The clouds
break.
Paths of
sunlight fall to the damp moss.
Whose golden
breath
Billows up from
a chalice of shadowed pines?
October 8,
2013 — halfway between Seattle and Portland, Ore.
I stood for
several minutes atop the highway overpass.
Lanes of rush
hour on Interstate 5 traffic screamed down the tarmac and beneath my feet,
swarming out of the city like hornets from a nest.
The lanes into
the city were gridlocked in a river of taillights.
The Seattle
skyline glinted dull orange in the hazy, late-day light. Its skyscrapers could
have been alien sentinels, some metal form of life tapping an invisible energy
out of the atmosphere.
Still the cars
came, dashing for the suburbs. Maybe some of them had been through California,
covering the same number of miles that had taken me almost a month, in a couple
days.
Mt. Ranier
towered above it all, the epitome of massiveness. The volcanic cone begins
almost at sea level, then climbs to over 14,000 feet above the proud city.
A narrow ring
of forest circled the base of the beast followed by two vertical miles of snow
and ice, set ablaze in brilliant, pinkish hues.
I stayed for a
couple days in Seattle, crashing at a friend’s place in the University
District. Between the steep streets and my crappy brakes, I had plenty of
excitement on the hills. In one instance, I used my shoe to drag myself to a
stop along the pavement right before I went careening through an intersection.
Eventually, I
managed to get an appointment at a bike shop, where I paid to have my gears
fixed too.
Maybe I needed
some repair as well. My knee had started jabbing little pain tweaks at me every
time I turned the pedals. I had less energy when I got on the bike than I’d had
at the start of the ride. Fatigue set in as soon as I started going anywhere.
I realized that
I was lonely most of the time. Somehow, I hadn’t been psychologically prepared
for solitude, especially not as I carried feelings from a dwindling
relationship. They lingered. They knocked around my cranium as I tried to think
of other things.
Coming into the
city was a welcome break from the tedious miles that I’d spent alone. My friend
Josh must have worried when it began to get dark and I still hadn’t showed up
at his apartment. Seattle may be a bike friendly town, but I found its suburbs
to be pure hell.
A highway that
I’d planned to take into town turned out to be a four-lane behemoth with on
ramps and a steady flow of traffic. My atlas didn’t have detail maps for the
area immediately outside the city, so I used guesswork instead. I kept my
compass needle pointing south and followed a river, thinking that it would take
me to a familiar landmark. It took me to a dead end, forcing me to retrace my
steps for three miles.
The burbs gave
way to another highway, then more burbs and more hills.
All the other
cyclists had turned on their flashers to make themselves more visible to
traffic. I had my reflective vest and that was it.
Seattle had to
live up to its reputation, of course, and it started raining. Gouts of water
ran down the streets, reflecting the neon storefronts and headlights. Cars
whirled around a traffic circle in a malicious carnival as I feebly attempted
to get around.
Finally, I hit
a bike path and promptly lost 20 minutes pedaling around a big loop. By the
time I figured out the route it was full night with miles to go. A steady
stream of city bicyclists whirled by me, their lights coming up quiet and
ghostly through the trees.
Hope sprung
when I realized that I was crossing the Washington University campus. I
couldn’t have been far from Josh’s apartment. My phone rang right then. Josh
wanted to know just where the hell I was. I told him.
“Hold on a
second man; I’ll come out and find you.”
He came out and
found me.
I bummed around
the city over four or five days, taking walks, playing music with Josh and his
friends, enjoying local beer and food.
I also got to
see my friends Rachel and Dustin who had just moved to the area from Wyoming. I
didn’t want to break my own-month streak of not using motorized transport, so I
ended up pedaling up to their place in Lynnwood. I went back to Seattle the
next day and got a flat — the first on my trip. Luckily, I was near a bike shop
where I got it taken care of. It was pretty lazy, considering that I had the
gear to do the job, but I wasn’t in the mood for the time and effort, nor the
possibility that I would screw something up.
Later, I met
Rachel and Dustin at the state park along Puget Sound. They’d brought bicycles
so we could pedal around together. We ended up sitting on a driftwood log by
the beach with the Olympic Peaks in front of us across the water and Mt. Ranier
rising behind us and to the south. It occurred to me that I’d never swum in the
Pacific Ocean before, so I stripped down to my running shorts and took the
plunge. The rush of cold was a welcome stimulant, so was the warm prickly
feeling on my skin as I boogied out of the water. Aside from a mild brain
freeze, I felt great.
It might have
been best to call the trip right then.
Even before I
started this trip back in Utah, I’d decided that I could be satisfied with
Seattle — even though my full plan called for going down through Oregon and
eventually coming back to my start point at the boathouse in Jensen.
I looked at
myself and asked how much more I was really capable of doing.
“Well, I could
at least make it as Oregon,” I thought.
Some family
friends, Mike and Margie, lived in Eugene. Mike, who knew I was a runner, said
it was basically required for me to see Hayward Field, the most famous track in
America, home of Steve Prefontaine amongst other running legends.
I left Seattle
the next afternoon. My course took me beneath the Space Needle, then along the
waterfront. People were in their summer clothes, strolled out among the ships
and docks, soaking up the October sun.
I made several
miles of progress along bike paths, followed by suburban streets. There were
several hills along the water that afforded spectacular views of the breakers
coming in along the miles of shore. Having a new set of brake pads added peace
of mind on the down grades.
I ended up
quitting early at a state campground, then going through Tacoma the next day.
The rain
started when I was pedaling along the shipyards along the sound, let up around
noon, then poured with gusto as I entered the forest. The knee tweak pinged
each time I turned the pedals over.
There was only
a light wind, but I could barely make the bike move against it. I swore like a
madman, trying to make my legs work when nothing else would.
Sign near Elbe,
Washington (transcribed approximately):
Mt. Ranier
Closed.
Thanks Federal
Government.
Let’s take your
paycheck and give you an IOU.
I could have
quit at a campsite near a reservoir, but decided paying the $15 fee would be a
cop out with all the national forest land nearby. Plus, I’d barely done half
the miles I’d planned for that day. I pushed five more miles to a forest road
and ended up camping by a stream in a soaking hollow.
It was misting
gently the next morning. The temperature must have been in the 30s and I
couldn’t get my hands warm for the life of me, not even when I wore all my
laters and pedaled myself into a sweat.
“I’m going to
quit in Portland,” I kept repeating to myself. The idea of getting off the bike
for good was a comforting one.
To celebrate my
capitulation, I pulled into a rest area and sat inside for two hours, downing
hot coffees and eating frantically as it misted outside.
“Fuck this
trip.”
I walked
outside with the food and coffee lurching inside my belly. It was kind of
enjoyable to hate every moment of the ride. Once I accepted that every mile
would be shit, I was rarely disappointed. What would be next? Sleet? Some
dickhead trucker splashing me with a wall of dirty water?
The cloud break
to the south gave me pause. The sun shone down in golden beams above a bowl in
the hills, illuminating drifting whorls of steam. It looked like someone’s
breath coming out of the hills. I knew I had to shut up for a second and
appreciate it.
I had become
regimental about enjoying such moments, taking them in the way some people pop
vitamins. It felt like they were keeping me sane. If I didn’t make an effort to
appreciate them, I would go pedaling right past in an unbroken string of
miseries.
It occurred to
me that this was the way to get through life itself. Most people’s lives are a
train of tedious tasks, insults, and thwarted expectations.
Amidst this,
the clouds will break sometimes. Seize that moment! Cherish it and hold it
close, just as you would cherish someone close to you.
If I could
remember these moments, better yet, to write them honestly, perhaps some of
this trip would be worth salvaging.
5 p.m. light.
The rain wet
fields
Behind the
tractors
Set ablaze.
Each blade of
grass
A green flame.
I couldn’t
decide if aiming for occasional happiness was a realistic goal or depressing
defeatism.
I camped out in
a strand of trees by the highway.
The next day, I
hoped to make it across to Oregon, if not to Portland. I began to think about
whether I could make it the rest of the way to Eugene.
Such thoughts
faded when I woke up to yet another cold, misty morning. The route took me to
the west side of Interstate 5. It was a straight shot down from there to the
Columbia River where I would cross into Oregon.
Even so, there
were plenty of hours of biking ahead.
The blue sky
broke through the clouds. This would be a lovely time, I thought, to munch on
those graham crackers I just purchased.
I pulled of the
road, enjoying the pastoral environment. Suddenly two other bikes came down the
hill. They had panniers clipped to the side to hold gear — like they planned on
traveling a long way.
“Howdy,” I
said.
“How’s it going
man?” the lead bike asked.
“Not too bad.”
“Where you
headed?”
“Portland.”
The bikes
slowed.
“Do you want
some graham crackers?” I offered.
They swung
around.
Mike and Cree
were also going to Portland. From there, they planned to bike down through
California and then power east all the way back to Kentucky where they’d grown
up. If this wasn’t ambitious enough, come spring they planned to start along
the Appalachian Trail.
Like me, they
were four days out of Seattle. Cree had worked at a bike shop — a useful guy to
have on this kind of trip. His bike was loaded down with a couple dozen pounds
of repair gear.
Mike, an
ex-coast guard guy, had been reading up on survival knowledge.
We agreed to
ride together as far as Portland where they would split off on the way to Hood
River, which was further east. I still wasn’t sure if I would have it in me to
pedal all the way to Eugene.
Of course now that
I’d agreed to bike with them, it meant I had to keep up. The two set a brisk
pace that kept me working. I didn’t want to drop out though. It was the first
time on the damn trip that I’d had any company on the road.
We cruised into
a town where the boys were jonesing for some Wendy’s. Our bikes blitzed through
several intersections, and bounced up onto sidewalks as one of them checked his
smart phone to confirm the directions.
There was an
A&W that was close by, so we parked our bikes their and ate outside. I had
fries with root beer, while the others gobbled down grease bomb sandwiches.
All of us
decided it’d be a good plan to hit a Safeway to restock our supplies. It would
be a mundane detail if not for the fact that we saw two other bikes with
panniers outside the store. They were an Aussie and a Canadian pedaling from
British Columbia to San Diego. The two were logging 100+ mile days — more
ambitious than the three of us who were more in the 50 to 60 mile range now. It
was probably best to let them beast it down to Portland, while we would hang
back and camp somewhere between Portland and the Oregon border.
A bunch of
teens were out of the local high school on lunch break.
“Where are you
guys coming from?” one shouted.
“I’m coming
outa, Utah. “ I shouted, “but these two bros are going all the way to
Kentucky!”
The chorus of
whoas and holy shits brought a smile to my face.
A long
steel-truss bridge spanned the river between Washington and Oregon.
The group of us
pedaled like hell up the span, only a couple of feet from heavy car and truck
traffic on our left. Big chunks of bark off of logging trucks littered the
breakdown lane, forcing us to bounce over them or weave hazardously around.
From the
crossing, our road went east. It wasn’t too late in the day, but no one had a
problem with quitting early before we came into Portland.
We ended up at
a state park where camping was prohibited and the woods were full of poison oak
anyway.
The park
caretaker recommended a $5 a night place at a marina two miles down the road.
Sold!
We were
pedaling back for the road, when I heard a groaning from the back of my bike. I
got off and found that part of my rack was rubbing against my rear wheel.
Cursing
generously, I tried to bend it out of the way. Eventually, Cree managed to undo
the bolts that held the rack in place. We tied it off to a different place
using cord, hoping that it would remain in position, away from the wheel.
Our camp area
adjoined a convenience store and some moorings. 10-story ships would come chugging
down the river, trailing enormous wakes.
We enjoyed some
beers out of the convenience store while one of my new friends hollowed out an
apple.
“You know
that’s not legal on this side of the river,”
“I’m not too
worried about it? Want some?”
“Sure.”
Cree and Mike
were taking a smell the roses approach to the trip, planning several stops
along the way. They figured if they took it easy, they’d have a better chance
to stick with it. Considering the state I was in, I thought this made a lot of
sense. Since they were south, they hoped to avoid the time pressure of an
encroaching winter, though I was sure they’d have a cold time for some of their
journey.
We took a
leisurely start the next morning. It was ironic that now that I planned to kill
the trip, I felt unusually energetic. Some of this could have been Cree putting
the proper amount of air in the tires — something that I’d overlooked because
I’d gotten used to squeezing them in a slightly under-inflated state. I stayed
up with Cree and Mike no problem and genuinely enjoyed pedaling.
We grabbed some
street food and ate it near the riverfront. They still planned to high-tail it
on the way to Hood River, though they would need to haul serious ass if they
planned to make it by nightfall. I had my eye on a campground south of town.
Yes, I’d changed my mind again, deciding that I might as well take my push all
the way to Eugene.
I pedaled up
the thoroughfare out of town only to have the groan come back again. The bike
lurched and I got off to the side to try and fix things. Try as I might to
wrangle the rack into a decent position, it seemed all the more determined to
rub the tire. I must have spent the good part of an hour trying to fix things,
then said to hell with it.
I posted up for
the night at a cheap motel, handing the manager my debit card in disgust. I
called my friend Mike in Eugene to see if he’d be willing to take me in if I
came in on a bus the following night. He was game, and better yet, excited to
have me down there.
If there was
anything I felt at the end of the journey, it was relief to have it over. There
was some regret, like I’d bowed out but there was also the relief that I cold
get on with life. Along the way, I’d envied people I saw working in stores or
having a day out with friends, just living their lives without the compulsion
to break themselves on some kind of hard-core trip.
I pedaled back
into Portland the next day to see about getting a bus. The rack kept rubbing
against the bars, and I had to keep readjusting. As I crossed one street, I
heard something honk behind me, a trolley bearing down right at me. As I
whirled to steer away, my tire caught on the tracks, sending me flopping onto
the pavement. I grabbed the bike and dragged myself away quick as possible,
though the trolley stopped before it reached the point where it would have
flattened me.
There was a
stab of pain, in my rib, definitely a bruise.
Someone helped
right my bike.
“Are you
alright?” he asked.
“I’ll make it,”
I said.
I got on the
bike and almost flopped over again. The pedals just spun in place without
turning the wheels.
I dismounted,
and started pushing the bike toward the train station.
The trip was
over.
