Cross-country bike trip (cont.)

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Epithets. For some reason, I’ve never been tagged with nicknames. There’s not much you can do with my given name, and my general appearance is sufficiently nondescript that there’s an obvious epistemic gap between my looks and the labels others want to pin on me. One old grocer at the Benner store in Keokuk, where I worked during my high school years, called me “Highpockets” several times, but gave up, after a week or so when it didn’t seem to catch on. Consequently, I’m always alert to what people call me when they’re not using my name. This happened three times on the trip and, each time, the epithet was unprecedented. The first time came at the registration desk of the seedy Sutton Motel in Springfield OR. The owner, a Chinese woman, was passing the time of day with us as I was trying to get my credit card together with my registration act. She asked where we were going. I said “Virginia Beach.” Then, when she seemed to think that Virginia Beach was over on the Oregon coast and I offered “Virginia” as a corrective, she looked up into my face and said “Man of Iron!” Wow! That’s almost Superman! I could spend my retirement conjuring on that one: How would I design my business cards? What sort of car does an iron man drive? Do I need to buy a toupee? Fortunately, we had hard enough roads ahead that the label was belied before it had a chance to be believed. The second stunner came north of Springfield IL, outside a convenience store in Sherman, as rain clouds came rolling in and I was struggling to get my bright yellow pack cover over my panniers. A fiftyish guy came running out of the store to his car and, as he passed me, shouted, “Better batten down, old-timer, it’s comin’ in!” Old-timer! Though I have been accepting senior discounts for nearly thirty years (my first time was when I was 45, at a barber shop, of course), I had never been called “old-timer.” That made me feel all… how do I say?...old timey. The last and, arguably, best happened in the middle of West Virginia, in Fellowsville, I think, outside a convenience store. Greg asked a woman exiting the store about the road ahead and a conversation ensued, or, I should say, a Q and A session. The woman asked the usual questions about destination, miles per day, and so on, then asked if we were together. I said that we did ride together, though Greg often rode ahead a half-mile or so. Then she said she meant to ask if we lived together. I said that we live in the same town. “No,” she demurred, “I mean…are you partners?” I laughed and replied that, were it so, we’d be going to California, not Virginia Beach.


Entertainments. We went to no movies en route. Nor did we patronize any bars after 2:00 p.m. Nor did either of us carry a Walkman or IPod. We did watch TV occasionally, and it was sometimes enjoyable, if not gripping. (see NBA Finals and Day, typical) On two occasions, however, I stumbled into real entertainments as I supped alone. Eaton OH, our destination on July 11, had no motel, so we rode five miles further to the outskirts of Glenwood where we found a little motel being refurbished. Surprisingly, there was a restaurant about 200 yards away. We went there for dinner, I to eat on the premises, Greg for take-away. It was Friday night and the place was packed with old people, about 60 of them, at least 50% of whom were older than I. A country-western combo was playing on the stage, mostly oldies, about half of which I knew. Now my country-western phase was pretty much started and over with in the winter of 1951, so that tells you something about the crowd’s age group. But everybody was having a great time, rocking in their chairs to the music, occasionally singing along for several bars, talking animatedly together, some making their way outdoors for a smoker’s recess. It was great. Even though I was by myself at the table, the good cheer was infectious, and I rocked and sang right along with the crowd. The other time was in Tuscola IL, on July 8. We had pulled into our Super 8 just as a thunderstorm hit. By the time it let up, I was ready to get a bite to eat. Fortunately a MacDonald’s was just a hundred yards away. I got my dinner without incident and was doing all right with it when I noticed a couple several tables away looking up, gesturing the same direction, and talking intensely. They looked a bit marginal, like they might be homeless, and I spent a couple of minutes watching them. Then I looked up at what they were watching, and saw one of those fiberboard ceiling tiles, wet and bulging. There were several other tiles in nearly the same condition, but the one most observed was clearly the closest to floodstage. I commented on it to the couple, who laughed and said they’d been watching it for quite a while. Several others in the restaurant said they had, too. So I watched along with them, through the rest of my dinner and some ice cream after. It was rather like the Seinfeld show on TV: how to make something out of nothing. But it was dramatic, convivial, and entertaining as all get out. I watched for quite a while, say twenty minutes, and it hadn’t yet burst, so I left. The day had been long and hard and even a mini-flood in the making couldn’t keep me awake.


Falls. Sorry, this isn’t where you get the blood and gore, either. In fact, there was very little of that on our journey. The only time I hit the pavement with more than my feet wasn’t even a fall; it was more of a crumple. Just after lunch at Crazy Tony’s Bar and Grill—the only place open on a Sunday in Guernsey NE—we rode down the block to a service station. I coasted into the driveway, then slowed so much I couldn’t lift my right leg over the seat to dismount before the weight of my panniers pulled the bike over, and me with it. Fortunately, it was Guernsey NE so there wasn’t a crowd to watch me disentangle from the bike and rise, ever so slowly, from the drive. Neither the road rash on my knee nor the pressure cut on my elbow required much treatment. Otherwise, the only injuries I suffered came from my pedals. Sometimes when I’m walking the bike, or dismounting awkwardly, my legs get in the way of the pedals, which have moderately aggressive teeth on them to hold my shoes. They did a number on my right ankle early in the trip and on my left shin the last day, at Cape Henry. I don’t think Greg bled at all. There. That’s all the gory stuff.

This entry is about waterfalls. We saw several big ones along the way, and quite a few smaller ones, especially in Oregon. The larger towns in southern Idaho appear to be located at falls on the Snake, probably because, in the early days, portages and transfers of goods from the boats that plied the river happened at them. Think of Twin Falls, American Falls, Idaho Falls, for example. I wanted to see the twin falls at Twin Falls, so Greg kindly accommodated my desire and we rode in from the interstate on an ill-fated mission. Not only did I nearly lose my life in that town (see Close calls), but we didn’t even get a very good look at the disappointing falls. The Shoshone Falls, a double-streamed falls for which Twin Falls is named, was about five miles out of our way. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a reason to avoid the trip. But there was a brisk breeze in our faces, too. Still we persevered until we came to the bluff above the river and saw the falls, a mile deep into the canyon. The return, a long, steep climb against the wind, was a daunting prospect, so we ventured down the hill far enough to see the falls and to judge the degree to which they failed to meet my rather high expectations. We were so bummed by the Twin Falls experience that we were pretty half-hearted as we neared American Falls. In fact, we tried three exits to find them. Two led nowhere. A third exit led down the hill to the small town, but the falls were still several miles further, so we settled for a Subway sandwich instead of the view. Idaho Falls were the best we saw on the Snake. They fall about 30 feet from rock shelf that runs in a long diagonal across nearly 1/2 mile of the river. Some of it was quite picturesque, with lots of big boulders and white water against a backdrop of trees and fields, a Mormon temple marking a sort of Renaissance perspective point at the end of the vista. Far and away the most impressive waterfall we saw was Sahalie Falls in the Cascades. We came to them early in the morning of our third day. It was cold, gray, and raining lightly when we walked through the trees down a little trail to see the falls. The McKenzie River was flowing fast and full. One of our informants the day before told us that more water was passing over the falls at that time than at any other since the flood year of 1964. We could believe it as we stood watching the thundering torrent. The falls are about 80 feet high, as wide as the river (about forty yards at that point), and characteristically Northwestern, with lots of ferns, firs, and mosses. We watched, transfixed, for about ten minutes, then used the conveniently located porta-potty before we left the area, as falls watchers are wont to do.

July 5. On the way from Belknap Springs to Sisters OR. Greg in the mists and gloom after viewing Sahalie Falls of the Mackenzie River in full flow.

Farewells. Most of the time, when we parted company with folks we’d been talking to, they’d urge us to be safe. “Y’all be careful out there.” Or, the most popular, “Keep safe out there.” I always felt like one of those Hill Street Blues patrol officers who were always dismissed by their shift sergeant, “Be safe out there.” What lurked “out there” in the “jungle” was lots of danger and certain death for the witless and complacent. I think that’s the way most people felt about bicyclists on the roads—that our kind was far too witless and complacent to survive for long amongst the crazy and reckless drivers our well-wishers knew from personal experience. We always thanked them for the sentiment, albeit somewhat witlessly and complacently. I remember something my mother said to me as I was about to set off in the family car for my girl friend in Carthage IL. “You be careful,” she yelled at my back. I probably responded with some such reproof as, “Oh, Mom.,” to which she replied, “It’s not you I worry about, it’s those other damn fools.” Witless and complacent in high school, too! The oddest parting shot I heard on the trip was from an old fellow in a pickup truck. We had just left Ogalalla NE for North Platte. The threatening rain clouds had broken and some sun was peeping through. After five miles, or so, Greg was already well ahead of me. When I caught up, he was chatting with a fellow in a pick-up truck. They were talking about Arizona at the time, I think, and the conversation sounded pretty normal. But my appearance on the scene gave them closure. Greg got on his bike and, as we turned to get back on the road, the old fellow called, “Stay out of the cheatgrass!” Cheatgrass is so called because it looks good when it’s young and cattle readily eat it. But, because it doesn’t have much nutrient value, the stock get puny and sicken. They’re cheated on nutrition. As it ages, cheatgrass develops a tremendous number of very sharp awns to encase its seed. These awns are perilous and painful. When I first arrived in Arizona I hiked through some cheatgrass, which is abundant in the area. The awns penetrated my sneaker tops and socks and gave me fits all the way home, despite my attempts to pull them out. So I appreciated the old fellow’s farewell. As it happened, of course, it was not his personal signoff line. He and Greg had been talking about cheatgrass before I arrived.


Firsts. As a bred in the bone Iowan I was eager to see signs of the Midwest as we headed east. I’m sure I kept Greg bored by calling out “firsts,” such as the first big agricultural fields we saw as we approached the Snake River—fields of wheat, corn, potatoes, onions, and sugar beets. I hadn’t seen sugar beets up close before and thought for a while that they were potatoes. In Nyssa ID there was a huge sugar beet refinery that makes White Star sugar. It’s owned by Swedes or Danes, which reminded me that “local” has to mean more than just “near this place” in our global economy. I was really excited by two indicators that we were in the Midwest—the first soybean field, which we saw on the way to Grand Island NE, and the first daylilies growing in the roadside ditches, also in central Nebraska. Other noteworthy firsts were: the first sunny day of the trip, on June 7, as we rode to John Day OR, felt like the first hint of summer after four days of rain; the first cinnamon roll of the trip, at a bakery in Blackfoot ID, which was such a disappointment I never had another for the rest of the way—a major statement for a pastry lover like me; and the first flat tire, on the way to Pocatello (see Tires). I kept myself amused counting firsts for the better part of a month, when the effort of keeping track began to pall.

Floods. All across Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming we heard about the near-record flooding in the Midwest, reportedly the worst since 1993. I remember 1993. Mary and I were in Springfield IL at the time, but had traveled fairly often to Keokuk IA to visit my sister and my mother. In May of that year we had to make a 60-mile detour through Quincy IL to find a road that was open to Keokuk. The floodplains of the Illinois and Mississippi River are vast, and they were full right up to the bluffs, an awesome sight. It is just hard to imagine that much water. And there was nearly that much this year. So we were apprehensive about what we’d find when we got to the Midwest, and were concerned that we might have to hole up somewhere and wait for waters to subside. It was a wet spring everywhere; all the rivers we crossed were bank full, or more, and rushing. We crossed the Missouri at Nebraska City. As we approached, Greg, who had traveled the road before, remembered that we had to cross low ground on the Iowa side of the river. We were lucky that the crest had passed about a week earlier and the bridge, which had, indeed, been closed, opened up just several days before we crossed. There was a lot of water left in the bottomland, and we could see the high water marks all around us. Our highway, IA 2, was much busier than usual because bridges on the east-west highway north of us (US 34) were out and traffic was diverted to our road. (see Roads) All the little rivers in western Iowa which usually flood in the spring—the Waubonsie, the Nishnabotna, the Nodaway—were all high and the nearby fields still full of water. Our hotel in Keosaqua IA was right on the Des Moines River, one of those along which a lot of the nationally reported damage occurred. We could see that it had flowed over its banks and noted the high water mark on the hotel’s foundations, but it was nothing like the flood of 1993, where the high water mark was six feet up on the wall of the hotel. When we parted in Keosaqua for separate R&R with friends and family in Peoria and Springfield (see Fourth of July Break), Greg headed for the Burlington IA bridge to cross the Mississippi. It turned out to be still closed from the flood (see Miles). The Keokuk bridge was open, but, when I crossed, the road that traversed the low land on the Illinois side had been raised by a dike of crushed rock about 9 feet high was constructed to keep traffic flowing. I saw no evidence of floods east of the Mississippi.


Florence OR. (see Oceans and Route)


Flowers. One of the delights of our journey, especially at the beginning and end, was the show of flowers. In Oregon, spring still held sway; peonies and daffodils were still blooming and, oh, the lilacs! There was one variety we saw all the way along the road across Oregon and into Idaho that was the most intense deep lavender I have ever seen. For the first four days, when we were riding in gloom and rain, we could only guess how intense they really were. But, after the fourth day, when we were in sunshine, those lilacs were just breathtaking. I kept after Greg to pose for a picture in front of one. He kept refusing. I think I put the wrong spin on it. Floral beauty may not have been a clincher. Had it been an intense lavender ‘67 Mustang, he’d have been begging me to snap a shot. I kept pestering him into Idaho, where he finally proposed a deal: he’d pose with the lilacs if I would pose for him in a setting he knew but would not divulge in advance. Now, with Greg, a practiced and proficient practical jokester, that might have been like a pact with Old Scratch. So keen was I on those lilacs that I took him up on his deal. Then there we no more lilacs; we had pedaled into summertime and the cool, wet spring of Oregon, and the flowers that went with it, was just a memory. I loved the chickory and daylilies along the Midwestern roadside, and was surprised and delighted to see some mountain azaleas still blooming on the higher mountains in West Virginia. But all these were completely outshone by the crepe myrtles in Virginia. What a display! Some properties had long avenues of them, mostly a bright pinkish red. They were absolutely stunning, almost to the point of redeeming Virginia (see Virginia). But not quite. I think I enjoyed them so much because they reminded me of Madaline, our across-the-street neighbor in Green Valley for about seven years before she moved to Ohio and expired. Madaline was a stitch. A former Vegas cocktail waitress who came up in the world through a series of fortunate marriages, she had an amazing repertory of dirty jokes and a heart of gold. How ‘ya doin,’ Madaline,” I’d call across the street. “Doin’ every one I can, and the good ones twice!” she’d call back. Outside her front door Madaline had a smoky purple crepe myrtle which she loved passionately, partly because it reminded her of her home place in West Virginia. I dedicated all those Virginia crepe myrtles to her memory. As usual, though, I couldn’t remember a single one of her jokes.

July 19. On the road to Fredericksburg VA. An avenue of glorious crepe myrtles makes a splendid memorial for Madaline.

Food. This was not a gourmet adventure. For all our patriotic instincts, we did not discover America the Delicious. For the most part, it was no foodie’s adventure at all, since we ate about half our meals at fast food chain restaurants. We frequented MacDonald’s more than any of the others because it offers a filling, relatively cheap pancake breakfast. Their “Deluxe Breakfast”, which features hash browns and a biscuit as well as pancakes to accompany the eggs, sausage, and bacon, is almost more than we could eat. It, like any of their pancake breakfasts, is made palatable by snatching the styrofoam top from the pancake tray as soon as you can without scratching or otherwise injuring the counterperson. Left on too long, the lid helps the pancakes steam themselves into an unedifying mush. Subway sandwich shops were our next favorite. Their sandwiches were about the right size for us and offered a significant salad in addition to the major carbs. Pizza Huts were the odds-on favorite when we arrived in town before 1:30 p.m., when the buffet lunch closes. It’s an all-you-can-eat event, which for us carb-crazy animals is a very good deal. After that, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Dairy Queen, Arby’s, Hardee’s, and Burger King follow in roughly that order. In the extreme outback of western Oregon and most of Wyoming, it was catch-as-catch-can. Towns too small for any real restaurants are not ideal mealtime stops but, on a bike, you take what comes your way—and that’s a convenience store. In the longer view of eating out, the convenience store is a new phenomenon, dating, I think, from the big oil shock of the seventies when service stations had to supplement their gas revenues with something else to make a go of it. A lot of them dropped service and took on Twinkies, Ho-Hos, and a thousand variations on them. In many small towns, a convenience store is all there is. They substitute for groceries, restaurants, gas stations, social meeting places, and casinos. Some of them are really well-stocked. The mid-Atlantic states on the east coast feature my favorite, Wa Wa, which sounds like baby talk but is Algonquin for “wild goose.” Wa Wa is a high-end convenience store, the kind of place where they have five different kinds of salad, all excellent, some good pastries, and the best gas station coffee you can find anywhere. We only saw two of them on the trip, and didn’t actually stop at them, more’s the pity. Other, more ordinary, convenience stores offer fried chicken, french fries, hot dogs, pizzas, prepared sandwiches and burritos, coffee and a vast array of sodas, beer, and icy confections I cannot name. Low end convenience stores stock packaged chips, candies galore, a Twinkie rack, and lots of soda pop. It is hard to make a meal at the low end places, but we had to try about ten times. Some weeks, a French fry was as close as we got to fruits and vegetables for lunch. The unchallenged best meal we had in a gas station-convenience store was in Brogan OR, a wide spot in the road about eighty miles from the Snake River. The first room was ordinary (candies, chips, etc.), but a room off to the left had wonders—crock pots and hot plates filled with German-American delights. I had a bowl of good chili and a polish sausage with sauerkraut; Greg chose a dish that looked like Potatoes Anna and some other confections I can’t recall. Coming after a night in Unity OR (see Motels), we felt as though we’d fallen into Antoine’s, or the Four Seasons, or some other fashionable watering-hole. But fashionable we weren’t. The best meal we had was a plate of spaghetti and meatballs in Bosco’s, an Italian restaurant of local repute in Casper WY. I also had a good dish of lasagna near Richmond VA. Both were restaurants which served what our biking buddy, Jerry, calls “Italian comfort food.” The worst meal, far and away, I consumed in the Hong Kong Restaurant in Idaho Falls ID. When the chop suey plate was set before me it looked bad. When I took the first bite it tasted bad. I knew I shouldn’t eat it, but I’d paid for it and, well, I was cheaper than I was prudent. I paid the price for two days with a yucky tummy and an extremely unsettled bowel. Surprisingly, that’s the only food on the whole trip that upset my gastric balance. The second worst meal I ate in a place called “The Steak and Chicken Buffet,” a fixed price, all-you-can-eat operation specializing, apparently, in very dry, overcooked fried chicken and small hunks of steak that were impossible to chew. Amazingly, the place was packed. Greg often ate his evening meal in the motel room, especially when we had a microwave oven. He likes eating that way. I tried it a couple of times. The second time I tried nuking a Hungry Man frozen meal which was not worth the electricity to heat it up. Moreover, I decided that eating nuked food, even good stuff, on the edge of my bed was not pleasant. So I went out most nights by myself to sample the culinary delights of low-budget, large-waisted Americans. If I frequented those places without riding seventy miles, or more, a day, I’d be large-waisted, too.

June 28. Brightly jerseyed bikers beaming after an unexpectedly great lunch at the Hunter in in Waco NE (pop. 844).

Fourth of July Break. (see Rest days.)


Greg. My partner in crime across America is long-retired but not yet old enough to claim geezer status. He was a top machinist for Caterpillar in Peoria IL who took the golden parachute offered during a corporate downsizing about ten years ago and jumped to Arizona. After a brief interlude in a suburb of Phoenix, he and his wife, Rhonda, came to Green Valley. We met about four years ago on our bikes and became biking buddies not too long after. Greg turned 58 just about a week after he returned from our trip. As I am always birding as we travel along, Greg is always looking at cars. They are his passion. He can tell you all about the motors and mechanical idiosyncrasies of almost any model of Ford automobile and pick-up truck, and most other makes, too. He was accommodating enough to stare at birds occasionally, and I reciprocated by gazing into junkyards (my term) to look at a treasure, a wreck he’d love to restore. He’d talk about its engine, the parts that might be difficult to get now, what aspect of its restoration might give him problems. At the moment he has only one classic car, a 2000 Mustang, in addition to his Jeep and Ford pick-up. His dream is to add a port or two to his garage so he can work on old cars. Autophilia runs in Greg’s family. His brother in North Carolina (see Brothers) has eleven cars, lots of garages and a separate barn for his treasures. Greg is handy in all kinds of ways. He remodeled his house into a showplace a year or so ago, doing all the work himself. He is my guru in all things mechanical.

He’s also athletic and extremely fit. He’s a member of the Southern Arizona Hiking Club and climbs with them frequently. Two weeks after returning from the bike trip, he and Rhonda took their annual trip to Colorado to climb “fourteeners.” Their aim is to bag all 54. This year they added five to their list. He runs, as well (see Virginia). He says Rhonda is the better runner (she’s won some long-distance races and has competed in marathons) but he sure looks good when he takes off. It should not surprise you to know that he’s also a strong cyclist and an excellent climber. He’s done a number of long bike trips, one across Wyoming and, several years ago, a ride from Green Valley to Peoria IL. He’s a phenomenal climber: one of our Green Valley group calls him “Pistons” because his legs turn the pedals so quickly. So why does he ride with me, you have every reason to ask. I have asked myself, and him, the same question. My best answer—he’s practicing virtue, namely, patience!

Temperamentally, Greg is conscientious about doing the right thing. Where most of us have nightmares about bears, monsters, and finding ourselves naked in public places, Greg’s bad dreams are about ethical and moral dilemmas. His sober hyperconscientiousness (Word’s spell check went bonkers on that one!) is balanced in social circumstances by his impish sense of humor. He’s an inveterate practical joker which, one might think, combines oddly with moral and ethical rectitude. I’ll have to ask him about that sometime. He’s very thorough about the things he does, which made him an excellent logistics manager for our trip. He seemed to enjoy solving the puzzles involving calculating how many miles we could manageably ride in a day and still find a motel by evening. That is not an easy task (see Motels), but he puzzled it all out. He is more independent than most, and takes responsibility for himself and his projects. Fiscally conservative and given to laissez-faire in social matters, he will nonetheless vote for Obama, I think. One facet of his independence is that he likes to be alone. On several nights he got a room for himself after being surfeited with togetherness night after night with a genuine geezer who is likely to be as active at night as during the day (see Infirmities). He also liked to have meals in the room at night, a practice I tried, but failed at, probably because, with me, gourmandaise trumps miserliness. I am famously careful with my pennies, but I am a drunken sailor with money compared to Greg’s parsimony.

Our trip featured another Greg, a restaurateur in Capon Bridge WV, whose restaurant, named “Greg’s,” we patronized at lunchtime just before crossing into Virginia. It was clean, friendly, and efficient. I had salmon patties which were exemplary for their kind, maybe good enough to make“Greg’s” the second-best restaurant on the trip, now that I think about it (see Food). We hailed the eponymous Greg, told him what a fine restaurant he had, and wished him the best. A sociable sort, he wished us well, too.