Riding a Bicycle Across North Carolina (with 1200 others)

I am very competitive, actually, but it didn't take long after the first day for me to realize that I was unlikely to beat anybody doing anything connected with this bike ride... but looking around at all the others I thought there might be a possibility that I was the oldest rider...maybe. So I took to identifying anyone who looked old. I didn't find too many. Everyone looked younger than me, as a matter of fact, so I came to the end of the ride in Oriental, NC feeling like maybe I could claim at least one victory...pitifully preposterous as it is .

I located the bus which was to take me back to Cary to pick up my car, saved a seat with my helmet, luxuriated in my last shower, loaded my bike on the bike truck, stuffed my luggage in the luggage area under the bus, snatched up a boiled scrimp dinner supplied by the town for all the maybe 1200 participants in AcrossNC 2004, and jumped on the bus just as the driver began to close the door. I scrambled to my seat noting that I had a seatmate. He had brought his scrimp dinner on the bus also, so we focused on the plastic boxes on our laps. We introduced ourselves after a moment. His name was Jim Moose. He was from Sacramento, Ca.

I asked him what he did with himself when he wasn't riding his bike. He said that he had retired in 1975 and had been riding his bike since he hadn't been able to run any longer. He loved the AcrossNC ride. He said that it was the best organized ride he'd ever been on, except possibly one across Oregon.

I turned to ask him another question when I noticed his white-grey beard and lined face and it dawned on me... I said: Jim, how old are you, if you don't my asking?

He said: 82!

Rats!

The worst part of the daily ride was waking at dawn, slightly cold, and damp, dreading the task of breaking down a wet tent, re-packing all the things one brings out when setting up camp, and getting on the road...muscles stiff and bottom sore.

The best part is that before tackling those chores, my first stop, after getting dressed in the dark so as not to wake fellow campers with a jiggling flashlight, would be the Rubber Duck, a huge trailer truck outfitted with stall showers, supplied by the organizers of the race..the sports authorities in the State of North Carolina, quietly announcing its presence and availability to the waking camp site with soft music and low lights illuminating some of the dawn shadows. It had clean floors, private stalls, and unlimited hot water.

My second stop would be the Bike Detail setup...these rides draw the enterprenuers...from massage therapists to tent setter-uppers... where strong, hot, Columbian-blend coffee waited in a warm place. And only then back to that wet tent.

Bill West, a good friend from Wilmington with whom I went to four years of high school and one year at North Carolina State University, before he went on to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, challenged me to make the ride. He had planned to ride the last two days with his son, Greg, and grandson, Josiah, and had done the entire ride last year. For whatever reason, I love to ride a bicycle and this sounded like it would be fun.

The bicycle is an elegant machine. It has barely changed from when it was invented in France in the 1800s.
Some argue that Leonardo Da Vinci conceived (made a sketch) of the first bike but a charge of forgery has been leveled against that claim.
A bike is essentially twin gyroscopes...(two slender masses that are eerily stable as rotational speed and resistance to change in
orientation increases...spatial rigidity its called.) That's why almost everybody can learn to ride one and its possible to tip a bike nearly to the horizontal around a sharp bend, to not fall over, and then to snap right back to the vertical upon exit.

I needed to bike a lot before starting this ride, since it had been a while since I had ridden even 25 miles in a day. The suggestion from the organizers is to ride 60 miles on each of back to back days. Fortunately, Katherine and I were in Washington in August before the ride began in early October and I could take advantage of the terrific dedicated paths...the WO&D trail...50 miles out to Purceville in Virginia, the Rock Creek Park route about 20 miles full circle...the one Nyal Mueenuddin did when he was 9... the Eustis trail paralleling Route 66...all readily accessible from Georgetown.

Long rides are definitely divided up into phases...at least for me. The Eustis trail starts with an incredibly hilly first 5 miles. Its exhilarating to take the downhill run from my house to Key Bridge but then, its necessary to take a deep breath, click into low gear, and be prepared for a tough 30 minutes: there's about a mile uphill climb, then a steep down hill that doesn't allow a breath even to be caught before a bike rattling 30 mile/hour rush... just to start a climb that requires the lowest gear for me, anyway. This alternating dread at the uphill, terror at the downhill that exhausts you before the ride as barely begun...makes me irritable.

I fret at the cracks in the pavement...why can't this stretch be better maintained... a rider in the opposite direction begins to pass another rider just so that we are three abreast as I go by...often I deliberately ride that guy back into his side of the path...or point my finger at him to intimidate him from passing...I'm passing 10 miles by then ...I become incensed at the signs that announce the name of someone, often a couple,..."Joy and John Fusterman sponsor this mile"...whatever happened to anonymous giving...by this time the path has leveled out...and I've broken a sweat...and my second wind comes...and the sun is shining...and the path is now bordered by
beautiful trees, and its slightly downhill, and riding is fun and before I know it, I'm 30 miles out and its, at least metaphorically, 'down hill' all the way back to complete my 60 mile training ride.

My first contact, other than reading the material on the web site, with the AcrossNC ride was the bus trip from Cary to Sparta, NC in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, where the ride begins. In Cary, about 100 miles north near Raleigh from Raeford, in the REI parking lot, where we were to leave our cars and pick up a bus to Sparta, the starting point, we had removed the pedals and loosened the stem so that a bike could be stored efficiently on a truck, I meet my seatmate...Arthur...a guy maybe a little younger than me from upstate New York, Gary...a guy from Philadelphia who handed me one of pedals which I has dropped from my carrying bag, and two guys from Wilmington, NC ...my hometown...Robert and Paul, who sat just behind me. I said I was from Raeford.

In that way that I have observed many of us use clichés, bromides, platitudes as safe comments in initial conversation with strangers, we all agreed: "At least the route was all 'downhill.'".... since the ride started on the Virginia border with North Carolina and ended in Oriental across Pamlico Sound from Cape Hatteras on the Atlantic Ocean ...about 600 miles.

Shortly after arriving on Saturday late afternoon, getting my tent up, and visiting around briefly with my other neighbors, I settled into a conversation with two male nurses, one from Franklin, NC and the other from Mebane, a stop on the way, and where Anne MacDonald D'Annuncio, Katherine's niece lives. (We each sat in a lounge chair with foot rest provided by a service from Bike Detail that included the coffee, a clean dry towel twice a day, the chair, and a receptacle to charge a cell phone over night.) Chuck and Charles were well paid, had flexible schedules, were senior on their wards, and were constantly and pleasantly pursued by hospitals all over the country which wooed them with offers of perks to join their staff. I learned that there is a large population of nurses who simply move from one hospital to another ...well paid migrants...picking up the perks...a new car...the first four months rent for an apartment....bonuses...while seeing the country.

For some reason, we continued to run into each other, frequently settling up camp in the same place...purely coincidentally... or on the route...they rode together but we seemed to make the same rough pace...I... much slower because they were experienced and younger riders. But I never spent as much time at the rest stops as they did, so I would gain enough over the three stops during the day's ride of about 70 miles to stay even.

They deferred to me of course, respectful of age, as southerners often are...and took to kidding me that at 70 I could not possibly be keeping up with them, an oblique way of complimenting me in the 'good old boy' manner, while denying the compliment by accusing me of taking the sag wagon and hop scotching to stay ahead.

Because we seemed to wind up in same area of the camp site, I developed a theory about why people chose camping sites, relying on Jungian rationales...extroverts
chose the high points, introverts back up to the fence...until Bruce from the Eastern Shore of Maryland on whom I tried out my theory said to me: "Jim, you're overly complicating the decision...its mostly about either being either close to or far away from the shower truck and porta-potties not about hills or fences or a bad relationship with my Mother."

One great little detail of the ride was the 'license plate' that AcrossNC provided for each rider. It fit on the back of the seat. It included your name and hometown and it provided a perfect opening for any biker who would ride up beside you to start a conversation: "Hello, Jim!", "Where's Raeford?" or "Turkey
Festival huh?"

I used that approach with a woman whose license said: Dorothy Deal, Cool, Ca. I came along side her and stated: "There's no Cool, Ca...you made that up, didn't you?." That began a conversation that lasted for 10 miles. She assured me first that there was a Cool, Ca ...up somewhat near the Oregon border. She was in her 50's I'm sure...not very athletic looking...a little plump maybe...but the most experienced rider I would run into of all: She has biked across the US twice...from Canada to Mexico once and had come to North Carolina three times before to ride...and she rode those 10 uphill miles on her
large front chain ring and on the next to highest rear chain ring. I was on the middle front ring and the granny gear on the rear.'

There were a lot of hills to climb especially early in the ride. I developed a technique: don't look at the top of the hill. This parallels my approach to problems in general...I don't admit they exist...so when a very steep, long, hill approached.... I'll admit that sometimes I peeked...I would just look at the road about 10 yards ahead and keep pedaling. There's a metaphor for life somewhere in all this. For the most part, I rode alone. Most people do I think. Its a very long daily grind and each person has a pace that suits or facilitates survival.

Thank goodness for the rest stops. In the morning, the first one...about 18 miles out.. would always come upon me unexpectedly. I didn't use the very detailed route maps the organizers provided each rider because the routes were marked perfectly. A simple little scheme was used to indicate turns and to confirm turns. The sag wagon went out the evening before and spray painted little symbols on the road before each turn and after each turn and in some place after a wrong turn, so that its possible to turn back before getting wildly off course... I never got lost once.

But the first rest stop was welcomed when it came into view...I would typically start early about 7:30am and I would get to the rest stop along with the fast riders...who had started a little later...I didn't have much to eat for breakfast...just three cups of coffee and maybe a muffin...but after an hour of riding I would be ravenous...each stop had bananas, Gatorade, water, power bars...and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches...sometime I would have four. REI set up a repair shop at each stop...I could top up my tires. I would carry about 100 pounds/sq in so the ride was rough but the likelihood of punctures lessened.

Refreshed, I would start the second leg and if one came along I would try to drop in on the end of a 'pace line'...you see them, of course, in the Tour de France...The US Postal Service team in a long line with Lance Armstrong in the middle drafting behind his teammates saving his strength for the end of the race. The advantage of the pace line is real...you really can go faster than alone...the disadvantage is that to gain the advantage you have to ride with your front tire almost touching the rear tire of the person in front of you...any blip in this process produces catastrophe...and I heard several sirens on a successive days when a pace line crashed because someone made a bad move. I didn't even know how to ride in a pace line and I never tailed along for more than a couple of miles because I couldn't do any pulling myself...I just caught a ride...but it was fun...I would average maybe 15 miles an hour alone but I could do easily 20 in a pace line.

The second stop and four more peanut and butter sandwiches was the high point...I would feel good and still not tired...but the last 35 miles would often be tough...no matter how much you ride...your butt gets tired and sore...so you look forward to seeing the outskirts of town and curse the organizers for not taking the most direct route to the camp ground and imagine the hot shower awaiting you in the Rubber Duck.

I met Bill West in Rocky Mount and had a long conversation with Greg, his son, who is a Methodist pastor in a small church in Suffolk, Va. He was part of what he called a "parachute drop" procedure the bishop initiated...a young minister gets some money to live on and to pay for rent for a building to meet in...moves to an area where there is no church ...no building...no members...and starts a new church. Greg now has 60 members and great hopes. He brought along his adopted son, Josiah. In fact Greg and his wife adopted two children before, what seems to me to be common, learning that they would have their own biological child...so now they have three...4, 3 and 2 /12...more than the so-called 'Irish twins.'

Greg underestimated the length and difficulty of the ride (I doubt that he has ridden any before hand), and before even 15 miles, discovered that carrying a four year old boy is very tough riding. I pedaled Josiah for part of the second leg and suggested that they hop the sag wagon for the third, and then half way through the last leg it became clear he was exhausted so I took his bike and pedaled Josiah to the outskirts of Washington, NC, the next to last stop on the route. We came to a four lane road...the only way to get into town for about three miles and I decided it was too risky...the bike with a child on the rear is wobbly and the traffic was a little fast...so Greg enlisted a local cop sitting in his cruiser at the intersection where we turned onto the highway and he drove in back of us essentially blocking traffic from passing him. So we entered Washington with a police escort.

The ride was extremely well organized. The facilities were perfect and clean. The routes well marked...the rest stops woman-ed and plentifully provisioned by local churches. And you saw some really extreme bikes

Jim Moose said I would love the Oregon ride because while the NC ride has better campgrounds and showers, the Oregon trip has better food. I doubted that.

The camp grounds were of thick turf, the catered meals delicious...prepared often again by the local churches...fried chicken..mashed potatoes...iced tea...you can imagine... I didn't sign up for meals...but I quickly discovered that with coaxing I could convince whoever was in charge to 'sell' (although I always got waived away when I tried to find someone to pay) me a dinner after all had eaten because, as do all good Southerner cooks who fear most not having enough, they prepared plenty of food.

So I've marked the calendar for Oregon next year sometime in September.