Things Fall Apart

I walked into a small independent camera store today to see about getting my Nikon fixed. Things are falling apart. The rubber lens ring flops around like a hulahoop. The focus is erratic, sometimes tack sharp, sometimes focusing four inches in front of what I’m aiming at. The camera even shuts off now and again. I’ve managed to atleast “fix” the last problem with a little piece of folded paper that I stick in the battery compartment to maintain constant pressure on the electrical contacts.

It does not look good. Things are falling apart, succumbing to the natural entropy of the universe.

This is of course only a small portion of things that we have just simply worn out.

Early on in the trip I more or less destroyed a rear wheel. Only about 2500 miles in the trip, I wore a crack through my rear rim. Fortunately, the kind folks at Rivendell built a wheel the same day and overnighted it to the campsite.

Over the course of our trip, our clothes have worn thin, some with holes, some with tears. My IceBreaker long sleeve wool shirt now has thumb holes at the cuffs, a new added “feature.” I had a well loved seersucker shirt that literally shredded at the tail after getting caught on my seat one too many times. We’ve had to buy new cycling shorts since a few pairs have only been a few threads away from the other side of decency.

It takes humans 7 years to regenerate their bodies but apparently it only takes less than a year to completely wear out clothes and have to renew our wardrobe.

I’ve sewn my Keen sandals together with a Speedy Stitcher when it was starting to split at the ankles. I’ve also glued the foot bed down with Gorilla Glue.

Once in Washington, I went to shift the front derailleur and the cable housing actually tore open in a dramatic puff of smoke. The housing had been so sun worn that it just split into several pieces. Speaking of derailleurs, I’ve broken a shifter and cracked another. We’ve snapped about 3 bike chains on climbs. We’ve gone through a few pairs of brake pads. Laura is on her 4th set of tires.

Once, Laura was using her multi-tool to tighten a bolt and it cracked in her hand. Even the things meant to fix things are breaking.

Our tent of a few years started to fail. The zippers stopped closing. There were tears in the mesh. Our sleeping pads have leaked air. I’m currently on my third type of sleeping pad having gone through a Big Agnes, an REI pad and now I’m keeping my fingers crossed the Therm-a-Rest will hold out. Laura keeps adding patches to her Big Agnes, reviving it from the dead with another healthy dab of glue and optimism. Don’t even ask about her pillow. Yes, we are REI members.

I’ve chipped camp knives. We’ve worn out fire starters to their snapping point. All these unbreakable things crumbling in our hands. We’re not ham fisted about our belongings, they are just being put to use day after day.

What is remarkable is that for all the bits of gears and equipment that are slowly failing around us, our bodies have remained fairly resistant. We are getting stronger, gaining endurance and perspective – if only our gear would do the same. Things are falling apart faster than we can replace them, but we do our best – repairing with glue and thread the things we can repair. It is a race against the natural order of things.

When we are in towns, we hope that people don’t notice that the color of our shirts are fading a little and our shoes are dustier than most. This is the great irony of course, when vagabonding you spend a large amount of your time dirty and disheveled. You don the clothes of a pauper for the freedom of a king. And at times, you break down and buy some new clothes off the rack and it feels so luxurious to wear something no one else has worn before and you feel the like the richest person in the world and you forget about the other frayed ends conspiring to become undone.

USTREAM: Chapel Hill, NC

The recording of our live broadcast from The Siena hotel in Chapel Hill. Sorry for the technical flubs in the beginning. Just fast forward to 1:10 and enjoy from there.

In Defense of the Shiftless Bums

The longer we’ve been riding our bicycles, the less our trip has been about our bicycles for us. They are vehicles to move our curiosity around the country. They are our “means” of transportation but not the “end” of the trip.

We’ve been stopped countless times by serious looking cyclists on the road who are curious about our trip – and all goes well until they ask how long we’ve been on the road. We tell them over a year and then something doesn’t compute. A whole year just to cross the US? We jokingly add that we like to drink a lot of local beer and eat food, to diffuse the confusion. But a whole year?

We are by no means the first to bike across the country and definitely by no means the fastest. For most, riding across the country takes about 2-3 months. We’ve been fortunate enough to have no time constraints, so we are taking full advantage of it. Despite this, on occasion we feel like we have to defend our “slowness.”

We have done many trips where we had a set amount of time to accomplish a set amount of miles to our destination. And while it was enjoyable, we were always wishing for more time to explore the curious shops along the road, to meander down the inviting side road and to talk to people to see what their life is like in this part of the country.

We are traveling with curiosity as our sail, waiting and looking for a promising wind to bring us toward new shores. We aren’t so much concerned with miles as we are with what local delicacies we can find, nor do we care much for heart rate monitors or computers that calculate our cadence.

We’ve yet to find a heart rate monitor that measures to any degree of accuracy the palpitations that occur when you behold a truly breathtaking view that has taken all day to get to. There are no metrics for the kindness of people we’ve experienced. How do you measure or graph the experience of meeting a reader on top of a mountain climb who has shown up with water and dessert? How do you chart or quantify the complete strangers who have opened their homes to us?

Our journey will not likely produce an Excel sheet that will impress Chris Carmichael. But we can tell you where the best pie can be found between Austin and FortWorth. We can tell you about a small ramshackle ranch built by a cowboy who had some hard luck and is trying to find redemption. He’ll let you stay there for $15. We can tell you about an 80 year old man with a cancerous nose who lives in a small dying border town with dirt roads and a dog named “bear” who will let you camp on his lawn and give you a shot of whiskey.

Every year cyclists ride their hearts out in the mountains to win a yellow shirt. This post is for our fellow explorers on bicycle who are riding for no greater purpose than to see something beautiful or be moved by some human interaction. There are no metrics for this sort of riding. There is no colored shirt to be won at the end of the ride.

We are in awe of speedy transcontinental crossings, but not every tour has to be that way. You must choose, early on, if you want to test yourself physically or if you want to absorb the local cultures. You cannot do both.

Our choice should be pretty obvious by now to our faithful readers. We’ll camp two nights in a row at the same spot if the sunset is beautiful and the fishing is good. We’ll cut our day short if we strike up a conversation with a friendly stranger and get invited to their house. The Great Spreadsheet of our trip will be rather dull and boring, showing an average of 10mph a day….maybe 12mph on a day with a tailwind.

We wake up every morning not knowing quite what to expect because we don’t quite know where we are going. Our plan was not to plan and it takes great discipline to do that.

Live Webcast: Chapel Hill, NC on Sunday!

It has been a while folks since we’ve done a live webcast. We’re constantly moving and internet is sporadic, but we are fairly certain that we will have a strong WiFi signal on Sunday. Through a friend of a friend of a friend, we’ve been fortunate enough to have a night at the beautiful Siena Hotel in Chapel Hill. We are SO excited!

So grab some milk and cookies and gather ’round the warm glow of the computer screen and we’ll do some catching up.

Where: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pathlesspedaled
When: Sunday, August 29th, 2010 at 6pm PST/9pm EST

Presentation in Durham, NC and a S24O!

Howdy y’all, we are writing from Winston-Salem, where we’ve spent the last two days with various readers getting a feel of this historic city. We’re headed to Greensboro, NC (we’re still looking for a place to stay, so email us if you can help) tomorrow where we hope to visit some of the local bike shops. From there, we’ll pass through Burlington on our way to Durham. We’ve been working with a local bike advocate with setting up a presentation (thanks Jack!). Here are the details:

We’ve setup a Facebook Event page here. Please RSVP so we can get a sense of the numbers.

Here are the details:

When: Friday, September 10th, 2010
Where: Temple Building, 302 W Main Street, Durham, NC


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S24O Durham – September 11, 2010
In addition to our presentation, we’ll be doing an S24O (an overnight bike camping trip) the next day on Saturday, September 11th, 2010. It will be about a 20 mile ride from our starting location and we’ll leave around 2pm and should arrive at the campsite around 4 or 5. We’ll cook out, swap stories and have a fun time.

The last time we did an S24O was in Austin, TX and it was an awesome time. We had lots of first time bike campers who got to try out their new gear and get a taste of bike touring. We’ll meet at the ATT trail head at Fayetteville Rd and NC 54 in Durham, just off I-40 and ride down the trail through Durham, Chatham and Wake Counties to Jordan Lake. Campsites are already reserved. To book a spot, please email Jack directly.

VIDEO: Motel Cookin!

We find ourselves on the outskirts of the town of Hickory, NC and get a motel. Motels, especially the cheap ones, are never by anything worth eating. So, we do a little urban camp cooking in front of our motel room!

VIDEO: Urban Fly Fishing in Asheville, NC

Just some goofy fun waving a stick, a camera and a some fish.

Chattanooga vs Asheville: Who knew there was a rivalry?

When we told people in Chattanooga that we were headed to Asheville, we got some serious dirty looks. People scoffed at the idea that Asheville is a better city, telling us that we’d be disappointed once we got there. “Chattanooga is a real, working town,” we were told, “nobody works in Asheville, they just live off their trust funds.”

In return, when we got into Asheville, and mentioned these comments from Chattanoogans, we were told, “People in Chattanooga need to lighten up, learn to have some fun. They work too hard.”

We find it kind of fascinating that there’s this sort of rivalry between the two cities. Maybe rivalry isn’t the right word, though, it’s more of an envy on the part of folks in Chattanooga. And not so much that Asheville is better, but that Asheville gets all the press, while Chattanooga is working so hard to become a great city. We’ve come to realize that it’s a lot like a younger sibling always trying to find his/her time in the spotlight, but never quite getting out of the shadow of the older sibling. Chattanooga is constantly in the shadow of Asheville. And, Asheville, it turns out, is constantly in the shadow of Portland, because you should hear how some folks prickle when you compare Asheville to Portland.

The interesting thing about this envy is that there’s no real comparison between the two cities. Sure, they have some definite commonalities, but they also have very different personalities, so comparing them to each other is just reaching for the low-hanging fruit.

We found Chattanooga to be a really wonderful city with a “small town” feel. It’s an active city, with a city-sponsored focus on how many amazing outdoor activities are nearby. And it’s fairly easy to get around on a bicycle, as there are a lot of low-traffic side streets and a beautiful greenway that runs for many miles out of the city.

Of course, when people say that Chattanooga is a “working” town, they’re absolutely correct, and this distinction colors everything that happens in the city. You spend time in Chattanooga and you can feel the work ethic that runs through the veins of the city. Even with all the recent progressive changes, it’s a definite Southern, old-money, conservative place (with a long history as such). But it’s also a city that’s not afraid to get its hands dirty, and Chattanooga has put itself to work transforming itself from the most polluted city in American to a gem of an outdoor recreation destination (Chattanooga is host to the highly successful Head of the Hooch Regatta, which now rivals the Head of the Charles).

Asheville, on the other hand, is larger, and more of a tourist draw. It’s smack in the middle of the seriously amazing Appalachian Mountains, so it reigns as a home-based for exploring this region. The food in Asheville is incredible, with a heavy focus on fresh, local ingredients. There’s a lot of art, a lot of shopping, a lot of hippies – and it’s a definite bring-your-own-job sort of town. Ironically, cycling in Asheville leaves a lot to be desired, and the progressive spirit that flows through a lot of the city does not yet extend to alternative transportation.

When I asked what word best described Asheville, I was told “localized” – and this fits Asheville, because you feel a strong sense of community here and push to support your community first. Because of this, Asheville can feel somewhat clique-ish and hard to break in, but it also means it’s a good city to spend time in if you need a nurturing space to “find yourself.” It also makes Asheville a more laid-back place, that attracts the sort of people who know how to drink good beer, eat good food, relax into art, and just “be.”

We’ve spent enough time in enough cities to become highly aware of the differences between places. So, after spending a week in Chattanooga and a week-and-a-half in Asheville, we can truly appreciate what both cities have to offer. We had the opportunity to meet lots of people and delve into various activities and explore. And we can honestly say that they’re very different places. Will Chattanooga ever be like Asheville? Will Asheville ever be like Portland? We hope not. We hope they keep their own flair and build their own niches.

If you’re headed out to this area, you really should check out both cities. Like any good explorer, you should ignore what the guidebooks tell you to do, and see each place for yourself.

Profile: Mike Sule – Asheville On Bikes

It’s just a hunch, but I doubt many bike advocacy groups began their lives on the pages of a parade application. I met with Mike Sule, one of the “quorum” that makes up Asheville On Bikes – Asheville’s only bike advocacy group.

AoB began four years ago when someone asked Mike if he and others would want to be in Asheville’s annual holiday parade. The parade asked for an organization’s name, under the gun Mike made up the name “Asheville on Bikes,” little did he know that name would stick around 4 years later. Despite being an ad hoc organization, they had little problem convincing people to dress up and ride their bikes in the parade. The sight of costumed bicyclists from different walks of life was enough to please the judges and they won $750 that year.

Of course, the knee-jerk reaction would be to throw a big party, but Mike and a few others saw that they had an opportunity to do some good. The money was put towards getting some of the city’s first bicycle lockers.

Since those early efforts, Asheville on Bikes has put on community rides and events, as well as help to create a Bicycle Master Plan for the city of Asheville. One of their most successful projects, Mike tells me, is an event that they called “Step Right Up.” With the help of the Bike/Pedestrian Taskforce and GetThereAsheville, they organized a political forum during the local elections. They had a soapbox and candidates had to do a stump speech addressing multi-modal transportation. They were expecting a small turnout but got over 100 people to attend.

While he doesn’t think the forum swayed the results of the election, he does think it made a significant impact on the community. For the first time, transportation was seen as a campaign issue. Even the local independent weekly began asking candidates their stance on transportation.

Despite these victories, Asheville is still a very conflicted city in terms of transportation. We talked about the recent Urban Velo article about Asheville that brought to light lots of obstacles and frustrations that cyclists face in Asheville. We also discussed some of the new bike infrastructure that the city was beginning to put in.

During our week in Asheville, we were pleased to see sharrows and bike lanes but were often puzzled by their placement. Of the few bike lanes in the city, many of them tended to be “door zone” lanes. Sharrows, similarly, were placed in such a way that they would direct cyclists into opening doors.

Mike understood the problem and reluctantly summoned up the argument that most cities and bike advocates put forth when they first add bike infrastructure – “breadth vs. depth.” Cities want to accomplish as much as they can with as little money, so bike network implementation is sporadic and usually coincides with the already-planned repaving of a street. There is no unified implementation plan so bike lanes and sharrows go to nowhere. Further, because the infrastructure is so new, traffic engineers don’t quite understand the design nuances, and bicycle advocates fear that by demanding too much too soon (like proper placement) they will end up with nothing. It’s a Pyrrhic victory at best.

We both agreed that educating the community in terms of the rights and responsibilities of cyclists was crucial. Mike is looking into becoming a League Certified Instructor in the near future. As progressive as Asheville is, it is still undoubtedly in The South, with a road culture that is not used to bikes as transportation.

I, of course, had to ask him about the “firefighter incident” which has become notorious to the point of urban legend in bicycle advocacy circles. For those that don’t know the story, last year, an off-duty firefighter shot a gun at a cyclist who was riding with his child because the firefighter thought the cyclist was endangering his child. The bullet passed through the helmet and the cyclist, thankfully, was not killed.

Mike tells me he was out of town at his parent’s house in Jersey when the incident happened. He woke up one morning and saw that his phone and email were exploding with messages. Like the rest of the cycling community, he was stunned at the news and was frantically gathering information about the incident, since he knew he was going to be contacted by the press to comment.

The “firefighter incident” both worked to anger and unify the cycling community. The collective unspoken fear of cyclists around town manifested itself in such a horrific event. Mike and other bike advocates tried to channel the anger into something productive. The event opened up conversations with the mayor who could no longer deny that cyclist safety was a real and important issue, when families were being shot at in the street.

Mike tells me that the irony is that the victim in the incident was not what you thought of as your typical Asheville cyclist. He wasn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” but a NASCAR dad. In a whole different context, the two men could have found themselves sharing a beer together. But just because one of them was on a bicycle, it created a chain of incorrect assumptions and misdirected anger that led to a firefigher shooting a cyclist in the head. The firefighter, I’ve been told, only served four months before being released.

Conversation drifts back to the Urban Velo article. “This is a struggle. It’s not easy,” Mike says of making change in Asheville. It’s important to show the struggle, to show how towns are trying to reshape themselves because it brings hope to other advocates that feel like they are working in a vacuum. He talks longingly about plans of a greenway along the French Broad River that he hopes to someday ride. He knows it probably won’t be complete for another 20 years and he knows it won’t be easy, but with any luck, Mike and Asheville on Bikes will still be marching along with the steady cadence of a drummer in a parade.

Video Review: Eton Scorpion

We’ve been swapping out some gear lately and one of our latest additions is the Eton Scorpion radio. I put together a video overview of Eton, discussing some of its major features.

The Eton Scorpion is a great little radio that can be powered via the hand crank or solar cell. We wanted a radio that we could use all the time (especially with the wacky weather in the east) without have to worry about charging batteries. The Eton lets us do that. No more having to purchase new batteries or find an outlet to charge our rechargeables.

Other than the hand crank, the next most desirable feature was the ability to get weather band. In the west, we could see a storm front days ahead. In the east, we have been surprised by many severe thunderstorms that seem to form instantaneously. Having the weather band at our fingertips will let us assess just how bad a front will be.

Another great feature is that the Eton Scorpion can double as a speaker for our iPhone/iPod letting us enjoy a little campfire music. Definitely a luxury.

If you liked our review and want to get an Eton Scorpion of your own, consider buying it through the links on this page. It’ll cost the same to you, but we get a small percentage (imperceptible, really!) of the sale which will keep us on the road longer!