So-so banana

Ok, obviously I haven’t been updating this internet blog.  Lately I’ve been more invested in making zines, studying for the GRE, obsessing over the election, and collecting new injuries via the classic two-part method of crashing a bike in a banana costume and drunkenly attempting to resurrect old break-dancing moves in said banana costume.  Halloween was pretty brutal, dudes.

Joino has a new website about bikes, and I’ve been writing about messenger stuff/my sad attempts at cyclocross over at www.sosovelo.com instead of here.  Check it out, because I think he and Dawn are the funniest cyclists on the planet.  Here’s a flyer for the spandexers vs. messengers race Dawn is putting on next week:  the after-party is at my house and will hopefully involve S’mores and a lot of non-banana-costume dancing.  Even if you don’t want to race, come for the party!  

 

SPAND AND DELIVER II

S’morebit Courier

I have an unhealthy obsession with S’mores-related puns, which probably doesn’t come as a big surprise to most of you.  Strangely, I could go either way on the actual snack item known as “S’mores”- that sticky sweet combination of roasted marshmallow nestled between a layer of melted chocolate and honey graham- believe it or not, it actually doesn’t hold any special appeal for me.  Beyond the sheer exhilaration of a myriad of word-play opportunities and endless punning options, I probably don’t eat any more or less  S’mores than the next freedom-loving American (although my on-again, off-again veganism might be the x factor keeping those statistics in check).  I just want to make myself perfectly clear- this is not a plea for people to stop sending me various S’mores-affiliated memorabilia (a s’moratorium??), simply a clarification about my enjoyment of the panoply of delights offered by both the concept and reality of this quintessential campfire treat.

Holy Crap!

 

 

Anyway, with that disclaimer out of the way, allow me to continue on to my story.  I’d been back in Portland for approximately two days when it occurred to me that something was missing out of my life- something that was making it extremely difficult to adjust to a non-bike-touring, planted existence wherein all of my possessions lay in a clutter around an actual bed with no impetus to packing up and moving them to a new location each day.  No, that something was not S’mores.  Without the structure of having a planned mission and destination for each day, my life suddenly felt lost and meaningless, leaving me with way too much free time to ponder the nature of human existence and possible solutions to all of the world’s problems.  Make. It. Stop!  With regret, I instantly realized that the thing missing from my life was WORK, and that electing to take the entire month of August off to ride bikes and focus on making zines was the biggest mistake of 2008- I needed the structure and excitement of working to lend me a sense of purpose and direction, all the while clouding my overactive brain with downtown minutiae so that I wouldn’t have to ruminate on the bigger questions churning around up there.  I needed a job!

Unfortunately, my qualifications are fairly limited and Portland seems to be one of the worst places in the world to find gainful employment if you don’t have a specific trade.  When I left in March, I promised I would wean myself off the bike messengering addiction, but the minute I was out of the Portland city limits, I knew that I was lying and would immediately come crawling back to Rose City Delivery as soon as I got back into town.  As it played out, this is exactly what happened, but the slowness of late summer saw that Rose City was already overstaffed with an entire roster of messengers bearing imaginative first names that all sound exactly like mine over an antiquated radio system, telling me in no uncertain terms to seek alternate employment.  So I took a bold step in this precarious economy and started my own messenger company: S’morebit Courier.  

Actually, I didn’t start my own company- I just decided to sub for James at Orbit Courier while he was camping on a honeymoon with Chicken, following their beautiful wedding last Saturday.  I played wide-eyed rookie to his corrupt Los Angeles narcotics officer last week in an artfully re-enacted messenger version of Training Day, manning the F up to learn everything I could about the chess-like business of being a big-city courier in the gritty urban environment of downtown Portland, Oregon.  James was a less-than-convincing Denzel Washington (or maybe he just got tired of my repeated Training Day references), but he did manage to impart a lot of valuable knowledge about the messenger game over the course of our day riding around together.  When Dawn first trained me at Rose City all those years ago, I remember her laying down the primary rules of engagement to this eager young upstart thusly: “The most important thing you gotta be able to do…” at which point I leaned forward in my chair, hungry for any material that could help me rise to the top of the intimidating new world I would soon be navigating.. “is ride your bike with a cup of coffee in your hand,” she finished somewhat anti-climactically, brows furrowed into a look of dead intensity as she paused to let the information sink in.  ”And always lie when they radio to ask where you are!”  I don’t remember her explaining such basics as how to operate the pager or fill out the manifest paperwork, but those two treasured Dawn Riddle commandments have been etched into my mental tablet for the last six years, guiding me through times of darkness and ensuring my trouble-free success and longevity at that esteemed icon of dependable delivery, Rose City Messenger.  I owe it all to the Riddler.  James, however, had different criteria for successful messaging: “If you wanna be a stand-in for me, you’re gonna have to hold down all my high scores on the pinball games at Ground Kontrol”.  I took patient notes as he continued on “And if things are slow and you’re looking to pick up some work, get a multi-ball on Theatre of Magic- Janice will immediately call in with a super-rush.  Also you need to start drinking more coffee.”  This I could handle.  With no time to grow a Tom Selleck mustache or increase my average biking speed to 15-minute rush capacity, I stepped into place as a cheap Magnum knock-off with the simple hope of not losing him any clients during my triumphant three-day return to gainful employment.  Being one dispatched messenger among five at Rose City is a whole different animal than being completely on your own, juggling three separate phones in an effort to cover the entire downtown area, northwest, and east side.  I enjoyed dealing with clients directly and having the freedom to dispatch myself, but occasionally the busyness was stressful, and I missed the radio patter associated with having funny coworkers.  As it turns out, James is NOT affiliated with any criminal narcotics enterprises, so I didn’t get the chance to handle any shady, high-paying deliveries on the side- somewhat disappointing, but probably for the best.  Two slow days and one insanely busy day later, I peeled off my Orbit mustache and stepped back into my own life, handing over the Nextel and charger to Thad with a simple “Game ain’t in me no more” (ok, yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of The Wire).  Now that I have the whole riding-with-coffee, drinking-lots-of-coffee, destroying-at-pinball thing down, I don’t know how much higher I can rise in the whole messenger game, although I would love to be able to work for myself someday, S’morebit-style.  I decided to cancel my ticket to go to the North American Cycle Courier Championships in Chicago this weekend after a string of events led me to believe the whole thing was ill-fated and I should probably just save my money to travel with later.  Now I’m gonna be permanently in Portland for awhile, trying to figure out where to go from here, working part-time at Rose City, and trying to put some zines together in the meantime.  If anyone wants to train me to do something new, I’m open to trying anything, because that’s what I’ve allotted this particular time period in my life to.  It’s a confusing time, but I’m happy right now and getting a lot of things worked out.  It’s good to be back and I wish James and Chicken all the best!

24-Hour Velo Vulture

People love to write memoirs about their own personal experiments with self-deprivation, and I love to read those memoirs.  ”The guy who took a year to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary.”  ”The woman who went a year without buying consumer goods.”  ”The guy who lived his most literal interpretation of the Bible for a year.”  The list goes on and on, and the one thing that links these entertaining exercises in self-denial and ensuing reflection is the theme of the “one year mission.”  An even calendar year seems to be the unanimous time period for such a endurance challenge- perhaps it’s the shortest amount of time needed to bring some level of individual struggle to the mission while simultaneously covering a sufficient human growth period upon which to personally reflect.  I don’t really know, but I’m certainly willing to accept the proffered one-year standard, no questions asked.  It just makes sense- do something weird for a year, then write about how it changed the rest of your life.  No one’s here to rock the boat.

I never actually planned to throw my hat into the ring with regards to my own story of personal endurance until the second annual 24-hour Velo Vulture bike race was publicized.  Less of an alleycat than a scavenger hunt, the race would take place all over Portland over the course of an August weekend, and I was absolutely stoked to be back in town in time to participate.  Yeah, I realize that “24 hours” isn’t exactly in keeping with the one-year theme of previously published self-deprivation best-sellers, but anyone who knows me knows that the insurmountable feat of my body maintaining a vertical position for one consecutive day and night is wholly tantamount to someone else maintaining any other possible challenging human condition for a full calendar year.  Sleeping is what my people do best, wherever and whenever we’ve been called upon to do so, and we have never before felt the need to experiment with the nature of our existence in the absence of a satisfying nightly 8 hours.  That is, until the staggering cash prizes were announced.  $666 for a mere 24 hours of biking, exploring, and friends?  It started to sound like the perfect job for me.  In fact, the more and more I thought about a 24 hour bike scavenger hunt, the more attractive it sounded.  I’ve spent the last 4 months building up my cycling stamina throughout 14 states, and now I would have the chance to put that endurance to the test.  I could totally stay up all night in the service of a scavenging cause!  Think of all the opportunity for self-growth and reflection I could pack into a mere 24 hours!  Consider the ensuing memoir!

Things started off on the right foot when I secured the greatest living alleycat partner of our times, Jason Joinerson.  Together we would be an unstoppable team, combining our congenial forces into a tag-team of ridiculously good-looking destruction.  Joino expressed a legitimate fear that I would drop off into a standing nap somewhere around 9pm, but I soothingly assured him that I was up to the task.  I would do it.  I would stay awake for the full 24 hours, solving any mental puzzles that came my way, and scavenging the hell out of the greater Portland metropolitan area.  We started to plan our strategy with excitement, certain that our vastly superior nerd intellects were all that was needed to nose out the fierce competition.  Odds-makers declared us a “team to watch”, although I believe their exact words were “you guys are a shoo-in if there’s a prize for most Swedish lesbians impregnated”.  Unstoppable!  

All that remained was to come up with a decent team name which would, at the very least, tie in the themes of S’mores, Sean Connery, narcolepsy, good puns, and 24-hour bike scavenging.  I felt tired just thinking about it, and the race hadn’t even started.  It certainly didn’t help that the Velo Vulture time block started at 4pm and I had been nursing a hangover since 8am that same morning.  Tires pumped and bag packed, I was in my kitchen pounding thyroid energy pills when Joino showed up at the last minute with the name “World of S’morecraft”, and we were off, ready to bask in the warm glow of post-race victory.  World!  Of!  S’morecraft!

The race started in Oregon Park in typical Portland alleycat style, ie. everyone else lounged around chatting, playing it cool, and/or riding their fixed gears around in a circle, while I roamed around hyperactively, trash-talking the other teams’ chances and generally making a bad first impression on all the kids I’ve never seen before.  I frequently come across as drunk in situations like this, but Team WoS’s secret weapon would be the fact that we would be the only sober team, politely abstaining from ubiquitous PBR offerings and maintaining a laserlike focus on the task at hand.  After pounding two kombuchas, pumping triumphant fists in the air, and grabbing our hefty manifests, we were off like a shot towards the first time-check in Ladd’s Addition.  This was the fun part of the ride, tearing across town in a blitz, wondering what the evening’s tasks would hold, and mentally forming a grid of the city in order to best plan our 24-hour attack.  Damien and his cohorts did an amazing job planning such a complicated endeavor- the entire race was set up with a million and one clues to objects all over the city that needed to be collected or photographed, with the added challenge that none of the items could be easily googled for those lazy armchair racers who hoped to knock out most of the tasks from the comfort of the nearest bar with wifi. After our initial flurry, Joino and I retired to Grass Hut to lay out our battle plan, which involved a complicated map of the city dotted with stickered numbers referencing each of the 140 or so questions on the manifest.  I felt like Napoleon in his war room, dramatically using a poker to shuffle around small representatives of his troops on an elaborate map of France, or maybe just one of the nerds at Bridgetown Game & Hobby endlessly re-arranging miniature Warhammer 40K figurines with a look of pure, raptured intensity.  Actually, I felt like there was a future for me in dispatch, which is a scary thought for any disgruntled bike messenger.  How could we fail?

I’ll tell you exactly how we could fail.  Once the planning stage was complete, the sun had set, and we split up to conquer different sectors of the city in the dark.  I felt really… tired.  And lonely.  Suddenly, four hours into the race, the idea of a 24-hour scavenger hunt sounded like more of an insurmountable challenge than I had predicted.  The questions were also much harder than I had predicted, so I spent hours searching aimlessly for specific plaques and buildings that never quite materialized, before riding to a different quadrant of the city and starting the process all over again.  Staying awake past 10pm proved to be much more difficult than I would have suspected too, even with the help of various energy supplements and caffeinated beverages.  Was I learning anything about myself by pushing my abilities to the limit?  No, I was actually having the least amount of fun I’ve had in years, and that was only 8 hours into the ride.  At 2:30 am I had a breakdown in the Rose City Cemetery, abruptly coming to the realization that I’m neither an endurance athlete, nor a particularly fun person.  I just wanted my old life back- a life that didn’t involve riding all over Portland gathering crap alone in the dark while trying to solve enigmatic riddles and stay focused for hours past a reasonable bedtime.  Even finding a secret hideout to catch up with a momentary snooze wouldn’t be enough, knowing that I would sleep fitfully with the stress of having to get up a few hours later and do it all over again.  The frustrating part was that everyone else seemed to be having the time of their lives- cracking jokes, drinking beers, and generally being goofy and fun together.  Soooooooo, I quit.  I dropped out and went home to sleep, feeling awful about my total abandonment of my amazing scavenging partner, who claimed to have only enlisted in World of S’morecraft so that we could spend some quality time together.  I’ve never so thoroughly abandoned a personal mission before, except for perhaps when I quit sugar for Lent and then immediately started eating it again after three days of torturous struggle.  Taking three months to ride your bike across the country is WAY easier than staying awake, alert, and on your feet for 24 hours straight.  Just so you know,  I won’t be writing a best-seller anytime soon and I won’t be reading the entire dictionary next year.  I’m sorry I let you down, Joino!

Back in action

Oregon was a whirlwind of stokage, culminating in the Crushers’ triumphant arrival in Florence, right on the coast.  It still hasn’t hit me that we actually rode our bikes all the way across the country- I expected to feel this gripping sense of triumph once we looked out onto the mighty Pacific, like at any time our powers were strong enough to come together and form one Voltron of unstoppable human achievement.  Instead I just felt sort of dazed and vaguely sleepy.  I also felt really proud of the Crushers in a way that I somehow couldn’t extend to myself, as if I hadn’t actually participated in the collective cross-country domination, but had merely enabled my Crushers to realize their own individual goals of surviving the coast-to-coast journey from the sidelines.  I’m not really sure what that’s all about, or if it’ll ever sink in that my personal accomplishment had its own significance.  All I can say at this point is that I feel good- I rode over 6,000 miles in the last four months, met so many amazing people, and saw so many incredible parts of the United States.  Most importantly, the Crushers came back safe and sound with stories that we’ll be telling for the rest of our lives.  It was definitely hard to say goodbye, but after being shuttled back to Eugene from the coast in a van, the tour officially ended.  I’m sure we all shared the same jumble of mixed feelings: sadness that the journey had ended combined with excitement at getting home and seeing loved ones.  I couldn’t have been more ready to get back to Portland!

After eating a vegan power breakfast at the Keystone Cafe, I rolled out of Eugene towards Salem.  It had been a long time since I’ve toured solo- I certainly missed the company of my crew, but it was nice to move at my own pace, stopping when and where I chose to.  The 45-mile stretch between Eugene and Corvallis was on mostly quiet back roads with an unfortunate headwind that seemed to thwart my every attempt to take advantage of the flatness of the route and really kick it into high gear.  Luckily the second half of the day was a little less challenging, and I was able to enjoy an easy ride into Salem alone with a lot of events to reflect on from the last four months.  When I got to Salem I was forced to confront the unfortunate reality that I should have actually done some sort of research of accommodations before I left town.  All of the motels recommended to me by the only friendly Salemite I could find, a babbling, incoherent homeless man, were either already booked up or no longer in existence, so I rode around town for awhile in no particular direction until none other than a retired ADVENTURE CYCLING LEADER spotted me and intervened with an actual map of the city.  See?  Even when you’re not on the clock, being an Adventure Cycling leader is akin to being a certain winged vigilante patrolling around the streets of Gotham City- basically you have to be ready to swoop in and help people at all times while brooding and looking really cool.  (I need to work on my brooding.  Also, yes, I just saw Dark Knight and would like to confirm that it’s the greatest movie I’ve ever seen in my life.)  Anyway, I found a motel and two of my best buds, Dawn and Erin, showed up late for snacks, beer, and some laid-back good times.  We arose the next morning at a sensible hour, got wired on some non-instant coffee, then rolled out of town on a confusing series of back roads that I couldn’t possible hope to relocate in the future.  D and E were kind enough to ride slowly so that I could keep up, but being super-fast racer types on carbon-fiber road bikes, I’m not sure they had any idea what “riding slow” really means to the rest of us.  Thus, I wore myself out within the first twenty miles, desperately trying to ride fast enough to prove to them that four months of bike touring had hopefully left me in better shape than when I left in March.  Unbelievably, I don’t think it did.  

Twenty miles in, we stopped in this small town called Mount Angel, which mysteriously has a city-wide German/Austrian theme involving strictly Bavarian architecture, a “Brathaus” on every corner, and the main tourist draw- larger-than-life-sized plaster Aryan children swinging in a mechanical chair to the eerie tune of Edelweiss being piped periodically down Main Street.  What??  We also had to visit the Mount Angel Abbey, which featured an exciting museum of various taxidermied animals fighting each other and several taxidermied animal oddities, like a calf with six legs and a deer with mutated, folding limbs.  Naturally, we were there until late in the afternoon, wisely returning to the road for the remaining 55 miles only when the temperature had reached 95 degrees at around 3pm.  I had a panicky emotional freak-out late in the day from the crushing sensation that I would never actually get to my house, but eventually I arrived at my doorstep at around 9pm Monday night ready to sleep in a comfortable bed with my lovable sidekick Pirate, the world’s sweetest kitten-faced kitten.  Finally, an official end to the journey!

It’s unbelievable to be home after traveling so long and rarely sleeping in the same place twice.  I’m still overcome by various emotions I can’t categorize, and it’s really hard not to feel an anti-climactic sense of disappointment that it’s all finally come to an end.  I miss the adventure, the excitement, and the Crushers, most of all!  It’s hard to resist the urge to pick up and start traveling again, but I’ve got to figure out how to stay still in Portland for the time being.  I guess this blog entry seems pretty emo, which isn’t necessarily the impression that I want to give off, it’s just that the re-entry is somewhat harder than I expected.  I’m actually really happy to return to all my amazing Portland friends and everything else that makes this city so great.  You really can’t believe how unique it is until you leave for awhile.  Thanks to everyone who sent their support on the road!  Call me and let’s ride bikes! xo

Idaaaaahhhhhoooooo!

After boldly resisting Missoula’s siren song of relocation, we tore ourselves away from Montana and ventured back into Idaho for one more go with the rugged canyons and baffling time zone boundaries of our penultimate state. The first time I traveled this route, I was absolutely blown away by the beauty and wonder of a vast, sweeping land unsullied by visible human residents. Is anyone even from Idaho? It flies so far under the radar that I’m sure a lot of you haven’t even heard of it. Well, I took the time to do some research and it turns out that it’s an official state, alright, and not just an illogically-shaped, poor man’s version of Oregon. Believe it or not, Idaho has people, places, and things all its own, many of which are of absolutely no relation to the potato. Mountains, for example. Idaho has a great deal of mountains- more than its fair share, some might even argue. Also, conservative people. Idaho is the natural habitat of a lot of our nation’s conservative people, including a healthy sprinkling of that hide-in-the-woods-in-a-bunker-with-an-arsenal-of-homemade-weapons-until-the-apocalypse variety. This volatile subspecies is one of nature’s most exciting varieties of right-wing conservative, and many are likely proud to call the scenic gorges and rustic mountains of the Idaho panhandle “home”.

Unfortunately for this blog, very little happened this time around in Idaho. Many UNO thrashings were soundly dealt by yours truly, and the ensuing trash-talk reached all new levels of profanity and verbal abuse. Rivers were crossed. Mountains were climbed. Canyons were traversed. The highlight of the entire state was coming down off the Whitebird Pass at 40 mph without even tapping the brakes- long, winding switchbacks with steeply banked sides that brought out the racecar drivers in all of us. Absolutely amazing- it felt like we were coasting for days before we hit the 100 degree wake-up call at the foot of the hill and had to crawl up out of the canyon. Rolling into Riggins, I was vaguely disconcerted to find myself campaigning in a vicious battle for re-election as the county sheriff. There were signs everywhere advertising my platform: Integrity in Government and Freedom to Bear Arms. Proud, American Patriotism and Traditional Family Values. Hmm. Well, it certainly SOUNDS like me…. although I had no idea I was a lifetime member of the Republican Party and NRA, not to mention the proud grandparent of seven lovable imps. There it was, though, in red, white, and blue on every signpost and window display: “Giddings for Idaho County Sheriff”. I’ve never met anyone else with my last name that wasn’t my mom, dad, or grandpa, so after reluctantly parting with fleeting fantasies of dragging around Riggins in a sweet patrol car with a flashy badge and some shiny shit-kicking boots striking fear into the hearts of law-shirking locals, I rustled up as much information as I possibly could about this Giddings character. “Oh yeah, ‘Giddings’. He’s an ok guy,” was pretty much all I could get out of anyone- no one would even confess which way they planned to vote on the matter. Well, if nothin’ else, it’s nice to know that there are some “traditional” families out there keeping our name alive and well in the heart of Idaho whitewater country.

Somewhere in Idaho I decided to construct a quiz for the Crushers, after being repeatedly blown away by how little they remember about our last three months of travel together. The quiz involved five questions about each rider from information I’ve collected over a summer’s worth of conversations, and about thirty questions about the towns in which we’ve overnighted throughout the last eight states. It ended up being really fun, although the Crushers’ final scores were certainly nothing to write home about- especially Pete, about whom we were all left with some serious questions as to whether or not he was on the same trip as the rest of us. NO ONE got any of the questions about me right, including such lob balls as “what is the name of Cait’s cat (that she never shuts up about)?” and “True or False: Cait is the greatest UNO player this nation has ever known”. Man, was *I* even on this trip? Maybe that’s the better question. The winner (Chad) will be getting an eventual care package of miscellaneous Portland items, not to mention ownership rights to the one group camp stove that wasn’t completely engulfed in flames in an ironic fuel-leak tragedy while we were sleeping in the Utica, KY fire station. See- I would have totally aced the hell out of that quiz even if I hadn’t written it myself. I know the Trans-Am like I know my own mom at this point.

With only a little more than a week left on the trip, it was around the Oregon border that I started to worry that everything will be different when I get back from this epic journey. I’ve been traveling in the company of the same five men for so long- will any of my friends still recognize me now that I’m a long-haired, sage-like road warrior with freakish tan lines and the mouth of a 60-year-old naval captain? Will I be able to casually reintegrate myself into the upper echelons of Portland feminist society, or will I continue to let slip such rowdy zingers as “I wanna break her like a shotgun and load her from the rear” once I’m back in mixed company? Will I need months of decompression time or perhaps even post-traumatic stress therapy? How long before I learn to talk about my feelings and emotions again? In preparation for my re-immersion into mixed-gender society, I’ve been studying back issues of O! Magazine and I think I’m now pretty well-versed in all the issues that face the modern woman in this day and age. Get ready, Portland, ’cause I’ll be back in action on August 4th and I’ve got hours and hours of talking to do!

Big Sky Country

I’ve gotten into the habit of updating once per state, which didn’t seem like an overly difficult pace to keep up with until I suddenly found myself three states behind.  Man, at the microscopic snail rate we’re sliming our ways across the country, one would think I would be able to stay on top of that laughably simple task, but here I am in Oregon trying to remember what the hell happened in Montana.  Montana, Montana.  Hmm.  Montaaaaaana.  “The treasure state.”  800,000 people, 41st state in the Union.  Named after the Spanish word for “mountain”; first visited by Lewis and Clark in 1805.  Yeeeah, it was a pretty good ride.  That’s pretty much all I got.
But wait! Isn’t the capital in Helena?  And isn’t the state flower the Bitterroot??  And for the love of all that’s glorious, isn’t the state bird the WESTERN MEADOWLARK???  Why, yes!  Obviously there’s more to this Montana than meets the eye!

Well, I guess I’ve stalled long enough to remember a few things about our journey through this spectacular, award-winning “land of shining mountains”. First of all, there’s our dramatic entrance- we snuck in the side of Montana from Idaho to hunker down at West Yellowstone for a couple days, proving once again that our cross-country route is the MOST circuitous, LEAST efficient way to bike from one coast to the other EVER.  In fact, if you even hazard a quick glance at a map of our dear United States it’s pretty obvious that Adventure Cycling tricked us into entering Montana at ALL just to visit their headquarters up in Missoula.  Well, welly, wellerton.  What have we here?  ACA thought they could pull one over on ol’ Detective Giddings, but once again she breezily unlocked the key to their presumably sinister map-routing motives.  I sure would hate to see her blow the lid off this unexpected scandal with a force strong enough to shut down the whole cartography department… an unfortunate action preventable only through a certain women’s medium Trans Am jersey mysteriously showing up at an Oregon mail drop!  General delivery to Eugene would work.  Ahem.
Anyway, my point is that the Trans Am route is more screwed up than one of those Family Circus cartoons where Jeffy treads a dashed-line all over the neighborhood to find the family cat or Grandpa’s ghost or whatever, and that’s even BEFORE we made our big loop around Yellowstone just so that we could experience riding vertically up one of the Tetons.  Down the street, over the trampoline, up a tree- we set up camp in Idaho for a night before doubling back east to experience a little thing I like to call “Big Sky Country”.  Montana.  Land of the Ponderosa Pine.  A majestic beauty of a state with a sweet bike network that just won’t quit.  This is the third time I’ve ridden across Montana and I can now say with certainty that it’s in hot contention for the title of “Greatest Living State of our Times”.  No other state better combines the jagged peaks of the Colorado Rockies with the lovable Western old-timey-ness of Wyoming, sprinkling in a dash of Idaho’s underdog charisma and Oregon’s go-getter attitude.  Riding a dusty Montana highway means getting stuck for twenty minutes in the middle of a cattle drive, the bovine equivalent of a big-city Critical Mass, then barreling down the side of a mountain at 40 mph into a perfect historical replication of an outlaw ghost town.  We knocked out steady 75-mile days through tiny towns with double digit populations, learned more than we ever wanted to know about the US government’s atrocities against the Nez Perce, and destroyed the Chief Joseph and Lost Trail passes on our way into Missoula.  With all those long, hard days of climbing, out of everything, honestly I’ve been the MOST impressed with the downright uncanny stamina of my pot belly.  Jesus, the thing will not go away.  It’s almost admirable to see such resistance in the face of persistant adversity- I can be down ten pounds, back up ten pounds, crawling through a barren Sahara desert for months on my elbows, jaw wired shut in a county that won’t sell High Life, and yet it STILL hangs proudly against all odds, fighting the good fight in a world that denies its very right to exist.  You have to just pause for a moment and admire the courage. The real all-American courage.  I can’t even IMAGINE the extreme conditions required to deflate this incredible seventh wonder of the stomach universe, and if that ain’t another example of the kind of true against-all-odds grit that makes this country so great, then you tell me what is.  I’m waiting to hear it.
Oh man, I’m full of tangents here.  I better wrap this up.  Missoula was great- bike lanes, book shops, microbreweries, suspicious-looking ACA cartographers- everything you could want in a non-Portland town.  In fact, I could even settle down there one day once Pirate gets tired of the hustle and bustle of big-city living.  Someone better talk me out of it ’cause Missoula is lookin’ better and better.  Let’s all move there together!

Paper Trail

For my own personal amusement and in the interest of recommending books/gathering new book recommendations, I’m going to list out the various books I’ve read over the last 3.5 months of bike touring. The rating system is on a scale of 1-10 and should give you some idea about my tastes, so if you want to throw out a few book suggestions, then I’d be much obliged (note: “10″ is the best, and “1″ is something by Jane Austen, et al).

Smile if You’re Lying
Chuck Thompson
8
Funny stories and advice from a jaded travel author who’s tired of holding back all of his best material because the industry values vacation-package sales over good writing.

Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
10
Sweeping and epic! I didn’t think I would like a Western this much, but it really sucked me right in. Excellent characters and story-telling- this book left me excited to have McMurtry’s entire canon to explore.

Mystic River
Dennis Lehane
9
I also didn’t think I’d like a crime noir novel that much, but I really enjoyed this. I can’t wait to see the movie…

Streets of Laredo
Larry McMurtry
8
Not as good as Lonesome Dove, but still hard to put down. Claire and I biked through a lot of the West Texas locations that comprise the setting of this sequel, which was pretty exciting. Who would have thought Judge Roy Bean would come up more than once in a lifetime?

Dead Man’s Walk
Larry McMurtry
4
The prequel to Lonesome Dove. Total disappointment- I just couldn’t get into it. Eventually I managed to slog through it solely out of respect to McMurtry’s characters, but I remained resentful throughout.

Water for Elephants
Sarah Gruen
9
Trains, hoboes, old-timey circuses, freaks, sassy senior citizens, wronged animals seeking vengeance, good ol’ nostalgia- all this book needs is a bike or a lesbian and it would be a Cait Ultimate Summer Read.

The Ruins
Scott Smith
1
Reading this horror novel while hot, sticky, and hungry in a tent on a bike tour must be analogous to watching the movie Hostel while backpacking around Eastern Europe. It just hits a little too close to home. Totally unenjoyable, relentlessly bleak, but of course I had to finish it. Ugh. I wish the memory of reading this would go away.

Gone Baby Gone
Dennis Lehane
8
Another movie I can’t wait to see when I get back! I like Lehane’s writing style and I like his favorite subject matter- organized crime and Boston lowlifes. I think I read somewhere that he wrote a few episodes of The Wire, which seems like a match made in heaven.

American Pastoral
Phillip Roth
10
Holy crap!!! I got this for a quarter at a library sale in Colorado ’cause I’d vaguely heard of the author and it had won the Pulitzer Prize. Amazingly well-written, with the kind of genius phrasing that sticks with you for weeks. I passed it on to one of the Crushers and he claimed it was “too high-brow”, although I found it to be immensely readable. Actually it’s the best book I’ve read so far this year.

Comanche Moon
Larry McMurtry
7
The second prequel in the Lonesome Dove series isn’t as good as the two latter books, but it’s still pretty hard to put down. It’s amazing how easy it is to find McMurtry books at library sales. This book seems sadder than the others because it deals with more Native American points of view in an era when entire tribes and nations were being wiped out or corralled onto reservations. Famous Shoes is the best character ever, but I really want to see how ALL of the characters are represented in the TV miniseries. I guess I have a lot of stuff to watch when I get back…

Kill the Messenger
Tami Hoag
?
Yeah, yeah, I know, but it was a QUARTER and I was hard up for a new paperback. How could I resist an action-crime novel about a bike messenger (named Jace Damon!) who gets framed for a brutal murder after one fatal super-rush goes awry? Jace, buddy, for the love of God, tell me you get the sig in the end!
I just started this book and so far I don’t have very high hopes…

Anyway, that’s my list so far. The amount of time I have to devote to reading vacillates pretty widely, but I would appreciate any new recommendations and/or discussions of the previously-mentioned classic titles. I’ve often wondered (ok, actually this is the first time) what I would do if forced to choose exclusively between the ability to read or the ability to ride a bike…. and I just don’t know, man, I just don’t know. Two great ways to escape- what a bummer they’re so hard to pull off at the same time.

Into the West!

I’m sitting on the bank of the Lochsa River in Idaho as I write this, having a hard time recollecting all the events of the last two states. It’s incredibly peaceful here, but the lack of human distractions is a distraction in of itself- impossible not to stare into the swirling rapids and get caught up in the Oregon-like beauty of tall, wooded slopes lined with endless Ponderosa and Lodgepole pines. What a strange place to try to catch up on blogging. Anyway, yesterday was our first day out of Montana, zigzagging us down from Missoula over the Lolo Pass into the panhandle of Idaho. Eight states down, two to go. The last time I rode this route I absolutely despised Wyoming, associating it only with brutal headwinds, chaotic evil mosquitoes in perpetual melee, long strips of dusty, shadeless desolation, and the killing of Matt Shephard. This time around I was surprised to actually enjoy the state, having gotten the desolated wasteland/uranium mining ghost town stretch out of the way first so that I could actually enjoy the colorful beauty of Northwestern Wyoming free from dread.
Highlights from the Cowboy State:
-weird, indescribable geological phenomena that rules
-lots of cowboys, Western stuff, and old timey nostalgia
-beautiful, snow-topped Togwotee Pass, which was a total cakewalk for the Crushers- we coasted up with our eyes closed, popped triumphant wheelies at the top, and rolled down out of the clouds like gods descending to Earth.
-the Grand Tetons! Mountains named after giant boobs!
-Lander, the greatest small town of all time- 10,000 friendly people that all know each other, an outdoor leadership school, two bike shops, the best coffeeshop on the Trans-Am, free camping in a beautiful city park, a vibrant downtown bereft of chain stores, and a great local brewpub where I unfortunately discovered that exceeding the official Crushers limit of two beers each means that conversation will stall on prostate problems and colonoscopies for the better part of three hours.
Now, I could mention a few of the lowlights too, but I’d rather let go of my old hurts with Wyoming so we can both take the time to bury our dead and move on together towards a brighter future. I think I’m ready to love again. In fact, really all I wanted from the state this time around was to see a Grizzly in Yellowstone, and I more than got my wish when we spotted a mama Grizzly and cub engaged in a loving Discovery Channel moment about 200 yards from where I stood safely cooing behind a set of binoculars. It all brought to mind my favorite piece of advice: “if you’re gonna be a bear, be a Grizzly!” which should go down in the annals of Crusherdom as our official motto and inspiration as we strive towards cross-country greatness. And as long as I’m speaking of good advice, I might as well say “Go see the IMAX movie on bears!”

Near-death experiences

It wasn’t the traffic that almost killed me- eighteen-wheeled logging trucks driven hard by sleepy drivers, or those rolling recreational behemoths that thunder down the highway with their stairs absent-mindedly left dangling out into the shoulder.  No, there were more sinister forces at play up on the epic climb to Hoosier Pass.  Forces out to maliciously curtail the success of the cross-country Crusher mission.  Forces beyond description.  Forces… of EVIL!

Eep!  Anyway, as we crossed the border into Colorado from desolate western Kansas, the fiercely competitive UNO-playing began in earnest.  We took over rough small-town saloons frequented by surly locals with more faded prison tattoos than teeth, and brazenly set up shop in corner booths to play disturbingly heated games that involved more vicious trash-talking than you would suspect from a rainbow-colored family card game.  We tread boldly among surly, leather-clad bikers hunched mid-shot over pool tables to narrow suspicious eyes at our unapologetic entrance in invitingly confrontational Day-Glo spandex.  After all, the triumphant conquer of the entire length of 5 states had taught us to fear nothing… nothing, that is, but the dreaded Draw Four Wild Card.  Colorado was the 6th of our states, and oddly enough the 2nd state in which I’ve been mysteriously cautioned by a skeptical bartender that at 5′8″ I look “too small” to handle a Miller High Life.  Here’s a philosophical question- how big down one have to be to order the Champagne of Beers without incurring the amused scorn of a roomful of good-timing locals?  “I’ve got a nation-wide reputation for partying to uphold, lady, so just give me the bottle and let me get back to my UNO hand!”  Jeez!  I had no idea that a woman ordering a High Life in Kansas or Colorado is the comedy equivalent of a 6 year-old asking for a shot of bourbon on the rocks.  All I gotta say is that the middle of our country is a really weird place…

Ok, that’s the end of my beer rant.  From these blog entries one would probably deduce that I’ve been drinking a lot on this trip, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  The fact of the matter is that I’m just out looking for trouble, trolling for a pick-up game of UNO, and small-town western bars where the Coors runs freely and Pancho and Lefty is on the jukebox seem like the best place to run my hustle.  There’s no doubt that Claire alone could out-drink the entire Crushers crew with me included- these guys are such proponents of a peaceful early bedtime that they make even ME (with my two beer minimum AND maximum rule) look like a wild night owl.  And you know that’s really saying something!  But, anyway, let me get back to the part where I almost died.  Ahem.  The surviving Crushers brutalized Eastern Colorado and rode north out of Pueblo towards the stunning, snow-capped peaks of the Rockies.  I know grandiose mountain ranges are supposed to make you feel small and insignificant, but they’ve never had that kind of affect on me.  The higher I climb, the more and more I feel imbued with a strong sense of my own individual power, like “I conquered this mountain, carrying myself from sea level up to 2 vertical miles in the air, and there’s nothing too steep, vast, or beautiful for me to totally shred on my sweet 80lb bicycle.”  It’s very egomaniacal, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to occasionally being blown away by what I can physically accomplish… although I DO have to confess that the Rockies are a fairly gradual climb.  The day we climbed out of Canon City up to Fairplay at the base of the Hoosier Pass, the most difficult aspect of the ride wasn’t purely the grade of uphill slope, it was the thinness of air at high altitude.  The last time I rode the Trans-Am, I coughed throughout the entire duration of my time above 8,000 feet, and this time around, things were even worse.  By the time we were past Royal Gorge, my chest felt tight and my breathing was shallow.  I had been having a really hard time with loneliness and group dynamics on the trip, so as I cranked my way through the mountains, dark thoughts set in and I began to get really teary and upset.  Immediately, my breathing grew rapid and I sort of let myself fall off the bike to hyperventilate by the side of the road.  I’ve been in denial for years about having a mild form of asthma ever since my doctor diagnosed me- I know it sounds small-minded and judgmental, but using an inhaler is just not something I associated with athletes or tough bike messengers.  At the time I felt like my doctor was just chalking up another mark on my laundry list of physical defects, so I only filled the prescription once or twice before giving the inhalers to my severely asthmatic ex-girlfriend and feeling like another over-diagnosed American chump.  Well… it turns out that I should have listened to my doctor, because the occasional oxygen freak-outs hat I’ve long been self-diagnosing as strangely unpanicky “panic attacks” are actually asthmatic breathing problems.  Asthmatic breathing problems that are REALLY exacerbated by thin mountain air, to the point that I nearly passed out, thinking I was going to die in the middle of nowhere with no one around to administer the “jaws of life” or the “breath of eternal air” or whatever it’s called.  Totally scary!  When I finally crawled into Fairplay, I couldn’t get my Portland doctor to phone in a prescription for Albuterol because it had expired over 3 years ago.  The Providence Medical office told me to go see a doctor in a town 30 miles away- not really an option when you’ve spent all day climbing for 68 miles in a severely panicked state and the team is anxiously relying on your leadership.  “Just have the support van drive you,” the medical assistant sighed unhelpfully into the phone.  “There IS no support van.  I AM the support van.  The pharmacy closes in 15 minutes and I CAN’T BREATHE,” I managed to choke out to a completely unsympathetic dial tone.  Total bureaucratic frustration.  I finally had to get my childhood doctor to call in the prescription after-hours, then wait around town in the morning for the pharmacy to open.  Only then was I ready to brutally crush the 11,542 foot Hoosier Pass and roll down into Breckenridge for a well-deserved rest day.  Whew!  Was that a boring story?  ‘Cause it sure felt like non-stop action and suspense when I was up there fighting for my life against all odds… Anyway, to continue my mysterious tradition of making constant allusions to Goonies even though I haven’t seen it in 15+ years, I still maintain that even with the inhaler, I’m totally a badass messenger and nothing at all like Astorian asthmatic weakling Mikey Walsh.  Wait… you can still be badass with a safety mirror on your helmet, right?  Especially if it gives you an excuse to use my favorite new dirty pickup line: “Hey baby, is that a mirror on your helmet?  ‘Cause I can see myself on your head.”  Yeah?  Funny?  Sheesh.  No one gets me…

Oh yeah, I would be totally remiss if I didn’t mention the Eastern Colorado care package heroics of Erin R. Fairchild, Esquire.  What an amazing display of letter-writing, weird crap assorting, and inspired snack mix creation!  There really hasn’t been a lot of contention for the title of Best Trail-Mailer, but you can throw your hat in the ring before July 12th by sending mail to:

Hold for arrival on/about July 15th
C. Giddings
Adventure Cycling
C/O General Delivery
1100 W. Kent Ave
Missoula, MT
59801

I’ll be back soon (August 4th) to gratefully reward you with S’mores for your efforts!

Ad Astra Per Aspera

Over the course of the last week I’ve been undergoing a dramatic spiritual transformation. Ever since we crossed the border from hot, hilly Missouri into hot, windy Southeast Kansas, we’ve been experiencing ever-intensifying weather conditions, dramatically forcing us out of the city parks in search of life-saving indoor accommodations. This epic battle with the destructive forces of Midwestern nature has driven us straight into the loving, waiting arms of our savior Jesus- or more specifically, the loving, waiting arms of the Episcopalian church. My dad, a powerful arch-deacon in the church, with a formidable reign that sweeps far across the Plains, managed to pull a string or two with some of his Episco-pals (or his “dawgs”, as he put it to me via text) so that we could roll out our sleeping bags in church basements all across the heartland. The Crushers (or “Crunchers”, as we’ve been called by polite society) paradoxically hate being forced to sleep in tents on a cross-country camping trip, so we’ve all been slowly warming to the idea of converting to Episcopalianism, with the alternative being braving God’s tornado-ridden wrath in hot, unbearable city parks.

Cool things about Episcopalians:
1. They ordain female priests.
2. They ordain openly gay priests.
3. They are warm, loving, and have beautiful, air-conditioned basements.
4. They’re like Catholics, except with more emphasis on being stoked than feeling guilty about stuff.
5. They let you bring beer into the church premises, provided you are an openly gay female priest (named C. Giddings?).

I invite any of the powerful overlords of Episcopalianism (the aforementioned “dawgs”) to smite me if I’m wrong about these hastily-researched fun facts, however, if they do check out, I’m willing to allow various churches to use the list in their welcoming pamphlets.

In Pittsburg, KS, my family came down to visit me just as I was going through some difficulties with group dynamics that resulted in one of our seven leaving the tour. The story is too long and complicated to go into here, but let me just say that it was great to see my parents, sister, and one of her four tiny minions and take a much-needed break from leadership duties. I hadn’t realized how eager I was to interact with outside parties until they showed up and I nearly talked their ears off with a bunch of hectic stories about all the bizarre phenomena surrounding our recently-ejected ex-Crusher. Our rest day in Pittsburg wasn’t nearly long enough! Rolling across the rest of Kansas, the slightly reduced gang of Crushers battled through epic thunderstorms, 10-inch flood waters, gripping head colds, and dry, dusty sidewinds strong enough to blow fresh tar across the road onto our passing heroes. I haven’t been firing on all cylinders lately due to the aforementioned gripping head cold, but I was still able to enjoy the western half of Kansas- especially the overwhelming friendliness of small-town hospitality and occasional miraculous tailwind. At this point I’m starting to retrace the steps of my Portland to Kansas City bike tour, which has been an interesting experience. Moving through the same small towns from a different direction in a completely different context, with the benefit of 3 additional years of bike touring experience, has given me a lot to reflect on. It’s recently occurred to me how unexpectedly exciting my life has become in the last ten years. I always wanted a life like this, but never imagined that things would necesarrily turn out this way, assuming that I would never have the courage or determination to set the wheels in motion. Occasionally I can envision another reality- the life I might be living if I had gone down a different path after graduating high school: married, with kids, living in Kansas City, working at an unfulfilling desk job? That life seems like a dream come true for a lot of amazing people, but obviously for me it would never work out. I don’t know how I ended up on a bike in the middle of nowhere, racing alone towards an endless horizon of blue sky and waving seas of wheat, but for now I’m happy I’m here.

A funny sidenote: when I told my group about the zines I like to write about bike touring, Terry, our British rider, expressed a fear that I’m currently planning to write a lurid tell-all about the current trip that insufficiently disguises everyone’s identity. Actually, his primary anxiety was mysteriously that I would make his character a Lancastrian. MY primary anxiety with this paranoid fantasy is the fact that he breezily selected “Vanilla Beach” as my questionable nom de plume, as if Spokes of Hazard is slowly becoming an indie subsidiary of Penthouse Forum. One can only dream!