| Cross-Country Ramble 27:
Reflections Sent: 06/24/96
The train we took from Houston to Ventura took 32 hours to zip
through much the same route as we had biked over the previous two
months. What a contrast! The train was cool, comfortable and safe.
Food food, drink and bed were close at hand. As we watched our trip
unfold backward, we recalled our experiences. Already, our tour was
beginning to feel like something that had happened a long time ago.
Had we really biked all that way? Through that place? Was it really
us who had done it?
Before this trip "desert" meant Palm Springs and Phoenix. Now
when we recall our tour through the desert a torrent of images
floods our minds. We see not only Saguaro cactus but also Desert
Marigold, Prickly Poppy, Mesquite and Creosote bushes. We feel the
intense heat in the blowing breeze under the sun in a cloudless sky.
We see the towns that used to be. We have been imprinted by the
desert. It is part of us now.
You'd think that during time we spent crawling across 1763 miles
of desert, we'd get bored with it. Strangely, we didn't. At our
speed, we could see the individual plants and animals that make the
desert unique. We could notice that our environment was actually
quite varied. Individual features appeared, disappeared and
reappeared in different combinations every day, sometimes several
times a day. Surprisingly, what was boring by comparison was the
train trip. We went past a lot in a short time, yet we couldn't see
anything, really.
The small towns swish past our train window, punctuating long
unpopulated stretches. Between naps, we notice familiar places:
Uvalde, Marathon, Sanderson, Alpine, Sierra Blanca ...
Small town living has both a romance and a reality to it. The
romance is that people are friendly and there isn't much crime.
That's true. The people we met were friendly and helpful. When we
entered a restaurant, someone always tipped their hat, nodded their
head to us or more often said, "Hello, where are you coming from?"
and the conversation began. On the road, we had people yell out
their vehicle window to see if we were O.K. or needed anything. No
one asked us if we were carrying a piece. Crime is not a prime topic
of conversation. The time we were in danger was when we biked on
narrow busy highways with no shoulders.
The reality of small town living is the limitation of services.
In our travels it was not unusual for small towns to be 30 to 50
miles apart with nothing in between. It could take an hour just to
get a loaf of bread. Going to and from the dentist, doctor,
hospital, supermarket, hardware, school, restaurant or church could
take half a day or more.
Another part of small town reality is old refrigerators and dead
cars huddled next to vacant buildings. I kept thinking Mother nature
must be saying, "Get a broom and a truck and get this mess cleaned
up!"
Our bicycles are packed safely away in Amtrak-supplied bike boxes
forward in the baggage car. We still love our recumbent bicycles,
but bicycles will never make it as a form of transportation until
some catastrophic event makes cars impossible. It is so easy to go
someplace in a car. Parking places are available everywhere. Other
car drivers expect you to be on the road. Cars' roads all go
somewhere. By contrast, what bicycle paths there are often go
nowhere, stopping abruptly. Even shoulders on highways end suddenly
when cars need an extra lane. Motels and camp grounds are at the
edge or several miles out of the center of town. Going into town and
back can take an hour. There are pitifully few places to safely park
bicycles. Drivers pulling out of driveways are notoriously bad at
seeing cyclists. By the end of trip, we still loved bicycling from
town to town, but once in a town cycling was a hassle. Sometimes, we
just wanted to get in a car go where we needed to go and be back in
fifteen minutes.
Our thoughts go back to High Island on the shore of the Gulf of
Mexico, where we had declared victory. Now we begin to wonder what
exactly was it we had vanquished? The more we think about the
answer, the more we learn about ourselves.
Carol: For thirty years, through babies, houses
and jobs, I held on to my dream to bicycle cross country. Through
the years, I wondered if it was o.k. to have my own dream, separate
from Ken and our children. Even though we didn't go as far as I
dreamed, it doesn't matter. I had the adventure I wanted. My own
adventure. Hallelujah!.
Ken: I am the neighborhood kid chosen last for
sand-lot baseball teams; the student who plays in the band rather
than go out for sports; the man who watches rather than plays. I am
the slide-rule-on-belt, pocket-protected Merit Scholarship Finalist,
not the sports hero. Now, at 54 years of age, I am still all those
things, but I am more: I am also the man who can bike across the
country if he wants to. I am the man who can, as happened just
yesterday, say "yes" to a friend's invitation to take a quick 8-mile
hike up and down the hills/mountains behind Ventura, sweat a lot,
and love it.
Ken & Carol
Ventura, CA
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