The road less traveled...

“Dread not, for the Lord your God goeth before you,” the narrator read. The cassette played as I inched up the mountain.  I clicked to the lowest gears and stood on the pedals like a gym-rat on Stairmaster. The knees hammered up and down like pistons. Beads of sweat formed rivulets and dripped off my body. 

“Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you which ye have of God? Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God’s.”

The legs are pillars;

The body a shrine;

The head a cupola of gold.

-Hindu poem

I pedaled to Buckhorn campground in the San Gabriel Mountains, a climb of 7,000 feet. I was exhausted and needed rest. I had cycled for 10 hours... and mostly uphill at 3 mph.        

The campgrounds were empty. It was a Monday in June. At seven, a van rolled to a stop not far from where I had pitched my tent. A group of teenagers piled out. They brought the noise and the restlessness of the city with them. There were dozens of empty sites, but they camped 30 feet from mine. My muscles ached; my spirit groaned. “Eli, Eli, lama sabactheni.”

At 8:30, as I was about to fall asleep, they started singing, and continued their reveling for three hours. Every time I was about to slip into sleep, they’d startle me awake. I tossed in my bag and cursed them. At midnight, their singing grew louder.

            “That’s it,” I snapped. I tossed in my sleeping bag and turned to see the silhouette of a black bear outlined against the tent. The bear was rummaging through my equipment five feet away.

            The kids sang again. Their songs were accompanied with whistles and the clanging of pans. The bear turned and plodded off.

I crawled out of my bag and jogged to their circle.

“Are you OK?” the leader asked. 

“Yeah.” 

“He was coming around all night,” he said. “We sang to scare him off. Black bears hate the noise.”

“Be strong and of good courage; fear not nor be afraid, for the Lord thy God he it is that doth go with thee. He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee.”

I’m in the desert. I ride alone on a treeless, shadeless road. There is no refuge, no relief, no shops- just the road and the sun and the stones and the creosote.

The sun drew itself up. I inched along at 4 miles per hour. I was hot. My face had reddened. I didn’t have much water, and what I did have had been warmed by the sun. I longed for shade and a cool drink! My pleasures had become much simpler.

The climbing seemed interminable. I dismounted to yell and curse in frustration. I was not in control. Primal parts of me began to express themselves. And all this time, I thought I knew who I was. 

Hours later,  I come to Slash X, a diner in the middle of nowhere. It was a refuge in the desert wilderness. I ordered 3 bottles of juice and drank them one after another to quench my thirst. I filled my bottles and canteens with cold water. The thermometer which hung on the wall read 100 degrees. “Sun’s burnin’ somethin’ fierce,” a truck driver said.

            Even the lizards are wearing sunscreen.

I continued riding.  At 7:30. I stopped and opened a can of corn. While I ate the kernels and drank the juice, I heard a few insects whirr to life. Their brains were the size of sand grains, but they had more sense than I did. The insects were teaching me a lesson in desert survival. 

The sun finally set. The rocky earth was sun burnt. I decided to continue pedaling into the night. I was a bit apprehensive. I saw sudden flashes of light in the darkness which fell quickly. Thunderstorm ahead. I was afraid. My halogen lamp went out. I pedaled through the bowels of the earth in darkness. I strained to see. The desert was still and deafeningly quiet.

            I saw comets burn themselves out in the night sky. How peaceful the desert was. I filled my spirit with its peace and grew quiet. I staved off sleep and fear and continued riding. 

At 3:45 I heard a rooster crow. At 5, the sun reared its ugly head. By noon, temperatures were over 110 degrees. I had cycled 206 miles to Needles in 24 hours.

            I was surprised at how tolerant my body was to the stress I had imposed upon it. The body was designed to endure hardship, privation, and toil. It grows fat and useless in luxury.

            I found a hotel. I showered and cranked on the air conditioner, then collapsed on the bed.

I slept through the day and woke up 12 hours later. I checked out of the hotel at 7:30 PM. A half moon illuminated the road. Again I found myself pedaling uphill.

Mountains stood behind mountains. I rode into the morning, cycling in and out of civilization.  

At 8:15 the next evening, I started off from Kingman, Arizona. I steeled myself up for the long ride ahead. The sun had set. It was dark. I was 125 miles from Flagstaff. I saw a truck stopped along the shoulder ahead, emergency lights flickering. As I approached, I noticed the driver standing alongside his rig. He waved and asked me where I was going.

“Flagstaff.”

“Jew vant a lift?”

I hesitated. There was another guy with him.

“I’m a cyclist,” he reassured me “I toured most of Europe.” I trusted him instantly. Anton was a Romanian from Transylvania, Count Dracula’s birthplace. He was transporting furniture to Connecticut “vhich is as far as I can take you.”

He didn’t look like a Vampire. I climbed in the cab.

The truck chomped at the bit and lurched forward. I felt like a mahout riding on the back of an elephant. We were brothers. Adventure was the mother  who nursed our spirits.

We arrived in Flagstaff around midnight. It was cold. For the first time in a week, I was eager to greet the sun.

“Where ya goin’?” a motorist asks me. “You’re all loaded up.”

“I’m cycling from LA to Florida.”

“That’s fantastic! Thanks.”

I looked at him quizzically.

            “Why are you thanking me?”

“You may not get it now, son, but by following your heart you remind others to believe in themselves and in their dreams. Let your life assume heroic proportions. You prove to the world that we are capable of so much more.”  I cycled to the Grand Canyon feeling 10 feet tall.

I slept in the woods, coyotes yipping and howling around me. Next night,  I slept under a highway overpass. It was a roost for bats. I slept on an abandoned mattress in a desert in Indian country. I slept in an abandoned general store. Receipts dated back 75 years. It sat beside a railroad track. The back wall had crumbled; the roof had collapsed in on itself. It rained that night. The old building creaked and shook like an old schooner. Terrible nights.  

           

            2,000 miles remain. This trip is too great for me. I lose my confidence and something else moves in. Hello, my little depression. Exhausted, wasted, spent. My will was just about broken. Fatigue had finally caught up with me. I didn’t want to continue. I will take care of you, my little depression.

            I think depression confers an evolutionary advantage. Positions you where you ought to be.

            I was happy that I was sad. My spirit was sober. I crawled out of my hole guided by faint inner lights. In sadness, the angels ministered to me and attended to my spirit.

          

             Can you feel the shirt clinging to the back or the breeze tickling the hair on the arms? I cycle on.                             

In 1817, Baron Karl von Drais of Germany designed a primitive bicycle called the draisine. It had 2 wheels and a steering column attached to the front wheel. The driver straddled it and coasted. The bicycle evolved. Inventors added pedals and a crankcase, chains, brake pads, seat posts, and rubber tires (some added wings and built an airplane- Wright Bros, Columbus, Ohio, 1903... but that’s another story).

I ride an aluminum framed Trek Y3. How the bicycle has evolved! Bicycles have gone hi-tech. BMC, a Swiss bicycle manufacturer, used nanotubes to strengthen the carbon fiber frame of the bicycle Landis rode on the Tour de France. It weighed 1 kg (2.2 pounds).  

I was cycling down tornado alley in tornado season. A storm was approaching. I was pushing hard against the wind.  The rain began to fall and I found shelter in an abandoned farm house somewhere off the I 40 in Texas (see photo above). The winds shook the old house. They were fierce. I had never experienced such intensity. I was afraid, but full of awe and grateful to be out of harm’s way.

At Amarillo, I called home. My parents’ voices were like sweet honey. My father’s voice especially.  He said he was proud of me. He didn’t talk like that often. I felt 10 feet tall. I dedicated the last 1,000 miles to him and the next thousand and the thousand after that. He was a missionary once and loved to travel. Now he was crippled and sat for dialysis three days a week.

            I crossed into Oklahoma. The wind was a Goliath. It mocked the spirit of God which was in me. “Insignificant, little man,” scoffed the wind. “I collapsed iron bridges and wood buildings and uprooted trees. I stirred up the seas and swallowed great ships and silenced the lips of the sailors who prayed for mercy. I flooded men’s cities and tore down their bulwarks and levees. I smashed their children’s skulls and crushed their bones while they prayed in their sanctuaries. I encouraged the fires to work mischief, consuming great forests and great cities. And I fashioned whirlwinds to scatter dust all over the earth.” 

Thus spake the wind. And I could not answer it. I took shelter underneath the overpass.  That once romantic idea of cycling across the country had lost its charm. It seemed like a good idea while I sat comfortably on the couch at home with a sandwich on my lap. Now, I had sore knees and bugs in my teeth. I talked myself into getting back on the bike, when it started to rain.

            Oklahoma City. I cycled through the slums. You don’t have to be Alexis De’ Toqueville to see that we still have a race problem. It was disheartening to see people who looked like me so sad and hopeless.  The slums are the physical expression of bad thinking.

            Each of us shares 99.99% of all that defines us as Homo sapiens with every other person on this planet. Our differences, striking as they may seem, are superficial.  Modern genes point to African origins. Every one of us has a drop of Kunta Kinte in our blood. We’re descendants of a common ancestor.

            But prejudice is as common as the cold. Some Japanese hate the Chinese who feel superior to Koreans who look down on Filipinos who feel superior to… you get my drift. The Hutus hate the Tutsis, the Sunnis hate the Shiites, the Bosnians hate the Serbs, the North hates the South, East hates West. It’s a disease of the mind. We should approach racism as we do diabetes or Alzheimer’s Disease.

            We are more than the silly labels that define us. but, oh, how much power we give them to define us and to shape our destinies!

            I was brooding about racism when I paused in my reveries to ask myself, “Why are you bearing this load? You didn’t cause it. You didn’t provoke it. You didn’t encourage it. I am a man of my house.” When I checked these thoughts, the breeze kissed me and the birds started chirping. They were always chirping. I just wasn’t listening.

            But I won’t pretend to be enlightened. I just wasn’t about to be moved or faked out of position. I was anchored to the Source, just beyond words.

    Now and Love. In Now is peace, eternity, simplicity, and God. In Love is joy, sorrow, charity, God. These two words, fully realized, embrace all. Did I write that or did I read it from somewhere? Either way, they are not original with me.

Arkansas is a state for Tom Sawyers and Huck Finns. There are plenty of wild and untamed places for boys to explore, plenty of rivers and lakes to paddle, plenty of fishing holes and hiking trails and forests.

I stopped on a lonely country road at 2 am to snack. A police car pulled up. I chatted with the local sheriff and he invited me to the station for coffee and donuts. I met so much kindness along the way.

Once, the moment was brief, but it was a peek into eternity, I was empty of myself and full of the peace of God. I sought that peace out, and have longed to drink from that cup again. That’s part of the reason I’m out here. The other part is to see how much I weigh.

I pedaled 199 miles one day and 194 the next.  What do those numbers mean in real terms? Protesting knees, calloused hands, fatigue, inflamed joints, sweat, a sore back, an irritable disposition, sunburn, thirst, anti-inflammatory drugs, caffeine, hunger, pain, exhaustion.

            I crossed into Mississippi. No sooner had I crossed the border that I punctured my tire. And no sooner had I dismounted to repair the tire, that a man pulled over to offer help. Doug was returning from a baseball game with his sons and offered me a lift. First he took me to Wal-Mart, but they didn’t sell tubes to fit my tire. Then he drove me to the Bike Rack, a shop in Jackson. The mechanic replaced the rear hub, which had cracked, and the ball bearings. He fixed the tire and gave me a discount. JS, a university sophomore and avid cyclist, was at the shop. He was the 1992 Mississippi state mountain bike champion. He rode with me 60 miles through the night. Excellent company. I was sad to see him go and sad to leave the friendliest folks I had met on my trip.    

            Alabama. I spotted a cyclist in distress. Jesse was 60 something. He was cycling from Mississippi to Orlando on a battered old bicycle. His tubes were punctured in a few places, but he was satisfied to patch them up just well enough to get him up the next hill where he’d inflate them again. He carried few provisions, tools, or supplies. I was awed. Here was a fellow with a will as tough as nails, whose resolve was of iron. He was coarse and poor but genuine. I gave him 2 bottles of Gatorade, 4 Power Bars, and some cash. I left him. I cycled 30 miles and rested at an inn. The next day, I saw him again pumping air into his tire.

I stopped at a Chinese restaurant. The fortune cookie read: “Confidence will lead you on.”  I folded the slip of paper, put it in my wallet, and crossed state lines into Florida.