Day 2-July 1st, 2009 (Davis to Somerset)

Noisy peacocks woke me.  Usually when I’m camping it’s young people singing songs and drinking beer late that keep me awake and old people leaving early that wake me up.  No people at the campground so Nature provided the alarm clock. 

 My first task is boiling water for the coffee press.  We had two coffee-presses--Daniel was a Scout and he remembered the Scout motto “Be prepared”, so he brought one.  There may be a Starbucks on every corner almost everywhere but you don’t take chances with essential items.  My backpacking stove is easier to get fired up than the Coleman but it takes so long to boil water using my pot from home I might should have invested in a back packer kit with the sculpted corners to improve the heating efficiency.  I threw in the “might should” for a recognizable regionalism effect.  I say it all the time, might as well be honest enough to write it.   I like to pour in the water and start the steeping, then walk away far enough so that when I return I can smell the coffee.  If I had time I would do bacon but what a mess.  Smell is almost worth it though. When it’s outside I wonder if coffee and bacon make the wild animals envious (or frightened)?  First cup is so pleasurable, it would be nice to let the boys sleep to whenever teenagers have had enough sleep but we’d be doing afternoon riding for sure.  I start packing up.  Soon I’ll wake Hardy have him drive me the 12 miles to Davis where we finished yesterday and we’ll pick up Ralph to head to the Start.  He’ll come back, wake Daniel, pack up everything, and then meet us for lunch somewhere between Folsom and Placerville.  Sooner, if one of them wants to ride rather than explore the  UC Davis campus....

Ralph is ready at 8 at the AmeriSuites.  The clerk lets us load Camelbacks in the kitchen because the state of California apparently can’t pay for water in the campgrounds.  We would have paid a camping fee if someone had asked. I hope they get some money to unlock the bathrooms and turn on the water and pay a ranger.  Now Death Valley has gotten The Ask down perfectly.  They put a little Kiosk in the middle of nowhere and say put $20 in the slot to visit.  The quietest, loneliest place outside a cave and they want you to pay to visit Hell. I wanted it on record we were in there so I paid the fee with a credit card.  If we got lost, the obituary could read--”last seen at Hell’s Gate....”.   It took us a while to find where we finished yesterday because it is right on the map edge.  The day was already feeling warm when Hardy drove off leaving us riding into the sun. 

I don’t want to be too categorical but the next 10 miles on the Yolo Causeway Bike Path were the worst of the trip.  Headwind, sun in the eyes, riding beside I-80 which was noisy as sin and large trucks keep plowing you with their bow waves.  There should be some of that beautiful California scenery on another route.  We rolled into Sacramento.  Stopped by an RV at a light  behind a svelte lady on a beater bike.  When we got up close enough to greet her, Ralph and I were struck by her lack of teeth.  From the back she looked 20, from the front-homeless.  Ralph wanted to show me the Capitol so we headed downtown and joined a demonstration of a bunch of purple shirts. 

They were some union of something like public service work.  They undoubtedly wanted some money from Arnold before it was all gone.  The grounds are nice--they have police riding bikes that politely ask you not to ride bikes on the paths around the State House.  We moved to the roads and wandered around looking for a good way to get on the American River Bike Trail.  Old Sacramento has cobblestones--a care must be paid kind of  place to bike and we eventually got on the trail.  We were passed by a lot of zippy bike clubs with matching pro look outfits.  Several moms exercising with their babies worried me because they seemed so far from civilization but being from there they undoubtedly knew how to get on and off without going the entire 20miles.  It’s not really well marked but no need to over sign for first (and only time) riders.  Some  danger from club riders.  We stayed to the right in case some club was pace-lining the opposite direction.  We did hitch a ride for a few miles but we didn’t get a real warm fuzzy feeling they wanted a touring bike (or strangers)on their wheel.  Miles do evaporate in a paceline though.

We stopped at a River Park and it looked like a company picnic on Wednesday!  Grills, tents,  softball games, smoke everywhere.  It was very warm, over 100.  Ralph had his thermometer, he’s techno savy and would do the NWS weather on his laptop in the morning, downloading hourly wind and temps.  With his Edge 705 he is a real data enthusiast.  I, by contrast, yesterday  forgot to put on my HR chest strap and today I  forgot to charge my GPS cycle computer, so it quit after 25 miles.  Batteries are a curse.  I could never have a car that ran on batteries.  Solar power sounds sexy but anything that relies on batteries worries me.  I have bad luck with batteries.  I had a 65‘Rambler with no hood lock and my battery was stolen a number of times and when I went to the used battery places to purchase another one, I always felt I was buying mine back.  My video cam is always dead when I want to use it. It takes a special person to organize their life well enough to keep everything charged up.

The day just keeps getting hotter.  Short hill in Folsom is steep but only a problem because we are not entirely certain of the route and reluctant to ride back down to follow the map. Generally the hills are not bad.  Ralph purchased a thin wicking headband for me that is a Godsend for sweat.  Sunscreen and sweat are tearing my eyes up.  I go through three terry cloth headbands but they are too thick and slide under my helmet slightly blocking my vision.  The Halo headbands wring out and dry out quickly.  We stagger in to Cameron Park for lunch at an empty pizza place.  The Mexican place yesterday and the Italian today are low on customers. I had a beer and burrito yesterday-making the afternoon ride in the heat harder.  Won’t make that mistake again.  I’m famished so I’ll have a beer and 5 slices of pizza..... We spread out and enjoy the air conditioning. 

Suddenly my right thigh cramps.  I am 57 years old and have been warned of cramps my entire life--from my mother not letting me swim after eating to bicycling buddies warning of them and getting massages after a fast club ride to prevent them.  But I’ve never had one.  Wow! what an experience.  I can see why you don’t want one in the water.  The guys thought I was having a heart attack, the way my face froze up with alarm.  We cooled off for at least an hour before pushing off for Placerville.  We tried to get a beer in Placerville but it was getting late so we pushed on to Lucinda’s Bed and Breakfast past Somerset.  The uphill  road out of Placerville is relatively shady and traffic light.  I was expecting some cooling effect from the altitude change but from my perspective, it only got hotter.

The B & B had only us there.  We had asked about camping for the boys and they found us a flat place on the horseshoe pitch but were kind enough to say the boys could sleep in the room on the floor to enjoy the A/C.  We had a one bedroom place and plenty of room.

There is only one place to eat in Somerset and it does not take advantage of its monopoly pricing power.  It is the best restaurant in the whole world.  Maybe you have to ride 84 miles to come to that realization but the owner is cheerful, the only waitress is perfect, and the food incomparable.  Molly, our waitress was a delight and we would still be there if she wasn’t married. 

That reminds me I should mention marriage. I am married and what I am about to say bears no resemblance to MY marriage at all.  That’s why I am an expert and happily married. I want to be completely sexist about this:  Women and men could have a partnership with equal rights but you know, that’s not really marriage.  My dad had it about right when he opined that men make all the big decisions and women all the small ones....there just hadn’t been any big ones to make in 50+ years of marriage.  Every marriage is unique and its own thing but generally from a guideline standpoint it would be useful if we could say the man’s job is the purpose of the marriage and the women’s job is the relationships around the marriage.  Men do the meaning, the women do the nurturing and caring.  In short not a partnership, a mutual sacrifice.  Marriage is a sacrament, so it needs a sacrifice.  A mutual sacrifice of different responsibilities. Cheating is less than 100% commitment.  As President Carter pointed out, we all do it because people aren't naturally at 100% capacity, as they say we use 10-15% of our brain power.  Obviously we underperform.  If the women thinks she signed on with a doofus or the guy wants to run around, great, they are candidates for the usual boy/girl relationship called serial monogamy.  Gay people can play too.  Same rules.  I think we should have something called a legal partnership.  All marriages are legal partnerships but not all legal partnerships would be marriages.  Why shouldn’t the church get to decide whether it’s a marriage or not?  If one church says a member can only marry once and another says you two guys can’t marry at all and another says you can marry as many times as you can say “I do” well that’s just viva la difference.  Find a congenial church......

Tomorrow we will rise and go to the sun--50 miles uphill to Carson Pass and then the mother of all descents.  We are ready.  

Day 1 June 30, 2009 (San Francisco to Davis, CA.)

Today was an easy start for a ride across the country: 75 miles including a ferry ride and not many hills.  Logistically, it was rougher.  Let me explain.  Ralph and I spent the night in a Santa Rosa hotel, 20 minutes from my sisters’ house in Larkspur where the boys, Hardy and Daniel, were camping in the backyard.  We had a ferry to catch across the Bay to Vallejo at 8:30AM from the Pier in San Fran but the start of The Ride was the parking lot on the North side of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Thus, we had to get up, pack, check-out,drive to Larkspur by 6:30, pack tents, bedding, and suitcases , in order to drive to the bridge, unload, lock the car, ride across the Golden Gate into the city to get breakfast, eat, and then Ralph would ride BACK to get the car and drive it to meet us in Vallejo while we would need to find the Ferry terminal buy tickets and load by 8:30. The next ferry was  an hour and a half later so if we missed our ferry then we would be doing the 75 mile ride across the Central Valley at mid-day rather than in the cooler morning.   There were thus a number of "deadlines" to meet, kind of like work rather than vacation.

We did not ceremoniously dip the rear wheel in the Pacific Ocean.  I believe a dipper must be planning to ride the entire way across the country.  There is no point dipping to go halfway. A pretend dip without expecting to dip in the Atlantic is a hypocritical act and deserves scorn.  We had a Sag and would sometimes cover miles in the car and thus we could not dip.  Interestingly, I was not so troubled by the inconsistency when my children were baptized.  

The ferry had 1 commuter from San Fran to Vallejo.  Turns out Vallejo is bankrupt and a little low on jobs and so there is not much call for someone living in San Fran to commute.  Our guy had been doing it several years and it seemed extremely relaxing to be reading on an empty ferry but  an hour commute would chap my day.  He probably could have gotten a cheaper apartment in the outskirts rather than having to pay San Fran real estate prices but not had the cachet of living in San Francisco.

We disembarked and spent the next glorious hours riding a tailwind to Fairfield and lunch.  We met up with Ralph after some technical cell phone coverage issues and had no idea what a bad idea it was to rely on cell phones.  When cell phones can’t find towers in the Sierras and in the Nevada desert, they search and run out of juice rapidly.  When you are counting on calling someone, both phones have to be charged and close to a tower.  We were always failing to meet these two obvious conditions.  The charger was rarely close to the phone needing to be charged and the unhappy discovery that your phone was dead was made by everyone, inconveniently, a number of times.  POA-1: (Piece of Advice 1) Don’t get too fancy with logistics and expect the cell phone to ride to the rescue.  A Sat phone seems like technical overkill for a bike ride.  As long as the driver has a map of the route and the group isn’t into spontaneous route changes, everything should work out fine.  It did for us. 

Once out of Vallejo it is amazing how quickly the ride becomes rural.  There are frequent views of the bay and suddenly you come up over a hill and there are what look to be lost naval destroyers just floating in the middle of nowhere.  I was not fond of the route along I-something 80 but Pleasant Valley Road after lunch is just a beautiful ride as you head to Winters.  From Winters its a hot flat pedal into Davis but on a sunny Tuesday afternoon riding through UC Davis campus, it made Ralph and I wish we were back in school--frisbee, tank tops, crowds of young people....We reached bicycle heaven in Davis by 5, in time for a beer on the main drag.  

Ralph found an hotel and we returned to beautiful Putah Creek Campground for the evening.   Lovely campground with no rangers because the State of CA has money woes.  Very few campers.  However, there are a number of peacocks and they can be noisy. 

My reflection for the day is financial sanity.  It was 2008‘s financial hurricane that prompted me to go on this bike trip now rather than in a few years, after retirement. I have a 12 year old, I don’t know when that will be.  It is apparent that for the self employed, retirement is now more problematic.  I actually have never been a fan of the concept of “retirement”, people should work at something useful, something they enjoy, their entire life.  Seems reasonable to golf and travel and work LESS but still you need to work at something you think needs doing.  A man without a mission is almost useless.

 My complaint is with the abuse of the middle class virtue of prudence and frugality by the elites.  Everybody’s supposed to save, save, save for a rainy day and the caretakers of those savings are abusing the trust. The government has encouraged saving in 401-k’s and is now poised to completely trash the efforts of careful savers by debasing the currency.  “Investing” is not much different than a trip to Vegas.  Caveat emptor. Savings and savers are much diminished and de-valued and it seems clear to me that if “old” money and “old” debts are going to be superseded by “new” money created and passed out to the politically connected, then I would counsel those who still have assets to take them back from the national squanderers and give it to a worthy cause.  Cut off Wall St. and invest locally.  (Eating locally is another rant).    I am not bitter (yet) but I am perplexed.   We are living in a delusional society.  Everyone knows where their own interest lies but no one seems up for the hard work of building a sustainable substantially just SOCIETY.  Elites who should know better-have made self serving and irresponsible decisions.  I feel it is highly likely that current government policy and current corporate profit seeking will completely undermine the incentives in the world financial system.  Think about that.   If the value of money is questionable and variable,-- to what end work and saving? The God fearing have an answer for that- Heaven.   Could a society exist without God or Money? How many busted utopias can you name? And where is shangri-la?  Anyway, the savers are toast.  The paycheck to paycheck crowd will turn out to be the wisest. 

Government attempting to borrow its way to prosperity is ludicrous.   What about a grand society? - sustainable, just, environmentally aware, ecologically sensitive?  We’ll have to work our way there, not borrow it.  We have subsidies supporting our system and it is unclear what would “happen” if they were discontinued.  Let’s pick a number between 20-40% and say governments, at all levels, get no more than that.  It being a democracy we want to keep the private workers more numerous than the dependents.  Now what can we build together?  And not another road, please.  When gas goes to $5 a gallon and no one has jobs we will have all the ribbons of asphalt we need....      

Training Preparations for Cross Country Ride

Having decided to ride across the country I needed to assess my fitness. So in January 2009, I decided on a century, a distance I had not done in 15 or so years.  To give you some idea of my general fitness for this adventure,  last September I easily completed the 64 mile Metric Century for the local club.  It took about 4 1/2 hours including rest stops but the first 20 miles was done with a large group of racers in the pack.  My usual late fall riding was  touring speed between 30-60 miles at 17-18 MPH.  I have no  special fitness, though at 5’ll’ and 180 lbs., am not in bad shape.

I set off from M________ County High School on my  first Century. I am after all planning to do 31 in a row to get across the country in a month. At Lexie Cross Roads or about 40miles into the ride , there is a hilly 16 mile loop up to Lynchburg and I was getting tired so I decided to return home and ride more if I had any gas left.  A stiff headwind chewed me up and spit me out and I slinked home, whipped, for an 84 mile ride.  Not possible to do THAT again the next day.  I was a long way from EASY daily 100+ mileage.  I felt confident that I could do a daily metric century but it would take at least 6 weeks (47 straight days for 3,000 miles) to get across the country.  I wasn’t sure I could take off that much time from work.  That was when I received the Adventure Cycling Association maps.  Approximately 2000 people buy the transcontinental maps every year, perhaps an equal number make up their own route.  If 2000 people a year do a cross country ride then I figure about 30,000-50,000 people have ridden across the country.

 Bad news from the maps!  It’s 3,780 miles across the country if you take the Western Express to Pueblo CO and then the transcontinental to Yorktown.  Bummer!   Can’t be done by me in a month although I hear tell the record is some 8 days and 17 hours.... I must confess that I really liked my idea of riding across the country in a month.  Secretly, I did not want to give up on the possibility but all mileage per day over 100 is going to be problematic. Especially if you are planning to do it again the next day. The country also has a number of hills.  I decided a compromise was in order.  I would ride half way across America, just the Great Western Express Route from San Francisco to Pueblo, CO. I figured if it was the most fun I ever had I could do the rest the following year, kinda like the Appalachian trail hikers.  I modified it somewhat to include the Moab, Utah area because I had heard it was stunning, a real bikers paradise and I decided on an ending in Telluride, CO. so that my wife and some other friends, not that into the challenge of a cross country trip, could join us for a sojourn in the mountains.  Our trip would be 1,282 miles across California, the loneliest road in America Nevada, southern Utah swinging up to Moab, and then into western Colorado and Telluride.  We planned to do it in 13 days.

Winter training, even in Alabama is daunting.  The weather is too often cold to ride far.  I really did not like getting up at 5:30A on Wednesdays to ride hard.  I must be a touring kind of guy.  An easy 20 mile ride would however do nothing for my fitness.  So my first suggestion would be that if you are going to resolve to ride across the country, it would be best to build a base in the FALL.  New Years Resolutions are fine but if you get a cold winter or wet early spring you are going to have a lot of bike rides in less than ideal conditions.  This last year was particularly windy and rainy.  My preferred method of coping with this was to ride before breakfast, go 25 miles return home, have a nice breakfast-coffee--read the paper and then go do a 60-70 mile ride.  Riding 25 miles before breakfast is psychologically most helpful. 

I have never had butt problems on a bike BUT riding more tests the tender areas.  My two methods of coping with this were riding two different bikes (with different seats) or carrying an extra saddle and then changing it at 50-60 miles. Strategically placed Band-Aids are helpful.  Two pairs of shorts are helpful. The problem never really goes away though, like blisters while hiking it is important to take preventive action before developing a problem.  If something seems sore, I would fix it in the next copse of trees.  My other concern was eating and drinking properly for maximum recovery.  Since I was skipping a day to rest while training, but wouldn’t be on the ride, I used a recovery drink 15-20 minutes after the ride on Friday and Sunday. Frankly there were too many variables for me to ever figure out what was helpful. Perhaps the biggest effect was from the level of the previous days’ effort, perhaps it was the pizza with anchovies I mistakenly ate too many slices of.   I simply had not done an extended tour and my usual biking practice of drinking 1-2 water bottles and eating a granola bar to ride 60-70 miles was hard to change.  The next day was typically sore but the problem is not the lassitude in the muscles but the weakness of desire to do another hard effort AGAIN.  I could not summon the will to ride hard 3 days running although I had every expectation I would be ready for the adventures of the road each and every day.  That was in fact true. 

Another issue is that training is done in the cold and wet and the ride is planned for the hot and dry.  Training is preparation and it is difficult to envision a shimmering Nevada desert highway while cranking into a rainstorm with the Gore-Tex soaked through.  In short, sometimes its not the miles but the condition of the miles that’s important. 

I bought the T1 especially for this trip.  I trained in January and February on the racing Cannondale and the vintage Gitane but I found the miles over 50 harder than I remembered and the bikes felt so harsh.  I had a compact crank on the Six-13 with a 50/34:12/24 but the Gitane had the 42/24 for the lowest gear and the maps showed a 68 mile climb from Placerville to Carson Pass.  I didn’t think I could push it that far.  I have developed the idea that every serious cyclist needs a “constellation” of bikes:  racing, vintage, touring, mountain, fixed gear(track), tandem.... and so I needed a kinder,gentler ride and a triple crank. The Cannondale T1 weighs a ton but feels great!   I loved the 28cc Gator Skin Continentals and the ride stability.  You can pound a big pothole and fly into gravel MUCH more comfortably.   We wouldn’t be carrying our luggage and camping gear, it would be in the Sag Wagon, but a rear rack with pannier and bag would enable day trip freedom.  A touring bike for a tour is only logical.  My wife remains skeptical that you need anything more than 1 bike, you can only ride one at a time.  She has her ’84 Peugeot--and it’s enough.

Transcontinental Ride Summer 2009

Written Spring 2009

On New Years Day (January 1st, 2009) I decided to ride my bicycle across the country.  I am several years removed from my optimal physical condition but it seemed a challenging and doable goal.  My rough calculation was that it could be done in a month, assuming the USA was approximately 3,000 miles across and that I could train enough to ride 100+ miles daily--comfortably.  It has been 15 years since I have done even one century and a moment’s reflection would have recalled that it was not “easy” then. Thirty straight days of riding would be closer to exhausting and grueling than to “challenging” and “adventurous” but people are doing mind boggling athletic feats regularly.  I read that someone has rowed solo around the world. Some woman swam across the Atlantic Ocean.  A guy from Stockholm biked to Mt. Everest-climbed it-and rode home.  Who knows what capabilities may be uncovered with a simple resolution?

I enlisted my son Hardy to drive the Sag Wagon for the trip and encouraged him to find a friend to help. A fraternity brother, Daniel, was game.  My long time friend, Ralph, was open to the project and was able to commit to it when his family reunion was postponed a week.  I had a simple training program:  20-24 miles Wednesday morning before work as hard as I could go and then 2 long rides as FAR as I could ride on Friday and Sunday throughout the spring.  I planned the trip from July 1st to July 31st, requested the Adventure Cycling Association maps, and elected to ride West to East or drive to the West Coast to start.  (We live in Alabama so that is not an inconsequential drive).  I figured that if I did enough practice centuries then back to back to back days would be feasible.

 Why ride across America?  It’s been done.  It doesn’t prove anything.  The fun quotient is arguably lower than a relaxed tour in a desirable locale. My answer, to embrace America suggests a love of the American Idea. But what is that? Does America have a shared project, a cultural goal such as becoming a substantially just, multi-ethnic, environmentally sustainable democracy? E pluribus unum. Or have we given up on “ideals” and are content to chase the Almighty dollar, every man for himself?  If our project is Liberty that is different than a project focused on Equality or even one primarily concerned with Justice.  All are important but if our embrace of diversity confuses the hierarchy of our principles then we may be content with a lowest common denominator value like Patriotism, an infinitely malleable kind of loyalty.

 My own religious impulse has withered and I am most interested in re-kindling and reflecting on the presence of God in these modern times. Darwin and philosophy “killed” him a hundred years ago and we’ve spent a ragged century trying to re-vivify him with a multitude of Great Awakenings or new human “isms”(communism, fascism, national socialism, etc.) proven unsatisfactory.  The bike is a reflective medium.  Many are the rides where the calm cadences and the glorious scenery locate the soul in a space that can only be described as transcendental.  Our current growth paradigm and monetary system are broken.  Consider:  Population and demographic pressures are pressing in on a majority of societies. Cheap energy has given many of us our own personal genie, converting BTU’s to modern comfort, and it has made us rich beyond all historical measure.  But now energy and resources are only getting more expensive.  We are funding our enemies and hurting our environment. We know we have to change--but to what?  What we have done in the past cannot be comfortably projected into the future and we don’t know a new type of economy that will work for us.  I wanted to think about being an American while embracing America on a bike.  A prediction:  One hundred years from now the bicycle will be more important than the car. Energy could be portioned out in teaspoons not barrels.  Greater efficiency could reduce consumption but there is no trend that says productivity gains will be so great as to deliver us.  Nuclear may be a bargain with the devil and solar has massive capital costs for batteries and panels that may prove unaffordable. I would like to think though that America can find a role in supporting some rough justice for the entire world rather than seeking to expand its unilateral empire.  A bike ride across America is easy by comparison, isn’t it? 

Preparing to Ride - June 29th, 2009

God HAS given us an assignment,  Survive with Honor. Love one another. Create something meaningful.  I don’t think she’s playing, she’s watching...  I don’t like the salvation requirement(believe Jesus Christ is the only divine human) but I do wonder if that or a similar belief is practically necessary to keep people from caring too much about this life.  If everybody got really committed to the game here on earth, the rules could get laxer and the play, meaner.  Nasty, brutish, and short would be more than a philosophic tagline.

My sister Katherine in Larkspur had a beautiful warm up ride around Tiburon and Belvedere to Paradise City and back planned for this AM.  My biking brother in law Tom had to work, which was good, because they need to get this little corner of paradise paid for before California falls apart(financially and or geologically).  He’s also a beast and since I would be hammering for the next 13 days I was looking forward to the touring mode in perfect conditions.  So we got all ready to ride 30-40 miles around Marin County, I gave Hardy the Gitane and Daniel the Six-thirteen while I took the T1 and the pack for all the extras.  We got all ready to go and Daniel couldn’t clip in.  He had never ridden a bike with clip-ins!  Daniel is a cross country runner, spare of frame and aerobically fit but he had last ridden a bike when he was 8 or 12.  Big problem with a lot of traffic on Marin County roads.  He also had never used shifters, either downtube or brake lever.  The concept of shifting was also a little weak.  Now he is a college student and can learn quickly but Christ! we were about to ride across half the country on highways.  I didn’t promise his daddy that I would bring him back alive but I felt a certain responsibility as the +21 yo.   I asked Hardy to give him a bike lesson around the neighborhood, and then branch out to some busy streets.  Tomorrow we were riding across the Golden Gate and through San Francisco and I thought a bit of biking finesse was warranted before getting plastered by a bus.

       My sister took me to the Verizon store to get my cell phone charger.  We then did a stunning loop down to Corte Madera and out around Belvedere to Tiburon where there are obviously a lot of people who are NOT financially challenged and have it made except when the fog messes up their views.  Not today.  Cool, low humidity, plenty of water all around and all I could think of was how yesterday I was looking at my steaming car on the side of the road in the middle of Death Valley.  Life’s changeable. 

We spent a little time testing out the bikes and trying to ensure we had all we needed to leave the next day.  I had planned to use my usual two water bottles with hand-offs periodically from the Sag Wagon but I got scared and bought a Camelback.  The thought of Death Valley, a broken down car, and 1 water bottle made me nervous.  I have subsequently wondered what it would have taken for the three of us to ride our bikes out of Death Valley and whether pushing on or going back would have been more prudent.  We were some 10 miles from Furnace Creek or only 10-12 miles into the Park.  It was at least 30 miles back to Beatty, Nevada and it didn’t look like much.  Forward to Lone Pine was at least 90 miles.  I’m a forward going kind of person and my recollections of Lone Pine at the base of Mt. Whitney were more verdant.  So if I couldn’t get the car started and needed a 90 mile tow, what would we have done?  We had plenty of water in the car but how much water would we need to carry to ride 90+miles in 121 degree heat?  I am glad I did not have to solve that problem.....

Another problem is where to find honor and nobility in a world that values cleverness more than virtue?  Too many successful people are too clever by half. To succeed means to one up. To pursue virtue when many others are having a good time or trying to fool you is to be haughty or naive. Gaming the system or relying on the letter of the law tends to undercut the social consensus.  Image, despite Agassi’s claim, is not everything.  If everything is about winning, then the group with the lousy hand could (should?)play a different game with a higher probability of winning.  Call it-- Kill the parasites.

      There is obviously a Real World, we create an Apparent World superimposed on it, and the Virtual World has recently become home for many of us.  I am after all on my computer to send you this missive.  If everybody is busy constructing their own virtual world to live in, how important is the social world we all inhabit as citizens? Where is the Energy in the social world?  Do we really think of ourselves as citizens  with responsibilities anymore?  Who goes to City Council meetings or belongs to a political party?    I believe the phrase is “bowling alone”.  The internet and technology have sucked the life out of historical institutions and delivered greater POTENTIAL but like the TV, the promise is not equal to the reality it creates.  Morphing from a word based to an image based world has changed the kind of society we are.  We tweet (tweak?) in separate rooms not talk and build on the social commons.  In fact I don’t know where that is.....

TEN VIRTUES or why do we keep talking about the ten commandments?

1.  Love                                       6.  Justice (Nobility)

2.  Honesty                                 7.  Temperance (Balance)

3.  Courage                                 8. Spontaneity (Openness)

4.  Generosity                       9.  Passion or Ardor (Desire)

5.  Hardworking (Persistence)      10.  Gratitude

We cannot be Good without God but we can be all of the above things w/o God.  If we were all of the above things—if we had all those virtues—how close to “good” would we be?  I would argue very, very close.  I think the faithful and the secular can agree that the above qualities (virtues) are desirable and would hope to find them in everyone.  We would not agree about the Nature of Reality but we could agree the above 10 virtues belong in the heart of every human being.

We bought some more tubes and a handlebar bell.  A ludicrous purchase for the ride across Nevada.  We could see 40 miles from the top of Carroll Summit and not one car anywhere!  We rode 64 miles without seeing a car.  Not one car passed us either direction for 4 hours of riding.  We didn’t need the bell.

 

Prologue to a Cross Country Bike Trip

 Posted Spring 2009 on iWeb

Call me Frank.  It’s an alias.  You have to lie to tell the truth.  We propose and Reality disposes.  The most important idea is the infectivity of Truth. Love is the most important human attribute.  It is a sure connection to the Real. We know it when we see it.  But then we move on and need something else.  Love is not an effort it’s an expansion or, if it is a sacrifice, then it’s a different sort of love.  My children just are, perfectly. Now if I was making a movie and I thought it would make a better story……  My selfishness pours into trying to see the world like it ought to be seen.  But why the “ought”?  Is it possible for all men to somehow HARMONIZE?  Let’s go on a bike trip instead.

 A hard coming we had of it.  Just the three of us, Hardy, his friend Daniel, and myself.  We would meet Ralph in California to start the ride.  We took entirely too much stuff.  We had a bike stand for repairs if need be.  (We didn’t).  We had a Coleman camp stove and lantern we used but didn’t need to.  We had two large coolers, one for drinks the other for food.  One is sufficient. We had a guitar, played 20 minutes in two weeks.  We had three bikes on the Allen rack on the back of an Olds Silhouette and three empty rooftop Thule racks.  We had a plethora of “bike stuff”.  The hardest stuff to manage though is the electronic toys a bunch of guys bring. Consider:  3 laptops, 2 GPS devices, 2 Garmin cycle computers, 4 cell phones, and 3 iPods.  How do you keep this stuff charged with one cigarette lighter in the car?  I forgot my cell phone charger and when you are trying to make miles everyday, you don’t have time to look for a Verizon store.  We left Thursday night and drove to almost Little Rock.  The next night we were in Albuquerque (1000miles).  It was hot-105 degrees in Oklahoma City at lunch and all the way through Amarillo.  The “third” travel day we detoured to the Grand Canyon and ended up in Las Vegas--109 degrees at 10PM.  I thought we could camp but the heat was frightening.  I can’t sleep in a tent with temps of 109.  Our last driving day was through Death Valley early morning, Yosemite at noon, Central Valley of California in the evening and roll into Marin County at 7:00P for dinner at my sisters house in Larkspur.  Our car overheated in Death Valley, temps were 87 at Tioga Pass (10,000’) and brutally hot in the Central Valley, 111 degrees coming out of Yosemite.  I could not conceive riding a bike 100 miles a day through the conditions we had experienced.  Marin County had record heat that day!  Fortunately, it cooled off some that night and we Alabama rubes pitched tents in my sister’s backyard.  Yea, we’re a classy bunch.

The American moment is beginning to fade.  America had a dream at one time.  We were a freedom-loving bunch of money grubbers but we “aspired” to starting something really special.  Perhaps a multicultural utopia, perhaps a society so rich no one had to work, but the facts are in-“Show me the money”.  The rest is window dressing.  Let’s raise a wan toast to the projects of the 21^st century—a lot of the same ones we had for the 20^th that didn’t turn out and didn’t get done, like peace, justice, sustaining the environment, meaningful work, meaningful play.  If we were explosively creative we were also explosively destructive—two World Wars and a boatload of wars declared and undeclared.  So if we consider the last century “successful” then there were still a lot of things that didn’t get done. When a country is declining, how do you define Progress? It used to mean going forward getting better, but now it may mean going back to something that almost worked, to a critical turn we may have missed.  Two billion plus people  when I was born but  now pushing 7 billion…Do we have a prayer of achieving something called Civilization?  The Captain D’s we have sprinkled across the landscape do not bring to mind the Sistine Chapel or the David statue. If we are starting to decline, is it beat the riff-raff out of the lifeboats and by the way where are my season tickets to the Symphony?  Societies choose to fail.  Our leaders are choosing to fail us and we are choosing to let them.  High minded hijinks in the desert.  Let democracy bloom in Baghdad. We know what the problems are but we don’t want to work or sacrifice. We’ve contracted that to the Army.  I will say straight out, I’m guilty. You may be an idealist and blameless. What we need are a bunch of people that have a dream of the future and do not mind the hard work of the present.  Most of us prefer the opposite:  Bookmark the “ideals”, order pizza in, check the tube or PC for something entertaining.  Maintain cool cynicism about honor or nobility.  One shouldn’t touch dangerous things.

Where can we find honor or nobility?  Tomorrow we will ride our bikes around Marin and I might come up with something.  California is paradise but it’s too expensive and doesn’t have any money....

It is hard to plan a possible once in a lifetime trip with strangers. The Adventure Cycling Companions Wanted page was a good resource.  I found TWO guys who wanted to make the cross-country trip BUT each had last minute issues that prevented them from going.  This could have been disastrous if I was relying on them. A ride across America by myself would have been anti-climactic.  So my old friend Ralph got fired up about going when his summer family reunion was postponed a week.  Ralph and I have been friends forever and ridden together forever and so was perfect that he could go.  He is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur while I am a stay at home dentist.  I save teeth and he travels to Singapore or Sidney chasing some idea.  He’s plugged in, I’m a little cottage industry craftsman.  I climb better on the bike though. He loves to fly downhill.  On the flats we are exactly equal and we make a great partnership.  The trip dynamics would be better--I didn’t have to pretend to be young with my son and his buddy and they could do what they felt like while we rode together.

On the trip out, we only touched the bikes to store them in the hotel rooms.  I had imagined that every day, I would take the bike off the car and ride a time trial maybe 20-30 miles, keeping in shape. But traveling is a lot about getting there and it’s always hard to be deflected from the goal.  But in Life?  Death is the end so what’s the rush?