Week 1

It is my job to tell you the story as it happened, and not to deprive you of any instances that you may find amusing or beneficial. This means this is not a children’s memo, or for anyone easily offended. My family, I know you’ll still love me. My friends, the same. Future followers, don’t pass judgment, just enjoy the ride, as I know I will. Friends, family, and future followers; feel free to pray for me. God knows I’ll need everything I can get.

Day 1, April 21
“Are You Fucking Kidding Me?”
“Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” These were the first words uttered from my mouth as we pulled out of our friends house to start our three month long bicycle journey. In Asheville, off of Merimon Avenue, we are pulling down the driveway to the street and my platypus, a large water carrying device, slides out of it’s containment, crashing on the pavement and sliding down the hill. Upon retrieval it had indeed cracked. “Your fuckin’ kiddin’ me!” I uttered as I laid my bike on the ground, still in the driveway, to roll the platypus up and put into one of my saddle bags.(I call them saddle bags; I know cyclists call them panniers, but I think so much of the cycling community has always seemed whack, I thought I would just stick to my own terms for comforts sake.)
Once I put my large water vessel, now broken, away, I picked my bike up, put one foot into the rat-cage style peddle, and was ready to go again, only now with significantly less water. My girlfriend, the really strong type, has her head together, she inspires people, goin’ to med-school, all around one bad-ass chick, is looking over her shoulder back at me, just shaking her head in amusement as I start roll slowly towards her again. Then, still in the driveway, the bag that I had just put now broken water vessel in, falls off of my rack will I’m tickin’ at a decent 3 mph. “Seriously, you-have-got to-be-fuckin’-kiddin’-me!”
This was how the journey started. Not even out of the fucking driveway yet and all this has happened. My girlfriend, Lauren, you know, the real strong type, is throughly enjoying herself at this point. Things are back on and we are on our way. I can only keep thinking about the “naysayers” in my head. It must be known that the “naysayers” are a very specific group of individuals, who happen to be my best friends, and are absolutely unrelenting on my decision to take this cross country journey with Lauren, the strong one, on a bicycle, for a fundraiser, to benefit people, help out, you know—-do something good in the world. One of the original bets placed against me, and there are many bets against me and my journey right now, was how far I would make it. One dear friend said Black Mountain. My journey takes me from Asheville NC, to Seattle WA, to San Diego CA. Black Mountain is in the wrong direction. “Naysayers” are good dudes, but they are against me at this point, and I’d be a fucking liar if I didn’t say they are winning at this point.
“Onward.” I proclaim.
We have gone 20 miles and Lauren, strong, has made mention of having a hard time. This seemed unfathomable to me, as she just finished a two month bike tour of South East Asia for this fundraiser, and is just all around in amazing shape. We asses a few things, and truck on. Western North Carolina is not the ideal first day out for a trip, as you are already in the mountains like small, untended sheep, and every 4,000+ foot peak doesn’t gently roll at you like Bo-peep with hugs and kisses, but rather jaggedly entering through your ribs and puncturing your lungs like packs of wild wolfs; almost as unrelenting as the naysayers. 2 miles later she proclaims she has to stop.
“I’m fucking leaving half of this shit hear!” She’s from Maryland, so her accent is not anything like my southern draw, there for her vernacular may not exist. After further assessment we realize there is a post office in Hot Springs only 5.2miles away. She shows me her quad. It is jumping like a puppy would under a light blanket or sheet, shuffling with delight. She doesn’t share this sentiment. I picked her bike up, then mine. Hers was near twenty pounds heavier than mine, more unfathomable to me because 1) she’s like a pro and has done this type of thing before and 2) because I am hauling textbooks in my saddlebags as well as everything else one might need.(Grad student, summer classes. We’ll see how it works out.) I gave Lauren some Progenex to aid her current ailments, worked, kinda.
We start the trek to the Hot Springs post office. Original goal of the day was to be twenty miles past Hot Springs. Uncertainty now looms. Only 5.2 miles. At that time we didn’t realize that the huge uphill climb we had just scaled lead us to a 2 mile more up hill, 8% grade. We walked. Pushing the bikes up the hill and bitchin’ the whole way, I could only think to myself, “You know, I can’t think of one place I’d rather be right now.” I have quite the pension for things that are difficult.
Made it into Hot Springs, mailed some weight off, ate a huge meal, booked a tent site, and called it a day after clean up, studying, and some seriously awesome close time with my amazingly strong women. Did I mention her bike was at least twenty pounds heavier than mine?
April 22, 2013
“Your GPS is Wrong”
Tired. Quick recap. Biked 62-64miles today. Followed the GPS down some wrong turns, where there was even a printed sign that read “Your GPS is Wrong”. Giggled to myself about how easy the first fifty miles were today, haven’t even had to push the bike up a hill after yesterdays ridiculousness. I then pushed my bike up four different hills after that. GPS then took us through some Tennessee housing developments. Highways are usually graded out smoothly over a long distance; developments are hilly nightmares that will haunt your dreams. Almost renegade camped. Didn’t, sick lake view, grilled steak, and burnt the left half of my beard off. Lauren says the tent is filled with the terrible smell of burnt hair. All in all, way easier than yesterday. Rock on. Meet a guy at camp who took our money in the shop, receipt, legit transaction. He had this huge golf cart. Not really a gator, but overhauled to be like one; still a golf cart though. I sake him “this thing got glow plugs?” He looked at me like I was an idiot, and smugly replied, “Naw man, this things electric.” He wasn’t amused by my humor, nor recognized that it was a joke.

April 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28, 2014
First Warm Showers host on 23 in Corbin KY. Super awesome. Leading to Corbin we ended up on an interstate, and trust me, many people precede statements with “You haven’t lived until…” but seriously…You haven’t lived until you have biked on an interstate. Dodging traffic on on-ramps is absolutely exhilarating. Hosts were great. Elaine, who I am assuming is sixty+ years of age, biked 17 miles with us out. Her and her husband were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in two weeks by doing a half triathlon. These folks were serious endurance folks. On the 24th, we biked into a liberal college town, Berea, and stayed with a man and his family, another warm showers host. Nice folks, daughter won some competition about writing about a novel that I had never heard of for the whole state of KY. The funny thing about the house was that, as I write this now on the 28th, I’ve biked in all sorts of weather and terrain, and I haven’t been as muddy as when I left the inside of their house. Great people though. Next day tried to bike to Lawrenceburg. Terrible weather, wind in our face. We are already accustomed to the wind blowing in our faces since we are, quite wisely I might add, heading from east to west. Found a warm showers host who was nice enough to come pick us up nearly thirty miles from his house. We went 17 miles in 2.5hours, and totaled 34 miles this day. Our new host, Dave, was super awesome, and he biked the whole way to Louisville with us, which was such great motivation.
Pulling into Louisville was like starting an amazing dream. The roads were perfect, traffic wasn’t dense, and as we pulled by multiple restaurants and the smell of pulled BBQ filled the air, a slight breeze took the blossoms off of the trees and made a flowered path for us to drive through. Seriously, it was fucking beautiful. The closer we got to down town, the more awesome this place became. We had a host, Forrest and Beth. Super awesome, took us to a bar for some killer pork tacos. There was a downtown festival, as it is one week before the derby, which apparently affects both large cities. The festival made Asheville seem conservative; seriously is was a tattooed circus. No stretch of the truth. Rings and ribbons, ladders, roller skates, hola-hoops, bearded women, and sparkling mead. Interesting.
Forrest told us that there was one road to not go down on our way out of Louisville, and of course, that is the one road that we went down. Everything was barred up, even church windows had bars. Lauren shouts “Did you see those teddy bears around that light pole? They had a picture of a little kid who got shot!” The only thing that I could think was “Mouth shut, eyes open, pedal hard, get us da fuck outta here.” Realizing that I had a blonde haired blue eyed beauty, and a white boy wearing spandex in the middle of the section 8 government housing, shit got sketchy. The fact that I’m a total pussy and grew up in the middle of “small-town U.S.A.” doesn’t help any. I’ve got thick skin, tough as leather when need be. I’ve had weapons pulled on me before. I’ve hung out with the junkies. I’m just not cut out for that shit.
Made it out of the city and into the outskirts, onto Dixie Highway. Lauren and I have had a few small quarrels over her drafting me closely, then running into me. Not that this set the stage, but Lauren was drafting me, a pot whole appeared that took the length of the whole shoulder, Lauren ran into me causing her to flip, and the rest of the day turned to shit. Lauren’s elbow was swollen and bleeding everywhere, she had hit her head denting her helmet, and I felt like dog shit. Since the incident, I have replayed the situation in my head well over twenty times. I usually like to speak in hyperbole, but I can’t really exaggerate when the situation made me feel the way it did. When I flew out of my rat cages and turned around, I saw Lauren with her legs bent to the side, sitting up right, looking at her hands, blood running off the end of her right limb, and tears coming out of her eyes as she cried genuinely from pain; I felt destroyed. A worthless child in bad trouble. A “grade A” jerk. I’ll never forget that site, and I hope I never have to see anything like it. Sure, there was no serious injury, and I was able to fix most of the bike issues on the spot, but nothing can explain what happens in that moment that makes us feel the way we do. If you’ve ever been in a traffic accident where someone was seriously messed up, you understand what I mean. It was a traffic accident, and it fucked us up. After the wreck, a nice lady pulled up and asked if we needed help. Replying that we had a phone and would call an ambulance if need be, she showed up around ten minutes later with cold water and Aleve, a nice gesture. “You know this is called Dixie-Die-way, right?” Fucking great, lady. Exactly what we wanted to hear.
We pushed on Dixie-fucking-death-trap for around twenty more miles before stopping at a war memorial. We sat for around twenty minutes before a family drove in, checking out the memorial. As they were leaving, they saw Lauren, dried blood, head down, and asked if she was alright. We got to chatting, they felt our pain, and hitch hiked us to Owensboro, KY, just over eighty miles away were we caught up with another warm showers host. A nice family, sweet neighborhood, kids, house; a pretty rad set up. The husband fixed up Lauren’s broken break lever, ran new brake lines, and made some adjustments to her newly bent set up in around twenty minutes. Showers, sushi, and two days later, the journey continues. There have been massive tornado outbreaks around the area, 17 families died a good bit of miles north west of us, and the weather has had us trapped for some time. As the weather breaks tomorrow, the journey will continue on.