Seattle to Sumner, Washington. Tuesday, April 30, 2024.
Catholics have St. Peters. Turks have the Hagia Sophia. Christian Scientists have the Mother Church in Boston. I have the REI flagship store in Seattle. An outdoor store so huge and comprehensive, I never visit Seattle without making a pilgrimage. No picture can do it justice. I needed a few supplies, and wound up spending too much time there.
Emblematic of my last day in Seattle. I was so sorry to leave this wonderful city, I spent too much time everywhere. Too much time saying goodbye to Annie, lingering over a sumptuous breakfast and more great reminiscing.
Her goodbye photo
I could’ve easily bypassed downtown Seattle, but had to snake through the streets to immerse myself in the chaotic, iconic Pike Place Market
go by the original Starbucks, and get a view of the Space Needle.
Hier ist die Nadel.
All this put me way behind schedule. Luckily, the bike paths out of town were smooth, flat, and straight; the sun was out, there was a gentle tailwind, and I made the almost 40 miles to my motel before dark.
Distance 39 miles, 213 total. Time 5 hours with stops. Elevation gain 619 feet
This was one of those days that was so delightful, so full of fun, that there’s not much time to blog about it. After a great breakfast and more conversation with Bob and Carolyn, it was just a quick ride over to Annie‘s house. I lived with Annie for my final two years of medical school in a group house, and we had so many memories to share. Annie has always worked for nonprofit organizations, she was an aide to Ralph Nader, worked with the Union of Concerned Scientists, and for most of her career was director of the Brainerd Foundation, pioneers in conservation advocacy. She shares her lovely home with her partner Steve, a projects facilitator, in the Ravenna Park section of Seattle. Steve has done much of the Camino, so we had lots to talk about as well.
Annie took me on a beautiful walk around Gas Works Park on Lake Union. We climbed a small hill that offered a sweeping view of the Seattle skyline, the Space Needle, and the rusting but oddly picturesque ruin of the Gas Works itself. We talked well into the evening after sharing a scrumptious dinner. Heaven. What more is there to say?
Distance 8 miles, 174 total. Time 2 hours with stops. Elevation gain 700 feet
Marysville to Seattle, Washington. Sunday, April 28, 2024
I can’t think of Seattle without this song coming to mind. It was the theme song for the short-lived series Here Come the Brides starring the teeny bopper heartthrob Bobby Sherman. My sisters, tweens at the time, couldn’t get enough of him, or the show.
Seattle. The very name evokes the space age. It was named for the revered Chief Seattle, leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples, but to me, it has always signified the cutting edge. The 1962 worlds fair. The space needle. Microsoft. Boeing. Starbucks. Frazier. Grunge rock. Pike Place Market. REI. The spectacular setting on Puget sound.
My mother’s birthplace, although she moved away when she was two. Back in 1980, when I was doing my residency interviews, I was dazzled by the city, even though it was pouring the whole time (the place is famous for its rain, that theme song was ironic). The University of Washington was my first choice, but as an out-of-stater, I never had much of a chance. I matched at Mount Auburn Hospital instead, and in retrospect, I was glad UW didn’t take me, I never would’ve met Jane. Still, UW endures as the one that got away.
One more reason Seattle has a warm spot in my heart, it’s the home of two of my dearest friends, Bob Kitchell and Ann Krumboltz, and I’m delighted to be able to spend a day with each. Supposedly an easier day today, just 46 miles, but I managed to turn it into a challenge anyway. A “shortcut” turned out to be a fiasco, had to cross a series of scary, rusting metal bridges across a tangle of sloughs to get into Everett. The only bike/pedestrian access was a catwalk so narrow I had to push my bike the whole way, almost a mile. Everett itself had a long, slow hill that sucked my energy until I got on the Interurban bike trail, a challenge in itself with lots of marginally-marked turns.
But it was all good. The Burke–Gilman Trail was a stunner, one of the nation’s top rail trails, going all around Lake Washington. It went right by the UW campus, and I was happy to take a steep hill detour to get a look at its signature Drumheller fountain
and the comically massive Husky Stadium. I’m always amazed how colleges can have such huge sports venues.
The final 1/10 mile to the Kitchell’s was so crazy steep I had to push my bike and stop 10 times to catch my breath. But the best things in life are worth struggling for, their house is perched on a hill with a great view of Lake Washington, and the evening with Bob and his wife Carolyn was pure gold. A lovely meal, stories and reminiscing that took me past 10 o’clock without even realizing it. They’re both doctors, Carolyn is a pathologist, Bob and I did our residency together, and we shared our medical experiences, our families, and our great adventures.
grandson Cal, Bob, Carolyn, and some random guy
Distance 46 miles, total 166. Time 8 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,768 feet
Bellingham to Marysville, Washington. Saturday, April 27, 2024
Or maybe I should say water zero. Part of this little conceit I have about the highpoints is that I want to start from sea level. So whenever I begin a new leg, I have to “zero out” at an ocean or some place contiguous with one. For instance, before climbing Mount Washington in 2020, I dipped a toe in the water at Goose Rocks Beach, one of the prettiest in Maine.
The blog post for 4/19/21 shows me zeroing out at the Hudson River at Troy, which is still tidal at that point and therefore also at sea level, before I did the 10 highpoints on that trip.
The Ingalls Avenue boat ramp in Troy.
For this trip, I had to zero out at the Pacific. I’m not sure when I’ll get another chance, I’ll be near the ocean quite a bit but often on a high bluff where accessing the beach is problematic, especially in cycling shoes. As I left Bellingham today, Andy suggested a spot in the harbor, and a couple of women were very kind to take my picture there. This is Bellingham Harbor, above Puget Sound, and therefore part of the Pacific.
It’s all uphill from here
And while we’re on this sea to summit thing, I might as well show you a helpful visual. When I retired in 2020, my resident firm (nine residents who I had precepted for three years) gave me a lovely gift, a map of the state highpoints, with little pins to stick in when I completed them—gold, silver, and bronze. This is a smallish picture, but high definition, you can zoom in if you like.
The gold pins show the highpoints I have done from sea level, 19 in all. The bronze pins (which I thought looked prettier than the silver, which look almost black) mark the big boys: major peaks like Denali, Rainier, Whitney, and others in the Rockies or Appalachians, each was a major undertaking, four of them required professional guides, but in each case I left from a trailhead or parking lot that I had driven to (or in the case of Denali, flown to an a ski plane). Therefore, I did not do these 13 from sea level. The silver/black pins mark the hall of shame, the five peaks I simply drove up.
My overarching goal then, is to turn all of the pins gold, including the 13 I have not done. Alas I am too old to climb those western big boys again, so in the twisted rules of this game (which matter only to me) I hope to bike to the starting points from before, thereby claiming I climbed them from sea level in two stages. Lame? Convoluted? You betcha. The first such gambit I hope to do is to bike to the Paradise Inn, where I started my Rainier climb 30 years ago.
Moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, today’s ride involved two gorgeous byways, Chuckanut Drive and the Centennial Trail, hilly but dazzling. There’s nothing like a glassy smooth-rail trail to lift your spirits. The elevation profile showed that the two were linked by a nice flat stretch.
The flat stretch turned out to be the hardest part of the trip. Crossing an open plain with no trees for shelter, I was exposed to a steady 50° rain and a 20 mph headwind, that slowed me down to under 7 mph. It was manageable if I got into a full tuck, but this early in the ride, I could only maintain that for a few minutes, my thighs were kneading my gut like bread dough.
Which of course brings up the other objective of the trip, it’s a fat camp. I lost 40 pounds in 2021, despite eating all manner of indulgent foods. Now that I have celiac disease, I’m eating more carefully, so hopefully the lard will come off even faster.
Distance 60 miles, total 120. Time 8 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,914 feet
Vancouver to Bellingham, Washington. Friday, April 26, 2024
It’s Blanche DuBois all over again.
Many times in this blog I have noted the kindness of strangers, always amazed that people you’ve never met are willing to bend over backwards for you. Today was no exception.
Chris Xie is the owner of the lovely B&B where I was staying, also a mathematician and businessman. Originally from China, he was educated at Heidelberg in Germany and NYU, worked for many years developing wind power, and has written a popular book about avoiding financial pitfalls. His wife is currently away, so he is managing the B&B, one of the highest rated in Vancouver, all by himself. In other words, a very busy man.
He offered to drive me to the FedEx office to get that missing crank. Per Noreen’s suggestion, we got there just as it opened and another kind man, Michael, spent 45 minutes rummaging through the hundreds of boxes in the back to find it for me. Chris patiently waited with me, taking phone calls, I wound up tying him up for well over an hour. What a guy. A genuine Trail Angel.
A 4 ounce piece of aluminum, the cause of all the trouble
But I had my crank! I could finally hit the road. The rain and the headwind were not too bad, but it was challenging crossing the many forks of the Fraser river to get out of town. I was concerned that my route took me over some unpaved paths, but they were remarkably easy to navigate in the rain.
With all the delays, I wasn’t sure how far I could get today. A third kind soul, Tony Morris, had offered to be my Warm Showers host halfway through the route if I needed him. He had been very patient with my scheduling and rescheduling as the FedEx saga evolved. When it turned out I didn’t need him, he graciously gave me lots of advice about crossing the border.
The border. Hardly the fraught frontier we have with Mexico, but I was still apprehensive as I approached, we’ve been delayed for hours when crossing here in the past. Al Stewart’s On the Border was my soundtrack as I drew near, but I was ushered through without a hitch. I’d hoped to get a photo of the touching Peace Arch, but this was all I could get.
Ahh, back in the good old US of A. Like Agent Dale Cooper, I thought “some kind of trees you got here,” and couldn’t resist playing the whole soundtrack from Twin Peaks. The rain stopped, the clouds parted somewhat, but I didn’t get a chance to see Mount Baker, one of the awesome Cascades. Arrived in Bellingham by seven, in time for a lovely evening with my cousin in law Andy Wheeler, add his adorable dog Honey Bear. I was very sad to have missed my cousin Tilda.
Rain and headwinds predicted again for tomorrow. I shouldn’t be surprised, it rains all the time in the Pacific Northwest. But what they call rain is usually just drizzle, hopefully that will be true tomorrow.
Distance 60 miles, I guess I’ll start a new total. Time 8 hours with stops. Elevation gain 2,155 feet
Well, that was foolish. Daring the punishers to keep bringing it on.
FedEx has a tracking number status page, updating you on progress towards delivery. As the morning began, things looked set: the package with my crank was in Vancouver, still expected to be delivered by noon. As I kept refreshing, the status suddenly turned red: it was held up in customs.
Cue the frantic calls to Customer Service. Many interactions with menus, hold music, and representatives with strong accents. It appeared that a duty needed to be paid, another $24 I charged immediately. Nothing changed, another call revealed that they didn’t need the payment after all, they needed a “power of attorney” form, authorizing myself as a shipper or booking agent. No easy task when all you have is an iPad, no printer, no fax. They suggested I take screenshots of the forms, fill them out with my Apple Pencil, and send them to the customs office. This done, the package cleared customs, but had missed the delivery truck, would have to wait until tomorrow. Instead, I could have it sent to the FedEx office by the airport, and pick it up there at the end of the day, although they close at six. If I could get the crank tonight, I could pop it on, leave first thing in the morning, and make it to Bellingham tomorrow.
Every agent did their best to be helpful, but each was picking up the thread anew. I tried to bite back my frustration that this wasn’t handled when Jane dropped off the package yesterday and was charged that exorbitant fee. Chris, the owner of the B&B, also helpfully offered to drive me to and from the FedEx office.
Perhaps you remember the ending of the movie Social Network, where Zuckerberg, having wrested control of Facebook from his friends and become fabulously wealthy, finds himself all alone. He sends a friend request to his ex-girlfriend; the final scene shows him repeatedly refreshing the page, to see if his request has been accepted.
I know the feeling. As the afternoon wore on I kept refreshing the FedEx page, hoping to find it was ready for pick up. No luck. Right at closing hour the most helpful representative, Noreen, called me back and said I should just show up there when it opens at eight tomorrow, and not leave until they give it to me. Hmm.
FedEx. When it absolutely positively has to get there overnight. Their logo is cleverly designed to contain a white arrow, hadn’t noticed it before.
Maybe not so clever
The day wasn’t a total loss. Took a 5 mile walk up that cool bike/pedestrian path to pick up some inner tubes and score some of the best sushi I’ve had in a long while. Long conversations with Jane and sister Anne, who quoted Taylor Swift and told me to shake it off.
Vancouver, British Columbia. Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Richard III got nothing on me.
The karmic punishers continue to mess with me. The flight last night finally took off two hours late; the seat had lots of legroom, but my seatmate, though perfectly pleasant, was corpulent and spilled over a bit into my space. I can never sleep on planes anyway. The luggage took forever to come, and I bobbled the Uber connection so that I wound up getting to my B&B at midnight, 3 AM my time.
Still too keyed up to sleep more than three hours, I started the tedious bike reassembly, and realized I had forgotten a crucial piece. Can you spot it?
The handdlebars are distorted in this close-up wide ankle shot.
Yep, it’s the right pedal. Actually, I have the pedal, but not the crank that attaches it to the bicycle. After spending an hour turning the room upside down, I called Jane, who was at work. Her coworkers covered for her, she ran home and searched our whole basement, turns out it was buried in the foam packaging I use.
A 4 ounce piece of aluminum, the size of a short ruler, but custom-made and not available locally. Without this “nail,” the trip would be lost. FedEx will charge me $157 to get it here by noon tomorrow.
Smooth move, Poindexter. Comeuppance for having such a fancy bike.
I was so frazzled and sleep-deprived the bike assembly took longer than the usual four hours. I was reminded of a line from Updike, “globes of ether, pure nervousness, slid down his arms and legs.” By the time I was done in the afternoon, I realized I hadn’t eaten since the plane ride 20 hours before.
I’d arrived in the dark, but was able to see through the ether, as I dragged my suitcases to the UPS store to be shipped home, that the modest Vancouver neighborhood was lovely, dotted with flowering trees.
We’ve been to Vancouver before, it’s really a spectacular city, won’t have time to see it this time. But even the neighborhoods are stunning. Had a nice meal at a Thai restaurant, admired how Vancouver bikepaths are segregated into walkers and bikers,
was surprised to see how cute my B&B looked from the outside,
rescheduled my upcoming friends/family visits, blogged, and got to bed early.
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
The Ends of the Earth 