Wednesday, October 24, 2012

El Fin

The End!! As I'm sure most of you lovely readers are already aware, Ben and I have made it to our destination of New York City. We rolled straight into Manhattan (by way of a bicycle super-highway, the Hudson Greenway), on the sunny afternoon of October 1st. Just north of the city we ran into some other bicycle tourists, Ryan and Lisa, a lovely couple who were just then completing a bicycle saga that spanned 2.5 years and 4 continents. Our adventure was not nearly so expansive, but we were still damn proud of ourselves. Over the past 68 days (for Ben, I was along for 56 of them), we only took 4 days off (+2 for Ben), covered about 3,800 miles coast to coast (of which I pedaled about 3,200), biked through 7 states (+2 more for Ben), as well as Ontario. Of the 59 nights we were together, we stayed in official campgrounds for 9 nights, people's houses 24 nights, non-official camp spots 22 nights, and paid for exactly 1 hotel (after a particularly miserable rainy day coming into Hudson, New York.

To say the very least, it was a truly amazing trip. I was taking a pretty big leap of faith by agreeing to bike across the country with Ben, a boy I knew I liked a whole lot but had only been dating for 3 months. We got along famously, probably owing to Ben's ridiculously calm and content demeanor. I tend to be a bit more fiery, so I suffered a few minor breakdowns. All of them were completely reasonable however, and were always directed more at frustration at the physically/emotionally/mentally challenging situations more than my impossibly sweet long-haired companion.

People ask us if we trained a lot before undertaking such a physically demanding trip. The answer is no, we hardly trained at all. Sure, I took a few long bike rides before heading down to Missoula, but they were along the lines of 20-30 miles, 2-3 hours on my sweet racing road bike in the drizzly cold Alaskan summer. To be fair, there's only so much training one can do for a long-distance bicycle trip when one lives in a place with only 46 miles of road. I had also never ridden my bicycle loaded down with panniers. On the first day of our bicycle trip, we rode 45 miles out of Missoula, Montana. This was more than I had ever ridden in my entire life, and it turned out to be one of our shorter days.

Before starting the bicycle trip, I was quite found of saying things like, "At the end of the day, it's just a bicycle ride!" Well, this proved to be not entirely accurate. I'm pretty sure some of those mountain passes and 102 degree days in South Dakota represented the most physically challenging things I've ever done in my entire life. And I don't know anyone who gets on their bicycle for 6 or 7 hours to relax and enjoy life. So I retract my previous statement. This was not "just a bike ride." It was an insane, 2-month long epic self-powered journey across the northern states in which we encountered many strange and lovely people, places, incredibly sunsets and inhaled the repulsive perfumes of far too much roadkill.

Not everything was fun and games in rainy northern New York...

Quite possibly the best thing about this velocipedal voyage were the people we met along the way. We stayed with many "hosts," which we found through the websites couchsurfing.org and warmshowers.org. We were absolutely floored by the hospitality shown to us by friendly folks who had literally just met us, and whom we were connected to by nothing more than love of bicycles and the desire to help fellow humans in their journeys. We were often given our own bedrooms, incredible home-cooked meals, cold beers, warm showers, and hours of colorful conversation.
 
 And then there were countless people who helped us along the way who had no connection to bike touring or those websites. People whose names I will never know. An adorable elderly couple who picked us up outside of Helena Montana as the sky was darkening and we had just discovered that my front tube had 9 holes in it. An older woman outside sitting at her fruit stand in upstate New York who made us listen to her I-hate-Obama rant and then "donated" a pile of apples and peppers to "our cause." Another couple who picked us up in the pitch darkness somewhere in Ontario just when we were starting to despair and drove us to our host's front door in Owen Sound. There are countless others. 
 
Ben and I have talked endlessly about how our very faith in humanity has been restored by being bicycle tourists. I've thought quite a bit about what quality of being on bicycle makes people particularly receptive to us. I think that people appreciate how vulnerable we are, and how connected we are to our current environment. When you're in a car, you're completely insulated from your surroundings and are for all practical purposes an autonomous self-sufficient being. On a bicycle, however, you are powering yourself through every mile of the landscape, and are painfully aware of factors such as temperature, slope, wind, traffic, animals, people, cities, towns, etc...It's absolutely incredible how people rise to the challenge of giving you what you need, whether it's because they respect what you're doing or find you to be insane and in need of guidance.

I could go on and on. And I think I very well will, but in future blogs. I haven't even mentioned New York City yet, this energetic metropolis we've called "home" for the past few weeks. Or the fact that we're headed to Argentina next (sans bikes) to meet up with our friend Lora and volunteer on organic farms for a few months. I'll also try to relate a few more stories from the bike trip, as I feel there are countless things I never got a chance to mention on here. I thank everyone for taking the time to read about and thus share in this crazy adventure that I am blessed enough to be on. You can reach me at sarahginter@gmail.com. Happy Revolutions, everybody. I wish you all the best.