Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
also true that saddlebags are designed more for easy transporting than for convenient
packing and unpacking, and it's pretty much the case that whatever you discover you
need at night is at the bottom of the second bag you look in. So every evening my motel
room looks like the aftermath of a windstorm, and every morning my bags must be thor-
oughly repacked.
Finally, there is route planning, which is a lot like shopping for a computer or a cam-
era. You think it's going to be simple, but no model has everything you want for the
price you want to pay. I try to plan for the day, and then for a day or two ahead. How far
should I travel and in which direction? What will the terrain be like? How much truck
traffic will I encounter, and do the roads have adequate shoulders? Am I likely to find a
place to stay? Which way will the wind be blowing?
Optimally, one would like an amiably undulating, curvy, deserted, newly paved road
through a scintillating landscape with a pleasant tailwind. Never happens. I find the de-
cisions anxiety-making, which is one reason I was happy to throw in my lot with Tom
for a couple of days. He handled all the arrangements—what a guy!
Tom, who is sixty-four, is an avid cyclist who made a cross-country ride with his son
in 2003, and before that he celebrated turning fifty by riding fifty miles in each of the
fifty states.
Our ride, especially early on, was lovely, winding through vast, remote fields of soft
white wheat (the kind used for noodles rather than bread, I was told). To our satisfac-
tion, we were pushed by a modest tailwind. Margo joined us for the first fifteen miles or
so, but at the top of a rise where you could watch the blanket of wheat shimmer in the
breeze all the way to the horizon, she turned and headed back to town against the wind
to begin her day.
Tom and I pressed on to Starbuck and Pomeroy. Along the way we crossed paths with
three cyclists going the other way, two young women and, a hundred yards or so behind
them, a bearded man wearing a shirt tied around his head like a kaffiyeh. They'd left
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, fortysomething days earlier, a remarkably fast trip, by my
lights. We had a short conversation with the guy, during which it became clear that he
was tired of traveling with the women; he was pissed at them, grumbling in the man-
ner of a put-upon husband (a put-upon bigamist, I guess), that they were stubborn and
aligned against him. We commented that they'd chosen to ride east to west, against the
wind for the most part. The guy scowled.
“That's a myth,” he snapped, with a breeze blowing in his face. This bike trip didn't
seem to be making him happy.
During the most rugged part of my afternoon, I sat in the mottled shade of one of the
few roadside trees we encountered that day, my head bent over and held between my
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