The First Bicycles Ever

February 13, 2016

This morning we're Team Gravel Grinders. We crunch and slide our way through miles of loose rocks and soft dirt on the empty roads that pass through a huge wildlife management area. Our bags clank and rattle in our racks and the brake and derailleur cables smack into the frame with faint metallic pings. Small rocks get pulled up into the channel formed by my front fender and then shot out ahead of me with a satisfying zzzzzzzzip! Kristen rides wide twenty-six-inch tires, but I'm on 700x35s because they're just about the widest thing that fits in the narrow gap at the front of my bike's chainstays. At least half the time I'm perched on the edge of a wipeout.

But it's all worth it. There haven't been many times on this trip when we've found ourselves in a place without homes or businesses or power lines in front of us or waiting over the next rise. This morning we have the rare chance to hear the rush of the wind through the trees, the calls of the birds, and the constant trickle of creeks as they flow over the logs that have lodged themselves between the banks.

It reminds me how much we love this stuff and how good it is for our souls. We need more of it in our lives. It's why this trip is the swan song for the Novara Randonee I've had since 2008. Back home a lugged steel frame from the late eighties built for twenty-six-inch tires waits to be sandblasted and repainted and built up into a machine that can take me anywhere without fuss, whether the road is paved or not. I think about that bike and try to imagine what it will look like and how it will feel. I hope it will carry me another 20,000 miles through places that make me smile, that make me think, and that make me remember why it's good to be alive.

As Kristen approaches the top of a hill a dark gray Dodge Ram pickup with a light bar across the top and a rifle standing upright between the front seats stops alongside her. Inside sits a law enforcement officer from the state's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

"Well this is a first," he says to her. "I have never seen anybody on a bicycle out here. I been doin' this ten years and I never seen anybody travelin' like you two. We'll get people on kayaks occasionally, tryin' ta get down to the mouth of the Mississippi or whatever, but never travelin' on bicycles."

Not long after I roll up, the officer gets out of the idling truck and stands next to us. I notice he has a picture of his daughter wedged in the gap between the speedometer and tachometer behind the steering wheel. The truck has a bumper sticker that reads Don't Trash Louisiana. And he has two handguns in holsters, one at either hip. The grip of the one on the left side points forward so he can grab it quickly with his right hand if needed. But what stands out the most are the two dogs looking over at us from the back of his truck.

"Can I pet your dogs?" Kristen asks.

"They're not your dogs, are they?" he says with a laugh. "Naw, I just picked 'em up. I try ta pick up strays when I'm on the road. I can't stand ta see 'em out there alone."

They're both girls. One is mostly black with patches of white. She's a total sweetheart. I can tell she's younger because when I lift up the flaps of skin around her mouth they reveal clean white teeth and healthy gums. The other one is brindle-colored and older. She's a mother, probably several times over. She's so skinny it's no stretch to call her skeletal, and she's so weak that it's hard for her to get up and stand when I walk around to the back of the truck bed to pet her.

"Some people just drive out to the woods and drop their dogs off if they don't want them anymore," the officer tells us. It's the same story for those horses we saw out near Fort Polk yesterday. They didn't escape; they were loaded in a trailer and taken out there and left to fend for themselves. Now they've bred and the populations are growing. He says it's a problem because the horses are wandering out into the highways and getting injured or killed by passing traffic.

"What's it like being law enforcement out here?" I ask. "I've always thought it must be kind of intimidating. You're out here all by yourself, trying to uphold the law among people with lots of guns who aren't always so keen on having all these laws on the books."

"That's true. But ya know, ninety-five percent of the people out here follow the rules," he says. "They wanta harvest game in the right way. They wanta be responsible about it. But then there's the five percent that don't. We got convicted felons out here who aren't s'posed to have guns. We get people cussin' and fightin' over good huntin' spots. We used to get a lotta drugs durin' huntin' season when so many people are out here, weed and meth, ya know. But we've done a lotta enforcement on that end in the last few years. People know we're out here. So it's not much of a problem anymore."

He says the job is pretty quiet between February and August. "But if it was prime deer season I'd offer ta put ya in the back a the truck and get ya outta here," he says with a laugh and a smile.

"Is it a good job then?" I ask while petting the head of the black dog, like I've been doing for the last fifteen minutes.

"It's a great job. I love it. I really do. Still, there's times I wish I could drop everything and just go like you guys."

Half an hour after he rolled up we get ready part ways, but I think we could have hung out in the same spot for another hour. I shake the officer's hand and find out his name is Scotty. Then he takes our picture to include in the department's employee newsletter – the first bicycles ever. It's the third time in as many days that we've had a real conversation that's positive and welcoming and has depth behind it. It's what I thought and hoped we'd find on this trip all along. It's what we've found most everywhere else we've ridden over the years. And it affirms what we've been feeling for the last few days, that the cold shoulders and disinterest of the Deep South have begun to release their grasp.

Wild turkeys and butterflies and hawks all cross our path on the last few miles of gravel that lead us back to the highways. Beyond it's men burning stumps, trailers stacked with hay, and trucks towing the boat out to the lake to go fishing. It's Saturday afternoon in the country in Louisiana, quiet and easy.

Love and back scratches at the gas station.

We haven't had a shower in five days. All of our electronics are dead. Our clothes aren't yet filthy enough to start walking off under their own power but we very much want to wash them before we cross that line. With another four days of camping in national forests ahead of us we decide to deal with all of this stuff by heading to the state park we tried to reach yesterday before a giant military base stopped us. That means it's a short, easy ride of less than thirty miles before the Toledo Bend Reservoir appears ahead of us.

The text and symbols on the brown sign pointing toward South Toledo Bend State Park are obscured because they've been blown off by a load of buckshot, but we get there all the same. The showers and laundry bring back a level of calm, satisfied clean that can only be achieved on a long bicycle tour.

There's smoke when I walk out of the bathroom in the late afternoon. I see it hanging in the air and the smell of it fills my head. My first reaction is that there's a forest fire somewhere nearby, but then I remember we're at a state park in America on a Saturday evening. It's just the collective smoke from a series of fifty separate campfires.

In the early evening we take a walk through a forest of oak and holly and hickory. Dirt and moss and leaves and pine needles pad each footfall. When we look to the west we see Texas. To the south, hills that were turned into islands by the creation of the reservoir rise up from the water covered in green with so many pines. It's like a taste of the Pacific Northwest here in the South. Everyone else is in the campground or speeding around the lake on a boat with a giant outboard engine attached to the stern, so we walk the trails of a state park that's all our own.

The night comes with quiet. The boats are docked or trailered, no diesel trucks roll in late at night, and the adult contemporary ballads we heard when we rolled up to our site have long since been silenced. The wind dies to nothing. The swamps and bogs are far away and no frogs sing. Aside from the scattered and distant rush of passing cars on the highway and a few coyote howls the world is still.

Today's ride: 27 miles (43 km)
Total: 1,151 miles (1,852 km)

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