A day in the life, Part II: The ride

As you have probably guessed, my dear six readers, the recent occurrences of internet availability and the energy to write things have not been overlapping very much. Please accept my apologies. Now then:

As much as we’ve managed to get the morning down to a smooth routine—regular and devoid of wild and unexpected twists and turns—all semblance of predictability goes out the window when we hit the road. Adventures are frequent and vary in excitement, but no two riding days so far have been alike.

It really can’t be exaggerated, I think, how wonderful it is to experience a country from the seat of a bicycle.  We crossed the state line into Colorado last week (okay, this particular sentence was written a while ago), and were immediately greeted by the snow-covered Rockies towering in the distance. I couldn’t help but feel like I should be paying somebody for the view. Of course, there was also the feeling that this view was well deserved, since it followed interminable and demoralizing Texas cornfields (not pictured for obvious reasons).

We don’t really ever know what any particular day will be like. We’ve ridden on bike paths and interstate highways; through towns and farms and wild rolling fields; across plains and deserts; over mountains and along rivers; in national parks and plastic suburbia. Sometimes we sweat profusely, and sometimes we can’t feel our toes. There was a day that started out in the high 30s and ended up in the mid-90s. Try dressing for that one.

We roll out in the morning in small groups, each at its own pace, to limit the number of bikes any car would have to pass at once (I think they’re all mad enough at us as it is). Throughout the day, these tend to shift (“I don’t like you any more, I’m going to go ride with Jess instead,” for instance), but we usually roll into the host location in roughly the same configuration as we had rolling out. Lately, I think a lot of us have been realizing that we’ve been riding with the same people a lot, so there’s been an observable conscious effort to slide around and ride with someone new. Keeps life interesting.

Conversation is right up there with scenery in the category of things that can make 100 miles  fly by. There was a 112-miler last week that I spent with Craig and Katie R, and there was nothing that we didn’t talk about. We had no idea where the time went when we pulled into that church. (Of course, as the universe would have it, the very next day we climbed the first 55 of 99 miles into an evil headwind, and halfway through the ride the day had already felt twice as long as the previous one).

We all carry sidewalk chalk for the purpose of chalking directions and other important messages to the people riding after us. Sometimes we get creative when indicating upcoming turns.

But I can’t really go on talking about riding without mentioning our most favorite activity, and one without which none of this would be possible. Obviously, I’m talking about eating. Now, because this word can also describe the life-sustaining activity in all of you engage on a daily basis, it seems almost as though we need to invent a new word to describe what it is that we do to food on this trip. This new word would have to combine the ferocity of “devouring” with the machine efficiency of “industrial” and the impressive scale of “astronomic.”

This is a photo of our very first lunch. And now that it’s been two months, we still don’t look any less excited when, about halfway through the ride, our van & trailer appear on the horizon, usually pulled over on the side of the road, usually with all of our food bins splayed out and ready to offer an abundance of calorific goodness. It frightens me sometimes how quickly a jar of peanut butter can go from sealed to empty, or a loaf of bread from a loaf to four crumbs, or bag of chips to just a bag. We inhale food.

And the funny part is, even if we get really full, we’re usually ready for a snack about half an hour later. Some of us pride ourselves on having an average of four to six lunches. The van will stop twice if the day’s ride is over 90 miles, but many of us like to supplement these stops with hearty in-between-lunch snacks. Gas stations are frequent haunts. Once, we rode by a smoothie place that gave us all free smoothies. I deemed the situation worthy of temporarily removing one of my water bottles.

For a week, we were spoiled by Brian P’s dad, who came out in his 1976 VW bus and drove ahead to make snack stops between lunches. He was stocked with Clif bars and Gatorade and plentiful oranges and bananas and all sorts of other goodness that left us all in extreme withdrawal as soon as he left. (Thanks, Butch! You’re sorely missed.)

Of course, not all things on the road are pretty scenery and snack breaks. Sometimes, we get flat tires (I didn’t have any in the first 2500 miles. Apparently Utah and Idaho encourage the placement of loose staples on the roads). Sometimes, our chains fall off/apart. Sometimes, our spokes snap and various other bicycle parts decide to quit. The other day, Lizzy found herself in the precarious position of being attached to her left pedal when her left pedal was no longer attached to her bike. In other words, shit happens. Luckily, with the technical and emotional support of thirty wonderful people, it’s easy to laugh most of it off.

Finally, some random things we’ve done so far while riding, condensed for your ADD reading pleasure, and because I don’t feel like writing complete sentences anymore: climbed a volcano, met astounded locals, got chased by dogs, sprayed dogs with Gatorade bottles, played paintball, zip-lined into a lake, jumped off cliffs, swam in lakes, swam in rivers (most of the time with some clothes on), fallen off at 20 mph, fallen over at zero mph, got lost (a lot), got money thrown at us out of passing cars, got yelled at out of passing cars, got hit by passing cars, played with horses, climbed abandoned trains, got pennies flattened by non-abandoned rapidly-moving trains, done a whole bunch of small, forgettable, insignificant, wonderful things, taken thousands of photos of all of the above…

And it’s not even over yet.