Mile 3801

We finished our ride on a day of bright sun and wind at our back. The sixty miles from Bethel to home went by in time to let us stop at the farm stand in Gray to pick up corn and cucumbers for lunch. Though we were traveling workaday Route 26, we delighted in every landmark, including my favorite misspelling.

A 3801-mile-wide grin was on my face as we turned into our driveway. Kim had put congratulations signs on the trees. As my high school didn’t have a soccer team, I have never before had my name affixed to a tree. Grass was growing in the driveway, the first clue that no one had been home for a while. “Scruffy” was the word that came to mind as we cranked up the last hill.  Thank goodness nature takes over if left alone. But the tall, prickly weeds going to seed in my front flower bed were an insult, and I started pulling them even before taking off my bike gloves.

Our first move was to answer a long-standing question by weighing the bike loads. Mark was carrying 47 pounds of gear on his 24 pound bike, plus four water bottles. I was carrying 29 pounds of gear on my 19 pound bike, plus two water bottles. We had met a biker in Montreal who kept exclaiming how hard it would be to pedal carrying a load given that road biking is all about shaving bike weight. This man really wanted to go bike touring but just couldn’t jump in. He kept saying he’d have to find someone to do it with, he wouldn’t know what he was doing, how would one get off the superhighways, etc, etc. Go out for just a weekend, we said. Then go further next time. Eventually you’ll start thinking about cycling from Paris to Moscow. Joan, I just know you’re going to do it.

As for me, for a few weeks of the trip I thought it unlikely that I’d ever go on another long bike tour. I’m hungry for a different kind of adventure that allows longer stops, closer looks, and a deeper immersion in the natural world. Now that I’ve been home for 36 hours, I’ve been asked, “Was it wonderful?”  No, it was a mixed experience. I’d say Mark’s primary motivation was to cycle all day. I was somewhat interested in having my body accomplish that, but my bigger motivation was to see the landscape change. The daily thrill dwindled to occasional moments of interest once we were in territory that looked like home, starting in Minnesota. The daily routine got boring. We got so practiced at packing up that we’d finish our preparations in the same order and in matching amounts of time.  Oh, his socks are still on the picnic table, so I have another 30 seconds to look at my phone. However, in the last few days of riding I started imagining a few other bike trips I might do. I’d like to finish our crossing of the American South. We’ve ridden from San Diego to El Paso, but Texas and the South are mysteries. I’m also interested in riding the length of Maine in one go: my Route 11 project. Who wants to come along?

I’d say I’m unwilling to leave Maine in the summer for so long again. It’s just so interesting and beautiful here in the summer that enduring the unpleasant months that are the price for living here means you should make the most of the summer and fall.

I also am unwilling to eat so badly for so long again. As Noah observed, we had to bike across the country to find a place with vegetables for dinner. Bike trips are fresh food deserts, as you’ve heard me harp. Little stores can’t carry a lot of perishables. But it’s amazing that even if you eat at restaurants you can’t get your five-servings-a-day. We saw many menus that offered only variants of burgers and fries. Going into Whole Foods in Portland yesterday I was struck that the prepared food island had more vegetables than we saw in all of North Dakota.

Beyond vegetables, the hardest thing to find on our trip was plain milk. We have created a culture where we presume everything is better with sugar added. Tea with milk should be pretty easy to get, but stores would carry only chocolate-flavored, vanilla-flavored, caramel-flavored, strawberry-flavored, anything-flavored except for un-flavored milk. (Getting boiling water for my tea is another chapter. How dispiriting it is to receive water in a pot with the teabag on the side, or water in a thermos carafe filled an hour ago. I did survive though.)

Spending most of every day on a bike can’t help but work some changes. One’s muscles get rearranged. Now I’m all quads and no hamstrings. After a couple of weeks of biking my quads felt like they would pop out of my skin, but then my legs settled into a low level buzz, wanting to be pedaling more than staying still. Mark lost 20 pounds. That shocked me: are we at Cindy’s dreaded “crossover” where I weigh more than my husband? Thank goodness I lost some weight too so we aren’t at that point yet. But there’s this: https://youtu.be/r6KtxuuWeiM

Another aspect of months on a bike is the pleasure of spending so much time outdoors. One gets to feel trapped just going into a building. So many times at restaurants we were the only ones choosing to sit outside. I will never understand this. Why would one sit in an over-air conditioned room furnished with numbing but mesmerizing images flashing on a TV when instead one could be out feeling summer breezes and sunshine? We slept better when we camped because cheap motels bring plastic bedclothes, a mist of cleaning products, and a twenty minute cycle of second hand smoke when the neighbors take another cigarette outside. I wish we had been able to camp more. Anna did this trip not only by herself, but camping every single night. I salute her fortitude. We just weren’t tough enough endure buggy bushes and no water to rinse off ourselves and our clothes.

Beyond the physical sensations of this long trip, we’ve had the chance to look at a cross section of the entire country at a moment in time. Coastal rainforest –> high desert plateau —> prairie grassland —> midwestern former forest/now farmland —> northeastern forest. We’ve traveled from where the raccoons are brown and the squirrels are black to where these animals are grey.

The biggest impression is that almost all of this land has been altered for human use. We have occupied the entire expanse and converted the mixed forests and the native grasses to tree plantations, grazing land, crop land, and cities. I must admit to a deep sadness and a fear that the remnants that remain are insufficient to sustain the continent’s biodiversity given our current politics. The scariest sign for me is how few pollinating insects we saw. There’s lots of wind, so wind pollination and self pollination will continue. The seed companies and industry will find a way for human beings to survive on corn and soybeans. But that’s not the rich and beautiful world we should be passing along to our children. By coincidence my book group chose Annie Proulx’s novel Barkskins for September. As I made my way west to east, Barkskins described the removal of the forest in this same territory from east to west in a tale of a Mi’kmaq and a European immigrant and their descendants over 300 years.  I urge anyone to read this story to understand how we arrived at the landscape we see today.

There are a leftover tidbits that don’t fit anywhere in this final post but that I didn’t want to leave out.

1. It’s hilarious to camp next to someone teaching his dog bad grammar. “Lay down! Lay down! Lay down!”

2. Michigan has a stunning number of roadkilled opossums. They are picked clean, with skulls ready to be collected by my naturalist friends.

3. Montana has an unintentionally lewd road sign, which I will email you if you contact me.

Finally, I’d like to give some thanks.

To Mark, who matched my enthusiasms and moods during the trip, solved bike problems, and stayed patient almost every time I stopped for a photo.

To Bob, who handled our mother’s medical issues this summer.

To Anna and Sam, who gave us a wedding to think about.

To Caroline, Greg, and Sally, who tended the vegetable garden and were a caretaking presence at home.

To you, who motivated me to dare to try out a blog.

To vultures and carrion beetles, who eliminate the dead animal smell on the roads.

And now for some catching up.