Then There Were Three

May 17, 2015

It's easy to travel by bicycle alone. The hills are still hard work, the thunderstorms are still cold and wet and kind of terrifying, and the asshole drivers are still asshole drivers, but so much of every day revolves around taking care of what I need and what I want. I eat that pizza when I'm hungry, I nap in that shade when I'm a little tired, and I camp on that drunk woman's front lawn when offered because, well, it's free, it would be rude to say no, and the only person who might get run over by an errant Ford F-150 is me. There's something about giving into and satisfying these selfish desires that's primal, animal, human — something that's been hard-wired into my brain and yours as a result of the lives and deaths of the hundreds of millions of people who came before us. It's second nature in every sense of the term. It's just what we do. It's wonderful.

When I travel by bicycle with another adult there's a subtle shift in that balance, but finding ways to meet these desires still sits at the core of my life. That's one of the reasons why it's such a good time; you do whatever the hell the two of you feel like and everyone else can go screw themselves. And if your traveling partner is more or less like you, the freedom and challenge and joy of the road have a way of smoothing down the differences between you while at the same time making the good experiences shine even brighter. If you're luckier still to have the good fortune of riding alongside a person you love and care about, a person who also feels a sense of fulfillment from traveling this way, it's whatever word describes the next level beyond wonderful.

But when someone you also care about who isn't self-sufficient enters the picture, everything changes. It raises a question you never before had to ask: do I find a person I can trust to watch over my little ball of awesomeness while I'm away, or do I bring that little ball of awesomeness with me? Choosing the first requires spending weeks or months or even years apart, every day wondering if the other is happy, if they're healthy, and what they'll remember of you when you come back. Choosing the second is a conscious decision to set aside a chunk of your selfish wants in the interest of taking good care of someone who can't survive without your help. It also means opening yourself up to the chance that they won't enjoy the trip like you do, and that you'll have to scale the thing back or end it altogether if they don't.

When Kristen and I cycled in New Zealand and Australia for five months this past winter — with plans to ride longer still — we both agreed that the burden of bringing my dog Walter along would have been far too great. In terms of cost, of time invested, of immigration hurdles, of the Australian summer heat, and of the stress endured by all three of us, there didn't exist an ideal formula to make the trip work in a successful way. That's how we chose to place Walter in a home with someone else, someone he knew well, with the goal of reuniting with him after we wrapped up our travels and returned to a more settled life at some unknown date.

For several months it worked. But in the end our plans were just that. One quiet evening in late January while laying in a tent in the Australian outback I received an email from Walter's caretaker. She told me that his behavior had turned poor, that he wasn't getting along with the other dogs in his home, and that he was limping around on his back leg because of a problem that two vets couldn't identify. He was in bad shape. And on top of this, the caretaker could no longer keep him; he had to find a new place to live.

Within a few hours my dad agreed to swoop in, rescue Walter, and help him back to health until we could return to the States five weeks later. But it only took a matter of minutes after receiving that fateful email for Kristen and I to decide that Walter would now be coming along with us wherever the slow road happened to lead. When at last we reunited with the little guy in early March, the thought of once again leaving his adorable face and outsized personality and undying loyalty behind for months at a time erased itself from our minds in an instant. Our team of three — Team Hawthorne — had been restored, and so it would stay.

Rather than give up cycle-touring we're bringing Walter along with us. It requires big changes to the routines we tested and failed at and then refined over more than 6,600 miles of riding this past fall and the winter. Our loads will be heavier and our pace slower. We'll take more breaks and we'll ride more in the mornings and evenings to avoid the heat of the day. Restaurants and grocery stores and libraries will become an exercise in teamwork and rotation. And most of all we'll have to dedicate time and energy to the well-being of an animal whose health and survival depends on us and us alone. It will demand a level of selflessness that we've never before had to rise toward.

Yet it's a challenge we're not only ready for but a challenge we need to face. We've made a promise to each other take on as many adventurous pursuits as we can, not only in the next few years but in the long term as well. And we never intended for these futures to include the two of us alone. I think a lot of people our age and a little younger have the same thoughts; these kind of idealistic hopes that they can take the hobbies they love and incorporate their pets or their kids into them when the time comes. But Kristen and I both know that plans and dreams and visions have a way of not aligning with reality when the cranks start turning for real. The only way to know for sure if such an ambitious life is possible at all is to get outside, give it your best shot, and see what happens.

This means that although we're about to set out on a trip across the United States on a pair of bikes so heavy no normal person would try to ride them, while sleeping in a tent that smells so bad no normal person would spend even one night in it, this is more than a cross-country cycling adventure. It's a question, a hypothesis, and an experiment. We want to find out if you can still do stuff like this when you choose to have a family of your own — when you have more to think about and take care of than just yourself.

By the end of the summer we'll have come a lot closer to finding an answer. We hope you'll follow along for the journey.

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