Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nation pursuing private, hedonistic pleasures. Wonderful. How many of the 25 million
unemployed have you encountered on your senseless trip, how many people have you en-
countered who no longer keep a home, how many of the starving among us have you shed
a tear
[sic]
. I bet an $8,000 shiny bike really inspires the vanquished. People are what
they do. And you do nothing but amuse yourself while a nation suffers foolish behavior
from an entitled class flaunting its greed.
Well, he's jumped the shark a bit, revealing an alarmist nature—“wreckage of a na-
tion”?—and making a bicycling obituarist the representative of an American entitled
class. Maybe hyperbole isn't so surprising, though, from a guy whose chosen pen name
is just a tad self-elevating; with its biblical verb construction and faux imagery from
Native American mythology, it's pretentious in two cultural idioms simultaneously. But
he's prompted a couple of other readers also to declare that my trip is self-indulgent. Like
him, they're pissed about how much I paid for my bike; it also bugs them that I can af-
ford to stay in motels.
My first response to this is: Hey, guys, you don't like what's on? Change the channel.
And that has been the leading sentiment of the many other readers who have come to
my defense. Also that if people are to be blamed for fiddling while Rome burns, maybe
others should be ahead of me on the list.
Of course, by some lights, I
am
fiddling while Rome burns. By riding across the coun-
try I'm going out of my way, after all, to add substance, heft, accomplishment, satisfac-
tion, eccentricity, individuality, spice—
something
—to the narrative of my life. And then
I'm writing the narrative down.
Is that self-indulgent? Well, sure. Do I need to apologize for that?
Can't say so. Riding and writing—avocationally and vocationally, it's what I do.
Still, I admit it: Mr. Scorpion has gotten under my skin a bit. Whether I ought to be
aiming at heroism other than in my own life story—that's a decent question.
Wednesday, August 10, Eureka, Montana
A sign on the highway outside of my motel room says I'm seven miles from the Canadian
border. The motel is at a crossroads, up a long hill from a small town and with just about
nothing else in sight. Oh, except those mountains to the east and south.
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, north is the most dangerous and romant-
ic direction to travel, the direction of the edge of the world. Granted, within the bounds
of the U.S. the limits on danger and romance are severe. But even so, here in the upper
reaches of Montana the sense of adventure vibrates—and so does the sense of isolation.
I like heading toward places like this on a bike, where it takes some effort to arrive and
