Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Chicago, and I didn't end up having as much time as I would have liked over the last 3 days to write about the first part of my trip, largely due to m y preoccupation with television watching and loafing. Rest assurred, however, that I have taken good notes and will eventually do so.
I would like to take a moment to update the cyber world on the restructuring of our plans. We realized on day 3 that, though we found ourselves to by physically capable of maintaining the necessary level of speed for the necessary amount of time to make it across the country in our 4-5 week time frame, it wouldn't be any fun to do it that way. We've managed about 600 miles in 6 days of riding during week one, with no training or preparation, including 127 miles on the last day, and most of it through the mountains of northern Pennsylvania. We survived camping every night for a week except one day, when we stayed in a $40 motel room so that we could shower. And at the end of it, we felt more fit than ever. I feel satisfied that if I was determined I would make it in the time frame that we originally set, but I also discovered that biking 100 miles a day kind of sucks and doesn't leave a whole lot of time for anything else.
After Sean's bike sufferred a bottom bracket cup unthreading problem which forced us to backtrack 30 miles from Tunkhannock to Scranton and spend the better part of a morning at a bike shop, we sat and reevaluated our intentions, realizing that we had been trying to combine two endeavors into an impossibly short period, and that we could either commit a feat of athleticism and commitment by biking across the country in a little over a month, or have an adventure on the road that involved stopping along the way, hanging out in random small towns, and enjoying ourselves, but that the pace required by the first precluded spending sufficient time on the second. As a result, we opted for fun (perhaps slightly out of character), figuring that if we only biked a couple of thousand miles, had some new experiences and a lot of fun, without putting pressure on ourselves to go go go, we would ultimately feel better about how we spent our vacation.
The (tentative) plan we came up with is to bike to Chicago, hang out, bike to Minneappolis, hang out, take a bus/train/plane to Seattle, hang out, bike to Olympia, hang out, and finally, bike to portland. The total trip will probably end up being around 2000 miles of riding, which I still feel pretty good about since this is the first time I've attempted a ride longer than the 2006 Halloween Alleycat in New York which included checkpoints at 150th and Amsterdam, Greenwood Cemetary, and Bushwick, finishing in Bed-Stuy. Perhaps some day I'll attempt a cross-country bike trip on an expensive carbon road bike with no gear (ideally with a support van, but short of that, simply by staying in motels every night instead of camping), and make it in a month. Or some day I might try a cross-country bike trip at a more leasurely pace, getting a chance to check out small towns and do some soul-searching, and take 3 or 4 months to do it. This time, however, we've chosen option C: the old-fashioned American road trip but on bikes. Adventure, here I come.
I'll write again from Chicago in (hopefully) 3 or 4 days. Until then, enjoy this ridiculous fucking heat wave and trust that we will, too.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Day 1
On Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008, at approximately 10 AM I woke up on an uncovered mattress on the floor of my loft, sweating and wearing only a pair of boxer-briefs and a few thousand mosquito bites. I fucking hate mosquitoes. I hate them more than I hate... pop country music. That's how much I hate them. I am a very light sleeper and being bitten by one is usually enough to wake me up, so the fact that I was covered in bites is an indicator of how well I slept. If our loft wasn't 90 degrees at night, I might have been able to protect myself with a cover of some kind, but then I would have been too hot to sleep at all anyway; you can see the predicament I was in. Of course, the last week or so has forced me to redefine my concept of discomfort.
The original plan was to get up before sunrise, ride to the southernmost point of Manhattan, and take a moment to contemplate the Upper Bay (which was the closest we could come to the Atlantic ocean without riding an hour in the wrong direction) as the sun came up. Instead, we left the house around noon after some hasty repacking and decided to skip the ceremonial crap and just start heading west.
We made it over the Williamsburg bridge and felt pretty good about our level of fitness (of course the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains proved to present some slightly more challenging climbs than the bridge). We stopped on sixth ave in the Village so Sean, having recently lost his fancy cycling glasses, could pick up a pair of knockoff designer sunglasses with white frames and ironically large lenses. Oh how I'll miss you, NYC. In a touching valedictory moment a not-so-unusually rude motorist in an SUV honked at me for several seconds while I was heading west on 14th, riding on the right side of the road, leaving, of course, ample space for passing. I yelled something to the effect of, "what the fuck are you honking at?", to which he replied, "you, asshole," or something similarly tender. Thankfully, we made it out of Manhattan without any incidents of fisticuffs or u-lock justice, and were not honked at again until we reached the outskirts of Cleveland 7 days later.
Our first serious challenge was finding the George Washington Bridge. The west side bike path ends around 120th, which is further north than I've ever taken it. We walked our bikes up a very long set of steps and then took Riverside Dr the rest of the way to 181st and then looped back around to 178th and Fort Washington, finally finding the stairs to the bike path tucked away on the side of a highway exit ramp.
Confusion becoming something of a theme of our tripe already, we found ourselves in Jersey with no idea how to navigate the clusterfuck of interstates and state routes spilling out of the bridge exit like the frayed edges of my extremely short cutoff jean shorts. The guy at the hotel desk nearby insisted that 46, the route we were planning to take, was an interstate with no shoulder and therefore not bikeable. I'll spare you the boring details, mostly because I've forgotten them, but trust that we eventually did make it to route 46 west and finally began to put some distance between ourselves and familiar territory.
After about 25 miles we stopped for the first in a long succession of gas-station breaks to refill our water bottles and cram as many carbs down our gullets as possible, mostly in the form of potato chips, the new, apparently vegan flavor of doritos, and nature valley granola bars. My diet has experienced better days.
While we were sitting outside of the BP on the curb, filling ourselves with heavily processed and almost nutritionally worthless foods, a strange man piloting a slow-moving motorized scooter (the wheelchair kind, not one of those hip, European thingies you see around New York these days) pulled up, executed a tight 3-point turn, and backed carefully into the handicapped parking spot. He was wearing sweatpants, a tank top, and a baseball cap, and did not appear to be severely injured or obese enough to necessitate the scooter, although some kind of chronic pain or joint injury may very well have justified it; he did seem to walk with a slight limp, after all. He came out of the store a few minutes later with naught but a pack of Newports and a Strawberry Yoohoo, fired up his whip, and scooted away at a brisk 5 or so miles per hour, whirring for all the world like an upset but slightly drowsy bumble bee. As he vanished into the distant sunset, he uncorked the strawberry milk and pounded the entire thing in a bottoms-up maneuver that would have made John Belushi proud. Sean and I were in stitches, and the thought of that image still makes me chuckle. I suppose you really had to be there.
Yikes, I'm even more long-winded than I thought. I've been writing for close to an hour now and I'm not even halfway done with the first day. I've been thinking all along that I might like to some day write a more substantial account of this entire trip, but since this blog exists mostly for the purpose of keeping my mom and grandmother updated, I'll try to keep things short from now on. Basically, we rode, rode, and rode some more. I got tired, but we kept riding. We rode up hills, and then rode down the other sides. As it turns out, riding close to a hundred miles per day can get pretty monotonous. The highlights of the first day of riding included me getting two flat tires within 15 minutes, the second of which left my brand new rear tire with an inch-long slash in it (which I patched with a folded up dollar bill), eating lots more junk food, listening to several chapters of a lecture series released by The Teaching Company which featured philosopher John Searle talking about the mind, and finally settling down for the night in a patch of woods next to the Milford Learning Center in Milford, PA. We did 96.4 miles at an average speed of 14mph, which is not bad for day 1. Then we ate pop tarts and peanut butter for dinner and fell asleep around 11.
The original plan was to get up before sunrise, ride to the southernmost point of Manhattan, and take a moment to contemplate the Upper Bay (which was the closest we could come to the Atlantic ocean without riding an hour in the wrong direction) as the sun came up. Instead, we left the house around noon after some hasty repacking and decided to skip the ceremonial crap and just start heading west.
We made it over the Williamsburg bridge and felt pretty good about our level of fitness (of course the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains proved to present some slightly more challenging climbs than the bridge). We stopped on sixth ave in the Village so Sean, having recently lost his fancy cycling glasses, could pick up a pair of knockoff designer sunglasses with white frames and ironically large lenses. Oh how I'll miss you, NYC. In a touching valedictory moment a not-so-unusually rude motorist in an SUV honked at me for several seconds while I was heading west on 14th, riding on the right side of the road, leaving, of course, ample space for passing. I yelled something to the effect of, "what the fuck are you honking at?", to which he replied, "you, asshole," or something similarly tender. Thankfully, we made it out of Manhattan without any incidents of fisticuffs or u-lock justice, and were not honked at again until we reached the outskirts of Cleveland 7 days later.
Our first serious challenge was finding the George Washington Bridge. The west side bike path ends around 120th, which is further north than I've ever taken it. We walked our bikes up a very long set of steps and then took Riverside Dr the rest of the way to 181st and then looped back around to 178th and Fort Washington, finally finding the stairs to the bike path tucked away on the side of a highway exit ramp.
Confusion becoming something of a theme of our tripe already, we found ourselves in Jersey with no idea how to navigate the clusterfuck of interstates and state routes spilling out of the bridge exit like the frayed edges of my extremely short cutoff jean shorts. The guy at the hotel desk nearby insisted that 46, the route we were planning to take, was an interstate with no shoulder and therefore not bikeable. I'll spare you the boring details, mostly because I've forgotten them, but trust that we eventually did make it to route 46 west and finally began to put some distance between ourselves and familiar territory.
After about 25 miles we stopped for the first in a long succession of gas-station breaks to refill our water bottles and cram as many carbs down our gullets as possible, mostly in the form of potato chips, the new, apparently vegan flavor of doritos, and nature valley granola bars. My diet has experienced better days.
While we were sitting outside of the BP on the curb, filling ourselves with heavily processed and almost nutritionally worthless foods, a strange man piloting a slow-moving motorized scooter (the wheelchair kind, not one of those hip, European thingies you see around New York these days) pulled up, executed a tight 3-point turn, and backed carefully into the handicapped parking spot. He was wearing sweatpants, a tank top, and a baseball cap, and did not appear to be severely injured or obese enough to necessitate the scooter, although some kind of chronic pain or joint injury may very well have justified it; he did seem to walk with a slight limp, after all. He came out of the store a few minutes later with naught but a pack of Newports and a Strawberry Yoohoo, fired up his whip, and scooted away at a brisk 5 or so miles per hour, whirring for all the world like an upset but slightly drowsy bumble bee. As he vanished into the distant sunset, he uncorked the strawberry milk and pounded the entire thing in a bottoms-up maneuver that would have made John Belushi proud. Sean and I were in stitches, and the thought of that image still makes me chuckle. I suppose you really had to be there.
Yikes, I'm even more long-winded than I thought. I've been writing for close to an hour now and I'm not even halfway done with the first day. I've been thinking all along that I might like to some day write a more substantial account of this entire trip, but since this blog exists mostly for the purpose of keeping my mom and grandmother updated, I'll try to keep things short from now on. Basically, we rode, rode, and rode some more. I got tired, but we kept riding. We rode up hills, and then rode down the other sides. As it turns out, riding close to a hundred miles per day can get pretty monotonous. The highlights of the first day of riding included me getting two flat tires within 15 minutes, the second of which left my brand new rear tire with an inch-long slash in it (which I patched with a folded up dollar bill), eating lots more junk food, listening to several chapters of a lecture series released by The Teaching Company which featured philosopher John Searle talking about the mind, and finally settling down for the night in a patch of woods next to the Milford Learning Center in Milford, PA. We did 96.4 miles at an average speed of 14mph, which is not bad for day 1. Then we ate pop tarts and peanut butter for dinner and fell asleep around 11.
Cleveland
After our longest riding day yet (127 miles), scortching heat, torrential thunderstorms, sore knees, and my first ever energy drink, we made it to Cleveland around 10:30. I'll write about the first week in more detail tomorrow, but I just wanted to quickly update my reading public (yes mom, that's you), that I am alive and, well, not exactly well, but I will be after a good night's sleep.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The morning of
I barely slept last night due to the flock of mosquitoes that spent the night bidding me a fond farewell, so we are getting a later start than we hoped. Now I need to repack my stuff and hop in the shower, and then I'm outta here.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Preparation
Cleaning my room took hours. I packed everything I own other than my bikes, books, furniture, and what I'm taking with me into 4 small crates and stuffed them into the corner of the room. Coleman, Ben's friend and my subletter, moved his stuff in yesterday afternoon. Sean and I packed up all of our stuff, loaded up our bikes, and went on a test ride. There are a few kinks that need ironing out; I need a better way to pack my ukulele and I need to make sure that the bungee cords won't be rubbing the wheel, but overall I felt really good about it. Right after I packed everything I started to feel apprehensive about the load. A change of clothes, rain gear and a warm layer, a few essential tools, toiletries, and a sleeping bag don't seem like they'd weigh that much, but once it's all packed up on the back of a bike, it feels like a lot. Luckily, once I got riding - and got over the initial difficulty of steering a bike that top-heavy - it felt fine. So that's it. I have to buy some batteries, attend Trackstar's courier appreciation party at 151 bar (free drinks! yay!!!!), and have a goodbye dinner (courtesy of Tamara's fine cooking). Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn (or whenever we wake up anyway), I'm out.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Brooklyn
I'm lying on my back on the lower roof of my building, my eyes fixed upon an imaginary point some distance from the ground. I can hear 2 different car alarms in different directions and the slow steady murmur of hundreds of industrial fans within a several-block radius, all of this punctuated by the occasional pop that could as easily be a bottle rocket as a gunshot. I can see very few stars, and almost as many airplanes; they fly by at a rate of about 3 per minute, some so low that I can hear the jet engines. This is the closest my life ever gets to silent. I'm typing on a laptop I bought with Christmas money, sitting on a couch I inherited from a college friend - practically the only one I made - who moved to California, inside of a room that I built with my own hands and my friends'. Said friends are in the next room, loudly watching Muppet Treasure Island, below me, typing on their respective keyboards, or sitting in the kitchen sewing patches that say "In Grind We Crust" into the seats of their shorts where the constant friction of bicycle seats has worn the fabric down to nothing. This is the city where characters in movies rush headlong into romantic destinies on the crowded grid of streets and sidewalks, the bourough where Paul Auster's smugly liberal figments read great works of literature and occasionally produce them and where Jay Z and GZA were born. It has a romance to it if you let yourself be duped, but really it's just a bunch of people in one place living, buying, fucking, and doing whatever it is that people do. New York will not change your life, make it more glamorous; destiny is not waiting for you around the next street corner. Sometimes it feels like home and sometimes the farthest thing from it. Right now, I know that I need a break. I need a break from car horns, billboards, models and fashionistas (that make me feel insecure). I need a break from bars (that I rarely go into), rooftop dance parties (that I never attend), and hip clubs (that I avoid at all costs). I need a break from commercialism, consumerism and Americanism. I need some time away from confusing people and confusing situations. I need some space. I need some time to think, to get my shit together and figure out what I'm doing. I need to figure out who I am and what I want.
I guess it's pretty foolish to assume that a bike trip will give me all of that, but if it just gives me some of that, if it just gives me a break, it will be worth it.
I guess it's pretty foolish to assume that a bike trip will give me all of that, but if it just gives me some of that, if it just gives me a break, it will be worth it.
So here's the plan
Tuesday I'm leaving to ride my bike across the country with my roommate Sean. The tentative plan (pending sufficient sleep Monday night) is to wake up just before the sun rises, ride to the bottom tip of Manhattan, take a moment to reflect on time, space, and all that junk (while gazing at the Upper New York Bay), and then hit the West Side Highway bike path. The longest I have ever ridden straight is about 40 miles. We are talking about riding almost 4000 in a little over a month. I honestly have no idea what to expect from myself, Sean or the trip itself. This is so much unlike anything that I have ever done that I don't know if I should be terrified, excited, both, or some other as yet unconsidered emotion. One thing is for sure: I need this. I've spent too many days inside my own head surrounded by flashing billboards and flashy people. I have a lot that I need to sort out, about my life, my goals, my desires. Not to be vague or anything. I need some perspective. I need some sensory and social deprivation. I need the open road. I know it's not particularly original, but distance has a calming effect on me, and I need it right now.
On the practical side of things, I will most likely only have computer access once every week or so from the time we leave until the time we reach Portland, and when I do I will hopefully have the motivation to write something, although I might be so busy responding to all of the myspace messages from people who miss be terribly that I might not get to it. When I'm not near a computer, however, it will be because I'm spending my nights camping, which means no electricity, which means that my phone will be turned off most of the time. I promised my mom that I would text her every night and let her know where we are sleeping, but other than that, I will likely have very little contact with the rest of the world, and I'm really looking forward to that. Wish me luck.
PS if you live in NYC and aren't coming to Ian's bbq this Saturday, call me so we can hang out before I leave for the next couple of months.
On the practical side of things, I will most likely only have computer access once every week or so from the time we leave until the time we reach Portland, and when I do I will hopefully have the motivation to write something, although I might be so busy responding to all of the myspace messages from people who miss be terribly that I might not get to it. When I'm not near a computer, however, it will be because I'm spending my nights camping, which means no electricity, which means that my phone will be turned off most of the time. I promised my mom that I would text her every night and let her know where we are sleeping, but other than that, I will likely have very little contact with the rest of the world, and I'm really looking forward to that. Wish me luck.
PS if you live in NYC and aren't coming to Ian's bbq this Saturday, call me so we can hang out before I leave for the next couple of months.
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