13 – This Is Where You Jump In - Travels with Walter

June 11, 2015

13 – This Is Where You Jump In

We wake up at 5:30 to see a pair of wolf spiders with inch-long bodies hanging on the mesh above our heads in the tent as they clean their legs in silence. The birds of the forest have already been chirping for the better part of an hour. The interstate drones in the distance. It's like we're the last ones to wake up on this overcast Thursday morning.

There's no rest for weary legs in Vermont. Every steep drop down to a river or creek or stream is followed by a climb up and away from it that's just as steep. The satisfaction that comes from ending up on a gentle road that follows a river for even a few miles isn't that much different from what I feel eating a fine steak dinner, reading a beautiful work of literary fiction, or putting on a fresh pair of tube socks.

If I could only pick one word to describe the people of the Northeast it'd be reserved. Almost no one waves when they pass by in their car or truck. Only a few people have said more than a couple of sentences to us since we set out from Bar Harbor and half of those have been bicycle riders. When I give an upbeat hello to the guy who works the cash register at the small store in South Strafford he says the same back to me so slow and with such dispassion that it's like it's costing him fifty bucks to do it.

Rural America can be a real oddball place. That's one of its great charms. But it's not that way out here. This is a region where social norms tell you to be less expressive, to reveal less of your character instead of more. People have their shit together and don't much care about what's going on with yours. This isn't a bad thing. Different places should be different. If all parts of the country or the world were the same there'd be no point in leaving home and traveling all over to experience them. But it makes for a more isolating kind of traveling than I expected.

We thought Steve would be long gone ahead of us after we first saw him back in Maine. He's bound for Washington on the Northern Tier.

There are so few cars and trucks on the road this morning that it's as if it exists for us just as much as for them. It gives us the space to admire the thousand shades of green in any direction we turn and the layered rows of mountains that extend far toward the east and remind us how far we've come. Those mountains have made for hard cycling, but we've been able to handle them without any trouble beyond hard work and serious sweating. In return we've earned the chance to travel through one of the most beautiful, secluded corners of America, where church bells ring in the towers of 200-year-old churches at the top of every hour and suburban sprawl has never and will never exist.

We hang out in a pizza place in Royalton for much of the afternoon. MSNBC plays on the TV in the far corner of the restaurant up near the ceiling. People watch it with interest because one of the lead stories involves a pair of murderers who escaped from a maximum security prison in upstate New York and may be hiding out on Vermont. But in true cable news fashion the story turns into a sideshow. It has its own dramatic title — Prison Break — spelled out in scary-looking letters. There's a poll question viewers can cast votes for online: Do you think the fugitives will be captured alive? It even gets the special Breaking News treatment, with white block letters on a bright red background that say, Sources: prison worker thought it was love. It's all a big fucking embarrassment.

The riding after lunch turns into a slog thanks to the hills, the headwind, and the pound of cheese and dough in our stomachs that feels like they're in the middle of a complex acrobatic routine. Because of the escaped fugitives, and because we continue to move closer to the New York border where the manhunt has kicked into high gear, we see more police cars in an hour than we have in the almost two weeks we've been on the road.

We continue on in a food haze, all side aches and pounding heads and regret. The wind that's been around since early in the morning fails and we sweat in sheets as we pedal up and away from the flood plains of rivers far more often than we ride through them.

We ride on a narrow and shoulderless road where the surface long ago started falling apart. The cracks and potholes and fissures almost send me crashing more than once. Only the bike's wide tires and my quick reactions keep me upright and leave all of my skin attached to my body. It's all complicated by the heavy and impatient evening traffic, including the shitfucker in the lifted diesel truck who revs its engine right as he passes us, trying to startle us with the noise and surround our faces with a cloud of gray exhaust.

This place has been selling Fords since 1913, the year Ford started building the Model T on a moving assembly line.

An older guy on a mountain bike rolls up to us while we shove some supplies into our bags outside of a gas station in Rochester.

"Are you coming or going?" he asks.

"Um, going?" Kristen says.

"How far?"

"Washington State."

"Ah, we have some friends in Seattle. Have you ever heard of the Dead Baby Bicycle Club? We're all over. We have friends on both coasts."

Kristen and I both give each other a quick glance. It's not what he says but how he says it. Anyone who uses the royal we is suspect straight off. But more than that it's the way he sounds half like a robot and half like a sports radio announcer, where the volume has been set about twice as loud as it should be.

"Do you have a place to camp?" he asks, running through the script.

"Somewhere out in the national forest," I say. "We're not sure exactly where."

"Would you like some suggestions?"

"Um, sure."

"Just up the road is the place to jump in. Bean's Bridge Road. There is a picnic area. For the camping there is a snowmobile trail, up and to the right. Good camping up there."

It's like he's a recording, like he's been programmed to say this stuff and it starts to come out as soon as his graphic sensor recognizes the outline of a bicycle rider.

"Be sure to stop by the bike shop," the guy says in a flat, over-loud monotone as he sits back on the saddle of his bicycle and starts to ride away. "We're open until 6:00. Or check us out on our website."

It's 6:45. We have no idea what the name of the bike shop is or where to find it. As all of this goes on, Walter barks at the automaton/human with such force that the trailer wiggles from side to side without stopping.

We decide to take the advice because, hey, it's free camping. We head a mile out of town, reach the bridge, and see nowhere to camp. There's no forest at all, just farmland and the river. We stand there looking at each other, trying to figure out what to do next.

And then all of a sudden, with no sound or warning, as if conjured from out of nowhere, our digital helper appears again. My heart skips a beat in low-level shock.

"This is where you jump in," he says, like it's a fact that everyone long ago agreed to be true.

It dawns on us at this point that he's talking about going for a swim in the river. At 7:15 in the evening. In early June, when the river still runs cold. After riding bicycles all day long. That's what we'd jump into.

"So where's the camping you mentioned?" I ask.

"Right there," he tells me, pointing to the faint outline of an overgrown snowmobile trail that's blocked by a few wooden pallets that no cargo bike or dog trailer could cross over without, say, a forklift.

"I think some others will be by later," he says to us. "Maybe we will see you out there."

Then he disappears up the trail, headed into the woods for some kind of gathering or maybe to lie in wait for the touring cyclists he's about to behead and store in a commercial-grade meat freezer. We'll never know for sure, because we turn around and ride away in the opposite direction.

We press on until we find a place to lay our heads for the night. We're tired and hungry and worn out from the hills. But as soon as we stop we get to work on rebuilding our spirits. This is the bicycle touring way. Tonight it means setting up the tent on a different overgrown snowmobile trail in the Green Mountain National Forest. Inside we drink tallboys of Bud Light and handfuls of Planters peanuts. Kristen reads aloud about the history of Vermont and songs from Leon Russell, Father John Misty, and Ryan Adams bounce back toward us from off the rain fly or fade out into the woods beyond through the open tent doors.

In the darkness we see a lone firefly flashing as it navigates through the tree trunks that lie in its path. The creek that sits within throwing distance crinkles and crashes and helps wash away whatever troubles of the day still remain. With Walter wedged in between us and taking up more than half the width of the sleeping pads, Kristen and I talk about life and love and the future until everyone gives in to the strong pull of sleep.

Today's ride: 53 miles (85 km)
Total: 435 miles (700 km)

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