Back in the 1980 presidential debates, Jimmy Carter would launch a spirited, thoughtful challenge to Reagan’s simplistic platforms and world view, only to have Ronnie dismiss him with “there you go again.”
Three years after my tripis interruptus, I’m at it again. My blogging has been sparse, we’ve had a spate of weddings, trips to England, Italy, Mexico, and Australia/New Zealand together, and a fair amount of sailing, hiking, skiing, and beach time. We’ve moved daughter Hope to Brooklyn and Portland Maine. I’ve taken a bunch of short bike tours, totaling about 50 days. Kept my medical toe in the water, precepting the resident clinic with some regularity. Maintained my board certification. Renovated the house. Done a ton of NYT crosswords and rarely missed Jeopardy. Even managed to take those semiannual sightseeing junkets with my homies we call Phizzing. Retirement has been great.
But something’s missing. As I mentioned a few posts back, the dream is deferred, and I can’t get it the sea to summit thing out of my head. I’ve just turned 70, the goal is still within reach, but just barely. Call it narcissistic, egotistic, solipsistic, or one of those other istics; I just gotta try, at least once more. Almost 400 people have done the 50 highpoints, but none from the sea. Pretty lame Guinness entry, but there it is.
I know it’s selfish, abandoning Jane for another 6 months. She’ll have a major kitchen/first floor reno to occupy her, and lots of chances to go to the beach or lake with her sisters and friends, but still. I really can’t justify it, just like I couldn’t justify the risk of climbing Denali 26 years ago.
The karmic gods are punishing me. My flight out of Montreal is delayed 2 hours, I won’t arrive at my B&B in Vancouver until after 11 (2AM my time). I’ve besmirched my “no fossil fuel” mantra by taking a jet, the most climately impactful way to travel. To do that I’ve had to shoehorn my bike into a regulation suitcase, avoiding oversized baggage fees.
Clever, fortunate the bike has couplers that make this possible, but MacGuyvering this contortion takes 4 hours at each end. I was up most of last night putting it in, will need to do the opposite tonight. Oh, and the forecast for tomorrow’s ride is a rainy headwind. Are we having fun yet?
Enough wallowing in self pity. I brought this on myself. Jane is being wonderful, holding goodbye dinners with friends and family, driving me to the airport despite her disappointment and misgivings, it was so painful to see her drive away. It will be a time, whatever happens. Let me cut this post short and try to get some shuteye on the flight.
[OK sports fans, breaking radio silence. It has been 11 months since my last confession—er—post. This summer it was Jane’s turn to plan the vacations, we walked the Cornwall coast and e-biked England’s Lake District in May, and just got back from Italy. We’ll start with the latter, actually the story starts 43 years ago]
August 2, 1979. He looked just like Giancarlo Giannini with those soulful eyes gazing searchingly into mine as he stooped down slowly behind John’s chair. It was our first day in Rome, my med school classmate and I, and we were having dinner on an outdoor patio, slightly raised. I remember thinking, what a sad looking fellow, from what hardship must he have come? Was he hoping for a handout? Suddenly with a whoosh he was gone and John cried, Oh my God, that was our backpack!
Our guidebook had warned us about Rome. Theft was rampant, pickpockets everywhere. We decided to keep everything–money, passports, ID, camera, airline tickets home, the receipts for the bikes we had checked ahead to Munich–in a securely zippered backpack that one of us would wear in front of us, a frontpack of sorts. John had stashed it carefully under his chair as we were eating. He’d looped a foot through one of the straps, but I guess he had shifted his footing.
We dashed after him down the alley, but heard a motorbike roaring away. We couldn’t believe it. We were penniless in a strange country where we didn’t speak the language. Even our hotel key was in the pack; we were homeless as well. No cell phones or Google Translate back then, the one time we’d called home on this 2 month Europe trip we had to wait in a long line for a booth at the post office, and pay for an expensive long-distance call.
Crestfallen, we found our way to the nearest police station. The guy there didn’t speak English, but we gathered he said something like, “American theft victims in Rome? Oh yeah, we’ll get right on it.”
We didn’t know what to do but head back to our hotel. 3 miles, we didn’t even have money for the bus. Thankfully the proprietress recognized us, and let us in for a fretful sleep, balefully contemplating throwing ourselves on the mercy of the American consulate in the morning.
The proprietress woke us up at 5 in the morning–our pack had been found! A cleaning woman had found it torn open in a trash filled parking lot a mile from the crime scene, and called the number on the hotel key. Hope against hope we ran the whole way, knowing how much US passports were worth on the black market. Boy were we lucky. We rooted through the piles of trash and found everything, crumpled and strewn, everything but the money and the camera. The camera was a cheap Instamatic, and the money was in travelers’ checks. Through the flood of relief I almost felt sorry for “Giancarlo,” he looked desperately poor and didn’t even know what he had. The lumbering polizia might even nab him if he tried to cash those checks.
The line at American Express went around the block for US citizens trying to recover their money, but I had enough of my high school French to get into the French line, which was much shorter. I had even, thank heavens, kept a log of the travelers’ check numbers, which sped things considerably. All told, we only lost half a day and a cheap camera.
The rest of our time in Rome was wonderful, but the episode colored the experience, and I hadn’t been back until now. Jane and I had planned a two week tour of Tuscany, and flew into Rome with our friends Barbara and Rit. Without too much hassle we got a shuttle train from the airport to the Termini station to catch the bullet train to Florence. Termini was crowded and chaotic, and I helped Barbara and Jane get their bags off the shuttle. We had a couple of hours to kill, and decided to escape the hubbub by taking a brief stroll with our bags to the Victor Emmanuel II monument. The weather was perfect, and it was delightful to be out walking with hardly any weight.
At least for me. Everyone else was burdened, and I suddenly realized, where’s my bag? In my effort to be helpful I left my own bag on the shuttle! I dashed back through the mobbed station, I thought I found the track we had arrived on, but the train was gone, headed back to the airport. Oh no! It’s déjà vu all over again! Not in Rome for two hours and again I was bereft.
I still have no Italian, but managed in my panic to find a stationmaster with a little English, who was able to radio the conductor on the train, and confirm my bag was there. I only had to wait an hour for the train to come back. So saved again from dumb disaster by dumb luck, and the kindness of strangers*.
But Rome wasn’t through with me yet. After two terrific weeks in Tuscany (post is pending), we had to go back through Rome to get home. We had a hotel under 2 miles from the station, and opted for a cab, rather than walk or untangle the byzantine Roman public transit system. We knew to watch out for taxi scams, and got in the official line for cabs. A kindly older driver helped us cram all our bags into the back, and entertained us with his verbal and gesticulating flourishes as he navigated the labyrinthine streets and crazy traffic. €48 seemed a bit steep, but I shrugged and gave him a 50 that Jane had handed me. I glanced away for a second, and he was protesting: I’d only given him a ten. He showed me the bill. We were double-parked on a busy street, the horns were honking and rather than make a fuss I just handed him another 40.
As we checked in, the hotel clerk informed us that the usual taxi fare from Termini was €20 . And we’d paid 90. Sheesh. Hearing our story later, daughter Hope remarked it was probably karma for our earlier rescue at the train station. But, but he seemed such a kindly and charismatic gentleman…
We only had half a day to spend in the Eternal City, and the thing we most wanted to see, the Galleria Borghesi, was closed on Mondays. We opted for St. Peter’s and Tasso’s Oak, as I will post later.
In the immigration and security rush at the airport the next day, I had to go back through the line again because I had failed to empty my water bottle. Chagrined at keeping the others waiting, in the tumult I neglected to recover my Apple Watch from the X-ray tray. Going back, of course I found the trays had been whisked away. Oh geez, not again. But there it was, improbably, at the lost and found. Snatched from the jaws of defeat once more.
Looking back, I’m reminded of a line from a favorite movie, Body Heat—I’ve learned how to use my incompetence as a weapon. Peck and Hepburn it wasn’t, but my Roman Holiday proved to be a metaphor for Rome itself, a mash-up of ancient and new, timeless elegance and mundane urban blight, shameless rogues and selfless rescuers. It was not that I loved chaos less, but that I loved Rome more.
*if you scroll back to my 4/24/21 post from Rome, NY, you’ll see I appreciated the kindness of strangers there, too. Blanche Dubois all over again.
Another coincidence: in 9th grade I was moved, unaccountably, to memorize the entire Friends Romans and Countrymen soliloquy, that followed hard upon Brutus’ lines above. And so began my lifelong infatuation with Shakespeare.
Thanks also to Lina Wertmüller, Yogi Berra, Lawrence Kasdan, Dalton Trumbo, and Tennessee Williams for help with this post.
Gaithersburg, Maryland to Washington DC November 1, 2021
For a science major, I seem to lard my narrative with a lot of literary references.
Most of us have seen Les Misèrables, and many have read Hugo’s novel. A pivotal scene is where Jean Valjean, on the lam from Javert for years, learns another man has been mistaken for him, and is about to be sent back to jail for skipping parole. He is up all night, agonizing over whether he should let this guy take the rap for him, or whether he should confess. The song in the musical is Who Am I?
I barely slept last night. Do I stay or do I go? Do I push on or do I blow? I’d ducked out to this motel in the heart of suburbia so I could clear my head. I’d decided that taking the canal was a non-starter. But the appeal of the canal was cutting through the mountains. If you look at satellite pictures of the middle Appalachians, it looks like someone drew a rake across the landscape. One long 2000-3000 foot ridge after another. Like crossing corrugated cardboard. Similar to Connecticut, but steeper. Once you get to Mt. Davis, it gets easier. You go with the grain, riding the valleys to the southwest. But to get there, you have to go against the grain. The corrugations added up to many thousands of feet of elevation gain, more than I had bargained for. I’d gotten a little soft with my two months in the Barcalounger, and was counting on 200 miles of the Canal to toughen me up before the climbs.
The ridges metaphor evoked another favorite novel of mine, John Updike’s Rabbit, Run. Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom was a high school basketball star, now in his twenties and dismayed by the mediocrity of his existence. So different from the glory he had known. One evening he abruptly decides to bolt from his wife and child and drive from his home in Reading PA to the sweet low cotton fields of the south, follow those Appalachian ridges until they deposit him at the Gulf of Mexico, where he can remove his shoes and fall asleep on the beach, the sun a great pillow in the sky. This is in the days before interstates and GPS, and he must negotiate the tangle of mountain roads with only a paper map.
Updike is a master of making the mundane beautiful. He makes Rabbit’s run, geographically accurate, one of the most compelling set pieces I have ever read, and I found myself following the route on my road atlas. Rabbit gets repeatedly lost, trusting to instinct as he darts around ever more frantically, finally seeing the tangle of roads on the map as a net, trapping him even more than he felt when he started. He calms down, solemnly tears the map into pieces, and hops on a straight road taking him home.
It felt so stupid, so frigging stupid, to bail again after only two short days. At least I’d come 5400 miles the first time. Again, I knew the challenges before I got on the train. I promised to be done after a year, this was my chance, it was now or never. I wanted to trust to instinct, felt once I got on the road that moxie, that mojo, would kick in, sustaining me as it had before. I didn’t want to believe I was too old for this nonsense. I haven’t read Barack Obama’s book, but the title touched a chord. The Audacity of Hope.
Another sustaining narrative is Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. It’s about these two goofballs, Bill and Katz, who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail despite being comically unprepared. The driver taking them to the trailhead tells stories of the other bozos he’s taken, knowing full well he’ll be picking them up again within a week. One guy comes back a second time—his wife refused to let him quit so soon after spending so much on equipment. Sure enough, he bails again, and the driver picks him up, asking him “what about your wife?” “This time I’m not going home.”
Anyway, Bill and Katz wind up doing more than half the trail, in dribs and drabs. After one poignant passage, involving Katz falling off the wagon and getting lost, they decide to quit, only a few days from the end at Katahdin. Bill mopes about failing, but Katz is having none of it. “We hiked it. We hiked in heat, bugs, rain, and snow. We hiked until our feet bled. I don’t care what anybody says. As far as I’m concerned, we hiked the Appalachian Trail.”
Like I said, I was up half the night, staring at that net, trying to find a way through that cardboard. I knew I could do it. At that famous outhouse, on Denali, in the quagmires around Timm’s Hill, and countless other places I’ve felt despair and misery, but pushed on, feeling ultimately enriched by an adventure, rather than just another trip. Did I now have the motivation? I thought I did. But when push came to shove, did I really? What was the funny name of that Buffalo suburb? Lackawanna.
As I imagine is obvious to many of you, this trip isn’t really about the highpoints, or sea level, or the bike, or my father, or losing weight. Those are all important, as are the kindnesses of strangers, seeing the country at ground level, reaffirming my patriotism, and reconnecting with family and friends. But what it’s really about is finding my way after retirement. Perhaps I can find a way that feeds my soul, and is a little less, shall we say, maladaptive.
Ultimately, like Rabbit, I trusted my instincts.
And like Rabbit, the way home was easier. I saw it went right by the grave of F. Scott Fitzgerald. For such an acclaimed writer, it was a little hard to find, in an obscure graveyard in Rockville, of all places. It didn’t stand out, but who could miss the stone covered with glasses and bottles? A little bizarre, considering his alcoholism.
Closing the loop with the Fitzgerald Theatre, in St. Paul on 7/21/21
And in another bizarre twist, guess who else was buried there? OK, one too many Ts
Close by was one of my PHIZ buddies, Matt Freeman and his wife Amanda. So great to reconnect, hadn’t seen them for almost two years. In another class move, I showed up hungry at the lunch hour, and scored some great chicken stew.
Matt and Amanda
Rockville Pike was a major artery, but I still have my urban cycling skills, and it wasn’t too hairy to follow it past NIH and Bethesda Naval to the crown jewel of rail trails, the Capital Crescent. An unbroken, beautifully paved glide downhill with overpasses and tunnels
sluicing unvexed through the rush hour traffic to Georgetown, and the Three Sisters Islands.
Weren’t these also at Niagara Falls? See 4/30/21
There’s a great parable about these islands involving DC home rule, the trucking lobby, urban freeways, and the Metro. Remind me to tell you sometime.
I was deposited in the heart of DC during a glorious late afternoon and sunset, snaked my way past all the landmarks, but I’ll leave it to my Uncle David to take the iconic photos. One last obscure touchstone, by way of a coda. The water gate at the start of the C&O Canal not only leant its name to the office building, but also to the Watergate Steps hard by the Lincoln Memorial, perhaps DC’s answer to the Odessa Steps. Originally designed to serve as a grand entrance to the capital, where dignitaries would disembark from their boats, it instead was the site of concerts. A barge with the stage tied up in front, and the audience would sit on the steps. Only the old timers will remember, they stopped in the mid sixties. Now they’re mostly used by fitness buffs.
The Watergate Steps
So now it’s all over but the shouting. Another night at the Yotel, and I appreciate the twelve hour train trip to do the blog. Thankfully, this little stunt didn’t cost too much. Perhaps the second greatest wussy story ever told. Lots of work to do, figuring out my third act.
Let me close with F. Scott. The inscription on his grave is his most famous, the last line of Jay Gatsby’s story, and certainly resonates with me as a sailor. But I prefer taking the last three paragraphs together:
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—-
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Like Jay, I believe in the green light.
Distance 30 miles, 4,520 total. Time 6 hours with stops. Elevation gain 985 feet
Glen Echo to Gaithersburg, Maryland Sunday, Halloween 2021
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the C&O Canal in our nation’s, and in my history. It dates back to George Washington, who saw the Potomac as a path to the nation’s interior, and envisioned a series of bypass canals to detour around the waterfalls and rapids. His idea morphed into the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, an Erie Canal wannabe, hoping to cash in on the westward expansion gravy train, linking the Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio River, and the Mississippi basin.
The idea was doomed from the start. On the same day John Quincy Adams turned the first shovelful of dirt on July 4th, 1828, the B&O railroad kicked off from Baltimore. Unlike the Erie, which traversed mainly flat terrain, the C&O cut through rugged mountains and paralleled an unruly river. At one point, Paw Paw, a tunnel had to be built, the first canal tunnel in the world. Construction was dogged by labor disputes, poor treatment of immigrant workers, and cholera outbreaks. By the time it reached Cumberland MD in 1850, a little over halfway to Pittsburgh with the Great Eastern Divide (over 2000 feet high) yet to cross, the B&O had been there 8 years, and the canal was obsolete.
The unfinished canal enjoyed some success, it could haul coal cheaply and was competitive if speed of delivery was not a factor. The Potomac flooded frequently, however, necessitating expensive repairs, and after a bad one in 1924 the canal was abandoned, and soon became a derelict ditch. It was saved from being paved over by a highly-publicized hike in March 1954 by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, was partially restored (most of it still a ditch with a towpath) and in 1971 became a national historical park. The river didn’t get the memo, though, and still floods frequently, with frequent closures.
The Douglas hike was two weeks before I was born, and the canal has always been magical for me. At age 14 my buddy Eric and I did our first “bike hike” to Great Falls, an audacious 30 mile trip that began my love affair with bike tours. So appealing: flat, beautiful, a conduit through history and mountain scenery without climbing, and with “hiker-biker overnighter” campsites every 5 miles. We did many trips in our Raleigh 3-speeds with wire baskets carrying our trash-bag protected gear. Many of you have heard my “famous outhouse” story, where we were caught in a freezing March rain with only a Sears drop cloth for shelter, and four of us had to cram in to a smelly old outhouse for hours, before bolting 10 mountainous miles in the sleet to be picked up at Harpers Ferry. A sympathetic friend dubbed it “the greatest wussy story ever told”.
It didn’t matter. I was hooked. I have biked the 184 mile length of it three times, and it never gets old. In a twist of irony, one of the rail lines that spelled the defeat of the canal went bankrupt itself, and was converted into a rail trail, the Great Allegheny Passage, that completed the route to the Ohio. The GAP is newer, better graded and surfaced, and goes through restored, lighted tunnels and over impressive viaducts. In 2012 I bribed Jane and Hope into doing the whole enchilada, 335 miles from DC to Pittsburgh, by staying in posh B&Bs. I was in heaven, but as quoted in my 5/19/21 post, Jane dismissed it as “a boring green tunnel”. Well.
So it’s been nine years since I pounded the towpath, and it was the hook that got me going on this resurrection of the highpoint junket. Irresistible, a slingshot shooting me deep into the mountains with minimal hills, depositing me 10 miles from Mt. Davis, the Pennsylvania summit. Eagerly anticipating, I downloaded a complete towpath guide, full of the rich historical minutia that really floats my boat.
Ah, romanticism vs. reality. The connecting path from Glen Echo was comically rough, down a steep railroad tie-studded slope I knew I could never get back up again, then around some washed out spots from the recent rain that were almost impassable. I was relieved to hit the relative safety of the towpath. It started out great
The classic canal scene, the Potomac on the left
but soon devolved into ruts, roots, rocks and some near-washout spots. I knew this was the best-maintained part of the canal, and that crappy weather was coming soon. I’d ambitiously secured a warmshowers host 60 miles up the canal at Harpers Ferry, involving many metal steps to cross the bridge over the Potomac, and a warning from the host of a steep climb to his house. The thing about cycling in the late fall is, it gets dark early. I’d gotten one of my trademark jackrabbit starts (9:30). There were only primitive campgrounds (back in the day, I didn’t care that the hiker-biker sites had only a water pump) for accommodations before Harpers Ferry.
I knew all this in advance, of course. I knew some critical points, like the Paw Paw Tunnel, were closed, and that the detours were irksome. If I’d thought it through, I might have guessed that rattling down a bumpy path for hundreds of miles with my arthritic bones and a 110 pound bike might not be a cakewalk. But hey, I’m a guy. As Jane loves to say, guys have the dumb-stick.
In 10 miles, I hit Great Falls, more impressive than usual with the recent rain.
It’s not Niagara, but the river falls 75 feet here
I was transported back to age 14, where it all began, but now the trip seemed even more audacious. Just like at the base of the Rockies, the wind was out of my sails. I talked with Jane for an hour, and decided to duck out to a motel. It was 12 miles off the canal, but I was pretty sure I had to deep-six the canal idea.
Even on this downer of a day, there were Easter Eggs. It was Sunday, scads of people were out, and my tricked-out bike got lots of those oohs and ahhs that I seem to crave. When booking the motel, I discovered I had something called Hilton Honors points that allowed me to score a nice room for $4.29. At a Subway, I helped a woman having trouble calling an Uber, she was just back from hiking in the Pennsylvania mountains I was headed for. We chatted awhile she waited for her ride, and it turns out she is the sister of Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Libby Powell
I know. A typical DC moment, random brushes with greatness. Shameless name-dropping. But she was delightful, and the encounter brightened my day considerably.
Distance 22 miles, 4,490 total. Time 6 hours with stops. Elevation gain 728 feet
Washington DC to Glen Echo, Maryland Saturday October 30, 2021
Been away for 40 years, but DC is still my hometown. Today was short on milage, but chock full of visiting friends, family, and old haunts. From that first Mr. Smith Goes to Washington view of the Capitol as I left Union Station last night, my mind was awash in nostalgia and reminiscing.
Hadn’t noticed the homeless person when I snapped the photo in the drizzle
My hotel, the “Yotel,” was ultra trendy with muted, colorful lighting and a front desk called Mission Control, but when you flattened the motorized bed/recliner you had minimal room to walk by. Like the Hilton Tru in Cheyenne, it was all about cramming in more rooms.
Had breakfast with Harvey Washington (see my post of 5/17/21) and we talked of our high school days and our medical careers, he’s still working long hours. We could have gone on for hours, made plans to get together more in the future.
Harvey
Then off to Lafayette Square, passing the White House
for coffee with My Uncle David and Lynne. Again, not enough time, but it was lovely to see them.
Passed my med school, remembered how we used to refer to the odd building as “the box the Lincoln Memorial came in.”
To restart the highpoints, I needed to touch sea level again, what better place than at Tidelock on the C&O Canal, also known as the water gate, the gate between the canal and the tidal Potomac. The infamous Watergate office complex rises just behind.
I posted on 7/31/21 that my highpoint obsession began on Spruce Knob in 1973, but I wonder if it was locked in long before. The highpoint of DC, Point Reno, was between my junior and senior high schools. Not officially marked back then, I’d walked within yards of it daily for years. Today was a chance to scale it from sea to summit, reminiscing along the way.
I passed the Shoreham, where Mom and Day spent their one-night honeymoon before Dad had to report to Frankfurt, Germany. Mom followed a few months later, and two years after that, she had me.
Nearby were the two group houses I lived in in med school, both near the zoo
2830 27th Street, 2629 Garfield Street
On up Connecticut Avenue to my childhood neighborhood, just two blocks away from Comet Pizza, site of the infamous Pizzagate Incident in 2017
Thence to my three grade schools, site of my Wonder Years
Ben W. Murch Elementary, Alice Deal Junior High, Woodrow (now August) Wilson Senior High
I guess Georgian architecture was a thing back in the 1930s, all three schools were WPA projects.
Between Deal and Wilson was Point Reno, now marked with a sign and a benchmark.
If DC attains its long-overdue statehood, this would be highpoint # 38, 20 from sea level
Just a short hop to the house I grew up in, now all tricked out for Halloween
5107 38th Street NW, my home for 13 years. So many memories…
The last 4 miles of this trip down memory lane took me to an old med school classmate, Mark Head. He was staying with his friend Anna in the leafy Maryland suburb of Glen Echo, and they treated me to a lovely dinner with another friend Josephine, and a soft bed. So great to reconnect and catch up.
Anna, Mark, and me
Distance 14 miles, 4,468 total. Time 6 hours with stops. Elevation gain 835 feet
I thought I was done. Maybe I am done. But I’ve decided to give it another go.
It was good to be back. Despite all my trepidations, it was clearly the right thing to do. Thanks to all of you for the supportive comments, calls, and letters. I got one more day in the mile-high city with my terrific hostess, we saw the Molly Brown mansion and a couple of awesome art galleries, before we scored a great sushi dinner; she drove me to the airport the next day. Shipping the bike and gear home was crazy expensive but easy. By Sunday night, I was back in lovely Vermont, just in time for a primo September and that famous foliage. We took a bunch of hikes, saw a bunch of friends, and I did my wigged-out Boston to Provincetown ride for the 36th (and I think last) time.
But what happens to a dream deferred? I’m not too fond of raisins and God knows Vermont doesn’t get much sun. I didn’t explode, but I felt adrift. Without the press of having to go another 40-50 miles every day, it was too easy to just veg. As the Thane of Cawdor said, I had no spur to prick the sides of my intent. OK, enough with the hackneyed literary tie-ins.
The grim truth was, I had no other plans for my retirement. All last year was spent planning the ride, preening my steed, and waiting out the pandemic. Back home, I didn’t feel safe resuming until I could get a stress test (equivocal, but without worrisome signs) and my booster. I was first in line when Moderna #3 got approved last Friday; piggybacked with the high-dose flu shot we seniors are supposed to get, it was a few days before I felt up to snuff. Now I’m ready to bolt.
Between the short hikes and rides I was doing, I spent too much time in the Barcalounger (the “death chair”, my family calls it). My poor eating habits continued, so you can imagine the results. Of course the smart move is to take my diet by the horns, and work on a sustainable retirement plan. Of course.
Hope made me a lovely poster for my sendoff last April. It’s still taped to the garage entry door. Great to see it then, now not so much.
I only wound up doing a third, 5,449 miles in four months
So there’s this big hole in the next few months where my trip was supposed to be. Never in favor of it, Jane was resigned to have me gone until next spring. She has her own trips planned with family and friends, and the bathroom/kitchen renovations loom, with their attendant disruption. Now’s my chance. One of the lessons of my golden years is to be flexible. Maybe I can salvage much of it.
As Hope’s rough map shows, the plan was to cross the northern states in the summer, drop down the west coast in the fall, and return across the southern states in the winter. Now winter is hard upon us, and as we speak I’m on a train from Vermont to my hometown of Washington DC. You can bring your bike, unboxed, for $20. I can “zero out” again at the sea-level Potomac, follow the towpath of the C&O Canal Historical Park, where I cut my teeth on bike touring, to the highpoints of the Alleghenies/Blue Ridge. I drove up these 50 years ago, but in my twisted logic, that “doesn’t count.” Breaking for the holidays, I’ll aim to follow the Appalachians south to Florida, then head west.
We’ll see if the weather cooperates. It’s raining heavily now, the towpath could be a muddy mess for a few days. A little snow is predicted in the Alleghenies. The days are getting shorter. With my winter gear, the bike is heavier than ever. This could be a fiasco. But hey, I’ve got to try.
Distance 4.9 miles, 5,454 total (I guess it’s OK to keep adding to the total) Elevation gain 212 feet
This will come as a shock to many of you. I’ve decided to stop.
Please don’t worry. I’m fine. There was no catastrophe, no trauma, no single thing that brought on this decision. It was just a lot of little things.
I just spent four days of unmitigated bliss and joy. It was so great to see my friends again, and their hospitality overwhelmed me. They were so kind to me, but the love they showed me had a curious reverse effect. It made it almost impossible to leave. Having tasted domestic bliss for the first time in four months, the prospect of going back to the daily challenges of the road was daunting.
There was one aspect of domestic bliss I did not get to taste. My wife had to cancel at the last minute because of a medical problem, not too serious, but prohibitive of travel. She’s already improving, was able to get a refund on her tickets, but it would be months and months before I could see her again. I had never been separated from her for this long, and now it was going to be longer.
The audacity of this whole enterprise was hung on the tender pegs of the state highpoints. I knew I was too old to do the big ones again, but had resolved to bike to their starting points, to climb them from sea level in two stages. My time off finally afforded me the chance to plot out the route, day by day, and look at what climbing the multiple high passes really entailed. A number of them were crazy steep, would necessitate prolonged stretches of walking my bike. I couldn’t get around it, it was just not practical. It was too late in the season. I could still make it to the Pacific, but instead would need to take Adventure Cycling’s signature Transamerica Trail. An exciting thought, it’s their most popular trail, and I would finally be able to meet other long-distance cycle tourists. Still, having to give up on the “prime mission” of this trip felt like kicking the legs out from under the whole enchilada. I put “prime mission” in quotation marks because I realized early on that the people I met were the real highpoints of the trip. So true, but still.
I was both thrilled and a little creeped out by the Front Range of the Rockies. I’d been looking forward to seeing them for so long, but when I finally got a good look it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was 7000 feet of sheer climb between Denver and the passes I would have to traverse. I had done this before, 9000 feet actually if you count the ascent of Longs Peak, but that was 15 years ago. I’m 67, hypertensive, prediabetic, recently obese, and traveling alone.
One the founding members of Adventure Cycling, very buff, about my age, who had led multiple long-distance tours, had been notified by his Apple Watch that there was an irregular heartbeat, and that he ought to get it checked out. He went to an urgent care center, and died before they could transfer him to the hospital.
Ever since I lifted my heavy bike into the pickup of that kindly sheriff’s deputy in Nebraska, I’ve had a nagging pain under my right shoulder blade. It became more evident when I was doing easy cycling, running errands during my sojourn, radiating up to my neck and around my entire thorax, possibly more evident with exertion but then that’s when I was twisting my shoulder more. It’s my business, my profession to tease out cardiac from noncardiac chest pain. This really felt non-cardiac. I was 95% sure…
All this was swirling through my head as I reluctantly rode away from my wonderful host. She lives on a plateau above Denver, so to approach the big climb of the Rockies I swooped downhill for 15 miles, giving me an even more eye-popping view. Today was one of those bluebird days, cool, crystal clear, with a soft tailwind and fantastic views. Just as I was rounding the corner to begin to climb, I got so distracted staring at my nav system that my wheel got hung up in a rut, and I tumbled over. It was onto a grassy bank, kind of like falling into a pile of cushions. No injuries, but I was still clipped in, and it was awkward disentangling myself. I was reminded of the father of a friend, who had one of those clipped-in falls that wound up having a significant impact on his life. There but for the grace of God. It just kind of knocked the wind out of my sails. I needed to have a root beer and a long talk with Jane, just to steady my nerves.
OK, I thought. Pull yourself together. You’re fine, it’s a perfect day. I cranked slowly uphill, past the awesome Red Rocks Amphitheater, my mind going back-and-forth. At the next rest stop, I studied the options, how much would it cost to go home; if I backtracked, could I get a reservation at a hotel in Denver? I kept going, the bike is so ideal that even bad hills are doable, but it was so slow. I had wasted time looking for a missing piece of equipment at the outset, and these additional delays had me way behind schedule. I knew I wouldn’t reach my original hotel in Georgetown until well after dark. I checked, there were no other campgrounds or hotels available. Those last 15 miles would have to be on the shoulder of I-70.
My NPR podcasts were full of bad news about the raging Delta variant, and the wildfires in the west. The worst of the wildfire season was yet to come. Parts of the Transamerica Trail had to be closed temporarily, and even now were under restricted use. The “bluebird-ness” of this day also had a curious reverse effect. This was the best the conditions could ever be, what happens when they revert to their usual heat or tempestuousness? No wildfire smoke today, but they were saying the smoke increases your susceptibility to Covid. It was now late summer, every day was getting noticeably shorter. One of my favorite songs, April, come she will, has this to say about August: the autumn winds blow chilly and cold. In my jumbled mind, I was fretful about heat and cold at the same time.
Do you ever experience the “false summit” conundrum? You’re climbing this big mountain, the trail is endless, you’re sure that when you round to the next bend you’ll be on top, only to see that there is more climb. So it was with me. I had teed up the Denver reservation on my cell phone, all I had to do was push the button. Take the irrevocable step (literally irrevocable. I am not going to put Jane through this again). I resisted at every “false summit” bend. Until one time, at 4:30 and 7,500 feet, I pushed it.
It felt like a huge weight off my chest. Roaring down the mountain, I hadn’t realized how steep the hill was that I was climbing. The views into Denver and of the surrounding mountains were beyond spectacular. I threaded around a tangle of police cars, there had been a bad accident on the road I had just passed, the ambulances had left but the wreckage was ghoulish. Another eerie omen.
Now I’m at that hotel in Denver, funny how rooms are so hard to get on the road on weekends, but are easy in the big cities. There is a big parcel of hassle coming up, figuring out how to ship my bicycle and all my stuff home, I am about to go to the UPS store. I fly out tomorrow morning.
Do I have regrets? Sure, it’s hard to have this epic, that has dominated my life for much more than these four months, come to an end. I am very sad not to be able to visit the friends and family that were on the agenda, but there will be other chances. I am particularly regretful to those who have been kind enough to say they’re living vicariously through this adventure. I feel like I have let them down, although I know they will protest to the contrary. I am so grateful to the followers of this blog, those who have commented and those who haven’t. It has been a tremendous comfort.
Even though I had a fitful night, I know this is the right thing. Kind of like Forrest Gump, when he just stopped running. The journey has been wonderful beyond words, the trip of a lifetime. The people I’ve met, the things I have seen, the nonstop kindnesses and goodwill I have been blessed with, the great realization of how special this country is, will stay with me forever. But it’s time to stop. Future adventures, this time with friends and family, await. My very best to you all.
Distance 64 miles, 5,449 total. Time 11 hours with stops. Elevation gain 3,057 feet
Greeley to Denver, Colorado Sunday, August 15, 2021
I could barely sleep, I was so excited. Today I would see a city I love, Denver, see dear friends, and soon rendezvous with my wife. A long day, 80 miles, but 50 of these were on bike paths, following the South Platte River, Cherry Creek, and the Highline Canal. All were beautifully designed and surfaced. The smoke dissipated and I could get a real view of the Rockies, specifically Longs Peak and Mt. Meeker.
At the confluence of the two rivers was an REI flagship store, always a magical place for me. Saw my sixth State Capitol, and a friendly tourist snapped a photo of the iconic inscription and marker on the steps, confirming I had arrived at the mile high city.
A short post for a very full day. The next few days will be visiting friends, shopping, planning, reuniting, and generally blissing out. I’ll start posting again when I’m back on the road. Enjoy a break from having to read them, hope you all can celebrate the waning days of summer, too.
Distance 80 miles, 5,385 total. Time 11 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,180 feet
Cheyenne, Wyoming to Greeley, Colorado Saturday, August 14, 2021
Before we get started, I have to lay down some snark on my quirky hotel. It was cute, trendy, and innovative, but it appeared that at bottom, it was about cutting costs. Hilton figured out that almost nobody uses the dressers in hotel rooms anymore, which were there in part to give enough room for the big color TVs of yore. Now it’s all flat screen TVs, so they got the idea that if you remove the desk and dresser, have a roll-out table instead, and have the chair do double duty, you can make the rooms narrower. A little claustrophobic, but it worked. Shelves were everywhere, even a webbing one on top of the air conditioner.
A walk-in shower is trendy, and takes up less room than a tub.
The soap, shampoo and conditioner were mounted on the wall, with cute slogans and logos. Unfortunately, the soap dispenser was empty, so I had to use shampoo for everything.
There was one triumph: the TP dispenser. For decades the debate has ranged, does the roll dispense from the top or the bottom? Poor Ann Landers, when she was still alive, got endless letters about this. But the Hilton Tru has solved the problem. True bipartisanship, in this age of polarization.
Turns out, you CAN have it both ways
Speaking of snark, my good friend Mary Jo (MJ), with whom I’ll be staying in Denver, rightly called me out for my snarky remarks about Wyoming yesterday, with a germane passage from Marcel Proust encouraging me to look at the landscape with new eyes, new attitudes, that only then could I expand my horizons. Inspiring words, and after reading them I noticed my speed had increased considerably, 5 mph faster than yesterday, with no help from the wind. Could my stamina have increased overnight? Was this a Proust boost?
Nah, it just turned out my elevation profile was the mirror image of yesterday’s. It seemed flat, but I was gradually descending 1500 feet from the high plains of Wyoming to the, um, regular plains of eastern Colorado.
Ah, Colorado! So excited to be here, been waiting so long.
You can see the flowers (daisies? sunflowers?) starting here and lining the highway for miles
The only state healthier than Vermont. Soaring peaks, lush valleys, legendary rivers, aspen, wildflowers, meadows, heaven. The Centennial State, since it was admitted in 1876. Centennial was my first book by James Michener, about a fictionalized version of the very town where I’m staying tonight, Greeley. Some people hate on Michener, say he produces watered-down or “pop” history, but I find his technique, to follow a corner of the earth from prehistory to the present, to be brilliant and compelling. I read the book almost 50 years ago, but looking at the synopsis now I’m startled by how much I remember.
All day I was running parallel to the Front Range of the Rockies. I have long fantasized about first spotting the Rockies rising from the plains, as the pioneers did, seeing those purple mountain majesties above the amber waves of grain. Alas, the smoke from the wildfires interfered, I could maybe just make out the faintest skyline. Maybe tomorrow, as I enter Denver.
Distance 55 miles, 5,305 total. Time 6 hours with stops. Elevation gain 716 feet
Pine Bluffs to Cheyenne, Wyoming Friday, August 13, 2021
There’s no getting around it, Wyoming is a weird state. The only state ending in “ing”, which makes it a gerund, I guess, sounds like a verb; the ending is unusual for place names in general (although Lansing, Flushing, Reading, and Corning come to mind). One of only two states that’s a perfect rectangle. The 10th largest state in area, but the smallest state in population, the only one behind Vermont. Home to spectacular scenery and barren wasteland. Named after the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, where Scranton and Wilkes-Barre are, one of that valley’s original land owners was Vermont’s own Ethan Allen. As it happens, I’ve climbed its three highest peaks (Gannett, the Grand Teton, Fremont). Its most populous city, and its capital, is in the extreme southeastern corner of the state. Usually a capital would be more centrally located. There was a time when the Nebraska Panhandle was considering succeeding and joining Wyoming, since Cheyenne was more in tune with its geography and needs than Lincoln. Site of famous Yellowstone and Devils Tower, the Hole in the Wall, and the Teapot Dome scandal.
Other than Pennsylvania, this will be my shortest state sojourn, less than two days, although I’ll probably cross it again. Today’s ride was weird as well, following I-80 the whole way, itself roughly following the Oregon Trail. Seemed flat, but I was going slower than I usually do with a tailwind, the election profile explained why, I was gradually climbing all day.
Friday the 13th, but nothing bad happened, other than hearing a beloved patient had died, I called the family. The state capitol was a little weird, I thought a gold dome meant the state had given us a president, I guess Wyoming and Colorado didn’t get the memo.
At these capitols I usually look around for a statue, to see the state’s most famous son. Here’s all I found:
The plaque says Elling William “Bill” Gollings, A True Cowboy Artist. Two more gerunds.
What, Dick Cheney didn’t make the cut? Now Liz, I could see.
I capped this weird day with a quirky hotel, the “Tru” from Hilton, known for its bright colors, lack of dressers, and “clever” bathrooms. Too clever by half, perhaps, but pleasant enough.
Distance 45 miles, 5,250 total. Time 7 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,537 feet
The Ends of the Earth 