West Meets East

I played my 88th piano somewhere in Kentucky.

I found the instrument in a church (of course) in the mountain town of -- was it Bevinsville? Melvin? Hellier?

I really have no idea.

Of course when I played the 88th piano I was sure I’d remember WHERE I played it. After all, how could I forget such a momentous event?

Trouble was, playing eighty-eight pianos had ceased to become any event at all.

Once I entered the Bible Belt, I played four or five keyboards a day. Churches were everywhere. Kentucky alone has more churches than the Old Testament has locusts. Most were locked, but some weren’t, and I played so many pianos in Kentucky that I stopped writing them down and simply kept a running mental count. “That’s seventy-nine…next one’s eighty…eighty-one coming up…”

And now, I look back and marvel that I actually thought I’d remember the town’s name.

But how could I? I was infected with “tour brain?”

You see it’s like this. The brain is also a muscle. It fatigues along with the quads, the thighs, and the calves. The constant flood of new sensations wears the brain down -- the weeks of living by your wits in unfamiliar places, the nutritional deficiencies, the stresses of overburdened muscles, weather, elevation, sleeping (or trying to) in a different bed every night surrounded by traffic noise, bickering neighbors, lingering cigarette smoke and odd chemical smells, parched air from heating systems with two speeds (“off” and “thermal meltdown”), refrigeration units with three speeds (“off”, “blow stale air”, and “eyebrow frost”) -- and that gradual mental deterioration makes it impossible to retain basic short-term memory -- like the name of the town you slept in the night before.

I’m not kidding. Ask any long distance biker and he or she will confirm the “tour brain” phenomena, especially after weeks on the road.

“So, where were you last night?” [blank stare] followed by [sheepish grin] followed by [glance at map] then the words “I think I was in [town name here] (but don’t expect the information to be accurate).

That’s me, now, [brain blurred] having long ago saturated my Cerebellum with the Antebellum mansions of rural Kentucky, my Temporal Lobe with the temporary lobbies of generic motels, dozens and dozens of them, followed by too many generic meals at too many generic restaurants, and way too many fitful hours of generic sleep.

Then, the next day dawns and new places deluge the mind. New people, new sights, smells, and sensations, again, and the next day it happens all over, again. No day is like the day before. No bend in the road is quite like the previous day’s bend. You’re a stranger on a strange bike, whether upright or recumbent, because you’re laden with trailers, or packs, or panniers or all three, and you’re an odd creature doing thousands of odd miles wearing odd headgear and bright, garish, life-saving clothes, and the entire act of bike touring dislocates the mind from the grounding rituals of anything resembling “normal” life.

So, where did I play my 88th piano?

I have absolutely no idea. And does it really matter?

Before I started the tour, I entertained the notion that I’d need a “project” to keep the trip interesting, something to divert me away from boring evenings in front of tedious televisions in those generic motel rooms. I imagined all the fascinating stories people would tell me before and after I played their piano.

But I soon learned that, although my piano hunt did indeed take me on many odd excursions, if I REALLY wanted to mine eighty-eight unique stories from eighty-eight piano owners, I’d have to spend two, three, or even four days in each town I stayed in, instead of doing what I did and “moving on down the line”.

I soon discovered that people weren’t going to open up to a stranger just because he knocks on their door and asks to play their piano. Quite the opposite. Sure, Americans were universally friendly to me, and sure, I’m just an odd, but harmless weirdo on an even weirder bike. But good intentions can be hard to see beneath all that road grime.

It became evident to me that my original 88 Pianos idea was flawed. THAT trip would require six to eight months of biking instead of three.

Fortunately, my little tour provided its own supply of twisted adventures.

So, did I succeed at playing eighty-eight pianos? Yes.

Did I fail to achieve my original eight-eight pianos intention? Yes.

Such is the failure of success.

And where am I now?

At the Breaks Interstate Park, a beautiful range of Appalachian peaks straddling the border between Kentucky and Virginia. I’m on my way to Rosedale to spend the night at (could it be?) another generic motel.

But, contrast sweetens a delicious life and my uninspiring night in Rosedale contrasted delightfully with my next night’s stay at the Apple Tree B&B in Damascus, Virginia -- one of the nicest towns of the tour.

Why? Because Damascus is quaint, and friendly, and lovely, and filled with interesting architecture and funky people with packs and walking sticks and all these adventurous characters stroll around town as if Damascus appreciates them.

And it does!

Damascus is a major trail hub. The town straddles the TransAm, of course, but also the Appalachian Trail, the Virginia Creeper Bike Trail, the Iron Mountain Trail, the Daniel Boone Trail, the Crooked Road Musical Heritage Trail, and Virginia's Birding and Wildlife Trail -- all that on top of four bike shops, a massage therapist who both soothed and tortured my shredded muscles, and a Subway.

Damascus also embraced my last moments on the TransAm because, once again, Destiny nudged me off the trail.

Last August, my dad turned eighty and the family planned a party in Kansas City. The celebration had already been postponed once to accommodate my tour, so I wasn’t about to miss the rescheduled party.

After leaving Damascus, the TransAm veers north through the “Blue Ridge” range of the Appalachians, then ends at the coast in Yorktown, Virginia. But, I’m flying out of Norfolk in five short (long) days of biking. In other words, I need a more direct route through Virginia than the TransAm offers.

I decide to continue my journey over the Appalachians by following Route 58, the JEB Stuart Highway, and pretty much follow the Virginia/North Carolina border until I reach the coast at Portsmouth, then cab the next day to the airport in Norfolk.

I say goodbye to the TransAm’s detailed maps, the handy motel phone numbers, the well-notated service stops, mile indicators, trip narratives, elevations, and emergency phone numbers.

I say hello to Google Earth, and hopefully, plenty of highway signs.

Unfortunately, I’m about to find out that JEB Stuart is a very unfriendly highway. A near-death experience lurks three days in my future.

But right now, I’m grinding, grinding, grinding -- you’ve read all this before, so I won’t repeat it -- but seriously, I’m grinding, grinding, grinding, up these notorious 9%, 12%, and who in bloody hell knows how steep % Appalachian climbs. They go up, up, up a couple of miles, then drop with a toenail curling vengeance, and you think you’ve gone from the top of a peak all the way to the bottom of the mountain -- before doing it all again -- over and over.

But that’s not what you’re doing at all.

You’re actually sawtoothing your way across peak after peak on an ever-rising ridge, and at some point that brutal ridge reaches a pinnacle.

On the JEB Stuart Highway, that pinnacle came ten miles above the town of Stuart Virginia, at the awe-inducing “Lover’s Leap” overlook -- and was followed by the steepest, longest, and fastest descent of my entire tour -- 48.4 mph for six of the next ten miles.

By mile three, my heart rate matched my speedometer and beat out a delirious 48.4 beats per second -- or at least it felt that fast -- then gradually, my heart coasted along with my bike down to a normal cadence as I rolled into the town of Stuart and onto the Virginia Piedmont.

Finally, I’m out -- finally -- out, out, out of the Appalachians, and finally, according to the bird’s eye view I get from the Google Earth maps, I’ll be riding over what looks like nearly flat terrain.

Finally!

Well, that fantasy lasted for the first few hours of the next day as I expected each rise in the landscape to be the last. I see now that I should have translated the word “Piedmont” sooner and spared myself all that false hope.

Pied (foot) -- mont (hill).

So I gritted my teeth and pedaled up and down the PIEDmont, the PIEDmont for the next two days, and on the third day, to add agony to misery, a fierce headwind slammed in from the coast and pounded me numb while I rollercoaster up, over, and down ever more PIEDmont hills and here I am, so close, only three days from the Atlantic Ocean, and suffering, believe it or not, the worst biking day of the entire tour.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

It’s late October. I’m chained to a schedule and the only warmth in this bleak and frigid world full of squall and bluster and blast is my feverish quest to reach the coast. I have no choice but to pedal on and on and on into the punishing gusts.

The next morning, lame with fatigue, I swallow my dread and peek out the curtain. I study the trees for signs of shuddering leaves and look for tempests blowing litter across the highway.

All calm.

Relief floods over me until I step outside and feel the chill biting my skin. I realize that the previous day’s storms have blustered in a bitter cold front.

For the last four thousand miles, I’ve been carrying extra clothes. These days are the reason why.

My gloves grip the handlebars as I pedal onto the highway. My breath steams in the frosty air. The bike computer, still warm from its cozy night in the motel room, records mileage for about three minutes before freezing with a blank stare. My leg muscles warm up after five miles, but abandoning my trailer in Kansas stranded me with sandals and a pair of laughable “waterproof” socks. My toes (assuming they’re still there) slip into a coma and don’t regain consciousness until later that night in the middle of a hot shower.

JEB Stuart screams with traffic. No wonder the TransAm veers north and traverses the Blue Ridge Mountains. The shoulder is narrow for long stretches, non-existent for miles, and when JEB finally becomes a four lane divided highway, few motorists cross into the empty left lane to give me space. I’m clearly a nuisance and an unwelcome sight and they’re happy to demonstrate their annoyance.

And then the highway does something strange and dangerous.

Every time the JEB passes a population center (about every twenty miles), signs appear saying something like:

Off limits to pedestrians, bicycles, non-motorized vehicles, hitch-hikers, dwarfs, eunuchs, and anal-probing aliens.

This only happens when some idiot highway engineer decides to magically transform the JEB Stuart Highway into a “bypass”.

But nothing has changed! This is the same highway I’ve been riding on for the last four days, and suddenly, I’m shoved off the road like some common, anal-probing alien?

Does that make sense?

Not much. Though, I admit, the pavement looks newer as I approach the “get your probes off our road” sign. The highway seems cleaner, almost friendly, and it’s sprouted a beautiful five-foot shoulder.

Naturally, bikes aren’t allowed on it. It’s too safe. Instead, we’re detoured off the nice smooth “bypass” and forced to pedal through the deadly and congested downtown where we bang our testicles over frost-heaved sidewalks in our desperation to escape the shoulderless Main Street where we'd have to ride in the gutter beside two lanes of pissed off motorists.

And let’s not forget: every time JEB Stuart becomes a “bypass”, forty-five minutes of sluggish detour piles onto my day’s ride.

Thanks Virginia.

But the triumphant death challenge of motor vehicle versus muscular thigh came late one afternoon on a lonely stretch of JEB (kill zone) Stuart Highway.

By now, JEB had morphed into a four lane divided thoroughfare -- two lanes in each direction with a grassy median between -- but it was still pretty much shoulderless. I had claimed a gravelly strip of pavement on the far right of the highway and was riding along peacefully when --

[Horn blast!]

Towering monster looming in the mirror.

Screaming tires. Speeding truck -- [horn blast] -- panic -- [horn blast] -- jerk to the right, loose gravel -- [horn blast] -- bounce into grass -- [horn blast] -- skid, scrunch -- [horn blast] -- bike down -- [horn blast] -- cower in terror as 25 earth-quaking tons churns up a hurricane of dust and thunders past, horn screaming in a frenzy of hostility.

I leap to my feet and stand on the shoulder with my middle finger raised to the sky.

“Cock you hole sucking truck mother bitch of a son ass!” I scream, my mind a floating jumble of losing lottery balls.

I shake my head and exhale a gasp of burnt adrenalin. My curse wafts over the highway with all the fury of dandelion puffs, powerless, meaningless, no substitute for a high-powered rifle or a convenient grenade launcher.

I check my bike for damage and roll back onto the highway.

The Appalachians never got my heart pounding this fast.

For the next hour, I marvel that, after years of biking, I’ve finally encountered a motorist willing to kill me. Really kill me. And though I’ll never know why that trucker hates bikers so much or why he chose today to express his rage, I do know that if I’d stubbornly stood my ground (what I usually do), and if I’d failed to veer off the road, I’d be either a decorative smear, an ornament, or a prized trophy on his stainless steel grill.

Amazingly, I let that thought haunt me for the next twenty miles (way too long). I need to wipe the incident from my mind and settle back into biker denial -- the cautious but necessary state of not worrying about all the sudden death scenarios that whiz by every day.

Better to focus on this sudden and delightful change of grade.

Ever since Stuart, I’ve craved this moment. Sooner or later (turned out to be later), I knew the JEB Stuart Highway would leave the Piedmont and start its gradual descent to sea level.

And here it is, easy pedaling, the easiest of the entire tour. Two days ago I experienced my most strenuous day of biking. Today, I’m almost coasting.

In this same three-day period, I’ve also experienced Martinsville, Danville, Turbeville, Clarksville, Lawrenceville, and evil. Yesterday, seventy-five miles from the coast, I spent a pleasant night in the euphoria of Emporia.

But this morning, I leave Suffolk, Virginia and indulge in a mild, seventeen mile, very leisurely, and very gradually downhill ride to Portsmouth -- the ultimate destination, the objective, the realization of a vision burned into my imagination by three long months and 4,300 very odd miles.

As I pedal out of the Day’s Inn parking lot, I try to imagine what it will feel like to enter the city limits, cross into the town of Portsmouth, and know that I’ve fulfilled my quest, accomplished my dream, and finished my epic journey across the Grand Continent of North Amer --

Actually, I got lost.

When I entered the city limits, Portsmouth teemed with traffic -- on, off, over, and under ramps, passes, bridges, tunnels, and rail crossings -- a biker’s dream nightmare.

I’m searching for the Econo Lodge, but about three blocks before I get there (because at the moment it seemed like the right thing to do), I accidentally veer off London Boulevard and onto an exit ramp that takes me onto a busy freeway that I don’t want to be on and then up a steep climb to a huge, and I mean really huge, bridge with all sorts of signs pointing to the underwater tunnel leading to the Norfolk Naval Station -- and Christ -- this can’t be where I want to be, so I take the nearest exit and curve my way around to another wrong highway that eventually, thank God, leads me to a residential neighborhood where I stop and ask a friendly old lady for directions to the London Boulevard I shouldn’t have left in the first place, and of course, I’m completely disorientated and end up heading west instead of east for many blocks before recognizing the spires of a granite church I’d passed thirty minutes earlier and now the only sensible plan involves turning into an alley and huddling next to a dumpster so I can get out of the traffic noise long enough to call the Econo Lodge for directions.

It exhausts me just thinking about it.

“Stay on London Boulevard for 1 mile,” the manager tells me. “We’re on the right. You can’t miss us.”

Don’t be so sure.

So, you may wonder, what did it feel like to finish my epic journey across the Grand Continent of North America?

Something very close to: “Less than triumphant.”

But…..

Sure enough, I couldn’t miss the Econo Lodge (this time).

So I consolidated my gear into two piles: “shipping home” and “toiletry kit”.

Then I used Google Earth to zoom down onto the virtual streets of Portsmouth, using their very detailed and useful “You are HERE, Moron” view and wrote down (on an actual piece of paper -- imagine that) every street name, turn, and distance that I would need to get myself to James Point Park, my chosen “tire dipping spot”.

Naturally, such impeccably detailed directions made it impossible to find my destination, so I spent the next hour in a maze of dead ends and cul-de-sacs.

But eventually, I spotted the coast (only because it was too big to miss) as well as a pair of elderly women chatting at the end of a long gravel driveway. James Point Park is an affluent coastal neighborhood filled with stately, red brick estates like the one I’m about to invade.

Boldly, I pedaled forward, trying to look innocent, friendly, and as harmless as an intruding biker can look.

“I’ve just now finished a bicycle trip from the coast of Oregon,” I lied. Actually, I’d “just now” finished blundering around Portsmouth like a drunken lab rat. “Could I trouble one of you ladies to take a photo of me dipping my front tire in the Atlantic Ocean?”

Turns out they’d be delighted, and the Lady of the Manor has a very athletic son who would love to hear about my ride, and oh how exciting, and you must be so tired, and what an adventure, and how long have you been on the road, and, and, and…

And both women were very charming, friendly, and not at all put off by a stranger intruding upon their conversation with such an unusual request.

That left two final tasks: Boxing up my gear at the nearest post office and sending it off, then continuing another few miles to the bike shop I’d hired to ship my bike back to Vermont.

Both were mundane tasks that failed to inspire any sense of post-tour magnitude. Neither aroused the slightest moment of reflection, or even an instant of appreciation for the bazaar and marvelous life I’d been living these past three months.

That didn’t happen until the next day.

At 35,000 feet.

In a jetliner backtracking my journey, heading west to wind-battered Kansas and my father’s birthday party.

Gazing from my window seat, down at the Grand Continent of North America, at a landscape too vast to encompass in one gaze, I got my first sense of what I’d just accomplished, me, that insignificant speck of determination crawling over an immense wilderness, a flea crossing the back of an elephant.

Joy and wonder swelled my heart, and pride -- for the thirty seconds it took me to remember Bob Wieland.

At that moment my “accomplishment” crashed to earth like a lump of warm clay dropped from 35,000 ft. I realized that hundreds, maybe thousands, of bikers cross the North American continent every year.

In truth, touring America on a bike isn’t all that special.

But Bob Wieland?

"There's a lot of adventure out here on the road,” Bob told a cross-country biker he’d crossed paths with in the middle of the Mohave Desert. It’s the summer of 2007. “I suppose I could sit back and get fat watching TV for the next fifty years, but I want to do something with my life. I want to make a difference. I have to make do with what I have left. You know the saying, you only go around once."

Bob Wieland is a towering figure, though he stands only three feet tall. He’s a combat veteran who lost his legs in the war. Using rubber pads on his hands, he spent three years “walking” across the North American continent; climbing the same mountains as every TransAm biker, through the same punishing winds, in the same pummeling downpours.

And here I am sitting in a cushioned seat, at 35,000 feet, drinking a cold glass of tomato juice. In a couple of hours I’ll stand up and walk down the jetway.

I’ll need to do a lot of bike touring before I can equate my “accomplishment” with Bob’s.

But at least I have one major tour under my helmet.

Only eighty-seven more to go.

###

Author’s note: I’d like to acknowledge all the kind readers who so doggedly followed my journey, braving the long stretches between posts, and setting aside the infinite list of far more interesting things they could have been doing.

I also want to dedicate this blog to Frank Lenz, an extraordinary young man who attempted a world bike tour in 1892 only to be murdered (after 20,000 miles of pedaling a single speed bike) in Afghanistan by Kurdish bandits.

Some things never change -- including the inspiration we can get from adventurous souls like Frank Lenz.

By the way, for anyone interested, my friend Terri has created a very simple and short survey to record my reader’s favorite stories, and possibly, even leave an anonymous comment. Thanks Terri!

The survey results may inspire me to write another book-length blog about my next bike adventure (possibly down the coast of Chile), or more likely, just force me to shut up and stop whining about Wyoming.

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228UKKY6VHR">88 Pianos Bicycle Tour

Grime And Punishment

I’ve just pedaled up a steep hill into Dwarf, Kentucky. I keep my eyes on the road, avoid glancing at the rusty junkers, the barking dogs, the creaky oldsters on creaky rockers on creaky porches, and most of all, I ignore the “stranger stares” they’re giving me.

This is derelict Appalachia, a world of grimy clapboards and faded shingles, a wasteland of ancient satellite dishes toppled onto overgrown lawns, of shanties held together by curling paint. It occurs to me that towns like Dwarf are recession proof -- simply because they’ve never known prosperity.

During lean and troubled times (every day), the citizens of Dwarf survive by frying birch bark in cast iron skillets and serving it up with corn mash and spuds. During times of opulence (never), the Dwarfians marinate piglets in grandpa’s moonshine then roast them in 55-gallon drums.

People survive in Dwarf, and in all of Appalachia, because they bond together in close community -- sometimes too close. And although Dwarf is a small town, it’s a town with a big heart (and probably an oversized head). It’s a town suffering, not just from poverty, or played-out coalmines, or from too many cousins called Mom, but from exhausted bikers with aching quads and heads full of clichés.

Bikers like me.

I never saw Dwarf, or anything else in Appalachia, for what it truly was. Because I’m starting to, as it were, smell the barn. The east coast is only eight days away. I’m completely focused on conquering my deep fatigue, pedaling, thrilling down the furious Appalachian slopes, pedaling, pushing on, pedaling, and trying to squeeze whatever joy I can from the frosty autumn mornings and the challenge of cresting mountain crag after jagged mountain crag.

By the time I crested the hill into Dwarf, superficial observation had replaced all thoughtful reflection. Because it was so much easier to think in clichés, fatigue and mental lassitude transformed a single broken down shack into a village of hillbilly hovels. A lone stray became point dog for a pack of rabid coyhounds --- because everybody knows how feral Appalachia is. Casual encounters with innocent locals turned every toothless smile into a mouth without teeth.

Well okay, teeth ARE scarce in Appalachia.

But it’s easy to see why. Mix need with scarcity, add a tiny pinch of education, stir in breeding, desperation, and poverty and you get a culture that turns the Tooth Fairy into an income stream.

But how else are they going to make money?

Not everyone in Kentucky can find work installing political placards -- onto the walls of every storefront, pounded into the soil of every front yard, nailed to every pole, fencepost, and oak tree -- although some ingenious Kentuckians surely, by God, have done it, you betcha. Judging from the shear number of placards, campaign sign yard decoration has supplanted porch sitting with a jugful of popskull as Appalachia’s number one occupation.

Since leaving the Oregon coast I’d been tormented by the visual dreck of thousands, maybe millions, of political placards (the summer of 2008 was, after all, election season). The Democratic and Republican Parties, each vile in their own distinctive ways, shamelessly smothered our beautiful countryside with ghastly placards so numerous and vulgar they managed to be simultaneously garish and ordinary. By the time I reached Kansas and had pedaled past my millionth placard, I wondered why Thomas Carlyle had called poor old economics the “dismal science” instead of the truly dismal science of politics.

And now, after cycling through nine states filled with dreary political placards, I can predict EXACTLY which states will vote for McCain and which will vote for Obama.

Kentucky, for example, will undoubtedly choose McCain. Because Obama placards simply don’t exist in Kentucky.

It’s McCain/Palin/McCain/Palin/McCain/Palin/McCain/Palin.

It’s…

What the…?

I plant my feet on the tarmac and stare in amazement. There’s a burly, bearded guy filling the last square foot of his front yard with what must be Obama political placard number 150. He’s literally glutted his property with placards of all sizes (as long as they’re either “large and gaudy” or “small and gaudy”), all colors (as long as they’re all blue and white with a dash of red), and description (as long as they all say something about “change”, “hope” “hoping for change” or “changing hope”). I can barely see the front door through all the signs. He’s transformed his once beautiful home into a lonely Obama Island in a vast Sea of McCain. The site is so unusual; I cross the highway for a chat.

It’s not the first mistake I’ve made on this tour.

“Wow. You might be the only Obama supporter in Kentucky,” I say, smiling and indicating the cornucopia of Obamamania. “These are the first Obama placards I’ve seen since entering Kentucky. And I’m almost in Virginia.”

He scoffs. “I’ve given up on Kentucky,” he says.

“Doesn’t look that way to me.”

“I’m serious. I’m leaving tomorrow for a rally in Illinois…then Ohio…then West Virginia.”

“I admire your dedication,” I say, though I’m thinking: What a perfectly dismal way to spend your otherwise valuable time. Of course, if everybody had my attitude and spent all their time disengaged from the (admittedly corrupt) political process, we’d all be living in some kind of dictatorship.

The guy uses a small sledgehammer to pound the last sign into the lawn (it has to be…there’s no more room), then he stares me in the eye. “We’re living in a dictatorship,” he says. “I have to do something about it.”

An image of Jim Bishop and his Psychotic Castle, his monument to Anarchy, leaps into my mind. I brace myself for a rant.

“A dictatorship?” I ask. “That’s pretty extreme, don’t you think?”

“Hell no! The President is a liar and a profiteer. He’s shredded our Constitution. He’s scheming for oil and giving billions to his buddies at Haliburton. He’ll personally make millions from this presidency and we’ll pay the price.”

I’d like to start backing away, but traffic keeps me on the shoulder. Like 76% of America in the autumn of 2008, I’m less than happy with the Bush Administration. But I’m also not in the mood for a political tirade and I don’t strictly agree with this guy. “Look,” I say, “everybody knows that if you tied a leash to George W. Bush he’d be working for an organ grinder ten minutes later. But I think he’s motivated by ideology, not greed. Bush is already a multi-millionaire.”

“What? Who the fuck cares about George W. Bush? I’m talking about the President.”

And I’m glancing up the hill and praying for a break in traffic. This guy is, as we say in Vermont, “touched”.

“Well,” I say, “good luck in Illinoi -- ”

“The President is an evil Dick,” the guy blurts, followed by what to me sounds like a genuinely evil chuckle. “He needs to be punished for eight years of lies, for killing our soldiers, and for wrecking America. As far as I’m concerned, the name Cheney is a stain on American history.”

Ah, I think, “President” Cheney, the supposed Machiavellian power behind the throne. At least now I’m following the guy’s logic. Maybe he’s not as touched as I thought.

“First of all,” I say, “it’ll take more than a Cabinet full of greedy psychopaths to wreck America. And secondly -- and this may not mean much coming from a stranger on a bike -- but the Universe has a way of punishing evil.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. Dick Cheney is headed for a place more horrible than any hell you can imagine.”

“I doubt that.”

“No, really. He’s going to spend the rest of his life in Wyoming.”

Kentucky Fried Biker

When chunks of coal appeared on the shoulder, I knew I’d entered the Appalachians.

The dogs were a good indication too.

Kentucky is famous for many things: A horse derby, bourbon, a strain of grass that looks blue after you’ve consumed enough bourbon, the Creation Museum, a philosophy that looks true after you’ve consumed enough grass, and of course, for inbred Scottish coalminers lounging on ramshackle porches with washboards and banjos.

But I guess I somehow missed that Kentucky.

The Kentucky I saw was a thin strip of asphalt carving through miles and miles of tobacco, winding along sparkling rivers, snaking over hidden mountain gorges, past ponds covered with shocking, lime-green scum, then up and up and up again around steep curves, and higher up and over even steeper curves, then (are we still climbing…?) up, up, push, grunt, push, gasp, strain against the pedals in the bike’s (easiest?) thigh-burst gear, further up, around another bend, and another, slowly around, almost too slow now to keep the bike upright, and around another, and another, and another, switch, back, switch, back, keep pedaling, keep pedaling, stop looking at the goddamn speedometer because you’ll lose focus and veer off the shoulder -- and, holy shit -- it’s still a half-mile below you, but now you hear a coal truck grinding up the mountain and he damn sure won’t stop for a puny little road kill like you because, if he does, he’ll never get started again on such a brutal incline, and please God, surely this is the last curve, at least on this particular Appalachian crag, because the cliff tops on both sides of the road reveal hints of blue sky -- but you’re wrong -- there’s yet another tight bend in the road, and the truck is getting closer, and wouldn’t it be nice to find some safe place to pull over, but perish that thought and just be thankful that your legs are still, somehow, pedaling, still pushing against merciless gravity, still striving up this final precipitous stretch before cresting the peak and panting like a Kentucky bird dog -- seconds before the road-swallowing coal truck quakes the asphalt inches from your tires, then plunges down the backside of the mountain and disappears into the tree lined switchbacks -- followed by a line of cars.

Jesus unholy mountain pass, I made it to the top and yes, yes, biking through the Appalachians is ALMOST as long, grueling, and exhausting as reading that last sentence.

I regain my breath as sweat slithers down my temples.

I wait at the top, listening.

Whining gears and sputtering mufflers fade away, leaving chickadees chirping in the forest.

Still, I pause at the top for another three minutes. I know what’s ahead and I mustn’t overtake that coal truck and his line of motorized trucklings.

I’m poised on the brink of a rare moment, a thrilling payoff, an adrenalin counterpunch to a mountain that almost smacked me senseless.

Easing the bike forward, I glide to the brink of the crest and point the bike downhill. I doubt there’s a safe way to do what I’m about to do, but I run through the safety checklist in my mind -- goggles secure -- check -- knuckles white -- check -- sandals centered on the pedals -- check -- sphincter tightened -- check.

Ready…?

As I’ll ever be.

Seconds later, speed blurs the tarmac. Wind screeches through my helmet. Rubber whines. Sweat chills. Cloth flutters. Every three seconds the switchback highway slithers around a cliff. One, two, three -- curve into the turn -- four, five, six -- turn into the curve…curve…turn…turn…curve.

The speedometer screams, “46.3 mph you suicidal idiot!”

I grin like a suicidal idiot and lean into the turn (though I do make a small concession to sanity and watch for loose gravel).

Then swoop -- another turn -- swoop -- another.

My eyes are watering. My helmet flies back and digs into the base of my neck. My lip curls up and plugs my nostrils…well, okay…it only feels that fast. But I AM grateful for the deserted road, and delighted by the consistent distance between corners. My turns take on a rhythm, an almost musical rhythm. I count the beats between curves and realize I’m biking in 6/8 time -- ONE two three, FOUR five six, TURN two three, TURN five six.

Curves are tight.
Road is steep.
Fly like kite
Land in heap.

This sensation reminds me of downhill skiing, the lean into the turn, the sudden shift in direction, the same giddy thrill, the rush of speeding along the edge of disaster.

And then a gradual slowing.

Driveways flash by in my fringe vision, followed by porches and lawns, hedges, tool sheds, and dog pens.

The road dips into a gully, momentum carries me over a short hill, then I pedal along a river for two rolling miles. If I’m lucky, dogs snarl at me from the ends of stout chains, or from cruel chain-link prisons stuffed into the corners of huge back yards. When I’m not so lucky, dogs spring out from behind shrubs and woodsheds and challenge my right to pedal past their territory. This happens thirty times a day. Or maybe it’s more than thirty. After the first hundred encounters, dogs snapping in my wake become little more than a snarling slipstream.

By all appearances, most Kentucky Appalachian dwellers keep dogs. But they don’t seem to live with them in a healthy, human/canine manner. Instead, half the residents of Appalachia pen their animals, subvert their social needs, demean them into “watchdogs” or “hunting dogs” and banish them far from the family den to an isolated life of endless boredom, punctuated by brief moments of biker barking.

The other half allows their dogs to roam in packs and chase hapless cyclists. Now, in truth, most of these “chasers” were harmless. I know this because thirteen years of raising wolf-dogs left me fluent in most canid dialects, especially head tilting, ear lowering, and brow squinting. So I can honestly say that none of the dogs I encountered displayed genuine hackle-bristling ferocity. Leaping to my feet and facing them head-on usually inspired them to back away. Other times, I simply outran them. But only if a pack assaulted me on a steep Appalachian downhill. That’s when I cackled over my shoulder and yelled back at their hopeless pursuit: “See you on the way back, Shitbreaths!”

Of course, another army of strays awaited me at the bottom, along with another steep climb.

I brought something to the climb as well -- my “deep fatigue”.

I’m sure every long-distance biker understands this notion. Deep fatigue starts shallow, then over time and distance seeps into every shredded fiber of every battered muscle and awakens with the traveler every morning, even after a good night’s sleep. It’s impossible to say when, but somewhere along the route, at a point no doubt unique to every cyclist, the body decides that the burdens of one, or two, or three thousand odd miles of daily pedaling simply can’t be rested away. The subtle power of unquenchable weariness presses gravity into the bones and no amount of sleep, or protein, or vitamin saturated Snickers bars can chase it away.

Simply put, you’re fried.

Too many mountains. Too much sun, rain, wind, and strain. Too many adrenaline cocktails followed by too few electrolytes. Too much sweat flowing down quivering thigh muscles. Hours of numb butt cheeks, tingling fingers, too many Powerbar lunches, and too much dehydration between water stops piles onto thousands of miles of road danger and exhaust pipes and stinking chicken farms, and before you realize it the mind dulls. Wildflowers lose their beauty, wondrous vistas fade into slate-dry monotony, evergreens wither into colorless stage props.

Fighting the fatigue, pushing doggedly forward, and finishing the ride overwhelms the experience of the ride. And at that point there’s only one thing a biker can do.

Just keep pedaling.

On The Origin Of Lincoln

As I rattled away my few remaining brain cells on the edge of Kentucky’s Highway 132, I silently cursed the Fraternal Order of Highway Engineers.

Yeah, yeah, I know. You think I hate all highway engineers because I spend so much time ragging on them.

But really, I don’t. I can honestly say I’ve traveled along some excellent, beautifully designed roads, multi-purpose roads, roads conceived as TRANSPORTATION, meaning, beneficial for multiple modes of transport and not just two-lane fiefdoms ruled by motorized vehicles.

But I didn’t find any true transportation in Kentucky.

Which is not to say that I think the State of Kentucky, specifically, designed their highways to kill bikers, or merely maim them. And I’m not saying, necessarily, that their roads inspired horror and dread on purpose.

I’m also not saying that Kentucky’s Road Commissioner should be forced to pedal for five hundred miles along the very highways he designed, or approved, or that he should end up at Kentucky’s Creation Museum -- exhausted, blubbering, soiled to his socks -- on display, within a tableau of foam rubber dinosaur dung.

No, I’m not saying any of these things.

I’m only sharing the thoughts that seeped between the cracks of my addled brain as I pedaled for my life through Kentucky.

And I’ll tell you why.

Some moron (did I say who?) decided that every road in Kentucky should have rumble strips, you know, those nasty “stutter bumps” I’ve mentioned so many times before. And granted, rumble strips are a common feature on many roads, in many states. But, other states don’t hire, or elect, or grow in a Petri dish Road Commissioners who are so clueless, so stupid, and so slack-jawed they trip on their own lips.

Other states have rumble strips, sure, but they also have asphalt TO THE RIGHT of the stutter bumps. The rumble strip is on the traffic side of the highway where it will do some good by awakening a drowsy motorist BEFORE he veers off the pavement and flies over a cliff.

But not in Kentucky.

Why?

I’ll explain.

According to the Creation Museum and the Kentucky worldview, the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth alongside Chihuahuas, dung beetles, squirrels, squirrel monkeys, spiders, spider monkeys, highway engineers, baboons -- but alas, I repeat myself.

The point is: Thanks to their belief system, Kentucky lost out on a billion years of evolution. They can’t intelligently design a safe highway. And no matter how much faith they have, 6,000 years simply isn’t long enough to evolve a decent Road Commissioner.

As a result, Kentucky’s non-simianly enhanced road engineers design dangerous, narrow highways over rolling terrain that dips, rises, turns, vanishes, hairpins, and curves with deadly precision -- and then they stamp a rumble strip on the far edge of the pavement to force helpless bikers as close to the speeding traffic as possible.

Which is too bad. Because if the roads weren’t so frightening, a biker might actually notice how deeply Kentucky stirs the soul, especially during foliage season. Beauty just saturates Kentucky. Everywhere you look verdant meadows pant with lushness, valleys splay out in orgasms of wildflowers, extravaganzas of sunlit hardwoods shimmer on the hillsides like neon rainbows.

Or maybe I saw the most striking, the most rural parts of the state because the TransAm maps were so busy diverting me to the least traveled roads. The savvy mapmakers at the Adventure Cycling Association knew that the only safe roads in Kentucky were the ones bikers don’t share with a car.

Which brings me to a rare opportunity, a chance to give you a short glimpse into the twisted navigational wonders of the touring biker.

A few times before I’ve mentioned the “narrative” part of the TransAm maps, the text written to the left of the map sections. In the western states, I barely glanced at the map’s narrative because half the time I was following the same highway for hundred of miles. But in Kentucky, avoiding ANY density of traffic is so important to a biker’s survival that every reasonably eastbound (mostly deserted) country road ended up on the TransAm map.

That meant that if I wasn’t constantly (and I mean every two miles) double-checking the narrative, I was in serious danger of getting lost in the middle of rural nowhere.

So, (and you’ll find this exciting) here’s the piece of narrative that got me into Kentucky. Once across the border, it got much, much worse.

Turn right onto Tower Rock Rd. (28), bear right toward Tower Rock (31.5), Route become Clay St. Enter Cave in Rock. Turn right onto Canal St/SR1 and ride 0.1 mi. Take ferry across Ohio River into Kentucky. Straight on SR 91 (14). Marion. Cross Main St., continue straight onto SR 120, SR 91 leaves route (25) Turn left, following SR 120. Turn left onto SR 132. SR 143 joins route (32.5) SR 143 leaves route………

It gives me a headache just remembering what it was like. Thank God I wasn’t biking through Kentucky on a penny-farthing.

A what, you ask?

A penny-farthing. One of those tall, old-time bikes with a huge, ball-jangling front (solid rubber) wheel and a tiny, ass-bashing (solid rubber) rear one.

But amazingly, when I pulled into the bike hostel at the First Baptist Church in Sebree, Kentucky later that day, the pastor told me about this British guy named Joff Summerfield who came through Sebree on a world bike tour -- on a penny-farthing.

Let’s pause for a moment and think about this.

World tour. [pause] Amazement. [pause] Horror [pause] I wonder how Joff escaped from his straightjacket.

I glance down at my twenty-seven-speed derailleur, and my big, comfy, sponge rubber recumbent seat while listening to the pastor’s story.

“We’ve been running this bike hostel for the past thirty years,” pastor Bob says, “so we meet hundreds of bikers every summer.”

It’s true. When I called the night before to make reservations, the pastor’s wife, Violet, surprised me by asking if I was a vegetarian. She wanted to make sure that the home-cooked meal she was preparing would be to my liking.

“Actually, I am a, well…vegetarian, and sure, a…” I muttered through my astonishment, almost too taken aback to accept such amazing hospitality.

After so many weeks on the road, the concepts of “fresh vegetables” and “home cooking” had devolved to a primeval, pre-6,000 year-old Earth section of my brain (though from a Kentucky Baptist perspective, my brain couldn’t have existed before the Earth itself was created, so perhaps I should say the two concepts devolved to a 5,999 year-old section of my brain).

But, regardless of the Earth’s age, Pastor Bob and Violet radiated the hospitality, and generosity, and the cheerfully giving nature Christians are always talking about. I truly enjoyed my evening, and after weeks of deep-fried grease sprinkled with crispy grease chunks, Violet’s food tasted like the very first, supremely delicious, divinely succulent home-cooked meal created by the original One True God -- a God who, now that I think about it, was clever enough to do in 6,000 years what everybody else’s God is still doing six billion years later.

“So one day,” Pastor Bob says, “this British guy shows up on a penny-farthing. By the time he got here, he’d already biked over 8,000 miles.”

“Eight thousand?” I asked. I stared at Pastor Bob in disbelief. “I’m struggling up these mountains with twenty-seven speeds. He’s fully loaded with ONE speed? How do you even mount one of those things?”

“It’s not easy. But he’s developed a technique of running along beside it, then leaping on.”

“Right,” I said. “And then he pedals merrily over the Appalachians, the Ozarks, the Rockies…and the Alps…and the Himalayas? ”

“Not always,” Pastor Bob said. “He pushes the bike when the grades exceed 6%.”

Wimp, I think.

But I’m still shaking my head, amazed. Joff Summerfield is a new species of biker. An evolutionary anomaly so fit, he survives on an atavistic bike.

I hear laughing and it’s not Pastor Bob. The sound comes from inside my brain, from every one of my puny 3,300 miles sneering at me. “Hey, Motel Boy,” they scoff. “How’d you like to sleep next to a goat on a bamboo mat, then pedal over some frigid Tibetan mountain?”

“Joff will ride over 22,000 miles before he’s through,” Violet says, offering me a bowl of steamed vegetables. My miles have stopped laughing at me, for now, and I’m sitting at Violet’s dining table. “This is his third attempt,” she says. “He blew out his knees the first time he tried.”

Blew out his knees? Then came back for more?

I considered Joff’s accomplishment when I thought about the days ahead, and the dreaded Appalachians.

#

The next morning, after leaving Sebree (and playing five pianos in Pastor Bob’s huge church complex), I rode to Falls of Rough, an odd name for a town, but this is, after all, Kentucky.

Then I left Falls of Rough for another day of pedaling, pedaling, hours and hours of more pedaling, pedal, pedal…yeow!

A swirl, a whoosh, a surge of Brenda-drive.

Then…

I arrive at my next stop and veer suddenly into the parking lot of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, a memorial and information center celebrating…oh, why state the obvious?

As I weave around two-dozen cars and twice as many ambling tourists, I marvel at the fact that Lincoln was born in Kentucky. All this time I thought he was born in “The land of Lincoln”, that is, Illinois.

For five decades I’ve been misled by millions of license plates.

On the other hand, I’m very thankful Lincoln was born less than 6,000 years ago. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a place to spend the night. Motels are practically non-existent in this region of the state and most B&B’s are closed so late in the season.

My room is a log cabin (what else?) -- small, clean, furnished with a dresser, a rocker, and two twin beds. It has no running water or bathroom. A tiny electric heater provides just enough warmth to ward off October’s evening chill.

Strangely, the tourists vanish in the time it takes me to unload the bike. The memorial closes at 4:45 pm and my watch says, 3:50 pm. At some point today I’ve pedaled across a time zone.

But, there’s still plenty of light and I’m eager to see Lincoln’s birthplace, eager to evolve my knowledge of American History. The grounds span several acres and are eerily still as I climb the fifty-six steps (one for each year of Lincoln’s life) to the birthplace.

By the time I reach step fifty-six, every cherished misconception of Lincoln’s humble upbringing has shattered. This man was obviously destined, from birth, for greatness.

Before me towers a magnificent granite and marble Greek Revival mansion, a truly grand edifice in a region filled with, in Lincoln’s time, mudsill farmers crushed by poverty and forced to endure harsh winters in leaky log cabins heated by soot-belching fireplaces.

But not the Lincoln family.

No. Their home looks like a cross between a Greek temple and an overgrown mausoleum. Six granite pillars along the front facade no doubt offered Mrs. Lincoln a convenient place to drape festive Christmas garlands every December. Granted, a front yard of polished marble tiles isn’t the best playground for a young child. But then, Abe Lincoln was no ordinary two-year-old.

For the next few minutes, I circle the home’s exterior and study the magnificent building. Amazing! I count sixteen windows, sixteen rosettes in the ceiling, and sixteen fence poles in the building’s architecture. It occurs to me that Thomas Lincoln, Abe’s father, must have been psychic. The Lincoln family only lived here for the first two years of Abe’s life. But somehow, Thomas could look at the face of his snot-nosed child, see into those determined gray eyes, past the coarse features and jet black beard and know -- beyond a doubt -- that his little boy was destined to be America’s sixteenth president.

Too bad Lincoln’s mother Nancy suffered from a wretched sense of interior decoration. She ruined an otherwise spectacular home by furnishing it with a one-room log cabin. Looking inside through one of the sixteen windows, I noticed that there wasn’t a single sofa, or a china cabinet, or a set of elegant draperies, or God forbid, a piano, to mar the stark perfection of her “Lincolnesque” theme.

And I’ll admit. At first, this disturbed me.

But the following day, on the way to Bardstown, as I thought about Nancy’s interior design choice, I realized that she, like her husband, understood Abraham Lincoln’s unique place in America’s history. Somewhere in her soul she knew her son would become a household name. She knew her little Abe would give mankind the materials to create structures of personal and lasting significance.

She knew the world would never be the same once it discovered Lincoln Logs.

It Had The Best of Trails, It Had The Worst of Trails

For the next two days, I pedaled south, parallel to the Mississippi River, along what the State of Missouri calls (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha) the MRT “bike trail”. I use quotes because the Mississippi River Trail resembles a bike trail about as much as Planet Hollywood resembles Planet Jupiter.

Initially, upon seeing the first MRT signs, I was (fooled into being) impressed that Missouri -- the state that created the amazing, trans-state, biker’s wet dream (especially when it’s flooded) KATY Trail -- would actually provide bikers with yet another bike path -- this time going north/south.

But I soon discovered that it’s easier to grab a handful of fog than it is to find an actual bike trail on the MRT bike trail.

Nevertheless, here I am, twenty miles before that realization dawned, following these cheesy MRT signs -- and the entire time I’m wondering: When is this hideous stretch of shoulderless rubble (currently masquerading as a highway) going to lead me to the actual bike trail?

I got so frustrated I leaned my bike against the wall of a country store and walked inside to ask a local: “I see the signs,” I say to her, “but where in hell is the MRT bike trail?”

“You’re on it,” she said.

Gaahhhh! I’m crushed!

But I’m not sure what crushed me flatter -- rage at being duped -- or sadness that Missouri, home of the lovely KATY, could stoop so low?

[Message from Planet Jupiter]: Hello…Missouri Highway Engineers…yes, you! The morons in booth number two stuffing your porcine gorges with Teriyaki Chicken Cheeks and Flamethrower-Broiled Double Cheddar Burgers -- that’s right, you! Get your sloth-butts out of Planet Hollywood and make the MRT an actual BIKE TRAIL. You’re not fooling anybody by planting signs along a shitty, traffic-infested strip of crumbling asphalt and labeling it, “Bike Path”. So, before that obscene mouthful of Chocolate Banana Foster leaves Crème Brulee all over your chin, think about the high standard Missouri has already set with its marvelous KATY Trail and the damage you’ll cause the state’s reputation by perpetrating an absurd fraud like the MRT. [Jupiter out]

Biking from coast to coast has taught me an important lesson, that is, highway engineers are so disconnected from earthly realities, it takes an intergalactic transmission to get their attention.

But, I’ve pedaled past worrying about that now.

Missouri has finally disappeared behind me and I’m crossing a mighty bridge over the “Mighty Mississippi”, into the town of Chester, Illinois, which is, according to a sign I see on the edge of town, the “Home of Popeye the Sailor Man”.

Trouble is, Popeye lacks that all-important third dimension, and I wonder if Chester, Popeye’s home, is a cartoon as well.

I climb one of Chester’s many very steep hills and pedal past Popeye’s six-foot bronze statue in the Segar Memorial Park. The metal glistens. The citizens of Chester really esteem their favorite cartoon. It’s obvious he’s not treated like the forgotten war heroes and puffed up politicians you see in most city parks, the ones immortalized under reverential layers of glistening pigeon shit.

Pouring rain has pursued me into town. But I find my motel minutes before the lightning starts and before actually getting wet. I’m starving, but there’s no way I’m going out into that death torrent. With a good wireless connection, I use the net to find the usual pizza joints offering delivery, then -- ah ha! -- what’s this? -- a local health food restaurant offering a spinach salad and a tofu and sweet potato burrito?

Perfect!

Normally, they don’t deliver, so I offer a twenty-dollar tip to anyone at the restaurant willing to bring my meal to room 214.

It’s delicious.

That night my dreams are cartoonish, in Technicolor, and if it’s true that you are what you eat, I guess I yam what I yam.

#

The next morning, I’m off to Carbondale.

Ten miles before reaching town, the Flat Gods puncture my rear tire, again, bringing my flat total to seven.

So, I harrumph for a while, then strip my bike of packs, bungees, bottles, and tool kits, and flip it upside-down to repair the leak. While patching the tire, it occurs to me that Carbondale is the only town with a bike shop for the next three hundred miles.

Time for a check-up.

Besides, I’ve pedaled myself into today’s starvation moment and the Tres Hombres Mexican Restaurant is only three blocks away from Phoenix Cycles.

I leave the bike for the afternoon, walk to the restaurant, order a bean chimichanga, and, what the hell, I’m done riding for the day. I’ll have a Margarita with my lunch.

Holy Madre of Hey Soos Christo!

I’m three bites into my chimy, and suddenly, my cheeks feel like punctured balloons. My tongue is a side of beef. It flops out of my mouth and licks salt from the rim of an empty glass. A velvet matador stares down at me from the opposite wall. Thick, clear gelatin hangs between me and reality, and little agave worms squirm behind my eyeballs.

The waiter stops by and asks me if I’m “doing okay”.

“Ture ting,” I slur, the words crushed like grass under a sleeping elephant.

Smothered in salsa, my chimichanga looks like a disemboweled gopher? Two alien appendages poke at it with a knife and fork.

Maybe it’s the exercise, the constant sweating. Maybe 3,200 miles of savage biking has way too purified my body, primed it for the ravages of alcohol poisoning. God knows, I’m no Puritan. But, until now, my need to ride sixty miles a day has kept me religiously away from alcohol. Truth is, I can’t imagine anything worse than struggling up a mountain with a hangover.

I also can’t imagine being this drunk.

I marvel that such a delicious drink can disguise what must have been pure Tequila.

Amazed and barely coherent, I somehow finish my lunch, pay the bill, and stumble out of the Tres Hombres Mexican Restaurant. At the same time, I learn the restaurant’s terrible secret.

There is only ONE hombre!

The other two show up after you’ve finished the Margarita!

I hail a cab while swaying under the porch, then sleep off the next two hours at the Econo Lodge.

I wake up just in time to retrieve my bike, and my sanity.

#

The next day I drink lots and lots of water on the seventy-six mile, up and down, ride to Elizabethtown. Tequila fumes draft behind me. I swear off alcohol for the rest of the trip.

Later that evening, in an outdoor hot tub overlooking the Ohio River, I purge the last trace of phantom hombres from my system.

All around me the air shimmers with roses and honeysuckle; it’s as alive as the magnificent river flowing past this beautiful little Elizabethtown.

The River Rose Inn is also a delightful surprise, one of the best accommodations of my entire tour, a beautiful Greek Revival mansion converted into a B&B. There’s a lovely baby grand in its historic parlor, as one would expect, but it’s sadly out of tune.

I play a very short concert.

Outside again, I relax for a few minutes under the largest and oldest Magnolia tree in Illinois before walking across the street to a floating restaurant. The evening sighs in breezy whispers and ripples across the sparkling water.

In a booth sipping a tall glass of iced tea, I watch birds swoop toward a setting sun that boils the Ohio River into a froth of molten orange. Warm, soothing, not even a hint of rain, air wafts in through the open window. I’m content, even joyful, and thrilled to be back on the TransAm. Hurricanes, floods, winds, and chafed thighs are behind me (well, my thighs aren’t actually behind me, they’re still down… oh never mind…you get the idea).

Tomorrow, I’ll say goodbye to my brief journey through the southern tip of Illinois, then cross the river into Kentucky, into America’s playground for demonic highway engineers, into the world’s foremost Biker Death and Mutilation Testing Facility.

A Confederate in Union

Miraculously, I woke up the next morning and discovered I wasn’t a cockroach.

I chalked up the hallucinations of the previous day to water borne mycelium spores of Phlebiopsis gigantean, or possibly, acute pulmonary ingestion of vaporous burger emissions. Who knows? Maybe fatigue, toxic flood gas, and snake-induced hyper adrenalin poisoning had something to do with it. Whatever the cause, the cure -- a hot shower one degree away from stripping my skin off, and seventy-five cents at the motel’s guest laundry -- allowed me to put my cockroach days behind me and scurry forward in life with the limitations of two legs.

But, once again, that proved difficult.

From the manager of the Best Value Inn I learned that in slightly over twenty-four hours Hurricane Ike had dumped six inches of rain on central Missouri, onto soil already saturated by a summer of record rainfall. The Missouri river had swelled from twelve feet to over thirty-two.

The flood had not only closed the KATY, but also Highway 94, the only other eastbound route to St. Louis (except the “off limits to bikers” Interstate).

Steeped in amazement over my latest predicament, I called the Missouri Highway Patrol to confirm the closure (yep) and scoured the Internet for another route -- there was only one -- Highway 50 east through a fairly rural region of central Missouri (“fairly rural” is the same as saying “if you blink on the way through you’ll miss the one horse).

The nearest town with a motel was Union, eighty miles away, at the end of a long journey up, up, down, up, down, up, down and up over the rollercoaster Ozarks, up to the crests and down into the troughs of my mischievous Destiny, through the very mountain range I had taken so many roads to avoid.

As I ground my way slowly up the steep grades, I thought again about the famous French proverb: People often meet their Destiny on the road they take to avoid it.

Justifiably or not, I decided to hate French proverbs, at least enough to start calling them Freedom Proverbs.

And the decision came just in time for a coincidence.

I’m in Freedon (close enough), Missouri pedaling past a large field where Zealous Followers have set up their circus tent. The bottom edge of the canopy is four feet from the ground, and by looking under the fringe, I can see beyond the folding chairs to a stage, drums, several microphones, and a piano set up near the back.

The tent is deserted.

A hand-lettered sign nailed to a post says: Revival Meeting, 7 PM.

I consider sticking around for a few hours to witness the acrobatic gyrations of True Believers flailing about and chewing on their tongues. But I decide against the idea because Union is still forty-six miles away. On the other hand, I figure I can spare a few minutes to score another piano. There’s no reason why I can’t…well, sort of sneak into the tent while nobody’s looking and, you know, just play a few notes.

I make a u-turn and veer off the highway, then lower my bike onto the trampled-down grass a few feet in front of the tent. There’s a travel trailer parked behind a row of porta-potties. For a wary moment, I stare at the trailer and wonder if someone is staring back at me through a curtain slit.

Not the slightest ripple of movement.

I know I shouldn’t be sneaking around like a thief (when has that ever stopped me?), but this could be piano number 56 and I can’t let the opportunity pass.

Looking left, then right, I move slowly forward and dip under the canopy.

A few steps into the tent I see --

What the…?

There’s a man lying on the ground, on his back, a few feet in front of the stage. He blended into the dirt so well in his dark flannel shirt and mud-smudged jeans that I hadn’t noticed him until I’d walked within ten feet of his feet. His arms are spread in “crucifixion position”.

Obviously, he’s blocking my path to the piano, so that became the perfect excuse to get the hell out of there. I’m glad his eyes are closed.

Very slowly, I back out of the tent, raise my bike a quietly as possible, and pedal back across the highway. I arrive on the shoulder very relieved and totally perplexed.

For the next hour, possibilities reel through my brain: He’s dead drunk, dead dead, praying himself into a catatonic stupor, nailed to the ground, infusing himself with the spirit left behind from the last revival, too weighted with sin to budge, hosting an ant feast, reserving his place near the strongest “Jesus Juice” so he can cure his lifelong paraplegia, auditioning for the “Lazarus Resurrection” portion of the revival, preparing to offer his soon to be trampled body to the Lord in payment for his numerous and infinite sins, or just, maybe, perhaps he’s -- I have absolutely no idea. This seems weird, even for a religion known for praying with poisonous snakes (Primitive Baptist) and washing each other’s smelly feet (Free Will Baptists).

But, it doesn’t take long for another steep climb to distract me from the Unknowable Wonders of the Christian Mind.

Four hours later, I arrive in Union.

A screaming, hot pink taxi cab pulls up to my motel the next morning.

I think: At least this part of the Bible Belt is evolved enough to tolerate a gay taxi service.

Two minutes later, Charlie the driver (and I find out later) the owner of the taxi company veers into the traffic and heads north to St. Louis. Charlie is a savior of sorts, the only 24-hour cab service within a hundred mile radius. My bike is conveniently stashed two blocks from the motel in a storage unit. I already miss it and can’t wait to return after a week on the east coast.

“I’m not gay,” Charlie says within the first thirty seconds. “I love women.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” I say, fiction being my specialty.

He grins. A big plug of chewing tobacco distorts his lower lip. “The taxi is pink ‘cause some day I’m gonna own a dozen cabs and hire the hottest, best looking babes in Franklin County to drive ‘em,” his says. “I’ll probably lay most of ‘em in the process.”

“Really,” I say. At this point I’m not paying much attention because I haven’t been in a car since Pueblo, and again, I have to adjust to the sensation.

“I ain’t bragging,” Charlie says, “but I’m probably the best looking guy around here. Chicks dig that I’m from Georgia. I don’t need to hire girls to get lucky.”

“Really.” I think: I bet they flock to that bulging, and oh so sexy, lower lip.

“Besides, there’s nothing like hot chicks in pink taxis to change a town’s bad reputation.”

“Bad reputation?”

“Damn straight. Central Missouri is the meth capitol of the country. We got labs all over the place.”

“Really?”

“Personally, I don’t do any drugs myself. Maybe a little pot, maybe an upper or two if I have to work the late shift.”

“Understandable,” I say, on auto-response and wishing I could blot Charlie out with a few of the drugs he never does.

“I have a deal going with the local bars,” he says. “Ten bucks to the bartender for every drunk I drive home. Win win win…all around. Especially when it’s a drunken chick.”

“I bet.”

“You wouldn’t believe the propositions I get. One gal sat in the back seat and asked me if I wanted to join her. I told her no and she says: ‘Hope you don’t mind if I entertain myself’, and I say: ‘Suit yourself. You’re payin’ the fare’. And there she sits goin’ at it.”

“Yeah…well…I….”

“Besides, I never get involved with a chick until after I see her -- ”

I’m desperately calculating the distance between Union and St. Louis. With traffic, I estimate about ninety minutes of Charlie hell.

“What’s with some women?” Charlie says, “They either smoke -- and that’s a deal killer for me -- or they’re way too, you know, lippy, down where I don’t like lippy.”

By now I’m way past squirm and my body has scrunched into a paralytic cringe. I glance to my left and notice a stain on the seat. Jesus “suit yourself” Christ! There’s never a good, clean, lie in the dirt revival tent when you need one?

I inch closer to the window.

Theoretically, he’s working for me, so I suppose I could tell him to shut up. Then I remind myself that this is the only cab company in the Union area. Besides, I’ve already committed to the eighty-dollar ride and who knows how much worse this could get if he’s pissed.

“Now,” Charlie bulls on, “things ain’t like this down south, but these Yankee chicks don’t want no kids. Can you believe it? They’re too busy gettin’ drunk and stoned. But hell, I’m in my forties. I want kids before I’m their grandfather.”

I actually understand Charlie’s illogical logic, and nostalgia floods over me. What could be better than life as a simple, uncomplicated cockroach?

“Not that being stoned all the time is always a bad thing," Charlie says. "Shit, I got a half-decent girlfriend out of it once. In fact, the last chick I hired. But then I find out all she wants to do is sleep. Day, night, didn’t matter. She’d a been a zombie if she’d been awake long enough.”

“Really,” I say. I settle in for a long ride with La Cucaracha playing over and over in my mind.

#

And now I’ve kicked into Brenda Drive and I’m back from the east coast. Charlie, the only ride in twelve towns, the only ride in the “meth capitol of central Missouri”, is taking me back to my bike, to the storage unit in Union.

“Know what I like about chewing tobacco?” he asks. I’m sure the question is rhetorical, so I don’t bother answering. “You get the buzz without stinking up your clothes. And personally, I can’t stand kissing a chick after she’s just smoked a cigarette. With chew, all I gotta do is pop a breath mint. They never know I’d just hawked a plug.”

“No…never.”

“After that I just gotta put up with their bullshit and listen to them bitch about puttin’ on weight and all the guys who ruined their lives and how nobody ever gives ‘em a break and whine, whine, whine. Jesus, I hate women.”

Charlie raced off after dropping me at my bike and now I’m pedaling to Festus, Missouri where I’ll follow the Mississippi River south before crossing into Illinois and rejoining the TransAm.

Ahhhhh…the traffic sounds so melodious.

La Cucakafka, La Cucakafka

So, where am I again?

Oh right, Rocheport.

And what’s that horrible smell?

A group of bikers, as stranded as I, sit in an outdoor café pondering…what? Which direction is driest?

I already know east and west are flooded, then five minutes later, I learn that the Missouri River is south of town.

So many options.

I decide to…

No really. What’s that stink?

I glance around at the tables and see a hefty biker chomping down on the first of two (bikers eat a lot) double-decker Mad Cow burgers, with fries. His touring buddy sits across the table slobbering belching ketchup onto his Just Slightly Peeved Cow burger, with no fries.

Naturally, to my ill-mannered and finicky vegetarian nose, their meal reeks. But I recognize the smell as nothing unusual -- the regular, run of the mill, rank and foul burger stench. If this other smell is on the menu, it’s Marinated Swamp Thing in a Creamy Toe Sauce, a sour, clammy tang with an undertone of mold.

I step away from the table, but the smell follows.

A middle-aged couple, stranded with a very long and very ungainly tandem, calls 1-800-fldhump. No answer. Most other bikers have finished their lunch and are using cell phones to rent anything motorized, anything with a bike rack.

I step to the fringe of the café and sneak a whiff of my armpits, and at the same time, realize my shirt is damp, but not with sweat. Wading and splashing through the fetid water has coated me, front and back, with Missouri River Rot. Ah, ha, I think. I wonder how long I can stay here before someone buries me?


Before leaving Kansas, I’d made reservations for all my nights on the KATY. My guardian devil had warned me that lodging on the trail was tight this time of year. So, remembering how brilliantly I’d navigated through Missoula, Montana, I stoked my I.Q. to just above fool and determined to not find my destiny on the road I took to avoid it. After all, if I’m insane enough to venture away from the TransAm on this new, customized, “seat of the pants” route, I’m damn sure not going to find myself stranded on the KATY Trail without…without…

Or, at least…I…well…

Okay. Relax. This situation isn’t hopeless. Somewhere beyond Rocheport, in some unidentified town beyond the intricate maze of unfamiliar highways carving through rural Missouri, somewhere, a motel room awaits me. If only I can stay with the plan, find my way to the KATY trailhead at North Jefferson, and phone the Best Value Inn for their bike shuttle.

If only…

Fortunately, I’d purchased a Missouri highway map.

Unfortunately, I’d barely looked at it.

For the previous two days, I’d used the Internet to guide me to KATY, and once I was on her, she seduced me with her gentle, soothing mounds, her well-groomed features, her hours of graceful, blissful glides in and out of bountiful scenic wonders.

With my path so well laid, I hadn’t glanced at the map long enough to realize how worthless it was, or even remove it from my pack.

So here I am now, totally screwed by KATY, malodorous vapors wafting up from my shorts and tee shirt, my sandals splattered with leaky diaper flood mud -- staring at Missouri -- from a bird’s view. Rocheport is a speck. Something an insect might leave behind after scurrying across the counter. Glancing up from the map, I see that the town does nothing to alter that impression.

I feel trapped. But if I stay here any longer, I’ll become just another roach at the port.

What’s this?

A woman in the café is watching me. Is that pity, or revulsion?

A moment later, she walks over, offers me a forced smile, then gawks for a second at my forehead, and squints. I couldn’t look or feel fouler. Even my hair feels coated with spluge.

She’s staring at me now as if seeing something horrible, something inhuman, something like antennae pushing up from under my skin.

I try to speak, but instead, a peculiar hiss escapes from my lips. I look away, embarrassed. She smiles again (I want to believe it’s pity) and hands me the map that’s been making the rounds between stranded bikers, a detailed map.

Seems I’m going to Jefferson City via Columbia, Missouri. All I have to do is turn right on Central Street, bear left outside Rocheport, then turn right onto Highway 40. Missouri 63 out of Columbia will take me directly to Jefferson City.

Sounds way easier than it’s likely to be.

I hear the woman say: “When you get to Columbia, scurry onto North Stadium Blvd. Hopefully, nobody will turn on the kitchen light before you get to Highway 63. If you’re hungry, you should be able to pick up a few crumbs on your way to Jefferson City.”

Wha…? Did you just say…?

She glares at me and curls the map into a tight roll. I realize I HAVE TO GET OUT OF THIS TOWN.

Now.

Leaving Rocheport triggers a memory, a story by Franz Kafka I read in college. You see, there’s this man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a…

Oh, never mind.

There’s Highway 40.

But for some absurd reason, Highway 40 also transforms -- into Interstate 70 -- after less than five miles. I’m still on the same road, but now I’m illegal, and everything is HUGE, loud, crowded, chaotic. Semis and fuel tankers, double-wides on flat beds, caravans of culvert pipes -- all snarl past the shoulder with deadly velocity and choke me in whirlwinds of dust. I feel as welcome here as a cockroche on a shower curtain.

My back stiffens. I squirm in my seat. Something hard and unyielding chafes my shoulder blades.

I know, officer, I chirp over and over in my mind, bicycles aren’t allowed on interstates. But the hurricane…and the flood…and these spines on my legs.

What? Why am I…?

The cop in my mind sneers with disgust as the first protrusions of antennae break skin. I stare back at him with big, bug eyes -- confused, distraught, near panic -- my soul crushed under his sole.

Will he sweep me off the interstate?

Or will I see a sign, just ahead, saying: North Stadium Blvd.

I exit the interstate and drive cops out of my mind.

My feet have narrowed into tiny little forks that easily grip the pedals. Biking is so much easier now. Two legs rest while two are pedaling. My third pair steer the bike away from the shoulder and into the middle of the lane. Never before have I felt so…invincible…and so aerodynamic. Wind glides naturally over this rugged new exoskeleton.

I’m also breathing with my armpits. This is very convenient because my nose has crusted over and armored into a blunt brown shield. Columbia, Missouri swarms. Hundreds of other hard-shelled creatures, of every shape, size, and color, surround me -- their vulnerable, soft interiors sheltered from impact. They mass, pause, screech, growl, pause, mass, pause, screech, pause, lurch, pause, pause, and whine before wheezing a foul miasma and scampering away, probably to some dark corner or watery hole.

Contentment floods me. For the first time, I feel as if I actually belong on the highway. Like the others, I butt in, barge, belch, and bully my way into the flow. I’m so elated, so transported, so swept along by joy and delight I barely remember checking into my “motel”.

For some reason, the door to my room has been left ajar.

I step inside.

My feet stick to the carpet.