July 26, 2015
58 – No Possible Compromise
We open the garage door at 5:30 to see the dark gray of a thunderstorm passing just south of town. It's the first of the morning but we know it's not the last, so we're ready to ride as soon as it's light. After a long series of goodbyes and hugs and promises that we'll see each other at Christmas we roll down the short driveway, turn left, and find ourselves back on the long, slow road toward the West Coast. Next stop: Washington state.
We head through West Burlington, past Jackie's hair salon, past the restaurant we ate at last night, past the Catholic church where we went to mass with Rose each of the last two Saturday evenings. We will have spent more time in Burlington than anywhere else on this trip by the time it's done, and both of us agree that's how it should be. The unsettled weather makes for dramatic skies all around us as we crank due west. Soon we pass by the barbed wire gates that guard the edges of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. Middletown sits closer to the plant than any other town, which the spokesperson for the plant would be quick to tell you has nothing at all to do with the high rates of brain cancer that affect the men and women who live there.
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We make it about a dozen miles before stopping to find shelter in Danville. It doesn't seem like the huge thunderstorm headed our way will show up for another thirty or forty minutes, but after coming so close to getting demolished by a storm just like it back in Central Illinois we're not taking chances. We'd rather sit around for awhile and make awful jokes and bust out bad dance moves than dodge lightning bolts on the way into the town ten miles down the road because our guess was off.
So many things in life that were exciting as a kid lose their edge as I get older. Birthday parties, soda pop, going to Blockbuster to rent video games, Jello — they don't mean as much now as they used to. But it doesn't matter how many years I live, I don't think it's possible for the surge of adrenaline that comes with a thunderstorm to ever go missing. One moment the sky is clear. The next, a layer of low clouds start to move in. The one after that the sky loses all texture and depth and becomes a flat gray all across the horizon. It turns so dark that the streetlights start to turn on, no matter the time of day. The sudden drop in temperature makes me shiver. The rain falls quiet at first, but within minutes turns into a roar as the volume of water shooting down from the sky grows and the puddles in the low points of the ground in front of me turn deeper. I stare out into the wet darkness in front of me and wonder at what point the storm with reach its peak force then start to recede.
All of this goes double while sitting beneath the heart of one of these storms, outside, on a wooden bench beneath the sheet metal cover of a dugout along the first base side of a high school baseball diamond, with Kristen's head resting on my shoulder and Walter curled up in a ball beside me.
In the end we wait more than two hours for the storm to reach us, pass overhead, and squeeze out the last of its rain. It takes only about fifteen minutes after that to learn an important fact about the back roads of Iowa: almost all of them are covered with gravel and dirt. If it were just the two of us humans it wouldn't matter, but it's bad news for the recovering little dog perched in the trailer that bumps and pops behind Kristen's bike without end. At the center of town in New London we throw out the well-planned list of turns we made a few days ago. Then we unfold the massive Iowa bicycle map we found last week and vow to stick only to the minor highways and country roads we know have been paved.
A lone wind turbine towers over the prairie like a skyscraper. Its white blades make such lazy arcs on the light breeze that we can't hear them moving. In front of us, long lines of tar snake across the pavement in a desperate attempt to try and stem the havoc caused by the harsh cold and wet that return every winter. Above, the clouds grow tall and thick in uncountable shades of gray and off-white and promise more storms for the afternoon. And all around us the birds sing and crickets chirp unseen in the deep greens of the soybean fields. Life out here is easy and uncomplicated, at least from the seat of a bicycle.
We crank north toward Mount Union, then west toward Trenton. Neither town looks like it has more than a hundred residents, nor any services beyond a post office and a grain elevator. In between it's all crop land, all flat. It's against this backdrop that I think about where stand, now that our time away from the road is behind us. While I was surrounded by all of the errand running, sleeping in, movies, fishing, baseball games, and all-you-can-eat buffets in Burlington it was easy to lose sight of what we'd accomplished and where we were headed next. The distractions around me were wonderful, but they were distractions all the same. They kept my mind locked on what was right in front of me and not much else. Now that barrier is gone. Our time is our own once more. Every day will bring with it the kind of mystery and novelty that settled life can never hope to offer.
Then I spend the better part of a mile riding on the white line at the edge of the road because the reflective paint makes a squishy, satisfying sound when my front tire runs over it. I also determine that Iowa has more Buick sedans per capita than anywhere else in the world. It's late afternoon and the heat index shoots up to ninety-eight degrees.
But just as we start to settle back into the freedom of motion and thought that come with long-distance bicycle travel it all comes crashing down. During our stop for dinner at the town park in Wayland, Walter wanders around, pukes in the grass, and then hunches over to take a leak no fewer than five times. His sickness is back. I can't believe it. I can't fucking believe it. After ten days of antibiotics, ten days of rest, and much reassurance from the vet, we're right back where we started weeks ago. Our little guy is in terrible shape once again and there's nothing in the 2,000-plus miles ahead that can do anything to change that fact. In the span of no more than ninety seconds any last shred of optimism flows from our minds and out into the warm evening air. We know that we're going to load Walter back into the trailer, get back on our bikes, ride a few miles down the road to the state park, and that'll be it. We've pushed as far as we can. This adventure is over.
The last act feels surreal. I'm riding westbound across America on a bicycle, staring into the setting sun, feeling the heat of the day fade away all around me, with a light tailwind helping me draw closer to the coast mile by mile. It swirls up within me this amazing combination of purpose and satisfaction and clear-headedness that up until a few years ago I never thought possible. On almost any other day, in almost any other set of circumstances, it's one of the greatest places in the world in which to find myself. But this evening all it does is add to the heavy waves of sadness that break above our helmets one after the next after the next. We're in great shape. The hardest riding is behind us. Today was amazing; we rode strong and had a great time despite huge heat and long, steep rollers near the end. And none of that matters anymore.
I'm sick to my stomach. I've had to end trips like this in the past, but always on my terms, always when I was ready to call it quits and go home. It's not like that now. We both want to watch the country unfold before us, to wake up and fall asleep outside, to ride until we see and smell salt water again. The heat, the humidity, the hills, the miles — we're capable of handling all of those things. Out here on the road is where we want to be more than just about anything. But what we want most of all is a healthy, happy dog. That's where our priorities lie. And on that there's no possible compromise.
Today's ride: 71 miles (114 km)
Total: 2,063 miles (3,320 km)
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