Back to Reality

When I finished the ride I said I’d write an epilogue. It's been 3 years now, and I'm finally getting around to finishing it. As you can see below, I've tried to write it before and always got sidetracked.

On the drive home from Canon City after completing my “both ends to the middle” journey, my wife and I got a call from my daughter and learned that our second grandchild was going to arrive later that night (a week earlier than scheduled), so we drove through the night to arrive in Tulsa in time for the birth. That made the return trip home a bit less leisurely than planned, and life has been pretty fast-paced since then as I have struggled to make up for all the time I was off work and away from my normal home and family commitments.

(written in Dec 2015) It’s been 3 months now since I completed the adventure. While I haven’t exactly “caught up” with everything, things are slowly returning to normal. I think about the adventure often, and it lives on in my dreams. Sometimes I have difficulty accepting that it actually happened. With my work and family responsibilities, finding the time to plan, train, assemble the gear, handle the travel logistics, and then – oh, yeah - bicycle across the country – was tough. This little adventure was the most challenging thing I have ever done, and while I did the ride solo I certainly had lots of help and support from others that enabled the adventure. Particularly so from my wife; she had to tolerate my absence and keep everything running without me while I was gone.

The Meaning of Life and Other Ramblings

On a recent business flight to San Antonio the lady sitting beside me happened to be a cyclist. She talked about a week-long tour she had taken this summer with her husband. Of course I told her about my adventure, and she had several questions for me. It was easy to answer the inevitable question about the greatest challenges I faced, because it’s also the answer to the “biggest surprise” question; having enough water, food, and shelter is what makes it an adventure. It’s not that there isn’t plenty of all of these necessities along the route in places, it’s just that there are periods when one or more of these aren’t available when you need them. If they were always handy and predictably available, it would still be a challenging bicycle ride but it wouldn’t be near the adventure. So THAT’S what they mean when they say “Adventure Cycling.” On the second half of my journey I learned that one can’t even assume that there will always be clean air to breathe, and dealing with the forest fires and smoke and uncertainty of road closures added a whole new level to the adventure. So it was easy for me to answer her questions about the challenges I faced.

Our lives are usually pretty easy. Struggle is important, we grow and benefit from our struggles. I get that, and it was easy to relate that to my bicycle adventure. But it was her next question that I couldn’t answer at the time; “What was the most enjoyable part of the trip, what was the best part?” Wow, I was stumped; I really didn’t know the answer. Each day brought new challenges to overcome, and each new state brought a sense of accomplishment as the milestones were met. The difficulty of overcoming the challenges was so consuming that I hadn’t considered what the most enjoyable part might have been. I punted on her question and merely said something like “It was all enjoyable, especially the people I met.” But that’s a pretty lame answer. I’ve had time to assess the question a bit, and I now have the answer that I should have given her. The best part of the trip? The best part of the trip was when I re-discovered the meaning of life.

The Meaning of Life Can be Found in the Mournful Music of the Coyote

I rediscovered the meaning of life on August 27, 2015 at 5:30am in the high plains country south of Wisdom, MT.  I found the Meaning of Life in the soulful cry of the Coyotes before sunrise. The lights of the small town of Wisdom had faded away into the darkness and there was nobody on the road but me, and it was pitch black everywhere except for the stars and the beam from my bicycle headlight. I stopped to get a drink and put on some gloves over my finger-less bicycle gloves to fend off the chill in my fingers. I was stopped for several minutes and that was long enough for my dyno-powered bike lights to go out. There was total and complete silence; never has the sound of silence been louder than it was just then. My breath made a vapor in the cool Montana morning, and I was captivated by the darkness everywhere except for the stars. There was magic in the air; and then the magic exploded in a cacophony of sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. A coyote on the east side of the roadway let loose with a long warble, and shortly after a coyote on the west side of the road answered. Then another joined in further south down the road, then it became impossible to know how many there were or if each was singing a different tune each time. I was completely and utterly fixated on their music, and they were singing only to me. They knew I was there, and they were drawing ever closer as they sang. In between the highs and lows and warbles of the music, words were forming in my ears; they were talking to me! They said, "We see you brother! We recognize that you too are alive, hear us because we sing for you, recognize us for we are your brothers!" To reach that level of understanding with the coyotes, I had to travel more than 3,000 miles by bicycle and overcome numerous challenges to find myself on the plains of Montana at the right moment to connect with them; you can't just make it happen, but it can happen when you least expect it. The coyotes were reminding me of something I knew as a child, that all life is connected. A child sees a puppy and considers it his friend and equal; he talks to it, cares for it, takes it on adventures, and connects to it in a way that we adults have long forgotten how to do.

I see beauty and hope in the eyes of my granddaughters, and I would die to protect them and give them their chance at life. But life on this planet isn't just about us humans; all life is connected. All of the animals branched off the evolutionary tree and evolved in their own manner, but if you go back far enough along the tree you can find how they all connect to modern man. We are even connected to the plants and trees and all the myriad forms that life takes. And we are in many ways dependent on each other, plant and animal, for our very survival. In the sci-fi film "Avatar," the humanoid aliens can physically entangle their brains with other animals and connect directly to them and communicate. For a brief moment on the plains of Montana, I was connected as such to the coyotes. The meaning of life is that all life has meaning, not just human life. If man is to survive, he must look after the needs of his brother animals as well. "We see you brother! We recognize that you too are alive, hear us because we sing for you, recognize us for we are your brothers!"

A Personal Note

I'll close this tale on a personal note. As I said at the beginning of this story, my Transam journey meant much more to me than just a bicycle ride across America. In 2013, a very rare form of malignant melanoma was discovered on the sole of my left heel. The surgery to remove the melanoma left a big hole where my heel used to be, and it took several months for the tissue and skin to grow back. I was told that I would need a cane to help me walk; well, I guess I'm a lucky man because I healed well and I can walk and even run just fine without a cane. Unfortunately, the cancer had also spread to 2 lymph nodes in my groin, and those were removed of course. So I'm a Stage 3 cancer patient. If any of the cancer had made it past the lymph nodes, I would become a Stage 4 melanoma patient. Stage 4 melanoma is fatal, and death typically occurs between 6 and 22 months after the discovery of Stage 4 metastasis. The development of Stage 4 usually happens within 2 years, if it's going to happen at all. During the period of my Transam ride, I was still in that 2-year period and I was being monitored every 4 months for the potential development of Stage 4 cancer. I had scans in March of that year, and since nothing showed up I was able to ride the first half of my journey. Returning from the first half, I had scans in July of that year and crossed my fingers that nothing would show up so I could complete the ride. Nothing showed up and I completed the second half. My next scans were scheduled for October. Nothing showed up then, and since that marked the 2-year anniversary of the surgery that removed the cancer, I was officially past the most dangerous time. I still get scanned and tested, but the frequency decreased to every 6 months and has now decreased to only once yearly.

So this ride meant a lot to me personally. Facing up to your own mortality and potential eminent demise is a very sobering prospect. I decided that I wanted to do the ride for many reasons, not the least of which is that if I didn't hurry up and do it I might die before I got the chance. I also wanted to set an example for my children; I wanted them to see that when the world knocks you down you just have to get back up and be even stronger than before. As you've heard me say before, "Long distance cycling is 95% mental and the rest is in your head." As it turns out, so is life itself.

Happy Trails and Best Wishes to All My Fellow Bicycle Travelers,

Buddy