June 28, 2015
30 – For the People
It rains long and hard for most of the night. We wake up to find a two-inch-deep puddle of dirty standing water in the low corner of the tent. It would have been deeper, but the end of sleeping bag sits in the puddle and has soaked up at least an inch worth of water like a sponge. The floor is wet all the way through; even two layers of the most amazing modern waterproof fabric technology can only do so much. It takes twenty minutes to bring our gear and bikes and the trailer with Walter inside of it back down to the road in a complex series of steps that keep us forever perched on the edge of a major knee injury.
The day starts with a climb to the top of the long hill we started two days ago. The rain leaves us wet on the outside and sweating in our rain gear turns us wet on the inside. On the other side of the climb Kristen stops when I don't expect her to stop and I almost plow into the back of her and Walter at thirteen miles per hour. Every time I squeeze my brake levers the wet discs howl and squeal like a small animal being burned alive.
On the plus side, we crest the summit of the Allegheny Mountains.
"Do you realize that was the last big climb we have to do until sometime in Wyoming?" I ask Kristen.
"Oh my god, that's amazing!" she says with equal parts joy and awe.
It's the only amazing thing about the first part of the morning. We pass through the dying town of Osceola Mills, where the only people milling around at the farmers market are the wet and frustrated vendors. A handful of restored American muscle cars sit idle with no one to look at them or ask questions of their proud but cold owners. We pass empty coal trucks, abandoned homes, homes so rundown they look abandoned, and a huge yellow warning sign that reads Targeted D.U.I. Enforcement Area. It's a bleak start to what the weather forecast makes us think could be a bleak rest of the day.
But then we roll to a stop at the Country Cafe in Houtzdale. Our breakfast is a gift from heaven: eggs, toast, bacon, sausage, home fries, an omelette, a biscuit sandwich, a large orange juice, and so much coffee. While we stand at the cash register, two of the women who run the place talk to us about our trip. They're as nice as we could have hoped for and have a dozen questions about where we're going, how long it'll take us to get there where we sleep, and what we wear.
And then, with a dead serious look and tone, one of them asks Kristen, "Do you have a gun?"
"No," Kristen tells her.
"I would have a gun," the woman responds. "Not for the animals. For the people."
Less than a minute later, with no prompting at all, we find ourselves being offered a loaf of white bread and a massive freezer bag full of cooked teriyaki chicken from back in the kitchen.
The gesture means more than the food itself, although the food won't go to waste. In the act of asking about our trip and trying to help us in the way they best know how, I feel like the two women answered the question about why there's no need to arm ourselves for a bike ride across America. There are bad actors sprinkled throughout this vast country. You can't avoid that in a place of 350 million people. But most everyone is good at heart. We experience some of that every day out here.
We're now in a part of the country where bumper stickers read Downsize All Governments. It's a place where the waistlines are a little wider and the hair coloring jobs are done with a little less precision. It's a place where the restaurant stays all but empty until church lets out and then fills in less than ten minutes; where so many of the homes are modest and set on cinder block foundations; where twenty-nine out of every thirty cars we pass have an American-brand nameplate on their front grill. It's a place where the post office in Gulich lives in a mobile home, and where we watch a twenty-something guy and a forty-something guy sit on opposite sides of a table inside a gas station in near-silence as they run through fifty bucks worth of lottery scratch tickets.
For most people I know these are reasons never to come to a region like this. It's such a change from what they know and how they live that they think it's not worth their attention. It's like it's below them. But the differences are what make these places important to visit. Although they're nothing like Seattle or Portland or Los Angeles, they're just as much a part of America. The decisions we make as citizens about the politicians we send to Washington, and the policies we encourage those representatives to fight for, spread out like waves across the country and wash over all of us. That's one reason why I love traveling through these places on a bike. It gives me a chance to get to know all of the parts of my country, to understand how they're unique from one another, and to try and figure out how all of those differences fit together to create one strange and confusing and wonderful nation.
We're also in a part of the country where kids have beautiful baseball diamonds to play on, where ads for local businesses have been painted on plywood and stuck to the outfield fence. Drivers slow down and head far out into the other lane when it's time for them to pass us. When I tell the camo-hatted young guy at the mini-mart that I don't need a bag for the armload of junk food I bought he says, "Okie dokie" in a deep, smooth baritone. I don't think these things will ever grow old or tiring.
It never quite stops raining. Even when the heavy stuff fades there's always a light mist that hangs over the world and turns all of the houses and barns and fields flat and hazy. But it's a good day for rain: the temperature sits in the low sixties and the wind is all but dead. We get wet and dry out, get wet and dry out, and on it goes for hours. When we stop to take shelter from some stronger showers beneath a maple tree Walter flops over on his side and naps, just like he does whenever we stop for more than five minutes.
Our route isn't a direct one. We follow the bends of creeks and the crests of the lowest hills. In a straight line I think it would feel like Pennsylvania was beating our asses over and over again. But with a wandering path it's a cool, wet, but pleasant ride through the back roads of a part of the country where even a week ago we never could have expected we'd end up.
Kristen rides maybe a fifth of a mile ahead when we're on one of these back roads. I lag behind because I'm about to to take a leak while standing over the bike. Then I see a dark green Ford pickup truck approaching so I stop, stand there with my shorts half unbuttoned, and wait for the truck to pass. But it doesn't. It slows, draws even with me, and then stops. There's a dad driving, a little kid in the middle, and a mom in the far seat.
"I think she's beatin' ya," the guy calls out with a big smile that reveals a bunch of missing top teeth.
"Well, what's new, man?!" I say back with a big full-toothed smile of my own.
Laughter spreads all the way across the bench seat.
I love it when I can make that happen. I love that I have the chance to end up in that kind of situation in the first place.
The minor highways and back roads we take are all empty on this Sunday evening. We see an Amish family headed home in a horse-drawn carriage that clips and clops its way past us at ten miles per hour. Our chains whinge and grind from all the crap that's been tossed up into them today and all the chain lube that the rains of the last three days have washed away. We hear the cracks and pops of gunfire, and a few minutes later find the source: a bald-headed dad is teaching his eight-year-old how to shoot from the middle of the driveway in front of their house's attached garage. We both wave as we pass and the dad waves back.
We ride in secluded hollows with creeks swollen from the recent rain charging fast and loud off to our right. When the hills turn steep heading away from the creeks we let Walter run ahead with the leash held tight in my left hand. It gives Kristen a needed weight break and gives Walter a sense of purpose. He walks with his eyes pointed ahead and his head and tail held high, happy to contribute to the team.
The rain continues to come and go in waves that show no sign of ending. One moment we're on a ridge with cold rain blowing sideways in our faces, feeling like we're back in New Zealand in the early spring. The next we're shooting out from a tunnel of trees into blazing sunshine that lights up the fields of wheat around us like it's the triumphant climax of a cheesy Hollywood movie. The endless lines of Posted and No Trespassing signs that have followed us all day mean we're going to have to get creative when it comes to finding a place to sleep tonight. We hope for a volunteer fire station or some woods behind a church but find neither. We nix the idea of setting up behind the lot full of fracking equipment with the dead deer splayed out on the shoulder of the road in front of it.
A few miles later a bar called Griff's Inn appears around a bend off to our left. We park the bikes, tell Walter we'll be right back, and then walk in through the front door. A skinny little hound dog puppy named Brooklyn runs up to us and starts howling with joy, tail wagging back and forth a hundred times a minute. There's a young guy of about twenty-five working behind the bar.
"Hey man," I say to him. "We're traveling across the country on our bicycles and we're just passing through town. If we get a couple of beers, would you mind if we set up our tent in the grass back behind the bar for the night?"
He's not into the idea.
"Aw, I'm not sure," he says. "I don't really care, but the owner, I'm not sure she'd like it."
We get a couple of cans of Budweiser and sit down anyway. We spend a few minutes talking to the bartender, a guy named Dillon, telling him about where we're going, what it's like to travel on the bikes, and all that stuff.
Then he looks at us and says, "You could stay down at my place if ya want. I mean, I gotta call the guy I live with — he's my uncle, but we're real close in age, so he's more like a brother or a friend, ya know — I gotta call him, but it shouldn't be a problem. We got a garage and there's some good flat spots behind it. I don't care and I don't think he's gonna mind."
Dillon heads into the back room of the bar to call his uncle, then returns a minute later. It's all good; we have a place to set up the tent for the night.
We spend the rest of our beers talking to Dillon about life in Central Pennsylvania.
"This is one of the few bars in the area," he tells us. "And I like the job. I'm from here, so I know a lotta people anyway. Workin' here I know most everyone else now. It's good. I'd rather be a cook than tend bar to be honest, but it's good. People who come here like to have a good time, don't cause much trouble, so, ya know. We get the occasional fight every now and then, but nothin' too bad."
"What kind of work do people do around here?" I ask.
"Oil and gas industry mostly. Lotta natural gas. Since they found that shale they got a lot of that fracking going on, ya know? But it's hard. The big drilling operations need a lot of people to run 'em. But with the smaller wells and stuff, people get paid to come in and set them up, but once they're up and runnin' there's no more work and the jobs go away. So we're kinda dyin' out here, but it's slow."
An old-timer sits at the far end of the bar. He's there from the moment we walk in until the moment we settle up and head out. He never says a word; he just drinks his beer and keeps his eyes locked onto the TV above the bar that plays a reality shows about home buying that there's no way in the world he gives two shits about.
Like a couple of rhinestone cowboys we charge into the town of Glen Campbell. We find Dillon's house, pick out a good spot for the tent behind the garage, and get set up in less than five minutes. All of our gear is wet from the rain of the last two nights; we'll have to sleep in our rain pants and jackets. The inside of the tent is dank and musty. The overpowering smell of sweaty feet fills our noses and takes us toward the edge of puking. It's like living in a hockey glove big enough to sleep three people.
And yet we're happy to be right here. We made it through fifty-seven miles of Central Pennsylvania hills and rain and ended up in a safe, level, legal place to sleep on a bed of soft grass next to the rush of a creek. We met so many wonderful people along the way. And we get to do it all over again tomorrow.
Today's ride: 57 miles (92 km)
Total: 1,061 miles (1,708 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |