R+71: Embracing the Tangle

Detroit. 2.28.14

I have been back at work for six weeks now.  I am still getting my feet under me.   The contrast to our lives on the bike is remarkable.  While we were on the bike sojourn, and then later, when we were on the writers’ retreat in our cabin, life, managing priorities and communications were much simpler.

On the bike, choices are reduced.  When do we leave?  Where do we go?  When do we stop?  Where do we stay?  What do we eat?  Of these, the only one that regularly presented complications was “Where do we stay?”  In many places across the country, there were exactly two choices.  Do we camp outside or do we stay in the one small motel in town?  In Circle, Montana, for instance, there was a KOA campground or there was a creepy looking motel.  We were so tired after biking hours in a howling wind, we didn’t want any more time outside.  We opted for the motel, and were filled with anxiety when we saw its ramshackle sign and abandoned, crumbling coffee shop.  As it turned out, the motel owner “gave us his best room,” which although the plumbing leaked, and was newly painted a spectacular combination of pink, blue, and gold,  it ended up being a pretty good rest for our weary bones.

To stay or not stay here....that is the question.

Other times, we were faced with a plethora of choices.  In Shawano, Wisconsin, there were many nice looking accommodations.  It was late, we had been lost (again), but we had reservations at a resort, theoretically on the lake.  Our inner voices were screaming at us, to just take one of these rooms and not bike out in the dark to that distant room.  But no.  And when we got there, after meeting the befuddled owner in a lobby reeking of cat, we found our beautiful lakeside resort was actually a rundown welfare motel. 

Still--these choices were pretty straightforward: cope or not cope with the choice.  Rail against your fate (Wes’ choice in Shawano) or slip into surly resignation (Shaun’s choice in Shawano).   The good news was that we could leave behind our bad choices the next day.   We left it behind and rolled onto the next adventure.

Communications on the road are also pretty simple.  First of all, for much of the day, silence reigns.  Once we mount our bikes, there might be an hour or two where the only communication was an internal conversation with yourself.   Many times, there was not even that.    

Our brains were focused on making sure that our bodies were functioning as needed, especially when the terrain was challenging.  The only thing that mattered, that truly was all-consuming, was getting that bike up that hill.  The same can be said for many down-hills.  Full concentration was required when zipping down a mountain at 35 miles an hour.  There is only one choice available.   The same is true riding in traffic, as when we were trying to make our way on that hell-hole of a two lane road going into Whitefish, MT.  With no shoulder, heavy traffic, and a six inch drop off the highway to the surrounding land, it took every ounce of our mind and body to stay alive.  

As we were going in and out of public places, like restaurants or bars, communication was an option.  If we were tired, or not feeling social, we could easily choose not to engage with the people around us.  When we did talk to the strangers we met, it was easy enough to turn the conversation to them and find out about who they are, what they are experiencing, what they are perceiving in the world.   We had nearly pat answers to the five standard questions.  (Where did you start?  Where are you going?  How many miles a day do you ride?  Where do you stay?  How many tires have you gone through?)  If our conversation turned to our background or interests, we could disclose… or not.  In any case, these were 15-45 minute relationships.  Before long, we would be down the road and would likely never see this person again.   Such are the pleasures of anonymity.

Oh, what a difference to be back in Detroit and back at work.   First of all, good bye to anonymity.  Nearly everywhere I go in this small town masquerading as a big city, I see someone I know.  Here at the coffee shop where I am writing this, I have spoken to 7 people in less than an hour.   Some of these people I have known for years.  I know their families.  I have had disagreements off and on through the years.  I must choose how I continue these relationships.  Let bygones be bygones?  Warily engage and watch out for grounds of conflict?  Keep the war alive?  I almost never choose the latter, although I know people who do.  I wish I could always choose the first, but I am rather bad at that best of choices.  Mostly I focus on the positive and watch out for the negative.   With the woman whose politics make me uneasy, but whose personality and family I like, we talk of family and history and neighborhood.

Back at work, the choices can be overwhelming.  There are ramifications to everything.  Who will it benefit?  Who will disagree?  What happens if we do?  What happens if we don’t?  What are the steps to get there?  Everything is a finely balanced choice.  Choose wrong and the resulting mess will bring emotions and confusion and disorder that may take years to sort. 

Even in the best of circumstances, I am operating with a mass of indefinites.   This is a human operation.  Humans don’t always say what they mean… even when they are not trying to obfuscate.  They may not have the skills to express it.  They may not feel comfortable expressing it in these circumstances. They may not know what they want (one of my particular failings)… And there are the inevitable balancing acts.  What may be just great for A is deeply upsetting to B and C is not yet ready to choose.  Round and round and round it goes. 

Then the context for every decision must be considered.  Can I see what is happening in the city, in our community?  If I align with one group, do I damage my relationships with another?  If I speak against one option, do I close off the possibility of a relationship with the people who support the other option?  Which way is the best way?  Who knows?  Who can tell?
And no matter what, whatever I choose, I will have to live with consequences of my choice.  If my choice angers someone, then I will have to work through the backwash of that emotion, even while allowing another person the space and time to celebrate, or worry, or dismiss the same thing.  It is a tangle, that’s for sure.

During these first few weeks, being back in the tangle has felt claustrophobic.  How often I just wanted to get on my bike and disappear from all these complications. How much I just wanted to retreat into a spot where all the choices are mine, as are all the silences. 

However, in one of those moments of grace that sometimes touch my life, I had a realization.  The tangle is the work.  To engage in human work, and be in the human community means embracing the tangle.  My only choice is to be as authentic and simple and straightforward as I can.  The negotiations will be constant.  The confusion will be ever present.  My job, therefore, is presenting my best and truest heart, and silencing the worrisome yammer in my brain.  I agree to muddle on, sorting and sifting and winding the tangle that is life.

R+ 43: Shedding a Skin

 Detroi:t 1/30/14

We have been back in Detroit nearly six weeks.   Finally, I am settled enough to write.  The need to re-organize and empty my house was a powerful urge during the first weeks of our return.  Although our house-sitters did a fantastic job of caring for our animals, house, and yard, some deep non-rational urge required I take everything apart, clean, wipe, re-fold, re-stack, re-arrange and otherwise re-connect to everything we touch or use in the house.

In the kitchen, every shelf, every drawer, whether visible or no, was emptied, cleaned, and re-ordered.  I have a mania for categorizing, so all the copper pots, cast iron, and Creuset were cleaned, polished or re-sealed and put in their specific shelf.  All of the storage containers were re-united with their lids and organized by type.  All of the food shelves were scrubbed and organized by food type.

I crawled all over the room, scrubbing the floors and the woodwork, wiping down doors, cleaning, wiping, touching everything.  In the midst of all this, I get rid of excess.  The memorabilia, the little tchotchkes and doo-hickeys, the piles of paper, the “I might use this someday” stacks of this and that---all gone through, much of it removed. 



This continued throughout the house, especially in the much neglected basement.  I spent days setting up a new work space and clearing out and organizing a portion of the house that had become a repository of good intentions, tired memories, and lost dreams.  One distressing day, I pulled apart the hardware cabinet, to find that our circular saw, sitting in its cardboard box, had been both wet and occasionally used as a kitty box.  It was rusted and filthy; a few of its blades were so gone to rust they could not be rehabilitated with WD-40 and steel wool.

There, working in my nightgown and bathrobe, I rubbed and scrubbed the goo and bubbles on this tool, regretting our neglect.  I emptied a small wooden cabinet of its mittens and gloves, then spent hours sorting hinges and sliders and hasps and whatnot into their own categories and finally into their own marked drawer.   Screws, nuts, bolts, nails…mixed randomly into jars or piled in their half empty boxes were separated, organized, and marked. 

I repaired or removed chairs and furniture that sat for years in the basement awaiting attention.  I removed videos, and books, and papers by the box-full.  Every piece of clothing in our drawers and closet were taken out, examined for fit, repair, and cleanliness.  Most of my clothes are much too big now.  I took sack after sack of clothes to the Salvation Army until I am in a “pant crisis”—I have only two pair of somewhat too big pants suitable for work.  I have only three pair of pants for casual wear.

Out go shirts, and shoes, and jackets, and purses.  Gone are briefcases.  Wes spends days pulling apart bags and bags carrying the scripts, rehearsal notes, promotional materials, and associated palaver from years of directing and producing plays.  All of the artwork and photos that had been waiting years for frames have finally been displayed.  Yarn and fabric in the box I mailed from England (in 1983!) are put in project boxes, still awaiting their encounter with the sewing machine or knitting needles.   I pull down a box of dog and cat grooming supplies, accumulated through years of living with animals.  We take leashes, collars, a dog shaving set, brushes, groomers, on and on, to the Dearborn Animal Rescue group.



High School Sports

We pull down books that have sat on the shelves in the library for years.  Out go the stacks of audio books.  All of them good, sometimes great books.  We ask: will we read this again?  If the answer is “No,” out it goes.  Good bye to multiple copies of anything, detritus of years of teaching.  We debate: shall we keep this set of Carlos Castaneda books, remnant of our life in the 1970’s.  Wes says “Let ‘em go,” but oddly enough, I say “Keep.”  I want to see if I still find any shred of truth in those trippy old things.

Down on our hands and knees, we clean and scrub and repair and wax and buff long neglected floors in our library and dressing room.  To our embarrassment, we think this may be the first time we have done the floors in the dressing room, although we have lived in this house for more than 20 years.



The floor is finally done!

We start the long process of going through boxes and boxes and boxes of papers.  The first box is one gathered by Wes’ mom and returned to us during the traumatic days of cleaning out the family shed after his father’s funeral.  There we found every letter we had written to them through all the years we had been married.  There were missives from our first years, travelogues of our time living and biking in Europe, painful letters from our disastrous foray into Houston, accounts of buying this house, promotional materials from Matrix.  Even more remarkable, Wes found letters to his parents from the young woman who broke his heart.  There were long missives from Wes on the road, hitchhiking his grief away in Europe, escaping from the inevitable but brutal end of that foray into mismatched love.

A letter from the road 1982
 

There pages and pages of clippings from Wes’ days of high school sports, but not a thing from his days of high school theatre. There were long-lost pictures of children and relatives and olden days of yore.  Wes sorts through these artifacts.  He wants to throw away all the sports stuff, but I convince to keep it.  In a few years, it may have more meaning for him than it does now. 



On and on the cleaning and sorting and arranging and disposing goes…right through Christmas…right through New Year’s…right up until I return to work.  It continues a bit at time, even now.  We are making our slow way through the storage room downstairs and know we have the giant problem of the unheated but stuffed attic awaiting us when the temperatures finally climb out of the icebox.

Throughout all this, several questions arise.  Why do we have all this stuff?  Why did we keep all this stuff?  What do we need to carry us forward now?  During our 20’s, we were footloose and fancy free.  We moved all the time, shedding possessions with nary a thought. (Although we now regret some of our thoughtlessness: we shed a western couch and chair my mother had carried from the earliest days of her marriage to my long-deceased father.)  We were in full explorer mode.  Life was out there and we wanted to go meet it.   We’d store the books and papers, garage sale our meager possessions, and hitch-hike off to our next adventure. 

By the time we got to Detroit, in 1989, that pattern was well past tired.  I was 33.  I wanted a home.  I needed a nest.  We set down some roots.  For twenty years, we built a home and a business and a career.  We weaved connections, and mounded up piles, and plugged along.  Until it was all much too much.

The bike journey put an end to all that.  Across the miles, pedal after pedal, the junk in our minds, the globs of fat on our guts and butts, were slowly burnt away.  Returning to our home, it was painful to see how constipated and fussy we had let every part our life become. 

So out it all goes.  If it has meaning, or purpose, it gets to stay.  Goodbye to all those old and tired patterns, so long to all that “just in case” keeping.   Good riddance to “woulda, shoulda, mighta” piles of papers, books, and clothes.  The Third Third of our life is upon us.   Leaner, cleaner, clearer…those are the watch-words for this time of life. 

But my-oh-my, do we still have a long way to go!  Just as I am still sporting plenty of flubber jiggling on my gut, butt, and thighs, my house is still crowded with plenty of stuff.  My mind still cavorts in eddies of worry and piles of fear.   There’s a lot more scrubbing, and cleaning, and clearing to do.  It’s all of a piece, both within and without, to come to the place redounding of peace.

T+160: In Spandex We Truss

NOTE:  Now that the tour journal telling the story of our cross-continent ride is complete, I have been thinking about how the blog goes forward.  We will add a few more posts wrapping up the last days of the "Exploratorium," as we prepared to return to our cabin in Wyoming.  This will encompass our travels in Maine, Massachusetts, and Seneca Falls, NY.  I am also planning on adding a few "Rants, Ruminations, and Reminiscences" about some of the on-going issues, through-lines, and bigger themes of our journey.

We are now making plans to return to Detroit next week.  There we plan to continue  our explorations by bike--this time, in and around our amazing city.  Plus--- we are in the beginning stages of scheming up our next adventure, which we are not quite ready to announce.  Stay tuned! 

Long story short: The journey to discover who and where we are is not complete. (Is it ever?) We are going to keep exploring and writing about our explorations.  We hope you will continue reading.   And yes, to the many of you who have suggested that this blog become the basis of a book.  This has been my plan and hope from the beginning.  If you have suggestions for publishers and editors, I would greatly appreciate your suggestions.
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Reminiscence 1:  Somewhere in the middle of North Dakota, I realized that long-distance bicycle riding all day, every day, is an unnatural act.  Up to that point, I held out hope  I would find a way to be comfortable on the bike. 

I had sought the Holy Grail of comfortable bike shorts.  I had adjusted my seat up and down, back and forth.  I moved my handlebars this way and that.  I had changed my bike gloves.  I tried adding padding, cutting away padding, I wore extra bike shorts.  I wore bike shorts with underwear and without.   I cut pats of moleskin and affixed them to various intimate and not so intimate body parts.

And yet…

I was often miserable and sometimes in real pain. 

When I began the bike trip, I was very overweight.  While I certainly carried (carry) excess weight all over my body, there is no doubt that much of that excess was in my butt, upper thighs, and belly.  That means a lot of flesh in constant motion while on the bike.  Where there is motion, there is chafing.  Where there is chafing, there are sores and abrasions. 

I had sores on my butt where the saddle and the bicycle short met.  I had terrible, swollen abrasions on my “ladyparts”.  I could get sweat burns on my thighs and under my gut.   Not a pretty picture, nor I assure you, a pleasant feeling.

As we went along, I got stronger and slimmer.  My legs, my breath, and my stamina got better and better.  I had the strength and endurance to do the daily ride.  It was just the constant problem with my netherparts that was holding me back.

I am an inveterate tinkerer.  “Almost” drives me crazy.  If something is working pretty well, I will mess with it, and mess with it, until I have either made it better or totally screwed it up.  If the latter happens, it just spurs more “dink, dink, dink” as Wes calls it.   I always think I can figure everything out.  This is equal parts blessing and curse.  When the washing machine drains and fills slowly, I will take apart the hose and drain until I find the blockage.  When Wes’ gear shift slips, I will take it apart and put it together until he can’t stand it anymore and tapes it place  (where it did work much better.)

So it was a real crisis of conscience when I realized I could not solve this problem.  No matter how many minute adjustments I made—no matter how many types of bicycle shorts I tried, I couldn’t fix this problem.  All I could do was mitigate the damage and manage the pain.

Thus began a different kind of problem solving that when it reached its zenith, resulted in a full 30 minute dressing ceremony that began each biking day.  The individual pieces of clothing, the specific order in which they had to be donned, along with the application of various powders, painkillers, and emollients would rival the complexity of dressing a 17^th century geisha.

By this time we got to the New York and were riding in cool weather, this is what my dressing routine looked like:

1^st layer:

·       Full length sports bra with Gold Bond medicated powder under the breasts and underarms

·       Bicycle shorts* with extra strength Anbesol gel** applied to my genital area, Gold Bond powder in the front of the shorts, chamois butter or glide at various abrasion points

·       Compression knee socks to keep my feet and legs from swelling

·       An ankle brace to keep my rotten right ankle from bowing out while riding

2^nd layer

·       Bicycle jersey

·       Knee warmers

·       Arm warmers which went down to my hands and had a hole cut for my thumb

3^rd layer

·       Wool socks

·       Nylon sports pants that could be worn as knickers or full length

·       Fleece or warmth layer

4^th Layer

·       Nylon sports shirt with numerous pockets containing Anbesol, gum, tissues, lip gloss, phone, and sun screen or bug spray, as appropriate.

·       Leather bicycle gloves

·       Nylon over-gloves with electro-sensitive index fingers and thumbs

·       Baseball cap

Out the door

·       Bike helmet  (despite the nerd factor, I wouldn’t be caught without one—a close encounter with a stone fence during our bicycle tour of England convinced me of that)

·       Wind and water resistant parka

 

·       Sunglasses

In my saddle bag, within easy access:

·       Small bottle of powder

·       Chamois butter or glide

·       Moleskin and scissors

·       Ibuprofen

·       Aspercreme

Basically, underneath my sports clothes, every part of my body was being compressed and held warm by spandex.  The knee and arm warmers could be adjusted for heat or cold without the necessity of undressing.    It always gave me a bit of laugh when the bike snobs looked disapprovingly at our camper shirts and sports pants.  Underneath that shell, I was completely encased in bike gear.

Wes didn’t need or want to go through all that preparation.  He has what is known in his family as the “May Butt”—a flat, narrow butt, often connected to fairly skinny legs.  He didn’t have nearly the abrasion problems that I had.  But even so, even with his bicycle shorts and underwear, he still suffered from what he called “40 Mile Butt.”  After being on the bike for hours and miles, it is hard to be comfortable.  He would begin gyrating on his seat, sitting this way and that, standing for a while, moving left or right on his hips, just to allay the ever increasing discomfort.

We don’t know how people like long distance biker Andrew can ride for 200 miles in a single shot, although we guess there are three factors at work.   These kind of bikers are usually whippet thin—there just isn’t much flesh to rub.  Second, they probably have invested in really high quality bicycle shorts, a lesson I learned the hard way on this trip.  (See attached note on bicycle shorts.)  Third, long distance anything: runners, cyclists, rowers (whatever) probably have a highly developed capacity to ignore pain.  I remember hearing the story of a woman who often runs hundreds of miles at a time.  She said, “Let me tell you about all the different types of pain I have experienced.”  Maybe some even enjoy the pain.

I am not enough of a masochist to enjoy the pain, but I did learn that I didn’t have to let the pain control me.  It was liberating to realize I couldn’t fix the problem, but I could fix my reaction to the problem.  I easily could have let the pain ruin my trip.  Once I decided that it was irresolvable and it wasn’t going to stop me, I was much happier and had more fun.   Yet another discovery of the obvious.

*A Note about bicycle shorts:  In the course of this trip, I tried numerous pairs of bike shorts.  I bought shorts in Detroit, in Anacortes, WA, in Whitefish, MT, in Fargo, ND, and in Port Dover, ONT.   I cheaped out on the first pairs: the padding was not anatomical at all and rubbed me raw. I ended up sewing in extra padding before I threw them away.  The next purchase was long leg Pearl Izumis, which worked pretty well, but the foam padding held the moisture.  As I got in better and better shape, I discovered that I am “sweat-hog” like my brothers.  At the end of the day, I felt like I was wearing a wet diaper.   This was especially the case as I lost weight.  Loose, wet bicycle shorts are an anathema.  In Canada, after complaining to the bike shop owner, he steered me to pair of bike shorts from Sugoi (of Canada) that cost well more than $100, fit incredibly tight, and had varied and anatomically specific padding.   Matched with bike glide gel, and when I couldn’t find that any more, chamois butter, rubbed on the abrasion points, I was as comfortable as I had ever been on a bike.    Not pain free, of course--see the note on Anbesol.

**A Note about Anbesol:  When I spoke to the helpful female bike shop clerk in Anacortes, Washington about my saddle and butt difficulties, she led me to the anatomically cut Pearl Izumi shorts.  She also told me that many women riders use topical pain killers.  I was shocked.  However, I had a “come to Jesus” moment when we riding through a beautiful estuary not too far from Anacortes.  I was in such pain and no combination of shorts, padding, or whatever was helping.  I could not enjoy the beauty all around me. 

I had to do something to “STOP THE PAIN.” I thought and thought about what could do this safely.  I realized that the painkiller I had used for toothache would work and be safe for this purpose as well.  The benzocaine in the compound would numb the active and painful abrasions.  If I could prevent further damage and not suffer from the damage already present, I would be all right.  It did work.  I tried a few formulations, and found the highest strength gel was the most effective and least messy.  I would re-apply the gel regularly throughout the day. I am sure passing motorists were wondering what I was doing down my pants, but oh, well.  Let them wonder.  At least I wasn’t in active pain all day.   I could be present to the world I was traversing, which was, after all, the point of the trip.

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Posted from Centennial, Wyoming

T+155: The Final Push

Mile 4162: Portland, Maine

We leave the bed and breakfast in Meredith and push out into traffic.  It is chilly.  We have about a 50 mile ride to the little town of Cornish, Maine.  The next day, we will only have about 30 miles to get into Portland.  We both have pretty strong homing fever.  Like horses who have been on an all-day ride, but who begin to trot and can’t be deterred once they get a sense of barn and pasture, we are singled minded in our focus.  We want to get to Portland as soon as we can.

Of course, that doesn’t stop us from missing our turn and going the wrong way for a few miles first thing in the morning.  Even though we were following Highway 25, we were not seeing the lake shore as we should.  Instead we were climbing a small saddle…and making good time, at that.  It just doesn’t seem right, I tell Wes.  Let’s stop and check.   We pull off into a public area, check the map, and…can- you-believe-it—not only have we gone the wrong way, I also have a flat tire.  Grrrrr.

It is already late because of the long conversation we had at breakfast, so we try to control our anxiety as we change the tire and make our way back to what should be a connector road back to EAST 25.    (We had been going due north on WEST 25.)  25B is a short-cut, all right, in distance.  It is straight up a steep hill we can’t ride.  After a long and cranky push, we make it to the top and see the streets of Center Harbor, straight down.  I am not completely confident in our repair, so I brake like mad down the 13% grade.   Wes shoots straight down, and when I meet up with him at the bottom, he has a bug-eyed, wild-hair grin.  Near the junction with the main road, we see a semi-truck loaded with hay just turning onto the road.  He stops his truck and asks us if this the road to Sunset Hill.  Wes tells him it is, but warns him that he may not be able to make it up that grade.  He drives off to attempt it.

We don’t tarry at the lake, even though the town looks cute.  We push through Moultonborough, even though it is on another lake and has an intriguing sign for the Cloud in the Sky house.  Nope, we’ve got homing fever.  No left, no right, just go.  The road outside of Moultonborough begins the circumnavigation of the Ossipees.  We climb up and can see its western flank with big canyons and fast moving streams. 

Ossipee Mountains

As we circle around these unusual mountains, the view to our right doesn’t change.  Unlike normal linear mountains, which have a beginning, middle and end, riding the perimeter of the volcano means that mountain seems to rotate with us.  However, once we are on the north side of the circle dyke, the views to our left begin to be awe-inspiring.  The White Mountains are just a few miles away and they are impressive.  At one point, we look north and see a jagged peak far above the surrounding peaks.  A single horn of granite, the stubborn remnant after glaciers had scraped away all else, stands 1000 feet above the rocky ridges below.  We wonder, is that Mount Washington?  It certainly was the tallest mountain we had seen since the Rockies. 

West Ossipee is at 1pm on the clock of the circle.  It is the last junction before Conway, in the heart of the White Mountains.  It is also the first place we see a road sign announcing the distance to Portland, Maine: 62 miles.  There is a busy barbeque joint right at the junction.  There are lots of folks wrapping up their Columbus Holiday weekend.  We eat in the tent outside the main dining area. 

It was better people watching than eating.  Around our table we see the following sets of people.  There is a handsome young couple, both quite athletic with the tans and muscles that come from lots of vigorous outside activities, with five children.  The oldest, a teenage boy of about 15 looks exactly like his father, who looks no more than 32 years old.  The mother has long, dark hair and a kind of casual elegance that makes me jealous.  Their youngest child is probably 5 years old. They order tons of food and eat only part of it.  They all seem very confident and relaxed.

Next to them is an intergenerational family of far fewer means.  The grandmother is on oxygen.  Her two daughters are overweight and wearing tight knit pants.  They all have their hair pulled tight into high ponytails.  All three women spend a good deal of time correcting and engaging with a young tween who can’t sit still and may not be able to read.  There are numerous questions, in quite loud voices, “Do you want the chicken?  How about the pulled pork?  Please sit down!  Did you want to try chicken, or not?  Answer me!” 

Across from us is a middle aged man of Asian descent, who has led his tiny, tottering, nearly blind mother up the ramp and to a high table, where he has very difficult time getting her into the stool.  There he explains, over and over, what this place is.  It’s not clear she understands.  When the food comes, he puts a bib around her then gently helps her take bites from her sloppy, slippery sandwich.

At the far end of the tent is another extended family.  I can’t see them very well, but I have a great view of the patriarch, with his sailor’s cap, beige windbreaker, tan chinos, and deck shoes.  He looks like he should be returning from a weekend on the boat instead of the New Hampshire mountains.  He spends the whole meal on his cell phone, only breaking his conversation once, with a loud, “Oh, all right!”  while he pulls some bills from his pocket to give to two gesticulating teenage boys, who then run into the interior of the restaurant.

When I come out of the restaurant, I see Wes in deep conversation with an odd-looking fellow.  I had seen him riding down the hill to the junction on a beater bike with a wobbly front wheel.  He looked to be in his forties.  His clothes—work boots, ragged jeans, polo shirt under a flannel shirt—were ragged and dirty.  His long blondish hair was stuffed under a mangled fisherman’s brim hat.  Still, his eyes were clear, his face was clean and smiling.  He was gesturing animatedly and pointing to his bike.  I soon learn he is telling Wes of his plans to convert his bike to a recumbent so he could take a tour like ours.  He is very fascinated by the trailers and asks Wes all sorts of questions.  The conversation starts to repeat itself and it is not clear whether this fellow actually has the wherewithal to do what he says, so we gently take our leave.  As we are riding away, a young interracial couple in full black leather come riding up on motorcycles.  We hear the cyclist tell them, “See them trailers…I’m getting me one like that and headin’ out!”

A few miles down the road, through a strip of tourist oriented businesses, we have traveled 180 degrees around the Ossipees.   The main route continues circling, but our route  turns to the east, over a small pass, heading to Maine.   The country is changing from upland hardwoods to boggy lowlands with ferns and pines.  The houses are becoming few and far between.

We stop to take pictures in front of the beat-up “Welcome to Maine” signs.  We have about 45 miles to go to Portland, and still about 10 miles to go today.   We are feeling pretty excited.  It’s hard to believe our traverse of the Northern Tier is nearly complete.

Almost immediately, we see that this part of Maine is in a very different economic state than anything we had seen in New Hampshire and Vermont.  Instead of big, well-maintained “add-on houses,” we now see bedraggled cabins or rusty, raggedy mobile homes surrounded by old pick-up trucks.  There are signs, some hand scrawled, offering firewood cutting, small engine repair, or “Maine-made” crafts.   Instead carefully tended gravel or paved driveways, there are muddy two-tracks leading to yards with falling down fences.  There are also chickens on the road with great regularity.

 
There are moments of great beauty in this landscape, however, especially alongside the Saco River.  Our minds, however, are focused on getting to Portland.  Even as we go through the little town of Cornish, with its rustic shops, outdoor cafes, and groups of weekenders pottering about, we don’t stop.  Our lodging is well outside of town, in a new-but-meant-to-look old complex.  It has a bar, restaurant, and butcher shop in the downstairs retail area, and is advertising for more renters.  It’s blinking external sign, at odds with its attempted colonial tavern design, says the motel is open, but the restaurant is only open on the weekends.

Our hostess is a young, beautiful Asian whom we can barely understand.  When she finds out that we are headed to Portland, she tells us we need to go to Kennebunkport and see President Bush—the first one—he is always there.  Make sure we don’t miss seeing the bridge over the bay, she says.   She is giving us more enthusiastic travel advice when we finally interrupt her and tell we are tired and need to get to our room.  She then apologizes several times.  We are to put our bikes in a covered awning behind the bar.  Our room is upstairs.  They will be serving until 8pm tonight and no, they do not have a breakfast in the morning.

Ok.  Putting the bikes under the awning proved quite difficult because of the chained picnic table also occupying the space. Both Wes and I end up with big bruises.  Upstairs, it is clear we are the only tenants in the motel.  The room is new and nice-ish. Like the rest of the building, it is built to look nice, but made with the cheapest materials and the shoddiest construction--the simulacrum of civility.

The restaurant/bar has a number of patrons.  Most are eating lobster, which is the special of the day.  It strikes with a blow that these are probably fresh caught lobsters.  Our minds and stomachs are still in the mountains, however, so we have stir-fry and sandwiches instead.  This was probably a mistake.

We try to go to bed early, but like kids waiting for Christmas day, we have a hard time sleeping and wake up every few hours to see if it is time to get up.  We are up before dawn and out the door just as the sun is beginning to peak over the hillside.  We are passing through numerous ups and down, with small farms and little cabins.  It is not quite as disheveled as the area near the border, but this is no high rent district, either.

The road turns south near the tourist area around Lake Sebago.  We are sure that this is a beauty spot, but nothing is going to deter us from getting to Portland as soon as possible.  We have gone about 15 miles; the sun is well up.  We need to get some breakfast. 

We find a tiny, “Mom’s diner” looking café, complete with gingham curtains, and pull into the parking lot.  Just as we are about to go into the door, a young man standing next to an old 3 speed bicycle, smoking a cigarette, accosts us.  Without warning, he launches into a big story about taking bicycle maintenance classes at his alternative high school.  Before long, we have learned that he was put out of his previous school, that he loved the teacher who taught him bike mechanics, that he thought it was a great thing for people like himself, who need to learn a skill, but that the whole program was shut down because of budget cuts.  He’s looking for a job now.  He hopes he can find something to do with bikes.  He really likes bikes, what kind are ours?  Have they worked good?  Do we need anything done?  This all goes by lickety-split, with barely a breath between sentences.  Stunned, we tell him our bikes are working fine, and wish him luck finding work with bikes.  Later, he comes into the restaurant, and unleashes another torrent at a fellow sitting at the counter.  The waitress and the cook exchange knowing glances.  The waitress then helps the young man find the door and tells him can come back later.

As we are eating, two 30 year old men enter the café.  They ask the whole diner, “Whose bikes are those?”  When they hear our answer, they sit in the booth next to us, and ask us questions throughout our meal.  While they are interested, they are also just a bit disrespectful, with “Why on earth would anyone want to ride a bicycle that far?”  and “Don’t you have something better to do?”  questions.  However, they wished us well as we left, and told us we still had 25 more miles to go.  We are surprised by this.  We have been pedaling fast.  Why aren’t these miles going down faster!  The young men beep and wave at us as they drive past us a few miles later.

Bit by bit, the landscape begins to take on unmistakable signs of suburbanization.  The two-lane road becomes a four lane and the traffic is becoming more noxious.  We stop in the town of Gorham, which was originally its own town, but has been swept up in the wave of suburbanization.  We are about 10 miles from the sea.  On some material I had picked up, I see a description for a bike route that will take us all the way to the coast.  The ride on the highway is not pleasant, so this seems like a good solution. 

We find the trail right away and are following a river trail, when all of a sudden, it goes into a small park and peters out.  We wander about a bit but can’t find it again.  We wander out to a major junction on the edge of a big industrial area.  We are trying to determine if one of these roads will get us to downtown and to the ocean, when we see a bicycle tourist riding up truck-clogged street towards us.  We flag him over.

When he comes over, we are surprised to see he is a tiny, beautiful youth.  His hair is light brown ringlets curling around his bike helmet.  He has enormous blue eyes ringed with long lashes.  He is just an inch or two taller than me and looks to be about 17 or 18 years old, with soft pink cheeks. Except for his well-used mountain bike shorts and dirty wind-breaker, he looks like an angel.  He is riding a mountain bike with an odd conglomeration of bags and a huge sleeping bag.  We find out that he has cycled all the way from Portland, Oregon, and that he left the day after us, July 4.  He has never heard of Adventure Cycling, but has been making his own way using Google maps. He has been camping a bit, but mostly couch surfing or staying with various relatives and acquaintances.  More surprising, he was now turning south, on his way to Florida.  He hoped to be there by December.  He had found Portland kind of inhospitable and was anxious to leave.  He could offer us no suggestions for a route downtown.  We watched this little spirit boy mount his bike, then ride off along the ridge, heading to southern parts unknown.

We are lucky enough to find good ol’ Highway 25 again, and follow it past suburban malls, across freeways, and through an increasingly dense and packed environment.  As we go along, Wes is telling an outrageous story about how the mayor will be meeting us to give us the keys to the city…for a rather large fee, of course.  Oh, and that marching band playing the victory march at your arrival, that’s an additional $6000.   If you could just leave the fee with the bursar, I have another pressing obligation…

At one point, we are faced with a Y junction, east or west?  We would have preferred south, but that was not an option.  The east route runs us past institutional buildings and ends at Portland’s Back Bay.  Clearly, we had reached some portion of the ocean, the smell alone would have told us that.   However, the tide was out and gulls, sandpipers, and curlews were hunting in the sodden mud. 

The main portion of downtown was to our right.   We cross another freeway and have to go up to go downtown and down to the sea.   Our path takes us by a Salvation Army service center.   There are scores of homeless people hanging around, all ages, all genders, all colors.  There are those in hot conversation with others.  Some look like they are embarrassed to be seen in this crowd, some are there in body, their minds elsewhere.  No one says a words as we pant up the hill, in hot pursuit of a little piece of open ocean.

We find our way to Commercial Street.  Before us are a series of busy piers.  Some are serving the tourist trade (Whale watching, scenic tours); others, for commercial fisherman.  A few look like private mooring for pleasure craft.  Beyond these piers, we can see a glimpse of water.  We want to get there. 

The first one we traverse stops us with a locked gate.  The next one leads to a waterside condominium with private boat slips.  Although there are numerous signs saying, NO TRESPASSING, we will not deterred at this point.  We come to the edge.  There will be no ceremonial dipping our front wheel in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  It is 8 feet below the edge.  It is not open ocean, either.  We can see standing oil tanks across the bay.  None of it matters.  We have made it.  Even when two men exit the condominium and give the fish eye to the two rasty-looking bicyclists on their dock, we will not be deterred from taking pictures and sending a celebratory text.   

We made it!  It is hard to believe that we have reached the end of our bicycle journey.  Our travels are not done, far from it.  We will visit with my brother and his wife in “downeast Maine.”  We still have to get back to our cabin, then  back to Detroit, before this journey is truly complete.  But for today, for right now, we can celebrate.  We can relax.  We can begin to begin to understand all the changes this journey has wrought.  But first, we’ll pause, and relent, and have at least one day where there’s no goal to be met, no task to be done.  Aaaaah.

 

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Posted from Centennial, Wyoming

 

T+151: We Don’t Know, We Just Go…

Mile 4084: Meredith, NH

Using my handy-dandy mapping tool, I find a way to take us out of West Lebanon that will allow us to get past the congestion and freeways before returning to US Highway 4.  We are curving around a back road when we spot a tell-tale trail marker just off the road.  The trail does not show up on the program, but this looks quite promising.  We’ll take it. 

Not too far along, we see what appears like college students out for a jog. We hope we haven’t made a bad choice. The conditions begin a little dodgy, but get better as we go along.  The trail is lovely as it crosses back and forth over the Mascoma River.  We don’t know where we are, but we are paralleling Highway 4, so we keep going. 

A few miles in, we are greeted by a handsome 60-something woman and her gregarious Jack Russell dog.  She tells us we are on the Northern Rail trail, and that it goes 30 miles or so all the way up to Grafton.  She also tells us about some the sights up ahead, including Mascoma Lake, with the Shaker village of Enfield across the way.  She asks about our trip and is very surprised to find out that we started in Portland, Oregon.  She tells of a recent trip she and her husband took to the Netherlands.  There, they would ride their bikes during the day, then get on a canal barge at night for their dinner and lodging.   She tells us they enjoyed it so much, she has developed a taste for more bike travel.  We offer “tips of the trade” and we all laugh about the various strategies we have employed to deal with saddle pain.

The ride is spectacular as it passes Mascoma Lake.  Two distinct features tickle our fancy.  In celebration of Halloween, various scarecrows depicting sports deaths are placed on the park land between the trail and the lake.  The bike-wreck scarecrow seemed to be plowing into a giant rock on a small moto-cross bike, with the stuffed rider about to fly right over the handlebars.   The hockey scarecrow had a black eye and broken teeth, and a hockey stick out of his head.  The six or seven of these creations were quite funny and creative---and must have been a big community effort to design, costume, and place these images.
This is also the first place we spot what we soon come to call “New Hampshire add-on houses.”  A house might begin with a small single gabled cottage.  Another generation would add a wing at a right angle, then another might add another gabled cottage addition, which might then have a connected corridor or two with eventually joined the barn. Over the years, simple structures become quite complicated.  I tell Wes that is what we are going to do with our cabin.  He just rolls his eyes.

We follow the rails to trails all the way to Grafton, even though the track is becoming more and more marginal.  There are places where it is hardly more than a sandy two-track.   Sometimes the trail is just a few feet from Highway 4.  We look longingly at the smooth surface, but don’t leave the track, choosing no competition with vehicles over an easy ride.   The trail takes us through a variety of huge culvert tunnels, which strikes us as a good solution for contested intersections.  

We are getting discouraged at our slow progress.  We are working pretty hard and not going very fast.  It is nearly noon and we have only gone about 12 miles.  We enter a rock cut where the train track was cut through 12 foot tall granite walls, and see a small brass marker.  We have just passed the Orange Summit, the highest point on the trail, and the highest point the railroad reached between the coast and its terminus at White River Junction at the Connecticut River.  Although we had been seeing  Mount Cardigan before and beside us, we didn’t realize we had been climbing all morning. 

We stop for a break at Danbury, where we will turn off to take a road to the little town of Meredith on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.  By the time we get there, we are tired, crabby, and worried.  I know we have to go a total of 60 miles to get to our bed and breakfast.  It has taken us until after 1pm to go 20 miles.  How on earth will we ever make it the rest of the way before we lose the light?    We have an uncomfortable break at the small country store.  Both of us are picking at each other.  My phone doesn’t work and there is no wi-fi, so we can’t scout the road ahead.   A young man and several senior ladies out for a bike ride try to allay our fears about the route ahead, but I, for one, am not having it.  One lady says, “It’s not bad.  There are ups and downs, but it’s just like life, isn’t it?” 

We are still sniping at each other when we head out on Highway 104.  It is pretty easy and quite beautiful, but we are both convinced these good times will end momentarily, leaving us to slog up the mountain to the Lake.  The miles start to slip by.  We’re cruising along.  Wait!  Where’s the climb into the White Mountains?  This part of the ride has been no problem whatsoever. 

As we ride along, we see lots of the “Add-on Houses.”   However, very few of these look like working farms.  There are no animals, no tractors, no work-trucks.  The fields lie fallow even as the houses are well-maintained.  We pass the grounds of the private Hampton School, and realize that this is probably the third private residential school we have seen since entering New Hampshire.   Although the road is fairly populated, there are very few commercial establishments.  I ask Wes, “How are people making their livings here?”   He answers, “Maybe they aren’t.”   This is obviously not a place where people are trying to make a living and can’t, as we have seen in New York and Washington.  This is a place where the living is coming from elsewhere.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and the ride to get much harder, as we zip along to Bristol and the crossing with Interstate 93.   There is a little outbreak of plastic land close to the freeway.   We have about 15 miles to go when the climb in the foothills of the White Mountains begins.  We spend the rest of the afternoon climbing, climbing, climbing.  We have just cleared one good sized hill when we see a long-haired hippie-ish looking fellow standing next to his station wagon.  He has pulled his car into the little verge between our road and a right turn.  He has been watching us hump up the hill and as we go by, he calls to us, “Do you have a place to stay for the night?”  We answer that we have a bed and breakfast waiting for us.  “Too bad.” He says, “I was gonna offer you a room at my house.  Where you headed?”  We tell him, and he sighs, “Man, you got a big hill ahead of you.  Good luck.”

He wasn’t kidding.  The country we are entering reminds me a lot of the glacial highlands of the Rockies.  There are deep, cold lakes surrounded by granite shelves.  In the distance we can see foothills with the occasional glance at the rocky highlands beyond.  We are about 5 miles from the town of Meredith and we look up to see what should be called a cliff climb.   We’re beat, but too bad.  Up we go until we can’t.  Then it is off our bikes and time for pushing. 

At the top of this steep hill, our road joins the Daniel Webster Highway and the traffic increases.  Now we are tired, it is close to dusk, and we are still not there.  It is spectacularly beautiful alongside the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, but hard to appreciate it because of the dangerous road conditions.  We feel a surge of energy, however, when we get to the town of Meredith.  It is a lovely tourist town, dominated by large, white 19^th century hotels which overlook the lake.  The town is a warren of 18^th and 19^th century buildings sitting cheek to jowl on the hills just above the lake.  Like all tourist towns, it is full of restaurants, bars, and cute little shops. 

We need to make our way to the Tuckernuck Bed and Breakfast.  When I had made the reservation, the innkeeper was thrilled to hear that we were cross country bicyclists. Her husband, she told me, was an Ironman, and had participated in many super long distance triathlons.  I told her we were far from Ironmen and that a 60 mile day was a pretty long day for us.   It had been a long day, and we were feeling every bit of those 60 miles, when we found the street on which the inn was located, and saw that it was another big climb.  We were pushing our bikes up the hill, on our last legs, when a young police officer, in a Meredith Police Department sedan, pulled alongside us.  “Don’t you know you are supposed to be riding up this hill?”  It took us a moment to realize he was joking before we had the presence of mind to assure him that this was just our “cool-down.”

Our brains are fogged by exhaustion as we get to the house on the top of the hill: our inn.  We drag our bikes around to the side and meet a young couple who say, “You must be the bicyclists!  Kim has told us all about your trip!  We can hardly wait to hear your stories!”   They take us to meet the landlady, an effusive, petite blonde with a somewhat raspy voice, who welcomes us mightily and tells us how excited she is to have us staying there.   We don’t feel special, just tired, sweaty, and hungry.  She gives us a great deal on a beautiful suite at the top of the house.   It is all we can do not to fall asleep right then and there.

After a shower, we feel slightly less exhausted and want to get some dinner.  Our landlady gives us a bunch of menus and guidance.  She also tells us that the other guests in the house are the young couple we had earlier met; they were newlyweds on their honeymoon.  There is also a threesome from England, fellow innkeepers enjoying a holiday in various beauty spots of eastern and western United States.  She assured us that they were all very interested to meet us and hear our stories tomorrow at breakfast.  Apparently, there would be no sitting back and listening to other’s stories for us in the morning.
Oh, how we wished we had been better able to follow our landlady’s advice about eating establishments.  We had seen a little brewpub on the way in to town.  We thought it would be a good place to eat and listen to the Tigers/Red Sox baseball game that night.  It was a fail on both counts.  The place was packed with sports fans, all right, football fans cheering loudly, then not so loudly, as the New England Patriots barely beat the New Orleans Saints.

After a disappointing corporate plastic goo-fest for dinner, we walk around the town, follow the lakeshore and explore the historic inns.  In one, we were sitting by the blazing fire, when a distraught man came in, trailed by a manager.  His wife had lost her phone.   Could we please move so they could check the overstuffed sofas where we were seated.  We do, but no phone is found.  Off they go, the man almost wailing, “What are we going to do?  Where can it be?”

We find the town charming, but we’re too tired to do much, so we go back to our inn.  We turn on the game, but fall asleep with the Tigers comfortably ahead 5-1 in the 7^th inning.  The next morning, as we make our way to breakfast, our landlady asks us, “Did you hear what happened in the game last night?”  Her husband, who had driven the 2 hours to attend the game in Boston, called her around midnight to tell her that game was now tied and there was still one more inning to go.  He was going to be very late getting back. She woke up to find out that Red Sox had won, in one of the most stunning comebacks in baseball history. 

At breakfast, all eyes are on us.  We start by telling them about how much economic distress we have seen as we travelled across the country.  Not very romantic, to be sure, but it does get the newlyweds going.  They are from Rochester, New York and in their mid-twenties.  He has a degree in civil engineering; she in marketing.   Together, they have sent more than 500 letters of inquiry.  They have gotten a few bites, but they see people with lots more experience getting the jobs.  They wonder how they will ever get a start, but they were still hoping a job would materialize for them.   The Brits are shocked at this.  They didn’t know the economy was that bad in the US.

We tell stories of our bicycle trip through England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland and make the Brits laugh with those “innocents abroad” adventures.  We all end up telling stories of our favorite places to visit.  I don’t think we ended up talking much about our ride across the country, but it was good fun anyway.

When we make our departure, our landlady, who had generously volunteered to find our next lodging, tells us how much difficulty she had making arrangements in the little town of Cornish, Maine.  After numerous attempts, she was able to find a place for us not too far from the town.  We thank her and commiserate with her.   Who would have thought securing lodging would have become such an on-going hassle?  She tells us of one set of bicyclists who had stayed with her.  They had arranged their entire lodging six months in advance.  Only once did they miss their reservation.  It’s clear we are not that rigid or that well-organized.

As we prepare to leave, I stop to stare at a topographic map on the wall.  Just to the northwest of Lake Winnipesaukee lies a circular range of mountains called the Ossipees.  Surely, this must have been an ancient volcano.  I show Wes and he agrees with me.  We ask Kim.  No, no volcanos around here.  Wondering what else could make such a distinctive outline, we vow to look more closely as we ride by.  Our route out of New Hampshire will take us half way round this strange feature.  By the end of this day, we will be in Maine.  Almost there.  Somehow or another.

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Posted from Centennial, Wyoming