Molly's Journal: Week Four

Roadkill count: 72. RPM (Roadkill per mile): 1.29  RPM in PA: 1.4

Colleen gleefully joined in the gruesome roadkill counting game today and at the end of the day, we were stunned at just how few animals ever get picked up from the side of the road. In fact, we have no evidence that there is any Animal Control in the entire state of Pennsylvania. She assures me that other places have Civic Departments who do this sort of thing. I'm not convinced. At any rate, Pennsylvania had fabulously well-maintained road shoulders strewn with dead things. At times, the shoulder had seen more upkeep than the road - the shoulder would have smooth, unblemished baby's-butt pavement where the road would be seamy and full of cold-patch.

Motel tonight. Colleen is concerned that we won't be able to make it - I think the best course now is to just keep plugging along to the best of our abilities and see how far we get. We may rechart our course through the midwest to see if we can make our route more efficient - right now it kind of wanders and takes few straight lines. It may be that she has to find some alternate transportation to Burning Man to get there in time, and I may have to show up late. (That way, she can get there for the very beginning of the festival to help set up, while I try to get over the Rockies or whatever.) We will see.

In a way, I'm enjoying having a huge, gaping knee wound. I spent all day today with a very disreputable-looking gauze-and-tape bandage all over one knee, and big bandages stuck to the other. You'd be surprised what spurs people to come up and talk to you. Apparently, people are fascinated by wounds. "Hey, big boo-boo," people will say, or "That's a big one you've got there," or even "Wow, fall off your bike much?" Whatever- it's fun to talk to people.

Today we had a great conversation with the people doing yard work at a summer camp we stumbled across.  They were incredibly interested in the whole trip. Some people get interested in an abstract way, as if to say, "How nice - what an odd thing for these young ladies to be doing, but at least they seem to be enjoying it." Other people get active in their interest - asking all about our trailers and our pedals and what it feels like to bike that far, as if they were mentally charting to do it themselves. These are the people it's fun to talk with. One of the guys gave us his own lunch money, in the coolest display of respect I've seen yet.

lovely scenic Conneaut, OH keeps us in its clutches for one more day

Rest day. We needed it. No more news that's really worth the keystrokes it would take to type up - we slept in, ate forbidden foods (Colleen ate chocolate and drank orange juice, and I just had lots of coffee), lingered unneccessarily in the grocery store, and re-planned our route for the next week or two. Bliss!

Today's RPM: 1.84

I may have to cede the roadkill game to Colleen - she went at it with such charmingly weird abandon today, it impressed even me. I got sucked into the license plate game. I have a little rule that I will call out a plate to Cee if I can't think of a good word before the car passes. This can lead to some embarrassing brain farts, like TYP (uh, duh, type) but there were aso some doozies, like PBP and CBJ. If you can think of one-word answers for these, I will personally come buy you a cookie. Or a beer. Or just be impressed by your intellectual prowess.

Yesterday being a rest day, we were both energized and zoomy today, going 75 miles (our longest day yet) to end up in Hiram and stay with some other cycle tourists.  We have something called the "Touring Cyclist's Hospitality Directory"; the basic premise is you put your name on a list saying you would like to host other wayward cyclists, and in return, you get the list itself. This way, you can not only get warm showers and beds all across the country, you can share bike stories and even host people in your own home and hear their own tales. I think it's a great resource. I'm only sorry that we haven't found anyone before now who was near our route. But since we're recharting the route, we figured, hey! might as well rechart it to pass by other cyclists' homes!

The Haveners are a wonderful couple, and their home is so lovely that it might as well be a bed and breakfast. They have the most amazing wood floor in their parlor - it's striped, with the boards alternating between a light wood and a dark rosy one. I haven't ever seen a floor so striking, and apparently, it's original to the house. They talked with us about bike touring and helped us chart our course for the next few days, advising us of the state of the roads and terrain ahead. And it's a good thing - we hit some startling hills near Hiram.

There are a lot of hills that look like sheer walls from a distance. Usually they flatten out as you approach, revealing themselves to be more lackadaisically sloped than you had first guessed. But it's not always a trick of perspective. Today, after 65 miles of lovely, barely undulating hillocks, we saw such a monster in our path. Only, as we approached, it stubbornly refused to back down. Up close, it still looked barely scalable. I was surprised I didn't have to toss my bike over a ledge and climb hand-over-hand to conquer this thing. We were cowed, and "decided" to walk up the beast, and were passed (though only just) by an Amish horsecart.  That horse did NOT look happy.  The reason this is relevant is that on the whole, we are faster than a horsecart, and a mile or two down the road were faced with the prospect of passing them. This sort of traffic leapfrog usually bothers me in a car, but with bikes and horses, it just seemed amusing. Until, of course, the Mack Truck started bearing down on us. So there we were, two girls with safety flags flying, trying to pass an Amish cart on a road with no shoulder while trying to BE passed by an angry blue 18-wheeler. The oncoming cars looked as if they were preparing to rubberneck. It was dicey.

We emerged unscathed - the cart decided to turn down a dirt road to its mysterious Amish destination, we timidly hugged the 18 inches of poorly-paved shoulder, and all of the special traffic tango that happens on small two-lane roads happened without incident. End of story - a pleasant day playing silly games in the beating sun. May all our days be so eventfully uneventful.

Miles traveled on a limited-access highway: 9
Miles it felt like: 50
Times we were honked at: 7
Times this helped: -7
Amish guys talked with: 2
Meals eaten: 6, if you count the ice cream
 

Today we were faced with the choice between going 6 or 8 extra miles on back roads (questionable grey lines, labeled simply "paved road" on our map) and traveling a few miles on a limited-access highway. Yes, it is illegal for bicycles to travel on limited-access highways. Yes, cars go very very fast on them. But the road we were taking rudely decided to go limited-access while passing through Canton. So, the question: do we continue on 62, sticking to the enormous paved shoulder as a cushion of safety, or do we go way out of our way, adding several miles to an already long day? We decided to brave the highway and feign helpless innocence should we be stopped by a cop. ("Gosh, officer, this big city is awful confusing! Please help us find our poor little way onto route 62!") Of course, just as we were slogging up the on-ramp, it started to rain hateful little spiky raindrops, and a guy in a beat-up red Geo Metro decided it would help us out if he laid on his horn. Mind you, there was about two lanes' worth of room on this ramp and only one lane of cars. Also, we were riding at the very edge of the shoulder, where  it's unsafe for cars to drive anyway. But apparently, this fine gentleman reasoned that if he honked at us, we would see the error of our ways and promptly disappear. This seemed to be a common line of reasoning among Cantoners (Cantonese?) - several people honked at us.

It's very difficult to convey the absurdity of these honks. It was a six-lane divided highway, with very minimal traffic. The shoulder actually looked a bit wider than the lanes, probably weighing in at eight feet. Here are two sad, harried, rained-on women who want nothing more than to get past this horrible section of interstate, while taking up the very outer edge of this shoulder. What is it that prompts that Oldsmobile doing 45 in the fast lane to honk at us? Some ideas:
 

• They are concerned for our safety. In this case, honking is a bad idea because it will only startle us.
• Perhaps we don't know we're on a highway.  Well, folks, if the Mack Trucks passing us at 75 and spraying water on our white-knuckled fists and rainy countenances didn't tip us off, a honk sure isn't going to help. It isn't as if they were honking "No animals, ridden, driven, or led permitted on this highway; Bicycles and scooters prohibited" in Morse Code. It also isn't as if their horns had the magical property to convey meaning, instantly enlightening us with their intended message. It simply says, "hi, I'm a jerk" in the universal language of contempt.
• They are concerned for their own safety. Two mad women careering around on bicycles are hardly a threat to a whole highway of automobiles. Switch lanes and pretend we're road crew throwing workgloves around or something.
• They simply wish to honk and see us as a prime target. This is the most likely scenario. It is people like this that make me believe you should have to get your horn recharged every time you use it. Imagine that your horn, once honked, could only be used for a four-second period, after which it would be spent. To regain use of your horn, you would have to pay $300 to the dealer to get it re-packed. Ah, sweet silence. Of course, it wouldn't take a month for people to start leaning out the driver's side window tooting air horns, but at least it would be more entertaining.

One thing that's happened twice in the past two days is that we've been asked, "So, you're just doing this so you can say you did it?" While I'll admit that it is a cool thing to be able to say, Colleen and I both agree that taking three months out of one's life and devoting it to lots and lots of physical exertion just to be able to tell a good story at parties doesn't seem like a real wise trade. If I wanted to say I'd done something wild, I'd go bungee-jumping or spend a week in Belize.  We're doing this to see what it's like out here. It's wonderful when we get to strike up conversations with motorcyclists or curious passers-by and spend a few moments swapping lives. One of my favorite parts of every day is waving to people sitting on porches. There are lots of porches in this country, and the great art of porch-sittin' has not yet been lost. Every day we pass dozens of people just out enjoying the nice weather or the cool breeze, sipping lemonade, taking a break from mowing the lawn, whatever. They see us pass by, and waves are exchanged. There's something both civilized and homey about it. Just a "Hi there, nice weather we're having, glad we're all alive and well to enjoy it, you have a good one now, OK?" Comforting. Nice. Pleasant, even.

We meet other cyclists, solve an enigma, and sleep in a happy home

Another unsurprisingly long day today. After stopping early last night, we were assured that the next, say, 15 miles would be hilly and then it would flatten out. Since we've been waiting for the terrain to "flatten out" since the Adirondacks, I didn't hold my breath. It's a good thing, because I wouldn't have been able to make it up 60 miles of hills if I had. It was a lovely day in all other respects. I had never realized that eastern Ohio is prime Amish country. We passed through the largest Amish settlement in the world, apparently -- 45,000 Amish people! Where do they put them all! -- and got to see lots of horsecarts and cool old farm implements and a mile of handmade haystacks straight out of Monet. Also, I was delighted to see an Amish woman on a bicycle. For reasons that only make sense to me, I'd been really excited about seeing Amish people on bicycles. It made sense that they would use them, but we'd only seen people in horsecarts for days.  So, when I saw a thirtysomething Amish woman going home on a bicycle with her shopping on the handlebars, it made me happy for hours. Yay bikes!

Later on, just at the tail end of the hills, we stopped in a convenience store for a little break. Now, once upon a time, we both told you the story of the worst honey-roasted cashews that any company could ever have burped forth onto the world. They were abysmal. What we did not tell you that the brand name for these nasty nuts is the poorly chosen "I. M. Good." Through further analysis, we deduced that all of their products are as flavorful as post-consumer cardboard, only more expensive. These abysmal products grew more and more frequent as we moved west. We were both wondering why, exactly, anyone would ever carry such a poor excuse for snack food. Better nuts exist - what niche is I.M. Good filling, exactly? Today, after I came very close to buying a bag of pistachios before noticing that they were branded with the infernal I.M. Good happy peanut dude, I studied the label. Guess where they're made? CANTON, OHIO! HOME OF THE HATEFUL HONKERS! Yes, the one enclave of hatred and ill-will in all of Ohio is the cradle of the worst snack food ever to shame the shelves of a White Hen. No wonder everyone in Canton is unhappy! Either they're located over a sinkhole of evil which is being leached out into the world through flavorless nut-mixes, or everyone in Canton has gone bad after eating too many I.M. Good products. I'm not entirely certain which of these theories is more likely, but they both work for me.

After leaving the Martinsburg convenience store (home to a number of revelations), we ran into our first fellow long-distance cyclists. There was a couple in New York that may have been doing a cross-country trek, but we were unable to speak with them due to a looming depression brought on by the horridness of Upstate New York.  At any rate, these fellows were doing a trek very very unlike ours in some interesting ways. They'd just up and decided to bike from Kentucky up to Montreal. (We planned for months.) Being short of money, the only way they could carry their gear was to wear large hiking backpacks. I cannot imagine cycling all day like this. I can't even stand wearing a small lightweight Camelbak to carry my water. I can wear backpacks while skating, but while biking, the constriction and the weight and the sweatiness all bother me far too much. So the concept of not only carrying my weight that high, which would make slow sleeds, turns, and hills difficult, but also carrying it on my back, is impressive to me. I don't have that much mettle. But there are obviously people who do it - mountain bikers being a notable segment, but also obviously other bike tourists. At any rate, it was great fun to sit in a parking lot and swap stories of the road and terrain and what it's like to be biking all the time.  It's nice to answer the curious questions of onlookers - "What's it like using a trailer like that? How long have you girls been biking? Are you biking back? Aren't you afraid of the crazy people out there?" - but it was a wonderful change of pace to talk to people going through the very same thing we were.

We ended the day in a Pizza Hut, where Colleen's friend Mark and his daughter Surya picked us up and drove us to their home. Here, we will rest - and it will be good.

rest. ish.

Today, I felt sick as a dog. I've been nursing a cold for the past week - sore throat, achy legs, stuffy head, nausea, the whole deal. Stubborn as I am, I've figured that if I ignored it, it would just go away. But it hasn't. It took the opportunity of a rest day to move into my head, invite its friends, and have a block party. Thankfully, Mark and Michelle were both very gracious and wonderful, helping me with my symptoms (what? you can treat sinus headaches?) and letting me just conk out for a while.

One of the funniest bits of the day was visiting the bike shop. Now, as you can imagine, we've seen a whole lot of bike shops in the past month. Things break, or we need parts, or we have to replace something we used up. These things happen. So far, whenever we've gone into shops, it's been two grimy women on touring bikes, obviously towing a long-distance load. This garners a certain amount of instant respect. Not like we're bike whizzes or anything, but we do get the acknowledgement from the folks on the other side of the counter that we've earned our wings. It's nice to be able to just go in, ask for a certain kind of tire or spoke or whatever and have the person just hand it over, rather than ask, "is that what you really want? What are you using it for? Can I sell you lots of other stuff to go with that?" But today, we had put all of our clothes in the laundry. Michelle loaned us both these beautiful, flowing Indian garments whose name has slipped my mind, and we went shopping incognito. What a weird feeling, then, to walk into the store and not be noticed! We bought a new spare tire and new gloves and were walking out of the store when Michelle spilled the real story behind the dorky tan spots on the backs of our hands: "They're biking across the country. They started in MAINE." Hee hee. The bike guys just looked at us dumbly, as if to say, "What? They bike in those clothes?"

In which Molly actually learns a valuable lesson

Other people may have seen it coming, but not me. Today, we took another rest day, not because Colleen's body was complaining about the wringer we were running it through, but because mine just went kaput. Yesterday I felt so bad, and today so very borderline, that I had to actually give myself a break, take the advice I'd been pouring all over Colleen for weeks, and rest. I needed it.

It was an interesting feeling. In a lot of ways, the trip up until now hasn't really been my own. This has been for a lot of good, valid reasons - Colleen is the one who has been having all of the problems and needing all of the care and attention. I've been the willing support crew. Mark framed it for me in terms of "enlightened self-interest" -- the trip just wouldn't be fun if I didn't have the Karma Priestess along with me. This is exactly right. Helping Colleen through her trials is not a selfless choice. It's the only choice. Everyone wins.  I know she's capable of conquering this trip, so I'll help her do it to the best of my meager abilities.  Still, when it comes down to it, it's a whole lot easier for me to allow her to rest than it is for me to allow myself to indulge in anything.  It's not a martyr complex, just misplaced guilt. Who am I to slow Colleen down? I should be a rock! A pillar! An uncomplaining force of nature!

Another force of nature whapped me upside the head with a big sign that said SLOW DOWN OR YOU WILL VOMIT, AND NONE OF US REALLY WANT THAT. The earthly vessel of this force was Colleen, saying, you know, you sound like crap, and you should rest another day. My lesson: I listened.