Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We New Yorkers can be so enamored of our high cultural advantages that we lord our
sophistication over the rest of the population. An island of the coast of America—so
goes the smug definition of Manhattan. Here is what I have to say about that after not
being home for three months. New York City remains the national center of conversa-
tion; one thing I missed on the road is the kind of verbal dexterity that you can find in
any Manhattan bar. (New York is also where restaurants know how much mayonnaise to
put on a sandwich—not much.) But one thing we could use more of in the city is the
inclination toward benevolence.
By the lights of my experience, in most of the country, the default temperament is de-
cency. Okay, there were a few beer cans tossed at me out the windows of pickup trucks,
but the total hostility amounted to what I'm used to on the subway on the way to work
in the morning.
Strangers went out of their way for me regularly, to give me a lift over a construction
site or unrideable gravel, to help me find a place to stay when none were evident, to help
me out with simple favors when there was no actual reason to do so except the inclina-
tion to be kind. Ellen in Montana, remember her? The woman in the sheriff's office who
found me a motel room in Chester, way out on the prairie, and offered, if I was strug-
gling, to send a police cruiser out on the highway to ferry me into town?
There was a motel owner in Medina, North Dakota, who didn't have a room for me
but who did have a cousin with a spare cabin on her property and called ahead on my
behalf. I spent a night in relative luxury in that cabin, listening to the contented bleat-
ing of well-fed sheep in the pens out back.
And Scott Zoet, the proprietor of Rock 'n' Road Cycle in South Haven, Michigan, who
opened his shop on his day off to perform an expert and much-needed tune-up in time
for me to get out of town ahead of a storm.
It's hard not to be grateful for that collective attitude.
Finally, one more thing that enhanced the journey, an advantage I didn't have the be-
nefit of the last time around and couldn't have predicted: the outpouring of goodwill
from the readers of my blog and those who followed my ride on Twitter. I've been hugely
grateful that so many people found a way to identify with the experience of this bike
ride and took the time to tell me so. That those myriad good wishes helped me along is
undeniable.
Of course, from coast to coast, I didn't have a single political discussion, minimizing
whatever enmity was out there to be had, a happy result that makes a point that collect-
ive discourse is no substitute for people encountering one another in individual circum-
stances, and another point about the powerfully circumstantial nature of relationships in
general.
