i’ve gotten rid of a lot of things in the past six months. big things, like a place to live, musical instruments, a bicycle, a job. little things, like shoes, shirts, phone numbers, pencils. and now that i’ve reached somewhat of a stopping point, i’m starting to reaccumulate those things. and it feels great. right now i “live” in a series of friends’ apartments in the mission district of san francisco, and i spend my days trying to find jobs, so i can have enough money to get another one of everything i’ve left behind in north carolina. since i have no money, every purchase carries the same electric rush that i felt when i saved up my allowance for whatever the hell it was worth spending on way back in 1995. for example: since i don’t have a key to the place i’m sleeping in, when i leave, i can’t get back in until my friend gets off work. if walk out mid-afternoon in a t-shirt, i’m stuck in it till midnight. last night i got cold and walked into a walgreens to get a tshirt, and even though they only had $2.99 shirts in my size in purple, i’m still excited about my purchase thirty-six hours later. since arriving here, i’ve also bought a pair of slightly-too-small-but-super-sharp shoes and a pocket-sized map of san francisco, all of which have made me positively giddy for inordinate periods of time.

some things, however, come even easier. getting off the BART on the way to Berkeley, i found a pair of shoes in almost my size. a pair of tims. a pair of brown suede tims. a pair of brown suede slip-on grad student tims. i was hoping they’d be at least comfortable, but they aren’t at all. why the hell do people wear those things, then?

my job search has been trying, at times. it turns out there’s like, a recession, or something? my one success thus far (among many “promising” leads, although the threshold of promising is pretty much the existance of a lead in the first place) is a cashier position at burger joint, whose fancy flash website underscores the glut of web designers in san francisco–one more thing to cross off the resume. basically, if i end up flipping burgers, it’s because i got a promotion.

i was going to san francisco, with an aching in my heart, or flowers in my hair, or something. actually, those somethings consisted entirely of one change of clothes (unless you count the two changes of spandex i still had), a camera, and a lot of water bottles. i was going to hitchhike as a sort of consolation prize for selling my bike and not riding down the famed highway 101. the county had cheap local bus service, however, and i elected to take it as far south as i could.

sandy had a aggregate weakness of body and mind that made it difficult to tell her age; she carried a child’s pink backpack and a tattered duffel bag and she was suddenly one more person in a waiting room that i had previously practically owned. the other sudden occupiers were a child, who pointed to me and said “stranger! that man’s a stranger,” and its mother who replied “yes. yes he is.” thus began my conversation with sandy.

“you know, i think more children have gotten in trouble because they’re taught to not ask ‘strangers’ for help than have been abducted by people in vans,” i mentioned. “i used to get lost in the grocery store all the time.”

sandy immediately turned her bulk as towards me as the bench permitted. “i think they should start charging, you know, maybe five cents more for a pop. because a pop is a luxury. and they could use that money to pay for, you know, doctors or whatever. and beer. they should put taxes on beer too.”

in situations like this, i often use a fictional grandfather as a sort of oscar-wilde-esque mouthpiece to give an opinion, in this case one supporting small businesses (like oregon’s many microbreweries). politics are dangerous to talk about with strangers, especially ones that are going to be trapped on a small bus with you for the next few hours. fortunately, i soon realized that sandy threaded her conversations together with nouns rather than more esoteric concepts, preferring tangibility to any sort of logical progression.

“i keep all my nickels in a jar. it’s good to have money in case something bad happens. like if your credit card doesn’t work or i have to pay my rent i can pay it in nickels. if you save your money in fifties and hundreds people will think you’re rich but not if you pay them in nickels.”

i didn’t know what to say. that made one of us.

“i was doing laundry the other day and guess how old of a quarter i found.”

easy response. “1995.”

“no. guess again.”

“1963.”

“no, you’re still wrong. older”

i lowballed her. “1894.”

“no. it was a 1944. i think it’s valuable. mr peterson offered to give me a dollar for it but its more valuable than that. i was lucky because i was doing my laundry and i saw it and i almost put it in the machine but it was old so i saved it. i probably used a thousand quarters last year and this one was old.”

in richard adams’ watership down, the protagonist rabbits have words only for the numbers one through four (never mind that one of the main characters is named “fiver”) and a thousand, which functions as a catchall for larger quantities. i found the book in powell’s bookshop in portland, which is the largest bookstore in the world, apparently. i hadn’t read it in maybe 18 years, and when i picked it up it became apparent that i hadn’t actually read it then, either, so much as i had made my eyes rigorously touch every word.

sandy and i got on the bus. we passed some bikers. “they should make bikers pay taxes for the roads because they use them too,” she said. “just, you know, a dollar or so.”

i kept my mouth shut.

mike stopped his ’93 subaru hatchback as quickly as he could. he yanked a string tied to some interior linkage in the door that had long since divorced the handle, and i hopped in. the first thirty seconds in a stranger’s car are the most awkward: your bags are stacked in your lap and between your legs, so your knee is right where third gear is; you’re both falling over and echoing each other’s words; in this case, you’re trying to graciously decline of the offer of a bowl hit while concealing your worry that he had recently indulged.

mike was a nice guy with lots of good advice. “if you ever want to get rid of some pot plants, sprinkle ‘em with slug bait.” or, “if your granddad leaves you lots of cool shit when he dies, bury it quick because your in-laws are going to try to come steal it.”

noted. mike’s best narrative, however, involved why he will never go to tillamook again (hence our detour around it off the highway). about five years ago, he was in town with some buddies and rented a couple of movies from the local mom ‘n pop video store. unfortunately, his buddy’s mom got sick, and they all drove back to portland without thinking of the movies. about a week later, the shop called him up to ask about the movies. “you need to bring them back.”

“listen, guys, my buddy’s mom got sick, i don’t have a car, i’ll get down there when i can. it might be a few weeks, just charge me the late fees or whatever.”

“no, you don’t understand, we’re a small movie shop. you have to bring the movies back now.”

“look, i’ll buy new ones on amazon or whatever. i just can’t get down there.”

“no, you have to bring us back our movies now.”

mike told them where to put their movies. a year later, he’s hanging out with some friends and their dogs in a park. a cop shows up to tell them dogs aren’t allowed, and proceeds to run mike’s friends ID and give him a ticket–only, mike’s friend had an outstanding warrant for “some bullshit”, and into the cruiser he goes. the trooper decides to run everyone’s IDs, and it turns out mike, too has an outstanding warrant.

“for what?”

illegal possession of stolen property. mike spends two weeks in jail and eight hundred dollars in fees ‘n fines for two movies. don’t f#$k around with mom ‘n pop.

jake picks me up at the bus station at 3:00 in the morning with a bike he had slung over his shoulder, a bottle of jameson, and a can of sparks. i sleep on a windowsill and fall off at seven in the morning when my phone rings. i go back to sleep and wake up to screaming on the street: some girl and her phone having an argument. “don’t you dare laugh at me!” she cries. “how dare you!”

how dare i, indeed. and now i have to find a job, and an apartment, and a bike, and things.

idaho was a lot like kentucky in several ways. for starters, it suffered from position–being one state away from the finish (at least, according to the plan) made us want to get through it all the quicker. also, the population was described as mostly mormon fundamentalists and anarchist white supremacists. lastly, they were suffering from a heat wave, with temps hovering around 105° for most of the time we were there. although we encountered neither packs of polygamist offspring nor gun-toting maniacs, we did see more confederate flags and homemade camo paint jobs than we had since back when radio stations started with Ws. idaho itself was beautiful–crystal rivers winding down through sheer gorges for the vast majority of the state.

washington was hilly. and windy and smelly. we weren’t even supposed to be there. but when given the choice between continuing on to the dalles in your wagon and rafting down the columbia river, what did you do? you rafted down the damn river. this was a mistake, because the columbia river is the biggest windsurfing spot in the world, and if you stopped pedalling (wagonning?) you went backwards. and lost 343 pounds of food, and your oxen all died. of dysentery. also, if you’re like us, you got 18 flats in three hours, shredded a tire, ran out of patches, ate nothing but pop-tarts and tuna for a day, and your ass looks like van gough’s starry starry night if he had only used red paint.

oh hey, look! a waterfall! and, now we’re in portland.

missoula, montana is home to the legendary adventure cycling association. since the official route has cyclists take a thirteen mile spur into town, effectively adding twenty-six unnecessary miles, a lot of folks are of the opinion that the ACA are just a lonely bunch trying to trick people into visiting them. since a) we were off route and were coming through missoula anyway and b) they give you free ice cream and soda for visiting, i didn’t mind the trip. they took our picture standing in front of the sign, and now my “loose” rig is immortalized in polaroid in the presumed world headquarters of adventure cycling. it truly is an international institution–waiting for the computer in the “cyclists’ lounge”, i was the only one who didn’t speak german. the lounge itself was decorated with maps and portraits of cyclists from the 70′s and 80′s, who look more or less exactly the same as cyclists from the 2000′s except that their ancient steel-tubed frames still have derailleurs on them.

montana is known as “big sky country,” but our first hundred miles were in a canyon, so we were stuck with sheer cliff faces and the gallatin river. us highway 191 is breathtakingly beautiful, and is also the most deadly highway in montana, as the scores of white crosses indicate. in fact, most of us highway 191 consists of redesignations of us highway 666 through new mexico and arizona. of course, we just liked the road because it was downhill for 70 miles through a beautiful canyon with bridges to jump off and decent shoulders to ride on. there were twenty-one, by the way; thanks for the heads up, fellas.

we stopped in bozeman, MT to visit the latest incarnation of camp chesnutt. as we came into town, main st was blocked off with bikers huddled under awnings to keep out of the rain; as adam and i pedaled down the street, gathered crowds started cheering and whistling. without knowing exactly what was going on, we copped our best tour de france poses, tucking in hard and spinning as quick as our loaded bikes would allow. what we had serendip’d was the sprint leg of the only-slightly-less-legendary tour de bozeman, and it marked the only time we’ve had a chute finish to a standing ovation on our own tour. once at the house, katie’s UNC education finally came to some good, as she had gone to school with half of the folks up here (this marks at least the sixth time katie has been recognized by someone who should have been a perfect stranger). continuing our tradition of not resting on rest days, katie took a hike and adam and i saddled up on mountain bikes to run up mt hyalite. by run, i mean half bike, half bike-push. fact: i did not anticipate kicking steps into a 75° snowfield at any point on this trip. the run down was great, and if anyone is curious, there are plenty of plants with thorns in montana; also, i’m pretty sure the headset on katherine’s bike is pregnant now. sorry about that.

this marks the last rest day until we finish; from here on it’s about 1000 miles through western montana, northern idaho, and oregon.

“oh, sure, but do know that the bear is very special. it was given to us by a three year old. who’s dead now.”

she rides in a truck cab through a construction zone (there goes ACA rule #2).

“yeah, i drove trucks for thirty-seven years. i tried to look up my buddies a while ago. turns out they were all dead.”

nothing like an innocent face to make you want to talk about dead people to a perfect stranger.

still, wyoming is beautiful–by far my favorite state so far. the mountains are incredible, the desert is breathtaking, and my adjectives are inadequate. we stopped to do some hiking in grand teton national park, and hitched out to cascade canyon with a string of friendly bearded folks in vans (note to children: friendly bearded folks in vans should probably only be hitched with inside national parks or similarly patrolled areas). another nice development: people now tell us how close we are to finishing instead of giving us a skeptical “be careful” and a shake of the head. we’re about to hit three thousand miles, and i’m running out of memory on my camera, so we’ve got to finish soon.

our greed did not please the cycling gods. within a day, the roads became carpeted with a layer of grasshoppers more numerous than the corn of the fields. things i have learned about grasshoppers in the past two days:

• they eat their dead (sort of a reverse-zombie thing)
• they are excellent jumpers but terrible landers
• they are capable of jumping mid-coitus
• there are a lot of them in kansas
• they feel like a one-pound sand spur when they land on your leg
• they go “crunch” when you run over them.

when we failed to turn back from this plague of erstwhile locusts, the gods’ wrath manifested itself as a great and furious storm, gathering tall and menacing over complicit acreage; the only shelter in sight a lonely split level ranch home.

the gods were steering us towards the great prophet william bean. much like yoda on dagobah, billy was a wyoming native in exile, eeking out a living in northwestern kansas. he gave us shelter from the storm, breakfast for dinner, and told us that to make up for our gratuitous bushwacking we would have to climb the great snowy mountains to the north.

we were still but unrepentant sinners. ignoring the prophet’s words, we hastened to the town of fort collins, meeting a false prophet (and state senator) along the way who boasted of dura-ace components, hybrid vehicles, and cheap mexican food. once in the city, we were lured by the siren symphony of free, wind-powered, bike-friendly beer, cool rivers, and discount sporting goods. we stayed for two days before heading on.

the cycling gods were now furious. the land buckled like a deflated mylar balloon. the winds howled their furies, from foreboding falsettos to terrible tenors, unrelenting and evil. the air reeked of rotting flesh and sin, and wyoming didn’t even have a welcome sign. our couchsurfing friend in laramie lost her phone (one assumes into an abyss or reasonable facsimile thereof) and katie’s friend’s sister’s uncle’s brother’s former tennis partner’s palm reader was at a wedding reception. when all hope seemed lost, and we were circling the lonely blocks of laramie, the gods sent the mighty and wise prophet dwayne flowers running from a bar.

“are you guys touring? i tour all the time! honey! go clean the dog shit out of the yard. i’m gonna buy these guys a beer and bring ‘em home!”

an aside: this is pretty much the touring experience in a nutshell. your plans fall apart, deus ex’s the machina every six hours or so, and you keep moving.

dwayne bought us more beer than we wanted and spun wildly into the night, beckoning us to follow with arms and legs that seemed more numerous than one’s usual allotment at birth; a sort of hindu god of bicycling and hospitality. he plopped us safely in his backyard, and left us early the next morning with our task: climb the snowy mountains.

the snowy mountains lie about thirty miles south of the interstate, which rises a mere 1000 feet to the snowies’ four. we had planned to take the interstate (or rather it’s frontage road, or the old highway, or really anything that didn’t involve going over a mountain), but the weight of two prophets’ words hung heavy on our panniers. we had no choice; we had to try.

you see, by bypassing southern colorado, we were dodging (innocently) the highest pass on the transamerica trail. all we wanted was a little adventure, a little fat tire-ing, and a little break from the map (although we did resort to rand mcnally after a few days), but the cycling gods are uncompromising in their integrity and insist on the same from us. so we climbed, it was beautiful, and now we’re back on route with consciouses cleansed.

while kansas is lacking in any sort of physical high point, the abundance of public pools helps to ease the burden of 105 degree days and surprise thunderstorms at night. of course, we all enjoy different aspects of pool culture–katie likes to start games of sharks and minnows with the local ruffians, adam likes to float down the lazy river and make eyes at the lifeguards, and i like to do 3/4ths of a front flip off the diving board and try to take my butt from vermillion to sangria. we like the pool/big miles combo so much that we’re detouring north to extend our stay in the sunflower state before heading west to ft collins.

did you know that there exists an agricultural machine specially designed to cover large areas of the ground with feces as quickly as possible? did you know, further, that kansas is one of the windiest states in america? it’s true!

after crossing the mississippi and passing the first of several hundred firework stands, we spent the night in the mobile command center of the farmington fire department, which is exactly as cool as it sounds. we moved on to houston, texas county, MO, but didn’t see a rodeo until marshfield, MO. way to waste a sweet name, houston. The fact that MO boasts the best swimming holes in the country so far is worth noting. Alley Springs marks the convergence of said spring (cold) and a river (hot), which run side by side without mixing for a few hundred yards. I hit a new speed record in the Ozarks–46 mph–but this was quickly shattered by kev (51!). DIY fireworks plus the best pie ever in golden city, MO, and then on to kansas.