Hey Brother, How Much Farther Is It to The Gathering?

May 21, 2015 to May 23, 2015

On Thursday we leave the interstates behind for good. In their place we follow one stretch of rough two-lane highway after the next, where we pass one church for what seems like every ten houses. There's green everywhere: leafy trees, thick underbrush lining the banks of creeks and streams and rivers, and lawn after lawn after lawn. Turning off the freeways gives a much stronger sense of how far we've come since California. The towns we pass through have that strange mix of Dollar General stores, check-cashing places, deer processing plants, and tubby older guys wearing confederate flag-pattered t-shirts and mesh trucker caps that signal we've crossed into the heart of the capital S South.

Where you get a flat tire fixed in the middle of the country in Tennessee.

Tennesee becomes Kentucky at a speed that's slow even for our van, but that's how we like it. The constant stream of SUVs driving ninety and semi-trucks passing eight feet off the rear bumper is gone. When we feel like stopping, we stop. When we want to take Walter for a long walk, we do. When it seems like a good idea to spend several hours in the same coffee shop in Bowling Green, Kentucky where I spent several hours on my cross-country ride back in 2011, that's how we decide to spend our evening.

Only twenty-four hours after setting up our bed in the back of a Volkswagen Vanagon in a dark corner of a truck stop parking lot in Western Tennessee, we find ourselves eating forty cents worth of ramen in the back of a Volkswagen Vanagon in a dark corner of Walmart Supercenter parking lot in Western Kentucky. The fact that all three of us are here to experience it together makes us just as happy as falling asleep in a remote forest or or on an over-soft mattress in a four-star hotel. To be content right where we are is one of the most amazing gifts I know.

On Friday morning we take a tour of the Chevrolet Corvette factory in Bowling Green. We have to park far away from the entrance because the closest lots are reserved for American-made cars only. Then it's on to a Waffle House, where hash browns with square-shaped slices of American cheese melted into place on top of them become our fuel for the road. Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter" plays in the background. As the afternoon wears on, the hills become bigger in size and greater in number. The farms turn smaller and the density of the forest grows along with the thickness of the accents we hear. The Appalachians are upon us. So too is the path I traveled when I passed through this part of the country in the bike in 2011.

I told you that dog makes terrible eating choices.

We cross that path again in Berea, a small town that I remember as the dividing line between the hardcore hillbilly country of Eastern Kentucky and the more mellow feel of the west. As we pass by the little coffee shop and the Italian restaurant and the shaded lawns of the college, I'm taken straight back to the three days I spent here on this same holiday weekend four years ago. What strikes me is how different my life was back then. I wasn't yet married. My business was a shadow of what it would become. I had no idea that I'd never again live in Seattle. Walter hadn't been born. I hadn't yet eaten bull testicles.

And my trip was just that: this defined block of four months with a fixed beginning and a fixed end. Once it was over it would be over, and I would return to a life of working, eating poorly and gaining weight, and limiting most of the fun things in life to the forty-eight hours of a weekend. Back then I had no idea how much the experience of riding across America would change what mattered to me, and how in turn it would lead me to Portland, to Kristen, and to the wonderful world and wonderful life that lay beyond. Four years on, I feel like a different person.

We head off into the Daniel Boone National Forest east of Berea to find a place to camp for the night. As we pound down a gravel back road through the woods, a silver Jeep comes up behind us. Not wanting to hold it up, I pull onto a side road to let it pass. But when I stop, the driver of the Jeep stops, maybe twenty feet behind us at the end of the side road. We both look at each other. Fifteen seconds pass. Then the Jeep pulls down the road on which we sit and inches its way toward us until it draws even. With the windows down I look inside and see a skinny guy with a ponytail, smoking, and his heavier girlfriend with shoulder-length hair dyed pure black.

"Hey brother, how much farther is it to The Gathering?" he says.

This isn't the question I was expecting. I stare off in silence for a few seconds.

"Um, I have no idea," I say once my wits have had a chance to reconnect themselves.

"But you're here for The Gathering, right?"

"Actually, we're just out here."

Long pause.

"Oh, alright then," he says. And then the Jeep backs away and speeds off into the woods, bound for a long night of eating mushrooms, group sex, the ritual sacrifice of a farm animal, or who knows what else.

In the end, the night passes with no animal or human screams. There aren't even any gunshots or drunken screaming. All we hear are the hooting of owls, the rustling of armadillos, and the contented sighing of West Highland Terrier falling asleep outdoors in a tent for the first time in his life.

We travel on and off the path of the Adventure Cycling Association's TransAmerica route throughout Saturday. First it's Booneville and Buckhorn and Hazard in Kentucky, then later Damascus, Konnarock, and Troutdale in Virginia. What strikes me is how little I remember of the riding itself on these roads. Everything I took a picture of and included in my journal remains as clear as the day it happened, but all of the specifics that precede and follow them have faded or disappeared altogether. It's reminds me how important it is to write as much as I do, and to take as many pictures as I do. As soon as the pavement falls beneath my wheels or fades from the oval shape of my rear view mirror, time starts to chip away at the details until broad, soft outlines are all that's left.

The store in Buckhorn, Kentucky. Four years later and the sign for the indoor yard sale still hangs next to the front door.

But what I remember is wonderful. My days in Kentucky and Virginia were some of the greatest I experienced anywhere on my cross-country trip. They were some of the greatest days of my life as a whole. Traveling through this part of America again makes me all the more excited about reaching Bar Harbor next week and setting out on another adventure. I hope that four years from now I'll look back on the journey to come with the same kind of nostalgia that will forever link a piece of my heart to the Appalachians.

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