I’m a sucker for a good road-trip story.
“On the Road.” “Travels with Charley.” “Blue Highways.” “Not Fade Away.” The list goes on and on and on.
Here’s another one, from Colum McCann, author of “Let the Great World Spin.”
Headlined “The Church of the Open Road” — perhaps a riff on “The Church of the Rotating Mass,” which may be a Maurice “Dirt Rag” Tierney creation — it’s McCann’s recollection of a bike tour some four decades ago. On the road to nowhere, or so he thought when he set out.
A Catholic when he began, he encountered tiny Louisiana chapels and Texas megachurches, Southern Baptists and holy rollers (no pun intended). Slept in a pew, worked in a church camp. Inclined to listening, open to revelation, he collected stories as he went.
I won’t spoil this story by summarizing it. Give it a read.
Also, cast not your eyes upon the illustration. There may be some hidden meaning in there, but if so, it is obscured by a lack of historical verisimilitude. Forty years ago bicycles had neither integrated brake/shift levers nor disc brakes (especially not on the drive side). They did, however, have chainrings (and chains), freewheels, pedals, and external cables.
A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single pedal stroke. But for Christ’s’ sake, you gotta have the pedals.
Mad Blog Media 
Nice story and picture. 2012 seems like a different country, as someone said once.
Here’s another fun read about alternative transportation — in this case, hitchhiking.
The idea is making connections and collecting stories, as with Colum:
Great article; thank you. I should check The Atlantic more often, given I pay for it.
I hitchhiked a lot the summer after I graduated high school and all of my freshman year of college if I wanted to get somewhere. Took the intercity bus a few times (I think it was the Trailways) but it stopped in the city centers and then I had to hitch back out to the country anyway. Bought a motorcycle after my freshman year and that was that for hitching.
Never had a bad experience. Only thing I regretted was that the girl who picked me up in Rochester for one ride and dropped me off in Buffalo didn’t ask me to stay at her place. She was really cute but I was (and am) a bit of a buffoon when it came to girls.
I hitchhiked quite a bit around Colorado as a teenager during the late Sixties and early Seventies. No driver’s license will do that for you, or to you, whichever.
In Bibleburg I could hoof it or ride the bike, but when I matriculated at Adams State in Alamosa, Bibleburg was a long pull by Schwinn, what with La Veta Pass being in the way and all. I’d never heard of bicycle touring, or bicycle racing, for that matter.
I did just one medium-long hitchhike, from Springfield to St. Louis in Missouri; thence to Iowa Falls, Iowa; then Denver, and finally B-burg. Missed a Stones concert and slept in a church in St. Looey; got run off the road and into the median by an inattentive trucker who started pulling into the Monfort lane just as the driver who picked me up was passing him. Good thing the grass was wet when my driver freaked and hit the binders, or we would’ve rolled instead of doing a series of donuts.
Burned quickly through a series of jobs in Iowa Falls (detassling corn, cleaning/moving printing presses, house painting), and lucked out by catching a ride all the way to northern Colorado, around Johnson’s Corner or thereabouts. Got stuck and had to call a bro in Thornton to rescue me.
That may have been the trip where I got stuck again in an absolutely ridiculous spot — on the Valley Freeway in Denver, right around Broadway. Got picked up by a state trooper, and man, was I ever glad to see him. He called me about a dozen kinds of dipshit-hippie fool, said I was fixin’ to get my hairy ass splattered from Broadway to Pearl Street, and then gave me a lift to somewhere south of the Denver Tech Center where I couldn’t get killed to death before he went off shift.
Perhaps the illustrator (Iris Legendre) of the Colum’s article is a rider themselves and is promoting the idea that we should all take a spin to find ourselves. If so then displaying an image of a modern gravel bike maybe does a better job versus a touring bike of the 1980’s. I suspect we all know a few people that can more easily associate multi-day bike travel with modern bikes versus one of those old clunkers. Gee I wonder how us old folks did it?
Regarding bike travel, I think it’s a fine thing to rediscover the added inertial energy of a loaded bike with front panniers. Sometime I’ll have to pack up mine and go find the light again.
Here’s hoping that you weathered the wind storms ok.
Sheeeyit, Shawn, the winds continue. Bloody nuisance they are, too. It’s like whichever demon is in charge of air movement is parked right by the dial, twisting it up whenever I want to go out for a ride.
“Right, here he comes, let’s give him a Force 5 with a side of allergens.”
I got out yesterday and fought the force of air breezing through our area. It’s a common exertion multiplier and adds 3 to 4 minutes to a one hour workout. And damn if you never get the full recompense back when you turn around and let it blow you home. Someday I’ll have to test my handlebar spinnaker. “Aye hard to starboard matey. That thar is a recycling truck bearing down on our heading”.
We were riding up to Kartchner Caverns SP one day. It’s a 50 mile round trip from our old house. The winds were light when we left home. When we got to the park, I told Sandy that we got there faster than normal which the handlebar computer confirmed. When we left and rode into a strong head wind, I realized what happened. Duh.
Back when I was in grad school, my Ph.D. advisor, a fellow faculty member, and I once rode out from Stony Brook to the North Fork of Long Island, and were amazed at how fast we went. Took the ferry to Shelter Island and another ferry to the South Fork and started back to the southwest. You know the rest of the story: into the teeth of headwinds. That was the first time I really bonked on a ride. Not the last, but it sure was memorable.
I’ve mentioned the time I thought I was crushing it in the 40km Colorado time-trial championships, out by Strasburg (or Bennett, can’t recall).
And I was, too … until I turned around smack into the jaws of a vicious headwind. Holy hell. My first race. I’m surprised I ever did another.
We used to run the 40k State TT on the Windward side of Oahu. Same thing. You got turbocharged in one direction and paid dearly for it on the leg that was straight into the Trade Winds, which usually was the return leg. And by that time, one was tiring. I only did it a couple times before wrecking my knees, and my times were…well…faster than my grandmother would have done. I think.
When I think back to some of the absolutely horrible touring gear I used it now amazes me that those rides even took place. Really saggy, weak mount panniers and of course the bungie cords to mount the tent and sleeping bag WAY too high on a shitty Pletscher rear carrier that clamped on to the seat stays and slid down into the brake. Unless….you tightened the bolts until the frame dented in which of course I did. And the first of the Cannondale front bags which put your front brake on for you when you turned the handlebars. Yeah my gear gradually got hi tech and the cast iron skillet from the early tours was abandoned in favor of Sigg. Graduated to a Karrymore rear rack that weighed a ton but allowed the better, but still breakage prone Eclipse panniers to ride lower and give Herb a fighting chance of staying on the roadway.