T+103: A Lucky Break

Mile 3690: Fulton, NY

After a difficult and frustrating day, we find ourselves in a town as least as beat up as Detroit.   Having lost Nestle, Birds Eye, and Miller factories, this small town in upstate New York is full of poverty, degenerating businesses, and people trying to make a way out of no way.  We recognize the signs and will tell this story soon.  In the meantime, our trip across Michigan begins….

After we said good-bye to our friends in Ludington, we began following the Adventure Cycling map through the Manistee National Forest.  It exemplifies everything we both love and hate about these routes.  First of all, it is a beautiful ride, but it is far from efficient.  We ride 50 miles through all sort of back country forest and lakes.  It is a lovely ride.  But at the end of the day, we have only gone 25 miles towards the east.

Throughout the day, we have been on a quest to get a good paper map of Michigan.  This is apparently a rarity, now that many (most?) people use GPS on their phones or in their cars.   In the little town of Wolf Point, after visiting with the resident young Jack Russell and ancient Shepherd/Corgie dogs, we ask the proprietor if she sells maps.  For the fourth time that day, the answer is no.  A few minutes later, a customer who heard our request and denial returns with a high quality laminated map from his car.  He will sell it to us at cost.  We are happy to accept, even though we squirm a bit to see that it comes from Wal-mart.

After Wolf Point, we make our way to the Red Moose Inn, which is south of Baldwin, Michigan on the Pere Marquette River.  We are struck by the level of abandonment and disarray we see along the way.  This part of Michigan is not looking so good.  At the inn, the proprietor tells us that he is full up with salmon fishers, but that we will be housed in a cabin just down the way.   He shows us the way to the cabin in the woods by driving us over in a 2009 Cadillac with leather seats and just 50,000 miles.  He tells us that it is his son’s vehicle, and that it originally cost $54,000, but that his son purchased it for just $2700.   “Some depreciation, huh?”  he asks.

The cabin is deep in the woods.  Wes and I are at first disappointed, because we hoped to be on the river, but once we got inside, it felt so homey, we settled right in.  After a quick trip to a local grocery store, we played “at home” and truly enjoyed the evening.

The next morning, we jounce over sandy roads and make our way back to the highway.  On the highway, Wes immediately experiences difficulties.  His back wheel is not rolling right.  We try several strategies, including realigning the axle and adjusting the brakes, until it finally dawns on us that the reason the wheel is not rolling is because Wes has 3 broken spokes.  We are now dead in the water.  I make a few calls and find out that the closest bike shops are 57 miles away in Clare, 25 miles back to Ludington, or 30 miles the wrong direction to Cadillac.   I call the Clare bike shop.  They can’t help because they are short staffed and cannot come get us.  Sorry.  Maybe the folks in Ludington can assist.

While I wonder if this is how our trip will end, Wes drags his bike across the road, removes the BOB trailer, and turns the bike upside down.  I pull my bike across and watch while Wes begins to hitchhike.  He signals to the first car by, a new truck pulling a big silver ATV trailer.  Wes gives his best “6 second sell” to the passing vehicle.  When he was younger, Wes travelled many thousand miles by hitchhiking, which he says depended upon making a connection within the six seconds a driver sees you on the side of the road.

Sure enough, the truck turns around and comes back to pick us up.  The driver asks us if we need help.  We tell him about our situation and tell him we need to get to a bike shop, or at least on a main highway.   He jumps out, opens his trailer, where a brand new Polaris 4-wheeler is secured, and tell us to load our bikes in the trailer.  Wes and I pile in the jump seat of the truck and meet our saviors.  They are Karl and Nancy Nelson, owners of the Pronto Pup in Grand Haven, out on a rare day off to try out their new four-wheeler.  They saw the upside down bike, knew we were in distress, and thought, “Something is obviously wrong.  We’ve got room, and time.  Why not?”

Nancy gets to work on her I-phone trying to find a bike shop where we can get the spokes repaired.  She calls the shop in Cadillac and finds out they are open and can do the work.   They decide right then and there to drive us the 30 miles to the north to the bike shop in Cadillac.  While driving there, we have a chance to visit.   They were out that day headed to the ATV trails around Baldwin.  It was lucky for us they chose to drive the back way from Grand Haven.  They just purchased this new ATV and wanted to check it out before taking it up to the Upper Peninsula for its maiden backwoods trip.   They are taking their first break after a long summer selling their high quality hot dogs to the resort community.  Throughout the trip north, Karl takes phone calls and makes deals to provide hot dogs at various events.

It is very clear that Karl and Nancy and Wes and I are not people whose lives would normally intersect, but we are glad to tell each other stories of life and work, bills and choices.  We connect around the challenges of running small businesses and how important good employees are to business success.  This leads to a surprisingly frank discussion about many corporations misplaced emphasis on financial success instead of employee success.   Despite our obvious ideological differences, all four of us agree with the principal that secure employees are the cornerstone of a strong economy.  We also agree that such security is no longer the norm.

In Cadillac, Karl and Nancy drop us off, wish us well, and drive off to enjoy the rest of their day.  We take the bike in, and find out that there are FIVE broken spokes.  While the young men in the shop do the repairs, Wes and I head out to get breakfast and explore the town.  We have great handmade food at the Blue Heron, wander a few shops, and are generally amazed at the comeback in this town.   We had visited a few years ago; it is vibrant and exciting by comparison. 

By noon, we are back on the trail.  The bike shop guys recommend the White Pine Trail to us.  This is a Rails to Trails from Cadillac to Reed City, going through forests and small towns in western Michigan.  The first 17 miles are paved.  It is beautiful, full of big trees, small lakes, and wetlands, and we have a blast.  As we discuss the broken spokes, we realize that Wes probably broke his first spoke way back in Wisconsin on that rotten concrete road.   Sheesh. 

We visit outback towns like Leroy, Michigan and buy handmade baked goods.  The trail turns to dirt and it gets rougher and slower.  It is far less fun.  The next 20 miles are much harder work.  We pull into the little town of Reed City, where the White Pine trail intersects with the Pere Marquette trail.  We wander up and down Upton Avenue, stare at the Yoplait factory, and think to stay here.  At the local pub, the waitress is one of those types that drive us crazy.  They don’t know anything about the town, its amenities, or its services. 

We finally determine that the next motel is in Evart, 15 miles down the trail.  We head out on the smooth and lovely trail as the sun starts to sink in the west.   This is the Michigan not seen by the roads, lush and lovely.  We stop to see the Muskegon River and marvel at its pure beauty.  When we finally land at the Osceola Grand Hotel in Evart, Michigan, it is nearly dark.  We have been on the move since early morning.  We have almost seen the end of the trip, travelled 30 miles north, and ridden more than 60 miles on Michigan rails to trails through wonderful beauty.  Like the day before, we have only travelled about 25 miles to the east, but we are incredibly grateful, first to the Nelsons, then to the creators and sustainers of these beautiful trails.

T+96: Where We Are Right Now ----Wrapping Up Wisconsin

Mile 3410: Dunnville, ONT

WARNING: WHINE ALERT!

Here we are, one day from Niagara Falls, and I am still trying to get the stories from Wisconsin finished.  I very much want to tell the stories as soon as I can, before the memories become too faded.  I keep records and notes, as well as photos, receipts, and maps of our travels.  But each blog post takes quite a number of hours to write, re-write, edit both words and images, post to the BlogSpot, then re-post to social media and emails. 

At night, after a long ride, cleaning up, securing the next night’s lodging, and getting some dinner, I am usually too tired to write.  In the morning, I am fresh, but the days are growing shorter, and it is important to use the daylight to get down the road.  I have been trying to find time in pre-dawn, and that sometimes works.  But sometimes, it is all I can do to get up, get dressed (quite a ritual!), and get on the bike.

The other irritant is the constant hassling with the technology.  For quite a long time, my USB port was not working and I couldn’t easily get my photos from the cameras.  I have twice had to refresh my computer and re-install my software because constantly using open networks and motel Wi-Fi means that malware has been a big problem.  If I harden my firewall, then often I can’t get on the internet at all.  Simple tasks become hard and time consuming.

All sorts of people write me wonderful emails, which go days and sometimes forever without being answered.  There’s not time on the bike, even if there were reliable phone service. 

Wes and I are real mixed bags right now.  In some ways, we feel great.  Wes is almost to “fighting weight”, and I am slimmer and stronger than I have been in years.  My knees are complaining about the daily workout.  Wes complains of feeling mentally weary.  There are nights when we stay in a cottage and nothing feels better than sitting down to a (sort of) home cooked meal.  We have been eating out nearly constantly, and I am sick of it.  I miss my kitchen and my “things”.  I miss all the homely rituals around food: its shopping, preparing, and presenting.    So much of this trip has been in the outback, where food choices are a result of what can be purchased, stored, frozen, or fried easily.  The ubiquitous corporate chicken breast whatever is becoming completely unpalatable to us.

Biking reduces life to the most basic level: going, eating, sleeping, maintaining self and equipment.  For most people on these trips, this is a blessing.  There are many times on the bike, where we are not talking, and just off in our thoughts, our legs moving along.   Wes has been working out what it means to no longer be a teacher.  He circles back to this point over and over, as he tries to understand his new place in the world.  I, too, try on new identities.  I have been so focused for so long on Matrix that there are huge elements of my personality and interests that have stagnated.   I want to more fully live in my body, for one thing.

Despite the wear and tear, we are really excited to see this long journey through.  We will re-enter into the US on Sunday, after just 6 days in Canada.  It has been a wonderful ride on the north shore of Lake Erie, and it has completely changed my view of this most maligned of Great Lakes.  

As for the stories of the travels, I don’t have a solution.  I will just keep moving the story forward, even though my legs are outrunning my brain and my hands.  I think I will do updates as we move along, but forward the story of the people and the ride as best I can.    Reality charges away, with story coming when story can.

Wrapping up Wisconsin

 

We have a forty mile ride to Green Bay, then will need to get across the city, and onto the ferry port city of Manitowac.  We guess the ride will be 70 miles, which we can do, but find it pretty challenging.  We have a reservation at the port hotel and need to be there because our friend Robert is coming up from Chicago the next day to spend a few hours with us.

On the way there, I am quite worried about my brother.  We still have heard nothing but that the flooding is epic.  They are calling it a “1000 year flood” of “Biblical proportions.”  I tell Wes that if something has gone wrong, I will leave the trip in Green Bay fly back to Wyoming.  He says he will join me.  We think about what we would do with our equipment if we had to leave immediately.

Shortly out of Shawano, we encounter two burly Marines, walking the Mountain to Bay trail in combat boots, full camouflage, and back pack with rifles.   I slow down to chat with them as they and we keep going.  I ask, “Didn’t we see you sitting on the grass just outside the K-mart in Shawano?”  Yes, they had seen us, too, on the mad scramble to get to rotten resort before dark.  They are sort of a Mutt and Jeff pair.   One is tall and muscular; his biceps are twice around one of Wes’.  His massive shoulders and pecs prove a long acquaintance with barbells.  His partner is also all muscle, but a full foot shorter, round and solid and a few years older.  Both have “jarhead” haircuts—almost shaved on the sides, with a little bit of length on top.

They tell us they are walking the trail from Wausau to Green Bay.  This is a distance of 110 miles; they will do it in 3 and half days.  They need to walk 30-35 miles a day and have been camping on the trail.  They are raising funds to purchase care packages for soldiers serving in Afghanistan.   They will be featured at the Packers game at Lambeau Field on Sunday.  This is the fourth year in row they have done this.  They like the challenge and the outcome.

We tell that we have ridden from Portland, Oregon, and the shorter soldier’s jaw drops.  This is becoming a more common reaction now, especially when people see that we are not spring chickens and that our equipment is not the most efficient.  We wish them well.  They return the same.   Afterwards, we talk about walking 35 miles in combat boots.  It sounds both painful and impressive.

Our friend Robert is much on our minds as we enter the little town of Pulaski, where there is a big Franciscan abbey in a large tiled domed topped church.  We take our lunch in a Polish bakery and Wes finally gets to indulge his latte coffee habit for the first time in days upon days.  When we order the lattes, the counter woman’s face darkens, and she says, “Let me see if I can get the Latte Girl to come help you.”  Well, the Latte Girl, a young heavy set blonde with a very chirpy voice, makes a damn fine latte.  Wes actually sighs when he tastes it.

To my great relief, I get a text from my brother Scott, who has been able to establish contact with Steve.  My eldest brother and his cat are holed up in the guest room above the garage.  They are all right, but there is no power, no water, and the roads have washed out.  It is still raining a bit, and his house, parts of which sit right next to Left Hand Creek, have sustained heavy damage.  His wife, Esther, is in Maine, but will fly back to Colorado as soon as possible.  It is not clear what will happen next, but it is a great relief to hear they have come through the worst of it.

The bike trail into Green Bay is pretty amazing.  For a long while it takes us through a boggy canal, far below the surrounding surface. We are in green secret passage, tunneling into the innards of the city.  We start to encounter more people on the path.  It is Friday afternoon.  Nearly everyone we see is a baby boomer on a bike. 

After a series of pretty parks, the trail ends on the northwest side of Green Bay, which is a big city.  We come out to the road and try to figure out where to go.  We point our bikes southeast and hope for the best.  At the first big intersection, we start following a bike lane, but the sun is in the wrong place.  So we pull out the handy-dandy compass, and yes, we are dead wrong.  Luckily enough, we soon find the truck route through town, which is going exactly where we need it to.   It is the right direction, all right, but boy does it suck as a bike route.   We ride a lot of bumpy sidewalks instead of fighting Friday afternoon traffic.  We stop and take pictures of the big Fox River just before it empties into the Green Bay.  We are thrilled to finally be in the Great Lakes region.

As we keep following business Route 10 and we start moving toward the inevitable plastic land that rings American cities, the sidewalks disappear.   The traffic is horrendous and fast.  We are reduced to riding parking lots and walking across patches of grass.  It is slow going.  We have been going for hours.  It is getting near 5; traffic is peaking, and we are still a long way from Manitowac.  At a tavern advertising a Friday Fish Fry (a ubiquitous Wisconsin tradition), we decide to get some dinner, wait for the traffic to calm a bit, then enter shoulderless, busy road.

Inside the dark and simple structure, a group of men and women are having beers and getting ready for the first home game of the Packers.  We order the delicious fresh perch and the folks there immediately engage us in conversation.  They are very fascinated by our travels.  The women run outside to see our equipment.  Like all women we have encountered, their first question is, “Doesn’t your butt get sore?”  I tell them my strategies for this very real and never-ending problem and I can tell they are both amazed and repelled.   (Just as a note, many women think a big seat with big pads are a solution: actually it makes it worse because there is more surface to rub.  Tight padded bike shorts are a must.   As is painkiller for my tender parts.) 

We ask about the Packers and find out they each of these people are stockholders in the team—“the better for them to get money from us,” they say.  They also tell us that Lambeau Field holds 80,000 people.  The city has 100,000: they don’t know “what the hell those other 20,000 people are doing on a Sunday.  The town is dead quiet when the game is on.”

The folks in the tavern are very concerned about us trying to make it to Manitowac that night.  There is a big debate about how far it is.  Some say 25 miles, some say 35 miles.  One thing for certain is that is a long way to go after we have already gone 50 miles.  Sensible people, (which doesn’t include Wes and  I) would have taken the hint, cancelled the reservation in Manitowac, and found a place in Green Bay. 

But no.  We are concerned about our rendezvous with Robert.  We are looking forward to not having to mad dash in the morning to get to the ferry.   We make our way out to the highway and squeeze ourselves as far to the right as we can and push on.  We get the turn off to Denmark, which is the direct back road route to the ferry.  The road is horrible.  Made of concrete blocks in the 1950’s, it is broken at the edges and separated between the blocks.  It is shaking the hell out of us and the bikes. 

We continue like this for some miles, watching the sun move ever lower in the sky.  At one point, still outside of Denmark, Wes has had it.  He stops his bike and tries to hitch a ride.  This is futile and a waste of precious daylight.  I tell him, “Let’s just go to town, where the traffic will be slower and we can talk to someone about giving us a ride.”

The town is hardly more than a crossroads, but the road greatly improves and there is a good shoulder.  We don’t stop, pushing hard to cover the distance.  Dusk is starting to come on when Wes stops a man riding a lawnmower, and ask how much further it is to Manitowac.  He tells us we still have 12 more miles to go and we better get a move on, but like a good Wisconsinite, he also wants to visit. 

The landscape is really getting interesting as we get closer to the lake.  We see a few 18^th and early 19^th century buildings, but there can be no stopping to read history plaques.   We zoom down a hill to lovely little glen.  The sun slips behind the horizon.  There is a very sweet state campground at the bottom.  We have to make a decision.  We have missed the deadline to cancel our reservation.  If we camp here, it is likely we will mess up our visit with Robert.

I call the hotel to tell them about our predicament and ask if there is any kind of shuttle service that can pick us up.  They don’t have one, but there is a service called “Two Guys Taxi” who might be able to pick us up in one of their vans.   She gives me the number.

I call and tell them where we are two adults with two bikes and two trailers.  He is in the midst of servicing one of their vehicles, but he will get someone out there as soon as they can.  I tell them we will keep moving toward them as long as there is light.  We make a few more miles and come to a well-lit intersection and decide we best stay put.  I call they guy and tell him where we are.  He is on his way in a car; a van is coming, too.

A little while later, a middle aged man and his 11 year old son pull up in small sedan.  We finagle our trailers into the trunk and back seat. “Don’t worry about the upholstery,” he says.   Pretty soon, the van arrives.  It is driven by his 18 year old son.  We move seats around, fiddle here, fiddle there and finally get both bikes in.  Wes will ride with the son.  The game younger brother will ride in the cargo area of the van.  I will ride with the dad in the sedan.

The ride to the hotel takes a fairly long time on the freeway.  We were obviously delusional to think we could make it on bike.  I have a nice chat with the dad.  He tells me he had been long-distance trucker based out of Milwaukee for 25 years, but then began to get neurasthenia of the feet and could no longer drive.  He was using some re-training dollars to go back to school to study computers.  He and his wife moved to Manitowac to help with her parents.   He was in the midst of his studies, when a school mate told him he was about to lose his business because his partner lost his driving license.  So four months ago, he became a business owner, running this transport service.  It is lots of hours, but he liked it a lot.  They mostly transported people back and forth from the ferry.  A big source of business was taking people from the ferry to the Packers games.  The hardest part for him was dealing with all sorts of customers—“quite a difference from spending hours alone on the road.”  A year ago, his family was in crisis.  Now they felt like they had a future---as long as his feet held out.

At the hotel, he charges us the ridiculously small amount of $30 for the use of two vehicles for a 30 mile round trip.  We give him more than that, and I wish we given more than we did.  I really hope this family can make it in this new venture.  

We have made it to Manitowac all right.  Not quite under our own power, but here nonetheless.   We entered Wisconsin on Sunday.  We will leave on Saturday.  We’re moving fast now.

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Posted from Medina, NY

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T+66: We’ve Come this Far by Grace, Part 1

Mile 1914: BISMARCK, SD

Getting to Circle was one of those pleasures that grows tiresome by repetition.  By about the 20^th hill climb and ride down, the thrill was gone.  After our visit with Lynette, the up and down continued and continued.  At about mile 45, we finally got to the end of the pass between the Missouri and Yellowstone Valleys.  All we had to do is turn west and go into the little town of Circle.  Easier said than done.  We faced a ferocious wind, thinking, “Well, at least tomorrow we’ll have a tail wind…”  It takes us almost an hour to go that last five miles.

There is only one motel in this little town and because the weather is still very hot, we don’t want to tent camp in the swelter.  We pull up to the Traveller’s Inn, and our hearts sink.  Not only are there junk cars all around the building, the lounge and café is in a state of complete disarray.  When I pull up to the bedraggled office sign, a passel of pigeons fly out of the long-closed lounge building.  Wes is giving me the fish-eye.  We open the door to the office and our worst fears are confirmed.  It’s a mess.  There is no one at the desk.  It smells of stale cigarettes.  The desk is a pile of papers, with a hand-written journal on top.  We look around at the dusty collection of old advertising signs and wait.

At last the proprietor appears.  He peers at us with goggle eyes, surprised it seems to have guests, although Lynette had called from the post office from Vida, and we told him we were on the way.  Wes says brightly, “Give us your best room!”  Our host says, “Well, I have been doing some renovations, but they aren’t done yet….but I think I can get you a pretty good room.”  He gives us a key and tells us it is around back.  When we cross to the back of this ramshackle motel and see a whole bank of rooms open to the elements, our apprehension only increases.  We are already considering whether we should try to find a place to camp, even if the temperature is over 95 degrees.  The room has a new door, which we open, gingerly…and are pleasantly surprised.  The paint is new, if garish.  The bedspreads and the carpet are new and look clean.  There is a nice little desk, as well as a microwave and fridge.  The bathroom is not very complete and the water faucets are erratic.  It is ok.  We breathe a sigh of relief because this is mediocre trying to be better and not horrible.  

As part of the registration, the proprietor tells us that he also works at the VFW and if we buy the first drink, the motel will buy us the second.  In fact, why doesn’t he give us a ride down there?  We are surprised, but agree after we get cleaned up.  When the time comes, his wife, after hearing the plan and apparently wanting to short circuit her husband’s trip to the bar, takes us to the VFW in a beat up Toyota with only 2 gears.  She barely speaks to us as Wes crams into the tool filled back seat.  At the VFW, we could not have felt more foreign or out of place.  The regulars barely look up and we hover at the end of the bar, drink our canned beer as quickly as possible and leave.

Later, we conk out in our ok room and look forward to a day with a tailwind to push us over the Big Sheep Mountains and into the lovely little river town of Glendive.  We were wrong on every count.  The next morning, we are up early and try to find a café for bite to eat before the ride.  No such luck.  We go out to the highway and sure enough, the wind has turned around and is blowing in our face.  There is a ton of heavy equipment and big trucks on the road.  So we push on.  

 It’s climb, climb, climb all morning over these desert-y sedimentary mountains.  We drop into a little settlement of Raymond where we want to have lunch and it is the first indication that the culture has changed.  At the farm implement/convenience store, the store owner could barely muster a hello to our bright greeting.  When we asked where we could eat our lunch, his “I dunno” was almost surly.  Luckily the postmistress pointed out a little picnic spot across the river in the trees (!) next to a large pond.  The picnic area was bedraggled and the metal shelter moaned in the wind, but it was out of the sun and by some water, so we were satisfied.  At one point, Wes wanders to see the pond and reports, “There’s muskrats here.”  Curious, I go look.  It is not muskrats, but big swirls of fish in low water, heaving and dancing around each other in tight coils of mating, I presume.  I watch from a few feet away.  Normally, fish would see me or my shadow and dart away.  These fish have something else on their mind.

We make our way to Glendive.  About 10 miles outside of town, there begins to be giant lines of empty coal cars just sitting on the tracks, mile after mile.  This is an indication of the change in the energy economy.  Years ago, before the oil and natural gas boom, train after train of coal from Gillette, WY would have come down these tracks.  Now they sit rusting in the scalding wind.

About three miles outside of Glendive, my back tire loses air.  We have been aware of the increasing baldness of my back tire, but there has been no bike shops or stores that carry my size tire for hundreds of miles.  I have a tube and a changing kit, but with a worn out tire, using either would be a lost cause.  We limp into Glendive, and turn into the John Deere supplier and ask if they can direct us to the bike shop in town.  It is gone.  Check K-mart and the hardware stores.  Nothing at the K-mart.  I call the stores in town. (For the first time in weeks, because I-94 passes through Glendive, I have phone service!)  No luck.  Now what?  No tire, no move.

I move into Major Problem Solving Mode; Wes moves into Major Distress Mode.  I offer a bunch of different solutions; Wes tells me why they are All Wrong.  This is typical.  I find out the closest bike shop is 60 miles away, in the little tourist town of Medora, ND, adjacent to the Teddy Roosevelt National Park and on the Maah-Daah-Hey Mountain Bike route.   A call to the Dakota Cyclery confirms that they have one tire that will work.  Now how to get it from there to us? 

This is where one of the most amazing moments of the entire trip begins.

While Wes and I think about UPS or renting a car, Jennifer Morlock,  a founder, along with the husband Loren, of Dakota Cyclery, says, “Let me make a few calls to see if anyone is driving over to Glendive and can bring you the tire.”   We decide we better get a place from which to solve this problem.  I call 5 or six motels in town.  All are booked.  The last one, the lowest rated, I finally call.  It has a room.  It will have to do.

We walk my bike from the industrial outskirts, over the Yellowstone River, to the discombobulating and dusty downtown.  Far from the green oasis we had envisioned, this is a town cut into sections by the freeway, the river, and the railroad.    It feels beat-up and hard-used.  On the way to the motel, we get a call from Jennifer.  She has found someone who will deliver the tire to us:  Andrew Gilchrist, a Briton who now lives in Red Lodge, MT and is driving through Glendive on his way home after participating in a mountain bike race.  He would be able to bring it to us the next afternoon.

The Glendive Inn used to be nice, but is now probably a few weeks from closing.  There is just one young man on staff and he is reception, and housekeeping, and everything.  There are a few customers, but there are dirty towels in the hallway and doors open to unmade rooms.  The flustered young man explains that the day shift of housekeepers didn’t come in today, but if we can wait a few moments, he will make a room up for us.  He disappears, leaving the front desk without staff, much to the chagrin of a customer who is angry about his remote.  When I ask the desk clerk what’s happening, he tells me that the sprinkling system failed a while ago, and did hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage.  The owners can’t operate without a sprinkler system and have been told by the health department they have 90 days to repair.  The owner can’t get a loan to refurbish this older facility downtown (even though two new big motels are being built on the outskirts.)  The inn is limping by until….probable closing and even more damage to fabric of downtown.

We walk out to the café on the freeway where we will meet Andrew.  It is full of oil field workers and construction workers.   Even though Glendive is more than 100 miles from Williston and Sidney, it is full of young and old men, often in clumps of crews, hurriedly eating and not talking to anyone else.  I came of age in a boomtown and recognize the vibe.

We have a nice visit with Andrew Gilchrist, originally of Manchester, England, now of Marietta, Georgia and Red Lodge, MT.  He runs an eco-tourism business in Central and South America and is an avid cyclist.  We are agog to hear his story of organizing a yearly ride from Red Lodge to Jackson, WY—in ONE DAY.  This is a ride over the Bear Tooth and Sylvan Passes, through Yellowstone—a distance of 250 miles.  It takes them about 18 hours.  I ask if he is a masochist.  He just laughs.

We thank him hardily for the delivery of the tire and make our way back to our sad motel.  With a certain amount of trouble we get the tire on, then use the remaining time in Glendive to re-supply.  (Wes gets new underwear and socks.  Woot! I get new support knee socks.  Yay!)

The kindness of Jennifer and Andrew are just the beginning of this amazing tale….. To Be Continued…

 

posted from Moorhead, MN

T-705: The Price of Freedom

You know it's bad when you are the architect of your own oppression.  I certainly have been and it causes me endless consternation.  The person who set up the particular trap that I find myself in is me.  It is true, so true, that worst oppression is self oppression.  What made me set up and maintain this particularly binding set of snares?

As I try to untangle this particular Gordian knot, I see several strands.  Part of it is the legacy of my family culture, in which we were taught, over and over, not to seek or trust help from "outsiders."  Family business was family business.  Of course, this is a typical protection tactic for families with something to hide.  One of the messages I remember clearly---and fight to "unhear"---is that no one cares about you or your concerns. I distinctly remember being told that people did not and could not like me.  I was on my own.

Wes got a dose of this message as well, though delivered in a different fashion.  His family's meta message was that his family owed him nothing, not even attention.  When he was 18, he was to leave and not come back.  His parents conveyed to him that they would feed and clothe him until the age of 18, then they were done.  One of the amazing...and to my mind, sad...facts of Wes' life is that his parents never saw one--not one...of Wes' plays.


 So from our family culture, we both got too big a dose of  "Don't ask nobody for nothing never."  This combines with the general Western ethic of  strident super individualism.  Throughout the West, and very strongly in Wes' family, is a strain of libertarian anarchism.  This version distrusts systems and the people in them.  It has meant that 3 of Wes' five brothers cannot bear to work for someone else and in fact have disdain for people who subject themselves to the workaday world. 

It is less pronounced in my family, being as they were Roosevelt (said like choosevelt) democrats.  While there was volunteerism and even political engagement, there still was a strong ethic that you make your own way.  Seeking help is a sign of weakness.  Giving help is required.  Asking for help is unacceptable.

Now match those system strictures with a chosen profession that absolutely requires collaboration and public engagement.  This is certainly the case with all not for profits, which are after all, public entities which exist to provide public benefits.  It is built into the DNA of not for profits that there will be multiple publics: those that give and those that receive.

In the ethic of the West, standing alone is standing free.

How many times would another person, with a  different internal makeup, have sought the help of others---of volunteers, of donors, or funders---to achieve a specific company goal.  All too often, Wes and I have defaulted to the "if we want it done, we'll have to do it ourselves" position.  

Because we are "strangers in a strange land"---despite living in Michigan for 25 years--we haven't had the regular and reliable social structures many people and organizations use to build social capitol.  We don't have family, or school, or historical connections to serve as scaffolds of support.  That we have built relationships rooted in neighborhood and ethics and social engagement is a greater tribute to the rich culture of community life in Detroit than it is to our organizational ability.

So it turns out, we have been trapped by our own freedom.  We run our own lives, it is true, but it is also true that our lives run us.  As we look to travel again, it is necessary to give up the freedom of self determination to gain the freedom of self determination.  Transferring the power of choice and yet not expecting anyone else to bear the self imposed burdens we created for ourselves is the trick I am trying resolve right now.  I am confused by this, and so I am going to do what I so seldom do...ask for help.  What would you do?  What would you suggest?