Category: coast to coast

Veritas- a cooler word for the truth.

Laura Wild1 Comment

I never thought I’d return to the Southern Tier as a route leader; I thought my days of soul searching and daydreaming under the desert sun were over. When I got offered the chance to return to Bike the US for MS and ride across the country a second time, I laughed out loud. It was like a writer’s miracle; I finally had the chance to go back to all those infamous desert roads and rediscover what I had dubbed as my glory days. In a moment the world felt small again; I had been so sure that 2014 was my once in a lifetime opportunity to prove myself that I actually believed I had absorbed everything from the experience that I could. It goes without saying that I was wrong. Since that time I have learned over and over again that I could never possibly be done growing and each experience I have had has dwarfed the previous one. Now, as I sit a day’s ride outside of Phoenix (the same place I was abandoned two years ago) I realize that I have been looking for enlightenment in all the wrong places. To be honest, I don’t feel like I want to get all introspective and philisophical this time around. In fact, ironically enough I feel like I’ve gotten all of the roving and pondering out of my system for the time being. I’m happy to announce that this blog is no longer devoted to dramatic narratives of self-discovery, thank the lord. This time around, I’m writing the truth.

 
I passed a 200 acre feed lot the other day and it was absolutely horrendous. I was right outside of Brawley, California, so I can officially confirm that happy cows do not come from CA. I’m used to feedlots; I live in the Midwest and take a lot of road trips; but this one was the worst. It included the usual herds of oversized cattle confined to pastures full of two-foot-thick sludge, but it was also no less than 110 degrees out. That is torture for any living animal, and I don’t have to go into how intelligent and social cows are because I covered that in my last post. This particular feed lot was also connected to a slaughter house, and the sounds of cattle bolts and distressed cows could be heard all the way from the road. Hundreds of solar panels stood amoung them and provided the small shelters that the poor animals huddled under, exhausted and afraid, unaware that giant manmade eco-freindly machines were providing their shade. Once again, the irony was unbearable, but not as unbearable as that hot Mojave sun. No one could deny that a sight like this is terrible, and that the treatment of those animals is plain wrong. And yet, time and time again, we somehow manage to. We all do, even if we are only doing so by simply refusing to acknowedge the problem.

 
Maybe in a case like that, humans are too far removed from the problem to take action. After all, I don’t even remember noticing this feed lot the first time I rode by, and that’s probably because I was too preoccupied with my own stresses for the day. I think that too often people like me hesitate to even accept that such things are wrong, maybe because they feel insecure about not being able to stop it or maybe because they feel insecure about contributing to the very industry. Either way, a group of hungry cyclists facing a 90+ mile day are not the ideal candidates for proactive passerby. Of all the pictures posted on social media that day none were of the obviously depressing feed lot, and I’m sure those disturbing images were not even called to mind at dinner time when we stopped at a burger joint. Of course I don’t blame any of them. I do, however, blame the dangerous way of thinking that forces us to justify something that is so obviously wrong just so we can go about our days without having to carry the extra weight of acknowledging it.

 
Unfortunately, on the Southern Tier bike route it is virtually impossible to turn away from all of the abused and neglected animals, and many of them are not nearly as far out of reach. The evening before we got to Brawley we were camping in another small country town called Live Oak Springs. I was on the phone with Jenny when I found I was being followed by two skinny, mangy calico kittens and the first thing I said to her was, “Oh shit, now I have to deal with these kittens.”

 
It isn’t easy to drop everything and devote yourself to taking an animal to a shelter or finding their rightful owner, at least most of the time. Being raised by my kind hearted mother I have always prioritized the health and safety of animals, I think it’s just something that runs in my blood. Even so, I still only take action when I’m not able to justify not taking action. Only when I am sure nobody else is going to do something, especially on a bike trip where I am tired and emotionally drained, do I go out of my way to try and do something. I’m not proud of this, but because I rarely am convinced that other people are going to step in to help a neglected animal I find myself taking that role more often than not. If I had a car I’d save twice as many animals, but with only a bike I am usually reduced to harassing as many local people as it takes to get the job done.

 
In this particular case all I had to do was knock on the doors of a few camper trailers before I found the owners, and then I returned the kittens and suggested they be taken to a vet. In other instances, I have called the local sherrif and closest humane societys, trying to convince someone else to go out of their way to save an animal. I am delighted when I come into contact with a fellow animal lover who is more than willing to help me, but more often than not I spend a lot of time trying to convince people to make a call, or take a drive, or even refer me to somebody else. Everyone is just so busy, that without prioritizing animal welfare I don’t know how local law enforcement can even make a dent in the reports of animal abuse that they must receive. Especially in states like New Mexico and Texas where animal protection laws are virtually nonexistent.

 
The sheer amount of stray animals in the United States alone is overwhelming. The least I can do, besides try my best to help the few individual animals that I come across, is be honest about what I see. It is really the least anyone can do, but even that seems to make a differnce. Americans need to stop relying on the code of politeness and start intervening when we hear our aquaintences joke about blatant cruelty, and especially when we see it in action. If we can stop desensitizing ourselves to animal cruelty, and speak our minds when we come across something that is wrong, maybe animal abuse will finally go out of fashion.

 
Veritas means truth in Latin, and while that is a pretty fancy term to describe the theme of this entry, it felt pretty fitting. One of my fellow cyclists has it tattooed on his arm, and he explained to me today that he got it when he decided to live more truthfully and authentically. I won’t try to recreate his words, but what he told me inspired me to look up the word and I discovered that it comes from the name of an elusive greek goddess who embodied humility and truth. I guess she is my inspiration for the next few weeks that I will spend in the deep South, and as I pass through each town I’m going to document the treatment of animals that I witness exactly as I see it. In my quest to live a kinder and less destructive life I have fallen in and out of denial many times; once before I stopped eating meat, again before I spent time living on a dairy farm, and most recently when I witnessed the giant feedlot in Brawley that never made it onto a postcard. I can’t promise that my clumsy ranting won’t cause me to step on any toes, but don’t let that keep you from staying tuned for my next story! There is a fire lit beneathe me and I have never been more ready to speak the truth.

 

 

This is Calico, a highly creative name I gave to the healtier of the two cats. She was a stunner. For a less adorabe picture google Brawley feedlot.

 

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The Heaviness of Being Home-Free

Laura WildLeave a comment

November 4th, 2014; 50 miles from the coast:

I’ve spent almost sixty days looking for this final horizon; this is where I have envisioned my success. I will plow through the unblemished sand and be met by the incoming tide of the Atlantic ocean, where all of the saltiness of my being will be washed away by the saltiness of the water, and I will be a different person. A better person. Brand new.
Suddenly I feel heavy again. Up until now all of the weight that I have been shedding in the past two months has seemed to be lifted from my shoulders, and even as I hunch over the handlebars of my bike I feel taller, and slimmer. But the heaviness has crept up on me again, and every forward motion feels like I am already pedaling through that promised land sand. Because I don’t want to go home again. I haven’t found enlightenment yet.

By the time I got to Mississippi all I could think about was Florida. As I drew evermore eastward, transitioning through Alabama and landing in the gulf coast, I became consumed by the idea of it. If I squinted my eyes I could see the ocean cresting the horizon, and if I breathed deeply enough I could taste the Atlantic air. I thought about it to the point that I didn’t even pay much attention to where I was, until suddenly I was there. The foam of the St. Augustine sea was splashing through the spokes of my tires and the foam of much awaited champaign was splashing against my skin. In a moment, it was all over.

When I left on my trip a year ago today, I set off in the hopes of broadening my horizons. Little did I know that I was actually, literally just making them smaller. With the help of a couple different bikes I crushed the United States down to a size that had somehow been manageable to me, and with a moderate amount of physical strain I pedaled across it. America was tiny; but the kind of tiny that makes you feel tiny, too, not bigger in comparison. As I approached my final destination I finally began to feel like I was prepared for it; not for the end of my journey, but for the beginning of it.

Unfortunately, making it to the finish line only meant that I would soon be returning home to the short winter days of South Dakota, where my stark tan lines would quickly fade and so would the sense of achievement that I had gained. The let down that followed lasted a lot longer than I expected, and as I’ve said before, I didn’t feel particularly enlightened in any sense of the word. I don’t know why I wanted it so badly to begin with; almost more than daily enjoyment, I wanted growth. But when my trip was over, the greatest feeling that I had toward it was that I was glad I had done it, and I wanted to do it again. I didn’t realize exactly why I was feeling that way until recently.

On the first day of my trip I made a journal entry about the Pacific ocean. I made some melodramatic metaphor about how the sea and I were similar, because we felt so strong but we were ultimately contained within ourselves; we were stuck. As I began to move through space I realized that wasn’t necessarily true for me anymore; in reality, I was as free as anybody could possibly be. I was graced with the lightness of the unknown, something that I have since come to value most about my experience. Looking back, I realize that I was closer to enlightenment on day one than on any other day of my trip, because I was brand new. I had nearly nothing to lose and that, matched with the exhilaration of not knowing what the hell I was doing, is the closest I have ever come to complete freedom.

When I finished something that was so pivotal in my transition to adulthood, I found it impossible to move on. The only way it stayed with me was if I continued to drag it around long after it was over. Though the memory of my experience on the Southern Tier is heavy with longing and nostalgia, I would never dream of letting go of it. Instead, I continue to reflect on it, motivated by my eternal desperation to write it all down. The only way I see that changing is if I replace it with a new, bigger adventure. But being a broke college student, that is easier said than done, and I spend more time than I would like to admit just fantasizing about what I might do next.

It is that anticipation that makes everything I do seem less risky, like settling down and going to school, because I know that there must be something in my future that will give me that same feeling of freedom again, and purpose. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was so lucky to have an adventure that was so rich in new experiences, hard lessons, and satisfying rewards. But those aren’t always the best stories to tell, and I feel compelled to find another story to write about, one that has to do with much more than just myself. Next time I set off for the great unknown (which will be as soon as I possibly can) I’m going to focus less on the destination, and more on the journey.

I think this counts as an awakening.

Laura WildLeave a comment

Our 21st night in Texas, that’s what I want to write about. The state was huge, needless to say, and I had been anticipating it since the day I decided to do the Southern Tier. Sometimes the prospect of riding across the whole thing seemed more daunting than the rest of the country. The first half of it was in the desert, until we reached a peak in elevation just before Austin, and then leveled out into what would eventually become the lowlands of Louisiana. Most of it was the same story I have told over and over again… about the familiar toll of my 6 o’clock alarm, the gentle mornings, the harsh afternoons, and the yellow evenings that ended in a display of fiery brilliance that never failed to cast my shadow on the ground before me. I changed a lot of tires, screamed at a lot of large insects, applied a lot of aloe vera lotion to my burnt skin and ate a lot of Mexican food.

Riding my bike was starting to feel really familiar, and even comfortable, despite the fact that I was almost always fatigued. I couldn’t describe those iconic days accurately in a million words, but I’m going to try to express what it felt like when the hot Texas sun went down, and was replaced by stars that shined brighter than anywhere else. They had no city lights to compete with.

On the 21st night, the last night, we tried to wrap our minds around the scope of the state that we had overcome, but it was impossible. Our heads weren’t in Texas anymore; we had given up on our daily plight to be present a long time ago. We’d been day-dreaming for the better part of a month, wishing ourselves away from that place even in the easy spots, even in the cool mornings and mild, shady afternoons of the hill country.

We couldn’t help ourselves; it’s what we had to do to not be driven insane by the constant vibration of our thin tires against the chip-seal pavement. It’s what we had to do to keep from being hypnotized by the eternal buzzing of an earth that was never silent, or lulled to sleep by a night sky bigger than our eyes even allowed us to adequately ponder. The same sky that turned to darkness two hours earlier than we were prepared for. I suppose I was physically still in Texas in mid-October, but in many ways I felt like I had really been home all along. All I had to do was close my eyes, and there I was. And there we all were.

I guess I was always looking upwards then, if not for the unconscious boost of optimism brought on by literally holding my chin up, it was because I just couldn’t look away. I guess that’s what you do on a quest for enlightenment. You tilt your head back, and you breathe a deep breath, and you stop trying to hold on to the moment you’re in and you let yourself get lost in your own fantasies.

Because it was fall, I was usually thinking about my auburn-haired mother. This was our favorite season, and I could picture her in the red and orange canyons of the Black Hills where the leaves were the most brilliant, the same leaves that would be long dead before I returned to them. She’d be taking their pictures while they posed, taking advantage of the soft Autumn weather that we were both so addicted to. I wanted to be there, I wanted to be in that moment almost more than the one I was in. I had the whole world to look at, every last star in the entire galaxy was twinkling above me and I would have traded it all for one breath of those tart fermented leaves.

What’s funny is how I tried to escape it all. As if I wouldn’t dream of it day in and day out; as if I wouldn’t miss the same people that I blamed for stunting my wanderlust. But they still had ahold of me; the whole city still had me in its grasp. I knew that someday I would think of that moment in the first year of my adult life, on my first great adventure, when I had conquered the magnificent state of Texas and yet somehow still felt conquered by the less-magnificent state of South Dakota. Maybe when I looked back on it I would think I was wise for my age, or maybe I would think I was clueless. At this point I’m leaning toward the latter, though it was easy to find any philosophy profound when it was envisioned in the wee hours of the night.

What matters is that I was wide awake when the sun came out again in the morning, and I saw a dawn that burnt away every lesser source of light in the sky and every last drop of dew on the ground. It was easier to concentrate during the day; the light brought an added sense of clarity, and the feeling of desperation I had to make sense of the universe disappeared with the rising sun. The few bouts of understanding that I experienced on my trip were intense, but short lived. They came to me swiftly in a moment of contemplative awareness and faded away as soon as I was able to find my blissful ignorance. The answer to the unknown was actually quite simple for me; though it was beyond breathtaking, I didn’t belong in Texas. The word ‘enlightenment’ was starting to seem less and less significant to me, and I was beginning to get a whole new appreciation for the word ‘home.’ I was starting to like the idea of it more, too.

Being hungry in New Mexico.

Laura Wild4 Comments

This was the part of my trip that I thought I would be in the best shape my life. I was not yet to the point in my journey that I was eating at Waffle House multiple times a day but I was still packing away a fair amount of calories in New Mexico, consisting mostly of peanut butter, tortillas, plantain chips, and anything else I could buy at Walmart. I was eating almost constantly and even when I wasn’t I was still thinking about food. I didn’t even care what kind of food- anything and everything was good enough for me.

I guess I always assumed that riding my bike 3,000 miles would be enough to cancel out all of the carbo-loading and binge eating but alas, I was sadly mistaken. Any attempt at dieting that I made on my journey was short lived; I didn’t have the energy to practice much self control. At the time this was a real disappointment for me; riding my bike across the country had seemed like such a crazy thing to me before I left, and I guess I always thought that embarking on it would not only leave me enlightened but also slimmer and more attractive. Yet by the time I reached Texas I still looked the same, I felt the same, and as we inched our way eastward I began to realize that I was going to return to my home essentially as I had left it; restless and ambitious, but ultimately average.

Now, as I look back on the whole thing, that is one of my favorite aspects of the experience; the fact that I did it all while still remaining as mediocre as ever, especially as far as cycling was concerned. I loved discovering that going off on these types of adventures was not reserved for the elite, I think knowing that has left me more enlightened than the act of cycling itself. I was in the gray area of being both an athlete and a couch potato and that felt weirdly freeing to me, despite the fact that it wasn’t what I had envisioned for myself.

At least I was not alone in my desperation. The four days that we were in New Mexico were disturbing not only in the way that they left me ravenously hungry (which was understandable; they were all almost 70 miles) but also because we were plagued by the presence of bird-sized locusts that had, by the grace of god, been given the ability to fly. When they weren’t hovering in the air too close for comfort they were crouched over their dead siblings on the pavement, feasting on their brothers without an ounce of guilt for the moral crime that they were committing. Cannibalism was a way of life for them, and in that state, I didn’t feel inclined to judge them for it. The only difference between us was that I was a vegetarian.

The constancy of my food cravings was similar to the constancy of my thoughts of home, my loneliness, and the tiredness of my body. This kind of rhythmic thinking was hypnotic. As to be expected, days were beginning to bleed into each other. When paired with the hours spent shuffling all of the songs on my iPhone, time began to pass in a blur and before I knew it I was through one state and into the next. The circular motion of the day was broken up by the same, predictable incident; I would be pedaling along on a gust of breeze from the west when suddenly my position in the atmosphere would drop two inches lower, and my rear tire would begin making an awful hissing sound. This happened every day, even up to two or three times. The warped rim of my bike was making holes in my inner tube, and the broken spokes that were held together with zip ties were causing enough friction on my tire that it was wearing thin. Just like my patience, and what little spunk I had left from the first week of my trip. I was starting to get worn out and I knew that it was too early for that to happen.

So I let myself be hungry, in every sense of the word. I let myself daydream about green chile Rellenos in family owned restaurants and nachos with queso blanco. But I also dreamed about the idea of a new, shiny bike, and craved the thought of being able to go one whole day without having to change my tire. I fantasized about Texas, and Louisiana, and the ocean. I thought about what I would do when I got home, and what kind of adventures I could plan next. New Mexico taught me one of the most valuable lessons I have learned, and I have stayed true to it ever since; being hungry can be a good thing.

The art of crying in the desert.

Laura WildLeave a comment

The sunrise the next morning was beautiful. There was enough shallow cloud cover that the sky was cool and pink; a color that would turn to a muted yellow as the day went on. In the desert the sun didn’t have to be beating down on you for the air to be hot and dry; I learned this lesson early, only to have it confirmed on a daily basis when I was going through the Texas hill country. In eastern Arizona, however, this was a new kind of atmosphere.

In my mind rural America has always been that color; the color of the watered down iced tea that the dried out people drank on their yellow doorsteps. The watchers; the ones with the cats with yellow eyes that had a way of following you long after you were out of sight. The people with the yellow fences, and the yellow trucks, and in some cases, the yellow teeth. Their grass, their water, the windows of their houses- they were all yellow. Maybe it was the hazy sky that had this affect on them, or maybe it was the heat. Either way, Tuesday, September 22nd was coated in a fog of deep-southern heaviness that stuck with me for many reasons. It was a momentous day.

I saw my first dead dog that day, an image that has stayed with me as vividly as the day it happened. She was a gray pit bull, and when I came upon her she looked like she was sleeping, or had been alive only moments ago. Maybe the car that hit her had been one that had passed me earlier, and seeing her so carelessly laid to rest made me wonder why it hadn’t been me. Was it just chance, or was it because I was easier to see? Either way, the feelings she evoked were not really anger or frustration, or even fear; it was just regular old heartbreak. She didn’t even have a collar. Not only did I have the overwhelming urge to cry but I felt an overwhelming obligation to it too; this animal deserved to be mourned, and regardless of if anybody else was going to do it, I was.

Crying in the desert was an experience unlike any other, and at this point in my trip I was not yet accustomed to it. It was almost paranormal, the way it snuck up on you and held you down for as long as it wanted, and then disappeared quietly as if it had never happened. There was something about letting myself cry that felt so dangerous, maybe because I felt unusually close to falling apart all the time. I was almost always able to avoid it by being optimistic, which is why it was so rare, but today was one of those exceptions.

It was easy to get caught off guard by certain moments, even the seemingly ordinary ones, because when they mixed with the loneliness of the desert they had a way of becoming extraordinary and momentous. The act of passing by a dog like the ones I was missing so much at home, and realizing that it wasn’t even really a dog anymore but just a body, was a significant moment for me in that way. Sometimes, however, moments became momentous for more obvious reasons; simply because they were traumatic. I experienced another one of those moments several miles up the road.

As I crested the top of a hill I saw a couple of cars pulled off to the side of the road, and beside them, one of my friends, who was laying unconscious on the pavement. She had presumably hit the rumble strip and had detached herself from her bike, which was laying damaged in the dirt. She, too, had been damaged by the accident, and didn’t come to for a solid five minutes. I called the police as one of the other cyclists helped her the best he could, because he was an EMT. She woke up before the ambulance even got there, and she had no idea what had happened. Nobody had seen it. All I knew was that I had been going about 30 miles an hour as I came down the hill, and she could have been going even faster when she crashed.

The way she thanked us all so profusely when she was awake, and the way she climbed onto the stretcher all by herself was an incredible display of strength. She was taken in an ambulance and then airlifted all the way back to Phoenix, where they determined that she had severe traumatic brain injury, five broken ribs, a punctured lung, and numerous other injuries. She didn’t return for the rest of the trip, and wasn’t able to ride her bike again until months later. It was undoubtedly the most unexpected event of the entire trip.

She was such a fast rider, and she had so much more experience than me. Her abrupt absence was so unusual and unexplainable that the Southern Tier bike route itself began to take on a much more hostile demeanor. Nobody knew what to expect, and the rest of the trip was simply different from that point on. We were without one of our strongest riders for one thing, and without the same relaxed view of our safety that we had had before.The day that began with a soft pink glow ended in a cloud of yellow dust, as we finished the rest of an 80 mile day that felt too long not only in distance but in magnitude. After the accident it became evident that I was more than capable of doing the same thing, especially since I was so inexperienced. I was not indestructible; in fact, from that point on I began to feel vulnerable.

How the first week of my trip became infamously terrible.

Laura WildLeave a comment

I spent a significant part of last summer preparing myself to get knocked on my ass, because I knew that I was not going to become a cyclist overnight. When the reality of what I really wanted sunk in, and I accepted the fact that I secretly craved hardship, I suppose I started trying to seek it out. I always knew that in the end, my efforts would not be wasted; I didn’t have to go very far to find it.

As a teenager on the quest for enlightenment it has always been easy to elaborate on the dark side of life. It has always been easy to get lost in carefully chosen words, or lost in the pages of a seldom used moleskin journal. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I guess in many ways I still don’t. I hadn’t been cycling for long and I hadn’t been writing for much longer. All I knew was that I wanted something from a particular piece of time, something that I did not intend to return. And I thought the only way I could capture that was through writing.

Getting lost in the daily motion of constant pedaling was just another way for me to stay in the moment, something that I not only highly valued but also found to be really tricky. The loneliness that I had been striving for kicked in as soon as I realized that I was doing something that most people didn’t even want to do. I was doing something that was going to be a lot harder than I expected, and I was going to be doing it by myself. So began the most difficult part of my bike trip- the summer leading up to it.

I thoroughly hated every minute of my daily bike rides at first, mostly because they were so repetitive. There is something surreal about moving through space at a steady 14 miles an hour, but for some reason I spent most of my summer taking full advantage of the ability it gave me to zone out. I used this same trick a lot when I was on the Southern Tier; when I wasn’t looking out at the emptiness before me, or squinting my eyes to catch a glimpse of the Atlantic coast, I was staring down at my front wheel and day dreaming.

What I was dreaming about last summer was making my escape. How was riding my bike across the country going to be beneficial to me? Mostly I just didn’t want to go to college; it wasn’t even Autumn yet and I was already terrified of getting caught in the cycle of post-highschool normality.

I have felt this self created pressure to swim upstream more and more as I have gotten older. As long as I have been encouraged to blaze my own trail, I have assumed that I have been doing the right thing by purposely being an outlier. I don’t know where my generation got this ability to follow our dreams without having to acknowledge their inevitable repercussions, but we’re lucky we do. The only thing that makes me different from everybody else is only the degree to which I enjoy the eventual downfall of my elaborate plans, because it is dramatic and, in it’s own way, weirdly exciting. I have chosen not to avoid intensity, partly because I like to learn the hard way and partly because it gives me something to write about.

The first week of my trip was intense as hell. The prospect of a 4,000 foot climb in elevation coupled with the fact that it was almost always over 100 degrees seemed daunting enough. What made it shittier yet was the fact that I got food poisoning in the middle of nowhere with three guys that were, at the time, mere acquaintances. By day five my cheap bike was already starting to fall apart under all the weight of my gear, I had changed upwards of a dozen flat tires, I had gotten poison ivy all over my body and I was holding the rest of my group back. Just before we got into Phoenix we were sidetracked by flash flooding and when we finally did get into town, I was left in a McDonald’s parking lot while the rest of my group went on without me.

Looking back it was one of the unluckiest and most uncomfortable weeks of my life, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t love every minute of it. It was so humid that our bodies were constantly dripping with sweat, our eyes constantly stinging from the salt. We used umbrellas as shade at some point; I hid from the sun under a conservative campaign sign that I had felt no guilt in plucking from the parched ground. It was crazy; the desert swallowed the road, and the never-ending road swallowed our motivation. The fire ants taunted us when we thought about sitting on the ground, and when we were thirsty all we had to drink was the hot water we were hauling in our panniers. The smell of the baking earth swarmed in on us and took our minds on some tired, hallucinogenic trip. We were lost, but we were together. At least until I got abandoned.

I had essentially failed because I hadn’t given up on myself, and therefore my cycling companions had to give up on me. I can’t say that I enjoyed being tired, hot, or hungry, but for whatever reason I felt prepared for it in those days. Because it wasn’t about overcoming all of the physical limitations that came my way, it was about learning how to navigate through the emotional complications that I expected. For that one week of my trip I was blessed with blissful naivety, and I didn’t realize what I was truly up against. When I was left in Phoenix I felt like I must have been fooling myself, because I had no idea that I was slowing the group down so much. I stayed in the city for ten days before I found a new group to ride with, all of which I spent laying in bed feeling sorry for myself. My bike was falling apart, and I knew that I could fix it, but my determination was falling apart too, and hiding under the covers in an air-conditioned hotel room was not putting it back together.

Why I biked the Southern Tier and why I’m writing about it.

Laura WildLeave a comment

I dipped my tires in the Pacific ocean on September 2nd, a Tuesday, and headed for the Atlantic. I was on a really cheap bike that I had purchased only months before on a whim, after I skipped my high school graduation to climb Devil’s Tower and was inspired by my climbing guide to bike the Southern Tier. I was not a cyclist, was out of shape, had little money, and had no idea what I was doing. But I was with three acquaintances from Colorado that seemed to know a thing or two about self-supported touring, so I got in line behind them and headed east.

What began as a way to fulfill a case of severe wanderlust quickly turned into a way for me to write another story. I wanted to suffer, I wanted to do crazy things, and I wanted to write about it. But a few days into my bike trip I found that I only had the energy to do three things: eat, sleep, and ride my bike. I didn’t actually get around to writing about it until I got home again in early November.

I wanted to blog about it then, but for whatever reason I am choosing now, several months after the fact, to tell my story. While a bunch of really shitty things happened to me during those two months that I was gone, and I definitely think some of them are worth sharing, the most interesting part of my story happened before and after I left. I tend to be totally devoted to everything I do, at least until I lose interest in it, and I think that’s pretty much what writing has been for me throughout my adolescence, as well as rock climbing, bike riding, and going to school.

I took a gap year this past year, which turned out to be a really good call. I was all signed up for classes and housing at Black Hills State University last fall, but I pulled out at the end of summer when I finally convinced my parents that I was serious about biking the Southern Tier.

I wanted to do it all by myself at first; I was freshly off of my most recent rereading of Walden and I was fit to embark on my own quest for enlightenment. This was partly because I had a completely naive do-it-yourself philosophy that I was devoted to, but also because I wanted to be really, really lonely so I could write about it. I just loved drama so much, I couldn’t get enough of it, or at least I didn’t think I could at the time. Unfortunately though, my female anatomy prevented me from being able to go it alone, simply because it would be unsafe.

Even though there was a period of time that I thought a good can of pepper spray would be a good enough companion for me, the reality of my situation was that I didn’t live in a world where I could do everything a guy could do, at least not in the same way. My parents drew the line at me taking off through the desert all by myself, and I don’t blame them. I mean, even with the help of the more experienced cyclists that I ended up riding with, I still got into some pretty precarious situations (more than a couple of times).

It was a good thing that I saw any type of adversity as a way to spice up my story-telling game. I was all for getting knocked down a time or two, and doing things the hard way, and even having a couple of ultra intense break downs in 110 degree heat. Those were the perfect conditions for a melodramatic coming-of-age memoir to be born, and the best part was I wouldn’t even have to stretch the truth. That’s what my current nonfiction project Into the Wind is about; in one sense, it’s about an 18 year old girl who rides her bike across the country. In another sense, however, it’s about a quest for enlightenment that went horribly wrong.

I didn’t find the meaning of life out there in the eerie emptiness of the deep South; I didn’t find it under the all consuming night skies of the Texas hill country and I didn’t find it in the rich, culture-saturated lowlands of Louisiana. In fact I still haven’t found it, but I feel closer than ever. When life altering things happen to you, like losing a loved one, everything can start to look a little bit more clear. When you realize what really matters to you more than anything, everything else starts to seem small and unimportant. Especially cross country bike trips.

The death of my dog has brought a lot of this on, but I don’t mean to go off on some rant about the important things in life. I don’t want to say that I have gotten wiser since I have had my best friend taken away from me; she was so much more than a way to grow and learn something about life. She was, and is, an ongoing relationship that is just as profound as all of the other ones I share. It’s just that I didn’t feel like I had changed very much after I went on my soul searching bike trip, but now all of a sudden I feel like a different person in just the past couple of weeks.

I guess I really just want to write about things that people can relate to, whether that is loss, depression, wanderlust, societal prejudice and discrimination, or anything else that accompanies the onset of adulthood, being female, or choosing to live one’s life unconventionally. I keep telling myself that nonconformity is becoming the new normal, and if that’s true then I know my story is relatable to a lot of people. I guess I would also like to think that my life is interesting enough to enjoy reading about, especially if I pull off the dark, dramatic style that is my favorite form of expression. I kicked it Thoreau style for a couple of months and now I’m ready to kick it Poe style, which is so much more fun. I’m going to be starting at the beginning, long before my bike trip, with the events that lead up to me feeling like I needed to run away in order to get my shit together.