After a long hot detour from the interstate I sat outside a food market an had lunch (tuna for protein, corn chips and soda for calories) and came to a kind of disturbing realization. Everyone driving by seemed normal enough. People driving to the store seemed normal enough. But everyone walking or cycling to, near or around the store seemed to be a cripple or mentally retarded. It was odd at first, though I didn't think too much about it. But as I left, my knees aching, I began to wonder what that said about me-- was I too a cripple? Was I a retard for biking somewhere instead of driving? Why was I doing this?
Almost out of town I passed a man slumped in a wheelchair, in the street, facing traffic. He looked defeated, resigned to his fate. And I thought I should do something, and I thought about all the times off the bike on a lonely roadside, people passing and not acknowledging me. Ceasing to exist. I didn't need help, but I wanted someone to offer. To reassure myself I'd make it through this desert, this oddysey in one piece. But everyone is too busy going somewhere to stop. Now I was the one too busy-- trying to get to a campsite before dark-- so I looked back and grimaced, but didn't stop pedalling. And I see I'm no different than the people in the cars after all.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
California Dreamin'
Cross the Colorado on I-8 from Arizona and suddenly you're in California. No visitor center, no free maps, but hey-- you made it. Things will be easy from here on out, right?
The shoulders are less well maintained in the California freeway, which is a moot point since it's illegal to ride them. After being pulled over, frisked, and interrogated about just why I wanted to ride a bicycle to San Diego ("you know how far that is?"), I was escorted back almost to the border and dumped onto a frontage road. These frontage roads look like they haven't been paved in a hundred years. If first impressions mean anything, California looks like a dud.
No, I take that back. California looks nice, with its cute little bomber plane on the "speed checked by radar" signs-- but it feels like flash with no substance. People in RV's everywhere, like Arizona, but camped out free on Reservation land. Rednecks riding dune buggies and drinking beer; more style than southern rednecks, with their clothes and cash-- but the same at heart. I didn't think California would be this way. I guess I expected it to be less like home.
{I've actually met quite a few good people since writing this, so don't think California is all bad.}
The shoulders are less well maintained in the California freeway, which is a moot point since it's illegal to ride them. After being pulled over, frisked, and interrogated about just why I wanted to ride a bicycle to San Diego ("you know how far that is?"), I was escorted back almost to the border and dumped onto a frontage road. These frontage roads look like they haven't been paved in a hundred years. If first impressions mean anything, California looks like a dud.
No, I take that back. California looks nice, with its cute little bomber plane on the "speed checked by radar" signs-- but it feels like flash with no substance. People in RV's everywhere, like Arizona, but camped out free on Reservation land. Rednecks riding dune buggies and drinking beer; more style than southern rednecks, with their clothes and cash-- but the same at heart. I didn't think California would be this way. I guess I expected it to be less like home.
{I've actually met quite a few good people since writing this, so don't think California is all bad.}
Day 4: highlights and thoughts
A security guard outside Gila Bend where the frontage road dead ends. At first she cops an attitude with me "Can I help you?" and "You're not planning on camping out here." But when I explain I'm riding just because, she asks me if I'm writing a "blog thing" and how she reads this one guy's blog who bikes around the country-- her friend recommended it to her because she's a "gypsy at heart". She ended by telling me to put Vaseline on my face, so I don't look weathered. Ha!
Seeing Misfits t-shirts on the Indian reservation. The cashier at Bashas thought he had heard of Manowar. Ads for Full Blood, a native american skateboard company. Realizing the reservation is like a third world country; signs at the gas station saying you can't buy energy drinks with food stamps. Perhaps it's like Africa-- give them everything to get by, but not a reason to make things better. Trailer with stove, fridge, and hot water heater for $500. Everyone under 65 looks attractive after being around so many RV's.
Seeing Misfits t-shirts on the Indian reservation. The cashier at Bashas thought he had heard of Manowar. Ads for Full Blood, a native american skateboard company. Realizing the reservation is like a third world country; signs at the gas station saying you can't buy energy drinks with food stamps. Perhaps it's like Africa-- give them everything to get by, but not a reason to make things better. Trailer with stove, fridge, and hot water heater for $500. Everyone under 65 looks attractive after being around so many RV's.
Day 1
Didn't expect much sleep on the Greyhound from Flagstaff to Tucson; wasn't disappointed. But all in all things wrapped up well. Aimed for 56 miles and quit at 76. Still daylight, but I want to rest. The highlight of the day was a German family that winters in Phoenix, who happened to be using a rest area at the same time as me. The husband asked me if I was riding to Ajo (126 miles from Tucson, which I thought I'd reach the first night so quickly was I gliding along the miles of flat blacktop leading away from Tucson) and responded with an exuberant "wuunderal!" When asked if I planned to camp in the desert (I was) it was "suuper!" When I told him I was en route to San Diego, it was "incrrredible!" Later they honked rowdily as they passed me in their RV.
Not everyone was so impressed; passing a farm I felt the horses looking at me curiously, while the cows seemed non-plussed. It actually seemed like they were looking down on me for riding a bicycle in the road. But later the bike stirred up a stampede of cattle, less running in fear than cheering me on, keeping pace on the opposite side of the ubiquitous barbed fence.
Hawks' cries cut the air above me. All around me, cactus; some regal , and others comically posed for my amusement. The high tension wire gurgling in some secret language, while the clouds stream by like subtitles. On my back, in the grass, it's all I can do to stay awake.
Not everyone was so impressed; passing a farm I felt the horses looking at me curiously, while the cows seemed non-plussed. It actually seemed like they were looking down on me for riding a bicycle in the road. But later the bike stirred up a stampede of cattle, less running in fear than cheering me on, keeping pace on the opposite side of the ubiquitous barbed fence.
Hawks' cries cut the air above me. All around me, cactus; some regal , and others comically posed for my amusement. The high tension wire gurgling in some secret language, while the clouds stream by like subtitles. On my back, in the grass, it's all I can do to stay awake.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Space and Time converge
Einstein believed time and space were two aspects of the same reality; clearly different, but fundamentally equivalent. Travelling has a way of making Einstein's observation abundantly clear, in that each day takes you farther from home, both physically and chronologically. And although travel brings up obvious questions about space-- why the West is perceived as more grandiose than the East for example-- it is perhaps the questions of time we should be asking. Several weeks in a car in one direction will bring you to lands far different than home; mountains and dust replace forest, ranches replace farms.
This seems normal. In fact, it would seem abnormal for the land not to change. But several weeks in a car and the landscape of time also changes. It's like being in a foreign place where everyone speaks the same language-- knowing the day of the week intimately, perhaps counting down the days til their weekend-- and you have this sense that you studied these days and weeks in school at some point, but that they've been lost in translation somehow. "Why are people riding ATVs in the woods after dark?" Then a moment of mental triangulation, pinpointing that monument on the horizon of your memory, the last firm connection you had between a place and a day of the week-- followed by some cautious finger counting: did we sleep at that campsite one night or two? Is there a day between Wednesday and Friday? And in a flash you understand. It's Friday night, and most people aren't going to bed when the sun goes down. But it feels so normal. And that is the shock-- that yourself a few weeks ago would ridicule the you now for being in bed by eight. These behaviours aren't ingrained. The bodies' rhythms, if you want to call it that, switch from speed metal to slow dance without missing a beat. So smoothly that it takes a troupe of prepubescent ATV riders to make you realize the music is still playing.
This seems normal. In fact, it would seem abnormal for the land not to change. But several weeks in a car and the landscape of time also changes. It's like being in a foreign place where everyone speaks the same language-- knowing the day of the week intimately, perhaps counting down the days til their weekend-- and you have this sense that you studied these days and weeks in school at some point, but that they've been lost in translation somehow. "Why are people riding ATVs in the woods after dark?" Then a moment of mental triangulation, pinpointing that monument on the horizon of your memory, the last firm connection you had between a place and a day of the week-- followed by some cautious finger counting: did we sleep at that campsite one night or two? Is there a day between Wednesday and Friday? And in a flash you understand. It's Friday night, and most people aren't going to bed when the sun goes down. But it feels so normal. And that is the shock-- that yourself a few weeks ago would ridicule the you now for being in bed by eight. These behaviours aren't ingrained. The bodies' rhythms, if you want to call it that, switch from speed metal to slow dance without missing a beat. So smoothly that it takes a troupe of prepubescent ATV riders to make you realize the music is still playing.
A year and a day
It's been exactly a year and a day since my last post here, and it seems fitting that I'm still writing about the South-- a different south to be sure, but not so different in all the ways we might think. Still on the road, this time exploring the southern parts of America: beginning in Raleigh and heading down to Florida and then out to Tucson by car; followed by a trip from Tucson to San Francisco (and possibly onward to Portland) by bicycle. Writing this here in a library in San Diego, I can't tell you how the story ends-- two months in to this three month odyssey, and I feel things are only beginning. And I apologize in advance; the opportunities to write are few and far between, and the photos will have to wait.
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