The Reality of Riding Across America

Note 1- This is written for cyclists thinking about taking this or other long distance trips. If you’re a casual reader, don’t ruin your fun, skip this.

Note 2- re-reading this, I can see a mix of present-tense and past-tense. I can’t fix it because the trip is present, but rapidly receding into the past. Bear with it.

I need to comment about the reality of riding across America and how it differs from the fantasy I had on setting out to San Francisco. The America By Bicycle brochures and web site point out that the two can be very different. If one is wedded to the fantasy, the ride will be disappointing. But if one can accept that “what is, is” the ride can be more than one expected.

First, I should say that there are times when the reality is just like the fantasy. Riding along the shores of Lake Tahoe with alpine mountains reflecting on its surface is awe inspiring. Seeing the salt lakes for the first time made me understand the whole concept of mirage and what it must have done to pioneers’ heads. Cresting Monarch Pass at 11,300 feet and seeing a whole new vista on the other side of the mountain is magical. In the Western States, every day brings some kind of surprise.

There are days when the reality is something I never could have thought to fantasized. These were the days of riding around the Major Taylor velodrome or catching the little kids with their red wagon parade around the Illinois state capital on the fourth of July. Who could have expected that? There were hip things like Lee serving us her home made pies at “The Bus Stop,” and telling about life as a building mural artist and boxer. Jesse James’ house and the huge museum of Western lore in St. Joe’s were hidden treasures. There are lots of little things that surprise and delight when you are traveling with the speed of bike.

There are many realities that I never thought of when I signed up for the ride. First is the reality of a fifty two day trip. That’s the longest I’d ever been away from home. It meant letting go of my job, my friends, my family, and all the things that make up my daily life. They would all go on without me. There were times on the trip when I would go to WalMart, just because that was something “normal” people do. I stayed at 47 different hotels, 47 different rooms to find, 47 times to figure out where to put my bike, 47 different alarm clocks to program, 47 times to load and unload the luggage. I’d never thought about laundry. I did the laundry ten times, in a truck stop, at the hotel, at a Laundromat, in a tub, sometimes drying on the interstate fence behind the hotel or the fence of the pool. Laundry became a big concern. I had four jerseys and three sets of shorts. Would I make it until the next hotel with a laundry? Would the blast furnace of a drier ruin all my “line dry” lyrca shorts? 47 breakfasts, 47 dinners, all with the same 40 people (and with food that was sadly the same). To be thrown in with forty people is like being freshmen in college. Everyone is a little nervous, everyone is in the same boat. A few people knew each other, most did not. There was no room for pretense or posing. You can’t hide who you really are for 52 days. Before I left, I wondered if I’d get enough time to myself. 52 days with a bunch of people. Argh! I liked them. I became a devotee of group riding. "Tom time" was never an issue.

I missed my friends and my family and my work and my routine. There weren’t many calls or letters from home. There weren’t even many comments on the blog or e-mails. I wondered if it was worth the effort to post. Was anyone reading it? It’s a little humbling to realize that life goes on without you, much as it would if you were on a trip to the moon, or for that matter, dead. I look forward to sleeping in my bed, having a cup of my own coffee from my own mug, and yes, even to using my own washer and drier.

Hotels weren’t part of my fantasy. They were mostly average budget motels. Only three were memorably good: the Best Western Lake Tahoe, the Query Inn and Suites in St. Joe’s MO, and Styleridge Suites in Indianapolis. A few were god-awful places that, if I checked in with my family, I would have left; Days Inn and American Value, where the sheets and towels had holes in them. Paint was either pealing or rusty. The pool was closed. The soda machine was broken. The washer worked, but not the drier. Some hotels were simply repetitive, the same light fixtures, the same dressers, the same soap in the same place on the counter in every Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express. It gets old when you know the hotel better than the house keeping staff does.

Most of the food was unremarkable, the only memorable meal being the first buffet we had at the Golden Nuggest Casino in NV. It was high quality and in quantity that amazed our European members. Breakfast was either in the hotel, or at Denny’s, Bob Evans, Perkins, or when we were lucky, someplace “local”. Those make-it-yourself waffle makers were popular at the hotels, they allowed them to claim “hot breakfasts.” The local eateries were invariably good. Lunch was “on our own” -we had some real finds in local cafes and restaurants. There were also more than our share of Dairy Queens, Burger Kings, and gas station food. The fantasy was that all out meals would be local cuisine served by local people. Dinner was usually at some chain restaurant. They never wanted in quantity, although quality was sometime questionable. Sizzler, Bob Evans, lots of Golden Corrals, a Chinese Buffet in Dodge City that was quite good and a few local restaurants. But we came for the riding, not for the food. The food often degenerated down to a simple source of calories - "a unit of energy" as I like to remind my students. We need lots of energy, but it's a little sad when you just "gas up."

As to the riding, the mechanics (not the actual riding, but the mechanics of touring) are pretty harsh. I’ve never been a morning person, and this was not like RAGBRIA or some charity tour where you could start whenever as long as your gear was on the truck my eight. Our mornings were much more compressed. There is typically an hour between the start of breakfast and the start of load. Breakfast could be as early as 5:30 but no later than 6:30. At exactly the posted load time, the trailers doors flew open, the pumps spilled out, and the sign-out table was set up. People scramble for pumps, luggage is loaded, tires are topped off at 120 psi, riding groups assemble and depart. Within 20 minutes, it’s all over. Point- this isn’t a leisurely get up, eat, have a second cup of coffee, and roll out deal. The ride is very compressed. The structure is necessary since four staff members in two vans have to provide support to 40 cyclists. The more compressed the departure, the fewer miles we’re spread over, and the better support we get. Still, for someone who is not a morning person, it sucks. I don’t usually hit my stride until the 20 or 30 mile mark. About 20 days into the trip, I started getting up 15 minutes earlier. That let me move slower and made my morning not so painful.

The mechanics of sag support are tremendously important to the reality of the ride. On really hot days, two water bottles between rest stops aren’t enough to enough to ensure hydration. I’d never had a problem with dehydration, who’d have thought it would be an issue now? At times, it was. Fortunately, the vans stop randomly and top off our water between SAG stops. There were parts of the route, which quite frankly, were too dangerous to ride. Going down I-80 in a construction zone with no shoulder wasn’t in my fantasy. The vans were there, and encouraged us to SAG, but gave us the choice. (Here is a reality not in the fantasy; when it was really dangerous, we were told to get in the van or be dropped from the ride.) (This may anger riders who are set on riding every inch, but safety should come first). Bikes break in ways they never break back home. For the first time in my life, my derailleur cable snapped. Not a biggie. A rider with a new Specialized bike developed cracks in both her wheels. That is a big deal. Several riders had to buy new wheel sets or have other major repairs done en route. Many bought new tires, new saddles, new gloves, new shorts.

The support team from the touring company is not something I gave much thought to before the ride, but they are the absolute key to a safe and happy passage. That being said, there isn’t much hand-holding. No one will, or can, ride the ride for you. There are forty adult riders and four support staff. When riders are injured, they are taken to the hospital and once every thing is under control, the staff leaves and returns to the ride. It seems cold, but if it were otherwise, there’d be three staff for 39 riders, or 2 for 38. : - ( (However, when lots of people caught the stomach bug, they were driven directly to the next hotel.) ((Whose fantasy includes sickness, constipation, sunburn, diarrhea, and saddle sores?)) Our bike mechanic was the best in the world, but for major bike issues (those requiring more parts than tubes, tires, or cables) we’re referred to a local bike shop. The riders are largely responsible for the well-being of both themselves and their bikes.

Riding down a two lane shaded road chatting with a cycling buddy, stopping to talk with the farmers, or riding off route to see the local attractions are all part of the fantasy of the ride. We did get to ride down those two lane shaded roads later in the trip. But most of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada were ridden on the shoulders of interstates. We had to concentrate on avoiding the rumble strips, broken glass, and shredded tires. It was challenging to ride with triple trailers doing 75 miles per hour just ten feet away from you. There was no single riding buddy. But there were always riders who were riding your speed that day. In a way, this was nice, I got to ride with Sue, Jose, Jeff, Steve, John, Amie, Audrey, CJ, Skip, Kip, Sarge, John, Don, Jay, Rick, and Gary at one time or another. (That’s more than a third of the riders.) But if you slowed down, you got dropped. If you wanted to take a picture or take a piss, it was “See you at the next SAG stop.” If you wanted to go off route, it was “Just let us know so that we won’t be keeping the SAG stop open for you.” In the end, on the road it was every man for himself. It was necessary. You have to ride your own ride. If a group stops every time a member wants to stop and there are 15 people in the group, the group never gets anywhere. There were also days when two or three people would agree to ride together with an implicit “no matter what.” This usually happens when we are tired, but allows for lots of stops to take pictures, have butt breaks, etc. Riding off-route for any period of time (it would have been nice to go to church on a Sunday or two) was really out of the question. The route directions are best interpreted by a group, and the SAG stops are opened for a fixed interval. If one took an hour off, it would be very easy to get lost and far off course.

In terms of me actually riding my bike, well, riding the bike is like riding the bike. I doubt that anyone who has ridden any distance has any fantasy about the actual riding. You get on, you pedal, you get off. On long days, I’d break the trip up into segments. Half way to lunch, ten miles to the sag, a third of the way through the day’s ride, or when thing got bad, I’d just count down the miles. (The later is counter productive since miles go by very slowly. I’d try not to look at the computer if the day was slow.)

The road bike, with it’s 20 gear combination (2 front, 10 back), is an incredibly efficient machine. I, however, am not so efficient, so most of the problems were with me. Dehydration was a constant issue. Although it wasn’t talked of openly, the state of one’s bowls was a topic of whispered conversation. Where you loose? Were you tight? Who had what medicine? Early in the trip, I had a severe constipation problem. Yuch. Later there were opposite issues. I came to hate my bib-style cycling short, which have suspender straps over the shoulder. I had to take off my jersey to let down my shorts. Somewhat related to this is the issue of food. Different people have different needs. I needed to stop for real food (not granola bars and an orange) after between four and five hours of riding. If I didn’t, I’d feel awful. I got past the point of asking if anyone wanted to stop for lunch, and would just announce that I was stopping within the next half hour if anyone wanted to join me. Someone usually did. Then there is that last whispered issue- sore butt, butt rash, and saddled sores. Mine had gone from bad to worrisome by day 10. Bad butts can end your ride, so there were circulating conversations of butt butter vs. assos vs. brave soldier vs. bag balm vs antibiotic cream. What saved my ass was switching out saddles to put on “The Seat®.” There were lots of crack about its unusual shape when I put it on the bike, but by the end of the ride, many people wanted to know where they could buy one. All my problems cleared up once I switched to “The Seat®”.

Flats were the most irritating, reoccurring mechanical problem of the trip. I had 14 of them, mostly in the beginning of the trip (after which I put in Goo tubes) or at the end, when my tires were chewed up. One tried not to get too upset by flats, they were a cost of doing business. In reality, flats are not that hard to fix, they are just aggravating. Two people tied for the most flats on the trip; 17. remarkably, one rider had none. The van had a box with a gross (144) of tubes. My biggest mechanical was a broken rear derailleur cable- it forced me to ride hills in my highest gear for ten miles. I had a new set of breaks put on after coming down the Rockies. It seemed like a prudent thing to do. My chain also wore out, but I’d packed a spare. I had to put on a third chain when I got home.

Small things that were never an issue at home became intolerable on the ride. My beloved Oakley sunglasses (a gift from my kids) didn’t wrap around enough and weren’t close enough to my face. Stuff got in my eyes and my contacts dried out. I got new sunglasses at Target. Those really cool metallic candy apple red water bottles that matched my bike so well? There were lousy, I couldn’t squeeze them to squirt water into my mouth. I threw them away and bought plastic water bottles at WalMart. My very expensive state of the art Garmand cycle computer became unreliable. I bought a bare bones "back up" computer for $20. It suited my needs. Things that were a big deal at home just didn’t matter on the road. I never listened to those CDs, wore all the clothes, or wrote any post cards that I’d brought from home.

The bottom line is that the reality of the ride is very different from the fantasy. If I’d known then what I know now, would I do the ride? Absolutely, and I’d probably enjoy it more.

If you are a rider, and you ever have the chance to ride cross country, do it. If you have any doubts, read the entries for July 18 and July 22.

May the wind be at your back,

Tom