Almost exactly five years ago, I rode my bicycle across North America, from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast.

I crossed 11 states, 3 mountain ranges, and countless bodies of water.

I kept daily journals during the trip, which I used for collecting my thoughts and documenting features of my experience, knowing that I would otherwise forget the details and the contours of my days.

Living somewhat grudgingly in this age of constant self-publication of everything from haircuts and coffee orders to the deaths of loved ones, I honestly never intended to publish these journals. I planned the trip for personal growth, not for “content”, and as is often the case with these things, the journals contained a lot of raw material that was never meant for anyone to see. 

However…on some level, I have to admit that “content” can be a vehicle for connection.

When I finished the journey, those that knew me and knew what I’d done wondered (understandably) about what it had been like. My friends and family had good questions that I often found difficult to answer meaningfully, because riding a bike is common, but riding a bike all day for 85 consecutive days is fairly unusual.

I found myself struggling to explain the thing I had experienced without it seeming either completely ordinary or completely insane. It was largely both at once, but how do you begin to convey what that’s like? The contrast just made it feel even more bizarre.

So, here I am: publishing my journals.

Ultimately, my hope is that others might be able to identify something they can relate to, or encounter something new, or get a taste of the extraordinary absurdity of doing something ordinary in kind of an insane way, as I did.

When I was preparing to do this trip, I found the writings of long-distance bike tourers to be incredibly inspiring and helpful resources in preparing me for what to expect. My friend Max gave me a book called “You & A Bike & A Road” by Eleanor Davis, which chronicles her touring experience. It no doubt fueled my inspiration, and led me to other resources, such as crazyguyonabike.com, where cycle touring blogs can be found and consumed ad nauseam.

As someone who loves to read, it seems only fair that I should add my writings to the pile.

If you make it to the last entry, you might crave (as I did) some kind of tidy little conclusion or takeaway that neatly sums up the whole thing. The truth is, I have taken a lot of things from this experience, and I still find it hard to summarize what they are. I think I’m ok with that. It doesn’t really make sense to try to squeeze an elephant into a sedan, and even if you are somehow successful, you will have done a real disservice to both.

In lieu of a tidy conclusion, I will include a page of reflections at the end that I wrote when the experience was still fresh in my mind, back in August of 2021, as to why I did the thing and what I found in it. It may be a little redundant to what you see here, but I think it stands alone as a decent summary.

One final note: There is a gremlin that lives inside me that craves perfect authenticity, and in deference to this gremlin I briefly considered publishing all my original writings without making any edits, but after carefully deliberating, I had to admit that there are certain thoughts which belong only to the pages of a private journal. While writing unfiltered thoughts in a journal is an immensely valuable activity which I highly recommend, what you will see here are (sorry) only the thoughts determined to have potential value to others. If you want the gremlin version, I guess you’ll just have to wait for the paid subscription model of my website to drop.

Some dry stats and figures…

Where I went:

I chose to largely follow the Northern Tier Route, as put forward by the Adventure Cycling Association. My only substantial deviations from the ACA map were through Michigan, which I have cycled across before and had some familiarity with, and Maine, which is my home state. My journal entries end abruptly when I reach Portland, ME, because once I had touched the Atlantic, I spent several days visiting with family before deciding to ride an additional ~250 miles to reach the easternmost point in the lower 48, a town on the edge of Maine called Lubec. I gave up the journaling for that part, but it was an incredible end to the journey and I have no regrets.

How i went:

A friend of mine happened to be moving from Detroit to Bishop, CA around the time I planned to begin my trip, and was kind enough to bring me and my bike and all of my gear along for the drive out west.

I got dropped off in Sacramento, where I caught a train to Seattle. There, I met up with Danielle, who had flown directly from Detroit to join me.

We took a ferry to Bainbridge Island, where my friend Ben picked us up and took us to Port Angeles. From there, we hopped on one more ferry and finally began the ride, starting in Anacortes, WA on June 1st.

I averaged ~50 miles/day, and arrived in Portland, ME on August 18th. Total miles ridden were roughly 4,300, including my little diversion to Lubec at the end. One night was spent in a hotel, in Bismarck, ND, and a handful of nights were spent with gracious friends and Warm Showers hosts (warmshowers.org). All other nights were spent camping.

WHAT I BRought:

In late 2019, I bought a 1992 Univega Activa Country that had flat bars and studded snow tires from Metropolis Cycles. They built up the frame to my specs for touring: 3×9 drivetrain, drop handlebars, bar end shifters, new cantilever brakes, fenders, Schwalbe marathon tires, a rear rack, and a brooks saddle.

I have always loved the look and feel of 90’s chromoly frames. A lot of the entry level models in those days were still of great quality. Living in Detroit, I like to own a bike that doesn’t appear to have the resale value of a high end brand, but secretly rides like one.

I carried all of my gear in a pair of rear panniers, a handlebar bag, and a pair of nalgene-sized bottle cages fixed to each side of the fork.

Bike tools:
allen set
pressure gage
valve adapter
mini pump
2 tire levers
2 spare tubes
13mm wrench
grease
chain lube
bike lock
maps
lights

Shelter:
big agnes copper spur 1p tent
sleeping bag (down, 30F)
sleeping pad (sea to summit, inflatable)
ultralight pillow
hammock

Cookset:
20oz stainless pot
8oz isopro fuel
MSR pocket rocket stove
mug
coffee strainer
bic lighter
utility knife
spork
bear canister
xsmall camp towel

Clothing:
2 bike shorts
1 merino tights
1 rain pants
2 underwear
1 cotton shorts
2 pairs short socks
1 pair warm socks
2 bras
2 shortsleeve tops
2 long sleeve merino tops
1 hoodie
patagonia nanopuff
light windbreaker
rain jacket
warm hat
neck gaiter
warm gloves
2 bandanas

Toiletries:
toothpaste
toothbrush
floss
mini mirror
tweezers
nail clippers
4oz dr. bronners
ibuprofen
tampons
hair ties
spare glasses
large camp towel
ear plugs

Miscellaneous:
2L hydration pack
sunscreen
bug spray
sunglasses
head lamp
power bank
charging cables
1 plastic shopping bag
camera + accessories
nalgene
keys
wallet
phone
journal
pen
ipod mini + earbuds

I woke up on Amtrak this morning, somewhat uncomfortably. I discovered a little late that my seat has a reclining footrest. I asked a fellow passenger where he got his  coffee. I’m passing through Oregon now, between Eugene and Bend. The scenery is a mixture of tall straight evergreens, yellow flowering shrubs, long ferns, and steep hills. I’m listening to Kid Koala’s 12 Bit Blues. It’s a good traveling soundtrack. 

My train arrived in Seattle around 8:00 pm last night. Danielle and I got dinner, and passed out soon after at our hotel. One of my bar-end shift levers had come loose somehow, so I did my first repair in the hotel room. It was an easy fix—the clamp just needed to be tightened. 

We rode our bikes to catch the ferry to Bainbridge Island. Seattle hills are no joke! Ben Bunk came and picked us up on Bainbridge—he lives in Port Angeles. The Olympic Peninsula is so incredibly beautiful; there are tons of yellow flowering bushes lining the road, with tall evergreens towering above, and blue snowy mountain peaks in the background. We got burgers for lunch at a place called The Rail, and ate them on a pebble-strewn beach nearby. We stacked rocks for a while and listened to a man with a broken arm singing and talking to himself in a disorganized way. “If you put frankincense and Einstein together you get Frankenstein.” That kind of thing.

We ran a few errands. We returned to Ben’s house and met his housemates, Josh and Abraham, and their dogs, Hunter and Willie. Willie is a cattle dog who likes sticking his head out of the cat door. Sallie Mae is still the best dog. 

Tomorrow, we are going to drive out to Cape Flattery.

Today was full. I woke up at 4:45 am but felt weirdly rested. We camped in Ben’s yard. Waking up in a tent feels natural to me already. We had intended to visit Cape Flattery today, which I guess is the westernmost point in the lower 48, but it sits on a reservation, which is currently Covid-closed to the public. Disappointing, but understandable.

We went instead to a beautiful lake and hiked through a rich, ferny forest with some of the biggest cedars I’ve ever seen. The trail started at Crescent Lake, which is fed by a glacier, and traveled along Barnes Creek. The ferns had my eyes popping, but the wildflowers were also in bloom and the air smelled amazing. I just kept drinking it in, in huge, slow breaths and savoring it like I’d never experienced truly fresh air before and might never again. I love this part of the country.

After our hike, Ben drove us to Rialto beach, where tons of enormous trees had washed up in piles, forming an incredible maze that we climbed around on for a while. The beach was covered in smooth ocean-tossed pebbles. I always feel suddenly like a magpie on a beach like this, compelled to collect and possess all of the most beautiful things I can find and take them home with me. I know this is a common impulse, because most places have signs admonishing it, and they’re right. We can’t all take the best stuff home with us and expect to still find it out there. Loving and possessing are different things, but we are so quick to conflate them. 

I have a pretty strong personal conviction to follow “leave no trace” principles in these special places, which was enough to temper my greed, but I also found some humor in my silly desire to carry literal rocks on my bike, after I had painstakingly packed it so carefully and minimally to be lightweight, knowing that every ounce I committed to carrying would make every mile another ounce harder. I did pilfer one small pebble to carry with me to the next ocean.

After we’d had enough ocean spray, we headed back to Ben’s place and stopped for ice cream at a little spot called Granny’s. It was nice to just ride through the beautiful landscape and catch up with Ben.

We had salmon, asparagus, corn, and squash on the grill for dinner. We met Ben’s girlfriend Shaylee, and chatted with his housemates some more. Shaylee is a tea farmer and mom of three kids who she homeschools. She talked about raising goats, geese, quail, and some other farmy things. She suggested we reach out to her friend in Anacortes if we need a place to pitch our tents.

Tomorrow, we’ll take the 9:30 am ferry to Coupeville to get started.

24 miles

Today I woke up in my tent feeling rested, and biked down the hill to use a public bathroom, because it was 5:00 am and Ben’s only toilet was between two bedrooms, both occupied by sleeping people. I made coffee and oatmeal after/while repacking my bike. There was some struggle involved in getting our bikes strapped to the truck, so we missed our 9:30 am ferry from Port Townsend. While we waited for the next one, we found a bookshop where I bought The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh. My main consideration in choosing a book was that it be physically lightweight (like my tent, and my rock), but I’ve heard of this guy and have been meaning to pick up some of his stuff. The store was mostly full of spiritual stuff and books on eastern religion, and we chatted for a moment with the owner, a lady in her 70s. 

We got on the 11:00 am ferry and finally found ourselves on our bikes…only to realize that neither of them were shifting gears as expected. My right lever had worked loose again, probably from being wedged against the truck when we strapped them down. Danielle’s was a little harder to diagnose. She made some adjustments to her limit screws, but after a while we eventually decided to just be on our way and find a bike shop later. 

It felt good to finally begin, but we had a lot of eating to do. We stopped for lunch at a place called The Pizza Factory in Coupeville. We passed some farmland. I saw a red-tailed hawk and two bald eagles. We stopped at a yard sale, and talked to a guy who seems like he might always be having a yard sale. He told us he quit smoking last year.

Apparently there is a naval air base on Whidbey Island where we are staying. We have heard fighter jets roaring overhead in bursts all evening. I took a nice hot shower at our campground, which is gorgeous and idyllic. There are wild rabbits hopping through our site, which is tucked between some blooming shrubs, tall cedars, and raspberry bushes. There are bright hummingbirds buzzing around, too. It feels magical here.

 As we began to make camp, we realized that Danielle left the rain fly for her tent back at Ben’s house. We’re still close in terms of miles, but because we are in the land of islands and ferries, it is not really possible for him to deliver it to us without huge logistical effort. He’s going to have to mail it to a post office or someplace ahead of where we are, so she can pick it up when we pass through.

77 miles

We stayed at Deception Pass State Park last night. We were on the road by 8:30 am. We made a lot of stops early on—Mocha Joe’s for some yogurt and snacks (and a celebratory *disgusting* mayo shot, in honor of Victor), a sporting goods store for Danielle to get a tarp/makeshift rain fly, Skagit Cycle Center to adjust her derailleur, and the post office, so we could both mail things home. I like the idea of mailing myself souvenirs so that there can be some continuity for me at home when I return. 

We spent some time on the highway, which was pretty comfortable with a generous shoulder. The majority of the day was spent on the gravelly Cascade bike trail, which was loose in places, but fairly flat and the scenery smelled good. We had to cross a small creek at one point, and I gouged my leg with my bike doing some awkward maneuvering, but I managed to keep my feet dry; the water wasn’t very deep. We passed lots of cows, horses, and fields of yellow flowers. I never get tired of seeing mountains in the background.

I thought about how a lot of men in particular seem to find great purpose in being helpful. It also occurred to me that doing this trip with Danielle is likely going to become a part of us both for a long time. Doing and sharing difficult things with the people in your life feels like a vital activity.

Today around mile 65, we got to the top of some very challenging hills and stopped to rest and check in. We were both getting to our physical limit for the day. We commiserated about how tired we felt, then headed onward. A few minutes later as we were (at long last) flying on the wings of gravity, a car passed us with a cheery beep, and both the passenger and the driver waved excited fist pumps at us out their windows, cheering us on. I waved back, grinned, and felt actual tears coming to my eyes. It was such a simple gesture, but it meant so much that these strangers saw us and were moved to encourage us on our difficult day. In my exhausted state, the emotions hit me hard, and I was grinning and crying like a maniac the whole way down the hill for miles.

 My watch tan is coming along nicely. Tomorrow, we’ll do Washington Pass.

27 miles

Today we were on the road by 8:30 am. I guess it takes about 2 hours to pack up camp, dress, and eat. It was an easy 15-ish miles of gentle terrain, bursts of purple lupins, butterflies, and the Cascades in the background. I guess I forgot that cascades are waterfalls. It’s indescribably beautiful here.

Before we set out, we stopped at the Chevron in Marblemount to stock up on water and snacks. There was an old man and a huge German Shepherd sitting (loitering?) out front, and we chatted for a while. His dog was creepily well-trained. 

We also met a couple there, who we continued to see throughout the day. The lady gave her name and number to Danielle and emphatically asked us to reach out if we should need anything when we get to New Hampshire, where they are from. They were visiting their son, who works at Mount Hood. They rented an RV for the trip. They are also cyclists. 

We got our first taste of long gradual climbs after that. It was a challenge. I wanted to push forward, but Danielle was tired, and we were both unsure of where we would camp. We speculated that beyond Colonial Creek Campground in the park, there might just be more cliffs on both sides of the road and nowhere to pitch tents, judging by what we’d seen of the landscape so far. Rather than passing the nearest campground and trying to push further along, we decided to stay the night and quit riding early, around 2:00 pm.

I read some of my book today. I stretched, and went for a nice walk through the trails here at the campground. It was very quiet, just the crunch of my shoes on pine needles and the sounds of birds high in the canopy. Everything here is covered in dense moss. It’s like a jungle, with ferns and flowery things everywhere. I want my home to smell like this.

Danielle and I ate some dehydrated mac and cheese and watched the sunset over the lake and mountains, talking about relationships. We’ll be riding over Washington pass tomorrow.

55 miles

We climbed Washington Pass today. It was a long and gradual climb. We went up for pretty much 30 straight miles through snowy, rocky peaks, and rushing waterfalls—truly some of the most rugged, wild mountains I’ve ever seen. They remind me a little of what I’ve seen of the Sierras, but they are so much closer to the road, and in all directions, so each one looks totally different every time you look up.

Traffic was pretty light. There was some sun and some intense wind in exposed spots, but we caught tailwinds every now and then, which helped us maintain our ever-so-humbling 4 mph pace.

We kept running into Annie and her husband (the couple from the Chevron). They feel like teammates now. We also met a family who is biking to Maine, too, a couple and their son—Terry, Janet, and Ross. It was nice to share the struggle with them and pass encouragement back and forth on our way up the pass, and we sat with them in Mazama and ate tacos at a food truck we found there. They are heading to a hotel in Winthrop for the night. After they left, we asked the taco lady if she knew of a place we could camp. She recommended a patch of grass near the community center nearby.

46 miles

Last night we almost crashed a party, completely by accident. There was a lodging/cabins area in Mazama where the taco lady had suggested we try to camp. We approached the office, which we found to be closed. Just as we were standing there deciding what to do next, a guy jumped out of his car, spotted us, and right away asked “Are you guys just arriving? There’s no checking in, just come and join the party!”  and without waiting for any kind of reply, he disappeared behind the building. We decided to accept the improv and see where this invitation could take us, so we followed him. 

Being a terrible bluffer, I decided it would probably be best to find the guy and lead with the truth, some form of “Hi thank you and no we weren’t actually invited to this party, but we did just ride our bikes over that huge mountain and we were hoping to just find a corner of grass where we could put our tents for the night.” As luck would have it though, we couldn’t find the guy anywhere. He had vanished like some kind of freakish yard party ghost. 

Eventually we found someone who pointed us to the host, a guy named Alec, who ever so graciously invited us to NOT crash his party by helpfully suggesting his favorite campground super far away. I will always wonder how differently that evening might have gone if we had tried to integrate, or negotiate, instead of telling the truth and accepting the consequences so quickly. If I’d had the energy, I might have tried to explain to Alec that his cheerful suggestion was not actually a workable solution for us, but I sensed that Alec maybe knew this perfectly well, and would have just found another way to kindly say “your problem is not my problem”.

We left the party and consulted our maps. I spotted a church a couple miles down the road, and without much trouble we found the guy who lived on the property and asked him if we could camp. His name was Dwayne. He was very accommodating, hooked us up with water, and had two adorable young kittens. I drew a quick portrait of the church and left it for him as a thank you; we packed and left by 6:00 am in search of a bathroom.

Danielle is feeling pretty fatigued from climbing the mountain yesterday. We contacted a warmshowers host in Twisp, but decided not to take a rest day there after all. We visited a bike shop in Winthrop, and a guy named Joe put some blue Loctite on my headset, tightened it for me, and marked with a Sharpie where it was positioned, so I can monitor whether it moves again. It has come loose a couple of times now, which plays on my mind when I’m riding fast on the descents. It seems solid now, but he suggested I contact a bike shop in Sandpoint, ID to have them order a 32 mm wrench for me, just in case I need to do my own adjustments.

We went grocery shopping, then crushed Loup Loup pass, and made it to Leader Lake Campground early enough to enjoy some restful moments of peace in our hammocks. I feel so present in my body after and during these long rides. The feeling of coasting down a mountain on one inch of rubber at 40mph is an indescribable, whole body thrill, and the feeling of a cold wind pushing you up the other side as you struggle to climb, sweating in the sun at a meager 4mph is a completely different kind of whole body thrill. It’s all so incredibly vivid.

40 miles

This morning we started with a leisurely ~8 mile descent into Okanogan and stopped for coffee at a place called Smallwood Farms. We sat for a while and considered our route. We read some details of the Yellowstone detour we had been considering, and sort of unanimously decided it would suck. It sounds like lots of steep, difficult terrain and “brutal” winds. I think we have decided to do the Northern Tier all the way across, which was my original plan anyway, so I am content with this rearrangement. I would love to see Yellowstone, especially on a bike, but tackling those steep Wyoming mountain roads sounds very intimidating to both of us. 

We rode a leisurely 40 miles to Tonaskett, which allows cyclists to camp for free in town behind the visitor center. There is a laundromat and shower center three blocks away, so we are both feeling refreshed. The town reminds me a little of Alfred, NY. The townies in the laundromat were all very small-townish. I spent a while trying to sort out what that thought even means to me, but listening to their conversations about and with each other while my clothes dried reminded me vividly of how, with terrific irony, you can live in the middle of nowhere and have no space from people, while living in close proximity to everyone in a major city can actually give you a crowd in which to disappear, for better or worse. 

We talked more over dinner about relationships. I’ve been using a plant analogy that I really like. Plants naturally have different light, soil, and water requirements, and I think of my relationships with people in the same way. You can’t expect a cactus to thrive on the same watering schedule as your tropicals, and vice versa. Plants will tell you what they need, but you have to observe them to pick up the cues. If you pay attention to how quickly they grow or drop their leaves, and you have the capacity to meet them on their terms, you can usually adjust to help them thrive. Some make their suffering obvious far in advance, some bounce back easily, while others give only faint indications that they’re withering, or completely hide their distress until it’s too late. 

We have another mountain to climb tomorrow: Wauconda.

45 miles

We did Wauconda Pass and made it to the town of Republic. We stayed at the Ferry County Fairgrounds. It’s a couple days later now that I’m writing this, and that feels like an eternity. 

52 miles

We did Sherman Pass today. The mountain climbs are feeling easier now. I am feeling stronger overall, but also getting tired. We made it to the town of Colville. Danielle found a warmshowers host for tonight, and it has been the most wonderfully surreal, unexpected part of the trip so far. 

Our host is a lady named Angie, who lives on a farm a few miles north of Colville. She offered to pick us up in town, so we met her at a Safeway and strapped our stuff onto her flatbed farm truck. I don’t know what I was expecting, but her place is an absolute menagerie. 

When we arrived, she walked us around the property and introduced us to: ducks, geese, chickens, Guinea hens, bantams, emus, peacocks, pheasants, a vulture she “rescued” and has been rehabilitating, her four dogs, numerous goats, sheep, a calf from one of her many Jersey cows, some horses, a llama named Maggie, and an alpaca. I’ve never touched so many different animal species in the span of 20 minutes. There are also guinea pigs, and actual pigs, too. If you whistle, all the peacocks whistle back to tell you where they are. It’s chaos, and it’s amazing.

She made us a fantastic dinner – burgers from her very own cows, with home made fries, veggies, pickles, and sauteed morels that she foraged, and we shared some marionberry pie that Danielle and I had brought, which she topped with fresh whipped cream, also from her cows. I think it was the best goddamn meal I’ve ever had in my life. We’re thinking it might be wise to spend a rest day here tomorrow. 

At some point during our dinner, Angie popped up suddenly and exclaimed “Oh! I have to go make sure my rattlesnake didn’t get out!” One very suspenseful minute later, she came back into the house carrying a plastic garbage can, which was issuing an unmistakable rattling. Apparently, she had found the snake just before we arrived. She explained that when she finds one around the house, she traps and relocates it somewhere up on the nearby mountain so that it doesn’t pose as much threat to her animals, and she doesn’t have to kill it. She showed us the snake, explaining that when it’s cold, it gets all weak and slow, and she picked it up by its tail to prove it to us. It was an incredible thing to witness someone do in the middle of their kitchen. 

Rest Day

This morning I woke up to Lucy, the old cattle dog, and Jet, the four-month-old puppy, at the entrance of my tent, ready for some petting. We spent the day with the Barton ladies – Angie and her daughters Ellie and Claire (identical twins), and Rachel, who works for the forest service. Ellie cooked for us and took us around to spend time with the animals. The llama (Maggie) was hilarious, instantly likable, and uncharacteristically friendly. She would run up to you from a great distance and put her face directly in your face, sniff you, and then let you pet her. All the others (goats, sheep, horses, donkey, cows, pigs, etc.) mostly just begged to be scratched, so we spent a lot of time doing that. 

In the evening, Angie took us and Rachel and the four dogs up to the cabin they have on a little lake up on the mountain behind their property. It was very cute and rustic with a sort of Lincoln Log style. The road to get there was truly hair-raising. It was a very steep and rocky dirt trail that cut switchbacks up the mountainside. I was glad to not be the one driving. We sat on the mountaintop to watch the sunset and took some pictures with Angie and Rachel. After dinner, we had some of Angie’s homemade strawberry shortcake and did some laundry and talked to Angie about gender non-normativity and identity politics. This pen is dying (as all things do).

69 miles

We left the farm this morning. I woke up to a big group of ducks loudly discussing something of vital importance to them directly outside my tent. We ate homemade pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream and sausages, gratefully said our goodbyes, and then we hit the road. 

We stopped at the bike shop in Colville called Adventure Peddler to air up our tires, and then hit the supermarket to restock our coffee and snacks. We sat outside the grocery store to drink our coffee and chatted about our time with Angie’s family, and about small town life, and how different it is here than what we are accustomed to. I was struck by a new depth of realization about how city folks and country folks alike seem to be exactly the same amount of clueless when it comes to what the other group needs and knows. The gap between these worlds in America is enormous.

While we sat, several people approached us outside the store with the usual questions about our trip, and words of encouragement. I’m coming to expect and appreciate these little moments whenever we stop. It happens frequently. 

There’s a massive logging operation in downtown Colville. I watched a crane claw picking up 50 trees at a time from a pile of (probably) thousands and sending them through a huge conveyor system. I took some pictures, but the strong pine smell in the air was the main event.

There were some challenging hills today, but the last 20 miles were so peaceful—long, quiet, flat, gentle, cool, sunset, riverside riding (with no traffic!) that I could do forever.  Turtles crossing. Smooth pavement. Glowing sky. We passed a lot of land that seemed totally unused and unoccupied, but for the “no trespassing” signs we saw every few minutes. I thought a lot about that. 

I did see one sign on a tree that just said “love”, which stood out in its contrast to everything else. Another tree held a sign that said “for sale”. I assume, of course, that whoever hung it meant to indicate the land, but I like to think it was just an absurdly desirable tree, and I imagined calling to make a deadpan inquiry about it.

We are staying tonight at Panhandle Campground, a National Forest campground on the Pend-Oreille River. It’s lovely and quiet. I can hear crickets and frogs. Tomorrow we’ll leave Washington and enter Idaho. We have a warmshowers host set up for tomorrow night in Sandpoint.

63 miles

We got a late start this morning. It was cold and cloudy, Danielle was on the phone sorting out some things back home, and I felt groggy and slow. We rolled out around 10:45 am and enjoyed another 30-ish miles of quiet riverside flats until reaching a town called Newport. We stopped at a Mexican place that had no customers, and ate some totally decent burritos. 

From there, we got on US Route 2 and entered Idaho. US 2 was fairly busy, but the shoulder wasn’t too bad. I’ve noticed that the only debris I see in the shoulder here is tree parts, usually big  strips of reddish bark that have flown off the logging trucks. It’s funny to me, because from a distance it looks exactly like roadkill, but when you get closer it never is. I have only seen a couple of dead finches, but so far there have been no other carcasses for hundreds of miles.

We stopped for an espresso at a weirdly modern place called Nomad. The owner reminded me strongly of Lisa, my first boss. She was nice, and asked us a lot of questions about our trip. A little ways down the road, we stopped again to discuss our route and ended up at an espresso hut/creperie called “Jo Mama’s Crepes” or something. The girl who worked there was closing the shop, but she made us a crepe and an espresso on the house. She told us Sandpoint was “full of hippies” and that there was something of a rivalry between them and the town we were in. According to her, “Priest River is full of gun totin’ types”. This description of the local politics matches what someone told us outside the grocery store back in Colville—that Sandpoint has a reputation for being especially progressive “for Idaho”. 

Our hosts in Sandpoint are a warm and hospitable couple of (suspected) hippies. Judy is retired from the forest service, and Steve works at a ski hill called Schweitzer. They fed us salad and spaghetti and invited us to use their hot tub. They have a beautiful property with lots of charm. They recommended the farmers market and some of the bakeries in town. I’m looking forward to poking around here a bit before we head out tomorrow.

25 miles

Our day in Sandpoint was delightful and bizarre. We agreed to take it slow—there was a decent campground about 20 miles east of Sandpoint on the water, and we both wanted to poke around town a bit. We chatted with Steve and Judy over coffee and then headed out to explore. We checked out some antiques and gift shops, found a couple bookshops, sent some mail, had a delicious breakfast at Bluebird bakery, and eventually visited the farmers market.

We kept bumping into Judy and Steve, and even randomly met one of their cyclist friends in town. Everyone we saw was so friendly and supportive, asking about our trip and wishing us well. It felt sort of surreal, like in a Disney scene when all the woodland creatures are smiling and singing and following the protagonist around. One guy selling baked goods at the market asked where we were going when he saw our bikes, and when we told him we’re riding to Maine, he literally threw two bags of cookies at us, refused to let us pay, and sincerely wished us a good trip. Another man offered to watch our bikes for us while we looked around. When we returned to them, a couple had joined him at his picnic table and offered to take our pictures. Picking up on all this buzz, a nearby vendor offered us each a bag of fresh greens and again, wouldn’t take our money. It felt like a dream. I bought some freeze-dried fruit (the perfect provision in terms of carry weight/calories) and a small bar of (suspected) hippie soap. When we finally left town, we hit a nice bike path near the water, where we spotted a guy dressed like a pirate on a fanciful pirate ship complete with pirate sails, floating by as if this was a completely normal thing to do on an average Saturday afternoon.

About 3 miles before we reached our campground, we stopped at a little shop where some live music was being played on the front stoop, which had been set up as a stage. We had just sat down with some ice creams when suddenly we heard a loud pop, like a gunshot. Apparently, Danielle’s tube had expanded in the sun and exploded at a weak spot, popping the tire off the rim while it sat. She had a spare tube, but it was the wrong size. 

Fortunately for us, Steve is a bike mechanic, and had insisted we call if we had any trouble. We hadn’t gone very far, so we called. It was humbling to have to ask for rescue, but as promised he showed up and fixed the tire for her. Apparently we had pulled him from someone’s graduation party, which was even more humbling. We were both so relieved to have his help. He gave us both hugs, thanked us for being in their lives, and left Danielle with an extra spare tube. His help felt so genuine and warm, like we had somehow been the ones doing him a favor by calling on him for it.

A short way down the road, we stopped again, because the tire wasn’t quite seated correctly. Another man happened to be pulling into his driveway next to us at the exact moment when we noticed it, and he jumped into action to help. His name was Mike. We chatted while the tire was being reinstalled. He told us he had once walked across the country years ago with a stroller, planting flags in the ground for each American soldier who was killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was interesting to meet him and hear his story. 

I am realizing how, after the tire exploded, it had given me the opportunity to relax on the grass back at the store while we waited for Steve, and read a little of my book. The weather was perfect, and we were surrounded by music and people and lakes and mountains, so, even what felt like the biggest setback of the day had afforded us some well spent time.

I also found myself reflecting today on how I have sort of a pathological need to do things for myself, and I often struggle or hesitate to accept help from people when they offer. It was nice to be reminded today that there can be times when relying on someone’s gift can also function as a gift to the giver, and you can usually feel when that’s true.

Tomorrow we will head to Bad Medicine Campground and hopefully see the Ross Creek Cedar Grove.

51 miles

A lot happened today. Danielle’s bike is still not quite right…maybe. She’s feeling a bumping from the front wheel. I rode it for a moment and couldn’t feel it, but she knows her bike better than I do. There’s a chance it’s just feeling spooky because it literally blew up yesterday while idling, and then wasn’t fixed right the first time. There’s also a chance it’s a big problem. I guess we’ll see.

I have been trying to remind myself that slowing down presents new opportunities. I have also been growing frustrated with all of Danielle’s bike problems. Just when I had started to imagine leaving them behind at the bike shop in Libby and riding ahead to Glacier solo, the gods of rubber blessed me with a flat tire of my very own. 

Luckily, we had just come to a small pulloff area for boats along the river, and we were less than half a mile to a gas station where I could get some air. I have a small pump for emergencies, but it’s a lot of work to completely fill a tire with it. The flat was caused by a sharp pebble. I adjusted my derailleur and cleaned my chain while the bike was flipped over and then we were on our way.

It was extremely hot today. We rode into Montana, over some beautiful sweeping hills. The colors were insane. The grass was backlit by the sun in a lot of places, bringing out the most vibrant electric green I’ve seen so far—an incredible foreground to the dramatic blue of the mountains and sky. We saw red, yellow, blue, purple, and pink wildflowers. Lots of daisies too. We saw a brown (grizzly?) bear cross the road some distance in front of us, and lots of motorcycles. My own color is growing more vibrant, too, despite my sunscreen. There was hardly any shade all day.

We stopped to rest on a boat launch and met a man named Stan who, upon hearing we were from Detroit, said immediately with a wave: “I could never stand living there with all those inner city thugs…I don’t know what YOU call them.” 

I didn’t know what to say to this, so I abruptly defected from the conversation and just stared at the lake while he finished securing his boat. I’ve heard people say ugly, racist things like this right to my face before, and I always feel caught in the headlights. My first impulse is to recoil, and then the debate team that lives inside me wants to leap into clever challenges to their assumptions, but the realist in me knows it’s very rare (if not impossible) to move the needle in the right direction with a total stranger. I think the best response is to somehow try to find a way to stand on what I believe and invite them to question what they said without somehow driving them further into their delusions, but there isn’t always an in-road for that with someone twice your age who you’ve known for 8 seconds on a dock in the middle of nowhere 3,000 miles from your home. He handed us each a Bud Light and left with his boat. 

After that we were joined by a couple from Helena who were celebrating their birthdays, which are a day apart. I don’t remember their names. I talked to the woman about her job. She teaches biomimicry, which is something I’ve never heard of before, but she talked about how it involves designing the built landscape to include elements from the natural world so that human impacts can be minimized. One example: there are a ton of birds that die just from colliding into windows, because birds can’t see glass like we do. So someone developed some type of filament to add to window glass that is invisible to us but mimics spiderweb strands or something, which are visible to birds. Apparently it saves a ton of bird lives. I would love to learn more about this stuff. 

They talked about Canada and Europe and healthcare and socialism in such a glowing way, telegraphing their political leanings in hilarious contrast to the last guy. Now I’m just listening to the birds high in the canopy, and the loons on the water, and feeling grateful for them. It’s going to be even hotter tomorrow.

58 miles

I didn’t sleep well last night. I woke up around 3:00 am ruminating about friendship. The birds were dead quiet until about 4:30 am, and then one by one they all started in like parts in a symphony. Once I finally accepted that I wasn’t going back to sleep, it was kind of nice to just listen. I got up and made coffee. Having that moment before the sun was up to spend some time alone was refreshing.

We were on the road very early, to beat the heat. The morning air felt so good and cold after our scorched ride yesterday. We made it halfway up the hill to see the Ross Creek Cedars, but we gave up. It was 3 miles of extra steep climbing, and it didn’t seem worth the effort, especially first thing in the day.

We ran into very little traffic. The road felt good, and the scenery continued to be perfect. I haven’t taken many pictures in Montana because everything looks like a postcard.

I found myself a little ways ahead of Danielle, so I stopped at a big garage sale. There was an older lady who told me she wasn’t having a garage sale today, she just always has the sign out and “happened to open the doors.” She seemed very eager to have a conversation. I wasn’t really ready for chitchat yet, having started the day so ungodly early (it was still only about 8:00 am), but she was persistent. I bought a pair of earrings and a small porcelain teacup for $1.50.

Danielle caught up, and a little ways later we stopped together at a roadside stand. It was sort of a cafe at a hiking trailhead. The guy working there seemed to be just opening for the day, and there was another cyclist already there. His name was Thomas, and he has been riding the Northern Tier in the opposite direction, starting from Bar Harbor, Maine. He had some good intel for us on our next few days re: camping, where to stock up on water, and what to expect near Glacier NP.

The cafe worker asked if he could take a polaroid of each of us with our bikes. He has an instagram page for his polaroids, I guess. He took a few and gave us some, along with some frozen huckleberries, knowing how hot the day was going to be. He was very sweet.

We made it to Libby – the ride went by pretty quickly. Danielle’s bike is totally fine. The thumping had been caused by the tube. I’m glad we know for sure and don’t have to worry about it anymore.

We made our way to the campground Thomas had suggested—the Army Corps of Engineers apparently maintains free campgrounds near the dam here. We stayed at Blackwell Flats. We met a very friendly guy who came over to our site to chat. His name was Lincoln, and he studies bees. He is from Corvallis, and came to the dam to do some trout fishing. He was very eager to help us fish, so we reeled a few times before the sun went down. He runs something called “The Bee Project” back in Corvallis. It was fun to hang with him and hear his impassioned thoughts about bees. 

65 miles

Today I woke up at 7:00 am, which felt much too late. The sky was threatening to rain all day, but somehow we dodged it all the way up the west side of Koocanusa Lake.

The road was hilly but there were basically zero cars, so I was able to really sink into the trees. I spotted a type of evergreen I’d never seen before, or at least couldn’t name. I looked it up later. Turns out it’s a larch. I love the little needle bunches. 

There was a place along the highway where a lot of young trees were crowding their needly branches over the guardrail, and they reminded me of how fans cheering on marathon runners might stretch out their hands from behind a barricade. I high fived a few of them, and thanked them for their support. 

We saw lots of deer, and more bald eagles.

The ride into Eureka was absolutely breathtaking. With panoramic mountains and stormy skies all around us, the light was incredibly intense and dramatic. We only got rained on (hard) for about 2 miles. A lady driving past us pulled up next to us and asked if we had somewhere to go, and I told her gratefully that we did.

We are staying behind the visitor center here in town. It’s just a large grassy park with a few shade trees. There is another Northern Tier cyclist camping here, headed east like we are. His name is Bryant.

62 miles

We started our day with coffee at an espresso hut about 2 miles from our campsite. Bryant is going to ride with us for a while today. We’re headed the same way, and he seems eager for company. He’s a 23-year-old kid from Santa Rosa, CA. He graduated last year, majoring in political science. We sat with our coffee and chatted for a while, and when we got up to go, he noticed that Danielle’s back tire was flat. She found a curved, thick gauge wire (maybe part of a fish hook?) to be the culprit. Once it was fixed, we were rolling again.

We were on US 93 almost all day, which was a real mixed bag. We started with a quiet country road, which was nice, and when we reached Route 14, we stopped at a post office so I could mail home a couple lbs of stuff – my fanny pack, which I haven’t really used, a spare long sleeve wool top, and my front headlight, which doesn’t cast properly over my handlebar bag, so is effectively useless. I still have my headlamp and a backup light if I need visibility. 

US 93 was buttery smooth, and somehow we were cruising at 20 mph for most of it. The shoulders were narrow to non-existent, but traffic was mild. There were a fair number of large trucks, which was scary, but we only got honked at twice, as we got closer to Whitefish. There were some great views on Farm To Market Road – we passed a massive field of yellow flowering crops, and got to watch some deer bounding through it, as if on cue. 

We got to Whitefish around 6:00 pm, and ate some amazing food at a place called “The Wich House”, as recommended by a warmshowers host. I drank a beer and remembered immediately that I don’t really like beer. It always seems like it will be refreshing, and sometimes it is, but usually it just makes my body feel gross. Tonight we are staying at Whitefish Lake State Park. They have a dedicated hiker/biker site, which has nice amenities—plenty of electrical outlets and a repair stand in addition to the usual bear box, fire ring, and picnic table. We made a fire, with a good bit of difficulty due to wet wood and no kindling, but we eventually got it roaring and it felt nice to sit around it. 

Tomorrow our plan is to ride to Apgar Campground, after doing some poking around in Whitefish. It felt so good to take a shower tonight. I haven’t showered since we left Angie’s house.

38 miles

Today was a leisurely one. We took our time in the morning. Bryant went kayaking while Danielle and I made some stops in Whitefish. I bought some blank journals for when this one runs out, and another spare tube. We had coffee at Fleur bake shop, and their pastries were stunning. Whitefish definitely caters to the tourist. Once we got on the road, we found Bryant a little ways ahead talking to another cyclist, a woman in her 60s or 70s. She told us she has been riding from Mexico back to her home in Canada since March. Her husband died of Parkinson’s last year, and she told us that they used to take bike trips together – he had a recumbent and some assistance for a while. She spoke of having done 100+ mile days through the desert. She had a long braid down to her waist. I loved her immediately.

My front derailleur is having trouble shifting from the middle to the largest chainring. I’m going to want to sort it out soon. It only happens occasionally, but I love dropping onto that big ring and pedalling all the way through a descent until the highest gear has nothing left to offer. We stopped at a river bridge near the end of our ride. The water was turquoise in the sun and flowing fast—I think it was called the Flathead River. We sat on the side of the bridge and watched swallows swooping and diving above the water. The sound of the water rushing and the feel of the warm sun and all that dazzling color was a real moment of bliss. I felt so much gratitude. 

As we approached Glacier National Park, the scene transformed into one of bustling tourism. Instead of actual bears, here we saw a guy in a bear costume. We poked around a bit, sharing a slice of Huckleberry pie while Bryant went ahead to the campground. We arrived at our site and set up our tents, then had a picnic dinner next to Lake McDonald while the sun went down. 

Over dinner we debriefed a bit on our experiences thus far. Danielle has been feeling homesick, and hearing her say so made me realize privately that I haven’t felt that way at all. If anything, I have been feeling much more at home in the woods, with just my thoughts and the smell of the pine trees. 

I keep thinking about how much I love this environment. Searching for where that feeling comes from, I realized that some of my happiest, freest memories as a kid are of being in the woods, or on the road. Spending summer days at Grandmaman’s camp in middle-of-nowhere Quebec, or at Pilgrim Lodge with so many other kids, or our family road trips, always to visit extended family, whether it was Virginia, Canada, or elsewhere in New England. I spontaneously found myself remembering the Pocahontas soundtrack on my way down a hill the other day, which comes from listening to that cassette over and over on the 14-hour family drive to Virginia, sometime in the mid-90s when that movie first came out. I’m really looking forward to reaching Maine. 

12 miles

Today is our first true rest day since Angie’s house. We are at Apgar Campground, just inside the west entrance of the park. We are planning to spend a couple of days here. Until now, our “rest” days have mostly just been shorter riding days. So far today I’ve had a leisurely morning. I set up my hammock, read some more of my book, and took a pleasant nap. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous, yesterday and today – high of 73 and blue sky with just a hint of a breeze. 

I keep thinking about tattoos, which is funny because I’m reading and thinking a lot lately about impermanence. I am remembering a moment earlier in this trip where I caught myself looking ahead on Google Maps a lot, and when you stray too far on the screen from your current location, the map shows you a button with an icon that says “Re-center”, which you can select to bring your map view back to your present location. It’s obviously literal, not spiritual, but it made me chuckle. I thought about it a lot on my way up those first few serious mountain climbs. I just kept repeating “re-center” to myself each time I found my mind wandering past the struggle of the present and skipping ahead to imagine the part where I’d already reached the top. 

We met another cyclist today. His name is Chase. He is going into the 10th grade next year, which is crazy, because he is riding alone, and apparently very fast. He told us he started a week ago, from his town in Minnesota, and tells us he has to be back there by July 4th. I think there might be some train travel along his route, but I’m not sure. He strikes me as maybe a bit of an embellisher, but he seems like a really sweet kid – very outgoing and full of wisdom for a 15 year old.

Danielle suggested we all go on a night ride, and the four of us went up to a small pebbly beach about 6 miles further around Lake Macdonald. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go at first, but I am so glad I did. There were almost no cars on the road, it was super quiet, the stars were coming out, and it felt very surreal to be there. Night riding feels very different, especially in a place as dark as this. It struck me that it was an experience most people don’t get to have here. I certainly wouldn’t have thought of it, so I was grateful that she did. 

We sat on the beach with just the lake and the mountains and the stars and despite a bright moon, pitch black all around us. While we sat and chatted, I felt a sudden impulse, and without thinking it through at all, I picked up a large pebble, and silently hurled it into the water. The splash it made (seemingly out of nowhere) naturally scared the living shit out of every single one of my companions. People were leaping up from the edge of the lake and there was a frantic discussion of what kind of animal could possibly make a sound like that. The mischief gremlin that lives inside me decided not to tell anyone that it was just me. I am the kind of animal that makes sounds like that. 

Tomorrow we are going to ride up to Logan pass and back, with no bags.

(mileage unknown)

Our ride through the park was spectacular. The climb and the traffic on Going-to-the-Sun Road was quiet and gentle. The colors and mountains here are next level. We did the climb with Chase. His enthusiasm is delightful, but his bike skills are terrifying. He was a joy to have around – just not too close, sort of like the bighorn sheep that we saw near the top of the pass. There’s a particular shade of vibrant blue-green that seems unique to the rivers and creeks here, and it’s unlike anything else. It started raining as we reached the pass, which made for a long, cold, slow, wet descent. We were drenched, now hardly able to see, feathering our brakes around the hairpin turns all the way down the mountain. My hands were numb and cramping up by the end of it. 

10/10, would do again.

41 miles

Today was a challenge on many levels. Danielle’s bike is having problems again. The rear derailleur is now hitting her spokes in her lowest gears, meaning she can’t climb hills. She was trying to fix it yesterday when we climbed Logan by adjusting the limit screws, with no success. 

The plastic spoke guard cracked and came loose before the night ride yesterday, and she removed it. Her bike had fallen over while it was unloaded that night, and without the panniers to protect it, the derailleur itself likely hit the ground and bent out of alignment. I could tell she wanted to solve the problem on her own, which I respected – but I could also tell she didn’t quite know what to do. I made what little suggestions I could, and then stepped away to give her space to sort it out.

The hours of good sunlight in the morning slipped past. I started getting agitated, with rain forecasted for the afternoon. Eventually, she called Shayne, who confirmed on her description that the derailleur was probably bent, and she could either try to bend it back by hand (risky), or just try to get by without her lowest gears until we could get to another bike shop that might have the tools we needed. I took myself to the camp store to get some coffee, and called home to wish Papa a happy Father’s day. We had a nice chat. I carefully neglected to mention where I was and what I was doing.

We decided to move along and hope to find a bike shop. When we finally got on the road, we were back on Route 2, which had a VERY narrow, sandy, barely existent shoulder, with broken pavement, and this two-lane section of road was very busy with park traffic. Not exactly an ideal start. One additional point of misery for me was that my shoes and socks were still soaked through from riding yesterday in the downpour. 

As we were making our way along this horrible, sketchy, narrow road, an oncoming pickup truck suddenly decided to triple pass a string of cars, and (I suspect) didn’t see me at all. Somehow, I didn’t see it either until it was in the near lane and coming straight toward me, passing within what felt like inches of me, at 70+ mph. All I could see was a momentary flash of the grille, and I screamed for my fucking life. I haven’t felt existential terror like that, maybe ever. I don’t know what my face was doing, but there was still too much traffic and no room on the shoulder to move over or stop even for a minute to recover, so I just continued riding while some real near-death tears came over me and I tried to take deep breaths and settle my adrenaline. One driver a moment later gave me a “rock on” hand signal out their window, which really brought the tears, because whether or not they could tell what was going on with me in that moment, I appreciated the gesture so much. 

We finally stopped before Essex, at a place that seemed to match the description of that one woman who mysteriously asked us to say hi to someone named Larry. We didn’t find him there, and I wasn’t in the mood to try very hard, so we continued on, making our way very slowly up Marias Pass. I stopped for a while to gawk at some mountain goats down in the river gorge. Danielle was struggling on the long climb without her low gears. Once she caught up, she suggested that she might walk or hitchhike if it got much steeper. 

I reflected for a while on my reaction to this situation with her bike, and how it connects to my own relationship with help. I thought about how she had offered to walk with Chase yesterday when he got tired, and how it struck me as such a compassionate thing to do, and how it was something I had not considered, simply because he didn’t ask. It’s not that I don’t feel compassion for people who are struggling—I do, of course. I think I just operate with the implicit expectation that if someone is struggling beyond their capacity, they will say so, and if they want my help, they will identify what they need and ask for it directly. This is probably my stance towards other people’s struggles because it’s how I want them to treat mine, too. I have always found it incredibly frustrating (and often patronizing) when people try to anticipate my needs, and rush to help me before I have a chance to ask, because I feel it robs me of opportunities to work things out for myself, which is something I value deeply. I want to be able to ask for what I need on my own terms, and further, I see it as my responsibility to do so. Not everyone comes to the table with this particular set of expectations. The differences can create misunderstandings.

In Danielle’s case, she didn’t ask me to walk with her. There was no part of me that wanted to walk my own fully functional, fully loaded touring bike up this mountain, but I wondered, should I have offered? If I did offer to walk with her, would she just feel like she was slowing me down? She might, especially if I couldn’t effectively hide how I really did feel burdened by the situation. I don’t get to choose how I feel, but if that IS how I feel, how do I hide that? Is it even right to try? If I can’t hide it, and I can’t change it, then choosing to walk maybe isn’t a gift of compassion after all, it’s a gift of guilt. It says “I didn’t really want to help you, but I’m going to do it anyway because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do. Hope you appreciate my sacrifice!” and that just doesn’t seem like a great approach either. 

It’s a double bind that’s familiar to me. When someone insists on helping you, and you can feel that it is frustrating for them to do so, it can make you feel like a burden, and because they didn’t want to help you, but they denied their own reality and did it anyway, it leaves you feeling even more obligated to express your gratitude. But it’s very difficult to access gratitude when you feel locked in the guilt and frustration of being a burden, especially if it feels like you didn’t have a choice in becoming one.

We ended up stopping 24 miles short of our goal today, at Devil Creek Campground just before the pass. The camp host is a man named Dan. He kindly brought our firewood bundle to our site and chatted with us for a moment. We talked over the campfire and Danielle read some of her book out loud. 

70 miles

We rode over the Marias Pass this morning, and spent the afternoon cruising at 20 to 30 mph through sudden wheat fields, long stretches of flat or gently rolling farmland with suddenly no trees in any direction. We saw a stray dog at a gas station in Browning. I think stray dogs are more common when we are passing through reservation land. I was chased by two others a short while later, but I yelled them into submission. I’ve found that loose dogs aren’t typically dangerous, they are mostly bored and just want something to chase, so if you stop moving and square up, you make yourself both less fun and more intimidating, and they tend to lose interest more quickly.

Today was the solstice. Mark told us. Mark is a retired marine and military security officer who moved to Cut Bank, MT to be near his son and grandkids. He used to work for the local sheriff’s department. Danielle and I stopped to eat at The Cut Bank Creek Brewery, and were discussing where we might pitch our tents tonight when Mark, who was sitting alone at a table near us, chimed in that the brewery owner, Louie, “has two acres across town”, but mentioned we were also welcome to stay with him if we were comfortable. 

He is the only person on his street with a flagpole on his front lawn. His welcome mat says “There’s nothing here worth dying for” and pictures a gun. I wasn’t sure back at the brewery if staying with him would be comfortable or not, but he does seem safe, in a paternal/republican kind of way that’s hard to explain. 

We set up our tents on his front lawn. There was a young kid (probably 8 years old?) a few houses down who began aggressively catcalling us off and on as we did this. It was kind of appalling, and equal parts funny and sad, and we thoroughly ignored him. It was the first catcall I’ve heard on this trip so far, and probably the first from someone his age. 

Later, an older man probably in his 70s or 80s was walking slowly by, and I heard the kid say “yo, yo, give me all your money!” with about as little real intent to rob him as he’d had in asking for our phone numbers. I guess maybe there’s not much to do around here. 

Mark’s front yard has a large birch tree near the road, which I climbed into once my tent was up. As I sat there looking out at the mountains, the walking man stopped abruptly and said to me, “Quite nice, isn’t it?”

And then, with the polished demeanor of a well-practiced tour guide or a history professor, he delivered the most detailed and thorough cataloging of the mountain range for me, totally unprompted. He named each peak from left to right, and gave the why and how of each name, and the people that were indigenous there, and spoke about the Indian wars, and Lewis and Clark, and on and on. I listened with rapt attention. He is apparently an avid backpacker and his favorite place to hike is called Two Medicine. He must have talked for 10 or 15 straight minutes, and I was spellbound the whole time. It was like something out of a dream, watching this soft-spoken white-haired man in a blue raincoat recite every conceivable fact about these mountains, while the sun set behind him. He told us his name was Jim Currie, and when he came to a close on his subject, he wished us both well, apologized for the “download” (we sincerely thanked him!), and he disappeared.

45 miles

We were making a huge weird breakfast with mashed potatoes, bacon, and frozen peas on Mark’s front lawn next to his American flag when he asked us if we would like a ride to Great Falls. Danielle’s bike is still broken, and the nearest bike shop is in Great Falls, which is 110 miles Southeast, with nowhere to stay in between. We gratefully accepted his offer.

His granddaughter rode her bike up and down the street while we ate our weird breakfast. She had a reading tutor come to the house, and after her lesson, the four of us set off in Mark’s truck for Great Falls. Mark told us a little bit about the area. He shared some views he holds about the “indians” on the reservation. I guess his son works as an officer there, and sees a lot of the local problems up close. I found myself recoiling at his attitude towards them, but also reflecting on how my distant view of things might be incomplete. I don’t know much if anything about the relationship between these specific groups of people, just the vague history of colonial expansion and general mistreatment of indigenous people. 

Firsthand, all I really know is that every time I have passed through a reservation, it feels sad and rundown to me compared to everything that surrounds it. It usually offers some of the least beautiful scenery, and there are lots of trailers in poor condition and many stray dogs. It feels like a place where there is little hope, and little obvious effort made toward material achievements. 

On the other hand, I am just as depressed by the gaudy materialism and excesses I see in white suburban American neighborhoods, all clean and sparkly and…wasteful. The “American dream” that involves killing or tricking people, stealing their good land, and throwing as much money at it as possible to make yourself look or feel successful by some arbitrary and ever increasing standard, without regard for the impact your “nice stuff” has on the global community, isn’t one that I’ve ever had. 

As I was listening to him, I guess, I could hear the obvious prejudice in his words, but I couldn’t figure out how to challenge him directly, and it certainly didn’t seem like the right thing to do in the moment, given how he was driving 220 miles out of his way to help us. And what insight could I possibly have about his local community that he doesn’t have? It was humbling and thought provoking and uncomfortable to be in that position. I listened and said very little, and thought about how kind he had been to us, and what it all meant. 

I bought a spare derailleur cable at the bike shop while Danielle got her bike sorted out. Mine has stretched some, and I probably won’t need to replace it, but it seems like a good thing to have, given all the gear shifting trouble we’ve had so far. It was only $2. 

We sat at a Burger King for a little while and made a plan to stay at a church in Geyser about 45 miles away. The sun was blazing hot, so we rode for a while, then hid in the shade at a rest stop for a couple of the hottest hours, just hydrating and eating lunch. I finished reading my book. It was a decent read, a good fit for this trip I guess, but a lot of the ideas were familiar to me already. I did enjoy learning about the founder of Patagonia and his business philosophy, which I didn’t know much about before. 

We made it to Geyser. There were some great hills on the way. At one point, a bumble bee somehow flew into my ear while I was bombing a hill at 30 mph. What a THRILL. Luckily I was able to stop and swat it out safely—it had gotten sucked into my helmet. I was glad we both managed to survive our chance meeting unscathed. 

The town of Geyser is, in total, about 50 houses and a bar. The church seemed a little sketchy after all, mostly because there were lots of close houses and it felt odd to openly camp in the middle of a neighborhood this small without knowing any of the people. We went to the bar, and the bartender offered to let us camp out back, so we did that instead.

68 miles

We woke up early and were on the road by 7:30 am. The sky really is much bigger here. We spotted a guy parking a piece of heavy equipment at the firehouse behind the bar, and he let us use their bathroom, which was most helpful, because the nearest public toilet appeared to be 15 miles away, in Stanford.
We had a pretty ride—the road was quiet with a wide shoulder, surrounded on all sides by open cattle ranches, prairie dogs, and wild antelope.

We stopped at the “R” Casino for breakfast, which was sort of a diner attached to a gas station with a couple of slot machines inside. I picked up a magazine and read a little about rodeo events. It’s odd to realize for the first time that there are lots of people (both children and adults) who actually dress and live like storybook cowboys. Stetson hats and tucked in plaid shirts with blue jeans and boots, just like Woody the toy, are everywhere. 

We met some “real” bikers at the casino, too—apparently there’s a BMW rally in Great Falls today. One guy with a voice exactly like Jeff Goldblum suggested we stop at Effigy Mounds National Park in Iowa. Thanks, Jeff.

We made it to Lewistown, MT. My period started a week early, so I got to enjoy the feminine privilege of bleeding heavily through my shorts today, and had to wash them in the sink at a thrift store bathroom (the only bathroom around for miles), and put them back on, still wet. Luckily, the day was hot and windy and they dried pretty quickly. 

I spent a lot of time thinking about wind today. 

We went to a bike shop here in Lewistown, because Danielle’s derailleur is still not quite right. The town incidentally reminds me strongly of Lewiston, Maine—big hills and a little downtown, a few parks. I guess Lewis knew what he liked. The bike shop “High Plains Bikes” was just a guy’s home garage, sort of a pre-fab shed. He is a middle school/high school science teacher. He worked on Danielle’s rear derailleur, straightened the hanger properly, and tightened her brakes. He gave us each a beer and regaled us with the local politics while he worked. There is apparently an initiative to buy land that used to be ranch land, and return it to the natural prairie ecosystem, but many of the ranchers oppose it, even though they are no longer able to use it for ranching. He gave us a nuanced explanation of it. It was great. 

We are staying at Kiwanis rest stop and campground. We had kale salad, pasta, and marionberry pie for dinner. There are a lot of prairie dogs living under the picnic table. The bathrooms are sparkling clean. 

87 miles

I’ve gotten pretty used to not showering. You can get pretty far with a microfiber washcloth and a gas station sink. Some of the gas station bathrooms are actually quite nice around here, which is great, because there isn’t much else.

This morning was overcast. I can’t get enough of this huge Montana sky. Before we left Lewistown, we stopped at a post office to mail some things. We were “blessed” with a head wind today, which robbed us of some of the usual joy of riding downhill for most of the day. 

I found myself working out an analogy about society, thinking about the wind, which is a force that becomes impossible to ignore on a bike. I’ve found that when I’m riding, I’m least likely to notice when I have a tailwind. I don’t feel it pushing me nearly as much as I do when it’s coming from any other direction, because it doesn’t add resistance, it adds thrust, and I also can’t hear it rushing in my ears, so it’s almost as though it’s not even there. If I’m really paying attention, the best evidence that it’s there at all is that I might notice feeling a little faster or stronger, which I might just as easily attribute to some other factor, like being well-rested.

So I started to think of wind as an analogue to culture. You don’t personally get to control where it comes from or where it goes, and you have no choice but to exist within it in some capacity. It’s nearly impossible to contain or predict its movement, but your presence within it does have an effect on its course, ever so slightly, as it flows around you. When you’re totally aligned with it, it’s incredibly easy to not even notice it’s there, helping you along, but when it hits you from an angle, or you’re opposed to its direction, heading straight into it, you can’t help but feel the resistance. It creates a conflict. You have to work harder to get where you’re trying to go. 

I thought about how effortfully changing a culture (or trying to control wind patterns) must require tremendous effort, cooperation, investment, resources, and time, the impact of which can probably still only hope to be felt on a very small scale. Locally. And, to the degree that those efforts do succeed, those who used to enjoy a tailwind without ever noticing they had one might suddenly find themselves experiencing an unwelcome change in how much effort it takes for them to get where they wanted to go. 

We stopped in the town of Winnett to kill some time—our plan was to stay at an RV park, which we didn’t feel particularly eager to get to. We met some other cyclists, traveling west on the Northern Tier, roughly. We hid under a shelter at the park with them and watched a big storm roll in and pass us, and then we headed on to Mosby. The RV park looked pretty dumpy, so we camped at a rest stop instead.

53 miles

I woke up early with the sun. There are basically no towns or rest stops or toilets out here—I ended up peeing behind a little hill next to the highway, because there are no trees or shrubs, either. I just kept thinking: somebody in Montana is going to see my whole ass today. If they do, it’s not my fault.

We stopped at a place called The Sand Springs store—basically just a gas station across the street from a cattle ranch. The lady who ran it told us she had just bought it 2 days ago. There were a few “groceries”, mostly instant foods and condiments, a wall of free books, nice bathrooms and showers (presumably for truckers), and a litter of brand new kittens in a shed out back.

I picked up a book called None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which looked vaguely interesting, and The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Great Buns and Thighs, because I couldn’t believe the aptness. We sat and talked for a while at the store and spent some time with the kittens. Danielle is still feeling homesick, which is tricky to navigate, because I am feeling like a fish that has finally found water, and I’m busy allowing myself to fall in love with everything I see out here, while trying not to make her feel worse. I have definitely felt that special loneliness before of having a bad time next to someone who is having a great time, and I know firsthand that it sucks to be on either side of it.

We both took showers and headed out—our goal was to make it to Jordan today, which we did. The terrain was nothing but long, straight hills, one after another, with some heavy cross winds from the north. We leapfrogged for a while with three cyclists from LA—they recently graduated (from college, I think?) and are on their way to New York, following the Northern Tier until they get to Chicago. Their names are Chloe, Ray, and Graham. Ray is friendly, Chloe is kind, Graham is quiet. We are all camping at Kariotis city park in Jordan tonight. 

I love the landscape here – endless sky and rolling hills, just grass and sagebrush in all directions. There is so much space. The sage looks amazing in the sunlight.

36 miles

We got started around 9:00 am today, riding with our three new amigos on and off for a while. 

I saw some cacti and what looked like yucca today, and a few snakes. I didn’t realize eastern Montana was so desert-like. The landscape between Jordan and Circle so far has reminded me strongly of New Mexico, or Nevada.

We got rained on for a little stretch today. It rained hard, but only on the left, because the wind was blowing at around 20 mph from the north. It was a weird experience. 

We stopped at a construction site to use a porta-potty—it was the only toilet we saw between Jordan and Circle, about a 67 mile stretch. I had anxious visions of the wind blowing it over as I went in—it was perched somewhat precariously on a trailer with wheels, right on the edge of a big hole in the ground. What a thrill.

Our goal was to make it to the town of Circle tonight, but the wind and my body were putting up a fight. We stopped and ate lunch at a rest stop, and decided to spend the night there, rather than huff and puff for another 32 miles through the brutal crosswinds. I feel like I had some great thoughts and moments today, but even writing stuff down right now feels like toil. 

The phrase “this, too, shall pass” has been coming up in my thoughts more and more lately. It’s a phrase I’ve heard often throughout my life, but almost always in the context of some difficulty. It’s obviously a good reminder during the bad times because it reminds you that relief is just around the corner, but I find that it’s just as useful for appreciating the good stuff while it’s happening, because that shit isn’t permanent either. Good, bad, boring, whatever is happening, it is all transient, and it is tremendously useful to remember that. 

We are planning to get up before dawn tomorrow to try to outrun the wind.

87 miles

Our 3:30 am start worked out even better than we expected. We had no wind and basically no traffic for the first 30 to 50 miles.  We made it to Lindsay, Montana, which in terms of infrastructure is basically just a large grain elevator and a post office—the gas station was closed. We ate lunch on the steps of the grain elevator.

I felt strong today, like I could keep riding forever. I was feeling pretty weak yesterday, so I’m not sure what changed. Maybe the wind? The early wake up gave us extra time to play with, which I loved. 

We are staying at Makoshika state park in Glendive. Apparently this part of Montana is where a ton of dinosaur bones have been found. We might be headed out of the cattle fields and amber waves of grain for a bit—I’m excited to see the badlands of North Dakota. Maybe some buffalo?

35 miles

Today we both overslept, which actually felt okay. We rolled out of Makoshika state park and discovered that there was a dinosaur/creationist museum in Glendive, which seemed too good to miss. We headed to a bakery called Trinity Bakery (probably a Christian reference, now that I think about it), to kill time before the museum opened.

The museum was roughly what I expected—lots of somewhat campy exhibits, a few real fossils, some big dinosaur cast skeletons, and almost every placard making a smug point about how Noah’s flood explains how dinosaurs and people were alive at the same time. Altogether, it was an entertaining way to spend the morning. A cultural experience. 

After that, we made our way toward Wibaux. I felt sort of restless on the bike today. We rested for a few minutes in a little park once we reached town, stretching and talking. Suddenly a woman appeared out of nowhere, I guess from one of the nearby houses. She asked where we were going, and handed us a big Ziploc bag full of brownies. She told us they were left over from a recent church function. They were fudgy and soft and delicious, a wholly unexpected treat. Praise be to Jesus, I guess.

Next, we headed to the Beaver Creek Brewery to have a beer, and on our way in, a couple that we had seen at the bike shop back in Lewistown spotted us. We chatted with them for a long while as we each drank our beer-and-a-half. I forgot their names. He is retired from the oil fields, she sells interior lighting remotely. They are from Texas and they travel by RV, with Harleys and regular bikes in the summer. They are headed to Theodore Roosevelt National Park / Medora tomorrow, just like us. Maybe we’ll see them. I hope we do.

We were invited to camp out in the yard of someone who knew the bartender. It’s only a block from the city park, so there is a bathroom and water fairly close. The clouds of mosquitoes when we got there were worse than I have ever seen. They were fully swarming me as I hurried to set up my tent, and then they all perched creepily on the netting once I was inside.

We will begin crossing North Dakota tomorrow, where the temps will be in the high 90s all week.

39 miles

We crossed into North Dakota today. We met a nice couple on our way out of Wibaux at a rest stop, just before getting back on I-94. They let Danielle use their bike pump. The woman said she had ridden the Southern Tier a few years ago. We left I-94 and took Old Highway 10, which gave us some nice pavement, nice views of the badlands, and no traffic. We stopped at an old fashioned gas station in Sentinel Butte, mostly just to read a historical sign about the local battles between Custer and the Sioux, and a man came out of the gas station and demanded we eat some rhubarb crumble. We obliged. 

He asked us all the questions. He seemed to know a lot about our trip already—I assume he only ever sees touring cyclists, considering we saw basically three cars for about 20 miles. I asked him what the fields were planted with around here—we have been passing some more bright yellow fields like the ones in Montana, and some new ones that were blue. The yellow are canola fields and the blue is flax, according to the guy that rolled up to the gas pump on his tractor, with his shepherd dog just trailing loose behind him. A perfect caricature of where we are.

A lot happened today, but I’m tired now. I watched a guy in a huge, scary looking truck casually pluck a dead bird off his grille and toss it in the trashcan at the Flying J station next to the highway. I was feeling snarky, so I asked “You’re not going to eat that?” and he laughed, and we chatted for a moment. He offered to buy us food, but we declined.

We made it to Medora and got a campsite. I bought a new rear tire at Dakota Cyclery. They only had 700c x 32 in Marathons, which was the exact one I wanted. I changed the tire at the campground, and put in a fresh tube. I’ll save my patched tube for an emergency. Danielle and I spent some time at the city pool. It cost $4. There are a lot of children here. We ate some mashed potatoes with rice and tuna. I sort of want to take a rest day tomorrow and see the park.

62 miles

We decided not to take a rest day, but we got a nice early start and rode through the park a little before setting out. I am writing this now two days later which feels like a lifetime away—I haven’t had time to journal lately. I’ll do my best to sum up what I remember…

Back in the park, I saw a bison, grazing right by the roadside. It looked up when I got near—I hadn’t seen it right away. I stopped and we looked at each other for a while, which was a crazy feeling. It was roughly the size of a car. I know they can be dangerous, and either way I didn’t want to disturb it, so I just stayed put. At first, I wasn’t sure how I could continue down the road without getting closer to it. When Danielle caught up, we waited for a little while, until we were able to flag down a passing pickup truck, which let us ride alongside, with the truck as a shield. 

Beyond that, prairie dog town was mesmerizing. It’s so fun to watch animals with complex social organization, like us. We stopped at the Medora post office on our way out of town and I mailed home a few lbs of stuff. So much more room in my bags now for all the peanut butter Snickers bars I am putting away daily.

It was extremely hot. I don’t remember much else from the ride, but I do remember that. Along the way, we spotted a gas station called “Creative Energy”, which I found funny. We were on Old Highway 10 almost all day, which seems like it gets more bikes than car traffic. I suggested to the shop clerk that they consider getting a bike pump for us. She didn’t pretend to think it was a good idea, but she was nice.

64 miles

I got up at 4:20 am. We stayed at Patterson Lake Rec Area on the outskirts of Dickinson, ND last night. We were able to get on the road early—I slept in my hammock last night, which expedited the morning packing for me considerably. 

We went to Walmart for some groceries. I found peanut butter in a squeeze pouch—I had no idea they made this, but it’s perfect for bike travel. A man in the parking lot came over and gave us each a Powerade as he was loading his car. I’m starting to think that if we ever ran out of food and money, as long as we were at a gas station, rest stop, dollar store, etc., we would be totally fine out here. Everyone has been so generous. It’s very odd to have a lot of strangers offer you help you didn’t ask for, and it makes me think about the people who I regularly see panhandling in those same kinds of places back home.

Today, riding-wise and mentally, was tough. Maybe the first really tough one for me. My body is tired. It was 90° and sunny all day. I drank at least a gallon of water, and kept my bandana soaked, but I still feel like a wrung out sponge. It didn’t help that we rode into a headwind all day, or at least for the last part, which is all I can remember. It kept getting stronger until we arrived here, in the town of Glen Ullin. We got to the grocery store just as they were closing. They are right on the other side of the time zone, so we’re in Central Time now.

The mental challenge for me today was probably largely that when we took a lunch break, I started looking at how far we have left to go, totaling up the miles. It felt important to do. I wanted to know if we were on track, time wise. But then I tormented myself with thoughts of the future, while I was tired, hot, and achey. I wanted to stop and rest, but I didn’t want to be taking longer. I feel like having a goal of where and when to be at the end of the day/trip drags me out of the present, and I’ve been so at peace with the present lately.

The last 15 miles were so hard today. Then…at some point, I realized that the crawling pace gave me time to notice the wildflowers – every shade of purple, and sharp slender yellows, and reddish grass bobbing in the wind. There were fields of something deep green, planted between rows of trees, a configuration that looked exactly like an imagined landscape in a painting I made once. Just before Richardton, I stopped for a moment to just watch a huge green field rippling in the wind, looking exactly like an ocean.

We passed through some fields planted with purple flowers—I have to find out what they are. It looked like some kind of clover, and nearby, someone must have been keeping bees. There were hundreds of them, zooming back and forth across the road in the crazy wind. I loved it.

So, during those last few miles, it finally dawned on me that the wind that had absolutely shredded and tormented me all day was the same wind that gave me all those little moments of peace, and as soon as that connection occurred to me, I felt it click, and I felt better. Interconnectedness is the perfect reframe. I started thinking about how none of this would (could) exist without the wind, so because I love the bees, and the scent of flowers, and that grass ocean, and the coolness of my wet bandana, and the way the shadows were dancing on the pavement…I suppose, however indirectly, I also love the wind.

62 miles

Last night I tried to sleep in my hammock again, but it suddenly became very windy again, and I was flapping and swaying everywhere. If that wasn’t enough to keep me awake, hearing the sickly tree beside me creaking and moaning in the wind was putting images of dying crushed by a dead limb into my mind. Not very restful. Finally I bit the bullet and just took the whole thing down, moved to a more open area on the ground, and was able to sleep, probably a mere 4 hours until the sun came up.

 Today was easier than yesterday, mentally, but not the weather. It was 92° and cloudless which means that we were in full sun for the entire day. We found a place with a fountain machine and filled our Hydro packs with ice, and we put ice chips in the bandanas we had tied around our necks, which did offer a little relief. We saw the biker from yesterday and his wife, driving their support van. I forgot his name. They are from Michigan.

I spent most of the ride paying close attention to my body position on the bike. I’ve noticed that I hunch my back more when I’m tired, so I kept my focus on how my hips were, and it seemed to help the overall comfort of everything else, too. It helped me to stay present. The wind was still crazy today, but after reframing it as an inextricable part of everything that exists yesterday, it took on a slightly new character in my mind. 

As we were passing through the town of Mandan, we noticed a lot of people parking along the roadside. We soon came to find out that a rodeo was scheduled to begin within an hour, and families were arriving in their cowboy hats. It was like something out of a dream—I have never really yearned for a rodeo experience, but since we left Montana I have been rodeo-curious. It seems like a quintessential wild west type of experience to have, at least once. To stumble into one this closely and with such perfect timing felt like fate. 

To thoroughly add to this feeling of serendipity, as we approached the ticket counter to buy our tickets, a lady who was noticeably (almost shockingly) much cleaner than I was walked right up to me and stood awkwardly close and said almost conspiratorially, “Are you going to the rodeo?” She was all quiet and serious. I answered “Uhh, yeah I guess so?” And she quickly handed me a ticket and said “We had an extra, someone in our group didn’t show up. It’s yours.” Her demeanor was hilariously like she was engaging in some kind of shady drug deal. It was so weird and awesome. She just disappeared after that, like some kind of benevolent rodeo phantom. Amazing.

The rodeo itself was kind of stressful. It was fun to be immersed in the aesthetic and hear the accents and the music and everything, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was just bracing myself to see a guy get stomped in the face by an obviously distressed horse the whole time, and I didn’t like imagining how it felt for any of the animals. Cowboys, though…I can see the appeal. 

After we left the rodeo, we passed Salem Sue, the biggest statue of a holstein cow in New Salem. She is quite big.

We decided to get a hotel and have a rest day tomorrow when we reach Bismarck. 

Rest Day

We slept in until 10:00 am and it was glorious. After spending some time stretching, we got breakfast and coffee at a place called Terra Nomad, a block away from our hotel. It felt great to be on no schedule. 

I walked to the Natural History Museum and took my time reading about dinosaurs, the timeline of life on earth, mass extinctions, and Native American life in the region. 

We took an Uber back to the hotel, then went shopping to resupply some of our essentials. Back at the hotel, we discussed our plans for the next few days. Danielle is considering taking a train home when we reach Minneapolis.

We went to a bar to have dinner, and watched the sunset over Bismarck. Now I am sitting by the hotel pool, feeling refreshed after a hot tub soak, and ready to start another hot week. The wind should be in our favor tomorrow if we get an early start.

74 miles

We got our early start at 6:20 am from the Radisson in Bismarck. We had a gentle tailwind for almost the whole day, and there was a long bike path to start. With my body rested after yesterday, I was feeling great, cruising at a fast clip all morning and feeling strong.

After about 30 miles, I stopped for a snack. Danielle caught up about 20 minutes later—I had been enjoying my newfound fresh legs so much that I hadn’t realized she was not feeling the same way. I adjusted my pace so we could ride together.

We met a guy headed west, and stopped to chat. He told Danielle that she shouldn’t “give up” in Minneapolis. I hadn’t thought either of us had considered her new departure plan to be a form of “giving up”. It struck me as a changed decision (and I think a wise one) born from a new understanding of what she wanted…so his suggestion was maybe not the helpful advice that he might have hoped it was. He was clearly trying to be kind and encourage her, giving the advice he would have wanted, but it didn’t quite land. I think healthy decisionmaking involves having the humility to absorb new information on a rolling basis, and having the courage to change your mind when you need to.

We made it to Napoleon, where there is a park/campground. Today is national Blow Shit Up Day in America, so we had the privilege of hearing a million fireworks being set off all around us in the campground (lest we forget what our nation truly stands for). We talked to a retired oilfield worker in a Grateful Dead t-shirt. He told us he originally left North Dakota because he was a single farmer in his 20s and had to spend all day inside farm equipment—“solitary confinement”, as he put it. He moved to Cheyenne, WY and worked there for 28 years. He met his wife in Thailand.

Earlier in the day, we tried to use the bathroom at a church, but despite it being Sunday morning, it was closed. I think we were in a town called Moffitt. In desperate need, we knocked on the door of the nearest house. A couple who seemed to only speak Spanish graciously let us in to use their bathroom. Their (maybe?) 5 kids were inside watching TV. I chatted with the oldest boy, who translated for his mom.

40 miles

We left Napoleon and were on the road around 10:00 am, taking our time. I’m writing this on the 6th, so I don’t remember much of the ride. We agreed to spend the night at a warmshowers hostel called The Honey Hub. It is in Gackle, North Dakota, and it’s sort of just a finished basement/addition on a house. The guy who runs it was super nice, and the amenities were great; cold drinks in the fridge, bike tools, two beds. The family was celebrating his wife’s mom’s 63rd birthday, and there were lots of family members there when we arrived. They shared a plate of food with us; corn on the cob, asparagus, pork tenderloin, tri-tip, watermelon, and chocolate cake with homemade strawberry ice cream. We have been eating a lot of tortillas lately with peanut butter and such. This was easily the best meal I’ve had in weeks. It was so good.

After dinner, we got into the ACA Maps a bit, thinking ahead to what we will do when we reach Minneapolis. Initially I was pretty sure I was going to want to ride through Iowa, but the route through Wisconsin and the U.P. is tempting—the book I’m reading by Timothy Goodwin right now is about the Northwoods area, and I sort of like the idea of doing the Michigan coast again. The Great Lakes are stunning, and the thought of spending 400+ miles all alone in the Iowa corn belt is dizzying. But then again, riding through the U.P. would add about 800 miles…

61 miles

I woke up and showered, put some lube on my chain, aired up my tires, and we hit the road. The weather has turned cold today, 55-65 degrees—windy and overcast. I wore pants, a long sleeve top and a rain jacket for most of the day, expecting rain, though we didn’t actually get hit with any. 

The cold was a nice relief from the last few days of brutal sun and heat, but I spent a good part of the early ride thinking about my warm sleeping bag. There was a subtle scent of wood smoke in the air, which was foggy, the colors soft and wet, and I just kept picturing a warm dry cozy cabin, like the one I remember Jean-Marc staying at in Eustis, Maine, or grandmaman’s camp in Canada, or that place I remember staying up in Grand Marais that one time. 

We made it to Little Yellowstone campground. I think we’re both tired from a long day of riding with pretty heavy side winds. I spotted a tick on my pant leg as I got into my tent. I hope there aren’t any more. Gross. 

47 miles

We made it to the town of Kindred. Today was the first day I felt like I was riding to actually get somewhere. I was able to tune in a couple of times, but it was a struggle. 

I saw lots of red tailed hawks. We’ve been passing more corn fields now, and soy. It seems we’ve finally left cattle country and are approaching the corn belt. It is renewing my desire to take that detour through Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula. Danielle has officially decided to take the train home from Minneapolis. It’s a little bittersweet, but it feels like a good plan. There is a cool looking climbing gym there, so we can climb for a day and hang out before we say our goodbyes.

We stopped twice today—first, to replenish our snacks. Our campsite was raided by a bunch of raccoons last night. One of them popped into a can of pringles that I had left strapped to my bike, and then they proceeded to ransack Danielle’s bags too. I managed to scare them back into the trees by running straight at them, yelling and brandishing my deer antler (we found a random wheelbarrow full of sheds back in Montana) like an absolute lunatic, but it took an awful lot to disturb them. I guess you could say my animal instincts took over. We secured our food just inside the campground bathroom for the night, which they seemed unable or unwilling to breach.

The second stop we made was at a place that sold farm equipment—the building was brand new, and there was a contractor working on the showroom with his 5-month-old chocolate lab, named Hunter. We had just stopped in to use their bathroom, but we ended up having a picnic lunch there too, finding a welcome patch of shade next to a big John Deere tractor with 5’ tires. From there, it was only a few more miles to Kindred.

We are staying at a city park—it’s well kept, and there’s a community pool next to it. The town has a grocery store and a school. It seems like a welcoming place. There was a bike path leading in from Highway 46. We used the pool. I lounged and read a little of my book, and we made dinner and chatted before turning in.

61 miles

Today we rode about 26 miles to Fargo from Kindred, with a tailwind (a real tailwind!) pushing us north for the first time in ages. It was so nice to just let it fly along the flat stretches of county road, with a decent shoulder and very little traffic.

We made our way to Great Northern Bicycle Company. I dropped off my bike for service to the rear derailleur and a wheel truing, and we wandered the town. There were a few touristy shops, but we took an Uber to a local pizza place a couple miles from downtown. Danielle saw someone recommend it on Reddit, so without investigating it further, we found ourselves at Duane’s Pizza House. It was a very underwhelming spot in a strip mall, but it was funny to think about how people who live in Fargo probably don’t always go to the pricey touristy spots when they just want a basic, affordable pizza. As Danielle put it, we got to see Fargo with its wig off. I think she put it best. 

We bought some cookies and coffee beans and headed to the Plains Art Museum. It was nice to look at art, and read about artists. I found myself noticing how some of the title cards/artist statements focused on how the artist thinks or approaches the material, and some focused on achievement markers and career details. I was always more excited to read the statements that helped me contextualize the work, rather than the person.

At some point, we returned to get my bike from the service department. I was surprised to discover that they did a lot of things I didn’t ask for, which normally I might not mind, but one of their mechanics readjusted my headset, saying it had been over tightened. I tried to explain that it had been fixed with Loctite for a reason, all the way back in Idaho, because it kept loosening, and he did not seem to hear me, and proceeded to explain how a threaded headset works. I hope he somehow did something better than everyone else who has worked on it before now, because if it gets loose again in a couple hundred more miles, I’m going to be very upset. The Loctite solution—while not perfect—has been the only thing that held properly for over a thousand miles. I re-marked the top nut, so I can keep an eye on it. I was pleased with the shop and service otherwise, but I wished he had asked before performing work I didn’t authorize, and I wished he had listened to me when I explained my situation, instead of assuming I didn’t understand my equipment. If it comes loose again on this trip, I will be asking them to send me a 32 mm wrench so I can manage it myself.

 We went to Fargo Brewing Company for a beer, which we half- finished, because we wanted to meet up with a group of lady cyclists that were leaving the bike shop at 6:00 pm sharp for a group ride. We rode with the three of them all the way to Sabin, Minnesota, and it was kind of nice to have something else to focus on for those 13 miles or so. They were on super lightweight, fast road bikes with clipless pedals and spandex and jerseys, the whole kit. I felt like an oddly shaped duckling waddling behind them with my loaded panniers and my heavy steel touring frame. They rode FAST. I realized when we got to Sabin that I hadn’t looked up at the scenery even once, because I’d been so focused on keeping pace and not colliding with anyone. 

The last 16 miles to Barnesville were nice—the sun was at our backs, and the road was quiet, so Danielle and I were able to chat while we rode for the first time in a while. Our ride is ending soon, in a week, when we reach Minneapolis, and it feels like we are both at peace with that, which is a nice note to end on.

1 mile

This morning I woke up to rain, so I stayed in my tent. We had agreed to have a shorter day, so I wasn’t too concerned about getting a late start. But the next thing I knew, Danielle was telling me her car was totaled—she’d been on the phone for a while in her tent. I guess it had been parked in a low spot for a while when there had been severe flooding back in Detroit. She was justifiably distraught. I listened for a while, and we agreed to take whatever time she needed today to sort things out.

A short while later, she got a message from the lady who was watching her cat, saying he was suddenly acting very sick. By mid-afternoon, we decided to seek distraction and left the campground in search of the local Dairy Queen…when her bike fell over, bending her derailleur hanger out of position, yet again.

Apart from dealing with this absolute cascade of devastation, I did spend some time resting in my tent and looking at my maps to get a feel for what’s ahead of me. There appears to be about 2,400 miles left. I am eager to do longer days after we reach Minneapolis. I hope we can get a good rhythm going over the next (final) few days and actually end on a good note.

80 miles

It’s morning as I write this—I woke up at 4:00 am, fully on the ground. My sleeping pad has had a slow leak for some time now. It was getting progressively worse yesterday, and driving me a little crazy. In the quiet of the morning, I donned my headlamp, over-inflated it, and found the leak, finally. I patched it. Hopefully there’s not more than one.

Now it’s almost 6:00 am, and I would like to have made some coffee, but it’s in Danielle’s tent, and she is still asleep, which after yesterday’s difficulties, I have no intention of disturbing. I think my task today will be remembering to enjoy what is.

Fortunately, with fresh legs from our day off, today we hit the magical section of Minnesota that is all rail trails. Our ride started on about 20 miles of highway, but it was quiet and cloudy and smooth. 

We stopped in Rothsay to eat a second breakfast—they had great pie, and we met two cyclists there, heading west, so chatting with them was a nice chance to look into our future. They started their ride in Boston—Ravi is a doctor and Noah is moving to the west coast to study neuroscience. They were very nice. They told us we were headed into “paradise”, and they were not wrong. The smoothly paved, nicely canopied bike trails were so encouraging, and our morale hit an all-time high. We were chatting and enjoying ourselves. I found some raspberry bushes and ate a handful. We did about 80 miles in all, one of our longest days. I felt like I could have kept riding forever.

70 miles

It’s looking like we’ll make it to Minneapolis by tomorrow. We took a shortcut from the ACA map, cutting off the part of the trail that goes to Bowlus. It’s probably a nice section, and there’s allegedly a great bike hostel in Dalbo, but at this point I think we’re both eager to reach Minneapolis.

My day started kind of funky—I found two more holes in my sleeping pad, woke up feeling sticky, and I have no clean shorts or socks. I’ve been slacking on my laundry. Last night was so much fun though—we found a park/playground just off the trail, and it was honestly a surprisingly cool playground. We found ourselves just cackling and running around like children, spinning on things and making ourselves dizzy. 

We made it to St. Joseph today and found another little park (Klinefelter) where we could stealth camp. 

Tomorrow we’ll stay with Zack and Bree.

81 miles

Today was another long one, mileage wise—a mixture of trails and roads. We pulled into Minneapolis around 7:00 pm. 

Zach’s partner Bree met us at their house and we chatted for a while. I couldn’t remember if I’d met her before, but she was so fun to talk to. She asked really good questions. Instead of “how many miles?” it was, “what do you think about on the bike?” We covered the usual ground, too, but I appreciated so much that we moved from small to medium talk so quickly. We talked about language, accents, dialects, letter sounds, aliens, humans, learning to speak Russian, all sorts of things. She told us she works in IT, doing some sort of programming, which she studied after majoring in saxophone. Their dog, Gonzo, is the best. They have a sizable collection of dinosaurs in their kitchen.

Zack returned home a while later and we had some more good conversation. They’re such nice people. We ended up going to Taco Bell for dinner because it had gotten so late, and then went to a place called 331 Tee, a local bar where lots of hip Minneapolis people were listening to an old guy yodel. 

Rest Day?

I woke up at 6:30 am, and I’m not ashamed to admit I immediately devoured some leftover Taco Bell. I’m usually ravenous the instant I wake up, even more so these days. 

I took an incredibly refreshing shower, started my laundry, and made coffee. It’s about 8:30 am now and the house is quiet. Zack and Gonzo are at work, and Bree and Danielle are still sleeping. I am learning that this is my favorite thing—waking up first, and having quiet time with my thoughts. Maybe I should live alone.

The plan is to go to The Bouldering Project, a bouldering gym downtown. Danielle will probably want to get breakfast and coffee. I want to visit a bike shop.

I’ve thought about the idea of home a lot on this trip. I really truly feel at home when I’m traveling. My space, my independence, and the freedom to come and go as I please are all so fundamental to my happiness. I don’t really know why, but something about having a rough plan, some essential tools, and no one to answer to is the best place for me. That’s where I feel most like myself.

Danielle and I were talking about this some along the way. She has been realizing what home is for her: a place of comfort. I found myself realizing that for me, home was more a place of constraint when I was growing up – it was where I had to be. I did experience plenty of comfort there, of course, but everywhere else in the world felt like somewhere I got to be. And, to add to that, I think my first taste of true freedom and autonomy was felt on a bike, from that first moment of taking the training wheels off and feeling an adult let go and realizing I could balance on my own, to being a little older and riding through the neighborhood unsupervised, to being a little older still, a teenager yearning for more independence, without a driver’s license or a car…the sense of freedom and autonomy that I still feel on a bike is hard to match any other way. It’s where I feel at home.

67 miles

I woke up at Zack and Bree’s, feeling groggy. Zack gave Danielle a ride to her train, and I hit the road alone for the first time. 

There were severe thunderstorms in the forecast, so I felt pressed to get as far as possible before they dropped. My goal for the day was to reach St Croix Falls, just over the border into Wisconsin, at a place called Interstate State Park. I stopped for coffee at Corner Cafe on my way out of town. The barista kindly gave me a plastic bag for my seat. I ate a banana, then I started my solo journey. 

I got turned around dizzyingly by Google maps whilst trying to cross a bridge near the University of Minnesota. There were some big hills and I was going in circles for a while, growing frustrated. I eventually gave up on gps and made my way to the ACA route bridge, which was on Franklin street. After that, the riding was pleasant. A mix of trails and roads with high humidity but no rain for about 50 miles. When it first hit, the rain was light and refreshing, but it gradually became a total downpour, and it hit me with real intensity as I was crossing a narrow bridge into Wisconsin, at Osceola. 

There was a terrifying truck incident. The shoulder was narrow to begin with, and the pavement was also split lengthwise, so it felt a bit like riding a tightrope. I was braking on my way downhill and pretty sure I was invisible on the road – I was hardly able to see through the rain myself. I decided to surrender, and pulled off at a boat launch/picnic shelter that appeared at exactly the right moment. It was a perfect spot to regroup. I set up my tent, put some dry clothes on, took a 20 minute nap, read my new book for a while, talked on the phone, ate some snacks, and relaxed. I considered just camping there for the night, but the rain cleared up by early evening and I was only 8 miles from the campground, so I packed up. 

There were some STEEP climbs, but I felt pretty good after such a long midday break. I reached the campground sweaty and tired, but I had stopped at a grocery store after the boat launch, so I was able to feast properly with soup, salad, and pie. Also, the campsite was gorgeous. It’s secluded and quiet, next to a waterfall and a river. There are showers here, but I didn’t use them. Who needs it? 

Good first day alone.

74 miles

I used up the last of my chain lube today. After yesterday’s deluge, it was bone dry and creaking. I dipped out of the campsite early this morning. The landscape today was mostly uninspiring—corn, soy, and deciduous forests. I stopped for coffee twice. The weather was perfect—a high of 82 degrees, and not too windy.

As the day wore on, I started to realize that this area is…weird. The small towns here have resorts and wine bars, and almost nothing else. I stopped in Balsam Lake and got an espresso at a gift shop just so I could charge my phone. The only other establishment was a Subway.

I decided to take a gravely, ill-advised shortcut on the Tuscobia State trail, hoping to skip a bit of mileage and hills. As it turns out, it’s quite accurately described on the ACA maps (and every other source I cross referenced and still neglected to heed) as “only suitable for unloaded mountain bikes”. It was “flat”, so not a mountain trail per se, but it was basically a rough horse path—rocky and uneven, with huge ruts and mounds of dirt. An actual Amish horse and buggy carrying four women appeared from the opposite direction at one point. I pulled off the trail to let them pass, which was difficult to do with my heavy, awkward bike. The trail in this section was largely just a crude ditch. As soon as I stopped moving, a nasty cloud of deer flies that had been gathering behind me while I rode began divebombing me, so there I was, violently waving my arms in desperate self protection while trying to offer a friendly greeting. I was met with stony, unsmiling stares from three out of the four. I must have looked insane.

Later, I did stop at an Amish roadside farm stand after exiting the hellish trail. The flies continued to hound me literally for miles, even after I reached a paved road. I bought two dozen cookies for $6. 

Eventually I arrived at Doolittle Campground and set up my hammock. The couple next to me was very inquisitive and I was glad to have bought too many cookies because I had some to share. I wonder what it’s like to grow up Amish.

74 miles

Today’s journal entry is digital because there are 8,000,000 mosquitoes ready to feast on me outside my hammock, and I can’t risk unzipping my bug net for any reason.

Today felt long. I was on the road by 7:00 am, and it didn’t feel like I made all that many stops, but I couldn’t stop thinking about getting to the campsite. I think it’s because I now have two great books I want to read, and I haven’t really done anything but ride and manage my basic needs lately. My mind is feeling kind of…empty?

I guess I’m a little bored with the landscape here, too. When we were out west, there was so much newness to take in. Here, most of it looks like Michigan. Corn fields and stands of deciduous trees turning into boggy lowlands and tall evergreens, like the U.P. I have seen some larches here, which I haven’t seen since Montana, so that has been kind of nice—there were a few lovely meadows too with wildflowers, and there are lakes.

I took a detour from the ACA map to visit a bike shop in Hayward. My chain needed a good cleaning/relube and I wanted to see if they had a Schwalbe tire. They didn’t, but they did totally clean and lube my chain. Their mechanic was from Livonia. I had a long conversation with the older gentleman who was working the counter, who had lots of energy and good questions and was a joy to talk to. 

In trying to get back to the route, Google maps took me to what it showed as a trail, but which was not at all bikeable. It was literally just a field, a meadow with flowers, tall pines in straight rows, and butterflies. It was not a road or trail in any sense, but I’m so glad the map got confused. It was less than a mile, so I walked it and enjoyed the short break from riding.

This morning feels like such a long time ago. It was cool and shady and the pavement was smooth and the hills were rolling and curvy and serene. I thought about how I like almost nothing as much as I like making people laugh.

Tonight I’m staying at Day Lake, a USFS campground near Clam Lake. There was a site with a reserved sign up and no one here, so I took it. I had a lot of difficulty trying to hang my hammock—you know when all the trees are just a tiny bit too close or too far or with stuff in between or too narrow or…?

I went for a walk to find the water spigot and found a beach instead. The lake was WARM. It made me want to take a rest day here and swim. Maybe I’ll just get up early and swim? Then do a short day? I definitely could stand to wash this hair.

I’m listening to some loons now.

62 miles

A guy named Chuck gave me $100 at a gas station today. The day started out normally, otherwise—I rode the first 20 miles from my campsite at Day Lake. Lately I have been growing weary of the same few questions I get asked every time I stop: where are you going; where did you start; how many miles a day are you riding; are you camping or staying in hotels; why are you doing this/is it for charity; what do you do when it’s raining; how long do you think it’ll take to get there…etc. For a good portion of the last 20 miles I had been rehearsing how I might be able to dodge if I reached the next town and didn’t feel like chatting. Somehow, there simply seems to be no possible way to phrase “I have no doubt you’re a terrific human being but I don’t want to talk to you” in a way that sounds truly polite and sincere, even when you mean no harm whatsoever. I think everyone should have the right to withhold consent to engage in a conversation at any time. Why is it always seen as rude (no matter how gently you try) to want to keep to yourself, when it’s a perfectly normal need that everyone eventually feels at some point or another? 

Having not really worked out a way to say my piece, I decided to just stop in the parking lot of a store that was closed when I first reached town, so I could minimize chance encounters with curious people and do my stretching in solitude.
Getting back on the road and now needing to find a bathroom, I found what seemed to be the only available spot: a gas station called The Bear Crossing. I felt pretty pleased, having had my uninterrupted morning stretch, and I took a seat on the curb to drink my coffee and have a snack.

Chuck approached with the usual questions, but he also came with a few more thoughtful ones. He asked if I had made any significant mistakes, which I felt was a very good question. It invited me to actually reflect and speak on my choices, rather than recite a fact sheet about my trip. It made me realize that part of why I dislike “the same 12 questions” at every gas station (and small talk in general) is that it doesn’t allow me to really consider anything new or think about what I say. My responses are always the same, so they’ve become automatic, which is boring. It requires my energy and gives me nothing in return.

After we chatted, he went into the store. When he came out, he handed me a piece of paper with his phone number (in a truly grandfatherly, small town good samaritan non-creepy way) and told me that if I got stuck or needed anything, I could call him for help. I could tell he was sincere, and I was touched by the gesture. We said goodbye and he left while I continued to sit, finishing my coffee. Then suddenly a moment later he was back. He handed me a wad of cash, said hastily “Just want to help fund the trip,” and disappeared before I could find the words to protest. 

I was stunned. He had told me in our conversation that he’d never done a tour, but always admired folks who do. I hope he does tour someday. I thought about how kind and generous and unexpected this gift was, and about how I had spent the morning planning to avoid an encounter just like this one, which I assumed would leave me as drained as usual, and how his thoughtful questions and attempts at real connection had completely turned my expectation on its head. Even without the fistful of cash, he brought a welcome change in the script, and it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. It truly made my day, and I hope it made his, too. 

I decided to take a long rest once I reached the town of Butternut. There isn’t much here, but there is an ice cream stand, and it’s bustling. I met a guy named Aaron, who told me about his friend Paul Jones, who is working on charting good bike routes through Northern Wisconsin. He said he is from Manitowoc. I spoke to a couple of other families, too. This area definitely feels a lot like the U.P.—almost everyone here is on vacation, or currently living out of their summer home. I’m hoping to get lucky and find a shower at the next campground. 

On a whim, I picked up a book called Normal Is Just A Setting On Your Dryer at the little Free Library here. 90’s self-help is a fun genre. The cover shows a picture of the author…sitting on a dryer. So far, it is a very light read.

45 miles

The feeling of “get there soon” has passed, I think. Yesterday gave me a quiet county road (F) which I was expecting to be rough and hilly, but which was not too bad.

The wildflowers were gorgeous today—mostly a soft pillowy yellow with dark green foliage, some black-eyed susans, some light purples, and daisies. There really weren’t many flowers through Minnesota for some reason.

I reached the town of Mercer, and decided to stay at the Loon Lagoon RV park. A lady named Brenda who had a very tough “I run an RV Park” way about her told me in no uncertain terms to set up my hammock over there behind someone’s truck, take my shower, and go into the rec room and watch tv. 

When I say she told me to do these things, I mean she REALLY told me to—the agenda she put forth did not seem optional. She reminded me of a type of person I’ve known before: a stern, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is director type who takes pride in catching people off guard with the gruff bluntness of a charging bull. While checking in, I told her I was traveling alone, and she asked abruptly “Are you mean?” So I decided to match her energy and quickly deadpanned “I can be.” I paid her the $10 for my spot and felt great about it.

 Today, I’m sitting at a coffee shop—the only one (?) in town. It’s called Looney Beans, which reminds me of Rob’s coffee shop of the same name in Bishop. There’s also a gigantic loon sculpture in town which I will stop to see before heading out. Its name is “Claire de Loon.”

I’m in good spirits. I know there’s a great bike path in my future today. Yesterday I traded in my Normal Is A Setting… book at a free library for a small Sylvia Plath. I’m almost done with my Timothy Goodwin book, Within These Woods. This book has put my own thoughts and feelings into words over and over. It’s been such a good read for where I am, definitely the best one so far. Here’s a passage that I love:

I may not know for sure the exact nature of the relationship between the chickadee and the downy [woodpecker], but what I do know is that I am aware of only a few of the seemingly endless connections between living things on this planet; and even then, my awareness is limited. For example, it is a good bet that most of the trees in this forest have millions of miles of fungal mycorrhizae strands growing around and into the cells of their roots. This is an example of a mutualistic relationship. The fungi get easy access to the plant’s carbohydrates that it has made through photosynthesis, and the increased sponge-like surface area created by the fungi strands increases the plant’s ability to absorb water, an essential ingredient for photosynthesis. This is but one example of the many symbiotic relationships in these woods that often go unnoticed. And this is what amazes me the most as I wander through these woods. I cannot know and understand all of the connections. The endless possibilities of connections are too immense for me to realistically comprehend. This is when the woods become holy to me and exploring them becomes spiritual. 

Now I’m in Boulder Junction. I stopped at Northern Highland Sports and asked if they had isobutane for my stove, which they didn’t, but the man helping me called the store in Eagle River and they do have some. He also gave me a map and showed me where the good camping is near Star Lake. I was planning on going further than that, but maybe today is supposed to be a 40 mile day… 

I bought a birdhouse for Ben at a roadside stand. They were handmade and $3 and made me think of his backyard stylings. I also stopped to paw through an antique store, and they had hundreds of slides that go in these little toy viewfinders and it was exactly what I wanted—many of the slide reels were of national parks and natural wonders, so I bought one for Danielle with slides of the places we didn’t get to visit – the Black Hills, Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I got one for myself too, with a few slides that remind me of some of my favorite places.

As I was standing outside the store, a young woman and an older man approached me. She said in something of a sincere but sort of innocent way that she liked my bike, and I thanked her. The man identified himself as Jim, her dad (or uncle?), and introduced her as Katie. He asked a lot of questions and we talked for a while. We finally parted ways, but I bumped into them again at the antique store and we chatted some more. As I was checking out, they came back toward me again, and Jim handed me a $100 bill, wishing me the best for the rest of my trip. Once again, I was so taken aback. I explained that I did not need money for my trip, that I was funding it with money I’d saved, but they insisted and were both so kind about it. As they walked away I heard Katie say “Sylvie is so awesome!” and it really lit me up to hear her say this. It’s not that I need people to think I’m awesome when they meet me out here. I’m just doing what I want to do. But the idea that I could have inspired someone like Katie today does feel really good. 

This area does seem pretty wealthy compared to where I’ve been, but I can’t get over how two different people did this, two days in a row. Where’s my next hundo coming from tomorrow?

52 miles

This day is a blur now – I’m writing a day late. There was a stop in Eagle River for fuel, post office, and a little reorganizing. I mailed a gift to Danielle, a postcard to Colleen, and some items to myself. The birdhouse for Ben wasn’t the right size for a flat rate box, so I will mail it to him from Detroit. The ride was nice – winding county roads through national and state forests—smooth curves and tall old evergreens and wildflowers. I decided to stop at Pine Lake campground, a US Forest Service spot in Hiles, which isn’t really a town.

96 miles

I woke up early to an unwelcome surprise, and discovered that I had exactly one tampon, so I got on the road pretty quickly. Crandon was the first real town, about 18 miles away. I visited the grocery store, and granted myself a coffee break. The humidity is very high today.

After Crandon there wasn’t another town or bathroom for about 50 more miles, so I basically just went for it. I’d been planning a long day anyway, though not for this reason. Fortunately, I’ve had a tailwind all day and there has been a lot of smooth pavement and easy downhill riding.

I’m sitting on the ground outside the Mattoon Market now, having a little impromptu picnic with my tortillas, beans, cheese, peanut butter and coffee. An older man walked out of the store with a Billy Gibbons beard and not many teeth. He had bought a box of ice cream sundae cones, and he gave me one and wished me well, and didn’t ask a million questions, which I very much appreciated. He told me he bought a van so he could go kayaking, but “then Covid ruined that”. I didn’t ask how, I just told him this is his year. I hoped I sounded encouraging, because I really did mean it.

I biked to a place called Hayman Falls County Park. There’s a nice little river with a walking path, a bathroom, running water, and even some rustic campsites, which I wasn’t expecting. It’s a little spooky though. Maybe it’s because it’s kind of remote, but the vibe is different than up north. It seems like a place teenagers might go to get high or make out or something. Twice, a car has pulled in, and pulled out, as if just using the park as a turnaround. 

Maybe I’ve just been in my head too much this week, but it’s amazing how different it feels here than it did at the (beautiful) East Star Lake tent site. Most of the sites here have dead or downed trees in or near them, which fills me with foreboding. I’ve slept in my hammock all week, and it’s honestly been great to not have to break down and pack up a tent in the morning. I think I may have to tent it tonight though—these trees make me nervous, and I’m the only person here.

In spite of all my gripes about this place, I rode almost a hundred miles today bleeding profusely, and this is the place that has running water and a real bathroom, which feel like a necessary respite in my current condition. 

One of the best parts of the day was that so many of those buttery smooth county roads were bursting with ripe, wild raspberry bushes. At one point, I stopped for a handful and found myself wondering how bears might eat raspberries, because I’m sure they do. I suppose they grab the branch and just go face first, but for a while I had fun imagining them delicately plucking berries between their claws, maybe poking a claw into each berry the way Henry does, eating them one by one off his fingers. There are some more berry bushes here at the park—I am excited to pick some to add to my oatmeal in the morning.

(mileage unknown)

My sleeping pad has a hole again. I woke up on the ground at 3:30 am. I’m glad it’s not winter. After the grumpiness passed, I realized the sky was clear and that I would not have been awake to enjoy the stars here if not for my swiss cheese sleeping mat. I ate a fig bar and went back to sleep until the sun started rising around 5:30 am. I made coffee, packed the tent, and picked a handful of raspberries for my oatmeal. Today is looking good. I’m going to go off-route a bit and skip Shawano—it saves me 20 miles and I will get to go through Appleton instead. I want to stay at High Cliff State Park tonight, which sounds like a pretty spot. 

42 miles

I was able to stay at High Cliff last night. There was an enormous extra hill to climb on the way up to the campground, but it was totally worth the climb. The sites have nice deep shade, tall hardwood trees and are spaced out well, offering plenty of privacy and quiet. 

I have a warmshowers host booked for tomorrow night, only 40 miles away, so I took my time in the morning. I slept in until 8:00 am, read some of my book, and thoroughly enjoyed how comfortable my hammock is with a half-inflated sleeping pad.

I did find four more holes in the pad. All of the weld points across the top are compromised, which seems like it has to be a manufacturing defect. I contacted Sea-to-Summit repairs and left a message.

The ride was windy. Before I reached my warmshowers host, I stopped at a grocery store called Piggly Wiggly (which is an insane name for a store), and bought two beers and half a pie. It felt necessary to celebrate reaching Lake Michigan. I sat down at a park to tuck in, but it started raining, so I moved along more quickly than I otherwise would have.

My hosts were Cath and Brian. Cath reminded me strongly of Aunt Celia, with an incredibly warm, peaceful energy that felt familiar immediately. I was not surprised at all when she told me she works with the recovery community here. She showed me to where I would stay, a little 100 sq’ house in her backyard that she and Brian built out of reclaimed and salvaged stuff, which she referred to as “the hermitage”. They had planted a path of clover between the hermitage and the house, and the yard had beautiful gardens—flowers and vegetables and fruit trees. It was a little utopia. She told me she built the structure after her brother passed away about a year ago, and explained how she went on Facebook and talked about what her idea was, and how her community just poured out to support her. It was so touching to hear her tell the story of how it all came together. 

She keeps the hermitage and her house open to anyone who needs it, including the people she works with in the recovery community, but she said it has been nice to have a separate structure for the cyclists they host, too. It was cozy and peaceful inside, and it felt very special to be welcomed into a space that was created with so much obvious love. I found myself reflecting on what this space might feel like for someone struggling through pain and addiction. I can’t know what it could feel like for them, but being here touched me with poignant gratitude for the quiet efforts of people like Cath and Brian.

21 miles

This morning, Cath made me a health food smoothie, and we sat on the porch and talked for a while about the hermitage, and about learning to receive, and it was so nice to have some medium talk. She brought me (and her two kayaks) to the river and we paddled for a while and talked through some other deep thoughts. What a delightful soul. I left her house feeling emotionally fed and re-energized, and so grateful.

 I went down to the bike shop she had recommended in Manitowoc, The Broken Spoke, but they didn’t have the tire I wanted. I went across the street to Jen’s Java and got a rhubarb crumble and a coffee, and went to sit in the park next door. One of the two bike shop guys rode by and we chatted about bike touring and living in Manitowoc.

I went into the crystal shop next door and picked up a few things to make some jewelry. The woman at the counter had the usual questions for me, and we chatted some. When I was ready to pay, she wouldn’t take my money. “On the state of Wisconsin,” she said. She was very sweet. It still always feels strange to receive things without paying for them the way I expect to.

From there I went to a sandwich place called “Wrap It Up” on Cath’s recommendation and got a sandwich for the upcoming ferry ride. When I went back to the bike shop for some air, an employee asked for my number. He was young and clearly nervous and I felt bad for shooting him down, but I don’t ever give out my number like that. I said something vague about imminently leaving the state of Wisconsin and fled the scene.

Now I’m crossing Lake Michigan on the SS Badger, listening to some guy playing an acoustic guitar. I have good books to read. I bought a sticker as a souvenir to put on my bear canister. The guy playing guitar has played a few songs now, all deeply melancholy. I thought it was just me for a minute, but then I looked around the deck, and saw like three other women gazing off into space with perfectly melancholic expressions, and it made me laugh. He’s controlling the whole vibe on this boat. 

Tonight I plan to ride to a state park to camp once we touch Michigan—both Mears and Silver Lake are pretty close by.

63 miles

My ride from Ludington to Mears last night was full of horrific Michigan potholes and LOTS of deer. I keep thinking about how common it is for deer to total a car, but it’s a new and different kind of anxiety to imagine colliding with one when you’re bombing downhill on a bike. 

When I got to Mears, I decided to climb a dune near the beach to pitch my tent, because the campground itself was packed to the gills with RVs and rowdy people partying. The “campground” was basically a huge parking lot. Gross. The spot I found was pretty nice, overlooking Lake Michigan. Initially I set up my hammock, but then I remembered that it was supposed to rain at 6:00 am and continue through the next day, so I switched gears and set up my tent. 

When I woke up this morning, the sky looked imminently stormy, so I hurried to pack up, and in my haste I broke one of the hubs on my tent poles. Once packed, I hoofed it to a coffee shop in town to figure out my plan for the day, which the radar was promising would be rainy. 

Somehow I managed to dodge the rain all day. I rode the Hart-Montague Trail and sections of the Fred Meijer trail, which are both beautiful and so smoothly paved. I stopped to buy some rain-ready shoes—I picked up a pair of cheap slides from a Family Dollar. I’ve gotten caught in serious rain a couple of times now, and since my feet always dry more quickly than my shoes and socks do, I want to try riding in sandals if I know the day is going to be wet. I figure if my toes are going to get wet during the storm either way, I can at least avoid carrying the leftover rain around in my socks for days afterwards.

My goal for the day was to reach Muskegon, which by some miracle I was able to do, somehow dodging each storm by a few minutes. I set a course for Jo-Ann Fabric, to pick up some supplies for the jewelry I wanted to make, and I thought I might find something there I could use to repair my tent.
I hate to say it but, so far, Michigan people are the worst. They pass too close, and they don’t wait for anyone in a crosswalk. Someone actually got mad at me for crossing in a crosswalk when I had a walk sign, while she was wanting to turn. It’s like they’ve never seen a bike before. I feel my defenses rising.
At Jo-Ann fabrics, I had parked my bike against a railing near the shopping carts (but by no means blocking access to them) and as I was preparing to leave, an older lady came up for a cart and said to me rudely “I don’t want to make you move, but you’d better move!” I was stunned. There was plenty of room. She could have easily walked around me, but instead, she went out of her way to tell me to get lost. It was so unnecessary and confusing. 

I felt anger and indignation bubbling up all day. I wanted to tell each one of these people how far I’ve come, how many hundreds of miles I’ve crossed and people I’ve encountered, and with maybe ONE exception in Minnesota, and one in Montana, no one has been anything but patient, considerate, and careful to create adequate space on the road and wish me well. Why is there suddenly so much hatred, and in Michigan, my “home” state of all places? It’s so disappointing.

I stopped for the night at PJ Hoffman state park. I rolled into an unoccupied site, figuring that someone might not show up. I set about fixing my tent poles, and sort of managed? At the store, I’d found a flexible (plastic?) pole with a reflector that people put at the end of their driveways. It was more or less the perfect diameter to take the place of the pole that broke. It doesn’t have the same tension, so it’s a little wobbly, but we’ll see if it holds up.

The rightful occupants of the site did appear eventually, but they told me earnestly that they didn’t need it after all. I assumed they were just being nice, but they explained that their party was smaller than they’d initially planned, so they really didn’t need it and insisted that I stay, and even gave me the tag for their registration. I offered to reimburse them for the site, but they wouldn’t take my money. I guess there are still some nice people here.

The sites here are nice and private with tall trees. I made a necklace with the stone I’d been gifted back in Manitowoc. It was nice to do something besides survival chores. 

I’m thinking of taking a rest day. I haven’t had time to enjoy the lake much, and I’ll be leaving it soon to cross the corn belt. And I need to buy some groceries and wash.

59 miles

The humidity here is horrible. Everything feels wet.

The thought of taking a rest day is appealing, but I’m on the fence. The weather is calling for a beach day, and I’d like to get some groceries, shower, and buy some supplies. I guess maybe I need to go to Meijer.

My grocery list: 

• fruit/veg pouches
• apples
• oatmeal
• avocado
• salad
• bananas
• peanut butter 
• tortillas
• lara bars

I had loosely planned on camping at Millennium park, which is not a campground, more of a sprawling nature park, but I got there too close to sunset to find a good spot, and it was also busier than I would have liked. The whole park was basically just a bog with walking trails. Nice bike trails, too, but SWARMS of mosquitoes. It was a full-on assault as soon as I stopped for even a few seconds.

So I kept riding. And riding. I briefly considered staying at the county park HQ, but when I arrived I decided against it. A picnic table and a bathroom next to a freeway feels a lot different when you’re this close to an actual city. It felt sketchy, so I trusted my gut and kept going with a loose plan to scope out the fire station, which was next to another big park and a cemetery. On my way there I rolled through an area that reminded me strongly of Detroit. The gas station had neon bodysuits for sale in the windows and bulletproof glass. 

I decided not to stay at the firehouse. Nature is what I determined would feel safest, even if it was just a clump of trees…I kept thinking about the fact that all the essential things I was looking for—access to water, a bathroom, privacy, and quiet, are all things that chronically transient people also need, and it seemed like there was more competition for it here than anywhere else I’d seen since the start of this trip. By this point, it was about 11:00 pm on a Sunday, and most of the people I saw on the street in this area were intoxicated and/or otherwise not to be fucked with. I was eager to avoid everyone.

Finally (through the magic of technology) I located what looked like a nature preserve near a suburb close by, and crossed my fingers that it might have something to offer. Google Maps expertly directed me to a bike path, which in itself was a huge step up from where I’d been riding since Millenium Park, on broken city sidewalks and ugly stroads.

The bike path led me almost immediately into the peaceful quiet of a sleeping neighborhood. I felt the vibe shift immediately and my hope of actually sleeping somewhere tonight returned. I still had to ride for a while before spotting an area that had adequate cover for illegally setting up a tent. Eventually, I found a grassy area far enough off the path near a creek, covered by some bushes and trees. It was nice and secluded, not visible from the path, and there was just enough space for my tent. I was overjoyed and exhausted and went straight to sleep.

About 3:30 am, I was awakened suddenly to what I can only describe as a sharp, ghostly shriek. Whatever was making the sound was very close to my tent, and it kept emitting the sound in LOUD blasts. Not knowing what it was, I kept very still, and tried to kick my sleeping brain into gear. It didn’t sound quite like any bird call I’d ever heard, but it also didn’t sound like a predator. It was terrifying and disorienting in my grogginess. 

A couple of minutes passed and the magic of technology once again provided an answer: it was probably a deer. This didn’t completely calm my nerves, because deer are still wild and big animals, but just as I started imagining whether I could take on a frightened deer in a territorial dispute in the dark woods alone, I heard a dog start barking like crazy from inside a house, somewhere very close. I guess I hadn’t realized in the dark how close to a fancy cul-de-sac neighborhood these trees were, and I hadn’t imagined I’d be disturbing the local wildlife to this extent just by existing. Being basically in the middle of Grand Rapids, I hadn’t really expected wildlife at all. As I was still half asleep processing all of this, with the dog and the deer caught in their freakish interspecies alarm-response feedback loop, a sudden new wave of horror struck me as I heard a new voice, a man yelling, not at his dog, but at the deer, exasperatedly urging it to go away. Heart thumping wildly, I heard him angrily shout “No one is here, move along!” which was a small comfort on some level, because it revealed to me that he did not know I was there and was willing to gaslight this poor deer instead of taking its warning seriously, but it also planted a new fear that the deer would stand its ground, causing the dog to stand its ground, causing the man to eventually investigate,  while sleep deprived and furious. 

By some miracle, the deer did move along and the situation stopped escalating after that. I ended up hearing it snorting again about an hour later, but this time it was just the deer. 

As they say here in Grand Rapids, praise Jesus.

84 miles?

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well at all after the deer incident. I guess I was probably in its bed. The ground where I had set up my tent was somehow perfectly contoured to my body. I didn’t even use my sleeping mat. I got up as soon as it started getting light out, around 5:30 am, and flicked all the slugs (there were SO MANY SLUGS!!) off of my stuff and got the hell out of there.

Now I’m at Biggby Coffee, regrettably. Why does it feel regrettable to find myself at a huge franchise? I guess when I travel I have this sense that I want to experience the things that are unique to each place, because those are the things that differentiate the place from every other place. If I don’t bother to find what makes a place unique, what is the point of going? 

So, it makes sense to avoid gas stations and Biggby Coffees because they are identical everywhere. But, having stopped at SO many gas stations and big franchise type places on this trip just out of sheer necessity, for water, calories, and toilets, I’ve found that there is something so absurd and surreal about these places’ sameness in all these different places. 

More generally, too, I think we have this automatic perception that big corporations lack soul. They do, usually, but we’re all hypocrites. The perception is that once a company reaches a certain size, it starts valuing profit over people. This is often true, but it’s not necessarily true. If a company is small and profitable, we don’t assume it treats its employees badly. What is the real relationship between profitability and human decency, and what is reasonable to expect? 

It’s going to be hot today.

…

Today took a really long time. I was on bike trails for most of the day. I saw almost no one. I watched an ant dismembering a dead bug for a while when I sat for a break. This trail is crushed stone, which started getting to me after a while, and the highway seemed quiet enough, so I jumped off the trail after reaching Fowler, and I was suddenly FLYING on pavement. I stopped for coffee and donuts in Ada. I tried to buy bug spray in four different stores, but everywhere was sold out. This is not a good sign.

I failed to apply sunscreen today. Partly, I figured the trails were shaded, partly I have a good base tan now, and partly I don’t like how sticky it makes my skin feel, especially combined with sweat and road grime, with no promise of a shower at the end of the day. I was determined to make it to Sleepy Hollow State Park tonight, to have a rest day.

I stole an ear of corn today from a field. I justified it to myself because all of this land is stolen anyway. I plan to roast it over the fire that I just made with the firewood that I paid someone $5 to carry to my campsite for me in their truck, since the woodshed was very far from the campground itself and there’s no reasonable way to carry one of those things on a bike after riding all day. With all this humidity, I was able to get a tiny little flame going, which I nearly snuffed completely out when my little bark strip tower toppled over, but I huffed it back to life until my lungs were burning and my face was full of ashes. 

I also found a roadside farm stand earlier and unloaded all my spare change for a basket of fresh green beans. I’m excited to eat them. I haven’t been eating many fresh vegetables on this trip, mainly because they’re relatively heavy to carry for the amount of calories they provide, and they don’t stay fresh very long without any means of refrigeration, so whatever I buy has to be consumed pretty much immediately or it gets wasted. Instead, I’ve been eating roughly 1-2 snickers bars a day for weeks, and I think I’ve still managed to shed fat and gain muscle. I guess the best diet really is exercise.

I’m obscenely excited to take a shower. There is so much grit sticking to me. I’m right next to the bathrooms, which means I can hear the electric hand dryer going off regularly. I’m also right next to a site with a baby, all of which means I’m probably going to sleep with earplugs tonight and really catch up on the hours I missed last night.

My odometer stopped working today, and Strava was paused for about half of the day, so I don’t know how many miles I did exactly, but it was more than 80. I have a spare battery I will install tomorrow. 

I haven’t decided what tomorrow will look like yet. My rough plan is to stretch, read, maybe swim, clean and lube my chain, eat, and hydrate.

23 miles

Last night’s dinner brought me closer to nature than I ever could have imagined. I was sitting on a log next to my campfire, staring into the glowing screen of my phone—eyeing a map or sending a text or something. The pot of mashed potatoes I’d been eating out of was resting on the ground between my feet. 

At some point I became vaguely aware that an animal was nearby, and figured it was someone’s dog because my site was so close to the path, but a split second later, I felt soft fur brush my ankles and felt something tip over my pot. I leapt to my feet and flicked on my headlamp to see FOUR BIG RACCOONS staring back at me. I barked a few words at them and they just casually trundled off into the woods, completely unafraid, no doubt judging me for being so weird and stingy with my potatoes.

 Today, I lounged the morning away. I ate, relaxed, and did some reorganizing, taking my time to pack the bike. I hit the road around 2:30 pm. My plan was to ride to Rose Lake, which appeared to be a nature area nearby, about 10 miles away. My plan was to stealth camp there—Google Maps had identified it as “open 24 hours”, which is common for hiking trails and nature areas. 

Turns out Rose Lake is open 24 hours because it’s a hunting area. On my way there, I made the mistake of asking three DNR guys I ran into where I could safely camp for the night. They kindly confirmed: nowhere. I feel like I could have found a suitable spot if I’d tried to actually do the stealth part better. I just got so accustomed to people helping me when I was out west. In small towns across Montana, the answer had repeatedly been “whatever, camp on my lawn”. Not so, in Michigan. I set off for Pinckney, another 3 hours away. It was doable, I just really didn’t want to keep going, so along the way I kept an eye out for better stealth options. 

After a short time, I spotted a building that looked like a town hall. It had a sprawling lawn, big trees, and a porta potty. It was basically paradise. To my even greater surprise, as I turned into the parking lot, I saw several kitted out cyclists arriving at the same time for some kind of organized group ride. I couldn’t believe my luck. I chatted with some of them, and met the group leader named Ken, who told me they were meeting for a Tri-County Cycling Club event that happens every Tuesday and Thursday. He offered to let me stay in his travel trailer, but I declined. I was pleased to run into such a sympathetic and understanding group, but I didn’t really feel like interacting much, and was eager for the comfort and solitude of my tent. 

I did still need a place to stay for the night, and was fortunate to run into a woman who worked at the town hall, just as she was leaving for the day. I chatted with her for a bit, and she agreed to let me stay the night on the property. I told her about my experiences camping at community centers and visitors centers in small towns along the Northern Tier out west, and shared my wish that such touring-cyclist-friendly camping options might exist in a place like this. She gave me her card and asked me to email her, which I understand is often a polite brush off, but she said it in a way that felt convincingly sincere.

I set up my tent behind some trees next to a cell phone tower, and then sent myself into an anxious sleep thinking about whether it’s dangerous to hang around all night so close to one. 

The deer are screaming their terrifying screams again, but this time I at least know what it is, and I have less fear of being discovered here. I also heard a pack of coyotes cackling several times throughout the night.

54 miles

Today felt great. Leisurely. I stopped at Sunnyside Cafe in Williamston, and had a delicious veggie scramble. I found a Redwall book at a tiny free library, and sat reading it in nostalgic glee while I ate my eggs and coffee. 

A few miles later, I stopped at a little gazebo in Webberville, and the tiny library there had a complete guide to stretching, so I was able to lay out my tent to dry in the sun while I flipped through it and stretched in the relative privacy of the gazebo.

Next, I found a mediocre slice of pie at a nearby diner, and ate while charting my course to my next stop at Max’s family cabin. I plan to check out the Howell Nature Center on the way, which is an animal rehab facility that looks kind of interesting. Most of the animals housed there are rescued from illegal ownership and, since they are habituated, can’t be released. It seems like an okay solution, but it’s a little sad to think about the human impact on these poor creatures.

I dealt with a few dirt roads and a lot of potholes today, but the dirt roads are mostly hard packed in this area, which is still pretty navigable compared to loose sand or washboard.

I took a quick detour to the town of Hell, hoping to eat a pound of ice cream and earn a death certificate, but I guess they don’t do that anymore. I ate a normal amount of ice cream and bought some postcards to send. I took my items to the counter to pay for them, and after the cashier handed me the receipt, she picked up my postcards and proceeded to set them on fire. I guess they char the edges for you, which was hilariously unexpected, and a very nice touch. 

After I left Hell I went to Busch’s and got a huge bag of groceries for my rest day at the cabin. I arrived at around 7:30 pm and met Emmy and Mark and their daughter Jordan. They made pork kebabs, sweet potatoes, salad, and a delicious blueberry dessert. It felt SO GOOD to eat real food. I feel very warmly accepted here. They have an 11-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback named Van, who is very sweet and docile.

Rest Day

I woke up at 9:00 am or something. I slept very soundly. I’ve been sitting on the porch at the cottage, drinking coffee and writing postcards. I think I’m ready for my second breakfast.

73 miles

Last night was fun—a great meal and a relaxing day. I wrote some postcards, read my book, and Max came by with Xena. It was nice to see them and catch up. We went out on the boat for a brief ride after dinner, and Max and I went to Cap’n Frosty for ice cream.

This morning I overslept, but only a little. I started out on some busy roads, and then Google Maps told me to take a left on an unmarked dirt road. It had a gate and a sign that said “Authorized Vehicles Only”, but I was feeling bold, and there was an area where I could lift the bike over a railing if I took off the bags. The map looked promising, so I went for it…and about .2 miles in, it opened onto…a BIKE PATH. Like, a really nice, smooth, winding bike path that was paved, with nice wooden bridges, through a beautiful nature park. Eventually I emerged in front of a gas station (perfect) so I stopped to fill my hydration pack with some ice.

A lady outside with only a few teeth asked me if I wanted “a pop or a donut”, without any preamble. Still in the mindset of say-yes-to-adventure that led me to the world’s most perfect bike path a moment ago, I gratefully accepted a Diet Dr Pepper out of the backseat of her car without hesitation. We chatted for a few minutes before I took off again, heading to the REI in Ann Arbor for my new front tire, which arrived yesterday.

At REI I bought a new spork, because I left mine back at the cottage. I also bought some more sleeping pad patches, a tent stake, and a cookie. I ate lunch on the bench outside the store before heading onward.

Tonight, I’m staying with a warmshowers host named Larry in Toledo. According to Larry’s scale, I weigh 124.8 lbs. His son has a large sword collection.

Mileage unknown

Tomorrow is the start of a new month, a new journal, and a new state. I like when things wrap up neatly like that. I think I’m about due for a post office stop, too. I have postcards to write and mail, and too many books now. I think I might send my camera home; I haven’t used it much. 

73 miles

Staying at Milan Wildlife Area last night was a poor choice. It was posted as a hunting area, but there weren’t any other campable areas within range. I woke up frequently on high alert, thinking about hunters. I searched online for details about Ohio’s hunting season and learned that squirrels, fox, coyote, crow, possum, and woodchuck are in season all year round. 

I also learned that hunters usually hunt coyotes at night, and that green lasers are more useful because deer can’t see them or something. So at one point, I found myself staring in horror at the netting of my tent, because I thought I saw a firefly, but it was long past dusk, and it was green, and I was paranoid. Could it have been a scope? I don’t know, but I lay awake listening hard and wondering if it would be safer to get up noisily or stay still on the ground. Then, with additional paranoia, I thought I heard someone walk nearby and say something like “good way to get shot”… but I still can’t honestly be sure that really happened. It could have been a fever dream induced by poor judgment.

I slept fitfully until about 4:30am when, nursing the last few drops of my phone’s battery, I decided to get packed up and get the hell out of the woods. I must have hit every single spider web on my way out. 

As soon as I hit the road, I felt better, and I was rewarded with a gorgeous cloudy sunrise over a perfectly smooth empty road. The cool morning air was restorative. My backup battery pack has been low, so I stopped at the first gas station to charge. I bought a coffee and sipped it outside at a picnic table, where a guy stopped to chat and gave me a ton of local traffic advice. He said he used to live in Washington state. He told me he mountain-biked something called July 4th Pass near Missoula.

After that, the morning passed quickly and blissfully. I stopped for another coffee in Huron at a place called Gathering Grounds. From there, I spent the rest of the day dodging thunderstorms along the coast of Lake Erie, on Route 6. Huge mansions lined the waterfront. I stopped at a gazebo in Lorain, and watched as a few water spouts formed in the distance and hit the lake—I’ve never seen anything like that in person before.

At the suggestion of my Cleveland warmshowers host, I stopped a little later to rest at Lakewood Park. I had intended to just plug in my phone and do some stretching to kill time, but the outlets were all inside the pavilion, which was occupied by about 50 people eating a catered picnic. I eyed the pavilion for a few minutes, considering what to do, not wanting to intrude. A woman spotted me looking and immediately ushered me over, introduced herself, and insisted I make a plate. She warmly introduced me to everyone at her table and with that, I was picnicking with the Chinese Women of Cleveland. They had matching shirts declaring their affiliation. I sat and ate with them, feeling somewhat awkward, mostly because everyone around me was speaking Chinese, and without knowing what was being said, there was little way for me to break the ice. Despite my invitation, I did feel a bit like an intruder. It gave me a valuable moment to reflect on what I take for granted, socially and culturally. 

The woman who had invited me to join told me about how she traveled the world backpacking once upon a time. In her words: she escaped from Romania in 1988 and moved to the US. She bought real estate, retired at 50, backpacked from Patagonia to Alaska, and all through Asia, and is “addicted to durian”. After my phone had charged enough to continue, I thanked her and departed feeling sincerely grateful for her welcoming spirit.

I ducked into a bar on the way to my host’s house, hoping to skip the last storm I saw on the radar. The guy next to me ordered chicken tenders but hardly ate any of them, so I ate them after he cashed out and left, without any shame whatsoever. I guess I am completely feral now. The bartender told me she’s on her way to Glacier next week, so we had a nice chat.

62 miles

Dave is a county judge in local “drug court”. Monica was a middle school teacher for a long time, and she recently began setting up a sober house with the local hospital. They were very kind and gracious hosts. They have three kids. Their house was in a nice part of town, and was very comfortable. They had a 7-month-old lab puppy named Duncan. One of their daughters did a big oil painting of a cake platter, which was hung in the hall just beyond the kitchen, where a print of the painting was also hung, such that both could be viewed at the same time. I took a photo with both images in frame, because I can’t resist moments like this. I’d like to make a painting of the photo. 

The ride from their house was hilly but nice, and the weather was perfect and cool. Cleveland has some great bike paths. 

I stopped to rest at Sportsterz Bar and Grill in Geneva-On-The-Lake, which is a little strip of touristy shops for vacationing people. It reminds me a little of Venice Beach. It’s not my favorite vibe, but there isn’t much else. I’m listening to a bad cover band play classic rock songs. 

After leaving the bar, I watched the sunset on the beach. There are plenty of sites at the campground here, so I was able to find one with a perfect pair of trees for hammock sleeping.

64 miles

I’m sitting outside of a coffee shop called Harbor Perk in Ashtabula, eating my way through a box of donuts which were criminally underpriced at Squire Bakery, just one block away.

I woke up cold in my hammock last night and had to get out my sleeping mat in the middle of the night. After that, I slept again until 6:30 am, when I decided it was time to pack up. I went back down to the beach to eat my first breakfast and wake up a bit before getting on the road. 

Outside the bakery, I talked to a man named Bill who was riding by on a trike with a basket. He told me he is 83 years old, and has lived in Ashtabula his whole life, in the same house. He broke his shoulder falling off a curb last year. He can’t raise his arm now. He was fun to chat with. 

There’s a lift bridge next to this Cafe. It rises for boats, and people stop to watch. 

I crossed into Pennsylvania, and arrived at Presque Isle state park, which was definitely not a campground. I had left my new spork at Squire’s Castle, so I bummed a plastic fork off a passing stranger. I ate some green beans and mashed potatoes and looked for a place to camp out. I decided it would be best to follow a trail literally labeled “A trail” and pitched my tent. There was a little spot under a big dying tree, which made me a little nervous, but the air was completely still, so it seemed unlikely that its limbs would fall in the <7 hours I’d be there. I accepted the risk.

This park is on a tiny peninsula just off the shore of Erie, PA. It’s about the size of Belle Isle. It was very busy when I got here, but it closes after dark, so it was sort of amazing to hear all sounds completely fade out until there was nothing but frogs and birds and then just crickets – literal crickets – and me.

84 miles

I woke up to the sound of heavy trucks thundering by a few hundred yards away on the other side of the trees. There was apparently some construction project underway, here on my peninsula.

I packed up my things and headed for a coffee shop in Erie, called Brew Haha. It was in a strip mall, but I was delightfully surprised by the menu and the vibe. I talked to a group of about a dozen older male cyclists who had just ridden the park. They asked a lot of questions about my trip.

The cafe had some delicious chicken salad, and was reasonably priced. I got a slice of veggie quiche to go. The rest of the day passed sort of boringly. I was on the shoulder of Route 5 all day. I saw one other cyclist headed my way, and another going in the opposite direction. I found a small plastic crocodile on the road.

I reached Evangola State Park, finally, and sat on the nearby beach to eat my dinner and wait for dark. A man invited me to stay at his cottage, but I went to the campground and found a nice hammock site. He recommended I eat at a Burmese restaurant in Buffalo called Lin restaurant. He lives with his allegedly gorgeous Chinese wife in Cheektowaga, and is fixing up a home to rent here, in Irving. 

36 miles

I woke up feeling very cozy in my hammock this morning. It is amazingly comfortable with a half inflated sleeping pad. The weather was cool and light and breezy, with the sun just coming up.

I packed up and headed back to the beach area to have my breakfast. A nice couple stopped to chat and recommended I take Old Lake Road, which I did, and it was nice and smooth and quiet. I rode into Buffalo, thinking I might get a hotel. I’ve learned my lesson about trying to camp near cities.

 I sent some messages to potential warmshowers hosts and stopped for coffee at Undergrounds Cafe to skulk in the meager shade of the building, buying time while I waited to hear back. I’m not really in the mood for exploring. I did stop to walk around at the botanical gardens, which were nice—they reminded me of the Belle Isle Conservatory. 

One girl on warmshowers recommended the local hostel, which doesn’t look too bad, but I’m not feeling particularly sociable. Eventually I gave up waiting for replies and booked a hotel room while I ate dinner at a place called Dino BBQ…but a few minutes later a girl I’d messaged replied that she’s available, so I cancelled my room. She’s only a mile away, so it’s perfect. 

65 miles 

Staying with Alyssa was great. She was delightful to talk to and her dog Ladi was very sweet and playful. I’m sure that if she lived in Detroit we would be friends. I left for the Bread Hive Bakery Co-op, right down the street, and got a couple of great sandwiches and scones to take with me.

The ride to Niagara Falls was gorgeous—there was a nice bike path along the river lined with wildflowers. Seeing the falls with all their mist and rainbows and the sound of rushing water was lovely, but the real highlight for me was watching the people way down on the boats and viewing platforms, clutching at their flimsy provided ponchos and getting absolutely drenched with spray. There is something hilarious to me about the idea of paying more money for a closer experience with this force of nature, only to then try to shield yourself from its reality by wearing what is essentially a garbage bag, which seems to provide no protection whatsoever.

After leaving the falls, I headed for Brockport. I ran into a guy who had a flat tire and didn’t want help. I took him at his word and kept riding. The Canal trail is decent. It’s calm, and the surface is smooth crushed stone with an easy grade.

I wasn’t sure I’d make it to Brockport, so I decided to stop in Middleport—there was a drive-in theater there that I noticed on the map, and they were playing a double feature of The Goonies and E.T.

 The lady who runs the place, Denise, agreed to let me stay the night, so I paid for a ticket and a bucket of popcorn, and set up my tent near the edge of the field, which never really filled up. The place was retro as hell, and it felt so absurd to go to a drive-in on a bicycle. I was provided with a portable radio to use for free, to tune in the movies.

33 miles

I’m in Brockport, NY, eating the biggest slice of pizza I’ve ever seen. I decided not to push the 90 miles past Rochester today, and to stay at the Welcome Center here in Brockport. It’s free, they have a shower, and I’ve been enjoying taking my time on the Erie Canal Trail today.

I had a great conversation with a woman at a coffee shop in Middleport, first thing this morning. She asked good, genuine questions. She’s trying to visit all 50 states, and is on her way to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Then Alaska. She used to be an attorney in Washington DC, but retired in June, and decided to take a road trip with her dog, Winnie. She is from a small town in Nebraska, and we talked about traveling and leaving your comfort zone. She told me she used to do Ironmans, and now coaches people on mindfulness.

Just now at the pizza place, I met Wilson Wilson. He rolled up on a Ritchey fat bike with 4-inch tires and canvas panniers, and told me he’s been touring continuously for the last 10 years. He talked my ear off about his experiences. I did my best to ask thoughtful questions. He’s riding east tomorrow, and I’m hoping we can ride together for a day. He had so many interesting things to say, but listening for so long has me feeling drained. 

80 miles

I found another bunch of holes in my sleeping pad last night—I took it into the shower at the Welcome Center to find and mark them. I knew there was an REI in Rochester just off the Erie trail, so I plan on stopping to replace it. Wilson kindly paid for my breakfast. We ate at the Brockport Diner, which is a type of no-frills, greasy American diner that I’ve always felt has a certain charm.

We rode to REI, and I got my new sleeping pad. We stopped at a Wegmans to wait out a rainstorm. While we were there, a guy rode up with a brake problem. His name was Mike. He’s a software engineer who lives in Fairport with his wife and three kids. Wilson fixed his bike and Mike bought him a sandwich. 

The stories Wilson tells are fantastic. He served in the navy, grew up “in the hood” in DC, and now lives in Maine during the winter, where he is a store manager or something seasonal at Shaw’s in Freeport. He lives in Gray. His family is based somewhere in the South—maybe Nashville? He sleeps in a hammock. He has delivered two babies. He’s met Dave Chappelle. He cuts down trees for people, does landscaping, and other odd jobs for money. He does well, it seems, on his personality. He’s outgoing, polite, confident, and absolutely full of stories. We made it to the South Shore RV Park for the night.

70 miles

The South Shore RV Park did not have bathrooms that were unlocked, so we got out of there early, and headed for the Sodus Point Lighthouse nearby. I made coffee while Wilson took a photo of the lighthouse for his grandma.

Next, we went to see the Chimney Bluffs—a super unique landscape on the shore of Lake Ontario. We found a short, easy hike along a cliffside with great views of the bluffs through the trees. They were very pointy.

We ate lunch after the hike, and shortly after we hit the road again, we got separated. The area we were riding in was hilly and winding, and Wilson’s fat tires were slower on the hills, but I suspect he deserted. At some point I looked behind me and didn’t see him anymore, so I waited for a moment, but finally decided to carry on. I had enjoyed his company, but it was something of a relief to be back with my own thoughts again after hearing all of his. Somehow it made sense that he would disappear as unexpectedly as he’d arrived, and it reminded me to appreciate the impermanence of everything.

I found a good spot to hang my hammock when I reached Selkirk. There was a family nearby blasting moody alt rock from the early 00’s, like Evanescence and Pearl Jam. Every site within a hundred feet of them was empty. 

Someone asked me today what I miss the most, being on the road for so long. I thought for a long time. I finally went with “constant access to electricity”, but I’m not sure that’s even true. I honestly couldn’t think of anything I miss.

61 miles

I was grumpy today. It’s probably because I started bleeding, and I’m sleeping in a barn. I dodged rain clouds all day. I bought some zucchini bread at a farm stand and talked to an Amish man for a moment, who was very nice.

I started the day with coffee and breakfast at a diner in Pulaski. It was just okay. I bought a pair of earrings for $1 from a thrift store that supports homeless pets.

Once I got to the barn, I cleaned my chain and took a shower.

54 miles 

I woke up to a roar of rain on the barn roof off and on last night. It was extremely loud. Otherwise I slept well, and woke up rested. I was on the road by 7:30 am.

The first few miles were an uphill struggle, just like Dan said they would be, and (also like he said) after that it was really pleasant, with long gradual hills, smooth pavement, curves, shady evergreens, and moist air. 

I stopped in Old forge, at a bakery/cafe called Doe A Deer, and ate a big bowl of fresh spinach with well seasoned chicken. It was the perfect lunch. I had a nice big cup of cold brew there, and walked around town a bit. It was touristy—almost every shop was antiques or jewelry/gifts. I looked at my maps for a long while, to sort out what the end will look like. I’m going to ride to Quoddy Head State Park, via Acadia, via Auburn, via Windham. I think I can do it all by the end of the month when Jeanelle can pick me up and drive me back to Auburn. Apparently, there’s a nice beach at Quoddy Head. I’m looking forward to that. It’s weird to think how soon it will all be over. I’m looking forward to seeing Jenny. She invited me to work as a server at a wedding with her on Saturday—I think this will be a great weird addition to my adventure. 

The road and the riding felt great today. I think I must have had a tailwind, because I even felt strong and content riding up the hills. The elevation has not been too extreme. I stopped at a book shop in Inlet, another tourist trap town. An older man asked me if I was interested in local history, and I took the bait and he talked my ear off for 20 minutes about land ownership in the Adirondacks. Evidently he wrote the book. Literally. It’s a huge hardcover book that probably weighs as much as my loaded bike. I tried to get away, but he kept returning, so I left the store. 

Speaking of land ownership, I composed a song today, inspired by my surroundings:

this land is my land 
this land’s not your land 
all the trees and mountains 
everything you see 
and I put up signs so
that you won’t trespass
this land is here for only me 
this land is private property 

I counted “posted” signs today. There were 76 of them within one mile. I didn’t see a single person. I did see a lot of orange spotted salamanders, mostly roadkill, unfortunately, but one was alive. I tried to help him cross, but he resisted. I introduced him to my plastic crocodile, but I can’t be sure they struck up a quality friendship in their brief moment together. I realize this sounds insane, but I’m finding myself leaning into whimsy lately. I have no one to impress around here.

I’m at Golden Beach Campground now. A loon is calling out on Raquette Lake. I had a picnic on the beach, then set up my tent as a storm began to break. Tomorrow morning I want to roll out early. I’ve been enjoying the days when I can get an early start. Hoping for more tailwinds tomorrow.

66 miles

I left Golden Beach and rode to Indian Lake, where I stopped for a coffee at a gas station. The man working there told me he’d just moved there in May to open the store. He used to be a contractor in California. He was baking cookies, so I bought one fresh out of the oven. He gave me a scoop of ice for my Hydro pack and told me it was the best water in the Adirondacks. Lucky me. 

I ran into some construction on Highway 28—they were paving it, and there was a huge descent on the freshest of pavement. It was SCARY fast, and so smooth. My route followed the Hudson River for a while, and I thought about how it flows to the Atlantic. I read some signs about the history of logging and industry in the region. I rode to a small town just north of Lake George and bought the smallest ice cream cone ever. I paid $3.25 for it, and it was literally like a teaspoon of ice cream. It was the first of many disappointments…

Lake George, it turns out, is a bustling cesspool of tourism. It’s a busy resort town. I found myself suddenly surrounded by hundreds of people dining and shopping and I was not at all mentally prepared for it. I tried to get a meal at a brewery, but I arrived to find they had a 2-hour wait. I wanted to just sit somewhere quietly. I found a barbecue place another half mile down the road that looked like it had a healthy bowl of spinach and quinoa on their menu online, which sounded perfect. I arrived to find that they didn’t have it, so I settled for a burger, which I was inflamed to discover was literally just a patty and a piece of cheese on a bun with no toppings at all. What even IS a burger without pickles? It was cooked just fine, but severely underwhelming and overpriced. 

I discovered a campground was only a 2 minute ride away, between the south end of the lake and the A&W. Given the flavor of the town, I knew it would be less than my favorite, but it seemed like the only option in range. I set up my hammock. A few minutes later, there were about 20 children with glow sticks marching through my campsite from an adjacent area, with a few adults too. A dog in the RV next door started barking. Someone started their generator and someone else yelled at them. A ship on the lake began blowing its foghorn. I was attempting to use the filthy bathrooms when the fireworks began. Late into the night, a nearby light across from my site was shining super brightly, directly into my hammock. It kept turning off and back on again for no apparent reason. 

It was easily the worst campground experience of this entire trip. I felt great about dodging the exorbitant entrance fee.

48 miles

I got out of the Lake George area as fast as possible. I went to the local Stewart’s for my coffee. I’ve decided I’m not going to answer questions that don’t interest me anymore. As soon as I left Stewart’s, I found a county bike path that was GORGEOUS. It was shady, foggy, mossy, and cool. I spotted a geocache hanging from a tree and took a headless plastic figure, exchanging it with a rock I had painted eyes on. A body-less head for a headless body feels like a sensible trade. It was a fun surprise. 

Someone running uphill said to me in passing, “tell me it gets flatter!” and I told them honestly that I didn’t know, but in retrospect, I probably could have told them that it always does if you go far enough. 

11 miles

I arrived at Jenny’s house in Cambridge, NY. We did some laundry at the local laundromat, poked around in the bookstore, and it was so fun to catch up with her. Jenny is one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met, and the rare kind of friend who feels like they’ve never left your life, even if it’s been years since you’ve talked. We made sushi and ate and talked and laughed our heads off. 

She invited me to work a wedding with her as a server at a fancy barn venue just over the border in Vermont. It was amazing. I helped set up the space, and then had an absolute blast serving platters of bacon-wrapped scallops, duck tartlets, pork meatballs, and crab cakes to tables of guests who had no idea who I was or what I’d been up to for the last 3 months and didn’t care one bit. It was totally refreshing to be invisible to strangers for the first time in so long.

I haven’t been a guest at many weddings, and I’ve certainly never served tables at one before. It was such a rare and unique and hilarious experience to jump into on a whim. 

39 miles

Jenny and I went to King’s Bakery, a donut cart that pops up (weekly?) a short walk from her place. I bought a dozen donuts for us to split and we sat on her porch to eat way too many of them and drink our coffee. 

When I finally hit the road, I started with a very strong headwind into Arlington, VT, but the weather was cool and crisp—my favorite, like early September. I visited a bike shop called Battenkill Bikes that I had called yesterday for route advice. Garth was very helpful, and looked at my derailleur for me. I thought I’d frayed the cable when I adjusted it a couple of days ago, but he said it looked okay. He had a dog named Dash. She tried to eat a nectarine out of my hand, very gently.

 Next, I went to North Kill bookstore in Manchester, at the recommendation of Garth, who said it was “the best bookstore in the world”. I could see what he meant—I could have spent all day there. I bought a couple of postcards and some chicken salad. I sat in the garden outside to eat and a kid came up to ask about my trip. He told me he’d just finished high school and always wanted to do a bike trip. I encouraged him to go for it. 

I kept moving toward Hapgood Pond Campground, which turned out to be a great spot. It struck me that the way people camp here is very different from a lot of the busy places I’ve seen recently. A lot of the sites here are occupied, but you wouldn’t know it. It’s quiet. There was a woman reading aloud while a man behind her set up camp. I chatted for a while with a guy named Dan, who advised me to stop in Belfast but not Searsport when I get to Maine. 

As I was riding through the campground looking for a good site, I spotted two men pulling into one. I said hello and they graciously invited me to camp with them. Jonathan is a baker in Northampton, MA, and James is an astronomer and teaches at Smith college. He talked about street light design and how it’s never done with the right considerations, and how there’s no evidence that lights make a city safer. Jonathan shared some bread he had made, which was delicious. 

50 miles 

I overslept. I woke up to the sound of James and Jonathan leaving. I guess I needed the rest—Jenny and I had been up until 3:30 am or so after the wedding, and I guess I had some catching up to do. 

The mountain I climbed yesterday was tough, and I realized I’d forgotten what mountains feel like. I met the eye of a guy on a motorcycle on his way down the slope while I was on my way up, and something in his expression seemed to communicate awe or some kind of understanding. 

Now I’m having sort of a dilemma. It’s absolutely gorgeous weather today, with rain in the forecast from tomorrow onward, but right now I just don’t really feel like going anywhere. It’s peaceful here, but I just had a rest day, and I’m low on food, and I want to make progress, but I want to stay put. I feel low on adventure energy. I feel saturated, full, ready to stop, but it’s like there’s one slice of this enormous pizza left, and I know it’s one of the most delicious slices, so I want to enjoy it, savor it…but how do you savor the 23rd slice of pizza?

75 miles

I was rewarded last night with a beautiful campsite at Ascutney State Park. It was quiet—peaceful quiet, not eerie quiet. I ate some soup and drank a Radler. I mainly chose it because it looked refreshing and had a bicycle on the label, and it was a good pick, but a fly flew directly into it during the final quarter, so it stayed unfinished. 

I made decisions about what these next two days will look like. I cracked open Girl With Curious Hair, which is delightful as expected. Whenever I’m in a bookstore and I don’t know what I’m looking for, I just navigate to where they keep David Foster Wallace. I’ve never read anything he wrote that I didn’t love. 

This morning I woke up around 5:30 am, which felt pretty good. I thought for a while about what I’d rather do: climb an 11.6% grade up Mount Ascutney and do a hike, or lie in my hammock and read, or get on the road and skip the Precision Museum. I chose to read for a while. It was a good decision.

After packing up, I decided to try the mountain, just to see how it would feel. I went about a quarter mile and decided that was enough. Turns out that was a good decision, too, because as I left the park I realized what I hadn’t considered before: it is super overcast today, and there are low clouds hanging over all of the mountains. Even if I’d made it to the top, the view was likely to have just been a wall of fog. 

I made my way toward Windsor, where the diner I wanted to visit was closed, and the cafe was “phone order only” and very overpriced. I decided that I’d just get some coffee and wait to eat. 

The American Precision Museum was a great stop, just before leaving Windsor. It was full of incredibly cool machines and manufacturing history. I love thinking about how a new tool or technique can change every aspect of how we live and make sense of the world. I don’t remember much from the day—I’m writing this on the 18th now. I remember stopping at a small country store in Grafton, which is a town a little smaller than Alfred, but with no university. The “store” was just a few packaged snack items and some homemade baked goods. 

I had hoped they had a bathroom, but they didn’t. The woman I talked with told me she is from a city (I don’t remember which one) but her husband is local, and she spoke surprisingly openly about feeling that her interests don’t fit in here – she’d rather shop than hunt, etc. When I told her the rough outline of my trip, she said outright, “that is definitely not something I would like to do”. I found her candor refreshing—most people say they couldn’t do it, but she was the first to say that she simply would not, and I really liked that. Anyone can do this. Most people don’t want to, and that’s ok. 

She directed me to the library down the street, which was incredibly small. When I got there, there were people inside, a woman and her daughter, and a man named Tim who appeared to be unrelated. They were deep in conversation about some small town drama. She explained to me that the library was not technically open, but she let me sit inside to wait out some of the rain. 

When she and her kid left, Tim and I sat on the porch for a while and talked. He has lived in Grafton his whole life, and is tired of it. He spoke in a smart, nuanced way that made me suspect he has few allies in a town like this. We talked about politics – local and large. He spoke about how he’s wanted to do a bike trip, but he’s afraid of being “out there where you don’t know anybody”. I hope he does take a trip. 

One of the things I have appreciated so much about this trip is that I don’t know anybody, but the vast majority of people I’ve encountered have been nothing but friendly, generous, curious, fascinating, and eager to help. It’s all too easy to convince yourself that something like this is too scary or dangerous or hard to do until you do it, and come face-to-face with the fact that there is actually a lot of counterevidence to those fears if you’re willing to actually find out. 

After I left the library, I got rained on, but it was light rain and felt refreshing. I was on the wonkiest bike path/rail trail for most of the day. The surface was different every mile: rough with very large rocks and railroad ties in some places, or smooth crushed stone, or a slippery blanket of pine needles, or mud, or sand…a little of everything. I lost the rubber wedge on one of my bottle cages over a bump, and when I stopped to assess the situation, I was instantly attacked by a million mosquitoes. I was able to make a new wedge with a triangular rock and a panty liner. One point for feminine products. 

The rain had delayed me, so I was riding in the dark for a little while. The dusk was beautiful, but then it got a little sketchy because the shoulder was rough and narrow and there was a lot of traffic in some places. I made it to Meredith Woods campground, which turned out to be a long-term residence RV park or something. There were no sites available, so I set up my tent next to the dog park.

100 miles

Today is my birthday. (And yes, it really did end up being a perfect century ride today.)

I evacuated the RV park as quickly as possible this morning. I located a cafe in the nearby town, and decided I wanted blueberry pancakes for breakfast. To my dismay I was told they were out of fresh fruit, but I was not going to be deterred, so I drank my coffee and took some plain pancakes to go. I brought my stack to the nearest Hannaford’s, where I paid $2 for a pint of fresh blueberries, and sat on a bench in front of the store to eat while I waited for my tent to dry.

While I sat, I spotted a man walking out of the store holding a cloud of birthday balloons, so I asked him if the balloons were for me, in my best deadpan, and told him it was actually my birthday. The serendipity of the moment inspired me, so after we chatted I went back into the store and picked a shiny balloon, with pictures of balloons on it. It felt epically silly in exactly the right way—I tied it to the back of my bike and rode with it all day, bobbing around behind me in the wind. The drag it created was intense, but so was the visibility. I felt like a clown that everyone could see, which feels like a weird kind of safety on narrow rural highways like these.

I reached the Maine border where a modest sign declared “Maine: Welcome Home” which felt very appropriate. The ride was nice. I decided to go all the way to Portland, inspired by my balloon to treat myself to a century ride for my birthday. I rode to Portland Head Light, looked at the ocean, dipped my tire, asked a stranger to take my picture, and then headed back to meet Andre and Daphne at the High Roller Lobster Company in the Old Port. 

The Old Port is an extremely touristy area, and it was bustling with clean, well-dressed shoppers who probably all took hot showers this morning. 

I don’t know precisely what inspired me to try this or when the idea took solid form. Whenever strangers asked me along the way why I was doing what I was doing, the question caught me off guard. It’s a natural question, but a surprisingly hard one to answer meaningfully in the checkout line at a Sunoco. 

Why does anyone do anything? 

“I don’t know, seemed like it might be fun?”

When I first started thinking about it, I remember vaguely realizing one day that over the course of a typical summer, I ride an outrageous number of miles on my pedicab, pulling 400-800lbs of weight around the city for cash, an average of 30-40 miles a day. Doing this type of work has dramatically strengthened me, not only physically, but also in how I feel navigating the streets, the diverse public, and the spontaneity of it all. You have to grow your toughness and flexibility in equal measure to feel like you’re on your game. With practice, you start to feel like you can handle any situation that comes your way.

On top of that, I have always felt at home in the woods—spending time in areas of remote wilderness and traveling alone are some of my favorite ways to reconnect with myself and refresh a sense of appreciation and wonder at how extraordinarily unlikely and precious it is to be here. Identifying plants and animals that I’ve seen before feels like a reunion. Seeing new ones and learning about how and what they are feels like an expansion of the world. And meeting people who see and live in different versions of the world is a vital reminder that you never see the whole world as it is. You only have access to the scene as it appears through your window and by way of your ability to communicate with others about what they see through theirs. 

I knew a couple of people who had ridden across the country many years ago, and a friend had given me a book that had some resources to offer. I started to do some research and decided that riding from the west coast to the east on the ACA Northern Tier route would be a good place for me to start. The terrain, the scenery, the logistics and the timing aligned with what I felt I could do, and I could arrive for a surprise visit with family in Maine at the finish.

I started planning this trip in 2019, preparing to ride in the summer of 2020. I am immensely grateful to work for a company that values my humanity and grants me the freedom to take time to live my life away from my work when I need to. After anticipating and preparing for months, postponing the trip due to the global upheaval last year was difficult, to say the least, but as with anything, the change in plans offered new opportunities. Last summer instead afforded time for a shorter trip through Michigan, which was a terrific way to taste the adventure and make adjustments before embarking on the long haul. This year, instead of forging ahead with the whole trip solo as planned, I rode the first half (from the Pacific to the Mississippi) with Danielle Grow, who became a fast friend and fellow bike weirdo on the Michigan ride, and whose company and sense of humor added incredible richness to the experience for nearly 2,000 miles. 

From Minneapolis, I rode solo to the Atlantic. I touched the ocean in Maine on my birthday. 

There’s a lot I could say about the experience, but there’s a lot I can’t, too. I wanted to do it in real time without considerations of how it would play in pictures or blurbs curated for public consumption, so I was deliberate about not posting anything online during the trip, but of course I took pictures. I may still share some thoughts. The main reason I might someday consider sharing anything is that I learned a lot from doing this, and I was initially inspired and helped by reading and hearing what others have done. If what I have to offer would help someone else realize an experience like this for themselves, I’d want to contribute.

That said, there are a lot of ways to do a trip like this, and sometimes reading about how someone else did something can feel limiting, rather than inspiring, so I would want to encourage anyone to take what they see others do with a grain of salt, and remember that there is a lot that can’t be or simply isn’t conveyed in a piece of writing or in pictures.

It seems obvious to think of traveling as a means of going somewhere, and this was truly the most common level of questioning people approached me with, upon seeing the bike and the bags. 

“Where are you going?”

“Where’d you start?”

“When did you start?”

“How many miles a day do you ride?”

“When will you get there?”

“Where do you stay at night?”

I had this conversation every single day. Sometimes with as many as 5 or 6 people.

Their curiosity was completely understandable, but after a while it left me feeling wrung out and bored, because the biggest joy of this trip, for me, was in being somewhere, and almost no one seemed curious about that. The few who did ask good questions stood out.

“What’s it like to pedal up a mountain with all that gear?”

“What do you think about while you ride?”

“How has it been, riding all day in this heat?”

If you want to go somewhere, by all means, pay for a ticket, and take a plane. But if you want to BE somewhere…pay attention, and take your time.