Bike Trip Across America

June 24th -- Scituate, MA

2006-06-25T11:44:00.000-04:00

I.

Jefferson’s grand Monticello stands on a hillside a few miles south and west of Charlottesville, close enough that he could ride into town on his horse in the three hours he liked to allot himself for daily physical exercise but far enough away that, in his later years when horseback riding had become more of a challenge in his daily routine, he had the trees cut along the site lines toward the growing city so that he could watch the construction of the university he considered one of the only three things for which he wished to be remembered [the other two: authoring the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom].

The front of the house faces southwest onto lawn surrounded by flower beds, in full bloom when we visited – peonies, iris, hollyhock, poppies, lilies, Sweet William. To the south, along a remarkable terrace Jefferson had created beyond a walkway of mulberry trees, is a vegetable garden like no other I have ever seen -- lettuces, kales, peas, cabbage, and lavender, laid out in neatly tended rows below the house.

One enters the house from the northeast, from the back. This is where carriages would have arrived with visitors. It is where we, too, are ushered in. Jefferson was a remarkable man. Evidence of his creative mind and his ingenuity are evident before you ever even cross the threshold – a wind vane on the roof is cleverly connected by a shaft to a directional arrow on the ceiling of the portico; the seven-day clock in the foyer, the one with weights so long that they drape from the walls inside and have holes cut into the floor so that the clock can make it through Friday and Saturday, has a second face on the same porch so that it, too, can be read from outside.

The entrance hall measures maybe 20 by 20. The ceiling is 18 feet high. A balcony runs along one wall. In his day, Jefferson kept this entryway as something of a museum of things that interested him. There is a buffalo hide draped over the balcony rail covered in hieroglyphics that clearly tell a long and elaborate story. One wall displays Native American headdresses and arrows sent back by Lewis and Clark to the man who had commissioned their expedition. There is a case with the bones of some huge animal(s) that to my eye may well have been dinosaurs.

On the wall are two maps. One shows the country as it would have been in 1802, during his first term as President. Kentucky and Virginia begin to take shape, but not along present-day boundaries. The Ohio Valley begins to get filled in as it is explored and mapped. Jefferson has yet to send Lewis and Clark to explore beyond the Alleghenies, which are still considered by many impenetrable. No one, it seems, knows what is out there. Jefferson himself was apparently convinced that there were likely mastodons still roaming on some unexplored primeval plains.

The second map is an earlier one, drawn by Jefferson’s father, who was a surveyor to the Crown. For his services, Jefferson’s father would be given 2,000 acres of Virginia land -- the land his son would inherit and on which he would build this impressive homestead. On this map even less is known of the land beyond the Appalachians. It is simply labeled “The Wild Unknown.”

Kate and I have now crossed east from that “Wild Unknown,” We are back on the eastern seaboard, in familiar territory. Were we to have chosen, we could have ended our trip on the Potomac at Washington D.C. The water there is tidal. It tastes of salt. We had made it to the eastern shore.

But, for any number of reasons, we still wanted to pedal home.

There’s an almost insatiable desire, as a trip like this matures and as with each passing day the landscape starts to look more like home until you find yourself thinking that any day now the view just over the next hill will be of familiar territory, to want to capture something vital about the journey that can be kept, and shared, and remembered. More than anything I want to hold onto this trip. I want to take it apart in all of its complexity and store each part safely in its own retrievable place, where I can find it and have it forever. I want to simmer it down to its delicious essence, add just enough sugar so that any bitter memories lose their bite, then jar it, sealed with paraffin, on a shelf where I can know that it will keep, and on some cold winter morning open it and taste anew the New Mexico desert and the Tennessee rains, and share these things with friends, and remember these things with Kate.

Our photos will serve this purpose to some degree, each with a story to tell, each worth many thousands of words in memories. At some point they stopped being my pictures, or Kate’s – they were ours. We interchanged cameras so frequently that we likely forgot who took what picture, and even when we remembered, it’s as likely as not that one or the other of us was saying “oh, take it from here, the angle’s better,” or “wait a minute until the sun gets out from behind that cloud.”

Our journals, the ones we each have kept privately, will serve this purpose. Kate has re-taught me the wonderful art of journaling. We would sit nights in the tent, each of us with a headlamp, and write about the day. Sometimes we would talk, sometimes not – but we have each kept our own chronicle of this remarkable trip. I’m sure Kate’s is full of captivating descriptions, the ones she’s so good at, of our day-to-day life on the road. Hers is much prettier than mine. Anyone who knows Kate will not be surprised to learn that hers is multi-colored, written in a beautiful, legible hand, or that there are countless things glued in – ticket stubs, pictures cut from brochures – or stuck on. Mine looks more like chicken scratch, but in it I have tried to keep a thoughtful accounting of our days on the road, to which, it should be no surprise, I have added a record of the more private reflections that strike me as we travel.

But beyond these, how is it we can capture this trip? What is it we can jar up?

Different jars should store different things. One I would certainly label “The Exquisite Joy of Being Physically Fit.” The sheer delight in being in top physical condition, in being able to scamper over hills and up mountains with impunity, is, to say the least, invigorating. We are blessed with having good physical health to begin with, I know – and we’re consciously thankful of this most every day. It’s this that has us wanting to raise money for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute – we’d love to think that everyone should be able to delight in being healthy and strong. But it is also true that we’ve worked ourselves into top shape. From this vantage point, much of America seems overweight and unhealthy. I say this delicately because I know the privilege of riding a bicycle across the country to get in shape is a luxury few can afford, one that has required sacrifice on the part of those others supporting us. And yet it seems, to paraphrase Garrision Keillor, we live in a country where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all too many of the adults weigh above average [many way above average].” It was a standard response when striking up a conversation, after the initial shock of finding out what we were up to, for someone to say: “I couldn’t ride a bike to the other end of the road” – and most of the time they were right. My standard retort, “If you were doing this, you could eat anything you wanted to,” always seemed to bring a smile or a chuckle.

Most people know they’re not in good shape, and know they should do something about it. It’s one of the things Kate and I both hope to keep in my mind as a treasure this trip has provided. Our physical health is a gift, one we would hope everyone should have – but, like so many other things, it requires a deliberate devotion to maintain a healthy lifestyle, a devotion most of America seems to be having a tough time maintaining.

Another jar will get labeled “Being Outside/Camping.” It might hold some essence with a taste slightly smoky, like a campfire. Wanting to be outside, not wanting to come in, finding sleeping in a tent preferable to the stale air of a motel room and the stars better entertainment than cable TV – these are things I do not want to forget.

One jar will simply get labeled “Bikes.” In this one I get to preserve the sheer delight of being on a bicycle, of getting to know it intimately, of getting to appreciate its elegant simplicity and efficiency. Leonardo himself could not have concocted a more perfect machine. This one might have a taste still a little tart, sassy -- I get to gloat over the fact that we traveled nearly 4,500 miles without consuming an ounce of gas. It will encourage thinking about alternative technologies, ones that do not deplete or harm the precious natural resources of the planet. It’s a jar worth tasting often.

In it I’ll also throw the panniers and the spare bike parts – the extra chain lengths, the derailleur and brake cables, the spokes we never needed to replace, the inner tubes and the fold-up Kevlar tire. I feel pretty strongly that there is another bike trip in us. We’ll need to know where to find our stuff.

There’ll be a jar that says “Self-Reliance.” It will taste very sweet.

Another I will label “Vicarious Pleasure.” Some of you who’ve followed us on the blog site will know a little of what this will taste like. We found long ago that a trip like this pulls deeply, and not just for us alone. Even before we left, friends were offering us books to read, had stories to tell, of adventures taken and others dreamed of. And it’s not just those we’ve left behind – it’s the many people we’ve met on the road – the people in coffee shops who ask you to repeat yourself: “You’re going where?” – the guy on the side of the road in Tennessee who shouted out: “Where y’all goin’?”, and then: “Oh, man … that’s somethin’.”

It’s been an unexpected and delightful pleasure to find that the blog has allowed us to share our trip so immediately and spontaneously. It’s been really fun. Our blog updates are picture postcards, mass-mailed, for anyone who cares to pick up and read. “Marvelous trip. Wish you were here.” It has become another record of our adventure, a wonderful chance to share what we are experiencing and seeing with others. It’s been one of the real joys and unanticipated pleasures of the trip for me. I didn’t know how important it would become. These sometimes hastily written updates are like the trip itself: we bike somewhere, try to absorb as best we can something of the essence of the place so that we can hold it in our memory, and then we move on. It’s like that with these extemporaneous moments at a computer keyboard – try to get something meaningful down, and then move on. These are our verbal photographs -- frame them as carefully as you can, see if you can capture the light just right, and then snap the picture. It’s time to go.

There were a few, but only a precious few, instances when we were able to take more time composing what we had to say – a night at Marilyn and Larry’s when I sat late into the night with his laptop on the floor, a day at John Stoney’s in Austin, a night at Kate and Tilmer’s. Kate has hated these times – she knows it’s when I go completely overboard. Fortunately for her, mostly we were dashing into a library somewhere with 45 minutes or an hour and a half before they intended to turn off the lights, with days of things to say and a need to work quickly, usually being escorted out the door as the last lights were flicked off by some disgruntled librarian eager to get home to his or her dinner.

I find comfort in accepting that those who have read these narratives have had to be a bit forgiving, knowing that we’re writing on the fly, knowing to expect that things may be misspelled or misrepresented. Sometimes, like early on in Glamis, California, I’ve said things I’ve later regretted. Many times we wish we’d said something differently, or added something else, or not included something we’ve said. Like the trip itself, there is always a desire to revisit something, spend more time with it, not leave it so quickly behind.

It’s not entirely true, at least for me, to say that these updates were completely extemporaneous. On a bike there’s lots of time to think. I would find there were things I couldn’t wait to write down and share – in fact, after three or four days if we hadn’t been able to find a computer somewhere I would begin to feel a need to purge myself of the baggage I was carrying, get it down somewhere, just so I could move on. I’ve turned a phrase for hours in my head, chewed on it until it seemed right. It’s probably a shame few of those things have come out as fine in print as they seemed to taste on the road.

There really is something about riding a bicycle over great distance that is quite difficult to describe.

Already I’m missing the writing. We have friends tell us they’re missing it, too – missing waking up each day to see where we are, to see if there’s a new posting. I guess we’ll go through withdrawal together.

There will surely be another jar in which I try to preserve the memories of what we have seen – the wildlife, the bird life, the wildflowers. I think I’ll simply label it “Beautiful Things.” It’ll need to be a big jar. This is a beautiful country. Into the bottom of this one I’ll drop a few of the dried flowers we’ve pressed from the roadside, the tiny lump of coal from eastern Kentucky and the rock from New Mexico rich with copper ore I carried in my front pouch, the pecans from Texas, the tuft of cotton from an Arizona field.

There’ll be a tiny jar I’ll fill with a bitter concoction of something akin to Marmite that I’ll hide at the back of the shelf. I’ll label it “The Virtues of Spandex,” and only bring it down and admit to enjoying it on rare occasions, to share with my closest intimates. I’ll serve it on toast, with tea, when Graham comes round.

And there’ll be a jar I’ll label “Libraries.” I don’t think I’ll put a lid on this one at all – I’ll keep it open to the air. That seems most fitting. Nothing goes stale or rancid here. The library system in this country is a phenomenal thing, one we take for granted, and all-too-often overlook. But such a thing to appreciate! Kate and I decided in planning our trip that a laptop would be too cumbersome and too fragile, and that we would try to find a way to get into a library somewhere every few days. It’s true that we would find it odd that we would occasionally need to have our ID’s photocopied in order to use a computer, as if we posed some potential threat to national security, or that we would sometimes need to sign forms agreeing to abide by rules governing what we could or could not do on the Internet, or that connections were sometimes slow and once so heavily filtered that we couldn’t even access the blog site [that was the library right next to the town grade school]. But the libraries were always there, and always accommodating. What a remarkable treasure. I intend to let the librarians in Scituate know how much I appreciate them when I return. They’ve followed the journey with us.

Some of these jars I could have begun to put up as the trip began to wind down – they were sweet enough and ripe enough for canning even then. Others would have to wait until the trip was truly over, when the fruit had completely ripened. There’ll be the jar that contains all the vital statistics, the final tallies, the distance traveled and the number of flat tires. Other jars may require time to age, to cure – reflections on America, or on the human spirit. Like a good pinot, or a single malt scotch, it may be years before these things can be truly appreciated.

And then there are some things that simply cannot be preserved in jars.

When I was a kid my brother and sister and I used to catch fireflies on sultry summer nights on my uncle’s farm in Ohio. We’d punch holes in the lid of a peanut butter jar, and shove a fistful of grass in the bottom. I used to think if we got enough fireflies we could read by them, under the covers. It never worked. But I do remember being able to examine them closely, sometimes seemingly for hours, under those bed sheets – count the interval between their flashes, look for the rim of red around each wing that would be visible only in the fluorescent glow of their emitted light. You couldn’t see anything of a firefly outside of the jar. The best you could do, chasing it around the yard, was try to guess where it would be when it sparked again, so you could catch it. Otherwise it was just a flash in the dark night air.

It never worked to try to keep them alive. They didn’t like the grass we thought could be their food. By morning the magic had gone. They seemed a bit listless – and they certainly had no interest in flashing for us during the day. By the next night, if we kept them, most were dead, and the others never seemed to light again.

Try as hard as you might, some things cannot be kept – at least not outside the deep recesses of the human heart.

Adequately describing the privilege of riding a bicycle across the country with my 18-year-old daughter is such a thing.

Long-distance runners talk about finding a “zone” where they can run great distances without pain or suffering. I never found that running, try as hard as I might – my knees always ached, or my breathing was too labored, or I was too hot or cold. But on a bike, over many weeks, Kate and I have both discovered a remarkable “place” we came to know well. When I used to imagine what it would be like to get out of bed and want to do nothing more than get on the bike, it was the thought of physical satisfaction that seemed so obvious. They say Lance Armstrong hates the days off during the Tour de France. His body needs to be on the bike. Kate and I know what that feels like. But even more, it is the mental place we each would begin to go that was so inviting, so desirable. There were many times we would talk to each other as we would ride along, me a few yards behind her, never really side-by-side. We would say a lot to each other. But there were also countless hours we would pedal quietly alone together, contemplative, introspective. It would be entirely false to say we would “zone out.” On the contrary, on a bike all senses become heightened, alive. Smells are intense, birds can be raucous. I would find myself exquisitely sensitive to the dangers around us, almost hyper-alert to the world we would pass through. And at the same time I was able to go to a profoundly contemplative place where, like being under the covers on my uncle’s farm, I could examine fireflies in a jar.

This was the place I was eager to find with each day’s ride. It came easily toward the end, almost immediately.

The monks with whom we stayed at Gethsemane sculpt lives of contemplative silence around purposeful ritual and work. Who knows where this takes them? One of the brothers told me it was here they hoped to catch some faint glimmer of enlightenment, some small hint of the grandeur and enormity of God. For me there is a ritual in the methodical motion of daily riding, and there is [quite pleasurable] work in exertion over a long day – and in the contemplative silence I have found something I had never anticipated finding.

I’ve become convinced that if ever I should have something I truly felt wanted to be said, or if I needed profoundly to consider some thing or another, I would want to do it on a long-distance bike trip. This combination of days of long exercise, fresh air, and raw, almost inexpressible beauty is a recipe that has allowed me some of the clearest thinking I have ever done. This is what it feels like to be truly alive. If this is my road to enlightenment, bring it on.

The challenge of the last days became to examine the most fragile things, the fireflies that would not survive another night without being set free -- the vital things about the trip that might well defy description. I wanted to look them over closely, scrutinize them, peer at them as best I could, before I had to let them go.

The place to do that seemed to be on the bike.

II.

Fragile fireflies. So many of them.

The thing I’m most aching to be able to capture and somehow record is the enormity almost beyond description of riding across the country in my daughter’s wake, of watching her rise to challenge, cope with adversity, struggle with decision-making, all with characteristic grace and cheerfulness. She knows what a pleasure and a privilege this has been for me. I’ve told her so. I am blessed beyond measure.

Good traveling companions are hard to find. Most people know this, even if they don’t admit it. It takes work, and understanding, and compromise – and conversation. Kate and I found our route across America littered with well-intentioned travelers who set out together and are now biking alone or in smaller groups. But the two of us traveled easily together. And we worked at it. We realized, quite early on, that we were in this together. There could be no “me” and Kate, no logic to thinking one of us could do this trip faster or better than the other. We were a unit. Our efforts needed to be devoted to supporting each other as a unit. Those things that might bring stress or tension into the equation needed to be eliminated, demolished, stamped on – instead, we would fight to find those things that would foster unity and common purpose. We’d help hold each other together.

This is for me the most precious firefly, the one whose subtleties I could quite easily forget by tomorrow and by next week declare I had never seen. I’ve tried to look this one up and down, inside and out – fortunately, I found it early and recognized that I had in my hands a pearl of great price, an enormous gift. Privately, I’ve tried to examine the dynamics that made the trip so successful as exhaustively as I could, tried to put into words some of the things I’ll not want to forget as time and distraction begin to etch away at memory, at least gather up the grist for some future milling. And I confess I’m tempted to leave it there, as a private matter. But, for the record – and for those who’ve embraced our ride enthusiastically enough maybe to be interested in these introspections – I’ll risk putting some of my thoughts down here.

When Kate first proposed this trip, and after we all struggled with whether it was possible and decided it was, I began to keep a journal of my thoughts and feelings – well before we ever bought bikes, or considered our specific route, or bought our one-way tickets to the coast. In those first days, I tried to describe what it felt like to have had God swoop down and kiss me on the cheek – to have so many dreams and desires culminate in that one precious moment when my18-year-old daughter asked me to do such a thing as this, and then to have the support and the love of others that could make such a thing possible.

More than a few adults we’ve met along the way have been brought to tears when I have related this story. Some have described their own often unmet dreams and desires; others have cried over loved ones lost, and over opportunity never realized, or sometimes heartbreakingly squandered. We carry in our hearts and in our panniers hopes and dreams and prayers from many people. They are not our burden. I’m convinced, in fact, they lighten our load.

Kate had asked me on this trip – not to shepherd her or get her safely across the country, but to be her partner and traveling companion. And I wanted to honor her request.

But I am, after all, her father … and someone who knows himself to be too many times quite strong-willed and with intractable opinions about how things should be done. And so, despite my best intentions, it doesn’t surprise me in retrospect that we headed out of San Diego with me in the lead, with me carrying the maps, and with Kate trailing dutifully behind. She even made it quite clear this is where she chose to be.

It was a couple months before we would finally talk about why she felt more comfortable trailing behind – months over which our relationship had solidified to the point where we could talk so freely, months over which we’d both had the time to search our own hearts over miles and miles of contemplative pavement, after our mutual respect had grown to the point that such conversations became easy. Kate hadn’t wanted me to be “on her tail,” nudging her ahead in the annoying way someone tail-gating in a car as you drive down a highway gets under your skin, makes you nervous, makes you want either to scream or pull over. She knew that’s the way it would be. She was right. She knew that this was the dynamic that described many father/daughter or parent/child or husband/wife or even friend/friend relationships, and she knew, at that point perhaps only pre-consciously, that it could easily temper or even destroy our trip.

I couldn’t see that … at least not then. And so I spent those first days obliviously in the lead, inching ahead, keeping track of Kate in the rear-view mirror we’d affixed to each bike, eager to be moving, not wanting her to fall too far behind, finding myself sometimes mildly aggravated that she didn’t seem to be keeping up, thinking to myself that at this pace we’d never make it across the country in the time we’d allotted.

Two trip-transforming things happened on that remarkable day in the sand dunes of Glamis a week into the trip. The one we talk about often – our encounter with the Susan, the mother whose blog comment made us aware that in order to meet America we had to accept it on its own terms and not see it through our preconceptions. We both hope Susan is still following our trip.

But the other we’ve only hinted at – it was that afternoon when, for the first time, as cars and trucks and huge RV’s returning home from a day in those dunes began to frighten us by driving too fast on a road too narrow and too rolling for us to feel safe, that we decided Kate should go first, that she would be better not feeling so “alone” on the road and that I would feel better “protecting her flank.” It was logical at the time. We would ride closer together, and cars would have to slow and then pass us together. We rode the rest of that long day like that.

The next day we set out, as usual, with me in the lead. But over the next few days we chose occasionally to switch things around, again for the same reasons. We began to like it that way.

In most any other lifetime, in most any other circumstance, things might have gone as Kate had subconsciously feared. I remember riding close on her heels, nudging her with what she would undoubtedly have begun to experience as psychic taunts, thinking we should be going faster, or harder, concerned for our pace, annoyed. Annoyed. Hard to imagine now … but there it was. And there it would have been -- the stress-promoting undercurrent that has ruined many a good ride.

… but God swooped down and kissed me on the cheek … again.

I’m frankly surprised it happened as easily as it did, that it penetrated so painlessly, that it became so transparent, so obvious, so quickly. I had no business thinking I could do this trip faster, or better, or wiser. I would not be here were it not for my daughter. I’d be home slugging off to work and ensconced in the routine of daily life were it not for her. She proposed this, she orchestrated it, she created the scenario in which this was all possible. She knew what the task was, how far we needed to go, what the challenges would be. She knew them as well as I … which is to say that the “Wild Unknown” was no more apparent to me than it would be to her. She had asked me to accompany her. I needed to relax about this.

Funny how little revelations can become transformative, but there it was. I developed two simple mantras that I would repeat to myself until, after only a few precious days, they became firmly implanted in my psyche. The first: “This kid can do no wrong.” Kate had given me a gift beyond measure, and I needed to appreciate it in my every waking moment. This one came back to haunt me when I confessed it to Kate and afterwards she would remind me of it when the dishes needed to be washed – “Hey, you wouldn’t even be out here if it weren’t for me.” And the second: “Kate will set the pace.”

There was no abrogation of responsibility here, no revocation of decision-making responsibility. But we were in this together. I’d help hold us together. So would she. We’d talk out our decisions. She’d have her responsibilities, and I’d have mine. For starters, she would be the one to set the pace. I would have other responsibilities, as important, as vital. In my mind, I’d begin by being content to do what I could to protect the flank.

By the time we reached Arizona Kate was taking the lead each day, and setting a comfortable pace. By Phoenix she’d taken over the maps and the navigating. By New Mexico I had been almost blissfully transformed into feeling as much protected by as the protector of my daughter. We were in this together. And together we were heading home.

Sometimes, pedaling across miles of unremitting pavement, I would wonder … what would happen if we all began to realize that we were in this together, that we all came to see that there was no “me” or “you” more important than our collective well-being? Now there’s a firefly to examine pretty thoroughly – and then to encourage back out of the jar! Go forth, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, little firefly. Be the light of the world.

Oh, such a trip!

III.

How to protect the flank? How do I keep my daughter from harm’s way, keep her safe?

People have said that the very nature of our adventure was foolhardy, fraught with danger, even irresponsible. I’ve struggled with this – and I believe them wrong. These are people more comfortable assiduously planning each day, anticipating each night’s lodging, avoiding chance encounters and serendipity. Since our return I’ve actually had people say to me: “We didn’t really get the whole picture of what you would be doing. We thought of this as mostly an athletic endeavor. We didn’t really realize that you were going to meet people.” These are the people who would have had us carry weapons on our travels. Do these people carry weapons every day, arm themselves against every encounter on any street corner? Does this make the world a safer or a more dangerous place?

Kate and I set out to see America, and, as we declared early on, to meet America. We recognized from the first day that our choice of riding bicycles was categorically the right one for both purposes – and our chronicles have only underscored time and again that we were right. If riding bicycles across America left us vulnerable to weather or to dangers, it also left us open to the random or deliberate acts of kindness of so many we might not otherwise have ever met. This was the risk we felt well worth taking. We wanted to meet people. We wanted to be invited into their homes, have supper with them, find out how they think. Getting to know one’s neighbors, it seems to us, is much less dangerous than living in isolation and fear of them. Our “weapons” became those things we could employ that might engender trust or invite goodwill – a firm handshake, a solid look in the eye, and a willingness, even an eagerness, to share the excitement we were feeling each day. And we learned to listen – to temper inclination to be judgmental or self-righteous in favor of finding the common ground on which mutual respect and any meaningful dialogue must be based.

This is not to say we are now blithely encouraged to tramp through life oblivious to danger or to the real threats and evil that surround us. But time and again it has been confirmed to us that there is a basic goodness in the human spirit, and that given the chance people are apt to extend themselves in hospitality and kindness even to total strangers.

There are solid life lessons here.

So how do we muster protection against the very real dangers around us? Caution, good judgment and vigilance were of course imperatives, though where these lines are drawn can lead to strident disagreement. One person’s caution may to another be utter recklessness. Always insisting on wearing a bicycle helmet makes little sense to someone who believes you have no business being on a bike in the first place.

But what of ignorance and carelessness in others, the two things of which I found myself always most wary, most watchful, the two things I felt a hundred, a thousand times more likely to cause us ruin than the conscious or intended malice of some evil-doer? Is there protection from the unforeseen?

I’ve never been entirely sure how I feel about prayer. I’m probably not very good at it. So it’s never seemed to me, at least consciously, that prayer should offer any defense against the unanticipated. It seems to me that the God of all Creation would be hard-pressed to be bothered by even my most valid concerns. There’s a lot to attend to in the universe on any given day. The anthropomorphized father-figure who would hold me on his knee like a sometimes benevolent, sometimes punitive Santa Claus and listen to my concerns eager to respond if only my heart is pure has never struck me as either comforting or valid. The Benedictines we visited in Kentucky believe God to be so big and so incomprehensible that even to approach understanding is the task of a devoted lifetime. “The light shines in darkness, but the darkness comprehends it not.” No anthropomorphized father-figure here, nothing to easily wrap your understanding around or to lean on with some smug self-certainty. Have someone shine a bright spotlight into the total darkness Kate and I were allowed to experience in Kentucky’s Mammouth Cave 250 feet below the surface of the earth, a darkness so complete, so thick and dense and quiet as to be unsettling, and then say: “What light? I can’t see a thing.” God, it would seem, has to be that incomprehensible.

And yet it is claimed this God of all creation can hear our appeals, can be petitioned with prayer. Can this possibly be true? Jim Morrison most certainly didn’t think so. My mother-in-law most certainly does. What I know is that over many miles of peddling across this country almost every time I would start thinking I might pray that the headwind that’s been buffeting us in the face all day long would turn to our backs, someone would come peddling over the hill in front of us, tailwind blowing him or her comfortably along, smile on his or her face, going in the exact opposite direction. How audacious to think that my self-centered desires might find an ear with the life-force of the universe, with a very busy God! I find myself thinking that the best I could reasonably expect is to pray: “Thy will be done” [and take on faith in the process that this God has a will and a purpose] … and, if so, how presumptuous to think that I’m doing anything other than placate my own neuroses. God, it seems, would do God’s will with or without my supplications.

On the other hand, not a day on the road went by, riding three or four yards behind her on the road, that I did not consciously will an invisible shield of protection over Kate in front of me. A hundred times each day I have envisioned this bubble in which I would see her floating, still able to feel the wind, still able to hear the birds, but protected by a shell as impermeable as my psychic resources can summon as trucks roar by, as potholes emerge, as rains make the pavement slick. I believe with all my heart that it helps.

I am comforted by the knowledge that there were people, many people, who prayed for us on our journey, and that there were many others who more simply kept us wrapped in their hearts and thoughts. We asked friends to pray for us. I have asked the Trappist brothers in Gethsemane, and the congregation gathered in the basement of the Elk Garden United Methodist Church in Rosedale, Virginia, and the pastor of St. Mary Cathedral in Austin to pray for us. I believe it tempers the shield I employ, hardens it, helps keep us from harm’s way.

At one point in the blog I wrote: “Many times I imagine that we are being carried along on a cushion of kindness. We are being pulled forward, across a whole country, on the many well-wishes of the many who follow us, of family, and friends new and quite old – on prayers and on goodwill. On grace. It is a wonderful feeling.” I still hold that to be true. And, while I don’t naively believe it kept us impervious to pain, or suffering, or danger, I do believe it has helped to keep us safe.

I believe Kate and I have ridden across America on a cushion of kindness blown along by the breath of God, a sweet breath smelling of honeysuckle and magnolia on a damp Mississippi morning. The life force, the one we can breathe, the one that can blow us gently down the road. I believe the cushion is sustained by kindness Kate and I can generate -- for each other, most certainly, but also in the way we sculpt our interactions with others, the way we try to meet others with gestures of openness, with a firm handshake and a solid look in the eye. We’re blessed here, too. We carry little of the baggage others all too often seem to bear, the baggage of suspicion, the memory of abuse, or neglect, of inflicted pain, of suffering – the baggage that would make for a painfully more difficult journey. Suffering can beget and invite suffering as completely as kindness can invite trust. We’ve taken on the almost unwitting task of spreading joy … and it comes back to us in very many ways.

It can’t be denied that by many measures we live in an increasingly dangerous world fueled by the kind of mistrust and misunderstanding that all too often leads to hatred, a world of escalating tensions capable at any moment of erupting into catastrophe. Is it wisdom to entrench oneself more completely in defense of this mistrust or to discover, as Kate and I had done, that our best defense might be to encourage conversation and dialogue, all the while looking for and embracing the good around us?

Here’s what a trip like this can teach! Here’s something to remember! And here’s where prayer, it turns out, makes most sense to me – not the supplicant petitions I still find suspect even if I unconsciously beg them, but prayer as a daily devotion to “practicing the presence of God,” to being ever-reminded of the basic goodness of creation, to finding joy, to affirming life, to extending oneself in the kinds of acts of kindness that have meant so much to us in our travels. This is how to disarm evil. This is how to live.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul and mind -- and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love Goodness with all your heart and mind and soul – and find it in your interactions with others. This, I become convinced, is essential truth. Arm yourself with this weaponry, and the world would change. “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For when I was hungry, you gave me meat; when I was thirsty, you gave me drink, when I was a stranger, you took me in, naked, and clothed me; when I was sick, you visited me; when I was in prison, you came to me … Whatsoever you have done to the least of these my brothers, this you have done for me.”

The Creative Goodness that Kate and I found in the mountains and the desert and the songbirds and in a delicious piece of “scrambleberry” pie in the Hillsboro General Store and Café is nowhere more evident than in the interactions we have had with others each day -- in the encounters we create, the ones we deliberately cultivate, and in the ones we stumble into. God is Linda opening her door to us in San Diego. God is our encounter with Larry and Marilyn, with Eric and Sally Ann, with Larry in Rockville. God is the kindness and support we have experienced at home. God is the love in my friend John’s eye when he greeted us in Charlottesville, and again the next morning when we left. God is Gertie and Tammy.

God is what I’ve come to share with my daughter.

And Kate is right about June Curry, who it turns out comes to embody most everything about this trip we could hope to describe – the kindness and generous spirit of giving, the encouragement, the food in her pantry, the welcome mat at the door where we were invited to stay. God, it turns out, is the face of the Cookie Lady.

The final statistics can now be told. We traveled 4,644 miles from the Pacific to the Atlantic. We went through 16 states and the District of Columbia. We were on the road 83 days, riding 73 and taking 10 off, only two of those “off” days for weather, although we cut a few others short to get out of rain or heat. On average we traveled just over 61 miles per day. We rode about 10-12 miles per hour -- though climbing we could easily find ourselves literally at a snail’s pace, and once on a long downhill, I can now confess, I found myself going 37 MPH! Kate has a picture of herself being clocked at 46 MPH … draw your own conclusions. At that rate we’d have been home in a couple weeks!

For the first two weeks we weren’t making much more than about 300 miles per week. The last two weeks we covered over 1,000 miles.

We started and finished the trip at sea level, though some purist may point out that the mean sea level in the Pacific is for esoteric reasons of density and current actually higher than the Atlantic, in which case we rode downhill about 20 cm over 4,500 miles. Our highest climb took us to 8,228 feet in New Mexico.

Wind was a big factor in the trip, but in our experience there is no wisdom whatsoever to the notion that prevailing westerly winds are of any benefit on a west-to-east cross-country bike trip. At 30,000 feet winds may blow across America mostly from the west. At ground level, local conditions will almost invariably prevail.

Over the course of a 3 month trip we of course experienced all kinds of weather. We had snow on day 3, 100-degree heat in Texas, and rain as our near-constant companion through much of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. Still, Kate estimates that we camped out about 85% of the time.

Our bikes performed wonderfully and required no major repairs, in part because of our daily devotion to maintaining them. We each went through two full sets of brake pads, front and back. We had only 7 flat tires between us – well, 7 or 8, depending on whether you count that we needed to repair the same flat twice on the streets of Franklin, Tennessee after we snapped the valve cap off the Presta valve while inflating it the first time. We replaced all four tires in Nashville at just about the 3,000 mile point. They were wearing quite thin. We had no flats after that.

As of this writing we have raised just over $12,000 for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute through the Jimmy Fund and the Pan Mass Challenge. We had hoped to raise considerably more. It must be that we are better bike riders than fund-raisers. We’re still soliciting contributions. You can still help.

We have had the ride of a lifetime. We have seen things, and met people, and grown in ways that we could never have imagined. We have been overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of others. We live in a beautiful country. Thanks for riding along with us.

We’re glad to be home.

… and we’d do it again in a heartbeat.

--- Jim

June 9th

2006-06-09T08:49:00.001-04:00

Not to "toot our own horns," but for anyone interested the Wall Street Journal has a short piece on our trip in today's edition -- page W5 in the Weekend Journal section. The article came about because of a conversation we'd struck up with a fellow as we stood, dumbstruck, outside of the PATH terminal at the site of the World Trade Center that day in lower Manhattan. Turns out he was the editor of the Weekend/Travel section of the WSJ. Sort of fun ...

... and for anyone who hasn't seen it, the very flattering video piece that New England Cable News ran on our trip is still there for the viewing. Go to NECN.com, and look for the link to the Pan Mass Challenge -- it's on the right-hand side of their home page. Click on that, and it'll take you to a few archived pieces, including the one that says "Scituate, Ma. father, daughter ride for cancer." It's well done, and recorded what was for us a very moving day.

Stay tuned ... we're still trying to compose the final chapters ...

Photos!

2006-06-03T15:09:00.000-04:00

Friends outside the MAC at Nobles

"Team Nobles" at Wompatuck State Park

We made it!

Friends and family at Minot Beach

Dipping our tires in the Atlantic Ocean!

Sorry it's taken so long for us to get these up! We've posted the rest of our photos (including pictures from Washington D.C. to Massachusetts, the last day, and our ride to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) on Webshots if you want to take a look! Also, look for a final blog update in the next few days... we're still trying to get our lives back to normal! Enjoy!!

-- Kate

June 1st

2006-06-01T06:34:00.000-04:00

The New England Cable News (NECN) did a very flattering piece on us that aired on television last night. We were pretty excited. They included pictures from our blog site and interviews from our visit to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute yesterday. For the next day or so ... I don't know how long it stays ... you can see it by going to NECN.com, looking for the "More Top Stories section" and then "Scituate, Mass. father, daughter ride for cancer." It's pretty fun!

May 30th- Scituate, MA!

2006-05-30T14:13:00.000-04:00

We are home! Our last days on the road brought us into Scituate, as planned, at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon of Memorial Day weekend, to a police escort, no less, we rode the final miles to Minot Beach and dipped our tires ... and then plunged our bodies! ... into the Atlantic. Family and friends were there. Lynne and Elizabeth, with the help of neighbors and friends, had the house looking wonderful when we got home and had a huge buffet in the backyard. It's been overwhelming. But there's been little time to think, and even less to write blog updates. Pictures to come! The local paper, the Scituate Mariner, will be doing a story for this week's edition, and the wonderful reporter who's been following our story was here to interview us yesterday. Today we complete the journey in earnest, with a final 30 mile ride into Boston to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where we'll meet some of the young cancer patients in the clinic, show them our bikes and tell a bit of our story. I expect it to be a very moving ending for both Kate and me. They expect television coverage, but I'm not sure who'll be there ... you just might look for something on the evening TV news. If we can figure out who's there, we'll try to let you know. The Wall Street Journal has contacted us and is requesting an interview for their Weekend Journal section, which should be fun, too. We promise to keep you posted. Oh, such a trip!

May 27th - Danbury, CT

2006-05-27T06:33:00.001-04:00

Just when you think the stories can't get better ...

We left you last in a tiny library in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, not sure what we were intending todo or what route we would take. By that evening we were in Norristown, on the north side of Philadelphia. We'd ridden hard to get there, but the day had been very satisfying. We were so famished by the time we reached Phoenixville that we treated ourselves to giant ice cream sundaes at the local ice cream store -- I'm talking giant sundaes. And then, before Norristown, a very pleasant ride through the National Park at Valley Forge.

Our Adventure Cycling map would have directed us north from Norristown and toward the Catskills and the Delaware River Water Gap, then east, crossing the Hudson at Poughkeepsie, then into the northwestern-most corner of Connecticut ... but there is also a "spur" from Norristown that goes directly into urban New Jersey and into Newark. We spent hours considering the options -- I admit to strongly favoring the Catskills option, it seeming safer and more in keeping with the way the trip had gone -- but the pull to get home was getting strong, and we decided to head toward New York City.

On Thursday we rode another whalloping 94 miles, and by evening we were in Newark. If ever there were a reason to doubt that these Adventure Cycling routes are worth the few dollars paying for to get their maps, getting into and through urban areas convinces you that they'rew worth every penny. Like in Phoenix/Tempe now so long ago, we found ourselves all the way into downtown Newark -- through Somerville and Plainfield and Rahway and Linden and Elizabeth -- without a hitch. It was bizarre.

The day had begun with a fine ride through beautiful Bucks County in Pennsylvania and a stop in New Hope, on the Delaware and at the border with New Jersey. New Hope is an utterly quaint upscale town of galleries, nice shops and restaurants. On the morning we arrived it was bustling, so much so that we nearly moved on -- but we eyed a little French patisserie down an alley, bought coffees and a baguette, and inhaled both. The ride through western New Jersey was incredibly beautiful, quite rural, and gave us good time to talk as we rode close together with virtually no traffic for several hours. The pace picks up in Raritan and the riding becomes urban, but, like I said,the route keeps you [somehow] on roads parallel to main routes but a few blocks to one side or the other, on roads that, if not bike-friendly, are at least bike-tolerable -- and before we knew it we were at Penn Station in Newark. Camping being somewhat difficult in downtown Newark, we opted for a hotel.

The logic in ending up here is that one needs, somehow, to get over the Hudson. Biking north on the New Jersey side would be a nightmare without the aid of bike routes. Ferries are an option. But there are trains out of Penn Station that go directly into Manhattan and, on off-peak hours, allow bikes on the trains. At shortly before 9 the next morning, Kate and I were sitting on the platform with our bikes waiting for the PATH [Port Authority] commuter into Manhattan. Cost us $1.50 each. The bikes were free.

20 minute ride and we were in lower Manhattan. What neither of us had realized is that the PATH trains end in what used to be the World Trade Center. These were the trains crushed under so many tons of rubble when the towers came down. And now service has been restored. What a moving rush of emotion when we emerged from the darkness of the tunnel under the Hudson and found ourselves 5 or 6 stories deep in the hole of what had been the WTC! The train station ends here. There is no attempt to disguise where you are. Wire fencing allows you to look out into the massive hole where construction work and clean-up goes on steadily. You look up from this hole and see the upper stories of the buildings around the site. You can't see the streets at all -- not until you emerge, either on long escalators or, in our case, a series of 4 separate elevators [we've got loaded bikes, remember], from these depths.

Erin and Mark, we thought about you a lot.

It seems somehow fitting that the thread of our trip should wind through here. We talk a lot about how kindness and generosity are driving forces on this journey. It might be hard to find a place where the kindness and true spirit of America has been more evident than in the relief effort following the 9/11 tragedy. Our wonderful friend Erin, the famous "Mrs. I," met her husband Mark in "the hole" when both were volunteering post-9/11. Kate loves Erin -- and visited with them in London when she was in Paris this past fall.

It might also be hard to find another place where it is as painfully evident that evil exists in the world, or a better reminder of how cruel the human spirit can become.

From lower Manhattan, there is a fine, dedicated bike path up the west side of Manhattan along the Hudson, to well north of the George Washington bridge, and in a light fog we rode all the way up Manhattan, eyeing the Empire State building and Lincoln Center as we passed, and we were heading out of NYC and into Westchester County before we knew it. By mid-afternoon we were in White Plains, by dusk crossing into Connecticut, and by nightfall in Danbury. Again we tried hard to find a place to camp, but again we were foiled, and we've ended up in a motel here -- probably a good thing, since we've got access to this computer here, and since there were frightening thunder and lightning storms most of the night [Yankees were in the middle of a long rain delay in the bottom of the 9th when we went to bed ... gotta say, it ain't easy biking through NYC and feeling like you're somehow in enemy territory with all the Yankees hats ... would'a pulled out the Red Sox cap I carry if not for the bike helmet ... probably saved us ...].

It's raining lightly this morning.

So here's what we're thinking ... we'll ride pretty hard again today through the Connecticut hills, taking a course up through Litchfield and Torrington, hoping to end the day somewhere east of Springfield. Tomorrow we'll reach the suburbs of Boston, where we hope to stay with my good friends Michael and Wen. We've been promised good weather on Monday -- hot, a great beach day. We extend the same promise to each of you.

We intend to ride from Natick to Kate's alma mater, the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, and to arrive there at about 8:30 AM. We're providing a link here to a Mapquest map for those of you who would like to meet us there -- either to greet us, or to ride the final 35 or so miles to Scituate with us. We'll be at "the Mac," the athletic center, by 8:30. We'll leave from there around 9.

I expect we'll follow back roads that I know well from my bike trips commuting to and from work in Westwood. This route takes us to and through Wamputuck State Park in Hingham, where we'd like to stop again -- and again we're providing a link for a map to get you there if you'd like. We'll be keeping a reasonably slow pace on Monday morning, so don't feel intimidated about joining us! We're not in a hurry! It's easy to find, and is sign-posted off of Rt. 228 in Hingham, from both directions. This is maybe a more logical meeting place for those who have to consider returning to cars. It's probably 7 or 8 miles from there to the shore ... so a 15 mile or so round-trip bike ride, quite lovely, I assure you! (Pelo family- a Wampatuck reunion? ) If you drive in the main entrance, past the unmanned guard house and up the road about a quarter mile, there will be parking lots on both the left and right. We'll cruise through both. We expect to be there around 11:30, and we'll plan on leaving at noon.

By 12:30 or so we should be biking into the village of North Scituate, our final meeting place and another great place to find us. It's easy to park there and only about a mile and a half to the beach. We'll wait there until about 12:45 or so for any who want to join us here -- and then off to the beach, arriving, if all goes to plan, by around 1. Parking at Minot beach is generally restricted to locals -- so if you're going to join us there, drop off people at the end of Gannett Road and think about either coming back with a bike to the village, or parking at our house. Scituate's Memorial Day parade takes place in another part of town, and shouldn't interfere with this scheme. We're really looking forward to seeing any who can make it.

It's been a fantastic adventure, and it's been an absolute blessing to know that so many have been "riding along" with us. We hope to end with friends riding literally with us for the last few miles. We hope you'll try to be one of them.

... and on another note, there will surely be more to say. We hope to arrive in Scituate Monday, but it will not end there. On Wednesday [not Tuesday, as I had indicated before], Kate and I are going to ride back into Boston and to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute for a ceremony there at 11. Consider joining us, if you can.

Both Kate and I want to write postscripts. Sometimes there are things that can't be said until a journey is complete and the dust has settled on the road. So keep checking the blog, will you? We'd like to think there's still more to be said ...

We can't wait to see home ...

-- Jim

Directions to Nobles: http://www.nobles.edu/home/content.asp?id=93 (the address is 10 Campus Dr. in Dedham, MA 02026, then follow signs to the Morrison Athletic Center, or "MAC")

Directions to Wampatuck: Find route 228 from either Rt. 3 (exit 14) or Rt. 3A. From Rt. 3 you'll be turning right about 3 or 4 miles after leaving the highway heading toward Cohasset. From 3A it's probably a mile or two to the left-hand turn toward the park. Both ways will have prominent signs ... but in case they've been taken down in our absence, ask someone if you find yourself disoriented. Just remember you're looking for the MAIN entrance ... there are several other ways to get into the park by bicycle, but only one way with an automobile.

As to the beach ... Minot beach has several entry points. We plan on riding stright down Gannett Road and ending at the beach entry straight ahead.
See you soon!

The Grand Finale!

2006-05-24T13:50:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone!
After a gorgeous morning of riding through rolling Amish farmland, we've stopped at a small library in Downington to use the computer. A lot of you have been asking about when we'll be returning to Boston, and we apologize for the frustration! As you know from reading our blog, there are so many unpredictable factors on a trip like this that giving a specific time frame is often nearly impossible. However, we've been putting in some great riding, and we're getting close enough to say with relative certainty that we will be returning home to Scituate, MA on Memorial Day (Monday, May 29th)! Many of you have expressed an interest in riding with us for the last few miles and/or meeting us on Minot Beach, and we'd definitely love to see you!! Our plan is to hopefully spend Sunday night somewhere not too far away so that on Monday we can set up places along the route where people can meet us with bicycles if they so wish and follow us as we make our way towards Gannett Rd. and the Atlantic Ocean in the mid-afternoon. So keep watching the blog for information about our specific route through Massachusetts and expected time of arrival for Monday, and consider pulling those bikes out of the closet and joining us for the last hurrah! I can't believe we're getting so close... after 11 weeks on the road, it's scary to think that we have less than a week left. Riding through Washington, D.C. and along the Potomac(a tidal river- Dad claims he could smell the salt from the Atlantic!) was a bit overwhelming... people kept stopping to ask us about our trip, and when they heard we were coming from San Diego, the response was "Congratulations!" instead of the "Good luck!" we received even a week ago. At the end of the day yesterday, we crossed into Pennsylvania, over the Mason-Dixon line, and over the 4,000-mile mark all within the same mile (!!), and before we know it we'll be home! This has been the trip of a lifetime, and I'm not ready to put my panniers away, but at the same time I can't wait to share our adventures with all of you when we get back! See you soon!
-- Kate

Hi. Jim here.

Kate and I are again side by side at separate computer terminals in a little library in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. She’s again in charge of the update. It’s the middle of an exquisitely beautiful afternoon, and we still intend to ride a good many hours more – so you’ll excuse the fact that we’ll be brief – but so much has changed that we both feel a desire and something of an obligation to keep you posted.

We’re out of the mountains and we’ve been to Washington, D.C. after a very wonderful night with family in McLean. We’ve decided after much deliberation to push hard for home – and we can say at this point that it is very likely we’ll be in Scituate, as anticipated, on Memorial Day! This is pretty exciting for us. We’re hoping many of you will be able to ride with us some of the final miles. We’ll give you a better approximation of the itinerary for the long weekend in another day or so, when it’s clearer where we’ll be – we keep making changes to our route as we see how well we’re traveling. By the end of the day today we’ll know whether we have the time to stay on a northeast trajectory and go through the Delaware River Water Gap and toward Poughkeepsie, or take a more direct route that would have us go through the Big Apple … this is the question of the day.

Our journey will end, hopefully around midday on Monday, in Scituate – but we’ve also been asked to ride into Boston the next day for a celebratory ending at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where we hope to present them a sizable check. It’s now the eleventh hour – and we’re still far from our fund-raising goal. We really hope that those of you who can contribute to our cause will do so [via the link at the top of the blog] today. Those of you waiting for a final mile tally should have taken my advice and estimated it at 4,000 miles! We’re now over that, and counting – as the sun was setting last night and we were dashing to find a rumored motel, in the exact same mile we crossed into Pennsylvania, crossed north of the Mason/Dixon line [OK, I know, they’re the same place] and hit 4,000 total miles for the trip. Pretty cool, huh? My best projection will have us somewhere over 4,400 miles by the time we’re home.

When Kate and I set out now exactly 11 weeks ago from San Diego, we told each other that we would cross the country on bicycles. We also told ourselves that we would use the journey as a way to support the remarkable work of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, through the Jimmy Fund and the Pan-Mass Challenge. We’re nearly home – but our fund-raising goal is still far short of where we had hoped. I’m the eternal optimist – and I believe with all my heart that we’re going to reach our goal. Please, if you would like to support us, now is the time!

A theme has developed over the course of our journey, a theme that has to do with the power of kindness and the extraordinary power of generosity. Before the dust settles on this incredible journey, I hope to say more about this. But the way you can demonstrate it and help underscore it is to donate, even a small amount, to our effort.

If 100 people give a thousand dollars apiece, our goal would be met … and some of our friends have been generous to this extent. But it would be as satisfying … maybe, given the fact that the trip has also been about meeting people and community-building, even more satisfying … for 10,000 people to give $10. each. Here’s my proposal – and I think it’s a realistic one. If you haven’t donated yet, give ten bucks to the Jimmy Fund in Kate’s name through the web link – but do it today. It’ll take you a couple minutes. And then … and this is the important part, send a quick email to at least 5 of your friends, or maybe to your email mailing list – but again, sooner rather than later would be best. You can 'copy and paste' my words if you wish:

Jim and Kate Spelman have been on a remarkable bicycle trip across the country that is almost over. They’ve been recording their adventure on their web log site, bikexc.blogspot.com. It’s a good read. They’re asking for help and support in their fund-raising effort to support the Jimmy Fund and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Take a look at the blog site, and see what they’ve been doing and thinking. And then think about donating just $10.00 to help them along, will you? They’ve made it easy – just click on the link at the top of the web site to the Pan-Mass Challenge profile.

… and then do them an even bigger favor, and send this request on to friends you may know who might be interested in their trip and in their cause … with a request that they do the same.

Kate and Jim will be very grateful.

Thanks.

OK, I know it’s strange … and I know I start sounding like a fundraiser for some public broadcasting station … but a promise is a promise, and mine to my daughter was that we’d do everything in our power to raise the money she hopes to raise. So I’m not above groveling. We can pretty much say we’re going to be home in a very few days. I want to say that both of our main goals have been met.

I see it like a bad joke on the Internet … if enough people pass it on to others, it grows exponentially. But we need your help. Do what you can, will you?

… now it’s time to get back on the road. Look for an itinerary for the end of the week and the weekend, probably tomorrow. Thanks for everything!!

Check out our photos!

2006-05-22T12:20:00.000-04:00

Longhorn cattle outside a barn in southern Kentucky

June Curry, "The Cookie Lady"

View from the Blue Ridge Parkway

Mammoth Cave

Kentucky Barn

Winding through the Kentucky fields and "knobs"

Monticello

Uh-oh...

For the rest of our new images, visit our "Franklin, TN to McLean, VA" album on Webshots. Enjoy!

May 21st- McLean, VA

2006-05-21T23:17:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone!
While Scituate, MA is our final destination, and we won't dip our front tires in the Atlantic Ocean until we reach Minot Beach, we're now just a stone's throw away from the coast (Washington D.C. is actually a terminus for many cross-country bike trips)! We just had a wonderful evening with my mom's cousin, Kate Stoney, and her family, and tomorrow we plan to ride through our nation's capitol!

From Wytheville we made our way towards Christianburg, where we'd planned on stopping for the night (the route was rumored to be quite hilly, and other bikers said that getting through the larger towns of Radford and Christianburg was tedious and time-consuming). However, we'd gotten a reasonably early start, and we didn't find the hills and traffic to be too much of a nuisance, so when we got to Christianburg around lunchtime we didn't particularly want to call it a day. Looking at the map, we saw that the town of Catawba was 30 miles down the road, but Adventure Cycling didn't list anyplace to camp in the area and the only place to stay for miles seemed to be a B&B whose phone line had been disconnected. Instead, we decided to veer off the route a bit and head to Roanoke, where we knew we would be able to at least find a cheap motel.

The next morning we blazed our own trail from Roanoke to Troutville, where the TransAmerica trail came back in (by taking the shortcut to Roanoke the night before, we'd been able to cut basically an entire day off our trip!). In Natural Bridge, VA, we went off the route again for a bit and had a picnic just outside of town. As we were riding along after lunch, we suddenly saw a sign by the side of the road that read "Foamhenge" in big bubble letters. I thought it was probably the name of a store or someone's cheesy nickname for their house, but Dad thought the sign was great and turned around to take a picture. When we made the U-turn, we looked up and what did we see on the hillside but a full-scale styrofoam replica of Stonehenge!! I couldn't stop laughing as we walked up to the top of the hill (you have to check out our pictures on Webshots). The things you see by the side of the road!

Later that afternoon, we rode into Lexington, a hip, bustling college town that seemed miles away from the poverty we'd seen in Appalachia. When we stopped to see the grave of Stonewall Jackson, a local biker named Rick saw our loaded bikes and pulled over to say hello. Turns out that when Rick was my age, 30 years ago, he'd ridden across the country on the TransAmerica trail... that was 1976, the year the route was created in honor of the Bicentennial! We chatted with him for a while, and then he took us to a delicious ice cream parlor in town before we got back on the road. We rode another 20 miles to Vesuvius before stopping for the day, and we spent the night camping behind a great store called Gertie's.

It was freezing that night (literally!), but the next morning we woke up to clear blue skies, bright sunshine, and warmer temperatures. However, I'm convinced that Dad has the power to jinx the weather, so when I heard him going on and on about "What a GLORIOUS morning! The perfect day to ride on the Blue Ridge!" I knew we were in trouble. We went into the store and Gertie and Tammy cooked us a huge, delicious breakfast while the locals talked about trying to catch a black bear the night before. Afterwards, we signed their wall (instead of having a log book, Gertie's had visitors sign the walls of the store, so the place is covered in signatures and messages!), thanked Gertie and Co. for letting us camp on the lawn (it had been quite a memorable stop), and walked back outside to pack up our bikes. Sure enough, the dark clouds had rolled in!!

We'd been hearing about the climb out of Vesuvius ever since we'd gotten on the TransAm, mostly from westbound riders who, hearing we were headed the other way, shook their heads and said, "Oh man, you're heading EAST? Geez, good luck with Vesuvius... I can't even imagine trying to climb that thing!" Vesuvius lies right at the base of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and getting up onto the Ridge involves an incredibly steep 4-mile climb, a 1500-ft. increase in elevation! Several people actually said that Vesuvius is the hardest climb on the entire TransAmerica trail! As you can probably imagine, I'd spent a while losing sleep over this, but at the same time I'd been feeling so strong lately, and I'd begun to believe that there was very little I couldn't tackle with enough time and drive. All I could do was eat as many pancakes as possible before the ascent!

I won't say that Vesuvius wasn't hard (we stopped a couple of times on the way up), but it wasn't nearly as difficult as we'd expected. As I was climbing up the switchbacks, I did feel like I was pushing my body to the limit, but it was a great feeling, not a bad one. Both of us powered up the last mile and a half to the top, and when we got there we looked at each other as if to say, "You mean we're done?" It's very cool to think back to those first two days coming out of San Diego and realize how far we've come.

... and the Blue Ridge Parkway! What a reward for the end of our climb! For those of you who have never been on the Blue Ridge, it's definitely worth going out of your way next time you're driving (or biking!) in that area. Like the Natchez Trace Parkway, the Blue Ridge Parkway prohibits commercial traffic and sets the speed limit at 45 mph. We were on the parkway for 2-3 hours, and I could probably count the number of cars we saw on my two hands. The road itself was great (it was designed by the Civilian Conservation Corps years ago, and everything was so well-done), the terrain was relatively flat, the wildflowers were just starting to bloom, and the views were out of this world. For those of you who have been reading the blog for a while, imagine the Natchez Trace on top of a mountain ridge. Incredible. The only problem with our ride that morning was that it was SO COLD outside! For the first time since California, I rode with a fleece jacket, hat, gloves and neckwarmer on, and I was still shivering! The bitter wind was quite strong on the Ridge, and it was hard to find a balance between sweating through thick layers on the uphills and freezing on the downhills. So much for following spring up north! We rode about 27 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway to the terminus at Rockfish Gap, and then we made our way down to the small town of Afton to visit "The Cookie Lady."

"The Cookie Lady," a.k.a. June Curry, is a living legend on the TransAmerica trail. Every person we met on the TransAm told us that this was not a stop to be missed. The story goes that years and years ago, June quit her job to stay home and take care of her sick mother around the same time that bikers started traveling through Afton on this cross-country route. Not being able to travel herself, she loved talking to the bikers, and through the summer of '76 she provided Bikecentennial riders with water and freshly-baked cookies. She's been doing so ever since. She also converted part of her home into a "Bike House," and she invites every biker who passes to spend the night. The Bike House has places for you to sleep, a kitchen stocked with food and drink (she insists you eat her food), and postcards, newspaper articles, photos, and gifts from bikers filling every room (by this I mean that the walls are literally WALLPAPERED with postcards). She is not a wealthy woman (she lives off of a Social Security check), but still she offers this hospitality free of charge and asks for nothing in return except your company and a postcard when you reach your destination. The Cookie Lady is over 80 years old and recently had a stroke, but she welcomed us so warmly into her home for the afternoon and eagerly told us about life in Afton when she was a little girl. I could go on and on about June, but I want to make sure that I finish this blog entry before we leave... If you want to get a hint of how many travelers' lives June Curry has touched, take a look at the pictures we took of the bike house (they don't do the place justice, but it's a start) or Google "Cookie Lady" and see what you come up with. What an incredible woman.

Part of us really wanted to spend the night in Afton with the Cookie Lady, but we had arranged to spend the evening with one of Dad's dear old friends, John Holden, in Charlottesville, which was such a treat! The day before, Mom had called Dad to say that she thought she'd tracked John down on the Internet if we wanted to give him a call. Dad had mentioned John several times on the trip, and he was so excited when John called us back to say that yes, he was in Charlottesville, and he couldn't wait to see us. So from Afton we continued on to Charlottesville, passing through the University of Virginia as we made our way to John's house. John and his wife, Jeannie, were absolutely wonderful. We were given a delicious meal, a hot shower, a comfortable bed, and a great evening of conversation and catching-up... and all this on 24-hrs notice! I hope my friendships are this strong years down the road.

The next morning, John let us use his car to visit Thomas Jefferson's famous home, Monticello (the car was a great time-saver, since otherwise it would've involved backtracking through town a considerable distance and climbing quite a steep hill!). I'd never been to Monticello before, and it was absolutely beautiful. We had a great tour of the house, and the gardens were in full bloom as we wandered around the grounds. Definitely worth the stop!

By the time we got back to John's house, loaded up the bikes, and set out, it was around noon. We left the Adventure Cycling map network again in Charlottesville to blaze our own path to Washington D.C., but John helped us choose some great roads, and we were still able to get a lot of riding in (about 70 miles, despite the late start and a stop by the side of the road for bike repair... I guess we're finally out of the mountains!). As we were getting ready to end our day, we pulled into a gas station to ask if there was anywhere to camp nearby (or, if not, if we could find a cheap motel somewhere). Apparently there was nothing for miles, but then one of the women working there, Belinda, said we could camp in her backyard if we wanted to! With the sun sinking lower in the sky, it was an offer we couldn't refuse, and we had a great night's sleep. People are so generous!

Today we created our own route again to get to McLean, and we arrived there in the late afternoon. Kate and Tilmer could not have been more hospitable, and it was so fun to spend the evening with family! Tomorrow we'll make our way through D.C. on bike trails (there are so many great bike paths and Rails-to-Trails in this area!). Can't believe how close we're getting to home... keep checking the blog for updates about our return (we should have more details in the next few days!). Miss you all, and see you soon! Massachusetts, here we come!
-- Kate

May 16th -- Wytheville, VA

2006-05-16T16:36:00.000-04:00

Didn't think you'd hear from us again so soon, did you?

We left Damascus around 9 this morning after a pretty cool night there. "Through-hikers" on the Appalachian Trail are a culture unto themselves, and it was a treat to spend the evening talking. I've mentioned that most hikers develop trail names and jettison their real names [and identities] on the trail. Kate and I were sort out "out of it" as "Kate and Jim" in a world of concocted pseudonyms -- but we dealt with it. Made me think of Tim Davis' insistence that we take on "hobo names" for our trip -- oh, I know I should have listened to him. "Wonder" [whose full trail name is "Wonderfoot," so named because at 26 years old she's hiking the whole trail from Georgia to Maine after having had an ankle replacement due to a congenital bone disorder diagnosed at age 11, at which time she was told that by age 20 she'd be totally crippled -- Wonderfoot, indeed!] explained the culture of the trail by saying "we're a whole town of homeless people -- it's just that our town's about a yard wide and a couple thousand miles long."

We were both particularly fond of a fellow Mitch [he'd yet to get his trail name] who shared our rather spartan room with us in the hostel. We've all entertained the idea of meeting again toward the end of the summer, by which time he figures he'll be heading into New Hampshire or Maine on foot. Maybe there's a day or so of hiking on the AT in store for us ...

We'd anticipated that the trip of 60 miles to Wytheville would take us most of the day, but we made phenomenal progress, even stopping for lunch in the tiny crossroads town of Troutdale to warm up [it's been freezing today -- no rain, but bitter cold], and we've come to the library here to edit yesterday's postings, since both of us got pretty much thrown out of the library in Damascus at closing time ... the costs of being verbose! There is a lovely community center here, and we've already been invited to tent on the lawn in the park and to use the showers there. More incredible hospitality! It's rumored that a group of about 15 is biking into town heading west, intending to stay at the Community Center where we will be. Should be a fun evening -- given that they're just setting off, and that we've now passed through 3,500 miles [as of today], we may be the life of the party. Such a trip!

So we are a day further on, still safe, still happy to be traveling -- and now beginning to feel an eager excitement for getting to the eastern seaboard. It has been my conviction, based on the logs we read frequently, that we are the first eastbound bikers on the Trans-America trail this year -- anyone starting from the west on this route would most likely be coming from San Francisco or the Pacific Northwest, and it would be much too early for them to get this far, seeing as how the northern Rockies are likely still impassable on a bike. We stopped in the local bike shop here on our way to the library, and the owner confirmed that we're the first he's heard of heading east -- and he claims he sees most everyone coming through town. "Congratulations," he says to us. Pretty cool.

And speaking of bike shops, here's a cute little story I've been meaning to pass along: Strange as it may seem, we've been plenty of places where we've had trouble making ourselves understood -- and neither of us have strong "Boston" accents. There was a gal in a McDonald's in Tupelo, Mississippi who insisted despite our strong protestations that we must be from a foreign country -- she couldn't seem to understand a thing we were saying, and all I was trying to communicate was "I want a number 3 with a Coke." There was a young woman in Tishamingo who must have tried 10 times to spell my last name with a "F" because I just couldn't say "S" with the proper southern drawl, something like "A-ass". But the best was in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. I'd been looking for a bike shop for days, just to get some more air into our tires -- I mentioned in my posting yesterday that we'd put new tires on both bikes in Nashville after 3,000 miles, and that I'd wanted to get the proper amount of pressure into them, difficult to do with the bike-mounted hand pump I carry. Our map gave no symbol for any bike shop in the town, so I wasn't hopeful -- but I figured that they had a pretty good sized hardware store and, if they couldn't direct me to a proper bicycle store, maybe they'd have a proper pump themselves.
So I walk in and ask the kid behind the counter: "Is there a bike shop in this town?" -- to which he replies: "You mean a place where you can get some pastries?"

Gotta love it.

-- Jim

May 15th- Damascus, VA

2006-05-15T19:06:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been a while since our last post... things like Internet access and cell phone coverage are hard to come by in the mountains! We have so much to say, and Dad and I both wanted to write the update, so you're getting two versions (NOLS Baja- I was convinced that we should Ro, Sham, Bo for it, but no such luck!).

Where to begin?

After we finished the last update, we pedaled on for several miles and spent the night at the Chimney Rock Campground next to a beautiful lake. It started to rain a bit as we were unpacking, but luckily the heavy rains held off for most of the night and early morning. By the time we were ready to go the next day, however, the skies had opened up! We're comfortable riding in the rain when we have to, but the thunderstorms were unsettling, and we wanted to avoid getting completely drenched in the first 10 minutes of riding, so we waited around for a while to see if the storm would pass. The rain didn't stop completely, but when we saw some of the darker clouds pass us by, we took advantage of the break in the weather and jumped on our bikes. The terrain was pretty hilly for most of the day, and we got quite wet, but fortunately the rain stopped long enough in the afternoon for some of our layers to dry out! We rode into Berea, KY in the late afternoon, arriving just in time to pick up the next map at the Berea post office (one of our Adventure Cycling maps had been put on backorder, so we'd had them send us a mocked-up copy via General Delivery... we were a bit anxious that it might not be there, so we both breathed a big sigh of relief when we finally had that envelope in our hands!)

When Adventure Cycling described Berea as the "gateway to the Appalachians," they weren't kidding! The rolling, green mountains lie just to the east of town, and by the next morning we had begun our trek through the Appalachians! Unfortunately the rain was even worse than it had been the day before... for a while it looked like the weather was going to cooperate with us (we even saw some rays of sunshine as we were getting ready to leave!), but it started to pour before we were even 10 miles down the road. I could feel the cold rain seeping through each of my layers one by one as I was riding, and by the time we found a gas station to pull into, we were drenched and shivering. We wrung out our clothes and ducked inside, and the woman there was kind enough to let us sit for a while and warm up over a couple cups of hot coffee. When we started back out again, the temperature had dropped (or at least it felt that way... maybe it was just the damp layers!), but the chill went away after we rode for a bit. The hills were gorgeous in the mist, though, and the winding back roads (especially a tiny road called "Murphy's Ford") were great for biking. The sun even came out for a few minutes later in the day! The terrain was reasonably flat in the morning, but by the late afternoon we were climbing some pretty big hills! We got into Booneville, KY around 5:30 (earlier than we usually stop, but the next place to stay was a considerable distance down the road), where we had been told that we could camp behind the Presbyterian Church. We had no problem finding the place...while we were stopped at an intersection talking to a fellow biker, locals kept pulling over in their cars to welcome us to town and direct us to the church! What a friendly place! While we were eating dinner (we found a great, cheap diner in town called Dooley's Diner), we met Carrie, a woman biking west on the TransAmerica route who also planned on spending the night in Booneville. We had a great night- the church had built a covered pavilion with bathroom, sink, and shower facilities just for bikers, and we were able to fit the three bikes and two tents under the roof so we all stayed dry. It was wonderful to talk with Carrie, and she gave us some great tips about the next section of the TransAmerica route.

The next day we rode over two mountain passes between Booneville and Buckhorn, and then we hit some more hard climbing before Chavies, where we stopped to eat our lunch next to a church. Despite the dark skies, we didn't encounter any rain that day, which was a welcome treat!

The next day we rode from Hindman to Elkhorn City, KY, and I had an extremely bizarre experience of deja-vu. Three summers ago, I spent a week doing volunteer home repair in Floyd County, KY with the Appalachia Service Project (ASP). The level of poverty in this region is sobering, to say the least. When we picked up this map in Berea, I figured out that we would probably be biking pretty close to where I had stayed, but the problem with these Adventure Cycling maps is that they don't give you the big picture, so I didn't know exactly where we were in relation to Hi Hat. But wouldn't you know it...as we were biking down SR 122 in Bypro, KY, I stopped and yelled "Wait! I've been here before!!" My ASP work group ("Rolls-Royce") will have fond memories of a little dairy bar at the corner of 122 and 1498, where we used to stop to get milkshakes on our way back from Roger and Linda's house... it was so bizarre to find myself back there! We couldn't resist stopping for lunch, and in honor of the Cohasset ASP '03 crew, I made sure to get a Reese's shake for dessert.

That afternoon we had a steep climb near Melvin (so steep that we could barely push our bikes up the hill!), and we ended our day just a stone's throw away from the Virginia state line.

We got a bit of a late start on Sunday morning (we decided to replace our rear brake pads before we left), and we started climbing almost immediately up to Breaks Interstate Park on the Kentucky/Virginia border. The Breaks, an enormous gorge carved out by the Big Sandy River, was absolutely gorgeous (no pun intended)... we kept stopping at the overlooks to take pictures of the mountains in the distance and the rushing water below. It was another chilly morning, especially when the sun went behind the clouds, and we really had to bundle up on the downhill sections! We stopped at a gas station in Haysi, VA to call Mom, and while we were waiting we struck up a conversation with two westbound bikers. Just after they left, it started raining yet again! We had a long climb up "Big A Mountain" in the afternoon, but we found that the grade was quite manageable compared to some of the steep passes we'd encountered in the past few days. From there we zoomed down to Honaker and then climbed back up to Rosedale, where we'd been told we could stay at the Elk Garden United Methodist Church.

As we approached the church, however, I saw a ton of cars in the parking lot, and I thought that we might have to change our plans. I could not have been more wrong! As we wheeled our bikes around the church, people ran out to greet us, shouting, "Put your bikes down and come on in! You're just in time for our Mother's Day dinner!". The men of the congregation had put together this enormous potluck dinner for the ladies in honor of Mother's Day, and they insisted we join them! We had an absolutely delicious dinner and a wonderful evening that will most certainly go down as one of the highlights of our trip. The people at Elk Garden could not have been more welcoming or more friendly, and their hospitality to bikers was overwhelming. They invite you to sleep anywhere in or around the church (including on the carpet in the sanctuary...they even tell you to use the pew cushions as mattresses!), they tell you to help yourself to the food in their kitchen (not like we needed anything to eat after the feast that evening!), and the door is always unlocked. Two other bikers (both heading west) had also found their way to the church, and all four of us went to bed with full stomachs and smiles on our faces. Every community should be as welcoming as the Elk Garden congregation was to us last night.

We had a long climb early this morning before dropping down to Hayters Gap, and we were treated to some beautiful scenery along the way (waterfalls, mist-covered mountain ridges, rushing streams, winding roads covered in dense foliage...). Today was an extremely short day, but we couldn't resist spending some time in Damascus. Damascus is where the Appalachian Trail intersects with the TransAmerica bike route, and the town is filled with long-distance travelers. We're spending the night at "The Place," a very cool biker/hiker hostel, and we've already struck up several really interesting conversations with people staying there.

So that gives you a rough idea of the day-by-day, but I feel like I should give a more general description of our time in the mountains... The Appalachian and Rocky mountains are very different mountain ranges to bike through. When we were making our way over the Rockies a couple months ago, we would climb steadily for miles on end until we reached a pass, and then we would plummet down the other side of the mountain. These passes were quite high, but there were only a handful of them, and we ascended gradually over the course of a morning, a day, or even a couple of days (some of you might remember our descriptions of the pass near the Arizona/New Mexico border, an ascent that took half a day, or of our ride up to Emory Pass at over 8,200 ft). The ups and downs of the Appalachians, on the other hand, have been steeper and more frequent, though not as high. Over the course of a day, we'll usually make our way over several mountain passes, and between the passes the route often runs along flatter terrain near river beds. Since the terrain rises and falls so much every day, it's hard to chart our progress through the mountains in terms of elevation gain (unlike Emory Pass, where we knew we had to climb to 8,200 miles and then we were home-free).

We've loved our time on the TransAmerica trail so far! This was Adventure Cycling's original trail, and the most common cross-country route. The tiny general stores along the road all have log books for you to sign that are just filled with names and tips from former coast-to-coast bikers. Very cool.

Those of you looking at a map will probably realize that we've dipped pretty far south again (I saw some Tennessee license plates again today!). Don't worry-- no, we have not taken a wrong turn, and no, we have not decided that we aren't coming home after all. Even though it's a bit out of the way, we feel that following the route is essential in the mountains, and Adventure Cycling has determined that this is the best way to cross the Appalachians.

From here we continue through the mountains to the Shenandoah Valley (where Dad will, at last, be able to sing "Oh Shenandoah" at the top of his lungs... I can't wait.), and onto the Blue Ridge Parkway before we reach Charlottesville, VA. Hopefully the weather will clear up a bit! We'll let you know how we're doing as soon as we find another computer... can't believe we're already in Virginia! Miss you all,

-- Kate

May 15th- Damascus, VA (cont.)

2006-05-15T19:05:00.000-04:00

Oh, what a trip!

We’re in Damascus, Virginia. We’ve stopped here for the day, not so much from fatigue – though we’ve been riding hard and the rest will be welcome – as for the mystique of this rather legendary town. Damascus is a quiet mountain town not far from the Tennessee border. It stands at the intersection of the Trans-America bike trail we are now following and the Appalachian Trail, and is something of the epicenter for hikers and bikers in a quirky town where all the hikers go by “trail names” like “Crutch” and “Wonder” and bikers are something of an anomaly. As fortune continues to shine on us, we’ve arrived at an interesting time. This coming weekend will be what is called here the “Trail Days” celebration, a yearly festival celebrating the several hiking and biking trails that pass through this town. We have been told that they are expecting around 20,000 people to descend on this tiny town – hikers from all over, people who once hiked the trail 30 or 40 years ago, present hikers … the whole place is abuzz. Being a few days ahead of the commotion, we’ve been able to get room at “The Place,” the legendary hostel where these hikers and bikers meet. We’ll spend the night here. There will surely be stories to tell! Already we’ve been virtually accosted by people curious about our trip and hungry to hear our story. These AT hikers, I am convinced, are kindred spirits on their own protracted journeys, if by different means. The rest of the day promises to be quite an adventure.

For the moment, however, Kate and I are both keen to record our progress here. We’ve found the local library, and, since it’s been a while since our last update, we’ve both decided to make a blog entry. Again she’s favoring the nuts-and-bolts day-by-day account – and so, again, I’m free to paint with a wider brush, which suits me just fine. Those of Kate’s friends who are most interested in where we are and how we got here: read what she has to say, and don’t even bother with this one. You’ll thank me some day!

To backtrack a bit: Kate’s last entry was from the public library in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. It seems like such a long time ago! She’ll get you from there to here, in her own words. But in that entry she made only casual mention of what are called “knobs” here – the round, conical hills that make up much of the Cumberland Plain. What she neglected to say is that they are tortuous. For a couple days we found ourselves up and down, over and over again, over hill after hill in a slow march eastward – ¼ to ½ mile up in steep ascents, only to crest and plummet for another ¼ to ½ mile and then begin again. Viewed from space I am convinced that all of Madison County [isn’t that where that awful book about the bridges was located?] looks like so many goose bumps and pimples on the epidermis of the planet -- and we, infinitesimally small creatures, too small to see without the aid of some cosmic magnifying glass, even dressed as we are in colorful clothing of bright colors and day-glow, traversing this landscape plodding along in measured increments of ¼ mile up, ¼ mile down for days on end, 3 MPH up, 25 MPH down, over and over again -- Doctor Suess characters in a book he never quite got to write:

“Two bikers, biking their ups and their downs,
Dodging the raindrops, the coal trucks, the hounds …”

That was the trip into Berea.

Kate also gave only casual mention to our night at the Trappist monastery of Gethsemane -- an oversight, to be sure. She neglected to mention that this is the monastery of the brotherhood of Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain and a profound 20th century monastic, mystic and social thinker, that this is where he lived [as Brother Louis] and where he is buried; she neglected to mention (and here she might have more probable cause) that her father is firmly convinced that we were directed here by an angel, and that they may have been expecting us when we arrived; she neglected to mention that she begrudgingly agreed to stay as a courtesy to her father when, quite out of the blue, we were offered a room for the night -- and before she became aware that one of the cardinal vows adhered to within the monastic community is the vow of silence; and how one of the “unspoken” [but, of course!] expectations would be that we, too, would maintain this covenant of silence for the duration of our stay, even alone in the room we were offered. Oh, there are stories to tell!

As it turned out, we had a most memorable evening there, one I certainly will never forget. In a world where the din of daily life is so ever-present, where televisions are turned on for company and background noise, where cell phone conversations take place by people blithely ignorant of their offensiveness to bystanders, the purposeful, deliberate silence of Gethsemane was for me quite compelling, a remarkable peace, a wonderful retreat. My 18 year-old was not as convinced, I assure you – but she took it in good stride, only confessing when we were ½ mile away from the Abbey the next morning that she wanted to scream as loud as she could.

I have friends who recently gathered over a couple of evenings to consider the question: “Do the Christian mystics have anything to say to us today?” To those friends who may be following along on this blog: consider that I’ve been on something of a field trip! I hope that conversation hasn’t been put to bed …

We traveled from the campground beyond Harrodsburg where we stayed the night we last updated the blog to Berea the next day. Berea is a charming town known as “the Gateway to the Appalachians.” It is also home to Berea College, founded in 1855 and fascinating place in and of itself. The college was founded to provide higher education to the youth of lower Appalachia – and since its inception it has remained true to this calling. All but about 10% of its students are from the mountains of southern Appalachia. In exchange for 15-20 hours of service-related work hours each week, they receive a tuition-free education. This seemed pretty cool to me. I would have liked to stay around.

Leaving Berea and heading east, the ups and downs begin to get longer – ½ mile at a time, the ¾, then mile or longer stretches of uphill and downhill, no less steep but now more “purposeful” as we began to ascend in earnest into the mountains. Fortunately, we would also find ourselves at various intervals traveling up or down river bottoms, where the terrain less arduous and the “squiggly” map lines suggested the curves of a river instead of mountainous switchbacks. The “pimples” of the Cumberland Plain began to give way to more open sores on the skin of the earth -- the coalmines of eastern Kentucky -- sometimes tunneling into the mountainside, but more evident as vast wastelands where whole tops of mountains have been blasted off so that the rich coal veins can be hollowed out and hauled away. The land is close, the hills steep, but with little way of gauging at all whether you are gaining in altitude. We would find that our best indicator of whether we were climbing over time was to see which way the river we might be following was running. There are no vistas, just winding roads going up and down, pushing us to exhaustion – that, and increasingly evident poverty.

The Appalachians is actually two chains of mountains running parallel to each other from the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec to Alabama. To the east is the Blue Ridge, or the older Appalachians. To the west, separated from it by the “Great Valley,” is a younger mountain range actually referred to as the “younger Appalachians,” in which lie the vast beds of bituminous coal of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia through which we have now passed. It is these younger mountains that are the craggy, raw, sharp peaks we’ve struggled through. The more venerable, rounded ridges of the Blue Ridge are ahead – and between them the basin of the Shenandoah Valley, into which we are preparing to emerge. The scenery is spectacular, and our route has taken us into fabulously interesting territory.

We are now biking on the Trans-America Trail, known locally as “the ‘76 trail.” This is the signature bike route of the Adventure Cycling Association, their first cross-country trail, established in 1976 when it was first laid out, and therefore celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. We picked it up after leaving Mammouth Cave, and will follow it until Charlottesville, Virginia, when we’ll again strike out on our own heading toward Washington, D.C. This is a remarkable bike route. It has taken us through towns so small that you will have a hard time finding them on any map – towns Kate is busy describing on another computer nearby. In this part of the world there is no cell service, and finding an internet connection has been nearly impossible. Instead are quiet, friendly towns that for 30 years have welcomed bikers traveling to and from all parts of America – and over these many years many communities have made accommodation to the bikers in marvelous ways. Churches open their doors and offer food and lodging. City parks welcome campers and provide toilets and showers. There is a “culture” in these towns that seems for the most part not so much tolerant of but quite welcoming to people like Kate and me who pass through. There were times and places through Texas and on the southern route where this was certainly so – but here, perhaps because the route is older, perhaps because the towns are so much smaller and so much further from established travel routes, this kind of hospitality is almost commonplace. We can hardly enter a general store or a church without finding a logbook going back sometimes 20 or more years and recording the odysseys of countless bicyclists on adventures untold. It is overwhelming, truthfully – and both a treat and a privilege to be traveling these same roads. Our excitement to be coming to Damascus today reflects this almost contagious enthusiasm that our trip has taken on since joining this route.

In Booneville, Kentucky, we camped behind the Booneville Presbyterian Church which had provided a lovely tenting area and (fortunately for us, since it was pouring rain) an open pavilion to store our bikes and big enough for our tent and the tent of a woman Carrie who was biking to her Montana home. In Buckhorn we were offered coffee, and then the keys to the beautiful log church built a hundred years ago, just so we could have a look around. And last night … oh, last night! … well, Kate will surely be talking about that. A church that has never been locked (they don’t seem to even know where the keys are!), where for 30 years they have welcomed bikers, made them feel at home, offered them a place to stay in the sanctuary – and we arrive in the middle of the Mother’s Day pot luck prepared by the husbands for their wives, and are welcomed by the whole community as if we were expected! What if all communities of faith took so seriously a heartfelt obligation to extend themselves to the greater community in ways such as this?

A few words on the nemeses I’ve hinted at above: the weather, the coal trucks and the dogs. The weather continues to be something of a problem – it rains nearly every day, sometimes quite hard, but so far it hasn’t slowed us down too much. We continue to pedal enthusiastically and strong, bundled against the wet and cold when necessary and grateful for the times of good riding. We continue to average 60 plus miles a day, which, considering the terrain, is fabulous. Today we scampered up the 4-plus miles to Hayter’s Gap that had been rumored to be extremely hard, looking at each other at the top as if to say: “Is that all there is?” But occasionally we get caught off guard by the weather, and several times have been soaked to the bone, forcing us into some small general store to dry off and wring out for an hour or two until the rain lets up. These “general stores” have a fascination all their own. On our maps are symbols telling us where we might expect to find camping areas, groceries, motels, etc. Kate realized some time ago that in towns of “less than three digits” populations, if there are symbols for a gas station, a grocery and a restaurant, you can be virtually assured that they will all be the same place – and it’s these places we generally find ourselves drying out [and signing a logbook!]. Replace the potbelly stove and the pickle barrel in your minds eye with an electric heater and a small TV and you’ve got a pretty accurate picture!

We’d love to think that the weather will clear some day soon!

The coal trucks of eastern Kentucky are big, gnarly, growling beasts that barrel down these small, windy roads and leave no doubt that they own the pavement. Like the log trucks of eastern Texas, they travel at very high speed and with little regard to anything else on the road. The explanation for this is as simple as recognizing that, like those log trucks, they get paid by the load – nothing more exotic than that – and, because of this, I presume, there is an almost tacit feeling that “they oughta be allowed to go as fast as they want.” In Texas I had actually developed a very elaborate fantasy about the logging trucks [this was the same time Kate had begun to worry about the effects of heat stroke on my mental status]. I began to conjecture that there must be something about a fresh-cut east Texas white pine akin to the first pressings of a Beaujolais in a good year, that needed to be rushed to market with all possible haste. I would spend countless hours trying to figure out what this could be. Is it possible that by mid day the next day these whole trees might be neatly milled into toothpicks and delivered to the most swank restaurants of Manhattan, gracefully skewering jumbo Cajun-grilled shrimp, the faint hint of pine tar giving that inexplicable regional “something” to the fare? My favorite image was of my friend, soul-mate and timber-framer extraordinaire Ben, hovering over a freshly delivered whole log still steaming from the Texas sun – Ben, framer’s mallet in hand, fending off other framers eager to take his prize – he, knowing that he held in his possession something akin to the Holy Grail of woods, so coveted and so desired as to be worth a fight to the death – wielding his mallet against all intruders, howling in delight -- Cro-Magnon before the obelisk of the Holy in Kubrick’s ‘2001.’

… if you know Brungraber, you know that the image works …

The Kentucky coal trucks led me to fewer flights of fancy – we spent too much time trying to avoid them. Fortunately, they could be heard a half a county away, and Kate and I had plenty of time to get out of their way.

I have to say, though, that few of these drivers seemed to be bad guys, and I developed an odd sympathy for them really. The poverty of eastern Kentucky is profound. It is claimed that upwards of 40% of whole counties in this part of the state are on public assistance. Land is poor and difficult to farm The mineral deeds to the coal in all the Appalachians were sold off a hundred years ago to unscrupulous barons, so that the rights to the coal for anyone living in these communities left the region long ago. Monetary rewards of the huge profits from coal mining to these communities are almost non-existent. Who can blame these guys for trying to haul an extra load of coal a day?

… and then there’s the dogs. Much is said among bikers, in these many logbooks and on line, about the dogs of eastern Kentucky. We ran into one guy who insisted that the mountain people he encountered were “Neanderthals” and that they purposefully sent their dogs on him. Most people think that some kind of “weapon” is imperative – mace is popular, so is pepper spray and ammonia in a spray bottle. Odd. Feels reminiscent of the discussion about whether to carry a weapon for personal protection against humans. Kate and I have taken a different point of view. It has become our conviction, that, while there surely must be “bad” dogs, as there are surely “bad” human beings, in the main there are probably no more of the former than the latter – and that in reality these guys are just looking for a little excitement. Kate and me riding by may be the best thing that’s happened to them in 2 or 3 weeks. Who could begrudge them a good chase? On the downhills we leave them in the dirt – though there were a few surprisingly fast fellows out there. And on the uphills or on the flats, we learned to simply slow down and be firm. No fun chase, no real interest … worked every time. We sort of think that if our Vic were out here, he’d be itchin’ for a chase, too ..

Riding a bike continues to be a fabulous way to experience the country. Fragrances are heady on a bike, and springtime is everywhere. Rhododendrons are in full bloom in the valleys and waiting to awaken in the mountains. Irises, peonies and Icelandic poppies are in full bloom – it will be a month before this color reaches New England, long after Kate and I have returned. Catalpas are ablaze with the purple “tulip” flowers that give the tree its nickname and seem from a distance like wisteria gone amuck. Bird life continues to amaze us. Today we startled a duck from her nest – she feigned being hurt and flew as if “injured” for almost a quarter mile down the road, leading us away from her nest, before taking flight casually and circling back to her nest. Later we had a pileated woodpecker fly alongside us for several hundred yards. Bluebirds, yellow warblers, red-winged blackbirds and now lots of cardinals seem almost ever-present.

So tomorrow we head into the Shenandoah Valley and up to Wythville. The next day should bring us to Christianburg. A day after that we’ll climb onto the Blue Ridge and ride the Parkway for half a day before descending into Afton for what we hope to be a night visiting with the fabled “Cookie Lady” … but that’s a story that can wait. Then into Charlottesville before leaving the Trans-America route and aiming toward Washington, D.C. This continues to be the most magnificent of trips. Kate and I both wake up each morning thankful for our health, our opportunity, and the incredible support we experience from family and friends. We want to thank those who’ve contributed to the Jimmy Fund, and to encourage others to help us meet our goal. The goal of getting to Boston seems now to be within our grasp. The other goal, of raising $100,000, will require your support and generosity. We expect to arrive in Boston with both goals reached. That will be quite a day.

Our love. Keep us in your hearts.

-- Jim

May 9th- Harrodsburg, KY

2006-05-09T18:00:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone!
We still have about 8 miles to go before we stop for the day, but we decided to stop and write a brief update first from this public library. We actually didn't end up leaving Franklin until Saturday morning (a combination of uncertain weather, last-minute details to wrap up, anxiety about Friday afternoon traffic in Nashville, and wanting to spend a little more time with the Spelman crew!), but we certainly made up for lost time! John had generously offered to shuttle us and our bikes to the north end of Nashville before he went to work on Saturday, but, being a determined purist, I decided that I'd rather wake up at the crack of dawn and bike the whole way, so we were up and on the road by 6:30 am. We were a bit chilly for the first hour of riding (I couldn't believe I was putting my gloves back on after those 100-degree days in Texas just a short while ago!), but the early-morning sunlight was beautiful on the misty Tennessee hills. From Franklin we cut west a bit to navigate around the Nashville bustle, and we spent most of the day on "rollercoaster roads"... we didn't see 1/4 mile of flat terrain for hours! Luckily the land flattened out a bit once we got past the Kentucky state line (we entered Kentucky on Derby Day!), and we stopped to eat our lunch next to a stretch of open farmland. We ended up doing another 101-mile day on Saturday!! Pretty good, considering the hilly terrain... I've taken to calling these "Dalmation Days" (if you don't know what I'm talking about, ask a 5-year-old!). Spent the night in Bowling Green, KY, and woke up the next day to cool temperatures and light rain. Just before we reached Pig, KY, we passed through the 3,000-mile mark, and we realized that this milestone was especially significant since both 1,000 AND 2,000 miles were in Texas! We'd decided to make Sunday a short day since we were going by Mammoth Cave National Park and couldn't pass up the opportunity to see what was there. We got there around noon, and spent the afternoon exploring the cave, which was VERY cool... we went down 250 ft. through small passageways and saw incredible stalactite and stalagmite formations. Unfortunately we can't post the photos we took yet, but I'm sure you can find more information and pics if you Google it. From Mammoth Cave we were able to reconnect with Adventure Cycling's TransAmerica route... we were actually quite pleased with the route selections we made from Franklin (scenic, good surfaces, minimal traffic for the most part), but having the map for reference eliminated the potential anxieties that come when you set out on uncharted territory. Dad and I are both loving Kentucky so far- gorgeous green hills (called "Knobs" in this region), fields of bluegrass, old farmhouses, and extremely friendly people. We stopped for lunch at Abraham Lincoln's birthplace near Hodgenville and met Eric, a really nice guy who'd hiked the Appalachian Trail and offered to get us anything we needed. We'd stocked up on everything we could possibly need in Franklin, but we had a great conversation with him about our respective adventures. At the end of the day yesterday, we stopped at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Trappist, KY, where we were welcomed warmly and given a place to stay for the night. Today we made our way from Gethsemani to Harrodsburg, where we stopped to eat a late lunch and do a few errands. The scenery is still beautiful, but the roads are getting steeper by the day! Tomorrow we'll ride through Berea, KY, the TransAmerica route's "gateway to the Appalachians," so the mountains are not too far away! I've heard that some people are having issues with the link to my Pan-Mass Challenge page... from using this link from many public computers on our trip, I've figured out that you need to have "Flash Player" installed on your computer for the profile to appear. This is easy to install and doesn't cost anything, so if the link isn't working you might try downloading it. Thanks to those of you who have donated! Your support is greatly appreciated. Keep following along on the blog, and hopefully you'll hear from us soon! Glad to have you with us!!
-- Kate

Housekeeping

2006-05-08T21:23:00.000-04:00

Hi again from Kate and Jim's friend Eliot, doing some of the housekeeping chores for the weblog on their behalf. Some people are having trouble using the link above to go to the Pan-Mass. Challenge site to donate to the Jimmy Fund. Clicking on the link works for me, but if it doesn't for you, just type the following web address into the address bar of your browser to go there:

www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=KS0140

If you type it in, be sure to enter the punctuation exactly as above, otherwise it surely will not work. Or you can highlight the entire address and copy and paste it into the address bar instead of retyping it.

The mailing address for donation checks is:

Kate Spelman
KS0140
PMC
77 4th Street
Needham, MA 02494

Please be sure to put "Kate Spelman, KS0140" on the check itself as well.

Photos!

2006-05-04T18:39:00.000-04:00

John ("Jack") Stoney with Joy and either Rice or Beans (we're not quite sure which...)

Fields in eastern TX

Sunset at the lake

The Nunes Family

Rice fields in Louisiana

Diner in Simmesport, LA

As always, you can see the rest by going to our new Webshots album ("Austin, TX to Franklin, TN") at http://community.webshots.com/user/bikexc
Enjoy! Miss you all,

-- Kate

May 4th- Franklin, TN (cont.)

2006-05-04T12:39:00.000-04:00

OK,OK, in the interests of full disclosure (and if you read the comment from Ska Faulkner's brother Bruce to my last poting), I gotta say that those who know me know that my glass is generally half full, and the riding surface of the Trace may, in fact, not be everything I was suggesting. Somebody's sure to come down here and get half-way through the route and start complaining that I misled them.

In fact, the "chip seal" riding surface of the Trace has something of a mixed reputation, at best. Even the Adventure Cycling folks had led us to believe it would not be the most pleasant ride -- and we were somewhat apprehensive about what we would find. Chip seal can best be described as sort of cobbly gravel imbedded into asphalt, sometimes rather rough and bumpy, other times worn rather smooth. It does jar you a bit, and gets to wear on you after too many miles. The older stretches of the Trace are made of this material. In all, I figure there's probably about 80 miles of the stuff on the whole route, including one stretch of about 60 miles north of Tupelo from below Kosciusko to about 40 miles above it. It's quite ride-able, and frankly isn't any worse than many of the roads around Scituate where we live -- but when you get off it it's true you tend to say "whew!"

But the reason for the "whew" is that the newer surface, which is well over 3/4 of the Trace, is superb, like riding on glass -- maybe the nicest riding surface of the whole trip. The whole of the parkway has only been completed in the past few years. Until then there was a big stretch around Jackson that required a detour, and the beginning around Natchez had yet to be extended. Other stretches of the parkway seem to have been re-surfaced. In general, I stick by my statement that biking the Trace is a magnificent experience.

In fact, there's a lot of excitement among bicyclists down here about the Trace now. Around the bigger cities it's quite common to find dozens of people out riding in the late afternoon with the kind of smug "I can't believe this is my backyard" smiles on their faces that remind me of the way I feel when I come off the salt marsh behind my house after kayaking. We ran into a number of people in Natchez who swore there was no better biking in the country. As members of the Natchez Bike Club, they were organizing a 20-or-so person supported [that means accompanied by a van or two so that you can travel lighter and faster] trip along the whole route for later this month. They knew, as we now know, that it is a fabulous ride.

There is another complaint that sometimes comes up about riding the Trace, and that is that it can actually become a bit boring -- the way highway driving can become boring -- and that you don't tend to meet as many people. It's true you are on a ribbon of parkway that avoids the small towns and many turns that sometimes make a trip interesting -- but boring? Never. It may, I confess, be that this portion of the trip came at just the right time. We are fit, the hills are not steep or particularly challenging, and there was a real joy in being able to "see what we could do" in a given day, like taking your well-tuned sports car out to put it through its paces. It was really fun for both of us to ride along mile after mile enthralled in the simple pleasure of riding. And we continued to make fascinating and memorable encounters along the way. In French Camp, Mississippi we were treated to a huge breakfast and the most thought-provoking of discussions by the gentlemen of the Masonic Lodge whose sign Breakfast Saturday 6:30-9:30, Visitors Welcome caught our eye. In Collinwood, Tennesse it seemed the whole town, or at least that portion of the town gathered in the convenience store where we had a sandwich (which may in fact have been nearly the whole town) was interested in the trip and wished us well. And then there is the story of Rick Cahmberlain ...

We'd stopped to look at the restored Mt. Locust "stand" (inn) early in our ride on the Trace. We thought it would be a simple, short stop -- but the place was really fascinating and I got quite drawn in, especially by the detailing of the carpentry work -- beaded boards, bevelled porch columns, tongue-and-grooved flooring -- that seemed odd for the period and the fact that the home would have been built on "the frontier" so to speak. The ranger was engaging and seemed to know a lot. Our enthusiasm must have convinced him that we truly were interested, because he disappeared into a part of the house roped off from visitors, returned with a pile of family photos, introduced himself as Rick Chamberlain, and told us that in fact this was his family home -- that he had been born in the front room, that his father had been born here, and that the family graveyard he had mentioned earlier on was his family's graveyard, dating back to 1710. He told us the story of the house being boarded up in 1944, presumably b/c his father was sent off to war [we saw a photo of his father in uniform] -- of how the property was sold to the National Park Service, of how he'd gone off to Texas to work, had now returned, how he lived a scant few hundred yards through the woods [but off the Trace] in the modern house his mother built after the family home was sold. And he showed us an odd photo of himself, literally digging his own grave, on the backside of the family cemetary behind the old house -- half-inscribed tombstone (no date of death, no "here lies a fine fellow" yet). You have to wonder about a guy who digs his own grave -- I told him I hoped he wasn't planning on using it any time soon -- but rather than striking me as some morose, macabre oddity, it seemed almost enviable. Here's a fellow so connected to his past, to his roots that go back hundreds of years, that he has chosen to return here to look out for it, show it to visitors, confess to probably precious few of those visitors what his real relationship is to the property, and to know that this is where he will finally rest. How few of us in America have this kind of connecttion to our past.

May 3rd- Franklin, TN

2006-05-03T08:46:00.000-04:00

"Tennessee, Tennessee, ain't no place I'd rather be ..."

Kate's last blog entry had us waiting out a rainstorm in Centreville, Mississippi, not far from the Louisiana line. We've come a long way since then!

We were incredibly fortunate to discover that the only lodging in Centreville was an absolutely wonderful bed-and-breakfast, Rose Hall, in a turn-of-the-century late Victorian home by that name, run by John and Jacquie Chapman. For a very modest price we were treated to a lovely room, a [completely unexpected] full course dinner, a scrumptous breakfast, convivial conversation and the warmth of their lovely home. To add to our delight, there were other guests in the house. Ron and Kate Nunes were traveling by bicycle-built-for-three from Florida to their new home in the Puget Sound beyond Seattle with their 6 year old Elizabeth. These were remarkable people with whom we developed an almost immediate affection -- kindred spirits, if ever there were ones. Ron had recently retired from the Navy, and this was their chosen way to get across the country. We'll surely post a picture or two of them on this blog site. Elizabeth was an adorable 6 year old adopted by them on her first birthday from China. They are fund-raising to support an organization which raises funds for China's orphans, Half the Sky [www.halfthesky.org], and they, too, are chronicling their adventure, at http://nunesfamily2006.crazyguyonabike.com -- a site you should probably visit if you think what we're doing is strange.

So a fabulous night of conversation and sharing stories. The next day we awoke to drizzling skies but the rain seemed to be easing up -- and we were off by 9:30 or so, heading toward Natchez. 60 miles of riding had us in Natchez by mid afternoon. Natchez is a very interesting and very beautiful small city, once rivalling New Orleans as the busiest port on the lower Mississippi. Ante-bellum plantation homes mix comfortably with mid- to late 19th century clapboard houses that would fit comfortably in Scituate. Along the waterfront were two-story buildings with wrought iron balconies that could have been on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. We stopped to gaze over "the Big Muddy," then found a little place to get a sandwich. As we were eating our lunch, who should pedal by but the Nunes -- not hard to miss since their bike goes for about a city block. They joined us for bar-b-que and ice cream. We then found a grocery, re-provisioned, and headed out onto the Natchez Trace, to a state park 10 miles out of town, where we would spend the night.

The Natchez Trace is a 440 mile long, two-lane parkway that runs from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. In the days shortly after the end of the American Revolution, farmers and trappers in the vast Ohio Valley began to prosper, and looked for outlets for their goods. It became common practice to load barges and float them down-river to either Natchez or New Orleans where the goods could be sold, including the lumber used to construct the barges, since travel back up-river would have been impossible -- and the Natchez Trace quickly developed as the walking route to return north, originally following established Native American walking paths but quickly developing into something of a thoroughfare north. In 1800 it became a post road, meaning that mail delivery added to the traffic. It is claimed that in the early 1800's as many as 10,000 men a year plodded north along this route. And then, with the advent of the steam-driven Mississippi paddle-wheeler in about 1812 or so, foot traffic along the Trace disappeared as quickly as it had began -- for the price of passage on a steamer you could get up-river in considerably less time and with [it would seem] considerably more pleasure.

There's the brief history lesson -- but the real history is along every mile of this fabulous parkway. Our pictures should give you some idea of what we've been seeing.

In the days that have followed we have ridden hard. Our first full day on the Trace we covered 101 miles, riding nearly 8 1/2 hours -- our first "century" day, which, with fully loaded bikes, is quite an accomplishment, even more so since we would stop frequently to see the many interesting things along the way. We ate breakfast atop what is claimed to be the second largest Native American ceremonial mound in the United States, dating from around 1200-1400. Seemed like something of a power spot. We spent a long time visiting the one restored inn [called "stands" locally] along the Trace, of which there were once about 50. Took a remarkable walk through a portion of the original Trace that was utterly magical -- and still we were in and beyond Jackson by nightfall, dead tired but satisfied.

There are to my mind two memorable things about Jackson, Mississippi. One is that it is the childhood home of my good friend Veronica -- as good a reason as any to think kindly of this town -- and in fact we had tried hard to see if we could stay with friends of hers who still live there, but this didn't work out -- missed phone calls due to our lack of cell coverage, their seemingly busy schedules, and, in the end, it seems all for the best, since after that day's ride and Kate pushing me to the point of exhaustion it seems all I could do was fall onto the bed in the motel room we rented and drool. I would not have been good company.

The other, arguably better known thing about Jackson, Mississippi is that it was the scene of the famous lunch counter incident, in its own way as much a watershed moment as Rosa Parks on the bus in defining the civil rights movement. It seems somehow fitting that this thin thread of tire track we leave across this country should take us through Jackson. If part of our intention is to meet America, then it seems right to me that we should at least find ourselves giving proper attention to places where "liberty and justice for all" were fought for. Anybody who doesn't know what I'm talking about here, especially young folks following our adventure, ask somebody about this. It's a very important chapter in the history of this country.

Friday we covered 62 miles in 5 1/2 hours to a delightful small campgound in Kosciusko designated as only for bicyclists, shared the evening with a fellow Mike who was riding the Trace on a recumbent; Saturday 75 miles in 6 3/4 hours to another bikes-only campground 25 miles before Tupelo where we had a soggy night in a wind-blown rainstorm; a wet ride into Tupelo [birthplace of "the King" -- arguably another important chapter in the history of music, at least] and beyond the next day, 77 miles in 7 hours -- but stayed in the most memorable stone cabin in the Tishomingo State Park, a night neither of us will soon forget. Monday rode 90 miles in shortly under 8 hours, passing from Mississippi into Alabama and then into Tennessee shortly after crossing the grand Tennessee River, to the Meriwether Lewis Campground, where Mr. Lewis himself [of Lewis and Clark fame] is buried. Stephen Ambrose, whose Undaunted Courage is a very compelling history of that expedition, leaves as an unanswered question whether Meriwether Lewis, who had been walking along the Trace that day in 1809, died in a fight or of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. You don't get any better answer from visiting the place. The title Undaunted Courage comes from the wording on the tombstone.

And yesterday we've come the final 65 miles or so to my youngest brother John's sweet home in Franklin, just south of Nashville, where we hope to recuperate for a day or so and let him take care of us -- which is to say to take total advantage of him, as any self-respecting older brother should be expected to do. John and Jodie and their two kids Philip and Rachel have welcomed us with open arms. We are, for the moment, happily with family.

So what to say of this most recent chapter of the odyssey? We remain upbeat, enthusiastic and in great spirits. We get along very well, which is a wonderful blessing. Our encounters with people, while sometimes surprising, are generally fabulous and continually amaze us.

The Natchez Trace was a wonderful ride. Whatever else we can say about a bicycle trip across the country, about quiet back roads with wide shoulders and little traffic whenever possible, the harsh truth is that we share roads designed for and used by automobiles and trucks. We almost always feel safe -- but cars and trucks are not always the most relaxing travel companions. But the Natchez Trace! ... what a ride. People who travel this parkway seem to keep to a gentler pace -- but the traffic is light anyway, and there are times we seemed to have the road to ourselves. Yesterday I swore I saw more wild turkeys than cars. The road surface is generally smooth, in fact incredibly so, and you can fly along delightedly. This is a bicycle highway! We see more bikers, though most are traveling shorter distances than we intend. There are no stop signs, no traffic lights, just a beautiful road through spectacular scenery, steeped in history and with accomodating, beautiful places to stop and stay. We were a bit sad to get to the end.

Our plan is now to head north into Kentucky and then begin our trek east over the Appalachians toward Charlottesville, Virginia and then Washington, D.C. Today there is a reporter from the Nashville newspaper interested in interviewing us. That should be fun.

We're making steady progress in our goal of biking across America. We hope we're making as much progress in our goal to raise at least $100,000 in support of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute through the Jimmy Fund and the Pan-Mass Challenge. Many of you have told us you want to pledge by the mile, and are waiting to see if we can pull this off, and how far we'll travel. I'd like to encourage you to think about contributing now, if you're so inclined -- getting much closer to our fund-raising goal will make the riding go a lot easier, I assure you. My best estimate at this time is that we'll travel a bit more than 4,000 miles. We're now 100 miles short of 3,000! There is some idea that the Dana Farber Institue may be interested in hosting a return celebration for us when we hit Boston -- and Kate and I hope that we can have the assured commitment of contributors by that time. We know how many, many people have been supporting us emotionally on our journey. If you're considering supporting our effort with a financial contribution to the Jimmy Fund, thanks for considering doing it now. It's very easily done by clicking on the link to Kate's PMC profile in the introduction to this blog. Thanks.

We're having an incredible adventure. Thanks for coming on the ride with us.

-- Jim

April 25th- Centreville, MS

2006-04-25T17:03:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone!
I just posted an update that I wrote yesterday afternoon (see below)... Blogger.com was down for maintenance when I tried to publish the entry yesterday, so sorry for the delay! News since yesterday: this morning we left Louisiana and crossed into Mississippi! Our plan was to ride to Natchez today and then connect with the Trace first thing tomorrow morning, but we hit several delays... we had to stop to fix a flat tire in the late morning, and then a little while later we saw a baby cow by the side of the road who couldn't figure out how to get back over to his mom and herd on the other side of the fence, and it was so sad we couldn't resist pulling over to help him look! [Dad says Tim Davis will be particularly impressed that "team penning" is alive and well, on bicycles, no less, in the State of Mississippi]. The real delay, however, was that we got caught in a thunderstorm/torrential downpours. Luckily we were able to duck out of the storm before the rain and lightning set in (we've been camping out in the local hospital waiting room and reading our books for the past 2 hours), but now it's 4:00 and even though the rain has stopped, it's too late to make it to Natchez and services from here to there are few and far between. So the new plan is to stay here for the night, and then bike to Natchez tomorrow morning, look around the town, buy groceries, and start our trek up the Natchez Trace. Despite the bad weather, we had a nice ride this morning on a surprisingly rolling road past beautiful ante-bellum houses in Jackson, LA and Magnolia trees in MS. Still loving every minute...talk to you soon!
-- Kate

April 24th- St. Francisville, LA

2006-04-25T17:02:00.000-04:00

Hi!
We've stopped for ice cream and coffee at Birdman Coffee and Books in St. Francisville, and the owner, Lynn, has been kind enough to let us use her computer before we get back on the road... people are so generous!

We had a great day on the 19th... one of the most wonderful things about this trip has been that even though our maps give us a lot of information, we can never know exactly what to expect. As we were riding through Coldspring, TX, I realized that there was a lake (Lake Livingston) located about a mile or so off route, so we decided to check it out and see if we could have lunch there. What an incredible find! When the road ended at the bottom of the hill, we looked out onto an enormous lake with a sandy shore and a cluster of trees where we could have our picnic. We'd planned on riding a bit further that day to Romayor, TX, but we decided to spend the afternoon swimming, reading, and enjoying this great place and spend the night at a campground a few miles down the road.

The ride from Coldspring to Kountze was pretty flat, with thick woods on both sides, and we were able to make great time. We also began to see the sobering effects of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina... this area was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Rita, but it was also a place of refuge for Katrina evacuees. I was flipping through the guestbook in the Super 8 motel lobby that afternoon and saw that someone had written, "Great place, but I want to go home!". Seemed like an odd thing for someone to write in a motel guestbook, until I saw that they'd listed "New Orleans, LA" as their hometown... We rode 61 miles that day (we now consider that a "short day"!) and stopped at around 2:30 pm.

God was truly shining down on us that night- after camping for over 2 weeks straight, we decided to splurge on a motel room the night that violent thunderstorms hit the Kountze area (the first rain we'd seen in all of Texas!). When we woke up on the morning of the 21st, the skies were dark and the weather forecast said to expect thunderstorms, strong winds, heavy rain, and potentially hail! Luckily the storm moved quickly, so we read and wrote in our journals in the motel room until the front passed through. By 10:00 am, the rain stopped and the sun started to come out, so we jumped back on our bikes and headed out. Despite our late start, we had another strong day of riding (73 miles total). Along the way, we passed more hurricane devastation (blue tarps covering houses, smashed trailers, uprooted trees...) and rode through the famed "Big Thicket" country between Kountze and Kirbyville. At the end of the day, we crossed into LOUISIANA! We were welcomed warmly into the town of Merryville by the folks at the Merryville Museum, who generously allowed us to camp on their property. Although we'd come to love our time in Texas, it was exciting to finally cross a new state line!

The next day we rode from Merryville to Mamou, LA, a total distance of 84 miles! With flat terrain and slightly cooler temperatures, we've been able to make great time and put in some long days of riding (and still make time to talk to people, take photos, see the sights, and do the things this trip is really about!). The ride into Mamou took us through beautiful rice fields in various stages of growth on a diked road.

Another long day yesterday- 85 miles from Mamou to Simmesport (our longest day so far)! The route took us on some gorgeous roads past bayous and cypress trees covered in Spanish moss, and we saw some beautiful wildlife, including bluebirds and red-wing blackbirds. We had a terrific night's stay last night on the lawn behind a place called Maddie's, thanks to the generosity of the owner, Tommy, who flagged us down and offered to let us set up camp and use the Trucker's Lounge facilities there.

Now we're in St. Francisville, LA, just on the other side of the MISSISSIPPI RIVER! From here we head north towards Natchez, Mississippi, where we'll connect with the Natchez Trace Parkway and start making our way towards Nashville, TN... and eventually, Boston! So this is the end of the Southern Tier route for us! We still have 5 miles left to ride before we stop for the day, so I'll end here, but we're doing great and can't wait to send you more photos and updates! Miss you all!
-- Kate

April 20th- Kountze, TX

2006-04-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

Hi!
We finished our riding early today, so we've stopped into the Kountze library to write an update of our time since Austin...

Dad and I celebrated Easter Sunday at a beautiful church service in downtown Austin (St. Mary Cathedral), but it was strange to spend Easter away from our family and friends back home. We missed you! We left Austin around 1:00 that afternoon, riding through the city and past the Capitol building on our way out of town.

Those of you keeping your eye on the national weather forecasts might have seen that Easter brought an intense wave of unseasonably warm weather to the Austin area... Sunday temperatures were in the high 90's, and that heat has been following us for the past few days (we've heard that it even reached 100 one afternoon!). When the sun is intense and the air is brutally hot and sticky like this (humidity has increased significantly, since we're no longer in those high desert lands!) every spot of shade on the side of the road is a welcome sight, so we pull over frequently to take a deep breath and re-hydrate. We've also gotten into the habit of waking up early to get some miles under our belts in the cooler hours, then finding shade around lunchtime and riding into the early evening. The sun stays hot until well after 5:00 pm (with the sun setting around 8), but when it eventually cools off a bit around 6, the riding's great. The heat has been exhausting and draining at times (even though our muscles feel strong!), but we've still managed to have some long, satisfying days of riding, and we're hoping that the temperatures are starting to go back down to normal.

Since we'd celebrated Easter on the morning of the 16th (and since we sweated under the sun through the rest of the afternoon!), we only rode 41 miles that day to Bastrop, TX.

The next day, we were on the road by 7:15, and we spent the first few hours winding through the rolling park road connecting the Bastrop and Buescher State Parks (for those of you following us from the South Shore, Dad and I both thought that this stretch felt a bit like Wampatuck State Park in Cohasset). We battled the heat all day as we rode through wide open fields that offered very little in the way of shade. At the end of the day, we stopped at the Rocky Creek Campground near Burton-- we couldn't have asked a better place to stay at the end of that hot day! The campground was located right next to a beautiful lake, so we jumped right into the water (which was the perfect temperature, by the way) before dinner. Grass all the way down to the water, a little beach by our campsite, deer wandering through the woods, beautiful picnic tables, starry skies... a great end to the day! Total mileage for that day was 76 miles.

On the 18th, we got up early again and were treated to vast, rolling fields splashed with colorful wildflowers as we made our way towards Navasota. Stopped at the small grocery store in Independence, TX and found Jim and Jenny in the store guestbook of travelers (what a great record of the adventurers who have come this way!). The ten miles from Navasota to Anderson were brutal, especially since we had the wind at our backs. Usually a tailwind is a good thing, since it pushes us from behind and makes pedaling easier, but you also can't feel the wind when it's behind you, and this lack of a breeze made the heat almost unbearable. We rode into the Sam Houston National Forest and spend the night at a USFS campground (daily mileage: 80 miles).

... they're throwing me out of the library, so unfortunately I'll have to stop here and pick up where I left off next time we update. We're doing great... we passed through the 2,000-mile mark today, and tomorrow we should be in Louisiana! Can't wait to tell you more about it!
-- Kate

April 20th- Kountze, TX (cont)

2006-04-20T16:56:00.000-04:00

SEVEN TRUE FACTS LEARNED WHILE BIKING ACROSS TEXAS

1. People in minivans generally have no interest in running you off the road. They are patient in trying to pass and most often maintain a safe distance until it is OK to do so, then give you wide berth, wave and shout pleasant words of encouragement as they pass you by.

2. Women generally have no interest in running you off the road. Women using cell phones while driving, however, are often seemingly distracted and by virtue of sheer carelessness are as likely as not to run you off the road.

3. Men driving pick-up trucks, especially on the stretch of road between Austin and Bastrop on the afternoon of Easter Sunday [go figure!], are as likely as not interested in running you off the road. This is especially true if they are wearing cowboy hats, even more true if the truck has a gun rack, and even more true if, in addition, there is a magnetic sticker in the shape of a ribbon affixed to the tailgate attesting to their support of our war effort in the Middle East. And then there was this one guy with all of the fore-mentioned criteria and a Playboy bunny sticker smack dab in the middle of the rear window [I didn't even know they made those stickers any more] ... but he was so far off the charts as to be an entirely different discussion altogether ...

There is an addendum to this fact based on personal observation that suggests that Hispanic men, tending in my estimation to be less aggressive and hostile on the road, are significantly less interested than their cowboy-hat-wearing brethren to run you off the road. Men in cowboy hats with whom I have spoken counter that Chicanos are basically a worthless lot, are likely in Texas illegally, and are therefore likely to be trying to avoid the attention of the law. The fallacy of this argument, it seems to me, is that never once in the whole of the state of Texas has it been our experience that anyone's attempt to run us off the road has drawn the attention of any officer of the law. Officers of the law in Texas, for the record, are generally non-Hispanic men wearing cowboy hats (in the case of County Sheriffs) or (in the case of State Highway Patrol Officers) patrolmen's hats, those with the wide brims not unlike cowboy hats and serving for all intensive purposes the same function of making the wearer appear more authoritative and assertive, which is to say, in the local vernacular, to appear to be "cowboy-ing up." To a person these law officers support the war effort in the Middle East -- though when on duty their vehicles sometimes lack the display of magnetic stickers, these being prohibited on government vehicles in certain juristictions.

Cowboy hats on women in Texas for the most part do not appear to serve the same purpose or have a similar effect.

It should also be stated that the above-stated contention of men in cowboy hats regarding Hispanic men could be seen as suspect in that it could be convincingly argued -- I myself not being willing, however, given my present non-judgmental stance, to argue the case in earnest -- that men in cowboy hats who consider greasy bar-b-que, served with nothing more than a stack of sliced white bread on either a piece of waxed paper or the backside of a brown paper bag and washed down with more than a few Lone Star beers, as haute cuisine are in no position to offer judgment on others ... and in fact probably shouldn't had oughta be driving pick-up trucks at all, let alone pick-up trucks with gun racks.

4. Diesel-powered pick-up trucks, especially the ones with the heavy-duty rear axle with two tires on each side and the flared-out rear fenders, are interested in running you off the road, regardless of who is driving them. These vehicles, in fact, seem specifically designed for this purpose.

5. Most women in Texas talk on cell phones while driving, whenever possible.

It should be noted, however, that cell phone coverage remains sparse in much of Texas, and therefore the hazard to bicyclists is at present primarily limited to greater metropolitan areas.

6. There are some men in Texas, generally younger men, who drive small sports-type vehicles modified to sound like diesel trucks. These men, unless very short, most often do not wear cowboy hats while driving -- though it is unclear whether they would do so if they could, given that these vehicles often have limited headroom. To a person, these men are diesel-truck-driving-cowboy-hat-wearing wannabes, and should in every situation be regarded as such.

7. There are precious few, perhaps less than a dozen, minivans registered in the state of Texas.

-- Jim

(It's been brutally hot in Texas these past days, as Kate will have told you. She's worried I might be suffering from some sort of delirium brought on by heat stroke ...)

New Photos!

2006-04-15T15:26:00.000-04:00

I've just finished putting a new batch of photos up on Webshots under the "Las Cruces, NM to Austin, TX" album. Here's a sampling of our images, but visit http://community.webshots.com/user/bikeXC
if you want to see more! Enjoy!

Ocotillo in bloom

Larry and Marilyn

Windmill at Judge Roy Bean center

Antelope in the field

April 15th- Austin, TX

2006-04-15T14:59:00.000-04:00

Greetings from Austin, TX, everyone!
Dad and I had both seen Austin as one of the many "landmark destinations" on our trip, so it was very cool to ride into the city yesterday and realize how far we've come since San Diego! My mom's cousin, John Stoney, recently moved to Austin, and generously offered for us to stay with him, which has been such a gift. We've been having a great time reconnecting with him, resting our bodies, and preparing for the next leg of the journey (next landmark destination- the Mississippi River!). Yesterday we all went swimming in Barton Springs, apparently a "not-to-be-missed" in Austin (and the perfect way to cool off after a hot morning of riding!), followed by errands and a delicious dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We plan to finish organizing ourselves and spend time with John today, and then ride only a short distance tomorrow so we can celebrate Easter in the morning. But for now, the task at hand is to let you know what we've been up to lately!

Mike and Lisa cooked us a delicious breakfast with fresh eggs from their chickens when we woke up on the morning of the 9th (see our last entry from Del Rio), and Sally Ann came over to join us and say goodbye before we took off. Mike kindly drove us over to reunite with Eric and our bikes at the Amistad Visitor's Center, and soon we were back on the road!

On our way out of Del Rio, we stopped at the supermarket to stock up on food since we'd eaten most of what we'd bought the week before. I always have mixed feelings about supermarket shopping, since I carry all of our food-- Dad and I carry equal loads, so we decided in San Diego that he would be in charge of carrying the bike tools and I would carry the rations... so as good as it feels to know we have enough food to get us through the next few meals, it's always a bummer when I pick up the grocery bags and realize that every pound of weight is going in my panniers (and in my stomach... my solution to this problem has been to eat as much as possible to lessen my load!). However, as we've said before, we're very conscious about the weight we carry, so the food we DO buy is, for the most part, lightweight. I'm mentioning this in part because several people have asked about what kinds of meals we make, what our favorite foods are, etc... we eat a lot of rices and pastas, some NOLS favorites like "scrambled brownies," and tons of PB&J crackers. We've also become quite attached to Mexican food while we've been in the southwest, so things like dried refried beans and tortillas have also made their way into our rations. We cook almost all of our own meals, and when we eat out it's usually breakfast or lunch in a tiny cafe (our favorites are those hole-in-the-wall gems filled with locals, because it's a great chance to meet people and get a sense of the town). Enough about food though...

That day we rode a total of 43 miles through Del Rio and into Bracketville, TX, where we stayed the night at the Fort Clark Springs campground. A group of bikers we met on the road had told us about a great, cheap motel room at Fort Clark Springs where we could get a hot shower, soft bed, and swimming pool access for less than $30, but when we saw how beautiful the camping area was, we decided to camp out without even looking at the room. I said in one of my earlier blog entries that I was surprised at how little desire we had to "treat ourselves" with a night indoors, and this has become even more apparent as the trip has progressed. Our most memorable nights aren't those when we splurged on a motel room in Silver City or Van Horn... rather, the nights I know I'll always remember are the ones we spent in the woods near Emory Pass, sipping hot tea under the stars near the McDonald Observatory, and pitching our tent at this gorgeous Fort Clark campsite. You get into a rhythm after a while, and you come to love waking up with the sun and going to bed under the dark sky.

When we left Bracketville the next morning, the skies were slightly overcast and the weather was surprisingly cool and humid for the first few hours of riding. We also started to see a bit more green along the side of the road, a definite change from the dry desert landscape we'd seen before. The sun broke through in the late morning, and the heat was quite tiring. When we saw a grassy campground near the dammed-up river outisde Camp Wood, TX, we decided to call it a day and had a wonderful swim in the crystal-clear water before dinner.

Having been born and raised in New England, I always envisioned Texas as they showed it in the movies- flat, dry landscape as far as the eye can see, with lots of rattlesnakes, cacti, and tumbleweeds. This was certainly true of western Texas, as you'll hopefully be able see in our pictures. However, the Texas "Hill Country" is a completely different story... so all you Bostonians and fellow New Englanders following along, take those Texas stereotypes and throw them out the window! When we left Camp Wood on April 11th, we started climbing almost immediately, and the grade was quite steep at times (our first significant climb since the Davis Mountains!). The winding, narrow road was lined with trees, the grass was lush and green, and water rushed through the riverbeds. Dad kept saying it reminded him more of the Finger Lakes and Shenandoah Valley regions... except for the occasional cactus we'd see in the fields! We dipped down into Leakey before climbing back up towards Vanderpool, where we stopped for the evening at the Lost Maples State Natural Area. There we met Dan and Lois, a couple from Cambridge, MA who offered to drive us to San Antonio the next day. Although their offer was hard to refuse (San Antonio is supposed to be a great city), what we realized we really wanted was to put in a long day of riding. People told us that we'd reach this point where we'd wake up every morning and just want to hop on our bikes, and I must say that it's a great feeling!

As we were packing up our gear early the next morning, Dan came over to our campsite and asked us to join them for breakfast. I can't even describe how nice it was to be treated to a delicious meal of homemade pecan-pear pancakes, bacon, and coffee on that drizzly morning (especially when our original plan had been Nutrigrain Bars and Cracklin' Oat Bran!), and it was great to have another chance to socialize with Dan and Lois. We encountered another steep, steep climb out of Lost Maples... when we got to the top, Dad turned around and said, "Well, there goes that breakfast!". However, we both had a terrific day of riding. The terrain was rolling and steep in places, but our bodies have reached the point where the hills feel like a satisfying workout instead of a strenuous chore. We rode through green hills and drizzle for most of the morning and then rode through Kerrville and into the town of Comfort (total mileage for the day: 71 miles). Just as we were entering Comfort, we saw some guy dash out of his son's Little League game and pull over by the side of the road to flag us down. When we stopped, he told us his name was Christopher Avery, and he was a local cyclist. He then proceeded to ask us where we planned to stay for the night and if we needed anything, and before we knew it he was phoning home to his wife, Amy, asking her to meet us at the end of their road so we could stay with them! Christopher, Amy, and their two boys Jake and Tom were so incredibly hospitable- we were given hot showers, cool drinks, a delicious dinner, a stunning view of the Hill Country from their back porch, and a great evening of conversation. What more could two people biking across the country possibly ask for?

On April 12th, we woke up to yet another wonderful breakfast, and we got on the road by about 9:00. As we were biking along later that morning, we heard someone coming up behind us, and we realized that Christopher had dashed after us on his bike after his 9:00 work appointment so he could ride with us for a while (our first bicycle guest on the road!). After Christopher turned back and headed home, we rode through Blanco and battled the boiling sun in the late afternoon. When we arrived in Wimberly, TX, we checked our voice mail messages and realized that Christopher had called ahead to friends in Wimberly and told them we were riding through, so we found ourselves with another invitation to spend the night. What a guy! Philip and Anne Zbylot (Christopher's friends) were also incredibly kind, and helped us find a great spot to pitch our tent on their property.

I've been completely blown away by the kindness and generosity we've encountered on the road. When my classmate Jenny came back from her cross-country trip last spring, she shared several memorable stories about people who reached out to her and her father, Jim, but I must admit that part of me thought they were just lucky, and that their encounters were rare exceptions to the norm. However, those of you who have been following along on the blog for a while will remember our fond encounters with Larry and Marilyn, Eric and Sally Ann, Lisa and Mike, and countless others, not to mention the folks I've just mentioned in this entry. All of these people have reached out to us out of the pure kindness of their hearts-- we don't solicit these favors, and most people don't even know about the fundraising aspect of our trip until after the fact (I initially thought that the cancer fundraiser might have been a significant factor contributing to Jim and Jenny's "good fortune."). People just simply get excited about our trip and want to help in any way they can. Another great story: On our way out of Wimberly, we stopped at an outdoor restaurant to get a quick bite to eat before heading over to Philip and Anne's. The couple sitting next to us noticed our journals, and asked if we were riding across the country. We started talking about our trip, and soon we'd struck up a conversation with several people in the restaurant. At some point I mentioned that we were supporting cancer research through the Jimmy Fund, and when we walked back to our bikes at the end of the evening, I saw that someone had anonymously left money in my helmet. This cross-country bike trip has generated so much enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm is incredible to witness. When we read the encouraging blog comments from friends and family back home, when we're welcomed into a stranger's home, when we're handed $20 for the Jimmy Fund, or even just when we see someone's eyes light up at the answer to their "so, where you headed?" question, we realize that we're not the only ones excited about this adventure, and that alone makes the trip worthwhile.

... and I chastise Dad for being long-winded!

We want to make the most of these days in Austin (and your eyes may be glazing over), so I'm going to wrap this up, but before I do I wanted to update you on our route. We said in March that we weren't sure whether we were going to end our trip in Florida or in Boston, but I can now say that we've just ordered the rest of our maps, and it looks like we're riding home! From Austin we'll continue to follow Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier route to the Mississippi, and then once we reach St. Francisville, LA we'll cut up to Nashville, TN along the Natchez Trace Parkway (rumored to be terrific biking!). From there, we'll make our way east to the Washington, D.C. area, and then head north to end our ride on Minot Beach in our hometown of Scituate, MA. We're still looking at Memorial Day as our goal return date, and we're so excited about the rest of the journey! Keep following our blog, and consider joining us for a few miles (or more!) if you're nearby (or even if you're not!). We're thinking of you all, and we're glad you're along for the ride! Happy Easter!
-- Kate

April 15th - Austin, Texas (cont)

2006-04-15T14:54:00.000-04:00

Greetings from Austin!

Kate and I travel the same road day after day, taking in the same things, smelling the same air. She’s done a wonderful job of describing the past week. Here’s how it’s looked to me:

Our departure from Del Rio included the wonderful morning breakfast Kate has described with Mike and Lisa, and with Sally Ann, who had dropped over for the occasion. Eric had had to work that Sunday morning and had cycled away before dawn. But Kate and I awoke to great music, a great shower, and a most memorable breakfast of fresh eggs from the chickens that wander contentedly around Mike and Lisa’s back yard, and a delicious lemon meringue marmalade that Lisa had made for our toast. Fresh eggs have a texture and a vibrant color that those who eat them regularly know to be quite different from the store-bought eggs most of us take for fresh. I’m still finding myself quite moved by the kindness of the people we met in Del Rio – I’ll say more about that later – but let me say it is overwhelming to be invited into a stranger’s home, in this case people we had only met that afternoon in the midst of a Mexican festival, and in the case of Mike and Lisa weren’t even going to be around that evening – they were off to a backyard wedding! And then to be greeted by a fabulous breakfast, and Sally Ann coming by to join us …

Turns out Lisa had worked for Adventure Cycling Association, the folks whose maps we are following – and Mike happened to be wearing an Adventure Cycling Association T-shirt when we met them in Mexico. Small world. Lisa talked about the bike trip she’d taken around both islands of New Zealand, and now we fantasize about new adventures. Large world.

Kate didn't tell you about the odd white rabbit, Snuffy I think his name was, who lived with Mike and Lisa, a refugee from Lisa's grade school classroom who thought himself one of the chickens, who would wait in anxious anticipation for them to be let out of the coop in the morning and would follow them around the yard contentedly thinking himself part of the flock, and who, by reputation [I fortunately did not witness this] would engage in more than infrequent unnatural acts with his winged companions, much to the consternation of neighbors who, alarmed by the squawking, would call with appropriate expressions of concern and alarm.

Mike got us back to our bikes at the National Park Visitor’s Center at the Amistad Reservoir, we had a final conversation with Eric there [he himself a reservoir of kindness and knowledge] and then we were off. At Del Rio our route finally begins a more easterly course, away from the border and toward Austin. Stopped at a grocery in Del Rio to re-provision, and then headed due east toward Brackettville 30 miles away, planning on getting only that far that evening, since it was already afternoon before we departed. We stayed in the wonderful campground in Brackettville that Kate’s described, on the grounds of an old army barracks. My good friend Michael, who tells me he waits anxiously for every new blog entry, also tells me this is probably as close to army life as I will ever get.

The road from Del Rio is straight and of no particular interest other than that it begins to draw us inland and away from the desert -- but within a few miles of leaving Brackettville the next morning Kate and I begin to notice real change. The landscape begins to roll a bit, and everything greens up – not the green of the Amistad Reservoir region, which had seemed a sea of low growing shrubs, mesquite, Guajillo [wa-he-oh] and Huisache [we-sach] mostly, looking without close inspection like the gorse-covered highlands of Scotland or the moors of Cornwall in springtime -- now taller trees begin to appear, and birds are everywhere [when I woke up in the tent in Brackettville, the bird chatter sounded like we were in a jungle]. By the next day the land turned to real hills, limestone, with more severe gorges and valleys. Again, without looking too closely to see the prickly pear growing in the underbrush, one could easily imagine that we were biking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, or in the Finger Lakes of upstate New York. I find that I am humming “Oh, Shenandoah” as we ride. It helps that the weather turned cooler for a few days, too. For the first time since leaving the high country east of San Diego in a snowstorm a month ago we wake up to overcast skies and a mist in the air, sometimes light enough to be barely noticeable, other times heavy enough to gather in droplets on our helmets and maps as we bike along. We both really welcome the change from the 90 degree days we had slugging across the desert. Biking through the hill country becomes simply fabulous.

We have also left busier highways for smaller, two lane roads, sometimes even quieter country lanes – and this has been stunningly beautiful. We’re grateful for the route Adventure Cycling has suggested -- their maps are invaluable since we know where we should expect to find bike shops and campgrounds, but more importantly, they seem to have a remarkable ability to lead us to interesting, beautiful places and the kind of quiet, safe roads you would never otherwise find. When we’re on a busy road or a narrow road with no shoulders, it seems it’s because there is no viable alternative. But now that we ride further east and byroads become more plentiful, we anticipate that the biking itself should become – dare I say it? – even better.

Kate has given a vivid description of our travel days that I needn’t repeat. She is a good writer. She is, for the record, an even better traveling companion, and we continue to thrive together. I am a most fortunate man.

I do want to join her in singing the praises of the west Texas hill country. This is beautiful country, interesting, surprising. There is remarkable bird life and wildlife everywhere. Vermilion flycatchers are unbelievably beautiful. We crossed a small herd of elk just off the roadside. I saw two gorgeous large pheasants. People are kind and generous. The riding is challenging [it is, after all, where Lance Armstrong and company train] but we are now in great riding shape and the sometimes very steep climbs and descents are not just manageable but actually fun. Kate described declining a day’s excursion to San Antonio, which is off our route just enough that we would otherwise not go there [this despite both of our burning desires to locate the basement in the Alamo] because what we really wanted to do was to put in a hard ride instead. We were eager to tackle the hill country.

We are also choosing to stay outside whenever possible, as she says. At Fort Clark Springs in Brackettville we had the option of camping in the beautiful spot Kate has described or of paying for a very inexpensive ($29.) and, by report, quite luxurious suite in the re-furbished army barracks. We didn’t even look at the room. We wanted to be outside.

These are incredibly satisfying things. We seem to have found a groove.

I will say, however, that this rest day in Austin is most welcome and most refreshing. We are staying with Lynne’s cousin John [known around here as ‘Jack’] Stoney, who is, as all who know him will attest, quite simply a prince. John accepted a much sought after position teaching sculpture at the University here last fall. He is incredibly generous and seems to not mind that we have invaded his place and that our drying laundry is scattered everywhere at the moment or that our bikes are parked in his kitchen. Such a fellow! Yesterday afternoon [we had arrived early, hoping to spend time with John] we went to the famous Barton Springs here or a swim. It seems to be something of ‘the soul’ of Austin – everyone says no visit is complete with a swim in Barton Springs. It is a 3 acre pool on the edge of Zilker Park, a beautiful place itself within the city limits, fed by crystal-clear waters of the giant underground Edwards Aquifer that underlies this whole region. Year-round the water temperature never varies from a constant 68 degrees … which happens to be just about perfect swimming temperature … in what may turn out to be a just about perfect town, as legend has always had it.

So we’re taking a day for rest, to get laundry done, to see Austin with John, and to prepare for the next phase of the trip, which will take up east and, before too long, finally out of Texas. Today is the day before Easter. It’s nice to be with family. And despite what I said above, that was a pretty comfortable bed I slept in last night …

I want to talk a bit about the people we are meeting. Kate is, I’m sure, rolling her eyes realizing I’m about to go off on a long-winded tangent -- but I gotta tell you, she seems to have gotten a bit long-winded herself! She believes my postings on this blog are MUCH too long – and she tells me that her friends either simply ignore anything that has been written by me, or skim quickly to see if there is anything at all that might interest them. So, Kate’s friends, adios … I’m off on a tangent.

What makes a guy like Christopher Avery pull off the road, jump out of his car, and wave madly at us to catch our attention, then offer basically anything we could want or desire for the evening? What makes someone like Eric Finkelstein offer to include us in an excursion to Mexico with his wife and friends, or like Dan and Lois to take us to San Antonio and then, when we politely decline, to get up early and cook us a breakfast of pancakes and bacon to see us off? What made Mike and Lisa invite total strangers into their home when they weren’t even intending to be at home that night? What inclines a couple like Larry and Marilyn to offer us the most gracious hospitality and spirit of kindness, and even an extra day in their home in Las Cruces when the winds turned bad?

I think about this often as I ride – and Kate and I spend a lot of time discussing it. It’s tempting to attribute this sort of kindness [at least at the moment] to something about Texas -- or as something in the American spirit -- and I trust it is … but I’m apt to see it as more characteristic of the human spirit, frankly. Over and over again we are struck by how kind others are to us as total strangers, even in remote places where our spandex riding clothes [OK, at this point I can almost see Graham Sida shuddering. Yes Graham, I'm wearing spandex ... I admit I came to it quite begrudingly, being basically a bluejeans and T-shirt kind of guy, but the stuff works, is practical, and, I even have to confess, comfortable. So Graham ,,, get over it] and our obviously "foreign" manner betray us as [probably liberal] outsiders. It turns out there is much more that connects us to others than separates us -- and in little places like the Arrey Cafe [those two words rhyme, by the way] or in these small Texas towns, we strike up conversation easily and find people generous and quite supportive. The story of Kate finding money in her helmet one evening is in keeping with the outpouring of kindness we find. Sometimes it is the fact that we are riding for cancer research that touches people, often people whose lives have been impacted by cancer themselves. Dan, who fed us pancakes and also gave us a generous contribution to the JImmy Fund, had been diagnosed with colon cancer at 23. The Baldwins, whose picture you will see if you go to the link Kate provided, were out riding to try to somehow come to grips with the fact that her mother had just been diagnosed with brain cancer. But as often the connection to others seems to be born in simple kindness and a sense we have that, given an opportunity, most people welcome an oppportunity to be kind --and in fact would much rather be kind than mean. If this sounds trite, it ends up striking us daily as being quite profound.

The key, it seems, is to be open to grace. It is a lesson we learn daily, and one that, frankly, takes some work.

And it also goes way back to things that happened early in the trip, like the encounter with Susan and her son in Glamis and the blog comments that followed. I am constantly reminding myself that being judgmental is off-putting, and that meaningful, truthful dialogue is an invaluable gift that only comes in relationships that can find a common ground of trust and respect. It's why we "liberal do-gooders," as I've been pegged a few times on the trip, are so routinely mistrusted -- "you don't have a clue what's really going on out here" --and why our dinner conversation with John last evening, in which he talked about his Peace Corps experience in West Africa of having long and thoughtful converesations, either interpreted or in French, with the tribal leaders in the villages in which he would live, to determine what it was that they really needed or wanted, seemed so enlivening.

I am asked more often than you might think about whether we are carrying a weapon. It's come up from friends at home, and it's come up on the road. It's come up often enough that I've been forced to consider whether I'm being really stupid, traveling as I am with my beautiful 18 year old daughter, staying in sometimes near-deserted campgrounds, sometimes traveling far from a beaten path. It's true I can't really get the logistics down -- like I'm supposed to be sleeping with a bayonet under my pillow in the tent, or how a conversation might go: "You know, I'm not really liking the way this conversation is going, so if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get to the loaded 38 I've got buried in one of the panniers over there" or "What do you mean, Officer, do I have permission to carry a loaded weapon over state lines?" -- but the truth is that, as Lynne has said, we wouldn't be taking this trip, certainly not in this fashion, if we believed we needed a weapon. On a daily basis I am much more concerned with bad or overly aggressive drivers than I am of the kinds of dangers posed by those intending us deliberate harm. We are PURPOSELY exposing ourselves to the challenges, joys, and, yes, occasional dangers, of living lives not so insular or protected that they keep us from intimate and potentially rewarding encounters with others. On the road this becomes more easy than you might imagine. The challenge mahy be to translate that into everyday life when we return.

This is not, of course, to say that we are naively oblivious to the fact that there are dangers out there -- though I would suggest that in some measure dangers exist for each person reading this blog on any given day. I had a conversation with a police officer outside of Wimberley the other day in which I was complaining about the narrow shoulders on the road and the fact that people seemed to be driving much too aggressively and too fast. "You know," he said, "most people realize you're out there and slow down and give you the way. But there's that one guy in a hundred who thinks you don't belong on his road any more than the deer he sees at night ... and just like them deer, he figures that if he hits ya, then, well, it's just your own damn fault." Sobering. There may never be any defense against ignorance. But we are as careful as we can possibly be ...

If we carry a weapon, it is the weapon of kindness. A firm handshake, a solid look in the eye, and a straightforward "hello" ... well, here it's actually "howdy" ... is most often entirely 'disarming' for any suspicious of us and invites conversation and trust. We try to use this "weapon" well -- and in the process hopefully to infuse in our way of being the kind of trustfulness and graciousness we also hope to find in others.

This is what I think about.

On a bike, with a good riding surface and a gentle wind at my back, the world glides silently by except for the bird calls and some occasional roadside distraction. Many times I imagine that we are being carried along on a cushion of kindness. We are being pulled forward, across a whole country, on the many well-wishes of the many who follow us, of family, and friends new and quite old -- on prayers and on goodwill. On grace. It is a wonderful feeling.

Keep following us ... and, please, keep us in your hearts.

Jim

April 8th- Del Rio, TX

2006-04-08T22:13:00.003-04:00

It's Jim. My turn ...

From Sanderson, which is the point at which Kate left off, we rode a full day to Langtry, and from there another full day to the Amistad National Recreation Area where we camped last night. We'd expected to cruise through Del Rio today, stop at a library for an update and then for groceries, and be on our way toward Austin. Instead, we've spent a wonderful day in Mexico with new friends, and tonight we're staying at the home of Mike and Lisa who have been kind enough to offer us lodging and the use of their computer. For those of you following us on a map, that should give you the update. Here's more of the blow by blow:

Kate's described quite well the trip up to and through the Davis Mountains. The McDonald Observatory sits at over 6,800 feet -- and while we didn't bike all the way up to the summit (maybe the most convincing reason of all to pay for the tour was when we discovered they'd put us on a bus for the final 800 feet of climb, at 17% grade), we did find ourselves back at a mile and a quarter high, and camping at over 6,000 ft. Fort Davis, our next night's stop, is at a mile high. Each of the next days we biked 60 miles or more and dropped about a thousand feet -- to Marathon, then Sanderson, Langtry, and now Del Rio, which is at about 1,000 ft. With each day the air gets thicker, the humidity increases, and the landscape carries its own particular signature. Kate's described the remarkable wildlife of these places but maybe not enough of the total isolation -- this land is remote, mile after mile of no homes, no water, nothing save a strip of pavement, a vast an ever-impressive landscape, each other, and the occasional passing car or truck. With each day the land has become more arid. The vast grasslands at 4,000 feet have given way to more arid desert, at least until we had descended to within 25 miles or so of the amazing reservoir that has been created since the completion in 1969 of the Amistad Dam on the Rio Grande on which we camped last night. Whether because we're now back in the sub-tropics, or because of our proximity to this small ocean of water, things are suddenly green again. The desert here is awash with the fresh spring green of mesquite, the shrub to small tree which is the predominant vegetation here. Wildflowers are everywhere -- a beautiful yellow yarrow that would be quite at home in our midsummer garden but which looks oddly out of place here, a white poppy again strikingly delicate for these harsh, hot climes, prickly pear with a beatuiful yellow flower, something that looks like a tall buttercup, the dustier foliage and purple blooms of sage, ocotillo [o-co-tee-yo] which would seem to be nothing more than clumps of dead, thorny sticks 4-6 feet tall were it not for the bright orange/red blooms shooting out of the end of each stem.

It's also been oppressively hot -- each of the past days have been over 90 degrees. We go through a lot of water -- and shade, when we can find it, is a welcome and often very infrequent relief. At 90 degrees the pavement begins to stick to the tires, and small pebbles get thrown up into the fenders with an alarming noise until they dislodge. At 90 degrees the roadkill, which is the odd subtext of the enormous amount of wildlife we encounter, becomes nauseating as we pass by, announcing its presence with unmistakable certainty. On a bike everything is immediate and unavoidable.

Alpine and Marathon are charming small towns with interesting shops and interesting people. Marcie, the woman we met who was within a few days of opening a small grocery in Marathon, a town that had had no grocery for some time, the closest being 40 miles away, described hers as " a blue town in a very red state" after I commented on the peace sign she was wearing on her necklace. Langtry is a tiny town famous as being the home of Judge Roy Bean, a legend even in his own time, known as "The Law West of the Pecos" who, as the only appointed "Justice of the Peace" in the region at a time of particular lawlessness during the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad, dispensed his own brand of justice out of the saloon and billiard hall he ran in the town. The saloon and billiard hall remain intact and the visitors center there was a friendly and welcoming place, particularly at the end of a very hot day. Langtry is also famous in our minds as being the site of a wonderful story told by Jim and Jenny Koningisor of being invited to a potluck supper in the community center there when they biked through almost exactly a year ago. We were not so lucky as to hit the potluck -- but spent a lovely night camped on the lawn of the community center. Jim and Jenny, you are remembered quite fondly there.

And now we are in Del Rio. As I said, we'd intended to just pass through -- but, as with any good trip, we hope to stay open to amending plans when opportunity invites us. We'd stopped at the National Recreational Center Visitor's Center to figure out where we could camp on the reservoir, and struck up an interesting conversation with the staff there, Eric and John. Eric is himself a biker and often commutes the 14 miles back and forth to work. A pleasant conversation led to an invitation to join Eric and his wife on a trip to Mexico today -- it turns out the Mexican sister city to Del Rio, Acuna, was having a big festival today, including a Pomplona-like "running of the bulls" through the streets. So we've had a wonderful day with them and their many friends, and now the kind invitation to stay with Mike and Lisa. There is a promise of breakfast in the morning with eggs from the chickens in the back yard. When we first met Eric he insisted that Del Rio was the most friendly place he and his wife had ever found. He may have proved his point. Could it get better than this?

Hard to believe, but we are nearly one-half of the way through Texas. Tomorrow we head toward the fabled Texas hill country. We should be in Austin in four or five days. That may be our next chance to update.

Moderating Comments...

2006-04-06T01:50:00.000-04:00

This is Eliot posting again. Lynne asked me to explain to people that comments are being "moderated". That means that Jim and Kate have to approve every comment you write before it becomes visible. This is why some of you who have written comments have not seen them appear yet on the site. Unfortunately, because they are not at a computer very often, there can sometimes be several days' delay between the time you write and when they can screen your comments in.

This is all because, as with many weblogs these days, the comments section was starting to be overrun by spam or other disagreeable content... not from any of the Spelmans' wonderful karass of friends and family, of course, but some unscrupulous interlopers. The tragedy of the commons... In a recent conversation with them, they wonder if they should let the spam back in but, believe me, the blog would soon be swamped.

I just screened the pending comments; they should show up now. Sure enough, there was a bunch of spam to deep-six but I did let a few of your messages through [grin]. I will make an effort to moderate comments for Kate and Jim more often to reduce the delay if I can...

April 5th- Sanderson, TX

2006-04-06T01:47:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone!

We're in the tiny town of Sanderson, TX (about 2-3 days from Del Rio). We've stopped into the local library hoping to post a new blog entry, but unfortunately the library computers are heavily filtered and won't let us access blogger.com, so we're sending this via e-mail for Eliot to post from his computer (thanks, Eliot!). Since our last update was so brief, I'll go back and start from March 30th...

We left Las Cruces early in the morning on 3/30, and by lunchtime we had entered El Paso and started our long trek across Texas (Texas is one big state! We figure we'll ride over 1,000 miles in Texas alone... that's longer than the trip from San Diego to El Paso!). Neither Dad nor I liked the ride through El Paso very much. When we rode through Phoenix, we'd been able to avoid much of the bustle of the city, but in El Paso we found ourselves riding past strip malls on busy roads with heavy traffic. It's amazing how you can be thousands of miles away from home and still see the exact same lineup of stores and restaurants in these plazas-- Applebee's, Target, Sears, Best Buy, Domino's, Walmart, and, of course, McDonald's... the list goes on! El Paso is right next to the Mexican border, and as we rode out of the city we could see the Mexican and American flags flying at the Border Patrol station. We rode all the way through El Paso that day (74 miles total from L! as Cruces, NM) and spent the night at an RV park about 10 miles outside the city.

The next day we had a long ride to Sierra Blanca, TX-- 84 miles, our longest day so far! We got another early start, and stopped at a great Mexican bakery (Estrella's) in Tornillo for pastries. The Mexican influence is so strong here that no one in the bakery spoke English... but then, neither of us speaks Spanish, either! A great stop. The afternoon was long and hot... we hadn't wanted to call it a day at lunchtime when we reached Fort Hancock, TX, but the next place to stay was over 40 miles away and the sun was brutal! Around 2:30 that afternoon, we passed through 1,000 miles of total riding so far, and over the next 25-30 miles we climbed 1,000 ft. to Sierra Blanca (a gradual, but seemingly never-ending, climb!), where we spent the night in a lovely town park and met Joe and Darlene (see previous entry).

We had an extremely short ride after we wrote our last entry from the Best Buy Grocery and Mercantile... it was only 33 miles to begin with, but by the time we got off the computer a strong tailwind had picked up so we got blown all the way to our destination! We were in Van Horn by 1:15, and although we would've loved to have kept riding, we thought it best to rest up and put ourselves in a good position for the next few remote stretches of riding. Since we crossed into the Central Time Zone at the Culberson County border, we had the rare opportunity of turning our watches ahead TWO hours that night (one for the time zone change, and one for Daylight Savings)!

On April 2nd, we left Van Horn early and headed east. In Kent, TX, we stopped to fill our water bottles and get popsicles at the Kent Mercantile since we knew we wouldn't see another town for the rest of the day. We were a bit concerned about what the day (and particularly the evening) would bring us, since Adventure Cycling had called this section "desolate" and a "rollercoaster climb," but the remoteness was what made it such a great ride-- one thing we can certainly say for Texas so far is that the WILDLIFE we've seen has been absolutely incredible. We've seen jack rabbits, hawks, tons of deer (two bounded right in front of my bike that evening!), herds of antelope, buffalo, boar-like creatures called "javelinas," and much more. Being on a bicycle has been great for seeing these animals, because we can really stop to look around and the animals aren't scared by any engines. The hardest part of that day was simply dealing with the heat and sun, since sh! ade was very hard to come by (a trend we're finding in Texas!). That night we pulled off and camped in the Lawrence E. Wood Picnic Area near the McDonald Observatory... one of our biggest concerns about this part of our ride was that Adventure Cycling didn't list anywhere to stay along the route from Van Horn to Fort Davis (more than a day's journey), but this turned out to be one of our favorite camping spots so far!

Total mileage for the day was 69 miles.

The next day we had a short but strenuous climb to the McDonald Observatory, where we stopped to look around and take a tour. We spent most of the afternoon looking at the telescopes, going through the exhibits, and watching hummingbirds feed as we ate our lunch outside. Very interesting, and a good rest for our legs! From the Observatory, we biked down to the town of Fort Davis, where we camped for the night.

Yesterday we rode 59 miles from Ft. Davis to Marathon, TX. On our way out of town, we stopped at the historic Fort Davis, a southwestern frontier miliary post from the mid- to late-19th century. After that, we spent the rest of the day battling a TERRIBLE headwind (the strongest wind we've encountered so far). We had lunch in Alpine and saw Jim and Jenny's names in the guestbook, and shortly after lunch we met Karen, an extremely enthusiastic and inspiring rider from the Boston area (biking west from Florida), who proved that you didn't need fancy gear to bike across the United States... she'd made these great panniers out of buckets and duct tape, and we realized that they probably protected her stuff from the elements a lot better than ours did! We camped last night on the grounds of the "Marathon Motel" (also an RV park), and today we rode 56 miles to Sanderson, TX. The library's about to close, so I'll end here, but we'll write another update when we arrive in Del R! io in a few days! Love to everyone at home,

-- Kate

April 1st- Sierra Blanca, TX

2006-04-01T11:55:00.000-05:00

Joe and Darlene at the Best Buy Grocery & Mercantile have been generous enough to let us use their computer to send you a brief update before we get back on the road... we're now in Texas, and we've made it through El Paso. We've just put in two long days (78 miles from Las Cruces through El Paso, and then 84 miles yesterday from just beyond El Paso to Sierra Blanca), and today we plan to ride a much shorter distance (35 miles or so) east to Van Horn to position ourselves for the remote stretch of riding up to the McDonald Observatory and into Fort Davis. As for our impressions of Texas so far (beyond the "hot and flat"), we'll give you a more detailed update in a few days, but we just wanted to let you know that we're safe, healthy, and having a great time tackling the largest state in the lower 48! Love to everyone at home,
-- Kate

... I almost forgot! Yesterday we passed an important milestone in our trip- 1,000 miles so far from San Diego!

Week 2 Photos

2006-03-29T20:02:00.000-05:00

When we heard that 35-mph wind gusts were forecasted (correctly!) for today, Larry and Marilyn generously offered to have us stay with them an extra night, so we're still in Las Cruces. Tomorrow we plan to leave before 7 am and make it through El Paso by the end of the day, but while I had some free time this afternoon, I uploaded our photos from this past week onto the Internet! I've included some of our favorites below, but if you want to see more, you can go to our Webshots account at http://community.webshots.com/user/bikeXC and click on our 'Week 2' album. Enjoy!
-- Kate

Superstition Mountains

Prairie fields just over the New Mexico border

Continental Divide crossing

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Santa Rita copper mine

Emory Pass!

March 28th- Las Cruces, NM

2006-03-29T15:14:00.000-05:00

When we left Silver City, I naively assumed we might make it up and over Emory Pass that first day. Kate was more realistic. What we realized within a very few miles of setting out was that we were both still incredibly fatigued. I kidded Kate that days off were not a good idea. In fact, it became pretty clear that the high altitude was finally getting to us. Our muscles ached, and we were easily winded. By midday, when we took a break for lunch, we decided against an assault of the summit in favor of staying in one of the National Forest campgrounds halfway to the peak. And so that night we camped at about 7,000 ft in a wonderful campground in deep pine forest under the most extraordinary canopy of stars, not settling into the tent until the fire had died back and the night had become too cold -- a night I will not soon forget.

The climb to the summit was much easier the next morning -- the terrain hadn’t changed, and if anything became much steeper, but we were more well rested, and by around 11 am we had crested 8,228 feet and were staring east out of the Rockies and into the vast plain of the Rio Grande River Valley. Part of our apprehension about this climb was that the description had been rather foreboding -- narrow road, steep ascent, no shoulders, no guardrails -- and in fact all of these things were true -- but on this particular Monday morning, with little to no traffic and clear views to the horizon, the trip was magical. We coasted eastward effortlessly on a beautiful road with excellent riding surface, the descent not too steep, the switchbacks quite manageable. About two miles down the mountain we met a woman Amy who was biking alone and was traveling from Florida to San Diego, again reminding us, as Kate has mentioned, that we are actually on "a route." It was an encouraging encounter. She was strong, enthusiastic about her trip, and, to us, inspiring. We asked her to let us know through this blog when she arrives.

We also encountered an impressive couple, the Winklers, who were biking up to the pass [mind you, from their home this is a climb of over 3,000 feet] for the simple pleasure of it all. We re-encountered them at lunch in the Hillsboro General Store and Cafe where we’d stopped for a bite to eat. They’d been to the top and back in the time we’d descended ... like I said, impressive. The hill towns of Kingston and Hillsboro were silver mining towns in the mid-1800’s that sprung out of nowhere when silver was discovered in those mountains and disappeared almost as suddenly when the price of silver plummeted at the turn of the century. Kingston seemed to have little left of it, but Hillsboro is a vital and very funky community of artists and interesting folks like the Winklers, and our lunch was great. My first good cup of coffee in many miles, and something they called "bumbleberry pie" for dessert, a hodgepodge of different berries and fruits, that we couldn’t pass up. Quite memorable.

Within 35 miles of the summit we had descended 3,800 feet to the Caballo Reservoir, where we spent the night last night just underneath the dam in a nice state park, tent pitched in the grass underneath a tree, the Rio Grande river a very few steps away. Today we have battled a strong and fluky wind to Las Cruces, where we are being delightfully cared for by a wonderful couple, Larry and Marilyn Gioannini, who we had befriended in Silver City and who had invited us to stay with them here. They have a lovely house and the most generous spirit. We’ve done a load of laundry, bathed, been treated to a fine meal of enchiladas at a local eatery, challenged by stimulating conversation, and now, as the household is sleeping, I’ve been left alone with Larry’s laptop -- some would say not an entirely good thing given my capacities for rambling on ...

So we are east of the Rockies. The southern Rocky Mountains -- the Mongollons, the Mimbres, the Black Range -- these are different than I had imagined, older, more sedate, less imposing than their more flamboyant, brash cousins in Colorado or Idaho to the north. In the National Forest there are tall stands of pines, that both Kate and I have commented on -- but we comment on them as much for their being unusual as for their majesty. Much of the hillsides here are sparsely forested with low juniper mostly, and cactus is visible in the grasses between these trees even at high altitude. Emory Pass was craggy and steep, but other peaks as high seem more staid, less formidable. You sense that you are in a range of very old mountains -- no brash upstarts here. And all around you are reminders that you are still in the Southwest. The Gila [that’s ‘Heela’] National Forest, the first designated national wilderness area in the country, is a magical place -- and the cliff dwellings, as Kate has said, are almost beyond description, as if one can sense there a presence that goes back centuries.

Now we’ve entered this vast river valley, with a majesty all its own. The legendary Rio Grande. From Caballo [‘Cab-eye-o’] south the plain becomes again quite agricultural, now with pecan orchards and fields of onions and chili peppers. This is the chili pepper capital of the country, we are told -- and while they are not growing now [it is still very early spring at these altitudes -- the pecan trees are bare, and the fields just being planted -- sprouts of onions spread to the horizon, and an occasional flowering cherry or plum draws your attention from someone’s yard], there are drying barns every few miles and workers can be seen packing huge crates of dried chilis onto trucks. Winter crops of cotton must have been only recently harvested, since tufts of cotton balls clump along the edge of the road. Hawks and eagles still keep us company. Roadrunners dart across the pavement in front of us. There is a fertile plain that stretches for miles and miles in every direction. One can only imagine the enormity of the river that once shaped this valley. Today it is a mere hint of its former self. Below the Caballo dam it is a small river, not much wider than the Charles around Newton, or the Concord where it passes under the Old North Bridge. At first this seems odd until we realize that, again here, there are canals flowing frequently inland on both sides of the river carrying the irrigation water that sustains the agriculture here. It is not unusual for us to see whole fields flooded as we pass by, now that spring planting is underway. I can only imagine the bitter battles that establish who gets water, and when. By the time we approach Las Cruces, through Radium Springs, the country becomes more hilly, the valley closes in, and the river regains something of its grandeur.

Kate and I travel together remarkably well. We’re both now quite fit, and our aching muscles usually settle out within a few miles each morning. Kate’s got calf muscles that will put Peter Raymond’s to shame -- for those of you who don’t know Peter Raymond, think "redwood tree" or "steel girder." By now "buns of steel" have taken on a whole new meaning for us.

It’s still quite cold most mornings. One of us makes tea on the campstove, and sometimes oatmeal or pancakes -- but if we’re itching to get going it may only be a granola bar or an apple. Kate most often rides first, and keeps a comfortable pace. I allow myself a paternalistic devotion to ‘guarding her flank’ by riding behind her, which so far she has allowed ... parenthood does have its prerogatives, after all -- but in truth there are very few other things that we do not share equally in every way. We carry equally heavy loads, we share the tasks of daily living and the decision-making.

Our bikes have been wonderful. A short bow to ‘Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance’ would not be out of order. I am most certainly still an engineer by disposition [for better or for worse -- ask Lynne about the hordes of half-finished projects littering our lives] and I delight in being able to understand how things work. My 35 year-old copy of the Idiot’s Guide to Volkswagen Repair, still kicking around somewhere, is a tattered, grease-stained relic. A bicycle is, to my thinking, the most magnificent of machines -- and, by the way, still the perfect way to see the country! A bike is simplicity itself, utterly easy to understand and to live with. A bicycle is almost self-explanatory. You squeeze the brake and watch the cable compress the brake pads against the wheel. You move the shifter and see the chain tumble up or down onto the gears. Simple. Elegant. Try explaining how your cell phone works, or try fixing it if it screws up. But a bicycle ...

Our morning ritual usually includes basic bike stuff -- check the tire pressure by feeling the tires, check the wheels for true, make sure the panniers are secure, check the free-play in the brakes. Oil the chain if it’s dry. Make sure nothing’s loose or hanging free. We each do these things instinctively now. We slowly become one with these machines. During the day we are quite literally attached to the bikes since we are clipped to the pedals while we ride -- and the more we pay attention to the squeaks and groans of the bike over a day of riding, and the more fit we become, the more I at least begin to feel that we are in fact quite a part of this thing under us. Lynne once said it aptly -- we become more the machine and less the baggage.

The bikes do just what we want them to do. They carry a load effortlessly, and in fact seem almost happier when loaded. On a slight decline with a trailing wind you can get into the highest gear and effortlessly fly along -- but they will take a steep uphill grade almost as effortlessly, and shift back and forth easily between these extremes. There have been a few times we might have wanted even lower gears, but those were the times we have felt we were going up almost vertically -- and even here it seems mostly easier to pedal than to walk the bike. There was one time, going up the switchbacks on that unnamed peak between Arizona and New Mexico, when I found myself in something of a race with a centipede crawling alongside me -- when, over ten or twenty yards, I wondered if it might be gaining ground on me. It occurred to me -- and I swear I had time to think this all through carefully -- that if he did start to outdistance me, I might simply swerve ever so slightly to the right and end the competition irrefutably in my favor ... but I didn’t ... and soon the road leveled enough for me to pull ahead. Later the whole thing seemed an apt metaphor to the way America conducts its foreign policy ... the things one thinks about on a bicycle ...

So tomorrow, unless the forecasted winds from the south become too foreboding, we’ll find ourselves in El Paso, Texas. Can’t keep from humming old Grateful Dead. Today was a challenge. Headwinds that slowed us to a crawl for miles at a time, then turning to hit us broadside. An occasional dust storm that dropped visibility and left a fine dusty powder in the back of our throats. It was the promise of this wonderful family and the roof over our heads that kept us going -- and we’re delighted to be here tonight. We’ll have to see what the morning brings.

Such a trip.

Once we’re through El Paso we head toward Del Rio. We’ll again be in smaller towns, and our updates may again become infrequent for a while -- but we’ll try our best. Keep us in your hearts and prayers. It matters. And thanks to those of you who’ve contributed to the Jimmy Fund. That matters, too. We really do appreciate it.

Our love ....
-- Jim

March 24th- Silver City, NM

2006-03-25T00:15:00.001-05:00

Hi!
After crossing the Continental Divide yesterday at 6,230 ft., we decided to take a day off in Silver City, New Mexico to recover from a hard week of climbing. We are tired but doing great.

It took a while to get rolling again after we left Tempe due to inclement weather (apparently the Phoenix area didn't get any rain for nearly 150 days... until we came to town!). We left Tempe late in the day on Saturday (3/18) with the intention to go only about 25 miles to a campground in Apache Junction ("AJ"), and then set off into the hills early the next morning. However, the next day was miserable, and we holed up waiting for the weather to break. We were itching to get back on the road, especially since we were so well-rested from our days off in Tempe, so we felt a bit frustrated that we were stuck in AJ.

However, by the next morning the skies had begun to clear, and we set off early. From Apache Junction, we climbed to Gonzales Pass at 2651 ft. and then dipped down into the town of Superior, where we warmed ourselves up over lunch at a great cafe next to the "world's smallest museum" (as an art and museum lover, how could I possibly resist?). By this time, the landscape had changed back from desert to mountains... the road cut through these enormous, jagged, reddish-brown cliffs, and you could see that many of the peaks in the distance had snow on them! It was a steep climb out of Superior and over a pass at 4600 ft., but it was just good to get back on the bikes again. We're also starting to feel how much stronger we've gotten since those initial hills in San Diego! That evening, the people of Globe, AZ generously let us set up camp outside their community center, which was also right next to the Besh Ba Gowah Archaeological Park (ancient Pueblo ruins).

On March 21st, we had an exhausting ride against a headwind through the San Carlos Apache Reservation to Thatcher, AZ (77 miles). The elevation profile on our Adventure Cycling maps showed the route to be basically flat (with the exception of two short, but steep, climbs), but in fact we spent most of the day dipping and rising with the wind at our face, so by the time we reached Thatcher we were exhausted! We stayed on the road until nearly sunset, and saw the beautiful evening light shining through the clouds and onto the mountains (at this point we could see several mountain ranges to our south, north, and east).

I was basically dead to the world once I crawled into my sleeping bag that night, but when I woke up Dad told me that another big storm had come through and battered us with wind and rain overnight (and dumped snow on the tall mountain peak just south of us!). We got a later start that day because we realized that I'd gotten a flat tire (not too surprising since much of the road had been covered in glass and "rumble strips" the day before, but it was still my first one this trip), but we were blessed with a stiff tailwind for much of our ride. The road (US 191) was very scenic (beautiful mesas, desert to either side, and that snowy mountain behind us), and the previous night's storm had left clear skies, bright sun, and moderate temperatures in its wake... virtually a perfect day! We climbed about 30 miles to a pass, and then came around the bend to see fields, cows in desert scrub, and mountains before coasting down into a valley, over the Gila river, and up a bit to Three Way.

In Three Way we stopped at the US Forest Service ranger station, and the people there could not have been nicer or more generous. Rosalie, the forest fire fighters, and other Forest Service rangers were extremely helpful (they gave us invaluable information about campsites, weather, roads, etc.), they let us camp on their lawn, they told us we should feel free to use facilities in their trailer, and they filled our containers up with cooking oil and white gas.

We had an exhausting ride the next day over a high pass near the Arizona/New Mexico border... the climb was steep, especially around the switchbacks as you neared the top, but luckily there was virtually no traffic on the road, so we were able to really enjoy the scenery as we rode (including horses grazing alongside the road that tried to find the food in Dad's panniers while he was busy taking photos!). Once we made it over the pass (6295 ft.) and began our descent, we found ourselves on a gorgeous, winding road (one of my very favorite rides so far) that cut through a thick forest of pine trees (up until now, we'd seen very few trees along our route)!

About 6 miles after the pass, we crossed over into New Mexico, and shortly thereafter we left the woods and emerged onto the prairie! We've haven't even been on the road 3 weeks, and already I've been bowled over by the dramatic changes in landscape we've seen. As we've described in these blog entries, these changes aren't just from state to state or county to county as you might expect... it isn't unusual for us to ride through arid desert, green forest, and golden prairie in one day like we did on the 23rd!

In the late afternoon, we battled a strong headwind as we rode into the small town of Buckhorn, NM... we were exhausted, and those last 9 miles were brutal! Unfortunately this same wind (probably even stronger!) pushed against us yesterday as we climbed from Buckhorn up to the Continental Divide-- by the time we reached Silver City, we were about ready to collapse!!

Today we gave our legs and bikes a rest and went to visit the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument about 40 miles north of Silver City. This place was so incredible-- we took tons of great photos that we'll try to put online soon, but type it into Google if you want to see what we're talking about in the meantime (although the site really doesn't do the monument justice). Afterwards we took a walk and found a hot spring, and now we're getting ready to settle in for the night. Tomorrow we plan to leave Silver City and start making our way towards El Paso, TX. We have one more steep climb over Emory Pass (at 8,228 ft., the highest point on our route) before we enter Texas, but we're feeling strong and well-rested, and we can't wait to get going! Miss you all!!
-- Kate

Week 1 Photos

2006-03-25T00:12:00.000-05:00

This is Kate and Jim's friend Eliot posting. They are periodically mailing me CDs of the photos they take both for safekeeping and so that I can upload them over a fast web connection. A small number are going up here on the weblog (everyone should know that a larger version will pop up if you click on any photo here, by the way); a larger number can be seen here, at their webshots.com pages. You can go directly to the webshots.com Week 1 album if you click this link.

I am hoping that the next time Kate and Jim log on (hello out there!) they will see fit to caption some of the photos — here and/or at webshots.com — and tell us what we are seeing. (If I knew what they referred to with certainty, I would be tempted to move some of the shots back down to the earlier weblog postings which describe the same scenes, but since you have already read those you might miss the photos if I did that...)

Rainbow on the side of the mountains at In-Ko-Pah Pass

Yuha Desert

Dunes

Kate riding through the dunes

Boys and their bikes outside the Glamis Beach Shop (next to the dunes)

David and Azulito, the flying dog

Next to the Colorado River

Sunset and moonrise in Quartzsite

Orange flowers, mountains, and desert (just west of Wickenburg)

PS: Good news! As I was working on this post, I noticed that Kate and Jim have logged onto Blogger and have started the draft of their next post. It won't be long now until we have the next installment from them!

March 17th- Tempe, AZ (cont.)

2006-03-17T14:27:00.000-05:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
We rode through Phoenix yesterday afternoon and have stopped to take a rest day in Tempe before tackling the Rocky Mountains to the east! For those of you tracking our route (either mentally or on a map), here's a quick run-down of the stops we've made since our last update: from Blythe, we crossed into a new state (and new time zone!) and spent the night in Quartzsite, AZ. On 3/14 we rode 38 miles to Harcuvar, on the 15th we rode about 60 miles to Wickenburg, and yesterday we rode 73 miles to Tempe.

Now for more details... in Brenda, AZ we had our first encounter with other bikers traveling along the Southern Tier route. They were only riding to El Paso, and they planned to stay in motels the entire way so their load was much lighter, but it was bizzare to realize that we are, in fact, on a published route. I'd gotten so into thinking what an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime trip this is that I'd lost sight of the fact that other people also use Adventure Cycling maps!

The ride to Wickenburg was the first time we encontered a long stretch of flat terrain. Since we'd spent the first few days of our trip in the hills and mountains, the day wasn't as physically demanding as some of our other rides had been, but the flats were surprisingly hard for us psychologically. The desert was beautiful, and we saw some beautiful wildlife (gorgeous orange flowers blooming alongside the road, jack rabbits dashing through the sand, and coyotes that wandered right in front of our bikes!), but the road ahead continued as far as the eye could see and then some(eventually it turned into a mirage)!

Yesterday we had a great ride... we left Wickenburg around 9:00 (even though our clocks have only shifted one hour ahead, we're still adapting to the time zone change!), and in the morning we were able to push out a nice, strenuous pace on the gradual terrain. After that, we entered Surprise, AZ and prepared ourselves for more urban riding, since the map showed us riding through Phoenix and its surrounding cities. However, Adventure Cycling did a wonderful job of navigating us away from the bustle of traffic, and we rode most of the rest of the day on suburban streets and bike paths. We stopped at a motel in Tempe last night, and we've taken today to regroup and do some errands before hitting the road again either tomorrow or the next day.

Going into this trip, I expected motel stops to be a welcome treat after a long stretch of riding and camping, but it was actually quite depressing to spend the night in a Days Inn. First of all, I've recently acquired a love of camping and sleeping outdoors, but we've also been pleasantly surprised by our experiences camping in RV parks this past week. The people we've met (RV park owners, "snowbirds", and many others who share our passion for traveling) have been SO welcoming and friendly. People come from all over the continent in their RVs and trailers (you see license plates from nearly every state plus Canada), but they form very tight-knit communities in these parks and we've been welcomed warmly into them night after night. In every place we've stayed, we've encountered people who go out of their way to make us more comfortable-- the people at the Desert Gem insisted we use their kitchen and cookware to make our meals so we didn't have to use our camp stove, a couple in Wickenburg ran to their trailer to get a Ziploc bag of ice for our sore muscles, a woman in Quartzsite came over from her house to offer us some of her firewood, and countless others have been extremely generous and supportive.

Tons to do today, so I'll stop here, but there are plenty more stories and observations to share when we're not constrained by fickle computers and long-distance communication! I was studying the map last night, and unfortunately it doesn't look like there we'll have access to the internet for quite a while. However, we've put our digital photos on a disc to send to a friend back home, so you should see those soon (thanks to Eliot!), and we'll try to figure out a way to get updated information on the blog while we're away from the computer. If not, talk to you once we're over the Rockies! Thanks for all of the support and kind words we've received so far, and we're glad you're following us on our journey!
- Kate

March 17th- Tempe, AZ (cont.)

2006-03-17T13:37:00.000-05:00

OK, I wasn’t going to post anything this time, I promised – and, really, I meant it – but Kate and I are sitting in the wonderfully fine Tempe, Arizona public library, and I’ve got a couple of compelling reasons to say some things myself. Kate is giving the account of our progress. I get to be the “color commentator.”

This trip has become somewhat more complex than I might have originally thought. This blog site is a wonderful way for us to keep friends and family updated, and to communicate with friends we meet along the way. Kate and I realized early on that it was important to keep in mind that many people would be visiting us here and following our progress, and that we would need to be mindful of that as we composed our saga. Last evening I read the long and quite poignant comments from a woman we’d met in Glamis, California, which is the tiny town mostly identified by its general store at the far side of the sand dunes I had described. She is disquieted by things I have said that suggest we were disingenuous or solicitous in our encounter with them. We remember her well, and we remember quite fondly our encounter with her son and his friend. If you haven’t read what she said, and if you’re interested in what I’m about to say, it would be a good idea to read it now. She is only “anonymous” on record, and I have no way of writing back to her, which I would love to do [Eliot, is there a way to find her? Eliot, FYI, is my good friend and our blog expert].

We have set out to see America … by bike … which, in case you’re interested, still seems to be the best way to see it. But we have also set out determined to meet America – and again here, being on a bike makes this extremely possible. Conversation comes easy. People are interested, very interested, in our trip. The answer to “so, where’re you heading” is an immediate show-stopper. We’ve met fabulously interesting people – a wonderful fellow David who was traveling with his dog Azulito and his ultra-light and several hang-gliders, who lives half the year on his ranch at 10,000 ft in northeastern Oregon fabribcating bronze sculptures and spends the rest of the year traveling south as far as Mexico looking for places to pilot his kites [he takes his dog flying with him – it’s so cool!], an intimate of the Grateful Dead and Neill Young who knows them well and has extraordinary tales to tell; Don Christensen, who runs the Desert Gem RV Park in Salome, Arizona and is the nicest fellow you’d ever want to meet; several other kind and generous people in that same RV park who etched themselves into our hearts and who we hope will be following us across the country.

I count among those generous people the woman whose name I cannot recall or maybe never got, the one who has commented on this blog site. I want to tell her that I was wrong to even give the impression of casting aspersions or seeming to “judge” what was going on in those sand dunes that day. We will post pictures in a few days – we downloaded them from Kate’s camera at the CVS around the corner an hour ago – and I will be sure to enclose the one we took of her son and his friend – it’s a great shot – proud young kids doing what they enjoy, delighted to be there and to have us take their picture. That scene was completely new to us – and I venture to say there are plenty of people who, like us, would have left that scene with questions and some measure of disbelief. But my admitted tendency to be glib or cavalier in making statements that are judgmental has been challenged by the thoughtful reply “anonymous” has given us. We learned while in Glamis that many, many people use that recreational area in the way we observed. I was told that last Thanksgiving weekend there were 200,000 people there. That’s a lot of folks! ATV’s and recreational vehicles are so much a part of this landscape that it would be hard to imagine an hour in which we haven't seen at least several. It’s hard to find a vehicle in this part of the world without a trailer hitch – in fact, it seems almost unheard of. What we learn and will try to be more mindful of is that there are extraordinarily different ways to “pursue happiness” and we will need to allow ourselves to be challenged by what we see more than judging it from our limited perspective. If our trip takes on a bigger challenge, it is just that – to allow our experience to broaden our appreciation for what we see and learn. Kate and I have talked about this a lot. I was sobered by that thoughtful and impassioned response from that woman from Glamis. We hope she will visit our site again, and appreciate that she’s taught us a valuable lesson.
So, how’s that for long-winded?

A little more color commentary. Since arriving in Arizona, we’ve been mostly in the desert, at varying elevations. You will begin to note that we comment frequently on elevation and wind direction – both become vitally important when you’re on a bicycle. A 10 MPH headwind can slow your progress by half, and the same 10 MPH tailwind can add 50% distance to an hour’s pedaling. Winds directly at our side are mostly a nuisance, but as soon as they creep abaft abeam [probably my favorite sailing term of all time], they give us aid, and even the slightest drift into our faces slows us down. Likewise with ups and downs. From Brenda, Arizona to Wickenburg we mostly climbed at an almost imperceptible grade for a day and a half – but it seemed like hard work. The day was clear and hot, and there was no shade anywhere. On the other hand, from Wickenburg to Phoenix, even with a bit of a headwind, we seemed to fly, and we covered nearly 40 miles in 3 hours.

Nights in the desert are quite cold, often down to freezing. We’ve woken up with frost all over the panniers. But the sun warms things quickly, and by afternoon it is extremely pleasant though not really too hot. I’ve only been in a t-shirt one day. Kate usually rides with a wind jacket. The terrain is beautiful, cactus and scrub vegetation as far as the eye can see, which is generally to mountain ranges at the horizon line toward which we plod or away from which we depart. Occasionally the desert gives way to huge irrigated, plowed fields. Very impressive. At these altitudes [1-2,000 ft] nothing is growing, unlike in the Imperial Valley which was so lush. But planting is underway. I’d love to be here in 6 weeks and see what’s coming up. There was one place outside of Aguila, Arizona where huge fields as far as the eye could see were covered in rows of plastic. Imagine a whole county covered by a sheet of clear plastic. What must be going on under there?

Weight continues to be another daily point of discussion. We have yet to eat through the rations we bought in San Diego – but we’re determined to do so soon, as from Phoenix we begin our ascent into the western slopes of the Rockies. If I could add weight, though, it would be for a book on wildflowers, and another on birds. The desert has been dry, quite dry, but occasionally we find an area so abloom with flowers, flowers I’ve never before seen, it is simply spectacular. We’ll try to download a picture or two. Hawks and eagles fly overhead, and there are beautiful songbirds I can’t identify. On the way to Wickenburg a pack of coyotes loped across the road in front of us.

We’re recuperating for a day here in Tempe before setting out again. In a very friendly bike shop I bought new brake pads and replaced a broken mirror. We’re getting photos downloaded and restocking the few [lightweight!] provisions like crackers we need. From here, as I’ve said, we begin our trek into the Rockies. For those of you following the route, we proceed directly east from here, through Apache Junction, Superior, Globe, Safford, and then into New Mexico toward Silver City, where we cross the Continental Divide. We hope to be in El Paso in a couple weeks – and we hope the winter weather that has been plaguing the southwest doesn’t trouble us as we get into the mountains. Our highest point on the trip will be just over 8,200 feet. That’s pretty high. Communication may be a bit more sporadic as we get into the mountains, but we’ll do our best.
Time to get moving! Between Kate and me, we’ve surely given you something to read about this time!

-- Jim

March 13th- Blythe, CA

2006-03-13T16:35:00.000-05:00

Beautiful day, have stopped in Blythe for a bite to eat and to use the library computer. Kate says it's my turn for an update.

The short and sweet: We were forced to stay in El Centro an extra day, the weather being patently uncooperative. The winter storm we thought we'd escaped when we left the mountains descended into the valley, and we had threats of strong winds and thunderstorms through the day. Even cars were advised against going into the desert b/c of threats of sand storms. The same storm dumped several inches of [unheard of] snow in Phoenix, which had been without precipitation for 140-something days.

So we holed up and waited. There is not much to do in El Centro, by our estimation.
Yesterday, however, was perfect, and we put 81 miles under us. Spent last night camping along the Colorado River just short of Palo Verde, for those of you following the route. And today we have arrived in Blythe just short of noontime, have had a bite to eat, and will continue on. Expect to camp in Quartzsite, a town famous to "rock hounds," tonight.

OK, that's the short version -- and it's probably where most of you should stop for today. For those of you used to my long-winded narratives, here's a brief geography lesson based on our personal experience:
The mountains west of San Diego are formidable and worthy of respect. My trepidations about being in reasonable shape proved legitimate. We climbed to over 4,000 feet twice, as Kate told you -- but with the ups and downs we most certainly climbed more than 6,00 ft total, nearly 1 1/4 miles up, in the first two days. You'd think, being so close to the coast, these mountains would be fairly inhabited -- but they're dry, treeless, and not altogether friendly, and there seem to be few people who live there. Once we descended [quite precipitously -- see Kate's description] out of the mountains, we immediately entered the Yuha Desert at about 500 feet, which descends gradually into the Imperial Valley, the dividing line seemingly not much more than that place where the irrigation canals have extended. The Imperial Valley lies below sea level. It is a remarkably fertile plain where it seems you could probably put a seed in in the morning and pick produce that evening. Desert scrub magically transforms in an instant into mega-agro-business, crop-dusters flying overhead, huge tractors in the fields, laden produce trucks pulling out on us and dropping stray carrots along the way. The smells are different. Birds are in the air. Quite remarkable.

We got stuck in El Centro, which is in the center of the valley (duh!), a town of 40,000 spread out in California fashion, with (it seemed to us) little charm and even less to do. We were glad when we could get back on the road.

We progressed north and then east, through Imperial and Brawley, and out the eastern edge of the valley, which ends as abruptly as the other side had begun, up into desert, and then into the most amazing dunes scene we had ever seen. To the north of the road is the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness Area, a vast expanse of high sand dunes, pristine, so beautiful we needed to stop frequently for pictures. Sand often drifting across the road. To the south of the road the dunes are smaller, but these are unprotected -- and it seems to have attracted the most unbelievable collection of dune-buggy renegades imaginable, souped up vehicles seemingly a cross between Rommel's desert vehicles [younger readers, do a history lesson!] and California crazies -- candy pink, high performance buggies flying off of dunes and disappearing in packs. There were off-road motorbikers flying 30 or 40 feet in the air, there were young kids on scaled back versions of these things, there were grandmothers ("what the flip was Grandma doin' at the dunes?", Napoleon Dynamite fans). It was bizarre --entertaining but, to us disconcerting, a good argument for protected wilderness areas!

Left these dunes to climb gradually into the Chocolate Mountains, so named for their color, and then descended into the Colorado River Valley where we find ourselves now. The road up into the pass was magnificent -- wide shoulders, fabulous scenery -- but the road down got more precarious, as the shoulder narrowed, and the hordes we had found in the dunes began their treks home, huge motor homes hauling huge trailers, as reckless behind the wheels of their vehicles as they had seemed hours before. We were glad to find the county park where we stayed last night.

We are again in a fertile plain, with huge fields surrounding us and mountains on all sides beyond. We will leave this town in a short time, descend to the river and cross into Arizona (a new state, a new time zone!, then begin another ascent over a small range before descending in a few days into Phoenix.

We are tired but in surprisingly good shape -- to those Sledgehammers paying attention, the erg training was very helpful, even if my performance in the CRASH B's proved mediocre -- I was, after all, competing to be the penultimate competitor in my class! Kate and I are both in high spirits. Shoulders, forearms, the heels of our hands, and butts are taking the brunt of the pain at the moment.

Time to get going. We're grateful for the support we're receiving, which is overwhelming. I learn from the blog comments that several of you have dusted off bicycles in shame. Others have contributed generously to Kate's fund-raising effort, which we both very much appreciate. We'll try to keep you updated as best we can. Kate will likely do the next one -- so relax, you won't have to risk falling asleep for that one! I'm thinking our next chance to update may be in Phoenix.
-- Jim

March 10th- El Centro (cont.)

2006-03-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

Kate will likely have given you the “blow by blow” on the last few quite exciting days. We’re trying to beat the clock in the El Centro library, which is about to close. For those of you following the route, our 1st night was in Alpine, at 2,000 ft. Last night in Boulevard at around 3,400, awaking this morning to a snowstorm, the beginning of a late winter blast from Alaska that is hitting San Diego as we speak. We beat it out of the mountains today, but the 25 mph plus tailwind did follow us, and blew us kindly across the desert with surprisingly little effort, until we were forced to head north and catch its fury abeam. There’s a hint that the storm will descend into the desert – an unusual occurrence – and one guy told us this afternoon that they were prepared to release the schools early so the kids could get home ahead of it. Weird. They obviously don’t know winter storms here!

But … we are being cautious and have again chosen a cheap motel to camping out. We’re blowing our motel budget before we get out of California!

I’ll write more when we have more time.
Thank you all for your support.
It’s going great so far – not without tribulations … but that's what “great” really means, doesn’t it?
--- Jim

March 10th- El Centro CA

2006-03-10T19:25:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone!
We are on the road and have dashed into the El Centro public library before it closes to give you an update of our journey thus far!

It's been an intense three days- we dipped our tires into the Pacific Ocean around 9:00 Wednesday morning (thanks to Linda Elander for posting the photos she took!) and started our climb out of San Diego and into the mountains. The first two days were basically straight uphill- the highest elevation we reached was over 4,000 ft., but the total climb was much greater since we dipped down into several valleys as we rode. It was beautiful in the mountains, but our legs were definitely aching by the end of the day, especially since we'd made the mistake of stocking up on food rations before we left San Diego (word of advice to anyone attempting this trip in the future: buy food AFTER the mountains!).

The first day we rode 36 miles from San Diego to Alpine, CA, and yesterday we rode 41 miles from Alpine to Boulevard, CA. I'd love to flesh out the details of those days, but since I'm pressed for time I'm going to tell you about our day today since we had the most incredible ride -- This morning we woke up early and saw snow starting to fall outside our window! We'd heard that this was supposed to turn into a major storm later in the day, so we jumped out of bed and hopped on our bikes. Luckily the snow wasn't sticking and the roads were clear, so although our feet were wet and freezing, we were able to make it through the passes at higher elevations. We climbed for about 1.5 hrs, but then we plummeted down below sea level and into the DESERT! Talk about a change in landscape! The desert was absolutely gorgeous, and we were blessed with a strong tailwind so we were able to sail along (at up to 30 mph with minimal pedaling!) and recover from the early-morning hills. Soon we found ourselves out of the desert and into lush, green farmland (we had left the federally-protected Yuha Desertand entered the Imperial Valley, where the land had been irrigated to grow crops). From there we battled a strong cross-wind until we headed towards El Centro... and as we were riding we got a free show from the squadron of Blue Angels fighter jets flying overhead!

So today was quite the day... over the course of 61 miles, we went from snow and mountains to heat and desert, and from climbing in the lowest possible gear on our bikes to riding with a tailwind in the highest possible gear! Unfortunately they're kicking us out of the library, but we wanted to let you know that we're both safe and having the time of our lives. As tough as some of those hills were on our bodies, we haven't questioned this trip for one moment, and we can't wait to see what lies ahead! Love to everyone at home, and look for another update soon!
-- Kate

Preparations and Departure on 3/8

2006-03-10T19:14:00.000-05:00

Preparations in San Diego

2006-03-10T14:06:00.000-05:00

March 7th- San Diego, CA

2006-03-07T10:46:00.001-05:00

Making final preparations in San Diego. We leave tomorrow morning.
Arrived quite late on Saturday night after two unexpected plane changes due to some unidentified mechanical problems with the plane, and after apprehensively watching out the plane window as our boxed bikes got tossed from one cargo hold to another. But my cousin Linda, with whom I've now made a solid and wonderful reunion after many years of being out of touch (Kate had never met her), was there to meet us with her friend Jim, and we've had the luxury of staying with her and using her garage for bike re-assembly and working through the many last-minute details of the trip. She's been accomodating and absolutely terrific.

So ... enough of boring details. The bikes are fitted out, the weather is gorgeous (sorry, New England!), and there are mountains looming to the east that at first blush seem quite intimidating -- but in fact we can't wait to get started. Linda lives only a mile from our departure point. We've biked there twice already to "scope it out" ... the first time Sunday afternoon just to see that the bikes were in order, and yesterday with panniers on and a partial load, to see how we would do with weight [the bikes seem actually "happier" carrying a load, and we're both quite comfortable riding like this]. We've watched surfers riding these near perfect waves so foreign to Massachusetts, been to the top of Mt. Soledad in La Jolla with Linda for a stunning panoramic view of the area, eaten 99 cent fish tacos around the corner from Linda's place. Been to Bernie's Bike Shop to borrow a tool and seek a little advice, and to the Ocean Beach hardware store around the block from Bernie's for a couple longer bolts to attach the front racks [anybody who, like me, finds reason to praise a proper, old-time hardware store with creaky wooden floors and lots of bins full of mismatched 'stuff' would have felt they were in the right place]. Kate's been working on this web site and on the email list that will keep us in touch. Let us know, please, if you have trouble getting through to this site ... or if we've somehow set it up so you're getting barraged with unwanted emails ...

Today we're off to the grocery store for supplies, the camera store for film [yes, film ... we're both still something of purists, and Kate and I intend to swap back and forth between the Pentax I've brought and the digital she has with her ... my three pounds of camera gear vs. her probably three ounces! ... every extra ounce may feel like a regretable ton as we approach the Rockies!], and then we'll pack the bikes in earnest. Linda intends to see us off in the morning.

--- Jim

For PHOTOS, visit http://community.webshots.com/user/bikeXC

With 3 days to go...

2006-03-01T23:56:00.000-05:00

If you’ve found your way to this site this early in our adventure, it’s probably because you’re family, or a friend, or a work colleague, or you read about us in the local paper -- or maybe you’re one of the people we’ve met in our shopping for bikes or gear or something else on our seemingly endless list of preparations. Welcome. We are excited you’re coming along for the ride.

Kate has done a pretty good job of talking about the kinds of things we get asked every day – what bikes will you take, what’s your route, are you in shape, how long’s it going to take, how many miles do you figure you’ll do in a day? We had agreed that before we left we wanted to post something on this site about expectations, hopes, fears, apprehensions … but quite frankly, in the whirlwind of final preparations for such an endeavor as this, in trying to gear up for a cross country trip and to prepare as well as we can for leaving our lives in Scituate and Boston behind for a good while, with now three days and still a very long “to do” list left, I am frantic. Tonight I’m still intending to finish up the income tax, and to confirm that most of the monthly bills can be paid online. My capacities for introspection are, at the moment, limited.

I can say this. We are about to embark on one of those trips of a lifetime. I consider myself so extraordinarily fortunate – flattered and excited beyond measure that my daughter actually asked me to do this with her, grateful in every way that my wife Lynne and our other daughter Elizabeth [a.k.a. “the Giz,” or, among her more recent friends, “Liz”] have supported and encouraged us and have offered to “hold down the fort” in our absence, thankful that we are both healthy enough to consider it entirely possible, and positively overwhelmed by the amount of support those who know us and love us have given as this whole idea has materialized. We hope you will follow us across the country by checking in here often. We hope we’ll find a way to post updates at least every few days, with pictures, and stories, and impressions.

So I get to defer this immediate task Kate has put before me, this task of being “profound.” I can say with confidence that in the days ahead, as the dust settles on our preparations and is replaced by the dust we stir up peddling down the road, we will both be better able to formulate what this trip is about, what we hope to achieve and learn and bring home with us.

For now, the important thing seems to be this: support us, keep in touch, and spread the word. Support Kate’s desire to fundraise for the Jimmy Fund – it’s a wonderful organization and gives an immediate purpose to our trip, one we hope you will pitch in to help. We may well ride 4,000 miles before we’re through. At a penny a mile, that’s $40.00; at a dime a mile, $400.00. There’s a quarter a mile, or … well, you do the math … We’re aiming at a minimum of $100,000.00 if we can – that’s twenty five dollars a mile! Help us in any way you can, will you? Contribute what you can – and then email a link to this site to anybody else you think might be interested. Help us spread the word. We’re thinking it’s going to be quite an adventure!

But as importantly, please keep this in mind – it is the love and emotional support of every one of you that will be our real sustenance and the thing that will be as important a contribution to this trip as anything else you can offer. Keep us in our hearts. Share our adventures and our trials. Follow us on a map. Think about joining us for a few days or a week along the way [we mean that!]. Kate and I are off on a self-propelled adventure to see the country and to learn what we can. If I have my way, we’ll learn that the most important things in life are often not bought but earned, earned through kindness and generosity and perseverance and sharing and an open spirit aware of grace. We want you on the trip with us!

… and now, off to the income tax …
… as Corita Kent once said: “After ecstasy, the laundry.”
-Jim

F.A.Q.'s

2006-03-01T23:53:00.000-05:00

When we tell people that we're getting ready to bike across the United States, we get a ton of questions, since there are so many details that go into planning a trip like this! We've included some of the most popular ones here (along with our answers), but please feel free to jot us a comment or e-mail with any additional questions or thoughts you may have!

"What route are you taking?"
This is one of the first questions people always ask, since there are, of course, infinitely many ways to make your way across the United States. We will be riding from the west coast back east, and on March 4th we're flying out to San Diego with all of our gear (just as a quick side note- it was so cool to buy a one-way plane ticket knowing that our return trip is by bike!). We'll stay in San Diego long enough to re-assemble and pack up our bikes, and then we'll dip our tires into the Pacific Ocean and start off! For the first part of the trip, we'll be following Adventure Cycling's "Southern Tier" route along the Mexican border, up to Phoenix, into New Mexico, and then crossing the Rockies at 8300 ft. before dipping down into El Paso and beginning our trek across Texas. Since we're starting our ride in late winter/early spring, we need to stay as far south as possible to avoid the snow and icy roads, especially in the mountains. Once we get through Texas, there are two options. Right now, we would love to think about riding home to Scituate, MA and ending our ride on Minot Beach a mile from our house, but we also have the option of continuing along the Southern Tier route and finishing in Florida. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration, so we're going to see how it goes and wait to make a decision until we're well into the trip. Either way, it's going to be an amazing journey, but we'll keep you updated!
To learn more about the Southern Tier route, visit: http://www.adv-cycling.org/routes/southerntier.cfm

"What kind of bikes will you be riding?"
Dad and I both bought new bikes for this trip. Since our bikes are our method of transportation and means of seeing the country, we needed to be sure that they'd be reliable and up to the task of crossing the continent. I had formerly been riding a mountain/road hybrid, and Dad... well, the last time he bought a bike was in college! Although we joked about what a good story it would be if he made it across the U.S. on his old bike, that was a big "if!" The bike we eventually decided on was the Trek 520, a sturdy bike designed for lengthy touring. We also thought it was important that we both had the same bike so we could share parts and tools. We bought the bikes (and most of our bike gear) at Belmont Wheelworks (http://www.wheelworks.com/), and we found the people there very helpful and knowledgable as we prepared for the trip this winter.
For more info about the 520, go to: http://www.trekbikes.com/bikes/2003/road/520.jsp

"How will you carry all of your 'stuff'?"
We will each be riding fully-loaded bikes as we cross the country, carrying our gear in panniers (packs that fasten over the front and rear wheels). This will allow us to be completely self-sufficient, but it also means that we've had to be attentive to how much we pack, since every ounce of extra weight is going to make it harder to bike up those mountains! "Where do you plan to stay at night?" When I came back from my NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) course at the end of January, I was so excited about my experience in Baja, and camping suddenly became one of the things I'm looking forward to most on this trip. We're bringing a lightweight tent, cookware, sleeping bags, and enough food for us to cook many, if not most, of our own meals (now that I've learned how many amazing things can be made with just pancake mix and a spice kit!). Camping will give us more flexibility in terms of where we want to stop at the end of the day, and it will allow us to really get away from the big cities at times. However, we'll also be staying with friends and family a few nights along the way, and we plan to splurge on a B&B or hotel every once in a while when we're dying for a hot shower and soft mattress to soothe our tired muscles!

"Are you in shape?"
Nope. Dad says he hasn't really been training, but this is coming from the guy who spent his summer biking back and forth to his work 34 miles away... for fun. He spent the fall on our erg (stationary rowing machine) gearing up to be a member of the Sledgehammer Rowing Club in the C.R.A.S.H. B's world indoor rowing championships last week here in Boston (this is probably the only international athletic championship event that any old guy can jump into for nothing more than a $25 entry fee). I spent my fall eating French pastries in Paris. Luckily we were blessed with a period of warm weather when I got back from my NOLS course, so I was able to put some miles on the bike here in Scituate in February. Dad says I have youth on my side. We both figure that although those mountains out of San Diego will be pretty rough, by the time we reach Phoenix we'll be in pretty good shape ('more the machine and less the baggage' as Mom said the other day!) .

"How many miles do you plan to travel each day, and how long do you think the trip's going to take?"
The answer to this question is that we really can't say right now. My classmate Jenny and her father took about 2 months to cross the United States from San Diego, CA to St. Augustine, FL (a little over 3,000 miles) last spring. However, as I said earlier, our final destination on the east coast is still up in the air, and ending in Scituate would add quite a bit of mileage to our trip. There are also many other factors to take into consideration, among them weather, headwinds, fatigue, terrain/grade, and the number of days we take off to rest and explore. All of these factors will figure into our daily mileage and total time for the trip.