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support CampCreative!Featured Excerpt
from "Momentum Is Your Friend"Momentum
Is Your Friend:The
Metal Cowboy and His Pint-Sized Posse Take on AmericaJoe
KurmaskieFor
Quinn and EnzoMy
Princes of the PacificMy
Kings of the CoastHow
am I looking? I don’t want the truth.What
am I doing? I ain’t in my youth.I’m
past my prime, or was that just a pose?It’s
a wonderful lie. I still get by on those.—Paul
WesterbergIt’s
never enough until your heart stops beating.—New
Order
PrologueA
few things you should know about me: I’m involved in a rather
unhealthy
relationship with caffeine; it’s been going on for years, and
I have no
intention of breaking things off. Also, by my twenty-first birthday
I’d
quit
more jobs than you’ll ever have, leaving me free to follow
the only
path left
for a strapping young man of questionable aptitude and work ethic: I
became a
writer. When folks ask me what that’s like, I tell them to
picture a
super-hero
with no special powers. You’re all Clark Kent,
all the time. Worse,
someone
along the way, probably my mother, convinced me that I did possess
God-like
abilities. This will turn out to be in my imagination.What
else? I don’t know when to say quit, especially around
certain flavors
of pie,
or after I’ve climbed onto a bicycle. Often, combining my
suspect
intellect
with my stubborn resolve makes for lively entertainment. Case in point,
I once
raced a greyhound on foot along uneven New Mexico
sand teeming with barrel
cacti. This, while an
entire deck of partygoers looked on. I was not drunk or running for my
life,
nor was this a high stakes wager. I just thought it might be fun, and
part of
me actually believed I could beat this graceful animal, (see mom, and
the
special powers ruse) and because someone needed to wipe that cocky grin
off its
streamlined face. I
would learn too late that centuries of breeding are responsible for its
loopy
smile, not to mention its incredible speed out of the blocks. Also,
that there
is no margin of error when running between barrel cacti. One
more thing, I have what teachers euphemistically referred to on
progress
reports as socially excessive verbal proficiency. I’m chatty;
my mouth
runneth
over.Let’s
review. What we have is a jittery, unemployable scribe, a tenacious
bastard to
be sure, but lacking a certain intellectual curiosity, who wants
nothing more
than to ride his bicycle . . . and won’t shut up.I’m
as surprised as you that it’s worked out this well.
Part
1How
Momentum Works
The
aim of life is to live, and to live means to be
aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely divinely aware.–Henry
MillerKnow
thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.-Goethe
Chapter 1
He
did every single thing as
if he did nothing else.–Charles
Dickens
Climbing
a healthy series of switch backs through the chill of a Colorado
dawn,
I don't feel tired. I don't
feel the miles I pedaled yesterday or the weight I'm carrying now.
Pockets of
warm air hug the corners of the road. I spot wildflowers, rebels
against the
altitude, clinging to the washes as I clear tree line. When I look over
my
shoulder there's another cyclist, some industrious insomniac out for an
early
morning ride. He's determined to catch me before the top, but it
doesn't happen.
We rest beside a sign marking CottonwoodPass,
at more than 12,000
feet above sea level.It’s
every man’s secret desire to raise a middle finger to the
approach of
mid-life.
High time to stick it to the reaper while I still have the lung
capacity. I want
to humiliate that cloaked coward. Put Death in polyester bellbottoms,
gaudy
gold medallions, cue the DJ and make him do “The
Hustle” for the
viewers at
home. After
that maybe we’ll dress life’s little party crasher
in tight Lycra, ride
him
hard, then drop Death like a wet bag of dirt on some slow rise in the Midwest.Who’s
with me?! "You're coming from where?!" Insomniac asks a second time,
looking over 14 feet of loaded rig: my two boys and the tagalong bike
and
trailer I've been towing for 1,576 miles. He
nods reverently. "And here I thought I was doing something this
morning.” We
let that hang there for a few moments. In an uncharacteristic show of
modesty,
I try to shrug it off. The cycling equivalent of Jack Lalane pretending
he
hasn’t just crawl stroked the English
Channel
pulling a hundred speed boats by his teeth.“Don’t
kid yourself." The Insomniac spreads his arms wide, in an effort to
take
in the whole monstrosity, before he gives up. “Oregon
all the way to Washington,
DC
pulling that? My
man, this is a bold
statement.” I want to agree with him, but my perspective
blurred beyond
repair
somewhere back in Idaho.
These days, unless I’m in well over my head, it’s
not even interesting.
I
should probably have that checked.When
it comes to needing a competent mental health professional, Insomniac
could
certainly give me a run for my money. It turns out bold statements
backed up by
equally derelict actions are his operating instructions. He has to be
pushing
thirty, but when the helmet comes off a spectacular abundance of
piercings, ten
in one ear alone, and a little metal pipe, glowing cobalt blue in the
predawn
light, runs the width of his pinched and punctured forehead.
It’s an
unsettling
marriage of tribal art to a pack of angry teens. You know the ones who
loiter,
smoke, curse and nod with no enthusiasm from the steps of the public
library;
maybe a tribal leader failing community college who’s stopped
speaking
to his
parents. “I lost my sweetest trick bike into Blue Mesa
Reservoir last
weekend,”
Insomniac announces.A
promising way to open an anecdote, it brings my second grader, Quinn,
back from
whatever reverie he’s lost in across the horizon.
Five-year-old Enzo
pops up
through the top flap of the bicycle carrier, a prairie dog emerging at
the
first whiff of excitement on the breeze. “It wasn’t
a road bike.” As if
this
explains everything. We wait him out. “I do BMX most
weekends. Trick
riding,
extreme jumps. People know about me . . . I mean people outside the Colorado
aggro
biker
community.” We nod encouragingly. “Dudes,
I’m awesome.”I
recognize this behavior. To back up bold statements, a certain amount
of
grandstanding is required. Not always pretty, but absolutely necessary
if one
wants to complete the motion. “On weekends, we toss up a
plywood ramp
on the
railing of the bridge. It’s sixty feet to the water. Crowd
mushrooms by
noon.
Music, Frisbees, lots of vans, a real Dead Show vibe.” But
with more
tattoos
and Incubus music is my guess. “Never a question of
‘if,’ I’m just
waiting
until the crowd can’t take anymore tension.” Or
they’ve run out of
ecstasy,
perhaps?! “Where was the other ramp?” Quinn asks.
His question makes me
proud
and a bit melancholy, motivated as it is by a sense of safety and his
misguided
belief in self preservation as a universal human trait. You
can tell Insomniac lives for moments like these. “The lake
Big Guy. I’m
over
the top and landing in the lake . . . roll tape, news at 11. You want
to catch
huge air, nail a triple spin like you do this every day, then kick out
from the
bike before hitting the water. No one wants to be near their ride when
it
lands. Bonus for a quick resurfacing to snag your swag before it sinks
to the
bottom.”I
watch Quinn’s world-view shift before my eyes. As though
he’s studying
the zoo
orangoutangs hanging on high vines doing something foolish with fruit,
a garden
hose and their nostrils. The evolutionary connection has been made. I
will need
to watch my eldest son more closely the rest of the way to the Atlantic. “Nailed the
jump but did it get ugly
on the way
down. Bike came back under me. I had to take evasive action or else . .
.” “Or
else monsters would get you?” Enzo’s into the story
now, standing
completely
upright in the bike carrier, solar cover thrown back and bracing
himself with
the top bar . . . essentially turning his rig into a de-facto
Popemobile and
himself into a mini pontiff. We’ll teach him the official Vatican
wave later. “Or else I’m impaled on my
bike seat and they’re
dragging the
res for my remains.” Insomniac winks, playing to his
audience. “But I’m
not
going down like that.”I
interpret for the boys, complete with hand gestures. We should all have
access
to a diplomatic translator in Lycra. “Speared, splattered . .
. sunk.”
A
cliffhanger before breakfast… it just doesn’t get
any better for my
kids. “Bammo
. . . I have to give the handlebars a roundhouse kick, then torque my
back
around like some circus performer, Dudes. Hit the water so wrong I
forget
everything until I’m pulled out and panting back on
concrete.”The
boys sigh at the same time and in the same pitch. The only thing more
satisfying than Insomniac’s ending would have been if it
included a
prize at
the bottom of the box. They might be done, but I have a few loose ends
that
need tying. Like how he has come to possess such a high performance
road bike.
“My brother took it in trade for a drywall job. He says
I’ll bury his
best time
by the end of the summer.” Replaying how Insomniac stalked me
up the
mountain
like some sleek jungle cat leaves little doubt. “You know,
there’s not
a lot of
crossover between trick riders and roadies,” I say. Insomniac
looks
back down
the mountain. Its angle and the distance to the lake below are
something out of
a Dr. Seuss drawing. Then he eyes our bikes, the boys and the radical
tilt of
the Earth in the other direction. “There ought to
be,” he says, not a
trace of
guile in his voice. “If this ain’t extreme, I
relinquish my
membership.” We
wait for sunrise at the top of the world—casual gods
surveying an
Evergreen
kingdom that spans for miles in every direction—then roll the
summit
and barrel
into another day on the road.
Chapter
2
This
is a perfect world, riding on an incline.—Talking
Heads
We’re
a few weeks and brutal headwinds beyond our triumphant cresting of
12,000 foot CottonwoodPass.
“Come
on, Dad,”
Quinn pokes at me with a bike pump in the same fashion I’ve
seen him
use on
roadkill. “Get up! We’re almost over the
rainbow.” I’m lying yards from
afternoon rush hour traffic. The mercury tops 106 degrees and
Quinn’s
reference
is to both the Judy Garland classic and the name of the steepest hill
in Kansas
City
. . . probably
less than 500 feet above sea level, which I’ve failed to top.To
my left is a church, its spiral steeple penetrating the heights that
man can
reach. To the right, a hospital… which will come in handy if
the spots
at the
edges of my vision continue to grow.Since
clearing the Colorado
border, I’ve
talked up
Baum’s Oz classic, even calling Kansas City its
spiritual home. The
boys are to be on the
lookout for a horse of a different color. I’d give anything
at this
moment if
they could locate a canister of oxygen.It’s
on the humidity-stoked hill
of Rainbow Blvd., straddling Kansas
and Missouri,
caught between the cracks, that I wish there were
“do-overs” in long
distance
cycling.Wait
a minute. Why not join me down here on the gravel? That’s it,
lie down
in the
road and let the burning asphalt blister your sweat-drenched skin,
swallow back
the tips of your lungs poking right through your throat and try to roll
into
the shade like some wounded Green Beret hunting for a depression on the
battlefield, only to find that shade, like everything else inside the
breadbasket of America, is a Heartland lie. Okay, that could be the
heat stroke
talking, but we are stretched across what most call a gutter, two
hundred yards
from the summit, seemingly incapable of forward progress, two kids
counting on
us and it’s not getting and earlier, I’m allowed a
little latitude.And
since you’re down here, I’ll tell you what
we’re looking for; somewhere
between
the gravel pocking your soft spots and glass shards boring into your
back, the
ants going about their business as if you don’t exist and the
hint of
fresh cut
grass carrying memories of renewal . . . is our will to live.
We’ll
need that,
or, at the very least, faith enough to fake it. One
more thing, don’t lie so close to me, I really should take in
some air
that no
one’s been breathing for awhile. We’re
nine blocks, less than two miles from our destination, but I
don’t know
that. I
can only recall it’s something of an oasis, the home of close
family
friends,
God parents more or less, and their beautiful daughters, one of whom
broke my
heart in all the right places years ago. Oh, and there’s a
pool,
nestled under
tall pines and lush flowering plants. Still,
Eden
always
comes with a price tag. I
can’t beg or borrow the strength to do what is necessary on
that bike.
Eyeing
the angle of our slope divided by the build up of lactic acid in my
joints,
then carrying the remainder of the day . . . nope. I’d better
stay here
a
little longer, until my math improves or time and nature grinds the
hillside
down to an acceptable size. “Go
Laaaannnce!” Followed by a few yips and yeehaws from the
passenger side
of a
pickup truck. I’m too far gone to let its sarcastic
undertone, or what
may have
been snickering from the back seat, touch me. Nothing’s
thrown in our
direction, so there’s that. Quinn wields the bike pump like
an old man
waving
his cane at the neighborhood hooligans.“Dad?” Lack of
forward motion has
interrupted my
five-year-old’s afternoon nap. Enzo emerges from the cave of
his
carrier
holding a spray bottle of water. It sports a little fan attached to the
nozzle. “Do
you have any chocolate?” He comes to a halt over me, stares
for a
moment, and
shakes his head. My current state does not offer him much hope of
obtaining
cocoa product. I hear the little fan whirl into action. Enzo spritzes
himself a
few times, then, in an act of unprovoked kindness, what I choose to
read as
empathy, he turns the mist on his old man.“No
one’s out of gas around here until I say so,” Quinn
barks, parroting
one of my
favorite self-help seminar lines. He gets in close, eyeing me with the
disappointed glare of a high school football coach. “Get up.
We’re in
the EmeraldCity.”
I
don’t even make an attempt. “EmeraldCity
for you two, maybe,” I say. My
breathing is reminiscent of someone locked inside an iron lung.
“For
me, it’s
all tornados and flying monkeys right now.”Enzo
turtles his neck a little and scans the skies for aerial chimps and
twisters.
I’m not trying to scare them, just buying some time. It
occurs to me
that if I
can still make fun of my situation, there might actually be something
left in
the tank. “Another minute, boys, that’s all I need.
Quinn, get me some
of that
Clif recovery powder from the right pannier. It’s in a
Ziploc.”I
manage a seated position without blacking out.
Quinn has my water bottle in one hand and a bag of powder in the other.
“No, no
. . . that bag’s your grandpa. I’m talking about
the other Ziploc, next
to the
gel packs and Band-Aids.” Did I mention we have three
generations on
board?
After my dad’s heart blew, Thanksgiving morning of 2000, his
urn ended
up in my
home office. Not much of a final resting place. The man spends a
lifetime
grinding it out inside cubicles . . . it didn’t seem right to
keep him
cooped
up any longer. Deserving better in life, but when all that’s
left are
gestures,
go big. That was before every ounce mattered, back when rolling weight
on a
bicycle was just an abstract theory and a source of future bragging
rights.But
when the road hits this hard, every item, even your long suffering
dad’s
remains, feel like a burden. With Pop back in the bag, a few gallons of
electrolyte therapy down my throat, and a pair of wobbly sea legs under
me for
support, we soldier on. It’s asking too much to straddle the
bike yet,
but
pushing it the short distance to the top is no picnic either, even with
Quinn’s
help. Enzo has located the dregs of a lollipop along the floor of the
trailer,
silencing him for the moment.The
adventure hits rock bottom at what could be the highest point of Kansas
or Missouri.
In my bleary
excitement to crest the rise, I surge the bike forward faster than
we’ve been
coaxing it up the hill. Not by much, but it’s enough to catch
Quinn in
the calf
with Enzo’s trailer. I can only watch as he performs a slow
motion
stumble
forward. My stomach jumps into my throat. I’m on the wrong
side of the
handlebars. I can do little more than witness him hit the sidewalk.
Quinn’s
bike gloves and one of the knee pads work like a charm. Little
consolation to
the other knee, scuffed under the pad just enough to raise a light but
crimson
patch of blood.Quinn’s
rage and recriminations are perfectly natural. The only surprising
thing is why
it hasn’t happened before now. For a seven-year-old, over
2000 miles
into a
bike adventure, he’s been, with a few exceptions, Jedi-like
in nature.
Knocked
down by the rig that has brought us all such joy, and by a father who,
until
now, has protected him from injury, not caused it; all this is too much
of a
betrayal to let stand. His outpouring of raw emotion is a Cal Ripken
Jr. hard
ball to my head. Knowing it’s coming doesn’t make
it hurt any less.
Shame,
exhaustion and this hapless feeling of failing my son nearly sends me
over the
edge. I
pull him close, a bear hug he’s both encouraging and
resisting with
physical
violence. I take a deep breath, absorb the worst of the blows, and for
once
really question the wisdom of this endeavor. Am I giving them the time
of their
lives on two wheels, or making them do hard time in the saddle? We stay
like
that until his tears dry up and his breathing levels out. I’m
not
broken yet,
but for the first time on our “Boys of Endless Summer Freedom
Tour,”
you can
see some cracks. That’s
when he remembers the swimming pool. “According to this sweat
stained
freebee
map of Kansas
City’s
best BBQ joints, it’s nine more blocks. Just nine,”
I say. Helmet
to helmet, we lock eyes. “Gonna take all my strength (and
probably a
blood
transfusion) to get us there, son. I’ll need to go radio
silent . . .
maybe you
could count us down, block by block?!” Enzo removes his
lollipop. “I
know you
guys can do it.” And with that we have our momentum back.How
important is this underrated law of physics? Here’s the thing
about
trying to
push pounds of metal, gear, human cargo and two thin strips of Kevlar
4,000
miles across America.
At some point, no matter who you are, after the excitement and
scheming,
purchases and preparations are behind you, the full weight of your
possessions
will threaten to crush your deepest ambitions. Narrow
mountain roads focus your attention like finding religion or dating a
supermodel, ancients navigating motor homes around blind curves send
shivers
down the small of your back, hills go on without end, windstorms blow,
fatigue
settles in, flash floods threaten, black flies bite, humidity,
tornados,
traffic and worse try to break you like balsa wood under a well made
work boot. Momentum
. . . is the only force on Earth that can possibly carry you through.
But if
you want to come out the other side with more than miles, then
you’ll
have to
grab the brakes, get off the bike when your gut tells you or your legs
force
you, and have a good look around. I
decide we’ve seen enough of Rainbow Boulevard.
It’s time to
take us to the water. “56th Avenue!”
Quinn
calls out clear and strong, like he’s a cadence jockey on the
Tour de
France
postal team. The miles have really worked him into quite a stoker,
hollering
“car back”, and “on your right”
as though he’s been riding for years.
“One more
block, boys.” I’ve been stifling back cries of
anguish, choosing
instead to
focus the pain into a meditation of little circles, suffering in
silence while
tears run the length of my cheeks. I burned the last of my fumes back
on 57th
Avenue,
before
searching around for the packaging it came in so I could torch that up
also.
The top of each short but deadly rolling hill is achieved by digging
deep into
muscle memory, then letting the enthusiasm in Quinn’s voice
wash over
me and
push us along. Anyone witnessing our caravan barrel down that blvd.,
looking
good from tail to hood, has no idea, not a clue of the battle raging
around
inside. It’s that way with most of us.“59th Avenue!”
My
son’s screaming now, a half-mad third base coach waving me
in. We round
the
corner and it all floods back. I know where I am. It’s 1980.
I’m
fifteen years
old, fueled by lust, Little Kings beer in the bottle and Black Sabbath
concert
tickets. The world and my hair, know no boundaries. It was quite a
summer.The
pedals crank on one last surge of energy. I dump our rolling whale on
the front
lawn and crumple in a happy heap. No ticker-tape parades, brass bands
or medal
ceremonies; the hum of cicadas in the high branches is our only
soundtrack.
Chain grease covers my calf, gratitude the rest of me. I’m
on my feet before the boys can locate bike pumps and spritz bottles.
“Pool’s
out back.” Quinn hits me with a bear hug, Enzo whoop-whoops
from the
carrier.
We’ve come halfway across America,
and, for the moment, all the way home.
Part
2Portland,
Oregon
to Kansas
City, Missouri
"I
don't want to sell anything, buy anything,
or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought
or
processed . . . or buy anything sold or processed . . . or process
anything
sold, bought, or processed . . . or repair anything sold, bought, or
processed.
You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."—Lloyd
Dobler, “Say
Anything”
Chapter
3
"We
all
agree that your theory is
crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
—
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
JULY
1 | 0 MILESPortland,
OregonNeighbors
stop weeding their flower beds and let hoses spill water down porch
steps as we
wobble by. “Feels like a parade,” Enzo calls from
the trailer. I can
barely
hear him at this distance, but I’m glad he’s
enjoying himself. “We are
the
parade,” Quinn points out.Big
Steve, an engineer who is never without his smokes, bottled beer or his
black
convertible with suicide doors—the John F. Kennedy
assassination
car—stands at
the curb shaking his head. He smiles at us through a prodigious cloud
of smoke
rings.It’s
T minus two hours until lift off and I still have a few bugs to work
out, but
even this minor victory tastes sweet. I imagine it’s what the
Wright
Brothers
savored high on that hill. Granted, we’re going to have to
stay aloft
for more
than a couple hundred feet, but considering that 24 hours earlier our
engineering set backs had reached an Apollo 13 rescue scramble, and not
a
rocket scientist in sight, I feel pretty damn good.“Your
arms look like Popeye,” Quinn says. It really is taking some
muscle to
steady
the rig and soldier forward on our pancake-flat boulevard. I try to
ignore the
fact that we aren’t even fully loaded yet. Pannier ballast
will trim
the wobble
and straighten the ride, but add to the overall rolling weight.
I’m
vindicated
regarding a winter regimen of free weights and hours spent wrestling
with the
basement Bowflex machine—Spanish Inquisition style. I
wave to the white haired woman on the corner who wears nothing but
brown tunics
or billowing pastel moo-moos no matter the season. This innocent action
almost
takes us to the ground. Adrenaline, angle, and dumb luck avert a
pre-trip
disaster. Speed
seems to level out our ride so I increase it. More reactions from front
porches
and other pedestrians. A blind man could read their expressions.
“Would
you
look at that! He thinks we haven’t thought about some foolish
jailbreak
from
the daily grind? But what sort of man acts upon such things? And with
kids in
the bargain?!”I
opt to nod instead of wave this time, hoping to hold off a call to
child
services. If there was more time, I’d stop and explain
myself. It’s like
this; I misspent the better part of my youth on a bicycle, with a
career total
of 100,000 miles and counting. That includes six coast-to-coast
marathons, a
2,000-mile epic across Australia's
crimson-red Nullarbor Plain, and up-and-down rollers on both of New Zealand's
islands. I've chased ice cream trucks around Baja and pedaled a
surfboard to
the breakwaters of Jaco, Costa Rica.
If a 12-step program
for addicts of open-road adventure existed, friends would have tackled
me to
the ground years ago.I
was raised in a community of Tupperware pioneers making damn sure no
one would
want for anything they could order from a catalog. This left me
insulated,
parochial and restless. Who wouldn’t wander into traffic?I
did stop rolling long enough to find a full life. But a wife, two boys,
three
books, and one mortgage later, the dangerous notion that it doesn't
have to end
in one zip code keeps surfacing. Still, a meandering, unsupported,
seventeen-state ride from Portland, Oregon, to Washington, DC, at the
height of
summer, my two sons in tow, Beth lost to us at grad school, and the big
clock
set at sixty-five days and counting?Vegas
bookies call this one a sucker’s bet, throw open the window
and try to
mask
their grins as they take my money clip. Close friends talk around me in
hushed
tones. Several have the backbone to come right out and predict
I’ll get
the
whole fiasco hooked together, realize my folly and call it off in the
driveway.Only
my wife seems serene. Maybe it’s the thought of all that
peace and
quiet, but
it’s more than that. We’ve witnessed enough of each
others lives to
know real
resolve. “You need this,” she says during a rare
respite from the chaos
around
our homestead. “But if this is about our promise of always
trying to
stay
awake. You do know we were young, foolish, and strung out of
Springsteen at the
time. Okay, and only because I know you’ll be the same
big-hearted,
safety
freak of a Dad
no matter
where you
are. So, have fun storming the castle.” That
went well, considering that my backup plan was nothing more than to say
we were
heading out for some Snapple, then keep going. We’re calling
this the
WWLDD
tour. It stands for What Would Lloyd Dobler Do? For
those who missed the 1980s, or VH1’s “I Love The
80s,” Dobler was the
working
teen’s hero in Say Anything, a very smart film starring John
Cusack
that,
despite a few hairstyling missteps, feels contemporary even today. It
dealt
with love, tax evasion, kickboxing as a career choice, and how to look
cool
holding up a forty-pound boombox. (Answer: make sure it’s
playing Peter
Gabriel.) Dobler had it together even though it didn’t look
like it. He
took
chances on things that mattered while wearing a trench coat right
through
August. He’ll be our patron saint for the duration of the
ride. I’ve
had T-shirts printed up with WWLDD on the front, and Dobler’s
four-line,
star-making speech on the back. Along the way our shirts will elicit
responses
I expect: “great flick!” catchphrases from the
movie like “Keymaster!”
and the
pantomiming of someone holding a boombox while they shout out the
chorus to
Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Other
reactions will catch me off
guard. I
never expected so many thumbs-up signs and “amen”s
from folks
throughout the
Bible Belt. They mistake it for a variation on What Would Jesus Do? In
this
case, What Would the Lord Do, or Decide to Do? or What Would The Lord
Do, Do?A
sweetheart of a gal behind the meat counter at a country store in
southern
Indiana went so far as to ask me, after reading the “I
don’t want to
sell
anything . . .” quote on the back, if Dobler was some holy
man she
hadn’t made
the acquaintance of yet. Maybe on Sunday morning TV?“As
I live and breath,” I said. “But these days,
he’s only on cable.” Most
wannabe
mavericks looking to instill a bit of rebel yell in their sons would do
well to
start each morning by teaching them the lyrics, plus hand motions, to
songs
such as Violent Femmes “Blister in the Sun”, and
read aloud from Huck
Finn
every night. I’ve taken this prescription a step further.Instead
of a raft, we’re floating on five wheels and so much forged
aluminum
tubing.
Standing in for the Muddy Mississippi is every blue highway, back road,
and the
occasional farmer’s frontage path ending abruptly in barbed
wire and
robust
cursing. While
Tom and Huck had the ingenious if not quite literate Jim, Quinn and
Enzo have
to settle for Papa Joe, clever in a limited sort of parlor-game way,
chatty to
a fault and, for what it’s worth, fully matriculated. Those
Missouri
lads
fought racism and a return to share cropping serfdom. We will battle
headwinds
and the end of their summer vacation. Lest
you think I lack for loftier goals to leave as a legacy, our plan
includes
learning, to public-performance level if asked, a full catalog of
songs, mostly
Brit punk, Talking Heads and three-part harmony on Bob
Marley’s “No
Woman No
Cry” because there’s nothing more satisfying than
really putting your
suburban,
white-boy back into the line, “Oba, Oba serving the
hypocrites, mingled
with
the good people we meet” in a faux-Jamaican accent.
It’s been known to
help
heal the hurt when the engine of injustice bears down on your rear
wheel. A
simple Trenchtown gift from Mr. Marley, which I want my boys to make
their own;
if only for singing in the shower, or in lieu of slugging a nasty
coworker one
Tuesday morning twenty years from now.And
while I doubt our tales of chainring rebellion will be banned in
libraries and
classrooms someday (couldn’t find myself in better company
though), the
audacity of our endeavor is obvious. You heard the body-pierced man of Colorado:
he
called us a
bold statement. And if that impulse-free adrenaline jockey of a man
defines me
as a radical, I must be completely off the map and I just
don’t know
it, yet. Stupid
is as Stupid pedals, Sir!Regardless,
our project doesn’t want for wanderlust, a solid grab at
independence,
the
head-clearing simplicity of graceful transportation and enough
journalistic
commitment to make the ghost of Twain tear up a little. Braving first
light
with my pint-sized posse in tow, shaking off the easy pleasures of
inertia and
the merits of good sense all summer, we’re entering serious
windmill-tilting
territory.On
the face of it, blame falls squarely on an article deadline imposed by
a
national magazine, but that would be taking the easy way out. I’m
all about personal responsibility, sometimes. To
that end, I’ve been up nights assembling a long list of
reasons for
doing the
ride and for doing it now, but here’s one that feels
authentic: I've
just hit
forty, and there's no denying every man's fantasy—no, not
that fantasy,
the
other one—to see if his body, tuned up to its current best,
will stand
or fall;
stage a bloody mutiny at the bow of the boat or hold the lines.In
other words, do I still have “it”; the soaring
finger-roll into the
basket
while two men guard me, (almost had that once) the perfectly executed
swan dive
from the three-meter platform. (never had that)But
I did have “It.” What
we have then is an old-fashioned Texas
cage match pitting myself against the easy athleticism I might have
treated
with arrogance in my twenties. This could get interesting. I’ll
be pulling 14 feet of traffic-stopping rig: My custom-made 27-gear
Rodriguez
touring bike, plus four expedition-size Arkel panniers loaded with
everything
from replacement parts to fishing poles to pots and pans.
Quinn’s my
copilot,
pedaling a Burley tagalong cycle attached to my rear rack; Enzo will
lounge in
his Chariot trailer, wedged between sleeping bags, bike pumps, and the
occasional watermelon. Most days this 250-pound caravan will feel like
I'm
hauling a Hobie Cat behind me. I draw inspiration from the unsung
Sherpas
working Everest and New World
conquerors
weighed down by armor and battle axes. This brand of insanity always
gets my
blood going. Returning
safely from our “startle the neighbors” tune-up
ride, we begin the
tedious task
of refolding map after map covering the hardwood floor of our living
room. More
of an accusation than a departure date, the red circle around July 1
stands out
from the piles of papers. By pedaling Oregon,
Idaho, Montana,
a bit of Wyoming,
high country Utah,
and the length of Colorado,
we'll get heart-pounding scenery instead of choking heat; I simply
pretend not
to notice how many times our planned route crosses the Continental
Divide. But
highlighting every mile of a proposed route is akin to cartographic
masturbation. Once beyond the Big Muddy we’ll improvise our
way to the
White
House.“We’re
bringing the red light saber for you, Dad
. . . ’cause that’s Darth
Vader’s.”And
they say you’re always the hero in your children’s
eyes. Losing
interstellar
laser battles from here to the Atlantic
doesn’t bother me as much as what those light sabers weigh.With
a long holiday weekend ahead of her, Beth will pace us out of Oregon,
but
she’s about the tough love,
agreeing only to cart our front two panniers and some extra grub in the
car. “It’ll
be less of a blow that way.” She notes from the front seat of
the
Forester,
windows down, AC blasting enough to compete with the Coldplay CD. Beth
appears
to be enjoying my burdens a little too much. I’m reminded of
every Florida
highway
patrolman who wrote me a traffic ticket from a cool, comfortable,
reclined
position, with the notable exception that I never slept with any of
them.When
we finally take our starting positions, the day turns against us. Not
by
wrath-of-God thunderclaps and plague-of-frog proportions,
it’s more
subtle and
far worse. A thin, hazy summertime cloud cover traps heat and humidity
across
the length of the WillametteValley. I
soak through my
first jersey standing in place. It’s 2 pm, our rig is a few
pounds shy
of a
prairie schooner, and there’s a slight breath of sticky wind
coming out
of the
East. “Ready,
Dad?”
Quinn adjusts
his helmet.Absolutely
not. I’d look back but I wouldn’t want to turn to
salt or lose my
resolve.“Let’s
do it, boys.”