Day 37, still awake

Utah is canyons and people. The canyons are constant; the people are spread out, just seeing one is amazing, and meeting them is a delicacy.

I left Hite at 3 in the morning. It actually wasn't much colder, but it was its coldest. I couldn't see anything. It took a while for my eyes to make out the stars. Then the canyons: at first they were silhouettes, all shoulders jutting out high above me on both sides. The brightening sky sketched some features onto them, and then some pale colors. When the sun neared the horizon, the canyons took over coloring themselves. We began with grey Moon canyons, red Clint Eastwood canyons, red Mars canyons, orange I-Don't-Know-What-canyons, and finally Tatooine canyons into Hanksville, my latte, and my morning post.

I was driving down a particularly grey canyon when I stumbled across an organic coffee shop/farm. This is quite a stumble. If the Bible were written in reverse, the would be the shock of coming from dirt, plague, pestilence (and knowledge) into the rich Garden of Eden. Plus, God's got some coffee on.

Inside are four kids my age. Cool kids. Dave is tremendously bearded, organizes music festivals, and plays new folk music. The couple seem similarly artistic, and they know every swimming hole and cold spring in a wide radius. The girl (try and remember names) Ingridchen is rolling dough, making me two cinabuns, cutting melons, and chatting with me about music, food, kombucha, and whatever else my sleep deprived mind bounced into play. She was quite pretty and she had armpit hair (don't stare). The coffee was the best drip I've ever had (stop, stop). And we listened to some throat singing (she sees you!).

I left with tons of recommendations and tremendous good feeling. People like me, here. There were clouds in the sky: somebody up there loves me.

Canyon riding is biking at the bottom of a lost ocean. That's why so many of the rocks look like petrified Canard Cruiseliners. If I could get up to the top I'm sure I could see the caveman shufflepuck board and the caveman climbing wall hanging over the bough.

Blah blah blah beautiful, uphill, humid, swimming in a waterfall with French tourists and grown men who can't bring themselves to swear, blessed nap, unblessed pain in my knees, final slog up a hill and 1500 ft to Torrey.

I'm at the Patio, a pizza joint and one of America's best restaurants. In the background is a tremendous iron canyon. The sun is on it. Our hostess is 55, glittery blue nail polish, three Bic pens in her hair, on rollerskates. Our music is Patsy Cline, Devo (!), Hank Williams, Beatles, and unheard Peter Gabriel. It's perfect. A dog is licking my legs clean of salt. I'm going to camp somewhere in that red mess over there. Two women have inspired my next trip: juke joints in the Mississippi Delta. The lovely Brits took an easy day and have found this place too. A man here plays harmonica with David from the farm. Perhaps pizza on rollerskates is how people find each other in the desert.

Early day 37, some old stories

I took a bath in Lake Powell by sunset, ate my last meal (soup!), tried to sleep on the hot concrete, woke up at 3, rode by dark, then stars, then sunrise, into Hanksville, and right up to this latte, which I plan on snorting.

Now might be a good time to give you three stories that have slipped through the cracks.

1.

I found another Shake Shack. This one is in Monticello, Utah. I can't say it was as great as my Shake Shack, but if gristle is any indicator, they do use real meat in their burgers.

The hostesses were two scarily Aryan sixteen-year-olds who were either sisters or the girls from Brazil. At the counter was Jed, picking up an order for Jred. It's rude to presume someone a methamphetamine addict, so let's just say that the lack of any fat in his temples did not bode well for his brain.

All of this did not put me in a turning around mood. Keep your eyes on your milkshake. Plus, I was in a booth. Behind me was a man and a woman and I swear they didn't have any children with them. Still, their conversation went --

M: Well anyhow it was great seeing you and Dan, and what are we dooey wooing...
W: Oh I know, bwabuwabuwaba, we've got to do it again.
M: Yes we do, yes we do.

It went on like this for twenty minutes before I ran out.

2.

There are three lovely young Britons riding on the same route as I. They're being sagged by two very nice, older Britons named Paul. Occasionally, the Pauls will find me on the side of the road and offer me water and kind words from their red minivan.

This story was told to me by the dreadlocked girl at the laundrette in Salida. In the interest of narrative simplicity and making it seem like I'm good with names, I'll draw three from a hat for our Brits.

"I saw Harry and Hermione at the base of the hill; Ron was at the top and getting his face shouted at by a trucker who'd stopped in the middle of the road. I hate that that would happen in Colorado [Ed: so do I]. If you see them again, please apologize to them from me on behalf all Colorado."

I bumped into Ron again (smiling, Ron) and confirmed the story.

"Were you there? [I explained] Yeah, this van drove up beside me and he hit me with his mirror. I said something impolite to him and he stopped his van, got out, and then he hit me in the face."

This is the part that kills me.

"I thought he was terribly rude."

Trucker gets back into truck, Wendy's gets their hamburgers, Ron has been hit in the face on the side of the road, and this is the level of his consternation. Were it I who was hit -- and I wish it was -- I'd be Blackberrying you snide comments from a wood paneled circuit court in Denver. I'd probably be in a neckbrace.

Ron is a better man than I, and he has the right attitude. Whereas I would have spent the next thousand miles dreaming of fun and dangerous ways to kill that guy, I honestly believe the whole gang had forgotten about it until I brought it up.

"Yes I remember something about that guy hitting me with his car and punching me in the face, but, you know, water under the bridge..."

3.

Three fishermen called their wives from the payphone in my bedroom yesterday night.

The first one called his wife 'snookums'. Honestly.

The second one called his wife 'babe', repeatedly. "Babe, the stripers were biting, babe. Babe? Babe! I thought I'd lost you..."

The third one called his wife Wendy. She seemed to have no idea he was off fishing. He had no idea she was away at a family reunion. He agreed that he should turn the water on for her when he got back.

Day 36

It's hot.

I'll get back to how hot, but first, an addend. I did not sleep outdoors yesterday. As I was about to close enter Slumberland, a big bat flew across my face and I crashed out of bed. I should never have eaten that Welsh rarebit. My tent was up in seconds.

So it's hot. The only surprise here is that it was such a complete surprise to me. I biked to Natural Bridges to fill up on water and that was fine. I bumped into two guys riding east and they seemed fine. They were in a band and were carrying their instruments with them. They actually seemed great.

Here's how it hit me. Natural Bridges is at about 7000 ft in altitude. I am in Glen Canyon, up above Lake Powell, and at about 3000 ft in altitude. For every 1000 ft I went down the temperature jumped about 7 degrees until here, Hite, where it is 120 something with hot wind.

The greatest part of losing altitude is going downhill. I never felt that. According the the Salt Lake Tribune, today's wind is blowing in whatever direction I am not going. This makes sense: I was riding down the exhaust pipe of a particularly hot oven.

I was compensated otherwise for I am in canyon country. Hot wind can't keep your eyes from this beautiful land (although it can make you tear up uncontrollably). There are canyons that look like rainbow trout with flat heads; canyons like oceanliners; canyons like cobras; canyons like Buicks. There are buttes: Cheese Box Butte, and another one I call 5-Finger Butte. I am surrounded by them now. They keep me warm.

I was going to explore some of these caves but it was when I stopped moving that I became fast aware of the temperature.

I stink. I haven't showered in days. There's a fine layer of red dust in every crack and crevice my skin has. My shirt is starched thick with sweat. I look forwards to a dip later in the lake.

I am going to have to beat Utah in the mornings. I'll be up at 3 tomorrow to ride, dip, and ride up all that elevation I lost and towards the mountains.

Day 35

I don't quite know how we went from day 33 to 44 to 35; perhaps time is getting a little unstuck as I move in a straight line; perhaps I'm going so quickly that, like with Superman, I am rotating the earth backwards.

I am looking up at the desert sky. I am pretty sure that's not a Sting song, but it very well could be. It could also be a fragrance. I must have a fragrance of my own because the desert fly loves me. I must smell dead.

I pulled up short of Natural Bridges National Monument, but I am much further than I thought I was going to go. I was too tired. I just stopped my bike, walked off the side of the road, and went into the desert (of Desert Sky fame).

The reason I can walk into the desert is I am carrying 8 liters of water. This could also be the reason I couldn't make it up the hill.

I am in Utah. The first 8/10ths of the day was a bit lackluster. I left the reservoir, biked down a canal, noticed how the canal kept everything wet while I dried out. I was in Utah before I knew it. Their state sign is an impossibly ugly piece of Photoshop. The landscape was a bit like eastern Colorado. I went to a town called Monticello, which is solid evidence that America is repeating itself.

After a shake, I went to Blanding, and decided to keep moving. Here's where it gets beautiful. Bicentennial highway runs along a canyon valley until it turns up into a narrow slit in the canyon, winds through that and opens on a lush valley lined with red canyons on both sides. Despite being the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and being mostly downhill, I stopped and took photographs for You because -- wow -- it was amazing. A thin shaft of light came through the clouds and lit the distant canyon wall LionKing-ish.

About five miles after that, I lost the will to pedal. I boiled rice with a packet of mac n cheese mix and lay down to write this.

The woman in the Blanding info center said this is the darkest sky in the nation. I suppose that's another way of saying, there ain't nothing there. I look forwards to some stargazing, light sleep outdoors, and then getting on the road so I can skip Lake Powell and its cursed jet skis and maybe make another park.

Day 44, More Than This

As often, I am drinking a malt. This time I'm in Dolores and it's chocolate. A terrible cover of Bryan Ferry's More Than This is on the radio. The original is brilliant: "You know there's nothing more than this." Of what comfort is that?

I woke up this morning to a tent that smelled of cold pork. The human body sweats a liter of water in sleep, and mine had a high ratio of Fat Albert's pulled pork. It was kind of the bears to spare me.

After packing, I bumped into John with whom I've been friendly since getting into Telluride. He has dreads, sweatpants, and is in his mid-30s. I saw him smiling at the free concert, smiling his way down main street, and smiling his way to the gondola with a bike. He's just a nice guy.

John has a weird favor to ask me. I tell him anything, which, by the way, is bad policy. John worked at Golden Gate State Park. I will end my trip there. He worked there with a woman who used to guide kids from Oakland on confidence building rafting trips. She drowned on one of those trips. John and some friends buried her -- actually buried her, with their own shovels.

There is a plaque in her honor hidden between Sausalito and a town that begins with an M. He asked me to leave something there for her, from him. He said it could be a pine cone.

I will be looking for the perfect pine cone, or a really round rock, and I will leave it with her because I said I would.

I went back to Maggie's Bakery for breakfast. Today I was joined by Dan Pearlman. Dan is the inventor of the halogen lamp. He made it for the movies. It was supposed to be a miniature sun; a black body that glows with color when heated to 3700 K. He sold the patent, but he won an Academy Award for it.

We have breakfast for 2 hours. Dan is in town before he's due in front of the Supreme Court to argue his latest case that, under the Constitution, the government does not exist.

Dan sought me out actually. He'd wanted to eat breakfast with me yesterday, but I was with the cycling geophysicist and family. Dan is also a cyclist. He rode a bike around for 3 years, living off patents and money he made as a film producer, and then road magic and the kindness of strangers. There were days when he'd find 20, 40, 100 bucks stuck in his bags.

He recommended the desert. Once, when riding practically-abandoned highway 50 in the desert, he came upon a large guy carrying an even larger cross. The cross had a little wheel in back. He asks the guy if he's religious.

"Not particularly," the man says. He just liked the idea of the cross. Isn't it a bit weird to be walking around with a cross in the desert?

"Isn't it a bit weird to be riding around with a bicycle?"

Further up 50, he spots a large, er, spot on the horizon. Clean the glasses, put them back on, the spot grows bigger. Soon the spot is passing over him at 1000 miles an hour. It was a supersonic jet. It knocked him clean on his fanny.

Further further up 50 he sees an antique store. He heads in. Everything in there is smashed into pieces.

A: I'm so glad you're here. This is a good day.
D: Excuse me?
A: I was just about to go bankrupt.

It seems that every year or so, this woman goes out and buys a bunch of glass antiques. She puts them right on the edge of her high shelves. Then she waits for some flyboy to line up on the highway and have the Air Force buy her a new set of china ... and then some.

Dan has run for President. His name was on the ballot. He has also run for governor of New Mexico. You see, there's lot of competition at the lower levels of government, but only a few candidates at the higher level. No harm, no foul is a motto.

His case before the Supreme Court is also a longshot, but it is being heard. He's gonna go on Bill Moyers beforehand and then head out into the desert to think on it. He holds it as self-evident (axiomatic) that 2/3rds of the population need to vote yay or nay to elect an official. Obama got a little more than half of a lot less than half of the population, ergo he's illegitimate. Ditto McCain. Ditto GWB. Ditto everyone. Ergo, the thing is undemocratic.

In its place, he hopes to put a voting machine that allows every American to call in or go online and vote for their preferred candidate (Sanjaya?). Even though this trip has shown me how intelligent and generous many Americans can be, I can't believe that we wouldn't just vote in our best interests and put the future off.

The farmer sees the future. The bro in Telluride does not. Experiential living is liberating until your (occasionally philosophical) unwillingness to live for tomorrow closes off some doors. Again, a good question to ask is, where are the children?

He wished me good luck in my life and we parted.

I left Telluride late but an easy ride got me into Dolores early. I'm in a restaurant that wants me to pay for my water and that has made me really angry. I'm off to the massive reservoir down the road to go swimming.

Day 33

I am in the library. I have been reading up on Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, minerals, Iceland spar, solenoids, the temperature in Nevada at night, an environmental consultancy I'm interested in working for, and home rule municipalities. I made to leave but turned around when I realized I could listen to an album that I must be the crowning musical achievement of the young 21st century. Ys, by Joanna Newsom. As she weaves her harp arpeggious and baroque, something quite American shines through: the rare (too rare) three-part female harmony, the banjos, the cowboy's harp, her hi-Appalachian twang. And the great orchestral swells in and out again. And it all blends together beautifully. And it sounds so old, like it's a miracle recording equipment existed that could catch this thing and put this it to (magnetic) tape.

It is the perfect soundtrack to Telluride because the place blends together beautifully too. As I listened, I stared out at a mountain that stitched red rock into evergreens and grass without any visible seams. Waterfalls pass through houses here. The sun seems to take some physical shape when it is long and passes down the box canyon onto Bear Pass. Earlier, I hiked up to the Bridal Falls and stared up at the house with the generator in it. This is the house of a mad American King. There is a rusty gondola to carry everyone up to court. There is a small widow's walk (or is it a window?) for the Queen to lie and wait for her millionaire miner to return from getting her gold and other heavy metals. All their power is AC from the waterfall. They are rich with gravity. Birds fly down the valley and bring them news and berries. The king heads down to the village for his weekly meeting at the Masonic lodge and to look up into the bordello windows. He walks the mile up past the power plant and its green ponds and then up to his wife with wildflowers by way of apology.

I woke up at 6:30 so I could be at Maggie's bakery by 7. A tremendously youthful German geophysicist was there with his son and grandson. The boy called him Opa. They lived in Boulder, which is where he taught. They kindly invited me to eat with them. The grandfather biked across country and got his family hooked. They liked to rotate riding in Europe and the States every summer. They were heading south. He talked about traveling Mexico by car and feeling that it seemed empty at speeds, but would reveal itself on the bike. We could all agree that the bike keeps you riding at the speed of older journeys. When you slowly travel Europe, the languages, food, architecture, and geography can change in a steep afternoon's climb.

I should like to be this man when I'm his age, intelligent, smiling, wildly curious at 7 in the morning.

I went to a coffee shop for a latte and was reminded of why I hate these places. Every barista (I prefer cashier) thinks he or she has the greatest, most diverse taste in music which shuffles around -- too early -- why? -- perhaps to win over the pale girl in Telluride -- the one in the corner -- perhaps to suggest that he is more than a barista (I prefer cashier) -- he was once in a band -- he's working on an album on afternoons off from mountainbiking -- ugh. I stayed there for 2 hours. The coffee was great. I have mapped out most of the rest of my trip.

I will be in San Francisco in two weeks and three days at the latest. I'll be riding short days in the desert because a lot of my options are either 68 miles or 148. I think we can all agree I've made the right choice. I hope to camp out on some vineyards in the Sierras and to put 20 on black in Carson City. If I win that, I'll put 20 on my birthday. If I win that, I'll invest the money in a really hi-quality Elvis costume.

I've yet to figure out how to get from the East Bay over to the North Bay and into San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. I can hit Sonoma and Napa, but I can't seem to avoid San Quentin. Is San Quentin nice this time of year, or should I wait for the foliage?

Before all that, I plan on reading my Twain up the valley and by the river.

But that's all the future-flexible. We did a little bit of the past-todayish. Now let's do the present-now. I'm still in the library, but, don't worry, I'll be in Fat Albert's soon enough. A Mexican man seated to the left of me is updating his Match.com profile and furiously clicking on some girls who, from their photographs, have no need for online dating. Ys has run out. The mountains are still here.

I can imagine Tesla living on the top of the mountain, a mad-American King, thinking magnetism and inventing electricity. There is a bit of that here. The rocks on the way to the Bridal Falls were shiny and metallic. The box canyon seems to trap some energy in it -- no, not holistic energy, man -- but perhaps solar. Perhaps this could be rigged up like a large solenoid. Perhaps we could use this large solenoid to pull comets towards earth and bring back Mark Twain for a brief lecture tour and to collect some hard earned royalties from Hal Holbrook. Perhaps, sadly, it is time to leave Telluride. Tomorrow, I will be back on the road. I will be rested and I will be fed.

Day 32, I have arrived

I am in Telluride. Nothing -- not the sun, not the full day climb, not making the awful mistake of taking 5 electrolyte pills and swelling shut -- could keep me from her. I'm sipping a latte. I'm under an aspen tree and a banner of multi-colored Tibetan prayer napkins. They're made in China.

I'm reading the local paper, The Telluride Watch. Some guy named Art Goodtimes is kvetching about which burial service is best. The man hates paragraphs. The rest of the paper is all green building, green shopping, the Dalai Lama, some local bartender/dj getting stabbed in the neck, and real estate listings. Garrison Keillor is syndicated. He's in New York. The balls on this man. First, he claims that the whole place smells of pizza and fresh coffee (it doesn't). Then he compares getting on a train in Penn Station to getting the last one out of Warsaw in 37 (overstating it a bit). Then he goes on about beautiful New York women and terrorism (?). This is travel writing at its worst: unfocused, false, and unfocused.

Telluride is lovely and a little bit frightening. My campsite is infested with flies. Doug Silver behind me is shouting in my ear about an amazing piece of property he's trying to sell ("I'd just hate to see it go to waste"). A gaggle of five teenage girls teleported in from the Upper West Side to talk about calling Doug and seeing if he was interested in Ani (Doug Silver?). A man in his mid-forties with an impressive amount of hair is chatting up our barista and is all "cool" this and "awesome" that. He is going to go mountain biking with his kids. It's 3 on a weekday. When I grow up I want to be so busy I can't see my kids until at least 7 on weekdays and that's if they make an appointment. And I vow that they'll never see me in shorts.

I'm off to the Free Box. Apparently I can just drop off stuff I don't want (the scissors I cut my hair with) for stuff I do (a red union suit for my desert nights). We'll see.

I'm back from the Free Box with a free flannel. A gentleman with sunbleached hair and teeth chipped from mountain biking gifted it to me.

X: Keep the free box free!
G: Keep the free box free!?

He also recommended some mountain biking trails to me and the historical museum.

X: There's stuff in there that you'd never see anywhere. Mining gear. Photos of John Denver.

After he let go of my hand, I walked down Main Street. This is a national landmark. Where hokey art galleries, western wear stores, and lovely cafes are, there were once bordellos and banks. One bank was robbed by a young Butch Cassidy. An older Nikola Tesla built the world's first AC- generating hydroelectric damn here; it is now a house that I'll try to check out.

I can't find my union suit here. I did find a free gondola, which I rode to a free concert. Nobody knew who was playing. Scuttlebutt had it she was the daughter of an old folkie. The turnout was massive. You are allowed open containers here in Telluride and its sister village. Everyone was friendly and jolly on the sunny side of the mountain.

You are keeping me from my pulled pork sandwich. Here's something you should never say to the chef at a restaurant called Fat Albert's.

G: So are you Albert?

Day 31

I just made a horrible mistake. I'm sitting in the corner at a Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat buffet. I am that guy. I am determined to get my 6 dollars worth.

There is a strategy to overeating. I was discussing this with my waitress at the burrito joint I nearly snuffed it in. Do bread last. Avoid carbs. Avoid chewing. Don't taste anything. Don't get distracted. I might add to that list, never confuse Pizza Hut's strawberry and icing pizza with pepperoni. The shock would fell a less conditioned man.

Same old stuff today. Colorado gets prettier, rode with my wheel unscrewed for 36 miles, wobbled into Gunnison and had a man fix my bike in 7 seconds, ate eggs, went down to canyon country, ran along Blue Mesa Lake (which isn't really blue, but the mountains around it are), skirted Black Canyon of the Gunnison (one of the eight wonders of my world), stopped by the Black River to give myself a crap haircut and a rinse, got to Cimarron, waved to a statue I thought was alive, really, really wanted to quit for the day, carried on 5 miles straight up and 15 straight down into Montrose where they have Pizza Hut and a mini-golf course that doubles as a campsite. With luck, I'll get site 18.

So there you have it. I am a day's away from Telluride. I need it. My knees won't go anymore. I have been dreaming about this for a long, long time. I want to see Nikola Tesla's generator house. I want latte. I want mountain girl. I want long underwear. I want ride gondola. I want healthfood store to sell me pills that make my legs feel great, like when I was working in copyediting and they never touched the floor.

I think it's important to believe in something. I believe I'll have some more pizza.

Day 30, a quick correction

Salida is pronounced Sal-EYE-Duh.

I also forgot to note that I got three thumbs up from drivers on the way up, and a hi-five when I got to the top.

Day 30, part 2

If you are a fan of the posts where I go through extensive suffering -- versus talking about how nice everyone is -- please enjoy my afternoon.

I am in Sargents sitting in an genuine teepee, just like the Indians before me. There are traditional Indian paintings, there is the standard, miniature flap door, and there is the traditional propane-fueled fire ring. I couldn't have celebrated my anniversary any better.

Well. After I washed my clothes I got to talking to a beautiful and charming Salidan girl with dreadlocks (note: Sal-EE-Dan). She started telling me about all the neat things in town, was polite enough to laugh at my jokes (and not my unfortunate outfit) and wondered if I mightn't rest in Salida and hit up the hotsprings. The next lines of dialogue would have been the smart thing to say --

G: I wouldn't know where to find it.
X: I could show you.
G: I haven't got a bathing costume.
X: That won't be necessary.
G: I love you.

What I ended up saying was that I'd always have Monarch pass scaring me subconciously and that it would ruin the bathing experience. I made to pedal off, she wished me luck with my trip, I wished her luck finishing her laundry.

I then went to one of those combination maternity wear/gun shops, went into a darkened alley, and proceeded to strangle myself with a 7-month dress. Cheating death, I went into a coffee shop and had the first latte of the trip. Note this conversation starter:

G: Good morning.
Y: Good morning.

From here the whole places makes like I've returned home from war a hero. Everyone's talking, everybody knows your name. If you have the option to work from home, move to Salida.

I biked up towards Monarch pass (elev. 1,312 feet). With my height at 6 feet flat, that makes the highest I'll climb this trip. Things are going swimmingly until it starts to rain.

I have forgotten rain as I have forgotten hills. The last time I was rained on I spent the night in a men's room. This time, I spent it riding up a winding road into thunder-and-you-know, around landslides, and then high enough for rain to become glorious hail.

I believe the bike helmet is nearly useless. You'd have to be pretty naïve to think a plastic hat would save you from a jackknifing manure spitter. If you've ever seen a smushed armadillo then you know how worthless a hard exoskeleton can be against a harder Mack truck.

That said, my helmet came in handy twice today. A bird made a nest in it yesterday night, and it made for a great hail shield. Hail is hard. Getting caught in it is like being stoned to death by Lilliputians. Death will happen, just be patient.

I climb, I freeze, I near the top, I near the lightning, trucks spray me half to death, I use what little ESP I have to do the same to them. I make it to the top. Bless Colorado, there's a gift shop.

I order a large hot cocoa and 10 dollars worth of fudge. I couldn't stop shivering. I had my arms wrapped around my chest and slowly tried to raise my body temperature. I wrote some texts. I stared blankly and talked to some (motor)bikers from Missouri ("God the water managed to get through my rain pants." Eat shit. I'm dying here. And I'm in shorts). The proprietor says another front's coming. Now is my chance.

I make for the bike, fumble with my gloves, put on my golf-inspired windbreaker, bite down on my teeth to stop them chattering, and point us downhill. Two massive trucks with massive fans are lumbering down the hill. I pass one to get down faster. The storm is on me. I'm blowing downhill at 40 miles an hour, everything is freezing, my eyes can't squint any smaller and still hail hits my precious eyeballs, and I can't move my hands. Sections of the road have become rivers. The whole thing was terrifying, zero fun (well...), and even when the air got warmer I refused to. I could not move my legs. Things began to flatten out and then the truck I passed took his sweet revenge by passing me with a millimeter to spare. I loudly wished him well.

I saw a small cafe. I couldn't move my knees so I rolled up to the wooden front and keeled over. I clicked out from the ground. I swung the saloon doors open and made straight for the hot coffee. I had four cups. I spilled half of the first one on the floor I was shaking so hard. The waitress took pity on me and brought me some chili. Another woman gave me a towel she'd warmed up. Some (motor)bikers told me to go into the gift shop, try on a fleece for an hour, and then return it. I passed on the latter.

I was in the Pacific half of the country. I had crossed the Continental Divide in a month. I was also, unknowingly, in the campground I planned on staying at.

G: I called earlier about pitching a tent.
Z: Oh you're the guy. That'll be blah blah blah.
G: Where is the lot?
Z: Over there by the teepees.
G: Teepees?
Z: Yes.
G: Sign me up for that chief.

I showered. For an hour. I got ready. I went back for more food. I met a nice man from Kansas City (Go Broncos!) who was there dirt bike riding. Last year, he rode his (motor)bike to the see the ocean for the very first time. Riding south on 1 on the California coast, if you look down you see the ocean. He was pleased. He dreamed of a trip to Alaska, but the guy he was planning it with hurt his shoulder skydiving. I do hope he makes it work somehow.

Minor annoyance. Bill O'Reilly was on the TV. Dan, the man from the paragraph above (Go Broncos!), likes him. He says it like it is apparently. I don't want to debate that here or ever. (Sometimes, SF, there isn't enough vomit in the world.) I did have the privilege of meeting Bill O'Reilly at an amazing concert and can say this empirically: he's boring. And sometimes that's worse than being wrong.

This fire is amazing.

Day 30, part 1, how to celebrate a month

I am in Salida, unrested from sleeping on a bench by the highway. But the sun, the sun woke me up by turning every red rock on at 530 in the morning. I made Salida by 8, finally picked up the maps, ate a cream cheese pumpkin muffin, a chocolate croissant, and a scramby eggs on a fresh ciabatta. I rode up the Arkansas and couldn't see the thing -- it was one long, blinding gold mirror.

I am washing my clothes with some hip 60-year-olds and listening to the radio. The first 15 seconds of Annie Lennox's "Walking on Broken Glass" are nearly perfect. Seeing an old cowboy tap his boots to it is completely perfect.

I got the next series of maps from Boris, who you may remember from my first hard day in Kentucky. Back then, as I remember it, this blog was a daily log of human and geographical failure. I barely wrote about people, so let's do Boris some justice as he is greatly responsible for the shift to the better.

The first day in Kentucky was the hardest day of riding. It also had the most pleasant surprise at the end of it. David, proprietor of the Historical Society, was waiting for me with a perfectly cool glass of sweet tea that helped me forget the cruelly steep hills I'd had to pass since the breaks. Boris had gotten there at noon and found it so nice he just stayed.

Boris was the first other cyclist I'd gotten a chance to sit and talk with. He was all advice: who to stop and say hello to; where to eat the best pie; where to camp with swimming pools and waterslides; and, most importantly, how to take your time and make this a trip about the country and people.

You can track cyclists traveling in the opposite direction by the many bike books in restaurants, inns, bathrooms, gas stations, and RV parks across the country. And so I could see Boris (San Fran --> Yorktown) at many of the spots I hit: "Tremendous pie, I'm waiting for one more slice"; "Thank you so much B---- and V----- for taking me into your home and your kindness..."; etc, etc, etc. He played frisbee golf with cacti in the desert. He took a day off to watch little league in Kansas.

I emailed him after he finished his goodwill tour in Yorktown. The mapmakers (who I am not tremendously fond of) ran out maps. I would have been stuck in Pueblo. Boris spent part of his first day back home express mailing me the maps and then emailing me the directions to Salida. Then he wrote a massive email listing more great things to see (abandoned motels in the desert), and where to get fresh water.

So, unsuccinctly, thank you. He lives in San Francisco and should pop up in this narrative when I get to the sweet, sweet Pacific.

---------

Now, it's been a month. My clothes are in the dryer. I have 6 minutes to decide if I celebrate this anniversary by crossing the highest pass on my trip or by getting as close to the top as I can and taking it easy. I do need a shower quite badly. I guess we'll see.

Day 29, a day of changes

Many eventful days begin with slow mornings. Today was one of those. We set no alarms. We planned on sleeping in. We were up at half past seven.

You have not known pain if you have not shaved off a months face bristle with hotel soap and a single blade razor.

We went and ate breakfast at the diner across the parking lot. I looked twelve. There were a lot of Sunday regulars. Our waitress and a large man were huddled around the TV watching a local boy compete in the Tour de France. So did I. I even ordered 8 slices of French toast in honor of the last day of the tournament.

These men are small monsters. It takes a particular kind of strength to compete in any athletic event that lasts a month, and so my hat's off to the hopped up jockeys in leotards. Now, if they really wanted to impress me, have them carry all their gear and keep the bikes in one speed -- like in the Tour's early days.

The Tour did nothing for motivation. We waddled back to the room and put off everything. Today was the last day Connor and I would be riding together, and so there was a bit of sadness on top of altitude sickness and fatigue that made leaving Pueblo a challenge.

The massive storm drains along the Arkansas are covered with large colorful portraits. Downtown Pueblo has some striking buildings and I felt some regret that I did not do a bit more exploration. We rode through the park and onto the winner of best street name on the trip so far -- Goodnight Boulevard.

The Pueblo lake area looks like a miniature grand canyon. Actually, I can't do any of today's sights -- my most beautiful day -- justice. You'll have to wait for my photos or someone else's. These might be lacking also.

Eventually, we hit the town of Wetmore. This is where I go straight west and Connor goes north. We looked for water, found none, and settled for shade. Connor was a tremendous person to ride with: I met a thousand more people because of his easy affability; we were equal in speed, films watched, books read, our understandings of what the value and purpose of slow travel is; he always ate a full 3-course meal and convinced you to do the same; he hated bike talk; he fundamentally understood this isn't an athletic event and convinced me of the same; he was just great company. I owe him a malted mikshake (it turns out one cannot eat 3 pieces of bread in a minute). I hope he comes to New York to collect.

One last note on the subject and then on to the afternoon. If you're traveling across country, you want a Sal Paradise not a Dr. Gonzo by your side: somebody good and somebody interested in everything and somebody who rarely sleeps.

So west led me straight over my first pass. I climbed 4000 ft. I sweated, I got nauseous, I was lightheaded, and I loved. Colorado has had a tremendous amount of snow and everything is green and rocky. The hills are not as steep as the Appalachians and there are no trees looming over you. When you get up top of the pass, you are free to look around you at cloud height, down to the light green cattlefields at the base of the real Rockies, and straight up at the jagged mountains you've yet to hit.

I met a cyclist who'd just come across the desert. He'd invented a kind of mask made out of cloth with hundreds of little American flags printed on it. He drank water right through the thing. He showed me right there on the side of the road. He recommended the opera in Telluride.

I got to Westcliffe and stopped dead. I went to a Mexican restaurant, chatted with the chef, had three flautas, and chatted with two young Britons I'd met earlier on at the Colorado border. I could not move. I went to the dingiest motel, asked what the dingiest room might cost, told them to go stuff themselves, and asked the directions to Cotopaxi. It was 26 miles away.

26 miles yes, but 26 miles down a rolling hill, into the sunset, narrowly beating storm clouds, past a beautiful pasture, into a ravine, down it at 40 miles an hour as the green makes way for orange and red rock, and right to the Cotopaxi store.

I am sleeping at the store. The man with the mask told me it was OK. I'll be up by 6, but I might just stick around for breakfast. I'm only a few miles from Salida, where my maps await, and then only a few miles from where I plan on stopping. I will wait at the base of Monarch pass. American Flag Man alleged that Monarch is the tallest in the nation. If so, I'll want a days rest and clean clothes.

Day 29, a small landmark

I watched my first movie since starting this trip. It was the new Batman. It was brilliant. I find movies to be one of the most moving, total entertainments. And this particular time I found it much more satisfying for numerous reasons, chiefly: I haven't seen images fly that quickly past my eyes; I haven't felt speed and kinetics like in the batmobile chases since my descent down Vesuvius; and come on, it's Batman.

I woke up with all my blood in my groin. I was sleeping like a banana on an imitation leather couch. It was donated. About three month's back, Gillian's home and ranch burned down in a fire that devastated much of Southeastern Colorado. The winds pushed the blaze at 60 miles an hour. It took Gillian a week to put out the fires in horse manure and on the railroad ties.

Gillian lost everything. She was stoic about the deal -- in the way you'd fully expect a Kiwi prison warden to be -- but she was upset about losing her photos. She also lost 10 years worth of logs and diaries she kept when sailing the world. So, miles from home, miles from the sea, in a donated house in a drought ridden town, wearing a donated highschool basketball jersey, Gillian helped us to goose eggs. Alicia, the fragile young girl helping around the property, mended a gosling's wing.

We rode out at 730 and made it to Pueblo by noon, despite stopping to chat with a nice bunch of cyclists from Portland with an ambitious travelplan. We had to make the post office before closing. We missed Crowley County Days, but we did see a fifty-odd classic cars drive past us on the way to the parade. Every single one waved.

The road to Pueblo was flat and uneventful. Well, I did run over a rattlesnake. Oh, and far away, blue with distance, the Rockies pricked up in the sky until they surrounded us. I am leaving flatness behind.

Pueblo is nice enough. A lot of cyclists found it a little dicey and unfriendly, but bear this in mind: any city of size is going to look bad next to the small mountain town; any city is going to seem spooky if you have to ride through the whole thing; and come on, they have a movie theater.

They also have good Mexican. We went to a nice restaurant next to a bike shop. I tried to eat a 9 pound burrito in a competition with the chef. It was called El Burrito Loco. Once I was served, I was not allowed to leave my seat until I cleaned my plate or quit. I left a loser. I don't care to see the man who can eat a 9 pound burrito.

A nap was in good order. I've been feeling lousy from the fast cycling, the long days, and the altitude. I'm feeling a bit of burnout, but I should make it to Telluride before I crash. The 5 pounds of burrito I ate did not help one iota.

I slept until 6 and then it was off to the health food store on my way to the cinema. The walls were lined with vitamins, granola bars, gluten-free shoes, head massagers, and kombucha. The women who worked there were beautiful, smiling sextagenarians who darted back and forth to help me get one of everything and anything that would make me feel better. They all had long, flowing hair that was lined with grey. They were healthy colored. It was like being helped by Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, and Joni Mitchell if they all happened to be your mother and were wildly concerned with your health. Note: Not a bad idea for a tremendously unpopular sitcom.

I'm in my motel room. As I click, I am fighting the burrito with wonderful health food. I am sleeping in. I am navigating without maps until Salida, but I'm not worried. I'll just point my bike towards those big green mountains.

Day 28, Welcome to Colorful Colorado, please enjoy the rodeo

Here is a slight disclaimer: I already love Colorado. I have loved it since I was a boy. I love the Rockies. I love the people and their athletic friendliness. I love the air. I love the Broncos. I love the milk. I love everything you can do here. I love that I have already met someone who has made the long flight to my hometown. I even loved John Denver when he guested on The Muppet Show.

I love it and I've looked forward to it and I got into it at about 8 this morning.

Our last night in Kansas was quite eventful. I had two bean burritos and mushrooms at a restaurant that also sold videos and bric-a-brac. Get Disney's First Kid starring Sinbad and a Hommel figurine for 5 bucks with a free side of curly fries. We ate with efficient joy, set up tent, and brushed teeth so that we could pass out by 8. We did this because we planned on waking up at 3 and making the long trip to Ordway without wind or sun.

Five minutes into sleep and a blinding light shines right into my face. I'm convinced it's either a group of people come to kill me or the sheriff come to write me a ticket for failing to yield fully at the 4-way. It is neither. It is the lights to the tennis court and, while I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, I did manage to make out that it was a very important match between two teenage girls who were both terrified of the ball. I have never heard such screaming.

I woke up again to my tent slowly suffocating me. The wind had picked up so fiercely that the side wall had wrapped itself around my face and blown up my nostrils. This was followed by a loud crash. Connor's bike had been blown into the air and onto the ground. He rushed to right it while I held his tent down.

My alarm went off just as I got to sleep. I had stayed up praying we wouldn't be struck by lightning. The storm worsened. The heat lightning had gone, but the wind picked up and was blowing against us. Connor's tent was completely smushed in on him. If we were to head out, we'd have to bike as hard as we could just to be blown backwards into Missouri. We made a tough executive decision: we went back to sleep.

We were back up at 530 and got ready to go. The wind might be up, but the storm had put hundreds of wonderful clouds in the air. I was even a little bit cold. We pushed on.

Then the best thing happened. We couldn't feel the wind. It was behind us and it stayed behind us as it pushed us across the rest of Kansas and 100 miles into Colorado. As I said in the first paragraph, I just love Colorado.

We ate lunch in Eads and were joined by a couple of Dubliners. These two got together over a couple of beers and drew up a map of places they wanted to see in the states using Google maps. Then they bought a road atlas and set about biking -- up to Yellowstone from San Francisco, back down to Vegas, over to the Rockies via Arizona, the desert at its hottest, and an Indian reservation.

They rode until they were tired and then they slept on the shoulder. They ate with real hunger at lunch. They survived the desert and coming upon town after town that existed on the maps but had either burned down or been abandoned. They had managed to see most of what they'd wanted to and they were only halfways.

I was very impressed. They weren't even sunburnt.

We arrived in Ordway at 6, had a decent meal, I lost a challenge to see if I could eat 3 pieces of bread in a minute (impossible), and we had a strange conversation with a curved-over man in camouflage about rattlesnakes. We went to Gillian's house and then the county rodeo.

Gillian is a woman from New Zealand who is kind enough to let cyclists into her home despite her being at work all day in the penitentiary. She has a hurt baby goose in her bathtub. She also has Alicia, who is working around the place in the mornings so she can live in sleepy, lovely Ordway. I have yet to meet Gillian, but I have spoken to her on the telephone.

The rodeo was tremendous. We walked from the dirt field in back of Gillian's to the floodlights and the music. We got there in time for the pairs cow lasso thingy, which was giving every rider trouble, and we stayed as the sun and lightning disappeared and the bull riding began.

One bull (KO) was not having it. He kicked and kicked in the stocks. Oddly, he was riden the longest. Heat -- what you could describe as a stretch-bull -- seemed friendly enough until he bucked his rider into the ground and stood on the boy's ribs. The boy, who had prayed to Jesus just moments before, was not that phased by being trampled. He was much more upset at going out so early. He had a nice pink shirt, sequined chaps, a new haircut (his neck tan gave him away), and he walked with all the unearned confidence young men often pretend to. He kept himself twice as busy after his loss, which helped keep his eyes down and away from the crowd.

Day 27, a small fragment

I ended up getting the necessary courage and heatstroke to get in the pool.

Lying face down on the poolside was a plump blond woman with skin the color of beef jerky. She had a special harness for her face so that she could tan her broad shoulders without crushing her nose. She had a tremendous laugh.

In the deep-end were two elderly ladies doing aquarobics and me. They had polystyrene harnesses and weights and they managed to keep their permanented hair dry. One of the two women had a terrible bruise across her face.

I eavesdropped while resting on the pool's gutter.

"It's interesting that you say that because when we did it he took our hands like so [folded over each other] and then pronounced us."

"See we had our hands by our sides and only when we were husband and wife could we grab each others palms."

"But the prayer was the same."

"Oh yes. The prayer was."

Day 27, we're almost not in Kansas anymore Toto

Forgive me the obvious subtitle, but I think I've either earned it or Kansas and the heat have melted any archness from my brain.

It's 105 degrees here. I'm at the pool in Tribune. I'm sweating in the shade. I'm in Mountain Time. I was reading my Twain book.

Woke up early today so that we could wake up early tomorrow. We rode for about 50 miles today (perhaps my shortest day yet) in anticipation of 120 miles tomorrow (perhaps my longest). We got into town early and had an early lunch at the Chatterbox Cafe.

Sometimes places live up to their names. Everyone was talking at the Cafe. People were shouting to us from across the room. "Where you from?" "Hot enough for you?" "Where you heading?"

A gentleman with a respirator wished us well. His wife offered us the local newspaper, The Hutchinson Post. A sweet, round couple who wore their pants very high told me about their daughter's trip to my hometown. She worked as a nanny for the man who built our soccer stadium. She flew in first. Apparently, she drinks scotch as a habit; on the flight, she had two 20 year old glasses of Chivas.

"That's not even a single malt," he said.

I told him I've never understood why those are so expensive.

"Because somebody's willing to pay for it!"

Quite wise. I went to the library, sat in a BarcaLounger, cracked open a copy of Adventure Kansas, rested it across my face and went to sleep. I woke up at closing, we to City Hall, looked at some neat old photos and a barbed wire collection, and then I hit the pool.

That brings us to now with one big omission. I no longer eat beef. There are hundreds of reasons to avoid eating another animal. I have three of the least noble: I'm sick of looking at them, or them looking at me; I hate the machines they use to move them around; and I have driven by a feedlot.

Now I think it is completely fine to remain willfully naive about some things. You can't feel bad about every decision. If you love the taste of a good hamburger -- as I do -- ignore my last paragraph and head to Shake Shack.

When the prairie cow turns 3 he is fattened up before death (humans follow this arc somewhat). What does a 3-year-old grass fed cow eat? Cow! Not, perhaps, what you and I might recognize as cow unless you are particularly fond of hoof, horn, bone, anus, and intestine. This swollen cow is then killed, subdivided, and sometimes sold to you as grass-fed wondercow.

I just don't think this sounds healthy. And the bloody trucks they use.

Day 26

Kansas is subtly different today. Imagine her from yesterday, but less rain and flatter land has made her paler and short. I'll be honest, some of her beauty might be fading away too.

The grass is shorter in this part of the High Plains. Well I'll take it. The grass keeps everything down. Remember, this was once the Dustbowl. Best not to rip up the topsoil to grow potatoes here.

I had a minor depression today. The wind just would not get off my case. When it wasn't directly in my face, it decided to blow hard into the left side of my bike and body. To keep from riding into the shoulder (and up to Nebraska), I had to lean my entire body's weight on the right side on my handlebars. Fine. Then, settled, a Mack truck filled with cattle would come flying down the opposite lane and send a horrible gust of wind into your chest. It was like leaning into a punch or being sprayed by shrapnel made of cowshit.

This began to wear thin. I should never have drank a gallon of soy milk at breakfast. Elaine made the best granola and, after giving me a CD ROM of some kind of rapture inspired videogame, Dan played us one last song. "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" is the perfect song for a Kansas sunrise and sweet goodbyes.

We walked outside and briefly met the 80-year-old man who farmed last night's sweet corn. As a teenager, he and his Sunday school class built a large sign outside of town that is visible from an airplane. It says: Jesus Pilot Me. Is it asking or saying in broken English? The man is a spry 80, and he says this is because he never drank or smoke or did anything but love the Lord. We took photos of him holding a rock with the sign carved into it. He sells them for 30 bucks.

But back to me being in a bad mood. Good feelings wear with the wind, and after three hours of cowshit shrapnel punches, I was about ready to stop my bike, run into a cornfield, grab an ear and shout a violent obscenity in one of the few parts of the country where that might still matter. It made me mad.

Compounding this all, the electric motor I've been using to power my bike died. It's Korean. It uses 37 hearing aid batteries every 70 miles. I hate buying new batteries because some teenagers slip them behind their eyelids to get high. You should see the dirty looks I get at the pharmacy. I broke a sweat just worrying about it.

Scott City couldn't have come fast enough. Towns pop up from about 10 miles out here. You can see a town's grain elevator take over the sky like the Emerald City itself. We made our battered way to a Mexican restaurant, ate modestly, and then hit the Athleticlub.

The Athleticlub let's cyclists sleep on the floor, use the showers, and, most importantly, use their jacuzzi. They also have a diving board. The room I am lying in now has little girl's gymnastics lockers, a series of trophies, a large fan, and a couple of framed photographs of George Bush and Regan on a white horse. Oddly (or not), this is the exact same trope used on my rapture CD-ROM.

And that is a full day. We have an easy one tomorrow to Tribune (named for the New York Tribune) and we're going to try and wake up at 5 and bang it out. I'll be in bed soon, but I want to leave the day with breakfast because what we were talking about (and that we were talking about it) was all quite interesting.

We talked about organic food, mad cow's disease, other wasting diseases, agribusinesses that don't allow you to keep last year's seeds, and agricultural talk radio. Dan is a sometimes phone in caller. One farmer called in and wanted to know why hormone free organic milk lasts longer. The host had no answer.

An angry farmer called in to say that all this organic talk is rubbish and we should just go back to doing it like we used to, like our grandparents did. He meant using pesticides and hormones like our grandparents did. Even if his family were prodigious breeders, I should have liked to have had the chance to correct him. Dan was in his harvester at the time, but he wanted to give the man hell.

Day 25, late evening

Elaine's was a treat.

While her Easy Veronica with meatballs cooked, Elaine took us to Mitch's to see his miniature artwork.

Mitch makes small scenes and people out of sculpey and in eggs, gourds, or plain old dioramas. Some of his scenes included a saloon, an artist at work in his studio ("If you look you'll see the plugs all plug in," noted Elaine), a lighthouse off of Cape Cod, Eskimos on ice, and a Scotland scene. The last one was going to go inside an emu's egg.

"I was looking at the egg and it wasn't quite right. Then it tipped over onto its side and I thought [*snap*] sideways!"

Mitch paints some and he also makes statuettes. He's got a Valkyrie, a gypsy girl, a barbarian with sword, and a female preacher with Tibetan lambswool for hair.

His house smells of old cigarette smoke. Everything was low down so he could reach it from his wheelchair. Once, when he was at a fair, a heavy wind started to blow his tarp away. He grabbed his tarp to stop it from going, it kited up and started to roll him down the street. He stopped it in time, but he couldn't feel his feet drag a harbor scene gourd crashing to the ground. He was alone at the time.

Each scene takes him about 10 months to make. I mentioned that I loved the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History in New York and he told me that that's where he wanted to get his stuff. He asked me to flag down the curator if I ever see him, and, if I ever do, I will. Perhaps for someone in Bazine (pop. 435), meeting one person in New York (pop. 9 million?) might seem easy.

Dinner was fantastic. Elaine told us that if we're short of water we can cool off by jumping into cowbaths at the base of windmills. Dan, her husband, told me a little bit about his many jobs rolling hay or alfalfa, raising cattle for feed, raising feed for cattle, his positive thoughts on organic produce, his negative thoughts on Barack Obama (it was my fault for bringing it up, and my fault for lingering on it). His ears really pricked up when we talked music.

In 1964, Dan and his family were on vacation in Colorado. He and his brother were listening to the AM when they heard that there were tickets still available for the Beatles concert at Red Rocks Natural Amphitheater. With luck and $6.60, Dan saw the Beatles at their loudest.

Dan has seen all kinds of bands over the years. My ears pricked up when he said he broke through the ropes to see The Band play at Harvard. When I told him that I'd been recreating The Band by The Band all throughout Virginia and Kentucky, Dan returned with a copy of that LP and Music from the Big Pink.

We put it on the machine, I sat back and listened to the first scrap of music I've actively listened to in months. Dan apologized profusely for the fact that only one speaker worked and then he took the dogs out for a run alongside his pickup.

One speaker is fine and plenty. A parting lyric from Rocking Chair that I remember misremembering in the Appalachians:

"Oh to be home again,
Down in old Virginie,
With my very best friend,
They call him Ragtime Willy...
This hill's too steep to climb,
And the days that remain ain't worth a dime..."

I am halfway across the country.

Day 25

I have everything I need, here, in Bazine, Kansas.

I have my feet elevated in a hammock. I have my book and my notepad. I have a sharpened pencil. I have some almonds within reach. I have showered. I have no more riding to do.

It's 100 out, but I am in the shade. We woke up early, checked for dead ducks (there were none; or do duck eat duck?), grabbed a quick chocolate milk, and were heading west by 8. After a little while we made a right turn and headed north for 19 miles.

What's this? I can hear? I'm not bleeding out of my eardrums? Pedaling is easy again? I'm riding uphill at 20 miles an hour?

Finally, after a long four days journey into wind, a little bit of it at our backs. I apologize if the ratio of chat about how hard cycling is vs how joyful it can be is 87 to 13. In the interest of fixing my numbers, imagine this: you're spinning your feet through air while America at her most dramatic (yet) passes you by. The prairie is green in parts, golden in parts; the sky is whiteblue near the horizon and thick blue right above you. Most farm equipment is primary colored -- red, yellow, blue. The sun washes everything so that it blends nicely. The road remains black and yellow. There are a couple of clouds to keep things interesting.

I guess everything was so pleasant because I knew I'd be at Elaine's Bicycle Oasis by 1. This is where I am now.

Elaine is a lovely, softspoken woman whose idea of tourism is traveling to El Salvador for church volunteer work and getting guns pulled on her. She and her husband raise cattle but she has clearly driven miles out of her way to find soy milk for vegan cyclists. She likes us, despite whispers in the small town, because we are the kind of people who spend our holidays fighting our way across the country, people in transition, from college to retirement. Most of all, we are an appreciative lot. I thanked her three times for letting me use her shower.

We are driving in her truck to her friend Mich's house. Mick is disabled and paints miniatures and then glues them inside egg shells.

Day 24

I left the bike store at 3. The gentleman who fixed my spokes offered to sell me a wheel that -- his words -- was just as bad as mine. I told him I'd have to pass. Two spokes and a wheel true came to 22 dollars (2 little ducks -- quack quack). The gentleman threw in bending my fender for free. Baruch Spinoza managed to remain composed in the hardest of situations. Must remain Spinozalike.

I flew up northwards. The wind was at my back and I was at Nickerson in short time. Good. I was in a hurry. I wanted to get off the road before the sun was at face level and the Larned public pool closed. At the expense of much suspense, I will tell you flat out that this did not happen.

Between Nickerson and Larend is 58 miles of prairie, my first sunflower field, a waterfowl preserve, and no drinkable water. Naturally, I stocked up.

About 10 miles down the road I managed to pour the contents of one of my precious waterbottles on my legs (it did feel good) and I discovered that the gentleman at the bike shop had kindly emptied my other one for me. I would have to breathe through my nose.

In the distance, large rolling sprinklers sprayed gallons of water on the grassfields. I closed my eyes. Spinoza's philosophy is quite interesting (and awfully boring to read) because it makes philosophical arguments as geological proofs.

Allow me to attempt a geographical argument using geometry. Kansas' flatland cannot stop the wind from moving across it. The wind cools. Ergo, the people have to remain warm to each other. Otherwise, they would just blow away.

Breakfast at Joey's Diner was a lovely experience. Old men is various plaids and ladies in two pieces all approached us and asked us where we were going. They demanded we have a bigger table for all the food we were eating. They wished us well.

Larned has the only hill in the area. While writing to you from my tent, a group of teenagers stoned a duck to death in the pond next to my campsite. 20 minutes on and the ducks are still crying.

Larned reminds me a bit of the town in The Magnificent Ambersons. At the top of the hill is a mansion that predates the rest of the homes. It is a bit Georgian and seems to have been built with the idea that the hill around it would remain sparsely populated. This was not to be. You can see other large homes from the following decades -- none as nice -- and as times grew tougher, lots were divided and divided and flimsier homes were jammed in the cracks.

At the end of the estate is a nice Mexican restaurant. I had a Jarritos mandarin, ice-cream and churros, a quesadilla, a burrito, chimmichangas, chips and salsa. I had everything at the same time. In the background, a waitress tried to explain to a farmer why Mexican Coke is better than American Coke.

"Well, for starters, they don't use corn."

Day 24, a quick correction

They actually have shark in Kansas! This used to be a vast ocean and in Oakley you can see fossils of horrifyingly large shark. Fortunately, I'm past it.

Day 24, Stuck in Hutch

I am in Hutchinson. My faithful bicycle is being repaired and I will have to wait. So I went to the space museum.

The Hutchinson Cosmosphere was voted one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas. I wonder why anyone would pay money to see a simulacra of the sky when any Kansan can get the real deal for free (good and clear and with a thick orange harvest moon). I didn't feel like paying for it either, so I stuck to the gift shop, bought some astronaut ice-cream to see if it was as disgusting as I remembered it (it was) and defaced some currency. For 51 cents, I smushed a spaceshuttle clean across Abraham Lincoln's proud, copper face.

And now I'm in the library. Hutchinson has a museum of Hollywood kitsch 650 feet underground in an abandoned mine, but sadly it's too far away to walk to. I will make do with the Wichita Business Journal, the tourist bureau's 'Kansas: as big as you think', and 'The Philosophy of Spinoza' by Spinoza.

I have 75 miles to go today and it looks like I'll be starting at 3. With luck, I'll be done at 11PM. I very well might have to ride by the stars.

Day 23, 100 degrees in the wind

Today was another slog through the winds of Kansas. It was horribly hot. But, for a good five hours, the corn gave way to grass.

West of Eureka are the flinthills of Kansas -- the largest natural grassland in the world. It stretches up to the tippy top of Nebraska and down as far as Oklahoma. Much of it, I'm told, is open range. Cattle (It's what's for dinner) get to wonder the wide strip until cowboys on ATVs round 'em up. Cows aside, they also farm oil and wind. The flinthills are hilly by Kansan standards and -- of this I am dead certain -- the winds always bluster westsouthwest.

We got an early start to try and beat the wind. Sadly, the wind got up even earlier. Consider the syllogism: the earl bird catches the worm; the early worm gets eaten and then vomited up and re-eaten; earliness is not all that jazz.

So we pushed on. We pushed on as Kansas went to church and then stayed home. We pushed on through ghost towns, down long straightaways, and right into Jim Davis. Jim had pulled his pickup onto the side of the road because he saw us and wanted to offer us a soda. We talked bikes, ranching, and all sorts of things because the longer we talked the longer we didn't have to bike, and because the longer he talked he didn't have to fix his sister's porch. It was lovely.

It was Kansas. The people are few and far between, but when you see them they're lovely. The ladies at Braum's ice cream were wonderful ("she has boys about your age you know; bless you; good luck"); the boy who turned 14 today and entourage were all sweet as could be when he invited us over for lemonade ("well, you know I'll be driving soon, so cyclists watch out").

I love it here. The sky is so clear it's like a planetarium. There are no sharks. Overcrowding isn't an issue. I've begun putting myself in a trance state so I can sleep through much of the riding. I keep my eyes open just thin enough to keep the yellow dashing by on my left and the gutter on my right. I think about how little time 6 hours ride is, say, to a prairie. I think about how I would have improved The Munsters (improvement number 23: add a living hand).

Oh: I called Pastor John to thank him for everything and to subtly apologize for calling him by the wrong name. He told me,

"Don't worry about it Jack. I've been called worse things."

Jack!

Day 22, yet more Kansas

This was a day of ups and downs on flat land. I had a wonderful breakfast with Pastor John, who I called Bob through the entire meal, after he gave me his card (all I saw was a 16 letter surname), and when we said goodbye. I would hate myself for this for hours, but Johnbob did say that Christ was put here to save us from our sins and to remind us that we were fallible. I'll tell you what is infallible: Johnbob's fresh and strong coffee and his tremendous homemade biscuits with pumpkin jam. Plus, real butter in margarine country.

I left and biked west into the wind. I almost never stopped biking west. The wind almost never stopped blowing at me.

The land here drives you mad. A good working definition of infinity: think of the largest number you can and add 1 to it. And so it goes with Kansas. Think of all the corn you can and add ten miles to that. Ditto hay, yellow dashes in the middle of roads, telephone poles, and grass. There is no stillness in this. You move down a straight road with the worst feeling that you're going in circles.

But, with nothing in between, I made it to Eureka. I paused for milkbreaks and to tape down another popped spoke. I could have gone on for another 100 miles, but the bike shop in Hutchinson is closed on Sundays so I will have to wait them out and only go 77 miles tomorrow.

I am at the new pool. I went swimming earlier. My new friends and I -- Cody, Earl, and Cody's sister, all 11 -- had a couple of handstand contests, underwater races, and biggest splash conversation.

"So you're a biker huh?"
"That's right."
"I have a bike. It's one of those bikes from Wisconsin --"
"I farted, haHa."
"I ride it a lot now. But I crashed once. Schwin, it's a Schwin, but my Uncle Eric has another kind and he's a real biker."
"Canopener!"
"I can make my stomach fat."
"That's nothing," I said, "I saw a woman in Kentucky who couldn't fit in this entire pool."

Closing time at the swimming pool is one of young life's great sadnesses. It can't be explained. The other is dropped ice-cream cones.

I am cooking for myself for the first time in a small while. It's rice fro WalMart. The instructions ask for margarine. I'll try and find some when I hit up the bowling alley.

Cheerio.

Pool closing

Day 21, my third week begins

Tonight I sleep like a king on the floor of Lutheran Pastor Bob's office. Bob welcomed us with fresh vegetables from his garden. After hellos, we walked back into it to grab some fresh sweet cream corn. We ate it, made a puttanesca with the veggies, and ate chocolate cake in a Sunday School classroom. We are in Kansas.

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of food and here are our oilfields. The plains unfold in four directions like an awful perspective drawing of corn, highway, sky, corn, hay, corn, and telephone poles. What you can't quite capture on the canvas is the wind.

I do not believe having enemies is petty. Multiculturalism does not exist if you are so polite as to allow everything to happen (the cannibal's right to dinner does not eclipse my belief in the rights of all mankind). Of course it is a sad day when one makes a new enemy: so welcome headwinds, meet totalitarianism, anti-individualism, fluorescent lights, U2.

The ex-marine I spoke to a while back told me this bit of pseudoshakespeare: every state takes its pound of flesh. I left Missouri five pounds heavier (I had pie for breakfast), potbellied, and in tremendous spirits. Five miles of biking against a 10 mile an hour wind left me miserable in Kansas. My poor bike registered its dissatisfaction by blowing a spoke a little ways down highway 7 our of Pittsburg, KS.

Pittsburg is a neat little town. There is one block of turn-of-the-last-century American vertical architecture and then it quickly descends into two story houses, ranch homes, trailers, plains. The post office is spectacular. I went into a pawn shop and found myself torn between a poster of Buzz Aldrin, a handgun, or a Dolly Parton album. I left with nothing.

A while up the street I stopped a man to ask directions. He knew nothing. He was probably my age but his cheeks were hollowed out and he wore his t-shirt around his shoulders like it was designed to improve his posture. His empty, sunbleached blue eyes could have been ripped from a Walker Evans photo or, as Connor correctly noted, Larry Clark.

And that brings us to now. Or then. Since starting this post I have taken a shower and I have helped Pastor Bob trap a small cat in a cobwebby basement. He returned to his crime procedural and I to you, but not without walking through a field of 100,000 fireflies.

Tomorrow, I am having breakfast with Bob and then hitting the flat road. I hope to ask Bob what, exactly, is Garrison Keillor's role in the Lutheran Church. I have 200 miles to the next bike shop. With luck, Rocinante should hold up until we can get him seen to.

Some parting advice: drink milk.

Day 20, entering the plains

I've injured myself eating. Forgive me if this post is short, but I can't get into my favorite writing position (sun salutation) on account of a distended tummy.

No matter how professionally or hard you exercise*, you cannot eat a beef brisket sandwich, a country ham, a chocolate milk, fried chicken livers, and three pieces of blueberry pie a la mode. You will feel bad in the best possible way. Now, complaints out of the way, I have found America's best restaurant.

Cooky's in Golden City, Missouri has everything. It's a family business. I had a granddaughter serve me her grandfather's cow. There is a warmth and friendliness to everyone and communal conversation that you would never find at a Per Se, per se. You can stay as long as you need or nap in the back. They allow kids. They have sundaes. And nearly every scrap of food is grown on the farm out back. A water sommelier will not stab you with a fork until you relent Pellegrino; you, normal eater, will spend 10 dollars.

The kicker: they actually want you to get full here. There are restaurants in New York City where, say, a lima bean salad is made from just a lima bean. At Cooky's, everything is plural.

A man cycling across country stopped into the restaurant and had a slice of pie. He stayed for 4 days and ate there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until he had eaten every single freshly made pie. I only had Dutch blueberry because I struck gold the first time. And because I knew I was going there for breakfast.

Earlier, a man woke me from my 35th failed attempt at a nap and told me he was the warm showers man. That's a bit fresh! Warm showers, it turns out, is a collection of people who board cyclists out of no greater utility but pure selflessness and a love of conversation. As we talked, it turns out he was stationed in my home town, worked at the hospital my brother was delivered at, and bought custom made NoSqueak shoes at the military mall I used to buy my comics at.

He met us at the Golden City Idol competition in the park. We just missed a young -- really young -- country singer whose parents farm and take highschool photographs. Do you know how much a Missouran spends on a senior portrait? 1500 dollars for the full treatment, blemishes photoshopped and a gaussian halo added to your pickup.

Like I said, we missed her act but were given a CD. The dad took the photos and made the album art. On the verso, a listing of songs including Stand By Your Man. Her father made her up, stuck her in a windblown canyon and photographed her from a distance. On the front, he stuck his daughter in some black chamber and blurred her hair into infinity. I don't feel good having this thing so I have given it to Connor (who probably doesn't feel good having it either).

Interesting fact of the day: country music was invented the very year the urban population overtook the rural.

*This depends on whether you believe competitive eating is a sport.

Day 19, a feast and the promise of seconds

Diane, remind me to buy a drop tarp from a hardware store so that I don't have to lie on wet nylon without due cause.

Refreshed from my first night's sleep in a real bed, I was not. I stayed awake till something-past-midnight and then made the mistake of thinking 6 was 7 when I set my alarm. Fortunately, I was riding with Connor and we had both agreed the night before that the ride was going to be easy.

Connor is an artist out of Baltimore. He is traveling across the country for research (in part). He takes photographs of dense, dense woods and then painstakingly draws every knobling of bark with a very fine brush. The result is really quite impressive, both technically (think Durer etchings if that helps you) and in the harder, vaguer area of being neat to look at. His book asks you to 'Read Slowly', and I did. Perhaps I am starved for faces, but I saw people in the woods.

The panels (24?) move chronologically through a woods and so do we. The tall, thick trees of Virginia make way for the shorter, denser eastern redwoods of Kentucky, which in turn give way to broad farmland, fertile Mississippi flatlands, rolling, reddish Ozarks, and now the trees of Central Missouri, which have green leaves, trunks, and roots. As a matter of fact, I have a root wedged in my spine as I write these very words.

These trees are plugged right into the ground here, which, blessedly, is nearly flat. Connor and I trudged it today, a cool 80 miles with time for a library break, a failed nap on the skinniest bench I have ever seen, my best biscuit sandwich yet, yet more chocolate milk, and 5 of those magical cups of coffee that leave you more tired than you were before you committed to caffeine. I have little else to report except for that I think I had the best bagel of my life in Fair Grove, Missouri (hint: sourdough).

Can I tell you what I'm excited about? We are headed to Golden City tomorrow to a restaurant called Cookie's that just might give us 6 pies. If nothing else, inching one step nearer to pie has made the day a definite victory. Expect a long rant about the many pleasures of eating across this country.

Day 18

Please, let me gloat just this once. I beat the mighty Ozarks in a day, which, biblical scholars that you are, is about how long He took to put them up.

It wasn't particularly pleasant, and there were far too many logging trucks for my liking, but I had time for a nap at Alley Springs, I found myself a sarsaparilla in Summersville when I needed it most, and I had the large carrot of free soda and a hot tub dangling right in front of me. Tomorrow, I've been promised a brief trip to Dog's Bluff and a cliff jump into a creek (I'm told) to set my day off right.

This is going to get boring for you. I haven't had anything horrible happen to me for a little while. Missouri is pleasant enough. It's nice. So the week's challenge just might be narrative.

I walked into a greasy spoon to get change for my laundry. I noticed the woman running it because she was wearing lipstick just under her mustache. Everyone was smoking and staring at me.

"How do you all do?"
All together now: "Muh."

To the left of the boss was a strange taxidermied animal. It had the head of a rabbit, horns, a pheasant's body, and a fish's tail.

"Say, what do you call one of those?"
"Jackalope."
"I've yet to see one of those on my trip."
"You can't see them you Mo-ron. It's made up."

While I will sleep easier knowing there aren't flying, swimming rabbits, I am a bit concerned that a man decided to glue the ass of one animal to another -- and that another man or woman paid him for it.

Earlier that morning, at a hardware store in Ellington:

The nicest, nicest man charges up to me, all smiles at seven AM. He's in his fifties and has a bluetooth headset. I'm there for tape, but we get to talking.

"Well now where are you from?"
"XX."
"Why gang, get a load of this. This nice young man biked all the way over the ocean from XX."
"I..."
"I'm just joshing you. Hey, speak of it, here's Josh!"
"Oh hiyo. Everyone's always saying you're joshing me -- but I'm just Josh."
"There you go now."

I used all the tape I could, kept some, but returned the bulky roll. They could use it for something.

"Well I can't take this. Let me give you back some money. No? Well you have just made my day."

Well ditto.

Day 17, a musical addend

Cows masticate for no reason. They can have empty mouths and just keep on moving their teeth clockwise against each other.

My mind masticates bovine. I want to share one thing it's been doing lately.

It's making a megamix. It is horrible. It begins with a church hymn, then British military songs, then English vaudeville as I misremember them. Listen:

...power, power, wondermaking power of the lord...

...In th Quartermaster's store -- behind the door -- My eyes are dim I can not see, I have not brought my specs with me, I have no brought my specs with me...me...MEeeeee'll...

...Drink a drink a drink, to Lily the Pink the Pink the Pink, the savior of the human ra-hay-ace, for she invented, a medicinal compound and now we're learning how to fly...

My, that's precocious, even though the sound of it is something quite...

Ixbyalydocious, supercalifragilisticixbyalidocious!

Thank you.

Day 17, the kind of perfect day that will go unremembered

I am in Centerville at the local malt shop/diner. It is opposite the Sheriff's office and the town hall. I will sleep between these two buildings as the people of Centerville have kindly invited me to. Now, how to shower using the Sheriff's sink. I am trying to get as much of my naked body into the shallow bowl. It's not working.

I am in Missouri, the show-me-state.

Missouri completes my brief spell with Mississippi flat land. Fun fact: Mark Twain was born in Hannibal, Missouri. Fun fact: the human head weighs eight pounds.

This was originally a French colony. There are historic French colonial homes and a couple of wineries that probably have very little to do with the early French traders.

I left Chester, hung a right by the statue of Olive Oil, breezed past Bluto or whatever his name was, and took a left past the Popeye statue to get over the river. Once in Missouri I noticed the birds were happier and that everyone drives Mack trucks. It's just the thing to do.

Less than fun event: a young Missouran deliberately veered from his lane to see if he could get as close as possible to me. What the French! I hope his date was impressed and that he gets the handjob of his short life in that little car, before a vehicle larger than his decides to run him over so that its driver can impress its date.

A bit of statistics here. I have seen close to a hundred thousand cars pass my by. Not even factoring in waves, smiles, and warm nods, a hundred-thousand-to-one are strong odds to suggest that we are good to each other here in America. That this event -- because it was an event or anomaly -- is more memorable does not mean it is equal. I believe you can learn more from an individual case any day and, yes, 90% of figures can be made to say whatever you want; but I want to stress the numbers just this once. After all, they say what I want them to.

I have a hard day ahead of me and then it's nearly flat tills the Rockies. As a reward, I have the Horse Creek Inn. I have already been given two wooden pogs redeemable for free beer; sadly, I'm not drinking, but I am buying!

Some words to live by from FBI agent Dale Cooper:

"Every day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, just let it happen. It could be tickets to a game [?] or two hot cups of coffee."