Travel Reference
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As for my favorite things, well, I've been weighing them, and I've come up with two.
The first is being able to watch the landscape change. After a long sojourn among wheat
fields, the world, in the last few days, has turned green—pines along the road, farm-
land that looks lush instead of baked, and the Pend Oreille River, which runs wide and
purple-black and opens into a bay here at Sandpoint.
The other is drinking, not alcohol necessarily (though beer tastes awfully good after
riding in the sun), but anything liquid and cold. Thirst is a dreadful thing, and anyone
who travels by bike knows what it is to be plagued by its symptoms—a dry mouth,
a sense of depletion, the feeling that you're emanating heat from the inside, as though
your very guts were simmering. You're told to hydrate continuously, but that's just to
complete the ride. Afterward, you're still thirsty for hours into the night. So that's what
I like, the slaking of thirst in the tranquil hours after a ride—I've been swallowing gal-
lons of Gatorade, lemonade, soda pop, cranberry juice, and beer—which is as delicious
a physical sensation as I can think of. It's sex for a solitary cyclist.
My packing list: I've got two pairs of bike shorts, four lightweight bike shirts (two long
sleeved, two short sleeved), two heavier bike jerseys, a pair of jeans, three T-shirts, four
pairs of socks, a pair of gym shorts, two pairs of boxers (I sleep in them), bike shoes,
sneakers, a pair of flip-flops, a lightweight sweater, a rain/wind jacket, rain pants, a first-
aid kit, a toiletries kit, and, as I mentioned, to make sure I never have to sleep outside,
a tent and a sleeping bag. Actually, now that I write it down, I think I'm carrying too
much. To the reader who suggested front wheel bags to go with my rear panniers to dis-
tribute the weight, I've spoken to a number of cyclists and bike store people about that,
and the jury is split. I don't like the burden that front bags place on steering, and though
it's true you can get used to it, and it's also true that all the weight on the back makes
you wary of fishtailing, after eight hundred miles or so I'm adjusted to it and pretty com-
fortable riding that way now.
Thanks to all for checking in, even Mr. Scorpion, my most diligent and irritable critic.
Here's his latest diatribe. He's getting a little nasty:
Weber, listen (if you know how), the country's merrily blowing up, devouring itself,
and the only contribution you can think to make at this moment of crisis, as an educated,
upper-class American, is to waste time and resources tooling through the wreckage of a
