(c) Mark D. Gardner 1999

On the Ground

Crossing America by Bicycle, 1998

Introduction

"We said there warn't no place like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy on a raft."

- Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I followed the Trans-America Trail, mapped out in 1976 by an organization called BikeCentennial, now called Adventure Cycling Association. The route is little changed in twenty-two years. It takes secondary roads whenever possible, passing through small towns, avoiding cities; and it veers all over the country, adding a thousand miles to the passage. The scenery and the cycling are usually good, often great. People who live along the route are accustomed and accommodating to the cyclists who pass through their towns every summer. (I'd love to live along the route someday.) Adventure Cycling's maps show you every restaurant, campground, gas station, creek, and moutain pass along the way. They tell you which towns let cyclists stay in the city park. They take you from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon, by way of Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

The prevailing winds in America are westerlies; the biggest mountains are in the west. It would seem to be smarter to ride from west to east, but it's the other way around. There are several reasons. First, you can start in May, and ride the east when it's cooler (at least it should work this way, but I had hot weather in May). Second, the wind is inconsistent; other factors are more important. Third, the Appalachians are harder than the Rockies, so it's better to get them out of the way at the beginning. No one believes this who hasn't done it, but it's true, and anyone who has done it will tell you. Finally, I like heading west, like the pioneers. It's less smothery out there.

Summary

No.	Date	Day	Miles	From	To
0	May 15	Fri	26	Dulles Airport, Virginia	Bull Run Regional Park
1	May 16	Sat	55	Bull Run Regional Park	Sperryville
2	May 17	Sun	30	Sperryville	Big Meadow Cpgd.
3	May 18	Mon	96	Big Meadow Cpgd.	Lexington -4
4	May 19	Tue	50	Lexington -4	Camp Bethel
5	May 20	Wed	47	Camp Bethel	Christianburg
6	May 21	Thu	53	Christianburg	Wytheville
7	May 22	Fri	62	Wytheville	Damascus
8	May 23	Sat	53	Damascus	Council
9	May 24	Sun	31	Council	Breaks Interstate Park
10	May 25	Mon	80	Breaks Interstate Park	Hazard, Kentucky
11	May 26	Tue	30	Hazard	Buckhorn
12	May 27	Wed	60	Buckhorn	Irvine
13	May 28	Thu	31	Irvine	Berea
14	May 29	Fri	75	Berea	Springfield
15	May 30	Sat	71	Springfield	Buffalo
16	May 31	Sun	52	Buffalo	Axtel
17	June 1	Mon	56	Axtel	Utica
18	June 2	Tue	74	Utica	Marion
19	June 3	Wed	51	Marion	Glendale, Illinois
20	June 4	Thu	49	Glendale	Carbondale
21	June 5	Fri	0	Carbondale	- Day Off -
22	June 6	Sat	8	Carbondale	- Day Off -
23	June 7	Sun	60	Carbondale	Ozara, Missouri
24	June 8	Mon	50	Ozara	Pilot Knob
25	June 9	Tue	60	Pilot Knob	Owls Bend Cpgd.
26	June 10	Wed	57	Owls Bend Cpgd.	Houston
27	June 11	Thu	70	Houston	Marshfield
28	June 12	Fri	83	Marshfield	Golden City
29	June 13	Sat	0	Golden City	- Day Off -
30	June 14	Sun	70	Golden City	Walnut, Kansas
31	June 15	Mon	27	Walnut	Chanute
32	June 16	Tue	66	Chanute	Eureka
33	June 17	Wed	76	Eureka	Newton
34	June 18	Thu	35	Newton	Buhler
35	June 19	Fri	19	Buhler	Hutchinson
36	June 20	Sat	54	Hutchinson	Hudson
37	June 21	Sun	96	Hudson	Ness City
38	June 22	Mon	56	Ness City	Scott City
39	June 23	Tue	53	Scott City	Tribune
40	June 24	Wed	31	Tribune	Sheridan Lake, Colorado
41	June 25	Thu	64	Eads, Colorado	Ordway
42	June 26	Fri	0	Ordway	- Day Off -
43	June 27	Sat	63	Ordway	Pueblo
44	June 28	Sun	56	Pueblo	Royal Gorge
45	June 29	Mon	30	Royal Gorge	Guffey
46	June 30	Tue	73	Guffey	Frisco
47	July 1	Wed	13	Frisco	- Day Off -
48	July 2	Thu	0	Boulder	- Day Off -
49	July 3	Fri	0	Boulder	- Day Off -
50	July 4	Sat	0	Boulder	- Day Off -
51	July 5	Sun	14	Boulder	- Day Off -
52	July 6	Mon	0	Boulder	- Day Off -
53	July 7	Tue	0	Boulder	- Day Off -
54	July 8	Wed	0	Boulder	- Day Off -
55	July 9	Thu	44	Boulder	Kremmling
56	July 10	Fri	64	Kremmling	Walden
57	July 11	Sat	69	Walden	Saratoga, Wyoming
58	July 12	Sun	53	Saratoga	Rawlins
59	July 13	Mon	71	Rawlins	Jeffrey City
50	July 14	Tue	60	Jeffrey City	Lander
61	July 15	Wed	0	Lander	- Day Off -
62	July 16	Thu	79	Lander	Dubois
63	July 17	Fri	77	Dubois	Colter Bay Village
64	July 18	Sat	25	Colter Bay Village	Jenny Lake
65	July 19	Sun	0	Jenny Lake	- Day Off -
66	July 20	Mon	33	Jenny Lake	Colter Bay Village
67	July 21	Tue	45	Colter Bay Village	Grant Village
68	July 22	Wed	0	Grant Village	- Day Off -
69	July 23	Thu	58	Grant Village	W. Yellowstone, Montana
70	July 24	Fri	74	W. Yellowstone	Ennis
71	July 25	Sat	74	Ennis	Dillon
72	July 26	Sun	50	Dillon	Jackson
73	July 27	Mon	79	Jackson	Darby
74	July 28	Tue	72	Darby	Missoula
75	July 29	Wed	9	Missoula	- Day Off -
76	July 30	Thu	60	Missoula	Powell, Idaho
77	July 31	Fri	60	Powell	Apgar Cpgd.
78	August 1	Sat	76	Apgar Cpgd.	White Bird
79	August 2	Sun	76	White Bird	Tamarack
80	August 3	Mon	63	Tamarack	Brownlee Reservoir
81	August 4	Tue	34	Brownlee Reservoir	Halfway, Oregon
82	August 5	Wed	67	Halfway	Baker City
83	August 6	Thu	61	Baker City	Dixie Summit
84	August 7	Fri	57	Dixie Summit	Dayville
85	August 8	Sat	48	Dayville	Mitchell
86	August 9	Sun	74	Mitchell	Redmond
87	August 10	Mon	17	Redmond	- Day Off -
88	August 11	Tue	67	Redmond	McKenzie Bridge
89	August 12	Wed	67	McKenzie Bridge	Eugene
90	August 13	Thu	62	Eugene	Mapleton -4
91	August 14	Fri	52	Mapleton -4	Waldport -3
92	August 15	Sat	55	Waldport -3	Lincoln City
93	August 16	Sun	52	Lincoln City	Cape Lookout
94	August 17	Mon	53	Cape Lookout	Manzanita
95	August 18	Tue	52	Manzanita	Astoria

Story of the Tour

Tuesday May 19 1998, Lexington, VA

Nearly 190 miles into the Tour and at last, thanks to this laundromat, I find time to write. Out in the big world, Frank Sinatra has died, and India and Pakistan are heating up their cold war. Here in the real world, Park Kitchings and I are starting our fourth day of this long tour.

Four days ago, according to plan, Park and I had met for the first time, at Bull Run Area Regional Park near Centreville, Virginia. For me it had been a couple hours' easy ride from Dulles Airport, but he had ridden all the way from the airport in Baltimore, with no sleep the night before. Back at home in Bend, Oregon it was still snowing, so he had been able to train all of 55 miles for a four thousand mile tour. Nonetheless he felt fine. I called this day zero.

Days 1 to 3 (May 16-19)

We set out across the continent the next morning, riding a hilly day to Sperryville, at the foot of Skyline Drive. We camped in back of the Volunteer Fire Department and took a dip in the chilly creek.

The next day began like a summer morning in Atlanta, 70 degrees and 90% humidity. Three thousand feet higher, on Skyline Drive it was lovely, temperate and dry. We rode to Big Meadow center, at 3680 feet the highest point on Skyline Drive. The total climb - I had an altimeter which accumulates altitude gain - was 4500 feet. In fact this will prove to be most climbing of any day on the entire trip, in only 30 miles.

We decided to leave Skyline Drive and ride in the valley. We rode 95 miles and stayed in the saddle till nearly dark looking for a campsite. We stopped at a pickup truck beside the road. Three local boys were fishing and urinating, drunk on Busch beer. They had accents such as I’ve never heard before, running words together into an unintelligible blur about two-thirds of the way through a sentence, about one-third of the time. One of them, with a red beard and bare shoulders even redder, pronounced something - I don’t remember the word - like an Irishman or a highland Scot. It came and went so fast I couldn’t place it. Park asked them if there was any place we could pitch a couple of tents for the night.

"Wait a minute! Let me think. I got it!" said red-beard. Up to the corner, turn right, down a hill, up another one, and camp by a little stream at the bridge. "It's our fishin' spot," he said. As soon as we got a hundred yards from them, we agreed we're not riding into the plot of Deliverance. We turned left and found a spot behind an elementary school, out of view of local rednecks. We slept under the stars and mercury vapor lamps.

Day 4 (May 19)

We rode six arduous miles into the charming town of Lexington, where I bought a new stove, then to Camp Bethel, a seemingly abandoned retreat. Camping was good by a stream. The trash bag I put out on the lawn disappeared by morning.

Day 5 (May 20)

Day 6 (May 21)

On US-11 again, we trudged into Wytheville and a nice municipal park with free showers and a personal escort. For the first time, we met other touring cyclists - two girls that I had thought were teenage boys. They had buzz cuts and wore baggy clothes. Counterculture wholesome, they had never done anything remotely like this, so they’re making about 25 miles a day with their huge, but shrinking, payloads. They had stayed at Camp Bethel three nights before where we had ridden from there in two. They had a wood-burning camp stove; a plastic milk crate in which they carried eggs and other groceries; a homemade Rubbermaid pannier; pounds of powdered drink mix and instant soup from a health food store, past the expiration dates. They did, at least, have a nice tent, good racks, and real front panniers.

It had not been a great riding day. I didn't feel strong. We rode the I-81 frontage road, on the advice of Lanny Sparks, to save a few miles. Lanny runs New River Bicycles, Ltd., a little place in what he called "downtown Draper." He liked to talk. We were shown a scrapbook of photos of the cyclists who had been through over the years. "Look at the places this fella has been," a list of all southeast Asia. In one, a few guys were buying bait; one was Greg Lemond. We must have stayed two hours in that little town.

Day 7 (May 22)

In Damascus, VA, we stayed at The Place. The Place is a house available to AT hikers and Trans-Am cyclists, suggested donation two dollars. Perhaps fifteen hikers were here, and two cyclists other than ourselves. I explained cycle touring to a hiker with every imaginable body piercing, even compared to a Tower Records employee. Those guys always look so forbidding, but they’re mild-mannered and unfailingly polite.

Day 8 (May 23)

It poured rain as Park and I breakfasted at Dot’s Inn. But as the day developed we rode 53 miles over two major climbs, nearly 4000 feet in all, in a minimum of precipitation. Hayter’s Gap was a steady 3-mile grind in low gear; the long-dreaded Big A Mountain, mentioned by Lanny Sparks back in Draper, was a series of shorter, steeper ones. We rode most of the day with Andrew and Jim, the other two cyclists at The Place. Near the top of Big A, Park and I rested in someone’s yard. A man sat in a lawn chair near the road chewing tobacco, more tobacco than I would have thought possible. We asked him how many more hills there were to get up Big A Mountain. "This one, then another one, then another one," he said. "Then it’s like a racetrack." The road was newly paved ahead. "This one, then another one, then another one. Then it’s a racetrack." Since he never said the word "three," we're not sure he could actually count.

The four of us camped in a well-maintained municipal park in Coucil. Jim chatted with some folks at a family reunion. They unpacked all their leftover food for us, good Southern home cooking. We slept under the shelter on picnic tables, just like the homeless guy who spends the night at Aurora coffee house, Piedmont and Monroe. Just like? He’s not full of home-cooked food most nights.

Day 9 (May 24)

Downhill from Council, we had but a few steep climbs to The Breaks Interstate Park, on the Virginia-Kentucky border. It was only 31 miles so we were there in early afternoon. Park and I did laundry in the scuzziest laundromat I have ever seen.

Breaks was a beautiful park, but on Memorial Day weekend, it was "redneck central, the worst camping we’ve had," said Park. The stock car race blared from two radios until well after dark. Earlier in the afternoon, a couple guys, drunk to a stupor, had theirs playing even louder, a 96-Rock type of station. A hundred feet away, it was too loud. Commercials boomed through the park. Later than night we could see the same people dumping Coleman fuel onto a live campfire, to see the flare-ups I guess, time after time. Another site was doing this as well. It was perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen people do.

Incredibly, I slept well. The place was quiet during the night except for Mr. Stupor’s five-minute coughing fit.

Day 10 (May 25)

Second Monday of the tour, and the best coffee so far. The others wanted to go off-route to Hazard, Kentucky today. Jim and Andrew are not experienced cyclists, but they're strong. Park also hit his stride today - you can no longer tell he didn't train enough. I generally brought up the rear and wanted to stop more at that. I may split off from them. They are all intent on getting out west; I’m here now. I don’t want to ride that kind of trip.

At least we stopped in Jenkins, I think it was, for lunch with peanut butter cake and a ceaseless torrent of stories from the 79-year old ex-trucker Victor. How he lost his family and remarried; found his daughter by accident; built the interior of the restaurant; crashed his F-250 pickup. "Man can see a lot of country from behind a steering wheel. It’s good work for a single man, but not a married man. I come home from a job out west once, and I saw the grass around the house was long. Looked like nobody’d mowed it. I went inside, wasn’t no one there. Wife and all my daughters gone. Two years later I was driving up around Indianapolis, saw my daughter in a yard by the road. She was as pretty as ever. She said, ‘Momma told us you was dead. Said you’d died.’ Next time I saw her was 30 years later, down here, in a casket."

He remarried three years after losing his family. His second wife went out on the road with him on his first trip. She wanted to. After that she told him, "You lost one family from this job. Get another job or you’re gonna lose another one." So Victor got a job driving for Ford - had to sell a truck in the process, I think, but he talked really fast - where he was able to come home every night. He put five daughters through school driving trucks. Sometimes he’d drive 48, 72 hours at a stretch. "How’d you stay awake. Did you have to take something?" I asked. "Took them Bennie pills," he said. "You just stare ahead like you’re numb. You don’t even want to go to sleep. Tell you what, though, you step out and you feel like you could step over it." The truck, I guess.

Andrew had been through Hazard a couple weeks back. He had wrecked a tire and couldn't ride, so he’d walked to Hazard. How far did you have to walk? I asked him. He thought it over. "Fifteen miles," he'd said, as if it were half a mile. We found the bike shop, 12th Gear, with the owner’s phone number on the window, with a note reading, "Cross-country tourers call me at home if you need anything." He came to the shop to sell me a chainring bolt, tire levers, and a seat post binder bolt. They put the four of us in a furnished apartment for eight dollars each.

Day 11 (May 26)

I broke off from the group this morning. "I’ll see you tonight in Booneville," I told Andrew. Park was already off. I meant it at the time, but it was the last I was to see of them.

I spent half the day in the bike shop, chatting with Rhnea, the owner, and a local boy named Jim. Jim used to build race cars, and he built his own recumbent bike. He welded two BMX frames together and made sort of a Tour Easy replica with dual 20-inch wheels. He even made the seat. We talked recumbents and Kentucky history for an hour.

Rhnea got a call from the local newspaper editor. We have a cross-country bicyclist here, she told him, hoping for a little publicity for the shop. Retired history teacher Paul Taulbee, now managing editor of the Hazard Herald, came and drove me around to see the sights: a building built like a goose; a two-story McDonalds; the new hospital, psych hospital, and veterinary hospital. He took me to lunch at France's Diner, my suggestion. Taking notes with a fountain pen, he interviewed me for maybe five minutes, and took my picture in front of the shop. "Send me a card from the next state. Send me one every couple weeks and I'll run updates as letters to the editor." All the way across the country, I did. I know the article ran because Rhnea sent me a copy, but I never knew about my updates.

I left the shop at last at two in the afternoon, after test-riding Jim's recumbent. Three steep hills led out of Hazard on the hellish high-speed Kentucky route 15. But in ten miles I was back on the Trans-Am trail, a bucolic two-lane route 28. What a relief! It became obvious, what I hadn't realized - yesterday was terrible. A couple more hard, steep climbs in light drizzle, then a dramatic plunge up to 39 mph - without trying - to Buckhorn. On an afternoon's ride that I thought would be easy, 2170 feet of climbing in 30 miles.

In my first night on my own, campground host Ray brought me some of his wife's homemade chili for dinner.

Day 12 (May 27)

I had bought a little Walkman radio in Hazard. Last night I listened to Beethoven before bed and this morning, NPR at breakfast. Just like home.

Hills continued, one or two of them extremely steep. I was standing in my 22/26 gear, jamming as hard as I could, and cutting switchbacks in the road. Mercifully it was only 100 feet long. But it amounted to another 3000-foot day. For the first time, I got a motel, as there was no place to camp in Irvine.

Day 13 (May 28)

This morning I met a couple from Dearborn, Michigan, Ralph and Janet, In their 50's, they were also riding the Trans-Am route. Ralph said I'm "hauling ass" at 55 miles a day. He saw Park and the 82nd Airborne (as he called them - accurately, I gathered) loading their bikes into a pickup yesterday morning in Booneville, saying, "We're going to get out of this rain one way or another." If they got a ride to Berea, they could be two days ahead of me.

At last, an easy ride: just a few hills in the whole thirty miles to Berea. Fog lifted, sun came out, and it was BRAG weather again. In Berea, bikes were $3.50 at the Oh, KY Campground out by I-75. I almost tried to bargain her up. There is no logic to campground prices. The bathroom, tastefully tiled, looked newly remodeled. Sleep was alright but I had to admit, I slept like a rock in that motel bed.

Day 14 (May 29)

West out of Berea, route 545 got my 4-star rating for scenery, undulating roller hills, goldfinches, and nonexistent traffic. I chatted with a tobacco farmer for half an hour. A big sheaf of tobacco is worth about two dollars. I told him, "You guys work hard for your money." He had seen Park and the guys two days ago, and had given them some frog legs and turtle meat.

One of the tricks of camping in a city park is trying to find a spot that won't be overwhelmed by sodium vapor lamps after the sun goes down. I waited till dark to set up tonight. It was high school graduation night, and I really didn't want anyone to see me,

Day 15 (May 30)

It was even muggier than Friday, but I rode the seventy miles I had planned. The route was typically complicated today, involving routes 528, 438, 55, 1858 (Stringtown Rd.), US-62, US-150, US-49, Fogle Rd., 457, 52, 247, 84, 470, then 61. More than a front bag, I needed a map holder. Hills seemed to be getting a little more scarce until a 350-foot climb out of the Rolling Fork River valley nearly did me in.

Day 16 (May 31)

Day 17 (June 1)

Dry as predicted! I rode to Utica, little more than a crossroads, and camped in a well-kept municipal park near the local school. The retired guy who lived next to it kept it up. Nearby, they were playing softball under the lights. Three little girls came and visited me after the game, two sisters and a friend, Madeline, Emma, and Taylor. They gave their ages as eight to ten years. They spent a good hour with me, telling me things they’d done, things their parents said, asking questions. We got onto the subject of Leonardo di Caprio. Taylor said, "I’ll probably never meet him, but if I did..." I can’t remember what she’d do. They all got in the little Eureka Zephyr at once - I made them take their shoes off first, since the sleeping bag was unrolled. I wish I had taken a picture of their three faces looking out the door. It was so cute.

"Are you a virgin?" one asked me, out of the blue. I declined to answer. "I’m a virgin," she said. "I’m a virgin," her friend said. "I’m a virgin," said her sister. They knew a girl at school who wasn’t a virgin. They described for me some off-color visual jokes from the Austin Powers; movie, like Mike Myers holding a sausage up. Their parents called them to go home, but didn’t seem to mind their daughters hanging around with a vagabond stranger. The girls were charming, and turned a lonely evening into a fun one.

Day 18 (June 2)

At lunch in Beech Grove, I met a Mrs. Bernice Aaron, who rode two thousand miles on her exercise bike last year. Her husband Joe was a columnist for the Evansville (IN) Courier. Ten years ago he died at his desk, 56 years old. Bernice was about 75 now, making her an older woman to Joe. Joe would have written about me, she said. They spent three months a year travelling, writing about the "local character" or whatever came up.

Truly dangerous coal trucks hurtled down route 132 east of Dixon. One laid on the horn behind me - I got the hell out of the way. Empty, you can hear them rattling and thundering from a quarter mile away. I turned over 1000 miles just before the Marion city limits. At the city park, I found another rider. Mickey Roy, from California, had started with an Adventure Cycling group but left them, then ridden with a couple other people a while and left them as well, at Rough River. I'd been on my own about a week and mostly enjoyed it, but we decided to ride together for a couple days.

Mickey had just taken the day off, reading and relaxing. Suddenly I realized I needed one. I had ridden eighteen days without a day off and I was tired.

Day 19 (June 3)

Mickey and I caught a ferry across the Ohio River into the state of Illinois, or "Illinoise" as he calls it. We expected few hills but found many. Along the Ohio, they were as steep as any on the route so far; I walked one, my first one. Another three-thousand-plus foot day, in only 51 miles. Weather hot and humid again.

Day 20 (June 4)

Three and a quarter inches of rain fell in western Tennessee this morning. Riding to the college town of Carbondale, we got wet today, but nothing like that.

Days 21-22 (June 5 and 6)

I took my first day off in Carbondale, then followed it immediately with my second. We were guests of the inimitable Bike Surgeon, former mayoral candidate, Kiwanis president, and liquor advisory board member Mark Robinson, and his girlfriend Rachel. We pretty much moved into their living room, itself barely discernable from his workshop. Well, there were more rims, old Schwinns, and rusted heaps away from his living area. Mark also ran a limo service; it is his main source of income, evidently. Rachel and Mark open their home to all Trans-Am riders, and many take advantage of it. Once a guy stayed eleven weeks. Park and the boys had been there a few days before. I cleaned the bathtub to earn my keep.

Rachel liked the way I dress, about the oddest compliment a bike tourist could ever get. She wished I could meet a friend of hers; we even have similar coloring. "I think she's attractive," says Rachel, so she may not be very attractive. "I've never known her to date a man or anything. I've never asked, because it's none of my business and the subject has never come up, but I don't think she's ever done it."

Rachel and Mark are like lots of couples I know: the women are more interested in your personal life, the men more reserved. Mark and I did not discuss our personal lives. We talked bikes, though - 32 vs. 36-spoke wheels; lacing patterns; lubricants. Mark had an OG clock almost like mine, and a huge, ornate reproduction wall clock, onto the pendulum of which he had fastened a freewheel cog. I said, "Looks like an old SunTour. Maybe a 28." I was right. An expert wheelbuilder, he built Mickey a new wheel just to get a lower gear.

Two eastbound cyclists rolled in from Colorado. One of them, Tom Mayer, worked at NCAR in Boulder (where I used to live), and knew some people I used to know. In addition he’s on the Louisville City Council. (A week later, Tom would stop at the 12th Gear Bike Shop in Hazard, Kentucky, and see the newspaper article about me on the wall, with my picture.)

Day 23 (June 7)

Crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri today, at Chester, Illinois. After a flood plain we climbed into the Ozark foothills, lovely country reminiscent of central New York state. I was happy to see Ralph and Janet again, with 24-tooth chainrings. Everybody was ready for the Ozarks at last. Mickey and I showered and ate at a truck stop, then camped at a picturesque Catholic church on a hilltop on the banks of I-55 in Ozara.

Day 24 (June 8)

Very hilly morning, 1100 feet accumulated climb in 14 miles. Here we met a wandering lawyer named Tom, who, since his divorce, has been touring the greater part of the past five years. When not touring, he has settled briefly in places such as San Luis Obispo or most recently, somewhere in Tennessee. "Settled" is a relative term in that he's been settled only when compared to riding every day and sleeping in a different place each night. He's on his fourth or fifth crossing of the continent but reports being ready for it to be his last. He liked to write - it sounded like his only true interest. He had never let anyone read what he wrote.

Hills let up but riding was tedious from Farmington into Pilot Knob. Moderately heavy traffic flew by at sixty miles an hour on the narrow, shoulderless roads. It rained and the wind blew. Most cars put their lights on. Mickey got us free lodging in the fire station. He prepared a nice dinner, pasta in olive oil with sautéed garlic, onion, and broccoli. Tom never showed. It rained like hell during the night.

Day 25 (June 9)

Riding out of Ellington, the final stretch of the day, inexplicably I became a racer again. I jammed hills, time-trialed the flats, got down on the drops for descents. Mickey was off the back in 30 seconds. Average speed for the day went from 11.2 to 11.8 mph in an hour. Climbs were huge: the final descent dropped nearly five hundred feet and I hit forty-five miles an hour, highest of the entire tour.

Our home for the night was Powder Mill Campground of the National Park Service. Amenities: water. Over bean burritos with two cheeses, onions and garlic; guacamole; and sweet corn - one of the best camping meals I've ever had - Mickey and I decided to go our separate ways in the morning.

Day 26 (June 10)

On the road this morning I met Ed Spaydd, an unabashedly positive young man of 24 who said things like "Right on, dude," sort of like people who were making an effort to be hippies thirty years ago. I didn't mind it from him though. He had a degree in environmental sciences and did some painting - claimed he sold some. He was trying out for the national Nordic ski team, and had made it I think. He rode a steel Trek mountain bike, pulling a BOB trailer with loads of gear, averaging hundred-mile days. Nearly everyone I met for the rest of the trip had met - and been outridden by - him. The hills were devastating all morning. Kentucky's standard 300-foot climb has been succeeded by the Ozarks' standard 450-foot climb - at about 10%. But they eased into moderate rollers from Summersville to Houston, where we camped in the Emmet Kelley Municipal Park and Cockroach Pavilion. Overall, it was a bitchin' hard day of riding, in a smelter of heat and humidity.

Day 27 (June 12)

Day 28 (June 12)

Day 29 (June 13)

I took a day off. There wasn't much to do in Golden City, but there was a ten-dollar "Biker's Inn" and it was air-conditioned. I did a little bike maintenance; drank a bottle of cheap white zin, the best wine in town; read the biker's log here at the Bike Inn. Park, Drew, and Jim made their entries on June 7 and 8 - they were five days ahead of me. I wrote three pages.

Back in Carbondale, the eastbound riders from Colorado had told us about Cooky's in Golden City. After dinner, breakfast, lunch, and pie at Cooky's, I can review it fairly. It's an average diner. Scrambled eggs were served as an overcooked omelet; English-style fried fish was slightly underdone and greasy. Nor are potatoes a specialty: greasy hash browns; mashed potatoes with nondescript gravy; soggy "Suzi-Q" fries. In fact I would consider it a sub-average diner but for the fine pies, $1.25 for a generous slice.

Next to the Bike Inn, an old guy had three Mercedes sedans plus a Toyota Previa van, an old Rabbit and a few bikes, for sale apparently. He meant to start a flea market in an old service station, but he had some problem getting the former owners to remove the fuel tanks. He paid in advance - story of his life. When he started telling stories about "niggers" I bolted for a piece of pie.

Day 30 (June 14)

I entered Kansas. In Pittsburgh, the first town I came to, I pulled up onto the sidewalk at Harry's Café on Broadway. A short man of around sixty said to me, "Ya got that thing loaded! How do you keep people from stealing everything?"

In ten thousand miles of cycle touring, I'd never heard that question. "I don't," I answered. "I just leave it here and no one steals it."

He said, "It's sad, though."

I said, "Not so far it isn't. No one's stolen anything yet."

He walked away. I wonder if he believed me.

In Golden City, I had seen on TV an author of a new book about fear. He maintained that we have too much fear in our lives, partly because of the media. We hear about a crime in New Jersey, one in Florida, and one in Texas, and we begin to think crime is rampant. In fact, statistically it's on the decline. We have too much information. I read in Newsweek that a weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than a medieval man was subject to in his entire lifetime. (That is itself a ridiculous piece of information. They must have counted all the financial data.)

Over the first 1500 miles, the average climb rate for the tour had been 50 feet per mile, about like riding in Atlanta. In a typical sixty-mile day I'd accumulate 3000 feet. Today it was 14. Wind blew out of the southwest today, however, at 15 to 20 mph; as a result my average speed was 10.7 mph, lowest of any day except the day we climbed way up on Skyline Drive (when it was a lot lower - 7 something.)

In Walnut, I pulled into the local restaurant, the Boot and Saddle Café. I asked about camping as I waited for my cheeseburger. I was seeking the local police; the Adventure Cycling maps often recommend that you contact them before camping. "That would be George Hightower," the waitress told me. "Not sure where he is right now." There was a bearded guy there, maybe fifty. He said, "I'm the mayor and I give you permission." Richard Wright was not only the mayor of Walnut, but owner/proprietor of the café and store. He did some bricklaying and had some calves or something. He had worked for the DOE up in Boise, Idaho. After a while it came out that Richard used to be in charge of nuclear waste disposal for the western United States! He'd been to Chernobyl after that blew up, and around 1991, down in Savannah on a problem for the SRP. Seems the government purchased an old Esso refinery and filled the tanks with low-level nuclear waste, which was corroding them. I guess it still is.

Later I met George Hightower, driving a beat-up pickup with police markings. He was a husky bald man in ripped jeans and a mostly blue t-shirt. "Are you the local law enforcement?" I asked. "As close as it gets," he answered. I shouldn't hesitate to come by his house if it storms or I need anything. "We had a bad storm last night. And there's a murderer in Chanute." Someone got murdered last night; they don't know who did it. "Happens every five or six years," George said.

Day 31 (June 15)

Twenty miles out of Walnut, at a roadside park, I met another cyclist, Jeff, one of the people Mickey rode with before I met him. We rode a short day to Chanute. We stopped at Spoke Folks and met Sheryl Willis, who drove us to a pizza buffet. We talked bike shops, computer programming, and life. She took us to the Martin and Osa Johnson Museum. They were photographers and cinematographers of primitive cultures and wildlife in the 1920's and 30's. Meanwhile, it rained outside. The woman at the museum gave us a ride back to Sheryl's place. Jeff and I set up in Yodelin' Katy's back yard. She promised us a snack later.

Yodelin' Katy has been welcoming Trans-Am riders into her yard since the early 80's. She used to fix them breakfast - after serenading them into consciousness, accompanied by her ukulele, but at 71 her arthritis bothered her in the morning. She did give us cookies, one a bicycle, and watermelon when she had us in for a chat before bed. We signed the log book. Scott Peters was there, as well Park Kitchings. I had met eastbound Scott back by Big A Mountain in Virginia.

Katy was taking requests. She had a song list taped to her ukelele, like Paul McCartney's Hofner bass. We got "Don't Fence Me In" and some other song with an interesting title I can't recall. It had something about "a horse, a pretty good horse." (From that description my father knew the song.)

I got to know Jeff a little. In some ways he seemed normal, but poor. The $3.75 pizza buffet may have been out of his budget, though he tried not to show it. He sold used bikes at home in Watsonville, CA, and listed them all for me. He had had a good year last year, selling 15. He couldn't have made more than two thousand dollars - gross sales, not profit. He'd offered to ride down the Pacific coast with me, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to ride to Toronto, KS with him.

Day 32 (June 16)

I couldn't get rid of Jeff. At lunch, he went on about the '67 Ranchero he sold to a friend for money to take this trip. He went on for a while about a Species movie then said, "I don't know, maybe we wouldn't want to see that movie." It was kind of like travelling with Mr. Haney of Green Acres. Other than that it was a great riding day, a bit warm but calm. We rode at 16 mph a lot of the day. I wanted to do a big day - 99 miles to Rosalia - but it would have taken until 7:30, so I bagged it at Eureka.

Day 33 (June 17)

Tricky day: 36 miles to Cassoday, then 38 miles with no services to Newton. Weather: 95 degrees and windy. Wind direction: they didn't say. There was a county park 8 miles east of Newton as an easier goal.

Wind came from the south in endless drafts and sporadic blasts, yet we averaged 12.2 mph and rode all the way to Newton. The first 19 miles took us on US-54, a busy road, but wide lanes with a foot to the right of the white line. I needed it - semis from the other direction sent a wall of wind into the Cannondale and its pilot. In Cassoday we found Susanne and Fabian, Jeff's lost companions from Germany. It was Susanne and Jeff who Mickey had ridden with. Fabian, Susanne's boyfriend, had joined them later.

Susanne's English was excellent, and we fell to talking about Jeff. He's dependent, childish, "Without volition," I said. She found him odd as well, and was relieved that someone else did. "He was like my shadow," she said. Susanne had American flag stickers on her bike and helmet. She worked as an instructor for the Berlin police, and was on a year leave. Fabian had just left a marketing or sales position with a large Danish parquet flooring company, and somehow got three months off before his next job. Fabian rode long mountain bike races, fifty-plus miles in the Alps, and had trained with Thomas Frischknecht in Berlin. He was carrying five pounds of potatoes.

Leaving Cassoday, we - four of us now - headed downwind at 20 to 25 mph for an hour. Then began the 38-mile stretch across county roads to Newton, with no services. No one said much. Five or six times I was blown off the road. Thankfully we came across a Mennonite church midway, with water spigots and a lawn.

Day 34 (June 18)

Although weaker, the wind was out of the northwest today. I stopped for my second lunch at Van's Picket Fence in Buhler, and never left. Her place was a house with tables in nearly every room, and items for sale on consignment. I was in her bathroom when she called, "You can take a shower if you want to." It seemed ridiculous, but I did it, and felt refreshed. "If you pass here again," she said, "you can sleep here, if you don't mind the floor." In the grocery store, "Estimated Prophet" by the Dead came on, and that's when I decided not to leave town.

I came back to dinner. I ate with a young schoolteacher, Brian Mullen. Susanne, Fabian, and the ever-present Jeff pulled in later. Van and her husband had to go somewhere that evening, but they gave me a key and let me sleep there anyway.

Around dark I was talking to my dad on a pay phone when an old guy roared up on a riding lawnmower. He waited ten minutes for me. He was Jim McGyver, 68 years old, a touring cyclist. He travelled alone, a long ways, on a Cannondale touring bike with a Brooks saddle ("Do you know what that is?") He needed to slow down and enjoy himself like me, he said. He had had Scott Peters in a few weeks back for strawberries and conversation. He liked Scott very much and was delighted that I'd met him too.

By now it was nearly dark, but another guy pulled up, not on a lawnmower - Wayne Sill, another teacher. Wayne and I headed out to the city park to talk with the Germans till after 11, mostly of economics, East Germany and reunification. Wayne invited us all for pancakes in the morning.

Day 35 (June 19)

Wayne's wife, away on a camping trip with some girls, is a road racer with a Litespeed, a couple Treks, a Serotta, a dozen wheels, and a few other bikes out on loan. Wayne's a USCF official himself. Last year his wife toured from Buhler to Banff; Wayne would go out to the city park every night to see if any cyclists were there and if they'd seen her. A lot of them had. So Buhler, Kansas, pop. 1277, was not only the friendliest town on the bike route, but a relative hotbed of cycling enthusiasts as well.

Kansas is known among Trans-Am cyclists for its friendly, open inhabitants. I had already heard about it a number of times, but it's hard to believe until you get there. Buhler was the Kansas legend come true.

I rode nine miles into Hutchinson to see the aerospace museum. I saw Everest at the IMAX, featuring the music of George Harrison, and liked it. The Cosmosphere, even having seen the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, was terrific. I read nearly every word of every exhibit. We - the whole gang - stayed in a cyclist's hostel run by a local church. Jeff has detached from me and stuck to the Germans. The more I see of him, he must have a developmental problem. He converses on the level of a 12-year old. It was difficult to see because he has no other signs whatsoever, and he's a polite 12-year-old. But I don't want one right now. I would like to travel with Susanne and Fabian, but fifty is a long day for them.

Day 36 (June 20)

Pretty uneventful day of riding. From Nickerson to Hudson, 37 miles, there was hardly a house. I passed through the Quivera National Waterfowl Preserve and was done by 3:30, about the earliest I've completed a full day's ride. Susanne and Fabian, still asleep when I left this morning, rolled in an hour later. With canned tomatoes and chili peppers and a can of beans, plus rice, I made a good dinner. We all ate in a little sheet-metal shelter they opened up for us, then slept by the ball fields. Guess who else was there? Jeff.

Day 37 (June 21)

For the first time on this tour, a good strong tailwind! It was out of the east or ESE, blowing about 15 mph, and it carried me 95 miles to Ness City. I dawdled in Larned till after three o'clock, then rolled 64 miles over the next four and a quarter hours, seventeen of them on dirt roads. The route maps show them paved, but it appears they've been repaved with hard-packed dirt. They rode pretty well, actually. Today's average was 15.8 mph, fastest day of the tour.

In the city park among the playground equipment, ferocious winds woke me at half past midnight, bending the little Eureka halfway flat. I dragged it next to a small concrete building for protection, and put on the radio. Some city, either Bezine or Beeler, was about to get hit by 70-mph winds and hail exceeding an inch in diameter. For your own protection, seek shelter immediately! Leaving three panniers in the tent to anchor it, I headed to the police station. By the time I got there, the worst was over, but I sat in there till 2 o'clock. I resolved not to sleep in the open in Kansas any more if I could help it.

Day 38 (June 22)

I'm on the road at 9:30 and into Scott City by 4:30. 56 miles for the day. Sky blue, air dead calm until I picked up a little tailwind after lunch. That night I stayed at the local "athletic club," where cyclists can sleep in the TV room and get a shower for $4.50. Two eastbound tourists from Phoenix, Arizona, names Mike and Terry, showed up later.

Day 39 (June 23)

I ate lunch in Leoti, at yet another in my string of motel restaurants, with a retired farm couple out here working the harvest, then rode to Tribune, 47 miles. The city park there was one of the more appealing ones - lots of trees, located out of the way on the edge of town, 4-H shelter close by. I ate at the restaurant that appeared least substandard, Karen's Kitchen. For the first time in recent memory it didn't rain in the night.

Day 40 (June 24)

I had met some Appalachian Trail hikers back in Virginia. The AT is mainly a mental challenge, they told me. After a couple weeks you get in as good a shape as you need to be. The hiking doesn't get any harder, it just goes on and on. Bike touring, on the other hand, is mostly physical. Nearly every day is hard. You have to take everything nature throws at you - hills, stifling humidity and heat, rain, sun, noise, sleepless nights, trucks, cars, teenagers, rough pavement. Mentally, it's not all that boring. Scenery changes a lot, you pass towns and restaurants, you meet local people, you go fast and slow.

But not today. Buffeted by the strongest winds of the tour out here on the featureless plains of eastern Colorado, it was a mind game. And I lost. The riding wasn't hard, really - you gear down however far you have to and pedal your 90 rpm. It's too slow, is the problem. After 30 miles my average was 7.1 mph and dropping. I was riding on the 22-tooth ring, in 20 or 23 rear. Wind roared in my ears mile after mile. A mile would take ten minutes, some of them; and I had to stop every 2 or 3, just to not be doing it. After half an hour I knew I couldn't make it to Eads today. I had considered hitching soon as I reached the Colorado state line, but I rode two more hours to Sheridan Lake. After lunch the forces of nature continued unabated. That was it - I'm hitchhiking. In fifteen minutes I had a ride to Eads with a good old boy from Johnson City, TN. I took a room, easily talking $39.95 down to $25.

Day 41 (June 25)

I wasn't hoping for much, maybe an hour or two before the wind became hell on the prairie again. Instead I was granted a calm, benign day, perfect for riding 62 miles in eastern Colorado. Only a light, pleasant breeze arose in the afternoon. Good thing, too - from Eads to Sugar City, there was one commercial establishment, the gas station in Haswell, 21 miles into the day. From there, I had 34 miles of scruffy, desolate prairie to Sugar City. For the first time in my life, I listened to a Walkman while riding, the Colorado Rockies vs. the Houston Astros. Baseball's leisurely pace suited the ride well. The Rockies won in twelve innings.

Hotel Ordway offers rooms to touring cyclists for five dollars, without linens. Madeline, the owner, supported the original BikeCentennial in 1976, and had a framed copy of the route map that was presented to her back then. I had a beer in town, then returned for dinner later. I had the special, ravioli stuffed with chicken and mushrooms, covered with unnecessary sauce the same color as Alfredo sauce. It was no worse than one of those refrigerated Di Giornio pasta packages from Publix. The salad, though, contained real blue cheese and romaine lettuce, the first I’ve seen since Atlanta. I told them it was good, which, in context, it was.

Day 42 (June 26)

Take a day off and half the Trans-Am Trail catches you. I wasn’t too surprised to see Susanne and Fabian - and when I see them I’m never surprised to see Jeff lurking - but Mickey pulled in as well. We had dinner together and talked over our tours. For two weeks he'd been hearing I was a day ahead of him. I wanted to read about Windows 98, released today, but couldn't find a PC magazine in this town. I couldn't even find a Newsweek or Car and Driver for sale anywhere.

Day 43 (June 27)

I rode with the three today, chatting with Susanne mostly. It was an easy day. Mickey left early for his own reasons; I promised to look for him in the City Park in Pueblo. I did but I couldn’t find him. It’s a big park. Fabian and I jammed the last five or ten miles into town at 20 to 23 mph. I felt like a racer for the first time since the ride into Owls Bend, MO.

Everyone but me loaded up with breads and bagels at the bakery outlet in Pueblo. Jeff got all excited about cheap AA Duracells, 4 for $1.40. "Do you need batteries? These are really cheap! And they’re like new. They use them in their price guns or something and they’re not worn out. Something like that. Maybe you should get some. Do you need any? Like for your Walkman or something?" I didn't.

Susanne and Fabian met a local woman, Pat Burke. She invited us to stay at her house. Home, she hauled out the cookies, made us instant iced teas, let us take showers. She drove us into the foothills to point out some mountains and ranges, then around a nearby subdivision ‘cause I’d said OK to looking at a few houses. She showed us hundreds. "That one is in a Spanish style. See the patio in front, behind the gate?" Two minutes later, "There’s another one in Spanish style. See the patio in front?" Five minutes later, "There’s another Spanish house. See the patio in front?" She said it at least three more times. We tried to buy her dinner, but she bought ours.

Back at home, I got the tour of the basement - here’s the linen closet - and some of her story. Now about 70, she'd spent maybe 18 years taking care of her sick mother then her sick father. Her only son had committed suicide. I think he would be about my age. There may have been one passing mention of a husband, but he didn't seem to be a major player.

In the morning Pat fixed us breakfast. It was hard to get away - I think she would have loved some of us to stay.

On the forty-fourth day the Rockies began at last, with a climb of 600 feet to lunch in Wetmore, and the best iced tea of the tour. It must have been decaffeinated, because Fabian nearly fell asleep afterwards. They ride a long ways without resting, then they take a long break. I’ll see you in Florence, I told them - I’ll wait for you. But we got mixed up and I lost them again. So I kept on to Canon City and beyond, climbing about a thousand feet to this campground near Royal Gorge. I slept at 6200 feet above sea level, the highest altitude I had slept at, probably, since I'd moved out of Colorado in 1981.

And at 2262 miles, it became my longest tour. (I did 2220 miles in 1990 from Seattle to Lake Superior.)

Day 45 (June 29)

Good to sleep in my tent last night - I'd slept indoors for the past week, except in Tribune. This morning I reviewed all the Sundays of the trip.

1 week ago - big tailwind day in KS
2 weeks ago - rode out of Golden City, MO into KS, finally to Walnut
3 weeks ago - left Carbondale, crossed the Mississippi River to Ozara
4 weeks ago - looked at the Lincoln birthplace; fixed 2 flats; rode to Axtel, KY
5 weeks ago - left Council VA, climbing to Breaks Interstate Park. Sat around most of the day.
6 weeks ago - Second day of the tour, Sperryville to big breakfast buffet for $1.25 on Skyline Drive, then to Big Meadow.

After spending the morning at Royal Gorge, I wasn't off until after noon. It was a hot, steep ride with no shade for twenty miles. My throat felt tight from the dry, thin air. I exhausted my supply of hot water a few miles short of Guffey, and had to take a detour there for sodas and junk food. The Shecter’s, who had a hostel for cyclist, however, was just three more easy miles. For $8 I got a cabin with a padded bench for sleeping, an afghan, a hotplate, some chairs, an outhouse, and the coldest, cleanest water I’ve ever tasted. It made for the coldest shower I’ve ever experienced, but at least I was naked high in the Rockies, 8750 feet above sea level.

Fabian and Susanne showed up at the hostel around 8. Jeff, incredibly, was not with them. They last saw him back by the Gorge on his bike (they were in a car at the time). Weird to see them without him, but I’m glad we’re reunited. Mickey, meanwhile, had to stay over a day in Pueblo.

Day 46 (June 30)

The last day of June dawned overcast and misty at 6 AM. I was on the lonely road at 8:30, having awakened Susanne and Fabian to wish her happy birthday. They went back to sleep. A brisk southerly helped me up Currant Creek Pass, 9404 feet, and propelled me along to Hartsel for a second breakfast, blueberry pancakes and sausage. I rode the flat road to Fairplay and stopped for lunch. The Continental Divide was right in front of me.

Everyone says the Rockies are easier to ride than the Appalachians or the Ozarks, but they’re still hard. My knees ached and my hands, most problematic body part of this trip, went numb. I couldn't ride to the ability of my strength; even standing up to jam made me lightheaded. But I was up there, on Hoosier Pass, by 5:00. At 11,542 feet, it was the highest point of the route. I hurtled towards Breckenridge, over 30 mph for miles. Still descending, I took the Summit County Bike Path to Frisco, getting my second puncture of the tour. This is a bike path that even the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign could like, wide, paved, well-signed, and well-used, by non-riders and serious cyclists alike. I set up camp in the woods along the path at 8:30, having come 73 miles and climbed over 4000 feet.

Day 47 (July 1)

Temperature 54 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. I slept well in these serene mountains at 9000 feet above sea level.

NOTE: At this point I took a vacation from my tour, spending a week in Boulder with old friends. Boulder had been my home from 1977 to 1981. I needed the vacation, but I missed my tour. It was jarring not to be travelling the backroads of America with full panniers, a world unto myself.

Day 55 (July 9)

I got a lift back to Silverthorne and the Trans-Am trail, and suddenly I was back on the tour. The riding was downhill and easy but the sky was spitting rain. I waited half an hour in an outhouse vestibule, then an hour at the Green Mountain Inn, an unspoiled, out of the way place with a nice view. But by the time I reached Kremmling, I was pretty wet. I met another cyclist, Chris, at a café in town. We camped at the RV Park for six dollars, special price for cyclists, a new policy for these new owners. Chris suggested that they have a logbook for cyclists to sign. On the Trans-Am, campgrounds, restaurants, and hostels often have logbooks for bike tourists to sign. I was the first to sign this one.

Day 56 (July 10)

The farthest I’ve ever ridden with no services, today was nonetheless easy. From Kremmling to Walden, 62 miles, there was not a store, restaurant, or service station. And even though we climbed Muddy Pass, the grade was gentle, so it wasn’t difficult. We hit Walden shortly after 3:00, racing the rain - and beating it.

At the city park, we met the eastbound Elenz family from Gaylord MI. They had seen Janet and Ralph recently - today, maybe. Susanne and Fabian were well up into Wyoming - she sent e-mail - but Mickey was only a couple days ahead. Everyone I'd asked had seen Mickey. The Elenz girl, Jody, pulled out the smallest computer I'd ever seen. It wasn't a palmtop - it runs full-blown Windows 95 (in fact that's a pretty good name for it). She was doing a Web page on their tour, updating it daily.

I ordered a piece of pecan pie after dinner. Should I keep my fork? I asked the waitress. "I’ll bring you a new one," she said, making it the classiest café on the Trans-Am trail. I'd been keeping my fork for weeks.

Between the Elenz’s, Chris and I, and a couple who came to meet Chris, it was a full city park in Walden. At night, a strange jingling noise. Chris and his friends were still up. "Is it a dog?" I asked out the tent. It’s a horse. What’s he doing? I asked. "Eating grass." A cowboy had come to town. His horse was leaping about, front legs tied together; he was sleeping in the pagoda. We met him out on the road the next morning.

Day 57 (July 11)

The family was up at five. They'd been getting up at four to beat the heat, but Chris convinced them it would not be a problem. "We could sleep in till five," Mom had said, without irony.

Chris and I rapped out ten easy miles to Cowdrey for apple pie, then crossed into Wyoming, "Like No Place On Earth." In Riverside, it rained. We vacillated but rode eighteen calm miles to Saratoga, where the $1.50 shower fee is waived for cyclists. We camped at the city park, on an island in the North Platte River. Saratoga was nice in a western way. The Mexican restaurant was pretty good, if not up to Tres Hombres in Carbondale IL - which itself was a far cry from Arriba in Pueblo, best restaurant of the tour so far.

It had been some great country today, especially the suddenly green stretch out of Riverside, abundant with little creeks and rivulets. The light etched the sagebrush into sharp relief; antelope prance in the fields. At one point, a farm startled me - I hadn't seen tilled soil in hundreds of miles. It could have been upstate New York.

The time off in Boulder had unsettled me. It had changed the pace of life. But three days back on the Trans-Am trail and I was doing fine; covered 175 miles in 2 1/2 riding days; cooked zero meals.

Day 58 (July 12)

Chris shook my hand and departed, going his own way. A lone German named Stefan, cooking mush or gruel on the other side of the tennis courts, had ridden down from Alaska solo.

Riding was as beautiful as a flock of pelicans, the one at the wetlands preserve just outside of Saratoga. Wind became the story of the day however - I turned to face it head-on when I hit I-80. The interstate, hurtling huge trucks and flying cars, felt briefly familiar. But thirteen miles was enough.

Someone built an oil refinery for Sinclair in 1925, then built a town around it, the town of Sinclair. He built a hotel, restaurant, barber shop - he built the entire town. By 2002 the refinery will live up to its claimed status of most modern refinery in somewhere. From Sinclair I rode to Rawlins, into the wind at seven or eight mph, like the day I had to hitch-hike. It didn’t seem as grueling, perhaps because I had only eight miles to go.

I rode across town to a campground near the interstate, with private showers, a cable TV lounge - everything but trees. I exaggerate, of course - there were trees, three of them, and I set up leeward of them. After dinner, I went into the campground office to kill time. A young woman was working there. I'd not failed to notice her earlier, her dark hair, beautiful eyes, and big breasts. She was playing the Windows plumbing game I used to play, and didn't seem to mind my company, so I watched her for half an hour or so. She giggled and narrated the game, getting better and better the more she played. If she made a bad move she’d say, "Just kidding." It was the closest I’d been to a woman in a long time. On the way out I asked her where she went to school. "Here," she said. "High school." I had spend the evening flirting with a high school girl. I had no idea! She was mature, smart and self-assured. And the best-looking girl I had seen in eight weeks.

Day 59 (July 13)

Up early, I consumed half the breakfast bar at JB’s. Today I was headed to Jeffrey City, most infamous stop on the Trans-Am. I'd been hearing about it for a week; Chris was dead set on avoiding a night there.

From Rawlins to Grandma’s restaurant in Lamont, nothing but a little highway construction and a moderate crosswind. In Ireland, Chris Boardman won the prelude time trial of the Tour de France, followed by Olano and Laurent Jalabert - then Bobby Julich! In the first road stage, Frankie Andrieu finished in the top ten. An eastbound rider, Andy, came in, a nice, unaffected guy. We talked for an hour, exchanging shower locations and camping deals. I spent two and a half hours there.

Easy eleven miles to Muddy Gap, then a long 22 to Jeffrey City. I didn't get there till 7:00. It was pretty bleak, alright - the speed limit doesn't even change. As Andy told me, the Lion's Club park was overgrown, but I could set up in the pavilion. My waitress was the most masculine woman I have ever seen. Dressed like a man, in tight blue jeans and a tight T-shirt, she was built about like me and spoke in a low voice. She worked on her father-in-law’s ranch. I have to keep an eye out for these things, I thought; I don’t want to end up like the guy in The Crying Game.

Days 60-61 (July 14)

Again today, Wyoming offered little in the way of commerce: a gas station, a rest area, a campground. Bagels and peanut butter nourished me; hundred-degree water slaked my thirst. But I made Lander early, shortly after three; scoped the town out and ate a huge turkey sub and an amber ale at Gannett Grill (Andy’s recommendation). I stayed with friends of friends, Karen and Bob Sweeney. Karen made a great pasta salad; I talked touring with them. As usual the last few weeks, I slept in a bed. I took the next day off.

Day 62 (July 16)

North of Lander lie the lovely, green valley of the Wind River. After about twenty miles, however, 287 led back into the arid hills typical of the last few days. I was on "res" land, as they say out here, so most people were brown-skinned Native Americans, with their soft voices like rivers. I spend an hour at the only establishment for fifty miles, the Crowheart store. At sixty-four miles I came to a restaurant not listed on my map. It turned out to be a high point of the day. A couple sat at the bar and ordered margaritas. I ask for an iced tea, but I’d rather have a margarita. It was after six already, after all. The woman, late 40’s perhaps, asked my name and showed me a menu. She was named Maddy and the guy with her was Rod. Maddy was having escargot tonight. The restaurant also offered elk, venison, pheasant, duck; I forget what else. It looked very good indeed. The bartender stuck my bottles under ice, bending over to show a couple inches of cleavage. She wouldn't charge me for the iced tea.

With all those smiling women, and the bartender’s neckline, I could hardly leave, but the last fourteen miles were stunning - I was stopping for a picture every ten minutes. Red-rock cliffs lined the canyon, similar to Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona.

I hit the Circle-Up Campground in Dubois - Andy’s recommendation again - at 8:00, my latest day. An Adventure Cycling group was there, the first group to do the entire Great Divide route. The cook for the night was Howard, a young Brit. "We’ve got some extra food here," he told me. They had fifteen big pork chops barbecuing, left over. I got the last roasted potato, ratatouille - Howard had actually made ratatouille - and fresh fruit salad from a plastic grocery bag. The mosquitoes ate as well as I did.

Day 63 (July 17)

Rode over the second highest pass of the route today, Togwatee Pass, 9658 feet above sea level. I was twelve hours on the road but only six and a half on the bike, covering 77 miles with 3840 feet of altitude gain. Again I got to camp at 8:00.

I began the climb from 6900 feet up the Valley of Biting Flies, climbing steadily rather than steeply, beside or above the Wind River. Eight miles from the pass, a café on the left served me a very good lunch. The placemats were blue jean seats with silverware in the pocket. I can’t remember the name, but they also sold performance truck exhausts. I ordered grilled cheese and a stainless steel low-restriction muffler. At Togwotee Pass I chatted with a couple from Milwaukee. Happy that I had quit my job, the woman said, "Good for you!" several times. The ascent was better than Hoosier Pass, quieter, closer to the mountains. [Author's Note: my spelling checker did not recognize the word placemats, suggesting placentas in its place. Thank God this was not the case. - Mark]

Day 64 (July 18)

With a day off in Lander, I had ridden 409 miles in the past seven days. Four days of 69 miles or more.

I met a cyclist named Cory after breakfast - a good one - and chit-chatted with him until noon. The 29-year-old ponytailed liberal (or so he was described in an article somewhere) from the Ithaca, New York area is eastbound on the Trans-Am. Together we rode off-route to Jenny Lake, camping at the stunning hiker-bicyclist area there. For the first time since Fort Gorge Campground, the Whisperlite stove comes out of its sack for a pasta meal with mozzarella string cheese. The minimally-stocked grocery sold microbrews by the bottle for $1.50. Life could be a lot worse than this.

In the shadow of the Grand Tetons, among the most majestic mountains I have ever seen, sleep was an honor.

Day 65 (July 19)

Cory and I decided to take a day off and hike. If ever a hike lived up to all expectations, this one did. We ascended by a roaring, cascading creek, glacial meltwater, which slipped guises easily into a calm stream in flat sections. The proverbial extra mile carried us to a meadow surrounded by high peaks, snowfields, and glacial waterfalls. I made a snowball. Coming back we got within 40 feet of a bull moose unabashedly eating a bush, and later, a couple more. We also got very tired. All told it was a five and a half hour trek back to the queue for the boat. We covered eleven miles in all, in our cycling shoes.

Cory and I improvised a fine potato-cheddar soup, from potatoes, cheese, milk, onions, garlic, dill and rosemary. No mix, no prepared ingredients. We amazed ourselves.

Day 66 (July 20)

This morning we concocted scrambled eggs with (leftover) onions and cheese. It was 10:45 AM before we hit the road. We met a rider named Gary riding his T-700 to Tierra del Fuego, who wouuldn't shut up. About a hundred cyclists were on the road as well, heading the opposite way, on a sagged group tour with one of those organizations that offers sagged group tours, Cycle America. A lot of girls were in the group. I pulled across to chat with the last, and cutest, one, Katherine from Chicago, in one of those little sporty outfits that girls wear on sagged group tours. She fell off her bike in surprise that we’re riding across The Big One.

Day 67 (July 21)

Excerpt from my journal, July 21:

I’m happy on this tour. I never wonder if what I’m doing is what I should be doing, whether my life is worthwhile, whether I’m wasting it. I don’t think about myself constantly. I go to bed each night alone but rarely lonely. I set goals, I meet them, if not today then the next day. I have no doubt that I’ll ride through Yellowstone then Montana; across Idaho; across Oregon.

Forty miles to Grant Village, over the Divide once more. Fueled by the breakfast buffet, it felt good to be going somewhere new. Most of the time I could climb in 2nd or 3rd gear, riding through the remnants of the 1988 fires beside beautiful Lewis River.

Day 68 (July 22)

An Adventure Cycling group of eleven riders - not Mickey's group but a second one - had left the east coast about two weeks after me. After my Boulder week and three days in the Tetons, they caught me. I had met some of them, three Denver guys and a woman, last night in Colter Bay. Tonight I camped by Tim from California, across from a young couple riding the Trans-Am west to east, not part of the group.

Day off. Took a bus tour of the Yellowstone lower loop. Cooked my own dinner. Other cyclists all gone - I’m on my own. One camping family couldn't quite grasp that I wasn't riding with the group.

Day 69 (July 23)

Today completed the tenth week of the tour. I'll reach Astoria in three to four weeks, then I may go down the coast for three more weeks. It's not as close as it seems, the end. Seven more weeks - where was I after seven weeks? Ordway, Colorado.

I stopped at a couple of geyser basins that the bus tour had skipped; cauldrons bubbled and geysers spouted and one hot spring poured out four thousand gallons of boiling water every minute, steadily. At 12:47 PM I saw Old Faithful for the second time. Later I entered Montana and left the national parks for the real world again. The Adventure Cycling group was spending their second night at the Wagon Wheel Campground; I joined them and finagled a site for $8.50. The showers there were as clean and nice as the place in Berea. The bathroom was spotless. At dinner I sat with an archeologist for the BLM who had herself discovered a bunch of obsidian on the Continental Divide, which had been quarried by Indians. She was going to investigate it with some geologists. I talked with Alice, leader of the Adventure Cycling group. A teacher in Brattleboro, Vermont, she tours in summer, plays ice hockey in winter.

Day 70 (July 24)

Excerpt from my journal, July 24:

Yesterday, touring euphoria took me about ninety minutes into the ride, as it does most days. I had just crossed the Continental Divide - not a big deal in itself; I've crossed it about seven times on this trip - and was riding the rolling gradients before the next crossing, eight thousand feet above sea level in the Rocky Mountains of northwest Wyoming. What could be better? At those moments I try to fathom riding across the United States. I don't know if I succeed in comprehending it, but I succeed in loving it.

It rained a little today, but not enough to bum anyone out, and not enough to make the locals happy. Although generally downhill, the gradient was light. The route passed Hebgen Lake, site of a 1959 earthquake, Richter scale 7.5. Eighty million tons of debris fell from an 8000-foot mountain slope onto an overflow camping area. It filled in the Madison River, creating a new lake, Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people died. In contrast, the Armenian quake of the late '80's killed 50,000; the Mexico City quake 10,000. The deadliest American earthquake, San Francisco 1906, killed about 600.

For dinner I pan-fried salmon on my Whisperlite stove, with fresh string beans and a jalapeno sourdough bread flute. I washed it down with a big Fosters Bitter Ale. I got all this at the extraordinary, for a town of one thousand, IGA Econo Market in Ennis. Had I wanted shallots, they had them. I stayed at the Camper Corner RV Park in Ennis, a bargain at seven dollars, but it used the sardine-can packaging model. I set up at the other end of the place from Adventure Cycling so one of the girls could come visit me. Instead I got my Swiss friends Martin and Thomas, whom I'd been seeing for days. They invited me for hot chocolate after dinner.

Day 71 (July 25)

By 10:30 this fine morning I'd already climbed 1900 feet and come back down 600 to arrive in Virginia City, Montana. On the way I listened to AM radio, the second time in my life I'd listened to headphones on the bike. It was Mick Jagger's 55th birthday. It was a country station out of Dillon, but they did not play "Wild Horses" or "Faraway Eyes" for Mick. I did, however, hear

• Good music. Almost every song was better than almost any song on 99X in Atlanta.
• One really nice song, with some smart electric guitar work. Turned out to be Clint Black. First time I'd ever heard him.
• A remake of Todd Rundgren's "I Saw the Light." What a great, timeless song! Did he write it? The remake even did the same ascending guitar solo.
• Dwight Yoakam singing "The Streets of Bakersfield, " another good song.
• No Nanci Griffith. You can't always get what you want.

Except for the initial climb, I didn't like the day's ride much. A poor road surface jiggled me most of the time, and I felt listless. I stopped at a small bookstore in Sheridan for an iced latte and e-mail, run by the local art teacher. He thought this town could use some culture. "I don't think there's any danger of Barnes and Noble coming in and putting me out of business." I had several e-mails.

Day 72 (July 26)

After cereal in camp I rode over Badger Pass, 6760 feet - from Dillon's 5100 - in eighteen miles. I dipped to 6000 again before climbing to 7360 at Big Hole Pass, then descended into tiny Jackson, home of Jackson Hot Springs Lodge, Rosa's cantina, Jackson Mercantile, and a garage. A faded IOOF hall claimed free Internet access but did not claim to be open. There was no water or food available from Dillon to Jackson, so I carried a bottle of Powerade in addition to the usual half-gallon of water. I could as easily have ridden on to Wisdom like the group, but why should I? Ron, a young Dutchman just out of school, stayed, his first night away from the group in 67 days. We each had the lemon chicken breast at the lodge restaurant, good but not exceptional. An immense piece of apple walnut cheesecake saved the meal from obscurity.

Ron and I walked around town - one street. He liked the '65 Cadillac, where I preferred the 1950's model, but I didn't actually like either of them. I explained the Church of the Latter Day Saints to him. I couldn't explain the International Order of Oddfellows, because I don't understand it myself. A hundred yards out in a field sat the hot spring itself, walled and enclosed in a fence, boiling hot. I wouldn't put my hand in it. Sleep came easily despite all the mooing.

Day 73 (July 27)

I stopped at the Big Hole National Battlefield, where, in 1877, a force under Colonel John Gibbon attacked a band of Nez Perce who had been fleeing the Army for months. The Nez Perce won, technically, but their losses were heavy. The Army fired indiscriminately into the encampment, killing women, children, old men. It was then that the Nez Perce realized, even having won this battle, they were not going to beat the US Army. Lewis and Clark had also encamped here in 1805 or 1806. I couldn't see it all as I had a pass to climb, 7241-foot Chief Joseph Pass.

It wasn't too hard - I didn't even need first gear. Then the road plunged 2000 feet in perhaps eight miles into the hot valley below. I ate in Sula at about 4200 feet and pedaled into a headwind for the final 18 miles. Counting the round trip to the grocery store, I rode 79 miles. Adventure Cycling was hogging all the picnic tables, so I had to cook in the midst of their riders' meeting.

Day 74 (July 28)

Beginning with a tailwind and flat terrain, the morning was looking like the easiest day of the whole tour, but in the end it was just the flattest. The wind turned around after lunch; traffic was heavy and the afternoon dragged, relieved only by the teenage waitress at my pie stop in Lolo. For the first time, I began to think I might be getting tired of this.

I stayed at the Birchwood hostel in Missoula; so did the group. The route maps call anywhere you can sleep indoors, other than a motel, a hostel. But the Birchwood was a real hostel, with a kitchen and a living room, where you sleep in bunkbeds and have to do a chore in the morning.

Day 75 (July 29)

Missoula is great college town, and headquarters of Adventure Cycling. The group and I took a day off. It was time to stock up on civilized experiences. Last night, I had found a good eastern Indian restaurant, someone's Tiger, with a great chutney; today I had a Thai lunch. I paid a visit to Adventure Cycling hq., where they treat you like a celebrity. Marketing director Kevin gave me a tour; I bought some stuff; and saw a map that had been soaking in water for over fifteen years. An eastbound cyclist had a message for me from Mickey, but he couldn't remember what it was. Lael shared his dinner with me. Then I had three desserts, a hot fudge sundae, a piece of pie, and a Yoplait yogurt.

Day 76 (July 30)

I rode 38 miles on two bananas before I got any lunch. Up Lolo pass, only the last two or three miles presented any challenge, and second gear sufficed. Coming down the pass at 5235 feet, a cold rain fell for ten minutes, leaving clouds in the valley hanging on the mountainsides. I found a wonderful, isolated campsite at Powell Campground, near the Lochsa River, out of sight of the Eleven. The Eleven were short one stove, though, so Alice threw an arm around me and invited me to dinner, me and my stove. Gerritt was cooking pasta with Christy as sous-chef. They all made me feel welcome.

It was the eighth night in a row that I had been with the group (though it was only Ron one night). Though I rode alone, I was ending up with them every night. I was even trying to avoid them a little, but there are only so many campgrounds in Montana. By this time I was getting to know most of them, and there was no one I didn't like, but being around them changed the experience. I wanted my solo tour back.

Day 77 (July 31)

Today was, I think, the most scenic of all 77 up to now. One of the funnest as well. I sat out in the woods in a hot spring with Christy and sat out a rainstorm under a bridge. It was easy too. Riding beside the lovely Lochsa River, there was only one climb all day, of fifty feet, once you got out of the campground (and that was only a hundred feet). All you had to do was keep the pedals going and try not to crash from staring at the beautiful canyon. There were no stores or gas stations all day, nor any houses that I can remember.

Breakfast was good this morning. Ten miles down the road, I stopped at the Jerry Johnson parking area, and hiked in a mile to the hot springs. Christy, in her riding clothes, was dangling her legs in the pool. I climbed in - it was perfect. Christy had just graduated from Michigan State and had never done anything like this ride before. She wasn't having a great time time on the trip. She needed a friend - someone her own age, another woman perhaps, since she and Alice hadn't really clicked. I felt a little sorry for her at the time, but she needed to get over it and have a good time. Her religion was helping her, she said.

We walked farther, to another pool. Two couples were soaking naked, one in their sixties, the other around forty. The old guy got out and stood there talking to Christy, who was seated. Whatever she was looking at, it wasn't his left arm, which was missing. Still he managed to show the full number of appendages. She was shocked, she told me on the walk back.

We went wading an hour later in the Lochsa River. I stepped hard on a thorny branch in the water. I pulled it out, but it still hurt.

By now it was early afternoon and we'd only done 25 miles. Christy was a slow rider so I went ahead, stopping at the historic ranger station a while, then sat out a cold rain under a bridge for half an hour. (Later my friend Dave would ask me if I was bummed out to be sitting under a bridge in the rain. Not at all - I was happy that bridge was there!) Finally I pulled into this tiny Apgar Campground and fixed the freeze-dried rice with curry chicken I had carried five hundred miles from Grant Village.

Day 78 (August 1)

Before breakfast I was sitting outside a restaurant with my shoe off inspecting my heel. A Harley rider came up. "Getting blisters?" he asked. No, I explained to him, I stepped on a branch. "Want me to take a look at it?" he said, pulling out a big fish-scaling knife. "Just kidding," he said. He did look at it, but couldn't see anything in there.

After breakfast I was caught by Ron, Cecil, and Raymond, and joined them. They rode in a paceline, taking five to six-mile pulls at twenty miles per hour. In my turn I managed nineteen mostly, which wasn't bad. It was fun, and 20 miles melted away to a second breakfast in Kooskia. Fully one-third of the teams in the Tour de France had dropped, but Pantani still maintained a comfortable lead over Ulrich, with Bobby Julich holding third. Raymond had called home to Holland this morning and got the news. There were three Dutchmen in the ACA group. None of them had known the others were coming on this trip.

The route led over White Bird Hill, climbing steeply away from the Clearwater River, deep into quiet prairie hills on the Nez Perce reservation. I liked the climb. Past Grangeville the road flattened then climbed a final 500 feet to 4320 above sea level. For those who cared to walk a hundred feet, a stunning valley lie below. And for those who leaned low over the bars, 2400 feet fell away in seven or eight miles, the speedometer constantly over 35, mile after mile. This was quite possibly the best downhill of the three months.

At 76 miles and one major climb, it had been a long day, but I felt strong all day. Could it have been the redundant breakfasts? I climbed 3520 feet, the ninth most of the tour. After dinner I sat at my picnic table and listed the top 20 climbing days. Of the eight that beat this day, three were in Virginia, two in Kentucky, and one each in Missouri, Colorado, and Wyoming. Three of the top six days were in Virginia - days two and three alone climbed 8200 feet. In Missouri I rode four consecutive days over 3000; 13,850 feet from Pilot Knob to Golden City.

Day 79 (August 2)

Even more climbing than yesterday: 3800 feet, the sixth-highest so far. They were not easy - a long, hot stretch along the Salmon River fueled by pancakes - good ones - coffee (weak) and danish. The pancakes arrived with eight or ten - more than I could count anyway - tabs of butter melting on top. I shoved them off onto the table. There was nothing else to do with them. I had a very good lunch in Riggins, good salsa then a huge mesquite grilled chicken sandwich on a homemade roll with guacamole. Beside the Little Salmon River the road narrowed; traffic did not decrease. I don't know what they put in that guac - I could hardly stay awake. So I sat by the river, where the water was louder than the traffic, and read a while. I passed Zim's Hot Springs, where the group was staying, then rode over the 45th parallel. Finally, I ate at a bar just past the sawmill of Tamarack; called Dad; and rode four more miles to the twelve-site brushy USFS campground known as Evergreen. Cost: five dollars. I paid it, but a payment envelope showed up on my table anyway. For the first time I made a campfire, albeit briefly. For the third night in a row, I was camping alone. And my heel was feeling better at last.

Day 80 (August 3)

From my journal, August 2:

I believe this is the day I rode my bike from a campground to another campground, ate in a couple of restaurants, climbed a big hill, and slept in my tent.

I rode three miles to a barren but sparkling campground operated by Idaho Power. All the facilities are maintained to the standards of a high-class Atlanta office building. Best of all, it had drinking fountains with refrigerated water. And nice clean showers. And bright sodium vapor lamps. I ate a lot of cookies and had trouble sleeping.

Day 81 (August 4)

I rode from 7:10 to 10:30 AM - that was it. I never made it out of Halfway. The first restaurant, at Pine something, wasn't open, so I was breakfast-deprived when I reached Halfway at 34 miles. I ate one, scrambled eggs with ham, homemade hashbrowns, weak coffee, a crunchy sweet cinnamon roll. I did laundry, getting pissed at the place when my clothes rinsed in hot water although I had selected Delicates and Woolens. It wasn't warm water, it was hot. The hoses were probably reversed. There was no one there to complain to.

Mike and Alice arrived. I had intended to ride on to Richland, but it didn't take much to convince me to stay. Had a couple beers with Lael, Kurt, and Bob, the Denver guys. That's about all there was to do in Halfway (unless you're in road construction, in which case you've got a lot of work to do). I ordered broasted chicken at the Stockman's Restaurant but was served fried without explanation. I asked about it. "Our broaster is broken," the waitress said. Apparently there is such a thing.

I finished Small Vices by Robert B. Parker, a detective novel. I never heard of Parker, but I'm trying to write like him now. He never uses dashes or semicolons, and rarely a hyphen. I don't remember ever seeing - I'm not sure of the name of this construction - an introductory appositive. It's a simple, unaffected style, clean and forceful like the protagonist Spenser, first name unstated. This book was easily ten times as good as the other crime novel I read, whose name and author escape me. (Parker would not have added that clause. He would have written another sentence: "I forger who wrote it and what it was called. I wish I remembered so I could not read any more of this author's books.")

Day 82 (August 5)

The route climbed a thousand feet out of Halfway, and fell a similar amount to Richland. I encountered Mike and Alice, who ride together, and Gerrit on the way. As we entered Richland an old black man accosted us. "Lemme get my bike and I'll go with ya!" he shouted in a Louis Armstrong voice. He used to pick cotton in Texas. He is the only black man I could recall seeing since Yellowstone, and those were tourists.

I'm going to drink more lattes. I rode strongly and felt great today. It was 100 degrees and I didn't care. The hotter it got the harder I rode. For once it was hot enough that it felt like a summer afternoon in Georgia, less humid, but warmer to make up for it. I rode with Gerritt a little, and Mike and Alice some. The stark barren landscape slid by as I worked out what other bikes I might want to buy, not that I need any more. Most of the group stopped for sodas at a rancher’s house by the road, who sells sodas to passers-by.

I climbed three hundred feet above the desert floor to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. It told the tale of the pioneers and their ordeal in coming west, in exhibits and a poorly-acted one-woman performance. In Baker City we all stayed at the Mountain View Holiday Trav-l-park. Alice, Mike and I, and a newly animated Christy, went out for Mexican food. Christy was the first one in this afternoon. It must have given her confidence. Something did. She was chatting and cheerful, speaking Spanish with the waiter. I had two Dos Equis; she had two milks, explaining, "I love milk."

"I can say, 'I'm too sexy for my love' in Spanish," she told us. I asked her to say it and she did; and she said it right, she claimed. I have no idea what it means, in English or Spanish.

I've climbed 150 thousand feet now, on the nose. The first 75,000 took 1500 miles; the second 75,000 took 2360 miles.

Day 83 (August 6)

Today's ride had three summits, Sumpter Summit, 5082 feet; Tipton Summit, 5124 feet; and Dixie Summit, 5277 feet. It looked like maybe three thousand feet of climbing on the map, but turned into 4080 feet gained, third-highest of the tour. Only the climb onto Skyline Drive and Hoosier Pass had more. The first place to obtain food was only two miles from the end. I ate a late lunch and wrote for a long time. The young waiter dispensed all the wisdom of his twenty years and referred a couple times to his art. I don't trust anyone who uses the words "my art."

It was about 5:30 when I hit the Dixie Summit campground. I was the only one there. A retired couple cruised in later but I was able to get a naked shower. I like a naked shower. It's a little easier to clean certain pieces. I built a superb fire but left it to join the old couple for a while. They were pretty interesting - they traveled a lot - but the man had to ask where I'd ridden from three times over the course of an hour before it sank in that I had ridden all the way from Virginia to Oregon.

Day 84 (August 7)

I descended nine miles and joined Gerritt at breakfast. Ron and Raymond arrived. Yesterday I learned that Raymond has run a 2:26 marathon. That makes him the fastest runner I've ever met, by a long ways. He's 37, a programmer for KLM airlines.

We hit some nice towns today. I liked the looks of Prairie City and John Day as well. I bought another Robert B. Parker book there at the used bookstore. Only eight miles west came Mount Vernon, and one of the best lunches of the entire trip, with a large tasty bowl of clam chowder and a big piece of boysenberry pie. I've never had boysenberry, and if I ever have it again I hope it's exactly like that one. Dayville, where we all stayed, was the worst town of the day, offering little but a convenience store. I stayed at the church with the group, camping on the lawn.

Day 85 (August 8)

Blueberry pancakes were good at the café. Most of us went a few miles off route to see the exhibits of the John Day fossil beds. Mike and I took a little hike to some fossil sites. The fossils have to be removed or they deteriorate rapidly, but synthetic fossils had been installed in the same places - a big tortoise shell; leaves; saber-tooth cat bones; but half of the mammal fossils found were oredonts, a horse-like, pig-like mammal with no modern descendants. After that Mike and I slogged up the seemingly endless Keyes Creek Summit to 4357 feet above sea level; I passed the 4000-mile mark. It was one of the few days I rode with someone most of the way.

We dropped into Mitchell about 4:00. I had run out of water before the summit, and immediately drank about three pints of Powerade, Frappucino, and water. And was happy to be staying in Mitchell. Mike went on and eventually Christy did, too. Long day for them.

There's a couple from New Jersey staying in the park, and a wild-haired guy named Jerry. I had seen him briefly in Dayville earlier. Mike greeted him by name. He had hung out with the group way back in Virginia. We went to dinner at the little Sidewalk Café in town, where we ordered Garden Burgers and soft ice cream. Although he looked as if he might be a homeless street person, with his scrawny shoulders and his odd belly and his slight limp, he proved to be both well-balanced and self-effacing. He was a DBMS programmer, fifty years old - his inspiration for this trip - most recently of Tempe, Arizona. I enjoyed his company more than most. But he was watching me write that next morning as I described him as "wild-haired."

Day 86 (August 9)

Jerry Garcia died three years ago today. I had heard the Dead play "Unbroken Chain" a few months before, to my utter amazement.

Today's climb: Ochoco Pass, 4720 feet above sea level, a 2350-foot climb. Mike, Christy and the others rode over it yesterday, so they did over 4800 feet. At lunch I did not tip the waitress for the first time in twelve weeks. She didn't offer me water, more Pepsi. dessert, or ask me anything; what she did bring, she brought without enthusiasm. Two young guys in a gas station/convenience store were amazed that I had ridden from Virginia, which I had. "You can be proud of yourself," one of those guys told me.

I got to Redmond and decided to take tomorrow off. I stayed at the Desert Something RV Park, the only tent in the place. It sat three miles north of Redmond on US Route 97, a veritable superhighway, noisiest place I've yet slept. I cooked the Spicy Thai Pilaf I had purchased in Dayville and carried over two passes, with fresh brocolli. There was nothing Thai about it - it tasted exactly like Rice-a-Roni. With it I drank an entire $7.99 bottle of Columbia Crest chardonnay. There are advantages to taking a day off, like you can get drunk the night before.

Even before I got drunk I must have looked odd laughing uproariously at my picnic table. I was listening to Car Talk on my Walkman!

Day 87 (August 10)

I took the day off in Redmond. The tour acquired an ending. In ten days I would fly to Phoenix out of Portland. Dad made the reservation.

At the Chamber of Commerce, a small soft-spoken man told me some of his friends who never had children now wish they had. Sometimes I feel like a rolling psychologist. I saw the only movie of the tour, Saving Private Ryan, a harrowing experience, one I can't even evaluate as a movie. Finally I had a bad dinner at Shari's Restaurant, a Shoney's/Coco's clone. It was celebrating its 20th anniversary, a testimonial to mediocrity.

Day 88 (August 11)

Today I was crossing the last mountain range of the trip, the Cascades. McKenzie Pass looked like a big one, but it was in fact only forty-seven feet higher than Dixie Summit. West of Sisters I took route 242, a beautiful, quiet road. For the first eight miles it was nearly level, with almost no traffic, leading me through a lovely fir forest. I felt it the prettiest climb of the entire western U.S. At a viewpoint called Windy Point you could see across the lava rubble to Mt. Jefferson, 27 miles away, and even Mt. Hood, 75 miles to the north. I did spend some time in the 22/26 but in that gear it wasn't a strenuous climb.

I spent some time at the summit, taking the path through the volcanic rubble. Jerry got there; I hadn't seen him in a couple of days. For us it was a moment and a place to savor, our last high point. A young guy came up the from western side of McKenzie; for him it was the opposite. He had done nothing but climb since Portland. He asked us if there's any special braking technique he should use going down. I told him to sit up if he gets going too fast.

I was out of water and food so I got mildly pissed when I didn't plummet like a falling sheep right off the top. But down in the woods, moister and more fernful on the western side (I made that word up, "fernful") I plummeted pretty well. Generally, though, it was a 25 to 30 mph descent, and you had to brake a lot. The road was alternately sunny and shaded; it was narrow; and occasionally there was sand or gravel on a turn.

I stopped at Proxy Falls, hiking a mile or two. At the lower falls you could stand right in the creek and look up the falls nearly two thousand feel. A couple hours later I got to McKenzie Bridge campground; Jerry was already there. We had lost 4000 feet in elevation from the pass. Jerry thought the descent was "magic. If someone had taken me back up to the top, I would have come down that again."

We shared a nine-dollar site. I concocted a meal of pasta noodles and tomato-based sauce with sautéed onions and a fresh tomato and a little cabernet. He deemed it very good, and indeed it wasn't bad. But I've made three or four better dishes on this trip.

Day 89 (August 12)

At 6:15 this morning I already had my bike upside-down and was pulling the rear wheel to replace a broken spoke. It was perhaps the earliest I had ever worked on anything in my life. I used Jerry's pump - he has that nice Topeak Master Blaster (I wonder if Stevie Wonder gets a royalty from them) that's almost like a floor pump. It's so easy to inflate a tire with that thing, but it weighs about three times as much as mine.

The ride was downhill mostly. It warmed up in the afternoon to Georgia-like conditions, but I felt good. I wonder if hot weather brings out my best - I felt good a week ago, that hot day over Flagstaff Summit too. Or else it was my afternoon pick-me-up, a big iced mocha and a quart of Gatorade, sort of a cyclist's speedball. Those came a couple hours after lunch at the Vida Café. I had some good navy bean soup, curly fries, and a slice of blueberry pie.

Every time I ride with Jerry I drop him in a hundred yards. I must ride four miles an hour faster than he does. In Eugene I decided to go to the Wal-Mart and get my four rolls developed. Some of the shots were pretty good. A couple of the sunsets came out really nice; and Christy took a good picture of me standing in the Lochsa River. I got a nice shot of her, uh, from behind.

I camped in Coburg, a few miles north of Eugene. Jerry was there. We talked until after dark about our tours. He hadn't had as good a time as I did. He'd had more like the kind of time I had expected to have. My tour had been more fun than I expected. He had worse weather and by his own admittance it took him weeks to learn how to eat right. I don't know why; he's toured for years. He was a little disappointed that he found no single women along the way, but in retrospect not surprised. I agreed with that disappointment.

It must have been about 11:00 that Alice and Mike strolled in. I hadn't seen them in a few days. Mike and I shook hands and Alice threw her arms around me. It was good to see them. They were glad too. Christy showed up later, but the rest of the group had ridden on.

Day 90 (August 13)

I took a long time leaving camp this morning. Alice had genuinely good bread, a cibatta and two boules, which someone had given her. We all looked at the pictures I got developed last night. I shook hands with Mike than went to hug Christy. She put both arms around me and hugged me warmly, to my surprise. Alice hugged me too. I rode out to the Original Pancake House in Eugene, just like the one on Cheshire Bridge Road in Atlanta.

I wanted to ride 85 miles to the coast today, but the forecast called for 100 degrees. The record for August 13 was 98 degrees. And I didn't leave breakfast until 11:00. Wish I had gotten to see more of Eugene. What I did see, I liked - a college town with amazing bicycle facilities. I seemed to always be on a street with bike lanes, and I wasn't even trying. A guy gave me directions when I looked lost; a professor on a bike asked me simply, "How far?"

Out of Eugene the route took county roads through Crow and Noti, past two sawmills. The postmaster in Noti was retired from twenty some years with the Postal Service in Eugene. He became postmaster of his own domain, making forty thousand a year in an easy position. He showed me a snapshot of his vineyards near Crow, where he grew pinot noir, pinot gris, and a little chardonnay. I ate two grilled cheese sandwiches on average bread in Walton; it was the best food they had. I didn't want a damn burger. A fresh-faced blonde girl pulled in on a bike, wearing a day pack, shorts, and a sleeveless shirt. She looked to be eighteen or twenty. She won the bike at the gym where she works out, took a fifty-mile training ride, and set out on a four-day tour. We talked for an hour; she was easy to talk to, genuine and unaffected. As I got ready to leave I introduced myself. Her name was Alison. "Maybe we'll see each other out on the road somewhere," she said as she left. That surprised me.

There were a couple of tunnels along the road, with pushbuttons for cyclists to push before entering. The buttons would flash warning lights at both entrances. I rode to this Archie Knowles USFS Campground, where all the water smelled like sulfur. There was a couple on a tandem, Rhonda and Alan, on their first camping tour, a one-week loop involving the coast. She invited me to dinner, which I happily accepted. They were riding a Co-Motion tandem built in Eugene, carrying panniers. Co-Motions are nice, and expensive. Alan said they usually ride about thirteen miles per hour on level ground with no wind. That was unladen. I had not realized it was possible to go that slow on a tandem.

Day 91 (August 14)

Five or ten miles north of Florence, the Pacific came into view! I shot a victory picture. Later, I walked a short path from the hiker/biker campsite at the state park near Waldport to the beach, and waded in it. It was freezing. My feet were numb in a minute. It's the custom, of course, to dip your bike wheels in the Atlantic and Pacific, but I hadn't started at the Atlantic. I'm not much for symbolic gestures anyway. I knew perfectly well how I'd gotten there.

Riding north on the Oregon coast was a perplexing mixture of good road surface, heavy traffic, spectacular scenery, disappearing paved shoulders, and horrendous headwinds. I couldn't figure out if I liked it or not. A lot of times it was so hard that I told myself, I've made it to the Pacific Ocean; I don't have to go any further. Then I'd sit down to a late lunch with a couple guys I met, Nathan and Matt, and they had me laughing out loud about people they'd met. They were hating the wind as much as I did, but they ride through it about five miles per hour faster.

Day 92 (August 15)

I slept well under the Pacific Ocean fog, and was up early and out of camp at 7:03 AM. It was foggy, damp and chilly, but no problem to see a hundred yards or more. I did a load of laundry that included my sleeping bag, eating breakfast during the dry cycle. The pancakes tasted of baking soda. I told the waitress and she told the cook.

People asked where I was going and where I was coming from. Now that I was off the Trans-Am route, people were surprised that I had come over four thousand miles. Most cyclists - and there are a lot here - are just riding the coast for a week or two. A small man with a foreign accent asked, "Have you taken many pictures or do you keep them in your heart?" I try to do both, I answered. He was a mechanical engineering professor, formerly at Purdue, now at Oregon State in Corvallis, who left India in 1955. He never understood what it was he couldn't stand about India until he was introduced to Joseph Campbell, just three months ago. Campbell was an expert on the myths of Indian culture, who finally went there, and discovered mainly disillusion. He found a contradictory culture of spirituality and greed which both repelled and attracted him.

The professor had some interesting opinions to share. Eugene was a little flaky, "a bit too hippie-ish for an engineer." We got into a long discussion on morality and what he termed the work ethic. By that he meant the way companies treat their employees as well as the employee's dedication to his work. It's wrong for Honda and Toyota to work their engineers like slaves, as it wrong for a tenured professor to sit in his office watching TV. At his university, the administration tries to tell him that he is a service provider and students are customers. Meanwhile over at H-P, they call the grounds a campus.

On the road, wind was one-fourth of yesterday and traffic was double. I stopped at Yaquina Head and Otter Rock, where whales were surfacing 150 yards away. With all the sightseeing I didn't get to camp in Lincoln City until 7:00. Oh yeah, I had the best lunch of the tour at Canyon Way Restaurant in Newport, clam chowder and a cajun halibut sandwich. In camp I cooked Ramen noodles for the first time on the tour, with a Beck's dark 22-ounce.

The guy I camped near last night, on the Rivendell bike, was in camp. Two guys pulled in from Fairbanks, eighty days into their tour. Nathan and Matt arrived. They had found a contact sheet by the road, shots of squirrels mostly. Most of the shots had been x'ed out.

Day 93 (August 16)

Happily, my route rejoined the Trans-Am at an intersection called Otis, where we both vanished into a quiet lovely forest for ten miles. The road curved and tilted deliciously on the downhills; hardly a motor vehicle came by. I ate another breakfast, a cinnamon roll and a big latte, at a nice little pub in Neskowin. At Sandlake there were dune buggies, trail bikes, and those little ATV's all over the dunes. I had to climb several hundred feet before dropping back to Camp Lookout State Park. I didn't cook but rode three miles to a little joint called Wee Willy's for a decent fish sandwich, clam chowder, and a slice of carrot cake.

That night it hit me that the tour was ending. The next morning, I would get up to a full day of touring for the last time. Because the day after, I would arrive in Astoria. It made me sad and philosophical. A month ago I had ridden out of Lander, Wyoming, up the Wind River valley eventually to Dubois - 79 miles; two months ago from Chanute, Kansas to Eureka with Jeff; and three months had passed since day one, when Park and I had seen a wild turkey in Bull Run Regional Park, had breakfast at McDonalds, and ridden to the Sperryville Volunteer Fire Department. What did it all mean? Any answer I'd give would be too simple - or maybe too complicated. I sure know how to do this, though.

Day 94 (August 17)

I rode mostly on the Three Capes Scenic Route. It was more peaceful than spectacular. Traffic came back with a vengeance from Tillamook to Bay City, as if Piedmont Road had been transplanted from Atlanta to the Oregon coast. There was a peaceful stretch away from the shore between Bay City and Nehalem. I sampled some wines at the Nehalem Bay Winery but I didn't like any of them enough to order one, especially after she insulted me. I told some kids there I was an expert in six-dollar wines. "We don't have any cheap wines," she said. Her 1993 Pinot tasted thin; the Chard was in the French style; I liked the Riesling the best. But the white wines were at room temperature so it was hard to judge them, and I simply can't gauge a red without a meal. I'm not good enough to extrapolate the sensations.

I cooked a Knorr-based potato soup, same as I made in Darby MT a few weeks back, and ate it across from a Brit named Tim, who concocted a Knorr-based vegetable soup. My meal was better because I had beer. Tim had been working for Microsoft in England, on the Microsoft Network. He had left to get away from it and figure out his next move by riding down to San Francisco from Seattle.

Day 95 (August 18)

Manzanita was the coolest town I saw on the Oregon coast, a few blocks of frame houses down by the sea out of range of 101. There were a few restaurants and bars, apparently all charming. Like, Duck, North Carolina - at least the Duck of ten years ago - Manzanita struck a perfect balance between tourism and the backwoods.

It was the last day. I did my best to dawdle along the way. In Cannon Beach I stopped in at Mike's Bike Shop and admired the F. Mosers and an Olmo. At Seaside I found the first actual cyber café in the United States, that I've seen at least. The route then mercifully left 101 onto a Lewis and Clark Road, leading eventually to a reproduction of Fort Clatsop, believed to be the site they wintered on the Pacific. On the road there were hills, forests, and forested hills, so it was sort of a last taste of what so much of this tour was like. I loved those parts, climbing hills on little-traveled roads far from anywhere. You don't have to be an athlete to ride across the continent, but you have to put in an heroic effort. Almost every night I went to bed thinking, it's been a long day. It was work every day, a lot of work usually. At Fort Clatsop a volunteer demonstrated writing with a quill pen. Things like that remind me how easy we have it today. Never mind word processors; writing is easy today because of our pens. People were writing with fountain pens until World War II, and they were a huge improvement over quills.

I followed business route 101 into Astoria, then some residential streets with a few final steep hills to the Maritime Museum on the Columbia River, western terminus of the Trans-Am. An Indian motel manager tells me, "If you find a room in this town for less than forty dollars, take it," after I had offered him twenty. I went to the next place, offered him thirty, and got it for thirty-five. The odometer read 4579 from Bull Run -- 4,605 miles in all from Dulles Airport. It took 96 days from there.

[Thursday, August 20, Southwest Airlines flight 1589, Portland, OR to Phoenix, AZ]

I betook me back downtown on this final riding day hoping to enjoy a celebratory repast. I chose Ira's, a restaurant claiming unique food. Sourdough bread was served first, which unfortunately had sat too long in a warmer so the edges were dried out, not just the surface, but a quarter-inch deep. In addition to fresh butter, Ira served a compote of artichoke hearts, garlic, and olive oil. As Eliot Mackle would write, I gobbled it up. I ordered one of the specials, fettuccini with smoked trout, onions, snow peas, and yellow squash (although the waitress said it would be smoked trout, onions, and green bell peppers). Although it sounded interesting, and the ingredients were of high quality and properly cooked, they did not seem to work together. The smoky trout had the only flavor, the squash, onions, and snow peas all being rather bland. A white wine sauce and some herbs, of which the dish was devoid, might have brought it to life. I may have been fortunate, as the portion was too big even for a bicycle tourist on a blowout; I ate too much and still left some. Curiously, in Bernard Malamud's The Natural, which I'm reading, the protagonist Roy Hobbs was eating so much in this part of the story that he nearly killed himself. I'm not sure I understand it. His appetites nearly destroyed him, I guess. Mine didn't - I outrode them. I outrode any objective I ever imagined for myself. And after it all, I still wanted to ride.

So ends the longest bike tour I shall ever take, most likely. I was sorry not to be camping under the trees in the cool Oregon air or staying in a town you can ride across in five minutes or plotting where I would ride the next day. The next morning, after separating the stuff I would take to Arizona (it fit easily into one front pannier) from the stuff I would ship back to Atlanta, I loaded the Cannondale once more and hit the street. It felt good. Tires felt low, but I let it go. I rode one mile to Bikes and Beyond, 1089 Marine Street, where the proprietor congratulated me. I packed the panniers and camping gear into a big box and lugged it four blocks to a shipping place. As a last souvenir I bought two water bottles with the Bikes and Beyond logo in green. They looked good on the Cannondale against the cherry smoke paint. I gripped her bars one more time, wanting to do something with her, but I took a last fond look at my summer home bereft of panniers. Chris (I believe his name was) said, "One last look, eh?" I shook his hand and thanked him; he congratulated me again; and I walked back into the world where riding a bike is just something to do.