The End of the Road

Home.

HEY LINDA!! Dirty me in the clothes I'd been wearing for the past 10 days, antes de sweaty nap, buzz cut, showering, riding over to The Spin Cycle to say heyyyyyy.

Last meal in San Fran with Parker

Something about King something. I told you I had to pee.On the flight home, I felt like a little kid with my nose glued to the window until I drifted off to sleep. It was my first time flying, and I was stunned by the beauty of the night cityscapes. Into the distance, they seemed to burn on a sea of black. I woke up around 2 to see some really wierd landscape. I couldn't tell if I was looking at trees. I didn't think so, since we were way too high for them to be that big. It took me 5 minutes to realize they were clouds.

Flight: 10PM Pacific Aug 12th ---- 9 AM Eastern Aug 13th. About 6 hours of flying, and I traversed the country that I'd spent the past 2 months crossing.

The journey has come to an end.

After a beautiful day tooling around San Fran, a night at the Green Tortoise, and a day in Berkeley getting all my stuff boxed, lazing around, and packing some more, Halley helped me out big time by helping me haul one of my boxes down to FedEx Kinko's.

10 or so agonizing blocks later, we'd hauled my bike box, and a box stuffed with the rest of my stuff, taped em up for the last time (after saying goodbye to my dearest ride), and payed the $115 to Ground them to Cary. Maybe I can blame my stomach or my toe or something, but Halley definitely had an easier time carrying her share, which was just as big as mine. Way to make me feel lame Halley :)

After a whole lotta essay writing for her John's Hopkins med school app, Halley is heading home Thursday.

Across the bay on the subway, and crippled without my bike, I limped around Pier 1 and sat in the grass, looking at the tourists, traffic, bikes, and the rest of humanity speeding by in the sun and wrote and drew the afternoon away. I met Parker at Cafe Treiste, munched on a somewhat dissapointing sandwich, with the sun in my eyes, coming in low through the window, casting a warm glare on everything.

I limped 7 more blocks to the BART again, checked into the sci-fi like SFO Airport, went through security smoothly (but not without some deep breathing to deal with the smoke-breath woman behind me who couldn't stop complaining and standing way too close to me), looked in vain for a place to send me postcards, forgot the Nalgene Parker gave me on a bench, and found my window seat on the US Airways flight.

The stomach thing started bothering me again on the flight. It's getting annoying.

Richard and Mom picked me up at the aeropuerto, and soon we were speeding through the roads I've known for so many years.

I plan on posting the following things in the next couple days as a wrap-up to this blog:

• Trans-Am Rider's Guide: tips and junk that I consider extremely valuable, and which I did not find in my research prior to embarking in June
• Stitched Panoramic photos of the country. Woulda done it before, but didn't have the proper software.
• More photos, stuff I didn't ever manage to put up
• Short lil video?
• Rider bios? Short descriptions/photers of the people I rode with.
  

By the numbers. everybody loves numbers.

6 soft things: number of beds/couches I slept on in the first 2 months before arriving in San Fran

4000 miles: I rode at least this far. My computer broke at around 3100, in Utah. Halley's read over 4000 by SF.

350-400 people: based on the number of people we ran into, my estimate of how many people do the Trans Am each year

18 jars: conservative estimate of amt. peanut butter I devoured. In the West, where services were rare, I'd go through a jar in a day or two.

10 states: Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California

32 bears: number of bear attacks successfully evaded

4 days: estimated av. days between showers

5 hotels: stayed in across the country

5 flat tires: a couple flats were due to my idiocy. A couple due to wrong tube size.

2 pounds: the amt. of weight I gained. I lost upper body muscle, so I guess it's in me legs?

4 heaping plates: amt. of delicous food in the epic eating incident o that town after Austin

9 pounds: amt. of weight I sent home after running into Sky

Half a bajillion: number of mosquito bites I got as a result of sending home my (Lee's) tent

3 inches: amt. of useless seatpost I hauled cross the country as a result of not hacking it off

$80: amt. of money spent buying bike stuff that I already had but didn't bring/ brought but didn't know I had

Lost (or broken): I'm an irresponsible turd.

• Can opener


• 1 loaf of bread, 2 bananas, 2 bagels lost to racoons and skunks


• Belt (cedar city) I have half a shoelace holding me pants on right now.


• 2gig iPod nano. Put it in the wash. idiot. I'm not buying another- I too irresponsible and poor.


• Front freddie fender: foot hit it while going kinda slow, plastic got mangled after getting caught by turning wheel


• Plastic cover to bar-end shifter, sitting in a cow pasture in Utah somewhere


• Specialized cyclocomputer. Just stopped working after my Bryce Canyon debacle. I think warrantee will take care of it.


• Toilet paper stash. Lost it on the last day on a fast downhill. Cursed but didn't stop.


• Rear allen skewer: overtorqued and stripped AL nut. Replaced with little hardware store thingy. Shady but functional.


• Nalgene that Parker gave me. I told him I lost these things chronically. Lost it 6 hours from home.


• Giro Xen Helmet. I think it was stolen at the Green Tortoise. 2nd to last day in SF. At least it didn't happen earlier

Random things I've come to miss/ appreciate:

• Toasters
• Refrigerators
• Toilets
• Grocery stores
• North Carolina
• fall colors
• Music
• Chairs
• Simmering
  

Random things I'll really miss about the road:

• Waking up with the sun without an alarm and without pain
• Sleeping under the stars
• Not even thinking about what to wear, because there was only two options: riding stuff, and regular stuff
• Not caring about being a dirty, stinky, unrefined, directionless dagum kid
• Small town America (at least certain parts)
• Getting waved at like a celebrity (Kansas)
• The part of my heart I left in San Francisco
• Eating ridiculous amounts of food, and having it always taste good, no matter what
• The great people I rode/ lived with throughout the trip. I hope to see them all again as soon as possible.
  

Other randomness:

• Got tendonitis in my left big toe due to an ill fitting flip-flop. Tis actually quite painful. I also have a MASSIVE callous on the bottom-outside of the same toe. The combination is no bueno.
  


• The group I rode to CO with arrived in San Diego a few days ago. I got a call from them saying that Billy's derailuer had sneaked into his spokes and wreaked some serious havoc. I returned their call in hopes of helping em out, but after 4 or 5 tries on my dying cell phone, I couldn't get a hold of them. Good luck guys.
• Cell phone officially dead after 2 years. The dagum cheap motorola charging connection sucks. After years of struggling to get it to work, and 20 minutes straight of screwing with it, I've given it up for dead. I barely had enough power to arrange an airport pickup with me mum. Sillyness.

In summary

I set out on the trip with high hopes, and ambitious expectations for what I would get from the trip. I was worried that I would be dissapointed, that I wouldn't learn as much as I'd hoped, that it would be as simple as a really long bike ride.

It turned out to be more than I ever thought it would be. It may not come across in the words I've put down in this blog, partially because there was far too much to write down, and there are things I can't write in a public blog, for fear of future consequences, and the knowledge that many (/most) of my thoughts would appear immature/offensive to many people (perhaps rightfully so).

Before leaving on the trip, I would literally break out in sweat when reminded of my urge to just go and escape the things that had been so familiar to me for so long. Prior to this trip, I'd been in the same place for my whole life. All my schools, my first home, and even the hospital where I was born are within a 40 minute bike ride from my parents house, where I grew up. The longest trip I'd taken previously was a 10-day bike trip up the east coast to ride BMX on everything within sight. Those trips were enjoyable, but travelling by conventional methods and not truly exposing myself to local culture, they had a minimal impact on my mind.

It took me exactly 2 months to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. It may seem ridiculous, but somehow, the country actually seems smaller to me now. I can think back and recall all the unique 'feels' of all the places we passed through and slept in. Each one of them was unique, yet unified, I can extract a vague, impossible to describe sense of the 'spirit' of each area.

Simply, generally, and inadequately:

The South: spirited, hospitable and accomadating, strong-willed, green, lingering racism, warm

Middle America: unconditionally and ridiculously kind, flat (ish), simple, traditional, respectful

The West: big, ENORMOUS, independent, dry, remote, unique, desperate

Nevada: why do people live here

Of course those don't do the job, but they'll have to do for now. I think I'm going on 4 hours of sleep or something.

The trip definitely calmed my restlessness, postponed my flight from America, made me reconsider the value of home, generally rearanged my priorities, and hopefully made me a calmer, more well balanced person. Fortunately, according to a few accounts, I'm still a bit crazy.

Sitting in the house I've called home for 17ish years, it still seems a bit unreal that I'm finally home. I'd been looking forward to coming home, seeing family and friends that'd I'd been away from for far too long, and getting back to being productive Steve. However, the trip caused me to question, yet again, and more so than ever, the merit in 'production' and 'progress,' what it means to truly serve humanity, and all that jazz. Nevertheless, I find myself looking forward to the coming months of school and my frantic efforts to optimize my working efficiency, grow as a student, and really 'get stuff done.' As much as possible, of course. While I don't find the thought of all the work crushing, as I did before, I seriously question its purpose, more than I have before- a thought that crushes me if I think too much about it.

For this reason, part of me wants to be back on the bike, where every day was simple. There was no questioning. The purpose of the day was to get from point A to point B, taking a winding path with the simple purpose of getting there, having fun, and hopefully riding into something new. We were able to pedal through society without being constrained to its norms and held by its principles. However lacking in reality, it was amazing. We were free.


Steven
08-13-08
Raleigh, NC