Day 50: 27 Feb, 49.5 miles today, 2,658.7 miles total, Sun City West, AZ
Even before we got into Chandler, we’d planned to do a short day on the way out—an idea that was only reinforced by my weird shitty left leg (was it a pulled muscle? a bruised tendon? who could even tell?) and the fact that the previous week had been an unfortunate mixture of longest miles, most elevation gain, and most consecutive days of terrible biking weather. But as it turned out, there was nowhere to go within 40 miles of Sean Meadow’s friend’s mom’s house—and nowhere to go that wasn’t ridiculously overpriced and a potentially a haven for bedbugs within 50.
So we ended up biking 50 miles on our “short” day, from Sean Meadow’s friend’s mom’s, to the nearest warm showers stay—all without ever leaving the greater Phoenix metro area.
We never quite adjusted our mentality to conform with our new reality, however, and it was well after noon before we even started the day. It wasn’t terrible riding, as we were using a series of paths and streets with bike lanes, but it felt nonetheless like we hit ever cross street and red light in Phoenix. When we stopped for a break after three hours, we were both surprised to find that we still hadn’t even made it quite halfway.
We spent the next couple of hours riding on the Arizona Canal Trail, which was great because we didn’t have to compete for road space with cars, and because every half mile or so the path would dip under a road that we would not have to wait to cross. The downside was that most of these spooky and completely unlit underpasses were crowded with people. They weren’t necessarily homeless—there were great encampments and sprawling tent cities along the canal where a person without a housing could clearly find shelter if needed—in fact many of them had the look of people who had left their homes clean and freshly laundered that morning. I lived long enough in Seattle to recognize the gravity-defying lean of a junkie on the nod, and what was happening in those tunnels was something the participants were literally intentionally keeping in the dark. We didn’t mean them harm, of course, but riding through these dank dens felt incredibly invasive. I suppose we were literally intruding on something secret. That in itself gave the tunnels a sort of sinister vibe, though I’d also chalk a lot of that up to my middle class upbringing. But I’ve spent enough time in the less-upscale parts of cities to know that a stoned heroin addict is a threat to no one but himself.
Eventually, the canal became a surprisingly lush green park, and the path dipped in and out the bottom. The tunnels were gone, replaced with a wide open green space that was actually quite pleasant to bike through even as we were starting to feel the pressure of the inevitable setting of the evening sun. We left the path, heading now in a more direct line toward our stay, and winding up on a busy road as the daylight faded, with no shoulders and, apparently, a fuckload of Arizonan dicks, all driving into Sun City West. It was stressful enough as a stream of trucks and SUVs raced around us, grossly exceeding the posted speed limit in a petulant expression of their contempt for us, but it was when not one, but two drivers passed within inches of me while honking their horns that after over 2,500 miles of traffic, danger, and childish, weak-minded, idiotic death threats like these, I finally lost my shit.
There’s no excuse for my behavior; it’s embarrassing to admit that I sunk anywhere near the level of these licensed grammar-school rejects, weaving between lanes as hard as I could pedal so I could scream abuse at the empty, insecure jackass with mid-life crisis and a boring family sedan who had just threatened my life for momentarily slowing him down on the way to a stop light. All of a sudden, I was 26 again, riding a bike on the crumbling streets of New York with a medium-sized messenger bag on my back and a huge chip on my shoulder, a petty vigilante impotently fighting to make the streets of the city safe for cyclists from the saddle of a rusted Schwinn with curses, spit, and a few well-placed swipes with a set of house keys. This was a person I’d been happy not to be in a long time; this was the reason I had abandoned urban cycling when I returned to the states after my first season in Antarctica. And now he was throwing a fit in traffic while Sean Meadow looked on in mute horror as he left her without a lane so he could go into combat against someone who probably didn’t even notice.
We left the war zone for a quiet, suburban neighborhood—what turned out to be a planned retirement community for “active” seniors. We rode down quiet, quickly darkening streets, pedaling slowing on the sidewalk, as the adrenaline slowly faded from my blood. By the time we pulled up to our hosts’ house, the sky was ablaze with an almost fluorescent mauve—a kind of color I’d never seen anywhere before, let alone in the sky, a true Salt River Valley sunset. As they lead us into their home, our hosts told us that this spectacular sight was common, and was in fact part of the reason they spent the winters here.
I can’t think of a single person we’ve met through the warm showers community who wasn’t generous, thoughtful, and kind—even the woman who ambushed us with a $20/person fee went above and beyond to make sure we had everything we needed or even wanted. But this couple, maybe only a few years younger than my parents, and still avid touring cyclists, we’re more so generous, so thoughtful, and so kind that all the residual anger and shame I’d felt since leaving that terrible road was washed away by the time I got of their shower. They were also just fun to talk to, and we spent a happy dinner trading bike-tour battle tales over a delicious and healthy meal and few craft beers.
It was such a positive, affirming experience; a reminder that while yes, the world is full of terrible things and cruel people, it is also filled with real goodwill, camaraderie, and generosity. In a world filled anger, pain, and fear, there is still nonetheless kindness. There is still safety. There is still hope.
Day 51: 28 Feb, 31.7 miles today, 2,690.4 miles total, Wickenburg, AZ
We awoke after an amazing night’s sleep to a breakfast of hot blueberry pancakes and fresh-squeezed orange juice made from oranges from the tree in our hosts’ yard. We were working our way back to the official ACA route after a day and a half making our way around Phoenix metro using Google, and our hosts had bumped their morning ride up an hour and a half to show us the way to US Hwy 60 from their house. We were as set up for the day’s ride as we could possible be—or so it seemed. And then I noticed the telltale wobble in Sean Meadow’s rear tire of a wheel out of true. We talked it over and decided that whatever the issue, we could keep going for a while. We agreed to give it a good looking into when we took a break—though it would turn out that there wouldn’t be a single decent place to stop between Sun City West and Wickenburg, some 30 miles away.
We stopped at a Mexican place with a patio where we posted up and ate tortas and fajitas until I completely forgot about Sean Meadow’s wheel. After digesting in the unrelenting sun, we were packed and ready to go when we remembered to check out the problem. I’d been hoping that it was just a simple deformity we could fix with my spoke wrench, but it was evident right away that she had a broken spoke. On its own, a broken spoke isn’t the end of the world, but Sean Meadow carries most of her gear over the back tire. A quick phone call taught us that the one bike shop in town wouldn’t open until the following morning, and we wouldn’t come to another for a further 250 miles of desert. Probably, everything would be fine, and we could finish the trip without doing anything…but then again, maybe not. We’d had a pretty cool stay lined up for the night some 25 miles up in a community of pilots, but in the end we opted to stay at the overpriced Super 8 to the north of town and hit the bike shop first thing in the morning. Ultimately, it was the right choice—though I admit that I did start to question that fact when the motel receptionist made us wait outside until long after check in for our room. But then I saw what I can only guess was a juvenile prairie dog scamper around a rock, and I had to admit it was nice to be able to just hang out for an afternoon.
Day 52: 1 Mar, 62.1 miles today, 2,752.5 miles total, Hope, AZ
The repair to Sean Meadow’s wheel was quick, cheap, and relatively painless—though she did have to hear the bike tech mansplain to her that she shouldn’t be carrying weight over that wheel, or that her bike was entirely the wrong “type” for a coast to coast bike tour, never mind that at that moment she’d already clocked 2,700 miles on the thing doing exactly that. As the shop was small and cluttered with bikes, I sat outside, babysitting the Misery Machine and drinking coffee from the donut shop next door. Sean Meadow would pop her head out and share the tech’s latest opinion for my amusement. He had already proven to be much fuller of himself than any real information before making his insistent declaration that Hope, the town for which we were bound today, was only 40 miles from his shop. And yet we rode 60 miles to get there, oddly enough the same distance we knew we were going to ride when we’d planned the day that morning.
We’d entered the desert. That is to say, we’d been in the desert for quite some time, but had always been close to a town big enough to support a grocery store, or at least a number of chain restaurants. But today we left the hamlet of Wickenburg, rode over a small, squat mountain range, and vanished into the vast and empty and extremely dry nothingness of western Arizona. We were on US 60 the entire day, riding in a dead straight line for dozens of miles after winding out of the mountains. And after a couple of days of residual (relative) cold following the winds of the week before, the heat had returned to the desert, the sun cruel and relentless by 1000hrs. It’s exhausting to ride in, with the result that by the time we got to Hope, a town consisting of exactly one each RV park, church, possibly-closed gas station, and possibly-closed antique store and literally nothing else, we were dead tired and ready to crawl into bed, even though we still had an hour of daylight left.
It had always been difficult not to focus on the end of this trip, but as we came into the last week and opened up the final ACA map, it became impossible. Every rest stop included a quick check for the total miles remaining. Arizona had so far proven to be the most beautiful part of the journey, and yet I could wait for it the end. I was tired of riding with traffic, tired of “bike safe” routes that proved to be dangerous and terrifying, tired of promises of wide shoulders that in reality left us no more than a foot away from speeding semis. Now that we were closing in on the Pacific, I was wearied at the thought of going back to day-long water carries, wearied of the chronic pain I had learned to accept in my knees and my shoulder and my calf, and I was becoming increasingly worried that my chapped and aching ass would never recover. And I was so fucking over having mechanical issue after mechanical issue with the bikes. With nearly 300 miles left to go, we still had many long days ahead, each with its own challenges to meet and spectacular scenery to take in. Nonetheless, we were racing for the finish line, and it was becoming increasingly hard to focus on anything but the light at the end of this harsh, bright tunnel.
Day 53: 2 Mar, 34.8 miles today, 2,787.3 miles total, BLM land outside of Quartzsite, AZ
Today we’d planned to bike around 75 miles, making it into California and setting ourselves up to cross a long, dry stretch the following day. Today we did not achieve our goal.
I’d been growing increasingly concerned about the baldness of the Misery Machine’s rear tire, but I was still fairly sure I could finish out the trip with it—sure enough anyway to sit outside the last bike shop for 250 miles without even poking my head inside. That certainty came to an abrupt end when I got a good look at just how threadbare the tire had become during a break this morning. It was in bad shape; I wasn’t even confident it would make it the 60 miles we still had left in the day. As it turned out, I was right to be worried.
We left the town of Quartzsite shortly before noon, just as the day was getting really hot. I could feel that my rear tire was low, but I decided to push on anyway. As we crossed through some wide open BLM land on fairly rough road, the tire was worse than ever. Determined to make it to shade before trying to fix anything, we pushed on to an overpass, where I flipped the Misery Machine over and started using my water reserves to try and find the leak. Sure enough, a wide section had worn through. It was more abrasion than puncture, meaning, essentially, that the tire was pretty much dead. I could spend an hour trying to patch it from the inside—I might even be able to fix that section well enough to last through to San Diego—but there were at least three other areas that would most likely break through in the next day or two. What I needed was a new tire. Like, immediately.
Sean Meadow, who still thankfully had cell service, sprang into action, locating the nearest bike shop—75 miles away in Yuma—and finding a rental to get us there. It was a pricey solution, but one that would save a lot of time and hassle over one of us trying to hitch all the way and back with a big ass bike wheel. Calls made, she started biking the 8 miles back to Quartzsite to pick up the only vehicle available in town—a 10’ box truck. I started back as soon as I had pumped enough air in the tire to get me a handful of miles, but I did have to stop to fill the tire again on the way. When I showed up, the truck was ready to go, so we loaded our bikes and headed to Yuma. An hour and a half each way for a tire replacement that took all of ten minutes to do. Over $300 spent to get a tire that by itself cost $34. At least the mountains on that side trip were among the prettiest and most wonderfully baroque we’d seen this whole time.
That $300 also bought us our last best chance to actually finish this ride within the timeframe we’d set—and by this time, committed to. Our margin of error had been eroded to nothing, as the whole tire fiasco had cost us a full day of riding, since we weren’t making any further progress today. We could easily hit Palo Verde, which had been today’s original goal, by midday; the problem was that there wasn’t a viable place to stop for another 75+ miles beyond that. So we’d end up with a short day tomorrow, and finish where we’d meant to finish today. We could still theoretically get to San Diego in time…we just needed five more days without anything else going seriously wrong.
For a change.
Day 54: 3 Mar, 40.5 miles today, 2,827.8 miles total, Palo Verde, CA
Aside from the continuous highway noise that I’ve come to think of as the ubiquitous soundtrack to bikepacking, the BLM campsite was actually pretty nice. No amenities like water, of course, but the ground was flat and dry and views were stunning, if austere. We were up at first light and on our way a little while later.
After a few miles, we were routed back onto I-10, which was as tiresome as ever. Riding the interstate is a huge pain in the ass, because even though the shoulder is typically pretty wide, it’s also always littered with tire debris and other trash. It’s an obstacle course, but one with a constraint stream of semis flowing by at high speed. It was particularly aggravating when I misread the map and lead us past our exit. This is how we ended up coming into our last state by riding our bikes on a truck lane though an agricultural checkpoint. I wasn’t sure if any of the guards would have a problem with that, but the only one I saw waved at us as we passed. We were in California.
The rest of the day was pretty short and unremarkable: we rode for the next couple of hours through flat open desert, converted into farmland with a series of irrigation canals. It was dusty, and it was hot despite the growing headwind that picked up as we made into the trailer park in Palo Verde listed as place to camp in the ACA guide.
The people here are very friendly and kind, and we were quite grateful to be able to sleep in the rec room instead of having to pitch a tent in the wind. But it is not exactly in the best condition, the sort of place where you want to wear shoes on the carpet and avoid letting any skin make contact with the couch. The men’s bathroom is a lovecraftian horror, and this after being “cleaned.” As someone who’s lived in the woods and pooped in some very questionable places, I wouldn’t say I have high standards, but even I can’t imagine using the spattered and stained facilities that have been offered here—though I hear the women’s room is at least passably clean.
Day 55, 4 Mar, 68.7 miles today, 2,896.5 miles total, Brawley, CA
We left the trailer park early, which besides giving us on a jump on the day’s ride let me use the women’s room without fear of judgement or interruption from the park’s residents. I’d slept fitfully on a broken and sagging couch, continually waking up with the fear of vermin taking up residence in my sleeping bag. I’m still not quite sure how, but Sean Meadow managed to sleep even more poorly on her pad on the floor. Maybe that place is haunted as well as gross.
We headed back out onto CA SR 78, a road which had given us no trouble the day before but which became something of a 35-mile nightmare when the shoulder vanished and didn’t return for almost, well, 35 miles. It was a kind of torture, riding well into the lane in order to force the vehicles going 70+ mph not to pass too closely to us, and then veering toward the edge of the road as they drew near. It was a stupid game I had to play all morning, with stakes that were unreasonably high. Making matters worse was the rolling terrain, which limited visibility for us as well as the motorists. Say what you will about hiking, but in almost 5,000 miles I’ve never climbed a series of hills at a sprint to a sour getting murdered by a car.
Frequently, we pulled off the road entirely—become stuck immediately in the sand and grit on the roadside—in order to avoid yet another string of vehicles coming up behind us that wouldn’t be able to give us enough clearance due to the string of vehicles coming the other way. And though both law and basic courtesy would demand that any vehicles behind us wait patiently until it was safe to pass, long experience had already taught us exactly how unlikely that was.
In fact, we were forced off the road on two separate occasions by a Pilot fuel truck that refused to move over a single inch for us, despite the fact that the other lane was completely clear. Just a dick being a dick for the sake of being a dick and achieving absolutely no goal other than being a dick. I ascribe similar motives to the eastbound black SUV who could very clearly see us taking up the westbound lane and decided to go ahead and pass the vehicle in front of him, anyway. I almost didn’t get out the way for that one, I was so stunned that someone could consciously make the choice to be that much of a stupid, petty, giant, mouth-breathing dick.
As we entered the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness area, a sandy wasteland riddled with dune buggies and rednecks, we got the first rain we’d seen since leaving Austin. It wasn’t much, but it was odd coincidence that after all the miles of desert we’ve seen, we’d get precipitation in the most deserty-looking stretch of the entire trip.
Speaking of things I was dumb enough to have hoped we’re behind us: once we were past the long section of 78 that pointlessly had no shoulder, and past the endless rolling hills, the dunes, the rain, and the rednecks, and we were on a nice, flat bit of road with a nice wide shoulder, we had our first really serious headwind since leaving Duncan. I was already exhausted, but literally couldn’t coast for the rest of the day without coming quickly to a stop.
We’re looking at worse winds tomorrow, another long, long, with the last huge climb of the trip—pretty much exactly the scenario I swore never ever again to repeat after the excruciating day into Silver City. But our recent mechanical problems have eroded our margin of error away completely, and it’s either bike up a mountain into a 30mph or give up riding coast to coast. Which just isn’t really a choice, you know? This last week on the road is such a brutal kick in the crotch. I just want to be fucking done with the traffic and the hills and the wind and this literal pain in my ass; under the right circumstances, three days can feel like a god dammed lifetime.
Day 56: 5 Mar, 14.0 miles today, 2,910.5 miles total, El Centro, CA
The plan had been to get up early enough to start biking around sunrise and hopefully get a good start before the wind got too gnarly, but walking to the hotel office for an undercooked waffle at 0530hrs we could see from the way the trees were whipping back and forth that it was already too late. After several cups of coffee, much hand-wringing, and a lot of discussion about alternate routes and mileage, we decided to bike 14 miles to the last town we’d hit before a 30 mile push straight into the the wind across the desert, where we could reevaluate our circumstances.
By the time we got to El Centro, the wind had picked up enough that even staying upright while simply walking the bikes—let alone riding them—was a real challenge, and the telltale beige-white cloud wall of a dust storm had obscured the mountains we still needed to cross. Staying in the Imperial Valley would complicate the next couple of days, as we’d have to cover all the elevation and distance with even less time, but we’d only be heading directly into the worst of the weather if we tried to go any further. So we found a cheap hotel close to our route called the “Classic Inn” that let us check in even though it wasn’t even 1000hrs yet.
It was a mixed blessing. The room was quite possibly the single most disgusting place I’ve inhabited for even a day. It wasn’t so much the countless roaches in the bathroom, the visible dirt and grime and nicotine smeared and dripping down every door and wall, the empty holes where light switches or outlets ought to be, the masses of flies living and dead massed on the window sill, the horrendous grinding sound the moldy mini fridge made every half hour, the noxious chemical smell that you never quite got used to, the thick kaleidoscopic brown stains visible on the exposed box spring mattress, the cigarette burns in the comforter, or even the unidentifiable debris littering the top the of the headboard. It was the obviously used fake nails and eyelashes left on the floor that truly turned my stomach. This room was everything every fear I’d harbored for the rec room at the trailer park made manifest. It was really fucking gross.
Partly just to get the hell out of that paid-by-the-night dumpster we went to the next town over to see the new Sad Emo Batman movie. It wasn’t great, but it was nonetheless a nice retreat. For an afternoon, it was shelter from the wind, shelter from the roaches, shelter from the road.
Day 57: 6 Mar, 67.6 miles today, 2,978.1 miles total, PCT, Boulder Oaks Campground, Cleveland National Forest, CA
In our impatience to leave the nastiest hotel room in America, we got up a bit too early and got ready a bit too fast, with the result that we then had to wait around with the falsies and the roaches for the sun to come up. At least the 7-11 coffee was passably decent.
We’d found a way to cut 8 miles of the ACA route for the day, which was worth pursuing as the climb from the -200 feet of elevation below sea level from the pit of the Imperial Valley into the mountains of the Pacific Crest was going to be exhausting no matter what. The internet forewarned us that the road surface would be rough, and that combined with the lingering headwind out of Ocotillo made for a slow crawl toward the foothills, but it was still (probably?) faster than the roundabout path we’d have otherwise had to take, and it was genuinely interesting to be on a road so disused and uncared for that it was actively being reclaimed by the desert. Even when we hit a bridge closure some 25 miles up the road, we were easily able to detour through the wash it had been built over.
We rejoined the official ACA route just before it merged onto Interstate 8 and headed up into the mountains. On the whole, it was a smooth (if long) climb, though we did have to cross two bridges on the way up that didn’t have a ridable shoulder—meaning that the ACA’s official route had us riding on the literal fucking interstate in one of the literal fucking car lanes. We took over the right-hand lane in each case and pedaled our way through those sections as hard and fast as we could, but it’s only possible to sprint so fast uphill on a loaded bike. I think those two little quarter-mile pushes wore me out worse than the rest of the 12-mile climb up combined.
The world at the top of these mountains is truly beautiful—some of the best of the trip, and a fitting way to end this long ride—but man riding up here is tiring. We still had an entire afternoon if ups and downs before we were done, ending up at a USFS campsite along the PCT. It’s so nice to out here, cold as it is right now, and especially after the previous night indoors in an uncomfortable dump. We’re cold. We smell bad. We’re exhausted beyond all reason. But we’re close to the end, back in the mountains where we each started our separate hikes of the Pacific Crest Trail in former lives. It’s good to be back, if only for a moment, to curl up in our smelly sleeping bags and dream of tomorrow, when we’ll make our final push to San Diego.
Day 58: 7 Mar, 60.9 miles today, 3,039.0 miles total, San Diego, CA
The last morning of the trip was the coldest in a while, with everything inside the tent soaking with condensation or stiff with frost. We did our best to break camp quickly in the early light of dawn, but it’s hard to move fast when your hands are frozen claws and everything hurts to touch. The riding itself wasn’t terrible, but thermoregulation was a distant and impossible goal, and by the time we hit our first serious incline I was already soaked in sweat, which only froze to my skin without every drying off. Pausing shortly before heading through a border patrol checkpoint to adjust my layer, I muttered my predicament to Sean Meadow: “I am perfectly, precisely uncomfortable.” This would simply be our lives until we made it to Pine Valley and stopped at the diner for breakfast.
We had hoped the day before to make to Pine Valley, since any miles ridden then would be miles we wouldn’t have to ride on the last day, but there wasn’t anywhere in or near that tiny mountain town to camp, and there had been literally no room at the inn. As we sat down for breakfast, we saw why, as the giant crowd of early-retirement age eastbound cyclists taking up half the restaurant was hard to miss. They were biking our route, as an organized tour group with a guide, pre-booked lodging, (presumably) a SAG wagon, and the prevailing winds at their back. Must be nice, I thought; as it was, after the frigid descent into town it took three cups of coffee before I could feel my hands.
60 miles does not make for a short day, though it did help that we spent much of that time going downhill. It was, on balance, a pretty uneventful ride, though one infused with the excitement of finally after all this effort and time reaching the Pacific. By the time the route bottomed out and we started weaving through the traffic of San Diego, we were sore, aching, and tired. Funny, I thought, how much emphasis Adventure Cycling puts on the bike paths they include in the route, when they make up such a marginal percentage of it. At least the drivers of San Diego seemed not to have the same baffling, maniacal grudge against bicycles as most of the rest of the country.
We did end up on a path, in the end—a paved bikeway leading in a straight line for several miles to the ocean. There was, of course, a direct headwind blowing in off the sea, but it was light enough that it didn’t feel like it was slowing us down much. That, or we were so close to the end that we couldn’t really be bothered to notice. At long last, we rode through a stand of trees and found ourselves staring into the Pacific. We’d reached the end of our travels. We’d reached our goal.
There’s a sort of banal unreality that comes in completing something that’s consumed so much of your time and energy for so long—that’s especially true when that goal is to arrive at a crowded public beach at which every other person present has driven ten minutes to get to. We’d done something large, something worthwhile, something momentous, and it didn’t earn us anything more than a few curious glances as we walked our bikes across the loose, shifting sand to dip our tires in the surf. Not that we’d done it for praise. The fact that this milestone, this moment that been the focus of almost two month’s toil, effort, expense, and pain, was also nothing more than just another Monday at the beach for a couple hundred San Diegans was just the latest incongruity of the trip. It didn’t matter. We’d crossed the continent on two wheels and our own power, so what if we looked out of place in our ratty and soiled biking clothes, toasting each other with tiny bottles of sparkling wine as we looked out over the ocean it had taken us over 3,000 miles to reach?
3,000 miles is a lot. I’d hoped for some sort of new perspective on this country when we set out from Florida; I suppose I’d gotten it, though it wasn’t exactly the view I’d hoped for. We’d watched as the swampland became farmland became bayou became cattle country became hill country became desert became mountains became mesas became a different sort of desert became a different sort of mountain—a gradual metamorphosis few Americans get to witness, and one we’d been extremely fortunate to see on a daily basis. We’d ridden through parts of the country neither of us had ever been to, and to which no foreseeable circumstances would ever compel us to return. It was, in that sense, a wonderful, truly once-in-a-lifetime experience, but that was what we expected. What we hadn’t given much thought to beforehand was what riding on 3,000 miles of road would be like, and while the country’s spectacular natural beauty was the constant backdrop to our ride, the foreground was the pavement under our wheels, the garbage strewn on the roadside clear from one coast to the other, and the endless traffic from which we never found more than a temporary reprieve. 3,000 miles of asphalt, concrete, gravel, and tar. 3,00 miles of diapers, pee bottles, trash bags, wrappers, roadkill, and tire tread. 3,000 miles of broken glass. 3,000 miles of cars and pickups and semis and SUVs.
We saw the best and worst in this country and its people. We stayed in luxury retirement communities and impoverished Indian reservations. We met people in every state who showed us truly astounding kindness and generosity—a level of true good-heartedness that I don’t think most people get to see on a regular basis. At the same time, we often saw literally homicidal levels of petty selfishness from petulant drivers enraged to the point of threatening our very lives by the momentary inconvenience of having to pass us. We were rained on for days at a time and we were scorched by the desert sun. We froze in the night and roasted in the daylight. We climbed mountain after mountain and rode the endless flat valleys and farmland. We saw so much of America and all the things it is, but there was at the end of it all one ultimate, defining characteristic that shapes this nation, its landscape, its culture, and its people—regardless of geography, political affiliation, race, gender, or age. There is, it turns out, one unifying principal in this country, one so ubiquitous that it’s easy to overlook until you mount a bicycle and ride its breadth.
Travel by any means and you will experience the full range of this country: racist, generous, pugnacious, kind, polluted, thoughtful, intentionally and gleefully cruel, and welcoming. But travel specifically by cycling on its roads and you will be left with one overwhelming and inescapable conclusion:
America is cars.
