For the past two years, I have been in front of the Brewster Meeting House early in the morning as riders in the Pan-Mass Challenge ride through Brewster en route to Provincetown and the end of their two-day, slightly less than 100-mile-a-day ride. Each of them has gone through difficult training and raised thousands of dollars for cancer research in order to do the ride. I am there to celebrate their accomplishments. As I wave them on, I choke up; I yell “Way to Go!”; I cry.

I’m there for them. I’m there for me.

I’m there because I know how they feel. Exhaustion. Exhilaration. Fear, especially in the rain.

It’s been thirteen years since I took part in the GTE Big Ride Across America to benefit the American Lung Association, but it feels like yesterday. Maybe it’s because this year many riders formed a group on Facebook to share our memories and to update our lives.

This is my new blog. I’ll be writing about travel (bicycles); food (brussels sprouts); and sports (basketballs).

Today I’m sharing the eight unedited emails I sent to my donors from my Big Ride plus an introduction and a look back. Hopefully, you can find them in the right order, but hey, this is a new blog, and I don’t know what I’m doing! Sort of like when I started training for my Big Ride.

My Big Ride

My “big ride” began with a bout of malaria. It was my second time around with this infectious disease, but that little oddity is a story for another day.  In the late fall of 1997, I was slowly recuperating at home in Ridgefield, Connecticut and feeling that perhaps once again, I had dodged a bullet, malaria-wise.

One day in the New York Times, there was a big ad promoting something called the GTE Big Ride Across America to benefit the American Lung Association. A bicycle ride from Seattle to Washington, D.C. from June 15 to August 2. Only 1000 riders could participate, and each rider had to raise $6000 dollars to make the ride.

It was the perfect thing to get me past myself and the debilitating malaria, to see something really big on the horizon, to help me get well.

Within a matter of weeks, I was signed up and raring to go. Crafting a letter looking for donations. Ordering a new bicycle recommended by the owner of a bicycle shop I had frequented in the past. Coming up with a training plan with the help of a wonderful nutritionist and marathon runner in Danbury, Connecticut named Mickey Harpaz. Trying to convince friends and family that I wasn’t out of my mind.

Regarding the latter, I didn’t totally succeed. Some people actually seemed mad that I was going. Some thought I was just plain mad to attempt such a thing.

I was 51 years old and not exactly a cyclist; I sometimes rode a bicycle. I had given myself a bicycle for my 45th birthday — having not ridden at all since I was a teenager — and I had once ridden the new bike 40 miles in one day — my longest ride ever — on the Cape Cod Rail Trail. The Big Ride was at least 3200 miles over 42 days, minus eight days off. The average ride would be over 90 miles per day in the heat of the summer, over the Cascades, the Rockies, the Appalachians, hundreds of hills and dales.

——

A few weeks after seeing that Big Ride ad and making my decision, I went to Rome with my friend Meg for a wonderful holiday over New Year’s. I came home to Connecticut in early January, picked up my new bike, and started training on January 8th. As I remember, there were few days I wasn’t on my bike between January 8th –brrrrrrrh, it was cold — and June 15 — also brrrrrrrh — it was cold, the latter which you’ll understand if you read the account of the first day of the Big Ride, which is Chapter 2 and called, “Oh Lordy, It’s a Big Ride.”

For the training, first I rode five miles a day, then six,….twenty, thirty-five all on the way to one hundred, the century mark.* Before that milestone, I had devised a route of 35-40 miles, all within three miles of my home where I could dash in case of rain or sleet!

On the perhaps fifteen days when snow and/or ice covered the roads in Ridgefield and nearby towns, I had the trainer apparatus that held my bike upright in my living room and allowed the rear wheel to revolve when I pedaled. I recall this as an awful thing, made more palatable by the view of the lake outside my window, sometimes covered with snow and ice with a few skaters breezing by.

——–

The fundraising was very successful. It generated over $10,000 from a very special group of people. I had over 40 donors, from $25 to $1000. Perhaps not surprisingly, although the amount of it surprised m, the largest donation came from the wealthiest person on my list, a former mentor in Dallas with whom I disagreed vehemently over the years on practically everything political and social — but she sent me a thousand dollars! Two of the smallest donations — not surprisingly — came from the professional colleagues who earned the most on a yearly basis, neither of whom would be considered the warmest puppies in the basket.

Eight of the essays that follow – Big Ride 2 through 9 – are really just emails to all the donors. They were sent on my days off and upon my return home. Sometimes they are downright confusing or grammatically weird, but in order to retain the flavor of the originals and keep them what they were, i.e., emails, I’ve edited only serious spelling mistakes.

Some of you will be reading them for the second time, some for the first. I hope they “move” you as they continue to move me, and that, as the Janis Joplin poster on my living room wall urges us, to “…get off your butt and feel things.”

Those essays are followed by Chapter 10, which is called “A Long Look Back to My Big Ride.” A lot of water has gone under various bridges since then and now, and I have a few random and desperate thoughts about both the water and the flow.

*I rode my first “century” back and forth on the 11-mile-long Minuteman Bikeway between Cambridge and Bedford, Massachusetts. When I arrived back at the Alewife parking lot at the end of a very long day, I had ridden 96 miles, with four miles remaining. I rode those last four miles around and around and around the parking lot, obsessed to the very end. One of the greatest feelings in my life was the first time I saw the odometer on my bike hit 100.

Oh Lordy, it’s a big ride.

From Wednesday of Week One

I’m now happily ensconced in a Best Western in Kennewick, WA and happy to tell the tale (there’s a “tail” story that’s part of the tale). This is our first day off and one of the things I know for sure is that I’m going to be looking for motels all across the country. Part is for pure comfort; the other part is that contrary to what I had been told, there is no internet access from the campsites except through the GTE communications system (that’s how you can send me e-mail at bigrider@gte.net {subject: Sharon Blair 1913}), and that is both slow, limited and printed out for riders to pick up and read. And you know me, I love to connect, but I have now officially given it up as something to be even slightly concerned about because there is nothing I can do about it. GTE is having some major problems with communications. The e-mail isn’t really important. What is are the cell phones that don’t work for the crew. And this is crucial on the road as they make the route safe and as you’ll see later, try to get struggling and hurt riders to camp or elsewhere. They’re working on it.

The logistics of the ride are settling down. Probably faster than under normal circumstances because of the terror of the first day. There’s nothing like getting a staff and understaffed volunteer crew up to speed than the near misses we had on Monday. We left Seattle just fine and dandy — 800 or so riders rather than the 1000 expected (1200 had signed up), but probably due mostly to the difficulty of raising the pledges (by the way, thanks to you, I have over $10,000!!!!!!!!!!!!), there are fewer riders (reportedly, they are under-crewed too with around 130 instead of the constant 200 “needed.”) At any rate, the morning was fine; lunch was glorious in a beautiful town called Snoqualmie, and then the trouble began as we began a 15 or so mile climb up to the top of something or other. This was made more complicated by the rain that started. It was difficult (actually really hard) but really no big deal until the top and just before our last pit stop when the rain started coming down harder and the temperature dropped in about 15 minutes by about 15 degrees to the high 20s. Fifteen minutes later, I was freezing, literally shaking on my bike and starting to make stupid decisions and unable to apply my brakes. I spent the next hour huddled under a Mylar blanket with a guy name Brian from Flint (on strike from GM) in a shed (roof, no walls) for some telephone equipment. A guy who works for the DOT magically stopped and gave us a ride to camp 15 miles away. He was wonderful. A biker who would have loved to be making the ride. Even took our wheels off and put our bikes in the back of his sports vehicle. Our hands wouldn’t really move.

Brian and I were lucky. Over 400 of the riders had to be “sagged,” or carried into camp. Many were tossed in hot water to stop the hypothermia. At least two were hospitalized. Reportedly, eight left the ride that night.

Talk about baptism by fire. Everything was wet. Camp was set up in the remains of the rain (of course, it cleared by around 7 pm!!!) and we were all walking around looking like bomb victims. It was scary. Uncomfortable yes, but really really scary.

The next day was glorious. A mere 90 miles to Yakima through one of the prettiest places I’ve seen on earth — Yakima Canyon. A tailwind. Bee-ut-ti-ful.

Yesterday was dicey but only in the afternoon. As we rode 86 miles, most of it through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and honest to goodness desert, we were blown to smithereens by big time wind from the west. At times, I was barely moving. And it was beaming sun (lots of number 45 used, still burned a bit). It was a long long difficult ride. For me, the problem was the heat, which turned to sweat, which turned to blisters on my butt. I had trained and trained and had to use Bag Balm along the way, but never honest to god blisters. (my friend Bill Dale who’s on the crew just rode his motorcycle to the pharmacy and got me Solarcaine spray and New Skin and perhaps with these pharmaceutical aids plus the lambswool seat Bunny brought me to Miami, I’ll make it through tomorrow’s day. At one point yesterday, I literally got behind some tumbleweeds (the only ones I could find not tumbling, took off my biking pants and panties and put on dry shorts). I wasn’t fooling anybody, but frankly, nobody cares.

Oh boy.

Am I glad I’m doing this? Yes. Has it been awful at times? Yes. The thing I’m personally glad about is Monday, that is, for someone as competitive and obsessed as I am to actually stop when I shouldn’t have gone on is both smart and a good dose of humility. It’s good to get that scared that soon when there are in fact real dangers.

The food service is great. Big kitchen trucks and dining tent. The catering company started doing this (and still does) at big fires where the crew has to be fed and rested and showered. The shower trucks seemingly have an endless supply of hot water. And there’s always a story there. Yesterday morning I brushed my teeth and put on my obligatory eye makeup next to a guy shaving. He has one leg. Uses crutches around camp. Bill Dale tells me he has a pedal on only one side of his bike. Talk about difficult.

So it’s hard to complain about butt blisters, but hey, it’s my bottom, and it’s in dire shape, but it will get better. In the meantime, I’m seeing some great country and some truly weird stuff and meeting some nice people, including a young man and woman who lived together and trained together until two weeks ago when they broke up. But they’re still on the ride. There was some tension between them at lunch yesterday over a sandwich!!!!!!

I treasure your calls to 1-800-683-1899 voice mail 1745 and have enjoyed the postcards (e-mail) some of you have sent.

Yes, I’m having a good time. If I hadn’t done this I would never have known that the Tri Cities Airport (Kennewick, Richland, Pasco) was the first commercial airport west of the Mississippi).

Greetings from Missoula

Wednesday morning in Missoula Montana 6/24

“Ken Burns was here.” Then five miles later, “Ken Burns was here.” That rather silly thought keeps occurring to me as I pedal past all the Lewis & Clark stuff. I keep thinking that someday there’ll be roadside plaques at baseball fields, trails west, civil war sites, jazz spots, the Brooklyn Bridge etc. etc. etc. that read “In 1992, Ken Burns was here…..”

Okay, okay, I know it’s silly, but it’s actually one of my more profound thoughts. I’m becoming truly aware of thinking a lot. There’s really nothing to do except pedal, drink water (except it isn’t p.c. to use the word “drink.” It’s “hydrate.”) see things and think. Oh yes, you can look at your computer on your handlebars (I’d say 50% of us have these) and see how many revolutions you are making a minute (it’s very cool when someone rides by and says “Great spinning.”) And with your computer, you can calculate how far it is to the next pit stop, camp, …anywhere. Home. Boston.

Every morning the crew passes out sheets of paper that on one side has text descriptions of the day’s ride (00 to 1.5 miles, 6% grade up to entrance to Fort Fizzle; 1.5 miles to 5 miles, rolling hills to abandoned mine, etc.). The other side has a graph depiction of the ride. Some days (like yesterday’s when we climbed and descended Lolo Pass) look like really scary electrocardiograms with big spikes. My body and my bike prefer about a 2% grade going up, even more than down or perfectly flat.

Something I hear a lot: “Passing on the left.”

Something I rarely say: “Passing on the left.”

Truth is, I’m settling into my own pace and I think that would put me as about a C if an A means getting into camp first or near and F means getting there at the last possible minute to not be sagged and to maybe get dinner before it closes at 8 if you don’t set up your tent first or shower.

It occurs to me nearing Kooskia that I’m a fifty mile a day woman. That’s what would be absolutely perfect for me, to do this trip in 70 days rather than 45. I could do it all in the morning when I’m at my best, then loll around in the afternoon, reading, staring off, putting my feet in a stream. Rearranging things in daylight.

I’ve been carrying too much stuff on my bicycle (started working on that problem yesterday) plus eating too much breakfast (yesterday I passed up the sausage, eggs, hash browns and had a bowl of oatmeal and brown sugar and a banana. I felt much better.) Ate a granola bar in the morning at a pit stop and wolfed one down that I had squirreled away at a bonafide rest stop while the “cello guy” played behind some trees.

That’s right: Cello guy. There’s a man on the ride who’s pulling a homemade trailer for his cello. Won’t play in front of anyone, but “practices” along the route. I saw him the other day in a field. Reportedly he doesn’t want to play in front of others; he’s just practicing. I truly doubt this. Hard to imagine someone building a trailer for a cello and pulling it across the country behind a bike and stopping to play two or three times a day if one doesn’t want to be noticed or heard. I think it’s that different drummers thing. A desire to be quietly noticed.

There’s also a man who plays his bagpipe every night after dinner. Sort of circles the camp piping away. It’s eerie and quite wonderful.

Yesterday as we rode into Missoula, a young man bought a hikers’ guitar. He was strumming away as we stood in line for our dorm assignments. It looks sort of like a mandolin. But it’s a guitar.

None of the women have exposed their musical talents just yet, at least to me. But with this many people, I’m constantly seeing people I’ve never seen before. And weird things keep unfolding in front of my very eyes.

Three days ago in the blazing sun I came along a group of riders guzzling homemade lemonade from a cooler on the hood of an old car. Two or three kids were there. A youngish man who kept running back and forth into the house for more lemonade. The property was pretty ramshackle, with lots of horse and farm stuff. The young man asked me where I was from. When I said “Connecticut,” he said that was where he used to live. I asked him how long he’d been gone, expecting the answer to be years. He said “about a month.” Turns out he’s from Mystic. A compulsive gambler who’s moved out here (WA actually) away from the CT casinos because he knew this rodeo family who took in troubled kids and who would help him with his problem. I asked him if there was anyone I could call for him. He said his mother. Gave me her number. I’ve been trying to get through to her, but so far, no answer.

The next day some of us were talking about this at breakfast, and one of the riders asked me if I had seen the baby in the cage. I said no, but the rider said that to the side of the house, there was a toddler naked in a chain link dog run.

Flannery O’Conner goes west.

Which somehow reminds me. Another one of the characters on the ride is called “Roadkill.” The back of his vest has a hand lettered sign saying “I stop for all road kill.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him come to a screeching stop and take pictures of, you guessed it, road kill. A couple of days ago at a pit stop near some houses, he was quietly stroking the fur of a sweet white kitty. It gave some of us pause. But we rode on.

Roadkill also hands out yellow printed stickers to riders (for their fanny packs) reading things like “Washington D.C. or Bust” or “Hydrate or Die.”

And now, the information you’ve all been waiting for: doodle de doo: My butt is practically well. The Flatau’s emergency provisions sent along with me helped (thanks Allison for the advice you gave your mom); Bill Dale’s run to the pharmacy did too. But the real turnaround came after a short viewing of my bottom in the porta-potty with the head nurse. Now besides the fact that no one I know wants to be in a porta-potty at all, let alone squeezed in there showing someone else your blisters and rash, you have some idea of the humiliation I was willing to endure in order to resolve my problem. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m on my way. It does involve some rather complicated doctoring on my part, which usually takes place in a porta-potty and results in some stares for taking too much time from those waiting in line, but hey, when you’ve got to slather on a layer of hydrocortisone, followed by A&D diaper rash cream, followed by Bag Balm, it takes some time. Hopefully, we’ll never discuss this again!

Leaving Kooskia (“Gateway to the Idaho Wilderness”) on the way to Powell early in the morning (I’m awake at 4 am {around 4:15, the air is filled with the sounds of little tiny alarms going off around camp}, have breakfast at 5, usually start riding between 6 and 6:30), there were sounds of a helicopter, you know, like from the opening scenes of MASH or the news reports from Ruby Ridge. I figured, great, now we’re going to get caught in crossfire from some confrontation, but as I rode upon the scene, it was “helicopter logging.” A big helicopter would hover about fifty feet above the trees on the side of the mountain on one side of the river. Someone below would attach two giant trees (already cut down) to a cable. The helicopter would then fly across the river (probably 150 feet wide at this point), trees swinging below. The helicopter then hovers and drops the trees on a big woodpile. There were women traffic controllers stopping traffic as the helicopter and its logs crossed the road. I got some nice video of this operation.

I’m thinking of buying a new tent here in Missoula. I like my tent because it’s small and light. However, it’s so small and shaped just so that I can only sit up at the entrance. This can get a little cramped, but on the other hand, I’m not in there all that much except sleeping so do I really “need” a new one? We’ll see as the day unfolds whether or not I can avoid the camping, hiking, biking stores that populate Missoula. If I get a new tent, I’m going to loan the one I have to this kid on the crew who just sleeps out in the open in his sleeping bag, crawls under a truck when it rains. He and I run into each other in the mornings, brushing our teeth at the edge of camp without going to the shower/lavatory truck. The other morning I brushed my teeth and washed out my mouth and cleaned my toothbrush with cranberry juice, the only thing I had in my water bottle I’d carried from my bike to my tent.

And continuing about tents. Some people, and I’m not yet one of them (but could become one) personalize their living space. So far I haven’t seen any Astroturf, a little portable lawn, at any entrances, but I’m sure I will before the trip is over. But one tent owner has two pink flamingos on either side of the tent door, not the hard plastic kind but blow-up flamingos, portable.

And one scary soul has a blow-up Casper the Ghost, about three feet tall, swinging from a little portable post.

There are several flags.

Wonder what I might do to designate my space. Suggestions?

Bill Dale says he “redecorated the inside” of his tent the other night when he got sick with what the medical folks said was a 24 hour bug. He’s fine now. The last time I saw him was last night when he was headed off to treat one of his crew members who’s leaving the ride (planned) to some ribs and beer. There’s some crew change over here in Missoula with new crew coming in, some old crew leaving for home. Hmmmm. Leaving for home. Interesting thought.

Some riders might be leaving for home earlier than they thought. At least two have been suspended for a day or so for inappropriate behavior, bad riding (like not signaling passing, stopping, hot dogging). Some of the ship is run tight.

Things that mean EVERYTHING.

-Surfaces. Both skin and road. The former has to be slathered with big numbered sun lotion. The latter is sometimes that awful stuff that’s made out of asphalt and big chucks of gravel, like most of the road from Yakima to Kennewick. Hateful, hateful stuff. Like water torture. Or being bitten to death by ducks. Rattle, rattle, rattle, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhh.

-Water.

-Oranges that are sliced just so at pit stops.

-Newly cleaned porta-potties.

-Ground soft enough for tent stakes. But not so soft that it won’t hold.

-Skim milk.

-A talk show on the radio at night that’s not Mike Reagan or G. Gordon Liddy. It’s actually easier to pick up a short wave feed of the BBC World Service than an AM signal of someone I can tolerate.

-Hot showers. Even when they’re limited to five minutes.

-Putting on a skirt .I felt like a Miss America contestant yesterday after a long shower here at the dorm. Put some powder on my face in addition to the obligatory eye makeup, which I’ve been known to install using outside car mirrors, contorting myself to get a view of my face. A woman standing next to me last evening was using a hair dryer and was humming a jolly tune, almost dancing. I put on my long gray cotton skirt that folds into the size of my fist and my yellow Eddie Bauer tee shirt and REAL shoes, Soft Aerosoles like Sally taught me to buy for traveling. I pranced into dinner like someone going to Le Cirque.

-Clean, dry clothes (I’m finishing this missive off sitting at a table in the dorm laundry room at 6:15 am and have decided that one of the sweetest sounds on earth is the sound of clothes tumbling dry, a zipper clacking from time to time against the metal drum).

-A phone line.

I love hearing from you by e-mail (on AOL and PBS Express when I’m stationary) and via Bigrider@GTE. net (subject: Sharon Blair #1913) on the road and when I can check my messages at 1-800-683-1899 voice mail extension 1745.

Goodbye for now from Missoula. Off to breakfast. Turn right at the Grizzly Bear, the campus landmark.

A River Runs Through It

From Billings Montana 6/29

Through most of Idaho and Montana, it seems that we have been following rivers. And to make things particularly interesting, some laws of gravity seem to be tossed to the wind, and when we’re riding down, the rivers are flowing slightly uphill. Now I realize that there’s probably at least an optical illusion at work here, or perhaps merely delusion, disorientation from so many days on the road.

This is Day 15, only Day 15, and it’s a Monday I think, and we’re in Billings, Montana. Camp was set up at a middle school in the Alkali Creek Residential Area (I’m not kidding with that name) on the outskirts of town, and by the time I got there, both parched and sweaty, at the end of the second one hundred mile day in a row, I hotfooted it to the Best Western Ponderosa in the center of town. The BWP is a little worse for wear, but it’s heaven on earth to me. It is one of those old motels (or at least half of it is very old, and that’s where I’m residing) where the doors never seem firmly shut, and the metal is rusting on the stairs. But there’s a phone jack and a big tub and a washer and a dryer (which I used at 5:45 am while simultaneously devouring a huge waffle and real big bacon at the Catlin Family Restaurant attached to the motel) and a pool, which I intend to slide into at the end of the day when the sun has gone further west. I’ll have quite enough sun tomorrow, thank you, when we head to Hardin.

Things started heating up yesterday after days in the deep freeze. You may have heard this, but while the entire rest of the country was sweltering, Montana was singled out for rain and worse. We left Missoula in a driving rain on Thursday, and the chill that comes with that sent at least one person to the hospital with hypothermia, but the afternoon turned pleasant for those of us who made it past Pit 2 and lunch (I ate mine sitting on a piece of cardboard leaning against the wheel of a truck as a windbreak), and I dried my socks in the afternoon pinned to the pack on the back of my bike, and my clothes that had become soggy from sweat under my rain gear dried out in the wind.

Cotton may be king, but polyester is premiere (sic).

Friday morning I left camp again in the rain, but my polyester clothing and some extra preparation like plastic bags between my shoes and my socks and some plastic gloves between some fingered gloves and some biking gloves got me through the day. It was a disaster. Literally. It started sleeting about halfway up McDonald Pass (the Continental Divide), which soon turned to snow. Our first pit stop was 12 miles out of camp on the top of the pass, which would have been cool under other circumstances, but we had a mini blizzard with which to contend. In short, the ride was suspended around 10 am. Everyone who was at Pit 1 or yet to arrive was hauled off the mountain in any vehicle the staff could commandeer, and I for one found myself fit as a fiddle on one side of a Burger King in Helena that had been taken over by the Big Ride. The other side of the BK was a triage setting where people in dire straits were getting clothes ripped off and hot liquids poured down them, and other people’s backpack water bottles (the Camelbacks that have the plastic water containers) were being taken from them and pressed into service as hot water bottles.

There are a thousand stories from that day.

Three I’ll tell you in short.

One is about a man who lived halfway down the mountain and had a barn. Some riders in trouble pulled in, and he let them in the barn. He set up a heater. More riders arrived, and he moved them into his house. He put some in hot showers. At one point, he baked chocolate chip cookies. At least 50 riders were in his barn or his house that morning.

The second is about John Robinson from Niantic, Connecticut. John lost his brakes going down the mountain in a whiteout. He says he screamed all the way down. At one point, his computer registered 44 miles per hour. Near the bottom, and thankfully about a half mile before some intersections, he was able to snake his bike down to close to 15 miles per hour. But he was still in deep trouble. A rider in front of him turned around, saw what was happening and jumped off his bike and threw it to the ground. He ran alongside John, got him in a bear hug, and ran the bike and John to a standstill. John doesn’t know who the man is, just that he’s “a big guy.”

The third is about ten people, nine men and one woman, who were so irritated about being pulled off the ride when it was suspended that they went on to camp in Townsend (the really really hurt people spent the night in the town itself in a gym under medical care with Red Cross help); the rest of us went on to the regularly scheduled campsite at a fairground outside town. The ten rented a bus, left camp at 4 am the next morning, returned with their bikes to McDonald Pass, and Saturday rode from where the ride had been suspended to Harlowton, 130 miles that day instead of the 100 the rest of us enjoyed. Now they “haven’t been sagged.” They’ve “made the whole ride.”

The ride from Townsend to Harlowton was a small miracle for me. It too started out rainy, and by Pit 1 at 16 miles, things were a mess. Once again I had dressed for the worse, and it saved me along with the hot water that they had at the stop. I threw a teabag in my water bottle and filled it with hot water, and it kept my insides warm and at times my hands for the next 30 miles. I made it to Pit 2 in spite of crosswinds that threw several bikers and their bikes to the ground, and I really didn’t know if I could go on. But thank goodness, I was able to dry my clothes a bit and eat lunch in the gym in White Sulfur Springs. The afternoon was something. That afternoon itself made this whole trip worthwhile. The skies cleared. We had a tailwind that literally blew us east. At one point I was going up a small hill at 7 miles per hour AND I WASN’T PEDALING!!!!!! I rode 50 miles in three and a half hours. There were snow-capped mountains. There were wild flowers. There were — yes — buffalo. The telephone and electric wires were singing. There were birds galore. IT WAS WONDERFUL.

I didn’t care if I ever got where I was going. I was WHERE I was going and I was getting there fast. I had wings, and it was glorious. I was in the moment, in the moment, in the moment….

Which makes me think of a little thing that Niki sent (thanks Niki), which is worth sending all your way: “Being detached from the outcome of what we do is one of the greatest, liberating, peaceful ideas that can be contemplated. You do what you do, what you love to do and do with passion…and then…you do the next thing that you want to do. It might be interesting to try to spend one day on your wheels and not think about your destination. At all. Every spin of your legs is taking you somewhere, and the destination may end up being an entirely different ‘place’ than you ever imagined.”

That afternoon as I neared Harlowton, I spied three little boys (maybe 6,10 and 12) running to the side of the road from behind a silo. It was otherworldly. They were all dressed alike, in dark wool suits and identical blue and white shirts, and little dark wool caps. The oldest of the three waved me down, but I wouldn’t have stopped if my computer hadn’t flown off my handlebars (I’m not kidding; it came out of its holder and fell almost at his feet, sailed really, in the wind). He handed me the computer and spoke from the back of his throat with a funny cadence to his voice. “I’d like this bike when you’re through with it,” he said.

“Well, that’s not going to work. I’m riding to Washington, D.C.” I said.

“Well, I’d like to ride it now,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I have to go on.”

“Where will you be going?” he said.

“To Harlowton,” I said. “I’m late.”

“There are others?” he asked.

“Yes, there are others,” I said. And I rode away.

I can’t get his face out of my head. There were spaces between all his teeth. And the other two, watching. Never saying a word. The youngest one looking slightly scared like you do when you see someone quite unlike you for the first time.

(Gear shift.)

Now that I’ve checked it out myself, I understand why the GTE Big Ride website is really Big Ride Lite. It is, after all, a public relations device for GTE and the American Lung Association. Bill Dale and I laughed (the laughter that follows terror) over lunch here in Billings at how the disaster day on the Continental Divide would be reported on the website: “Big Riders from all over the country mastered the difficulties the surprising weather brought their way as they crossed McDonald’s Pass outside Helena…”

Of course there’s going to be no mention of triage at the Burger King.

Of cots in the Townsend gym.

Of ambulances driving riders to the Helena hospital.

Of blankets donated by a local church.

Of the Methodist women bringing cookies to the fairgrounds.

Of the man with the barn.

Of the staff doing a great job at everything except communicating with the riders.

And that’s the way it is or at least that’s the way it is for me.

One of the things I’ve loved about sending you these e-mails are the responses I’ve gotten back. From Kathy Atkinson. From Carol Van. From Gene…et al.

Keep those phone messages and e-mails flowing in. It’s like being a kid at camp folks, and I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to hear from you.

Next day off, Rapid City. If my memory serves me, Ron Hull’s hometown. We arrive there on the 4th of July, and it’s been more than a little difficult finding a motel what with the holiday and Mount Rushmore etc., but the Holiday Inn Rushmore Plaza came through. Between here and there, there are a lot of miles and tent stakes, tho’ (and I hope tailwinds), and I’ll be ready for another hot tub and phone jack for my computer.

Moving Slowly in Rapid City

The Day after the 4th of July

It’s a hot, dry day in Rapid City. It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m blissfully holed up in a room at the Holiday Inn after a long morning of laundry, conversations with other riders over the sound of the dryer at 6 am; a breakfast on a plate with real silverware in the hotel restaurant; a long wait for a ride to the campground (once again, a flat, sun-baked field adjacent to a middle school, and jeez, am I glad I’m not staying there) to pay off the costs of having my tires replaced and a tune-up performed by technicians from a local bike shop; a ride to yet another bike shop in search of the perfect pump (Eureka! They had one! A Topeak that rides on your bike but stands on the ground while you pump) and some mountain bike shorts to get some air to my continuously burning bum.

The television set is delivering beeps and a crawling bulletin about severe weather to the west of us in Custer where I yesterday had a great bowl of cheddar vegetable soup in a purple building on the town’s main drag. I had yelled to a woman standing with her arms crossed across her chest in front of the Cowboy Motel. “Where’s the best home cooked food in town?”

“Through the light. Two blocks. Purple building. On the right.”

It was really good soup. In a big cup. On a plate. A nice stick of crusty bread. A piece of homemade rhubarb and strawberry pie.

From there, I rode downhill through the Black Hills where three years ago I had wandered and camped among buffalo. I left the park, crossed the cattle guard in the road that’s there to keep the buffalo in their place, and continued downhill toward Rapid City. Zap. Another flat.

The bad news is that I had yet another flat. It took two weeks for me to have one; then in one week I’ve had four. The good news is that it got me a ride into town with my bike (a stroke of luck; usually sagged riders and sagged bikes travel separately, and we always worry about our bikes when they’re not at our sides or parked nearby). I decided not to fix the flat, convincingly convincing myself in the heat of the late afternoon with 20 miles left to go that the problem was with the tire not the tube. And miracle of miracles, a van carrying supplies from a pit stop and a little extra room took mercy on me. Looks like I was right about the tire, and goodness knows I was glad to get to the hotel at 5:30 PM rather than the 7 I had expected. It had been a long day, the first 45 miles of which were uphill big time and into a headwind.

Youth is not always wasted on the young. At one point yesterday morning on a five mile 6% uphill grade against a strong headwind, the woman pedaling with her arms on a recumbent (neck broken in a car accident in 1982) and her niece on a bike attached behind found two young men at their sides. The young men each put an arm on the women’s vehicle and helped propel them up the grade. The whole way.

At one point before our first pit stop, I got off and walked my bike faster (3.1 miles an hour) than I was riding (3.0). From that stop, we had to be escorted in packs of around 50 riders for five miles down and up and down and up on a curvy road with no shoulders (Bill Dale says his motorcycle may never be the same, considering the number of times yesterday it followed people riding at 4 miles per hour for two or three miles).

*************

Ninety nine bales of hay in the field.

Ninety nine bales of hay.

One gets eaten, the others stay.

Ninety eight bales of hay in the field.

*************

Not that I’m bored or anything, but there’s a serious amount of time involved in getting from here to there everyday and sometimes, when I’m not huffing uphill, I sing*. And up till now, there’s also been a considerable amount of hay. Although, although, there’s an interesting variety of ways to store hay with, I’d say, less than half in actual bales. I am particularly fond of the large wooden racks (they look like dish drainers) that are used to hold the hay in eastern Washington state. And then there are the rolls. And the mounds, usually with little corrals constructed around them.

(*except for singing, for which exceptions must be made, it’s a good idea to keep your mouth closed when cycling. Two things. It makes your mouth dry, and there’s a good chance something will fly into it. When I’ve made this mistake — or just simply had to sing — and a bug has flown it, I’ve found that I can expel the bug if I act fast and simply blow hard from the back of my throat.)

Speaking of something there’s a whole lot of, like hay, why is it “ammo”? Amm-o. Why not “ammu”?

The other day just outside Gillette, Wyoming, I rode by perhaps the 100th “guns and ammo” shop of the trip. Ka-boom. Ka-boom. I actually ducked on my bike. Looked to the right and saw stacks and stacks and rows and rows of huge tractor tires running in rows alongside the store. Ka-boom. Ka-boom. Somebody was trying out a new gun. Shooting into tractor tires. At 6:30 in the morning for god sakes.

The booms the previous night were from thunder. It was the night of the trip’s longest day. 113 miles of which I had done 70 something before my shoulders, diaper rash, and blazing sun made me give out. Thank goodness I  sagged in. If I hadn’t, I would definitely have been caught in a major storm with hail, not to mention major wind and rain. At 5:30, it was nice in camp with some clouds building in the west. At 7, megaphones announced a major storm and pleas to run to a nearby shelter, a strong-feeling exhibition hall at the fairgrounds. There were perhaps yet a 100 riders still on the road.

By nine, Helmut, the rider who’s an obstetrician from Stamford, CT, was behind a table in his biking shorts handing out Mylar blankets and taking peoples’ temperature. Same for the rider Paula from Seattle, a nurse when she’s home. The storm raged, literally raged. A megaphone announced that the county emergency office had reported funnel clouds in the area. A flash flood warning. Seven or eight hundred people milled around in the hall. Some slept on the concrete floor. One crazy woman from Colorado snuck out the side door and crept to the shower truck and took a shower. I found Winnie from Colchester CT playing bridge. Her tandem mother watched over her shoulder. At 10:30, there was an all clear but continuing driving rain and we were told we could go to our tents if we wished to pick up personal items. I ran to my tent, slipping and sliding in the mud, grabbed my sleeping pad and bag and some long pants and a dry shirt. Slept like a baby the rest of the night on an unfolded folding table flat on the floor with two new acquaintances from L.A. on their own tables to the side.

At night in tents in fields, the snoring sounds like locusts. That night, in the concrete and metal shell of a building, it was altogether something else. Sawing redwoods. Acres of redwoods.

*********

There are really big pickups out here. Big hunka pickups with men driving them talking on cell phones. Usually a dog standing in the back, wind blowing through its hair, the dog looking really happy. Another thing about dogs, particularly dogs from Wyoming. They bark louder than dogs where I’m from. The bark starts and just keeps going. Nothing to stop it until it gets far away. Baaarrrkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Speaking of hunka men, the younger ones are the most likely ones to be found shaving their legs in camp at night. There’re probably more young men shaving their legs on this trip than young women. The young men sit on the ground in front of their tents, spraying shaving cream on their legs, shaving carefully. They claim it’s safer in case of injury (the doctors don’t have to fight through all that hair?); I know it’s primarily that they like the way it looks. Hard greased bodies. I heard a guy from Colorado telling a guy from California that his shaved legs felt great between clean sheets.

Hmmmmmmm.

The other day I came upon some bikers standing by boxes of bottled water sitting at a dirt crossroads. A young woman and two girls stood by, visiting with the riders. They had come to watch us. Talk to us. I asked the oldest little girl where she lived. She said, “Down that road. Everybody knows our house is the one past the bees.”

We know what we know.

There are a helluva lot of bee keepers out here. I’d say at least every ten miles there’s at least one great stack of boxes for bees. There are also some of the prettiest flower gardens I’ve ever seen in my life. Great care goes into these flowers. I like to yell at people working in their gardens. “Beautiful,” I say. “Absolutely gorgeous.” They always smile and wave.

I can’t stop waving at trains. Started in Idaho and worked myself into a frenzy through Montana and in Wyoming. Huge, long trains. On Thursday, I blew a kiss to a conductor and he waved and tooted a big train horn. I burst into tears. What IS this romance with trains? All trains. Coal trains. Empty trains.

For several days now thanks to Meg, I’ve been riding with a sign on the back of my bike reading: “I can’t go on. You must go on. I’ll go on. Signed S.B.” Practically everyone has something to say about it because practically everyone passes me. “Who’s S.B.?” they yell.

I call back, “Samuel Beckett adapted by Sharon Blair.”

One young woman yelled back over her shoulder, “What’d he do?”

“Wrote a lot,” I yelled.

“Oh.”

One man yelled back at me, “I thought he was a couch potato.”

Well, yes. I think it’s fair to say that Beckett was a couch potato.

Tonight here in Rapid City, I’m making some more signs (Meg has suggested an Oscar Wilde, “Anybody can be good in the country” and a Goethe “The deed is everything, its repute nothing,” both of which I’m considering.

I will definitely do one about my birthday next Thursday leading into De Smet, South Dakota. Turns out De Smet was one of the homes of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and we may be blessed with a pageant. I used to love those Little House on the Prairie books. Sod houses. Hot soup. The family huddled against all odds, the cold trying to push through the cracks.

It’s going to be hotter than Hades tomorrow through the Badlands. How could it be otherwise? I’ve been to the pharmacy and restocked my number 45. Bought more ibuprofen. There’s also the promise of thunderstorms. Bought a lighter weight rain jacket at the bike shop.

The next time you hear from me, I’ll be 53. And proud of it. Glad to be alive and healthy and able to have a choice daily about whether or not to go on.

Sagging Across America

I am half jokingly saying these past few days that my book will be: Sagging across America: Confessions of a Sixty Mile-a-Day Woman on an Eighty Mile-a-Day Ride.

Here’s the deal. All across South Dakota and into Minnesota, we have been  plagued by sun. Merciless sun that creeps up all sneaky-like in the morning and by midday starts to cook lizards into tiny insects and farm implements into big insects and middle-aged women like me into raving maniacs pedaling away and having conversations with their dead daddies and writing country and western songs like “There Ain’t No Shade in South Dakota” or its cousin “I Can’t Stand in My Own Shadow.:

I’ve taken to putting plastic zip lock bags of ice on top of my head and under my helmet. I wrap the ice bags in a bandanna and tie them at the back of my neck. When all the ice melts, I pour the still cool (read “not warm”) water onto my clothes. I wear a visor (the “Blair: The First Fifty Years” visor that was the party favor at my fiftieth birthday gathering in the Adirondaks) under my helmet. In the afternoon, when I’m starting to feel the heat from the sun like Jack Nicholson in “The Passenger,” I drape a bandanna from the visor, letting it fall down over the back of my neck. Sharon of Arabia. Bedouin Biker from Hell.

It’s really, really hot. And my problem with the sun is not so much getting burned. I’ve pretty much got that knocked with number 45 sun block. It’s that the unrelenting sun makes me crazy.

If only I could start riding every morning in the dark. I swear I could leave at 3, ride till noon, and be okay. But I can’t really start riding before daylight, and that happens, more-or-less, at 5:45 am central time.

I can do distance. I’ve done many 100 mile-plus days. I can do your regular heat and humidity. I can do hills. But I can’t seem to take the blazing sun in the afternoon. I find myself praying for cloud cover, starting to see it sometimes in the eastern sky, but it’s a mirage. I yearn for storm clouds, thunderstorms, even scary storms, anything to cover the sun.

Three of the last four days, I sagged from Pit Stop 3, which I usually reach at 2 pm, about 20 miles from our destination. I don’t even care that I’m sagging. I have to get out of that sun.

And yes, I’ve moved from being a Fifty Mile-a-Day woman to being a Sixty Mile-a-Day woman. I realized somewhere around the halfway mark (that happened mileage-wise in South Dakota) that my endurance has increased, that under good circumstances, my speed has increased even though I often yearn for a different type of bicycle. The Cannondale hybrid, which I DO love, was selected for the long haul and wear and tear on my body that this trip promised. But of the 720 or so riders who remain, I’d say 600 of them have touring bikes, and people who are older and in less good shape physically that I am constantly pass me by. The way I figure it, if I were riding a touring bike, I could get the same place in seven hours that it currently takes eight.

Oh well.

It’s not a race, and getting “there” ahead of others is not what concerns me. What I yearn for is more time OFF the bike on a daily basis, a time for stopping and smelling wildflowers if not roses, a time to visit with people like 81-year-old John from Volga, Minnesota, whose wind gadgets in his yard caught my eye on Saturday. There were dozens of things spinning in the wind in a yard in Volga. I threw my bike to the ground. I walked the length of the yard. There were spinning plastic rabbits. Lots of little round metal things. Chickens spinning madly in the breeze.  What is this place? Who made these things? A woman drove out of the driveway.

“Are these yours?” I asked.

“My father-in-law’s,” she replied. “Knock on the door. He’ll tell you about them.”

I knocked on the door. An older woman in curlers answered. “Is the man who makes these things here?” I asked.

“Here he comes,” she said, pointing toward the train tracks and grain elevators across the street. “He’ll tell you about them. I don’t much like these things. Clutters up the yard.” Here came an old man pushing a baby stroller with two kids. It was so hot that in the distance, he and the kids and the stroller looked a little wavy.

John couldn’t hear very well, but we talked a little. He’s been making these things spinning in the wind for years. Uses cream separator disks. Bicycle wheels (see the connection?) Puts them on frames that look like little oil derricks. He says people used to stop a lot and buy them

“I’ve got these things all over the country,” he said, “but people are in too big a hurry to stop any more.”

God, am I glad I stopped, but unfortunately, my daily schedule has gone like this:

Wake up at 4 am.

Get dressed, brush teeth, pack up belongings and break down tent between 4 and 5.

Breakfast between 5 and 5:30.

Get the bike and myself ready to roll between 5:30 and 6 (check tires, oil the chain, hook up my bags to the bike, cover myself with sun block).

Take off at 6.

Ride about 25 miles to Pit Stop 1 till around 8:30 or 9.

Spend 15 minutes at the Pit Stop (porta-potty, fill water bottles, eat a snack, visit with other riders).

Ride 25 more miles till around noon.

Have lunch and do the Pit Stop routine for about 30 minutes.

Ride 25 miles or so……(sometimes in the blazing sun)…..to Pit Stop 3.

Put bike in the area for “bikes to be sagged.”

Wait for the bus.

Get to the campsite.

Get gear out of gear truck.

Find place to set up tent, searching desperately for shade (I pitched my tent the other afternoon right beside the gear truck, sacrificing privacy, quiet, everything else for the shade of the truck).

Shower. Wash some clothes. (I’ve started getting in the shower in my shorts and washing them there. My shirts and socks I do outside at the sinks.)

I usually spend most of the time between 6 and 7 trying to get my hands on a GTE cell phone and then trying to get a signal.

Dinner around 7:30.

Mess around until 9.

Asleep by 9:30.

Sleep like a baby.

Wake up at 4 am.

Start over.

Except on GLORIOUS DAYS OFF LIKE TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve hit the big time, caught the gold ring, located god, found heaven on earth in Minnesota.

I’m sitting and writing this in a funky little feminist leaning coffee house in Mankato — the Coffee Hag it’s called. I’m drinking my second iced double latte and getting a little buzzed. Earlier I ate a wonderful little raspberry tart. My friend Meg is sitting in an overstuffed chair a few feet away, reading some literary magazine, calling out little tidbits from time to time.

That’s right — Meg. Frequent flyer miles brought her from Boston to Minneapolis yesterday for a belated birthday celebration with Miz Blair. We met on the road between Pit Stop 3 and New Ulm late in the day. I haven’t been in a car since June 14 in Seattle, and that was a cab. In her big white rented Pontiac, I was delirious, fascinated with the softness of the seats and lord knows the air conditioner, and it got better (although I was freaked by the speed with which a car travels). We drove to the New Ulm high school where the day off campground is located, did a little tour of my traveling city (I even showed her the shower trucks, the mobile kitchen, introduced her to my 71-year-old Big Rider friend Fred from Scranton with whom I discuss opera!). And then we headed for Mankato where she had booked the Comfort Inn. A quick call from a cell phone to confirm brought the news that the reservation had been canceled for some reason.

Uh oh.

Uh oh because this is the weekend of the New Ulm Heritage Festival which draws people of German extraction and people who love them (and beer) by the thousands. Rooms for miles around have been booked for months, at one Holiday Inn for over a year.

We drove on to Mankato, hoping for a break. And boy did we get one.

As far as we can tell, the only thing that was available for miles and hours around was the honeymoon suite at the Best Western, and we took it in a flash. I was hysterical. It’s huge. It’s tacky. It’s wonderful. After traveling for days through Laura Ingalls Wilder country, I call it Big Room on the Prairie. It has stars on the ceiling that glow in the dark. I spent an hour or so early in the evening in the HUGE hot tub in the room. I got back in later.

I have died and gone to heaven.

And then we discovered the Coffee Hag after my obligatory day off errands (Target for a camp chair, toothpaste, packages and packages of moleskin for my derriere).

There are interesting looking people (albeit many of them quite young) in here reading interesting looking books and tabloids and clicking spoons against the side of glasses filled with coffee, and the music is great.

——–

One of the most overused epithets on the bike trip I surely won’t hear in here. It’s “dude.”

I’m really sick of people calling other people “dude.” Particularly middle aged people calling each other, or worse yet, younger people, “dude.”

Speaking of dudes (uh oh, there I go), Bill Dale is now down to one in the motorcycle corps, himself. I don’t know how he’s doing all he has to do alone. I do believe that if there were a mayor of the GTE Big Ride Across America, he would be elected.

He was particularly busy this week because the staff (and thus the crew) is really beefing up enforcement of the rules of the road. There was a bad accident that was caused by some riders “illegally” riding what’s called a pace line. That’s when several riders ride very close together, fast, wheels nearly touching, the lead rider setting the pace. Well, one rider lost control and touched another rider’s wheel. Three bikes went down. The rider who caused the accident was lying in the road wearing a neck brace with another rider sopping up blood coming out of the hurt rider’s leg when I rode by, an ambulance’s siren sounding in the distance, coming from Huron. It was a compound fracture of the tibia. He spent three days in the hospital in Huron and was to be flown home to Philadelphia today (Sunday).

Speaking of Huron, two bicycles were stolen from pit stop 2 there that same day.

And speaking again of Huron, it’s where I spent some of one of the best birthdays of my life — and I’ve had some doozies.

It was late morning when I arrived there along with hundreds of other riders looking for lunch. We were earlier than the restaurants that had been alerted expected. Nothing much was open for lunch. I rode through town. I looked to the left and saw a Domino’s Pizza. No, not for me. I looked to the right and saw a teeny little place with a big sign that read “Sid’s Diner.” I hooked a right. Rode up in front of Sid’s to find that it was now “Ha’s Vietnamese” on a hand-lettered sign in the window. I parked my bike under the front window and squeezed the storm door opener with my thumb, expecting it to be locked; it was after all, 10:30 am. It was open. I went inside. Eight stools at the counter. Ha and Mrs. Ha looking at me as if I’m a Martian, but they smiled.

“Are you serving lunch?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ha said.

I sat down. Asked for a tall glass of water and a Diet Pepsi. I asked, “are you expecting any bicycle riders?”

Ha looked at me and smiled. Mrs. Ha smiled from the kitchen, approximately six feet away.

I said, “You should put a sign up on the corner. There are hundreds of bikers looking for a place to eat.”

Ha smiled.

“Do you have a restroom?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ha said. “You go out the front and meet me at the side.”

Outside, Ha unlocked a big green door and led me down into the basement. We wandered among boxes of food. He showed me into the bathroom. It was very clean. I stayed there, reveling at my good fortune on my birthday.

Back upstairs, I ordered one of the three specials of the day. Pork and rice. Mrs. Ha fixed me a huge plate full of two different kinds of rice (she didn’t know which I’d like best so she gave me both) covered by a big pork chop. I told the Ha’s that it was my birthday. They both came over and shook my hand. Mr. Ha came and gave me two cookies on a plate. I got another Diet Pepsi. Paid my bill. It was $4.18. It’s one of my best ever birthday meals.

But then there was birthday night in DeSmet.

There’s not a whole lot in DeSmet, including cell phone service or pay phones.

I wandered downtown (two blocks worth, maybe) in search of some tent stakes and moleskin. Went to the hardware store. Found the tent stakes. Standing at the cash register, I said to the owner, “I’m going to ask you something, and I understand that the answer might be ‘no.'” He looked at me. “There aren’t any phones, and today’s my birthday, and I’d love to check my voice mail, and could I use your phone if I use an 800 number….?”

He said, “Sure.”

I ran to the phone. I dialed madly. I got my messages (thanks, you know who you are!). About the time I was through, I hear him coming from the back of the store, humming a familiar tune.

He shows up with a saucer with a Three Musketeers candy bar on it with a burning birthday candle stuck down in the middle.

I thought I would pass out with delight. It was absolutely one of the best birthday “cakes” I’ve ever had, and what a WONDERFUL thing for him to do.

——–

I’m giving myself tomorrow off too as my birthday present to myself, an all day sag. Meg will drop me off in Owatanna to meet up with the Big Ride mid afternoon, head back to Minneapolis and on to Boston. I’ll be bounding about the honeymoon suite at the Best Western in Mankato until around 1 pm.

Till Madison, y’all.

So this is Madison….

I walked across the Mississippi River into Wisconsin on Wednesday. We’d camped along its banks in Winona MN the night before. What with the Ryder trucks transporting things on the Big Ride and the name of the town, there were way too many “Winona Ryder” jokes, all precisely the same, but then again, we don’t have all that much variety in terms of things to do, think…

Relatively small river there, the Mississippi, but big beautiful cliffs and mosquitoes the size of finches. It was in Winona that I realized that even though I’d heard about it in the news — floods, etc. etc. etc. and studied my geography, I’d never come to grips with the Mississippi being a northern river. It has always been The Big Southern River that divided my home state of Arkansas from everything east; the most northernness I’d ever given it was Missouri with Huck and Tom and that scary arch in St. Louis. Being on the Mississippi up north, seeing it described on a sign coming into La Crosse as “Wisconsin’s West Coast” gave me one of those “ah ha’s” that you get when you realize that you’re always looking at things through your own eyes.

It was sort of like when I was finally in South America a few years ago and had to look at the world from that perspective.

It was on the banks of the Mississippi in Winona that I got sent to the hospital. On my way to take a shower, I stopped by the medic tent to perhaps get a lozenge for my sore throat. As usual, I over explained:

“My throat’s sore. But I don’t think it’s swollen or anything,” I said.

The head nurse looked me in the eye, pressed her fingers to the glands in my neck.

“Your glands are really swollen,” she said.

“But I don’t feel bad,” I said.

She picked up her walkie talkie. “Crisis Control, come take a woman to the hospital,” she said.

A red Explorer drove across the grass. I crawled in the back seat. Joined Rick the driver (taking two weeks away from his printing business in Kansas City) and a young woman rider named Amy with an infected cut on her arm. Went to the sparkling new hospital in Winona where all the personnel were really nice and they apologized in the emergency room for what they thought might be a twenty minute wait!!!!!

Had a strep test. Came back negative. Doctor put me on antibiotics though and now almost three days later, I’m 90% okay. Can swallow without wishing I wasn’t (or is it “weren’t”?), sneeze without ripping my throat out.

One of the nicest parts of this whole hospital evening was missing dinner back at camp. Rick takes us to the Lakeview Drive In, which really WAS a drive in, and we had really good burgers and fries and they had homemade root beer (like liver, something I wish I liked) from trays hanging on the windows put there by earnest and healthy-looking young women who were embarrassed by the size of the tips we left.

We rode down the eastern bottom of Minnesota on the western banks of the Mississippi the next day until we crossed over into Wisconsin. That’s when I walked across the Mississippi. Thank goodness, we had to “ride” in a pedestrian lane on the bridge because being so afraid of heights, I had to walk, and it’s easier, when there are others doing the same thing. At one point, I got another woman to walk her bike just a few feet in front of me; it’s easier when I can see someone close by.

Wisconsin is a gem. The prettiest, most “country road” riding has been through Wisconsin. Full of Amish or Mennonite farm families selling quilts and jams and cookies but Never on Sunday says their signs. Under one set of great shade trees, the whole family except the wife and mother who was of course inside baking her brains out sold us fresh donuts and cookies. I got the husband and father to go inside and get me a glass of milk. Gave him 50 cents for it. Could have died perhaps by non pasteurized milk. It contained everything that came from the cow; it was sort of like a milkshake, and this is from someone who normally drinks skim milk, but boy was it good with those chocolate chip cookies, and besides that, with all my Heifer Project trips, lord knows about the milk and milk products I’ve consumed (and then there were the fried guinea pigs in Ecuador…).

So now, I’m sitting in a laundry in Madison near the campus where the group is officially staying in a dorm but I’m at a nearby Best Western. When I arrived and took a look at the dorm (it’s nice, but…), I decided to stay at the BW only one night, but this morning, when I was padding down the freshly vacuumed carpeted hall, admiring the ice machine and the indoor pool, and speaking quite limited Spanish to the housekeeper who was plying me with fresh towels and generous smiles, I decided to change back to two nights and will go creeping out of the BW before daylight tomorrow to begin the trek to Illinois.

Between that paragraph and this one, I’m back at the BW, clothes laundered and hair trimmed in a salon that doubles as an antiques shop. I’m getting ready to jump on a city bus for an excursion through town. It’s one of the best ways I know to get a feel for a place, and goodness knows, there’s little else one can do for as little as $2.50 (round-trip).

On my stroll to and from the laundry, I was once again aware of feeling a sense of worship. I don’t mean in a going-to-church-going way necessarily although I will admit to this worship feeling sometimes being triggered by the sight of a interesting chapel, a massive church with interesting eaves. Old bricks. I felt it today standing under an arch on campus that was the entrance to Camp Randall, a Civil War gathering point for Union soldiers. Clouds do it (even when I’m not worshipping them for covering the sun). Extreme and long silences do it. Cookies and milk on the side of the road from Amish families with pink cheeked and curly headed children even though you deplore their beliefs and lives do it. And as of last night shortly after checking in here, eating from a giant bag of chips and a jar of hot salsa and drinking a huge Diet Pepsi WHILE IN THE BATHTUB did it. (It’s an odd feeling spilling salsa into the bath water you’re sitting in and wondering what the repercussions might be….)

Speaking of Camp Randall and the Civil War of course reminds me of, of course, Ken Burns, and yesterday, when we rode by the Frank Lloyd Wright visitors center, there it was again, that old “Ken Burns was here, Ken Burns was here” feeling… What shall I do?

What I’m getting ready to say now is so disgusting and troubling that I will make extreme light of it, but there’s an attempt to control the news out of the ride, an attempted “crackdown” on individual web sites, etc. It’s really pretty scary, and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out and whether or not GTE, the American Lung Association and Pallota Road Works can spin this thing into oblivion, particularly considering one of the web sites is actually written by a rider who’s an editor of the Cincinnati Post (www.cincypost.com and scroll to the GTE Big Ride location). Another interesting one is www.wheninrom.com/bigride (clever, huh, that wheninrom?). The other day, a woman I know was interviewed for the official web site, but when she said “I haven’t been in any pain,” the “reporter” said he couldn’t use it because it contained a negative word — pain — even though she said she hadn’t had any.

There are such good stories here. And such an attempt to keep them from being told. And such an attempt to control. And spin (and I don’t mean wheels). Truth be told, I think that everyone on this ride wants all three organizations involved to be the best. We all want to be part of something good. And we want to hear the stories. Tell our own. Share others’.

Speaking of news and this has nothing to do with the Big Ride or Madison, my favorite news item of the day from the paper here:

Lexington, KY — On Wednesday, it became legal for Kentucky ministers and church officers to pack heat inside a house of worship, as long as they have a concealed weapons permit.

The change – believed to be one of the only provisions of its kind in the country – came through an amendment passed this year by the Kentucky General Assembly.

“A friend of mine said it, and I’m going to repeat it,” said the Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper, executive of the Kentucky Council of Churches. “Jesus would puke.”

Huh?

The paper also included scary weather maps, showing extreme heat over most of the country (do they really mean 110 in northern California? and no wonder Peg Hughes is talking about cold beer when it’s 115 in Tucson) and what I fear to be a misleading bit of optimism for here and southward tomorrow with partly cloudy skies and highs in the 80s. Talking about weather, Karen Parrella said it beautifully in an e-mail I got yesterday, “… I can’t imagine living where the weather isn’t passionate.” Well Karen, I’ll agree. It’s just that the passion I want from the weather for the next few days is a hug not a squeeze, a balm not a burn, multiple cool breezes.

Pray for mercy.

Okay, it’s time to get on the bus, go find America, worship Wisconsin. I will not buy a cheese head, I will not buy a cheese head, I will not buy a cheese head (of course, there are riders with cheddar heads on their helmets already). There are no restrictions on bad taste as we ride across America.

I will not buy a cheese head, I will not buy a cheese head, I will not buy a cheese head…

——-

So this is Madison #2

The city bus driver invited me to dinner. At his house. Quickly added that it would be with his wife and kids and a visiting French woman chaperoning some students.

At the end of the line way out in Buckeye (far southwest in Madison), I of course was the only person left on the bus, and I walked to the front to inquire if it would be turning around. Since the bus driver had been talking non stop to every passenger, I asked him if he knew everyone on the bus. He said he knew none of them, just liked to talk.

He let me ride back into the center of town for free. But not before he did a little detour and showed me a Prairie Oak tree on the top of a hill.

Then he proceeded to tell me that his father had invented the house trailer back in the 30s but never built but one and it’s still sitting in his mother’s yard. Said people out west would point at it when they rode by and call it “Little House, Little House.”

On the way back into town, he continued to direct comments to me even as other passengers got on. At one point, he enthusiastically pointed out some Ginko (sp?) trees near the Capitol. He never stopped talking. I am absolutely full of stories about Madison and sick about the things I didn’t see, including the arboretum, which supposedly has a great big prairie in it. Of course I’ve seen some prairie recently…

I DID see State Street, which is truly a great street, at least this week. Quite a happening place with a street fair of sorts where tee shirts were going as low as $3. Stood for a long time and listened to a great brass band.

I’m reminded of something else I didn’t see on the Big Ride that some others did: a propane tank in a front yard painted to look like the outside of a watermelon.

And I wish I’d talked longer to the local man who rode up on his bike at some camp in Minnesota and before I knew it, he was telling me that he was going to do for the polka what Riverdance had done for jig dancing. His words. I gave him my business card. Stranger things have happened.

I can’t go on. You must go on. I will go on.  To Illinois. But since I declined the bus driver’s dinner invitation, I’m first going to partake in the Best Western’s Friday night Fish Fry. This will either be really good or really awful. Kinda like the Big Ride.

Night.

A Little Below the Great Lakes

I am sitting in the only shade at the pool at the Rodeway Inn in Sandusky, Ohio. It is near noon, and Big Riders are emerging through the doors like slow ants. Many are carrying their gear to rental cars, taking the large pieces to our camp at the Erie County Fairgrounds where they will stash the gear underneath the gear trucks for the night to come. The crew has the day off too so the gear trucks are locked. They will pick up their bikes, and leave here early tomorrow morning on their bikes with just the shirts on their backs so to speak. I will probably do a similar thing later, the only difference being a wobbly ride for me tomorrow morning to the camp with a heavy backpack on my back where my Powerbook is stashed.

I imagine that every motel in and near Sandusky is filled to the brim with vacationers and Big Riders. Reportedly, the world’s scariest roller coaster is located at Cedar Point amusement park, helping make Sandusky both a tourist attraction and trap in the summer. I discovered the part about the trap when I booked this room  — $58 for Thursday night, $108 for Friday. I talked to one couple whose room at another motel started at  $110 for Thursday and jumped to $170 for tonight. In addition to the amusement park, Sandusky is also the jumping off place to what are billed as really interesting islands in Lake Erie where I may go this afternoon if I locate the energy and time.

This motel needs work. Only one of two soda machines delivers soda (ever, according to a woman in the office) My sink will not hold water (making my laundry work a little difficult last night). The laundry that the motel claims to have has no washer nor dryer, just pipes where they used to be. I was into serious bleaching so I stayed away from the laundromat a mile or so away, ultimately doing the wash in the bathtub, and the final drying is taking place in the sun a few feet away as we speak. And, the light in the bathroom can’t be turned on without an accompanying fan that sounds much like a small lawnmower, making a tranquil bubble bath an elusive dream.

I suppose I sound cranky. Well, I’m not — exactly. I arrived in Sandusky yesterday afternoon in front of a tailwind that had carried me forward 83 miles from Napoleon, a neat little town 40 or so miles south of Toledo, full of incredible houses and one of the most interesting churches I’ve ever seen.  The day before I had left Kendallville, Indiana in a driving rain with serious lightning going on to the south, but yessiree Bob, I’d rather have rain and lightning (the latter, at some distance) than direct sun, and besides that, the rain and storm stopped at midday and the tailwind showed up and took me to Napoleon.

Earlier in the day in Waterloo, Indiana, I was standing outside a convenience store drinking coffee (it was too cold and smoky inside so Big Riders were swarming outside the building like bees sipping out of styrofoam) when the police arrived, called to the scene by the store owner who was complaining about Big Riders peeing behind his store. As the police roared up in the rain, Fred, my 71-year-old opera-loving friend from Scranton yelled, “I’ll do anything to be arrested and taken to jail.”

There’s now a woman of a certain age in a very pink two-pieced bathing suit covering very little of her leathery skin (it looks like an old saddle) on a lounge chair a few feet away. Every now and then she sprays herself with something from a little brown bottle. She keeps looking at her watch. I can tell her for sure, it is already too late.

We had lots of bad weather in Illinois (major thunderstorm at 4 am in Belvidere, Illinois that ripped my rain cover off my tent and sent buckets of water in the mesh door) and then again early in the evening in Kendallville, Indiana. That last storm caused lots of damage elsewhere in Indiana and Ohio. We’ve gotten a break from the heat though — yesterday, today, and tomorrow below 90 degrees. Oh happy day.

The roads in Illinois were no fun. Lots of traffic, potholes, and your basic suburbia. It was interesting, though, to see pennies scattered on the shoulder all over Illinois. I can’t explain it. I kept seeing pennies along the road, and just one dime. In Indiana, there was a stretch of a mile or so when there were dozens, if not hundreds, of white golf tees scattered along the shoulder. I am reminded that back in Montana there was a day when I saw three identical pieces of Tupperware, each with their tops, in three different locations along the road. Lord knows how many single shoes I’ve seen, usually fairly expensive sneakers. I’m guessing 1500 dead raccoons and at least 100 dead skunks. In South Dakota near Miller, there was a stretch of about 50 miles or so where the road was covered, and I mean covered, with the remains of frogs. I’d see one standing at the edge of the road, contemplating the crossing. “No,” I’d screamed, “No. Go back.”

That day I sang:

Ninety nine frogs are dead in the road.

Ninety nine frogs are dead.

One got over, the others died,

Ninety eight frogs are dead in the road…

On the particularly hot day between Lisle, Illinois and LaPorte, Indiana, I was struggling to make it to Pit 3 around 1 pm when I looked up and saw a street sign that read “Mary Byrne Drive.” For a moment I contemplated a photo or some video but thought, “No, I think not,” and rode on.

Speaking of pictures, Bill Dale has become a photo op. As Big Riders and crew realize that the end of the road is upon us — eight more days after today!!! — they are rushing to get their pictures taken with Mr. Bill. He’s gotten quite grizzly and increasingly more handsome. There are any number of women with fairly serious crushes on him, and the men mill around him like some sort of returning war hero or sports star.

In camp the other night at dinner-time announcements in Belvidere, relatively near Chicago, one of the staff members thought they’d play a little joke and pretend that Michael Jordan was there to greet the riders (the origin of this joke, I both believe and fear, is a strapping and handsome young Black man on the crew who was playing basketball earlier). People already in their tents but able to hear the announcement ran toward the dinner tent in various stages of undress and anticipation carrying pieces of paper for autographs. It was quite amazing to watch. And we were not a bunch of happy campers when we learned it was a joke.

That same night, though, there was an incredibly well-received announcement that one of the Big Riders, a paraplegic named Keith, had completed some trials the day earlier in Madison and had been accepted as a competitor in the Sydney Olympics. The applause was loud and lasted several minutes. It made my throat so tight I could hardly swallow. It still does, writing this. I can’t read it out loud.

On the outskirts of Belvidere, Illinois, there was a tiny park with flowers where I stood early one morning eating a granola bar and drinking water. Across the street, there was a house and a barn and an old man precisely the shape and size of my dad the year or two before he died. He walked slowly around the property, doing a slow chore here, shutting a door there, stooping to pick something up, and staining to put it down again. I was far enough away that there were no details in this portrait,  just an outline. He WAS my father. I couldn’t leave until he went out of my sight, inside his house, away.

On the outskirts of some other town somewhere, there was a single tombstone with some rather pretty flowers. Carved in the marble, “This town’s last shoplifter.”

Even though we have been blessed with several days of relatively flat or downhill riding, as I sit here by the pool remembering the Appalachians are ahead of me, I remember that what I initially think is the top of the hill is very rarely the top of the hill.

And speaking of pools, here in Ohio, they are most often ponds. Swimming ponds. Complete with slides, diving boards, floating rafts. According to a policeman in Napoleon whom I queried about this oddity to me, the ground is mostly clay underneath gravel and holds the water. It’s an odd sight, a pond with all that clear blue water and pool paraphernalia.

I am especially grateful today to the encouraging and sometimes just interesting words along the way by phone and e-mail from Susan Dowling, Helen Matthews, Ann and Parker Ward, Jon Boettcher (among other things Jon has sent along, I offer “I’d rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city of earth.” — Steve McQueen), Kate Bonvicini, Art and Charlotte Warren, Jan Kozen, Carrie Corbin, Barbara Bradley, Ann Thorpe, Pia and Anil Britto, Andrea Hanson, Vickie Rogers, and Virginia Bunn (the latter whose brother’s name and date of birth and death from lung disease has ridden across the country with me on a dog tag around my neck). To everyone who’s been in touch — and there are many more than named here — thank you. You have no idea — or perhaps you do — how much it means to me.

Washington DC and August 1 are right around the corner. Well, relatively speaking, after Chagrin Falls and Canfield, OH, Washington and Confluence, PA, Flintstone and Frederick, MD. Whoop-de-doo!!!!!!

Home Sweet Home

Home, it turns out, is more than this wonderful house on Rainbow Lake. I first felt it — home, that is — when I pedaled up a steep hill out of Pennsylvania and crossed the border into Maryland, the last full-fledged state of the trip. The American Lung Association of Maryland had posted welcoming and informational signs such as “If you had lung disease, this is the way you’d be struggling for breath all the time” and “Your Mother would be proud of you.” Turns out I don’t just cry over trains with lonesome whistles in the west. Turns out I burst into tears sort of in the east but south of the Mason-Dixon line when I feel like I’m home, in this case, Maryland. That’s where I started feeling home.

I felt home when I spotted Meg and Amelia (Meg’s niece visiting from Rome) on the streets of Boonesboro on Friday. They had driven down from New York to meet me, to haul my gear (and me) into D.C. to avoid all the mess accompanying the official end of the ride. The next, and last morning of the ride (Saturday), I rode my bike from the hotel at the edge of Georgetown far north on Connecticut to Chevy Chase Circle and beyond and turned around and joined other riders and followed the route to the Mall. I felt home and an incredible sense of accomplishment when I turned that last corner onto Constitution and saw and heard the crowd of volunteers clapping and yelling “Good job, Welcome home.” There was a certain sense of artificialness about it, but believe me, it felt good, and I felt home.

I felt home when at the closing ceremonies I spotted Kathy Doyle standing tall and calling my name in the crowd, and then Lauren Kalos, and Joan Lanigan, and Hallye Galbraith (and Peter) , and even when I didn’t see them but knew that the Pascuals were somewhere in the sea of people there to meet and greet their families and friends.

It came as no surprise to me that the closing ceremonies themselves were anti-climatic, not only for me but I think all the riders. Of course we were glad to see our loved ones, and it was a spectacular day on the Mall (who ever thought August 1 in D.C. could be humidity free and in the mid-80s?). And of course we really didn’t mind getting new shirts about 1000 feet from the end and riding together like good little p.r. soldiers. We smiled and perspired for CNN and the Washington Post, applauded the Big Ride crew madly, the American Lung Association with enthusiasm, GTE with a certain amount of gratitude, and the Pallotta staff with considerable restraint.

Of course, I was glad to get to my house on Rainbow Lake in Connecticut Sunday night. In fact, I was nervous as hell, wired with enthusiasm. I chewed all my fingernails off on the Garden State Parkway in anticipation of seeing my house, of walking inside, of getting into the Jacuzzi. When I got home on Sunday night, I walked in and turned on the music. Put some lights on and wandered about, touching this, adjusting that, marveling at this place, liking the fact that some of my treasures were just slightly askew. Books having been read, a night light repaired, the television table fixed, a treasured knick-knack in a slightly different place than where it might have sat for years. Held up to the light, examined by other eyes.

All the time I was away, I loved knowing that friends were here. It made me feel secure. It wasn’t just that the lights were on at night and burglars held at bay. I love my house so much and hated to be away from it to such a degree that only knowing that other people were enjoying as I would made it okay to be away. My only regret is that Brad Warner was a bit under the weather and couldn’t make it for the week in early July that he and Patty planned to spend here, but, hey, maybe they can visit in the fall, and the main thing is for Brad to be healthy.

In the meantime, I’m home and healthy as a horse. Disoriented, of course, and concerned about how my body’s going to react to days that aren’t spent in constant motion, eight to ten hours of pedaling and what amounts to isometrics. I like the shape I’m in, literally, and want to figure out a program to maintain at least some of this tone. There are bones in my shoulders that I haven’t seen for years, and muscles I have never known.

I am forever grateful that you helped make this possible. I like life-altering events, even when they’re subtle and only obvious in retrospect. Who knows what all — or even how little — this meant ? (There I go, Dude, being an existential cyclist) I don’t plan to get on a bike anytime soon, however. At least not before the weekend, and I doubt I’ll ever ride again for longer than a week (and I’m thinking southern France or on a rail trail in Quebec with wonderful B&Bs I read about last weekend in the Washington Post!).

But I’ll never forget this trip we took together across the top of America in the summer of ’98. Telling you some of what I felt and saw were every bit as much a part of the trip I took as the physical exertion and the fear and the pain and the exhilaration and sense of completion I felt every mile and every day and at the end. That you were — and are — there to hear me, to read my unedited entries, and to tell me things back is in the end what really matters.

I appreciate you very much.

A Long Look Back to My Big Ride

It happened during a previous century.

I think often about doing it again.

I have no interest in training that hard for a shorter ride, either in length and time.

I remember riding for my brother, Doug, and wearing dog tags honoring Virginia’s brother.

I hate that so much money I raised went to Pallotta Road Works, just $1200 divided between the Lung Associations in Arkansas and Connecticut.

If I recall, we were 20 days into the ride when we were introduced to the staff. Mismanagement!

The Big Ride was a disaster waiting to happen.

On the Big Ride, cell phones were the size of bricks.

My Big Ride was less about cycling and more about seeing and listening.

About two days into the ride, I stopped shooting video; I could document the ride, or ride the ride.

The Big Ride is one of my favorite things in my life.

Fourteen years later, I contemplate doing it again. I think I can….