day 26: the songs in our heads

we are making our luncheon in kerkhoven, MN. according to the sign, there are 555 people in this town. the public library is one room in the corner of the civic center, plus a closet for periodicals, files, and cleaning supplies. the video/dvd collection is hanging from the closet door. the book return is a big metal washbasin. there are 4 computers, and the 10-year old next to me is researching TRANSFORMERS.

the minnesota skyline has opened up for us today: after navigating some pretty sweet bike trails out of minneapolis yesterday, we are facing another beautiful day with only flutter of headwind. we are going to depart from our dilapidated but cheerful friend rt. 12 and venture due west on county 6 until we get to appleton. there we hope to find a churchyard or high school baseball infield where we might make our couscous.

these are some of the songs that have been stuck in my head over the last few days:

"america" from west side story
the 'hostia' tenor recitative from verdi's requiem.
'rise above' by the dirty projectors (n.b. i have never heard this song. tom was just singing the chorus all day yesterday, and now i know it)
most of the first weezer album
'i believe,' stevie wonder
as we gather at the table
'the thong song,' sisqo's modern masterwork

if anyone has suggestions for BETTER songs to have stuck in my head, i welcome them. if anything, one needs a diverse soundtrack; these roads are pretty straight, pretty flat.

day 25: olfactory awareness

i'm sorry these posts are so few and far between. internet access is hard to come by; time off the bike is precious for reading, or stretching, or staring off blankly into space, or procuring and consuming peanut butter and jelly. i am also finding my reflections on the bike resistant to the blog format. having just graduated from university, my thoughts on the bike often settle into existential ruts of anxiety and doubt: i often feel that i'm not 'very good' at this trip; it's difficult for me to stay focused on the immediate scenery, the immediate moment, the immediate aches and unexpected encounters with people whose encouragement keeps us going into the next day. not feeling very 'good' at the trip makes me doubt my ability to make fulfilling things happen for myself post-school: without a concrete destination or predetermined route, this trip can seem like a metaphor for my whole future; the anxiety i feel when we haven't yet found a place to camp and the sky darkens is writ large. where am i going to pitch my tent? it's hard for me to find words for the ins and outs of this that don't seem like navel-gazing in the blogosphere.

these are some things we have been smelling over the past few hundred miles:

hay
fresh cut wood
wood burning
tires burning
cinnamon (unexplained, very strong)
the foul smell of high water that will not be accepted into the earth
cowshit (manure)
pigs and their shit
horseshit (golden stones that blaze up in the shoulder and become a little slalom course for us)
truck exhaust
lake michigan
butterscotch (outside a 'baby animal nutrition center.' disturbing.)
mint
banana bread
minty banana bread (at this point in northern illinois, i smelled mint, tom smelled banana bread. we compromised.)
fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies (we actually tried to follow this smell. we would have followed it into the depths of the earth, but we lost the trail.)
the musty interior of our tents
dust from dirt roads
elderflower
the dew burning off

we are leaving minneapolis this morning and heading west for the blue cloud abbey in marvin, SD. from there, up to bismark, ND. from there, glacier national park. we are well.

day 19: rest days in chicago!

good morning (central time):

tom and i had a beautiful ride into chicago on saturday, following route 12 from southwest michigan.  we rode through the corpse of U.S. Steel in gary, indiana (a significant blemish on the day's ride), but on to the magnificent lakefront bike path that runs parallel to lakeshore boulevard 17 miles.  early showers gave way to sun, and the bikinied rollerbladers were out in force.  we rode straight up to tom's brother sam's place near loyola university, where we participated in a barbeque, with gusto.

after a solid night's sleep, we spent the day in chicago: i caught up with some of my clan in the morning, and tom and i met at the art institute in the afternoon to investigate.

my body definitely was and is ready for a day off the bike, but it seems to be responding strangely to its novel tasks of walking, sitting, standing.  not hunched over the handlebars, my back is suddenly very tired.  i have a hard time standing for a long time.  not cranking on the pedals, my legs cramped up twice for no good reason.  i guess we'll just keep on stretching it out.

more to come; tom and i are going to roll out of sam's place this morning and take a short jaunt to batavia, IL, to stay with my grandparents for a night.  i'll post more tonight when we get there; if not, in a few days when we get to the twin cities.

day 14: bloomfield hills, MI

tom and i are at the library. this one is particularly beautiful, and apparently designed with the weary traveler in mind: we made our noontime PBJs in the little cafe area just inside the door, then walked across the expansive fiction and magazine section to the circular computer kiosks where we now have come to rest in office chairs with lumbar support.

since leaving rochester 5 days ago, we have ridden to tom's cousin katie's in buffalo, where we consumed untold and regrettable amounts of pizza, wings, and labatt blue light. the allentown arts fest was less than 50 paces away, and in the party atmosphere our bodies found that which they desired: more or less organic material to consume, in quantity. we left the next morning and rode up to niagara falls, and into ontario, CANADA. the toll was 50 cents per bike, and the canadian customs officer was much more excited about the idea of a bike trip than he was about searching our panniers, so it was smooth sailing across international borders.

sunday night (15 june, day 11) will surely be one of the highlights of the trip. looking for a place to camp along the road, we were directed by a kind dutchman to the house next door. "they're nice. it's two guys, but that's fine." fine indeed. we knocked on the door and jay, a burly bearded dude in jeans and a harley cap said "what can i for you?!" we asked if we might pitch a tent on his land. he said sure, he used to be a cyclist himself, clasped our hands, and shut the door. we were pumped. 10 minutes later, jay comes out, asks if we need to fill up our water bottles. he takes the empties into the house while we set up camp. comes back out after 5 minutes with water and 3 bottles of coors light. cheers to you, jay. we talked for a while about what we were doing, jay's cycling career in college, his farm, and the harley-davidson rallies that he goes to every friday the 13th in port dover, year round.

so then tony comes out, wearing birkenstocks and a golf shirt, clasping a big glass of merlot in his ringed fingers. he's british, a golfer, a doctor, a cancer specialist in hamilton. tom and i talked with him about the london theatre scene while jay hustled back to the house for a map and more beers. all in all we chatted with this amiable and generous fellows for about an hour before they went inside and we made some couscous.

about 45 minutes later, jay brings out some bug spray and two MORE bottles of the silver bullet and says if any weather comes in, just knock and there's a spare bedroom just inside the front door. and then 10 minutes later he comes out and says he doesn't like the look of the clouds to the east, why don't we come in and sleep in a bed. we did, and missed a killer T-storm that shook the trees.

the next morning we left a note of profuse thanks, which still fell short of the mark. given how psyched we were simply to have a place to pitch a tent, how could we express our gratitude for beer, good fellowship, and a four-poster bed?

day 12: cayuga, OT - port stanley, OT
day 13: port stanley, OT - ferry at sombra, OT/marine city, MI - algonac state park, MI.

we're heading for chicago, and hope to be there this weekend.

stage 1 complete: pit stop in fairport

leaving valley falls sunday evening, we rode a nicely rolling 30 miles down to the banks of the mohawk river in scotia, just west of schenectady, where we pitched a tent and cooked up some couscous. those two cups of granulated pasta have become our golden nuggets of nutrition. two middle-aged brothers spied us and rode over on their mountain bikes, all amped up to talk about gear. bruce and jay told us all about their routes up the mountain in the background and admired our racks. all they were carrying, bruce noted, was a rather large silver flask; from the smell of bruce's breath at 5 feet away, i was willing to bet there were only a few drops of canadian club left in the bottom.

we broke camp the next morning and met up with my good friend rebecca in amsterdam; she rode with us as far as antionette's cafe and pastries, where we ate ambrosia and drank the nectar of whatever gods dwell along the mohawk. later in the day, we took respite from the scorcher in the "grand hotel," the st. johnsville house of hospitality and hops. 2 pints of labatt were less than 3 dollars.

then we sprawled out in front of the local church and ate our cous. gutting out the rest of the day, we camped just east of utica at lock 19.

tuesday, we made our approach into syracuse and into the outstretched arms of ted limpert. ted, tom and i spent new years 2006 together in london on an english department theatre program and this was the joyous reunion of "room 14," some of whose exploits are chronicled in the earliest posts of this blog. we also met up with my francophile pal sasha at 'the blue tusk,' whose customers and beers on draft were both approximately 10-15 times that of the 'grand hotel,' where there were 2 liquid lunchers and 3 taps. we were moving up in the world. the ride into syracuse was essentially uneventful, excepting the massive thunderstorm and tornado watch that we neatly avoided by ducking into 'the knotty pine,' a delightful dive diner that sheltered us and poured cup after cup of lukewarm coffee.

we reluctantly left ted wednesday morning and rolled along rt. 31 toward my hometown of fairport, ny. there was a consistent headwind, but i am trying to accept a headwind as a fact of life, indeed, to affirm headwinds as nature's way of helping me breathe in. more importantly, the temperature was much more amenable to inhalation: after 3 days of 90+ temperatures (tuesday midday we passed a bank whose digital thermometer read 101 F), the breeze was like a balm to my sandpaper lungs.

we stopped at a roadside stand to chat with a friendly girl and eat strawberries picked that morning. she was kind to us: "surely, yous can stand here and eat 'em!" she spoke a melodious dutch into a cell phone. i thought that was weird, but whatever: the strawberries were delicious and we downed a quart without trying.

we depart tomorrow morning for buffalo, where tom has a cousin. we understand that there is an arts festival happening literally out her front door, so we are excited to explore that.

days 2 and 3 - needham, MA to valley falls, NY

day 4: half-day off in valley falls, ny

well, we've just had some delicious tuna sandwiches here at tom's uncle rich's house just north east of albany, and we're going to take a swim at the neighbor's before taking a jaunt down to the schenectady area, so i will say only this for now: we made it from boston to valley falls in 2 days, and that feels like a victory. as you can see on the map below (you can move it around with the cursor), friday we rode on through the rain to swanzey lake, NH and yesterday we beat the heat from swanzey, across vermont, to valley falls. there were hills - big ones - along route 9, also known as the molly stark trail. we feel we have made molly's intimate acquaintance. we ate lunch at the "100 mile view;" we shoveled couscous into our maws while surveying 4 states.

at that point, i was pretty sure we weren't going to make it: i was feeling pretty beat, and vermont's famous green mountains lay ahead. thankfully, we had already made most of the day's elevation gains, and the ascent into the state park was roughly half the distance of our earlier climb, and was followed by a 4 mile descent. even with our unaerodynamic panniers and fat touring tires, according to tom's cyclometer, we hit 40 mph.

i will post some photos when we get to rochester on wednesday, but the other highlight of the day was an unexpected parade in brattleboro, VT. it's their take on pamplona's "running of the bulls:" this 3 day celebration of maple products, recycling and dairy is called the "strolling of the heifers." we followed the compost float and 40 bekilted bagpipers past the "green expo" straight to the "dairy fest," where we sampled delicious cheeses and saw a performance by the new england school of circus arts. trapeze. the young woman was very accomplished.

finally, i swallowed 3 bugs yesterday. i spent a lot of the time in between meditating on different kinds of knowledge: the first had a rigid exoskeleton - i could feel it struggling against me, and i was struggling against it. the second was tender. the third was a lakefly, i'm sure.

day 1: unexpected rain, unexpected rice

as you can see from the map below, today tom and i rode to hull beach to ritualistically dip our tires in the atlantic ocean. driving winds near the surf and a light rain provided a second baptism. round trip, we covered about 57 miles, including a few wrong turns. as much as i love the new england geography, local governments in massachusetts seem to take pleasure in making thier towns difficult to navigate. we came to a few intersections completely unmarked by street signs and many more giving us only the name of the cross street. in massachusetts it is very easy to see every way one might go, only very difficult to determine where one is.

we ate a delicious brunch at this little diner across the street from the beach. i couldn't stop shivering, so i drank 4 cups of coffee to try and warm up. in hindsight, perhaps i passed seamlessly into the jitters. by the time we finished our hash browns (mixed with rice - interesting!), we were the only people in the place, so we had the pleasure of listening to the waitresses talk amongst themselves as they cleaned up. in time, they turned to us, telling us about their kids and pouring still more coffee. "here you are, sweeties." "there you go, my loves." we are loved.

tomorrow we head west towards tom's uncle's in valley falls, new york - just north of albany. we'll be there saturday or sunday afternoon; we haven't decided our pace right out of the gate. let's see how the legs feel tomorrow.

of the few i took today, this is the picture that tom selected for himself: this is what tom looks like contemplating infinite water and infinite fog.

this is the picture that i have selected for myself.

day 1: prologue

bike trip 2008

hi!

the blog is back: i am posting in response to rumors that my good friend tom cole and i will be taking a bike trip during june and july. these rumors are true. tom and i are meeting up in boston tomorrow to get organized, and we anticipate departure on thursday or friday for points west. first stage: boston to rochester, with stops at tom's uncle's north of albany and our friend ted's in syracuse.

i'll be posting again in the next few days to give a more complete picture of our immediate situation and our developing plans. tom will be blogging also, and his address is under the 'links' section to your right, so you can follow our progress from MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES. stay tuned.