Heartbeat

Kamala: The spinning of the pedals is the heartbeat of the road. We're drawn to it and feel guilty if we don't do it. The slowly-passing landscapes seep into our souls. Years later when traveling a route by a gas-fueled motor, we remember the details, like where we sat, where we changed a flat, where we saw sheep, and oh yes, that hill (up or down). The trips take us back to a simple life where we can no longer hide from the elements but work with it as we experience each tier of our hierarchy of needs. Shelter behind a wall that shields us from the wind while we eat lunch becomes sanctuary. Our muscles are our engine that powers us forward. The earth passes beneath our wheels. Mountains become hills then transition to flat plains. Life issues are debriefed through therapeutic conversation.  All bicycle touring trips are odysseys. Just like that of Odysseus, our epic adventures include pleasure, villains, traps, challenges, and struggles.

A little over half of this year's 700-mile two-wheeled journey was over roads we've pedaled before. The last part was new. The old hilly foes of Alamosa and Nogal Canyons shrunk to reality and posed no new challenge. We let the wind's influence be our guide this trip. We were coming home sooner but the wind had different ideas. When we could only muster 3 mph we both said, “Forget this!” We turned around and decided to see where it led us. Magically, we were blown to our trail's end in Amarillo to Charley's cousin's home where we visited Oklahoma farm memories, family histories, and his 99-year old aunt. We transitioned to a mini-van and brought us and our gear home to plan our next two-wheeled adventure.

Hope you enjoy the video.

Bicycle touring and making predictions

Charley: Life is unpredictable. Most of us know that at our core, but then there is something in most of us that strives to make sense out of all this chaos buzzing around us and thus make the world a little more under our control and therefore more predictable.
You would think that we'd learn the futility of placing too much importance on predictions, but no. It's not just that our predictions flop and fizzle, It's that sometimes we get it right and, at least subconsciously, pat ourselves on the back for being so damn smart. And, like Pavlov's dogs salivating at the bell but getting no food, we just smile and go on making decisions based on our own or expert predictions.
Now as a bicycle tourist I make no claim to being better at this prediction fantasy, nor immune from making them, only in recognizing the folly in them. As we pedal through unknown territory we lay out the maps, we listen to the weather, we ask questions of locals and consult the Google Gods. All, to our sometimes sorrow, we've learned are fallible. Still there is the day, week, distance ahead, so we pull what information we can scrape up and consult what experts are available and predict the day's ride. Now I know that sounds quite reasonable when one is considering things such as; Will it rain? Headwinds or tailwinds? What's the you terrain like? A place to camp? Is there a bike shop? However, Tarot cards, flipping a coin, or reading sheep entrails would probably work equally well. I've already decided that on our next tour I'm going to carry a copy of the I Ching and refer to it's hexagrams on all important decisions. Hey, I might even become an economist.
"An expert is a person who has made all of the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." N Bohr

Gear

Kamala: “Why do you carry so much gear? You camp out?” Well, we don’t always camp out but it really comes in handy. We did a spring-break mini-tour back in 2002, We came upon a couple who were in their 50s. He had always wanted to do a cross-country bicycle tour. There he was, his wife at his side and his dream was now a reality. What did they carry? Almost nothing. They each a change of clothes and bare minimum tools. All went into two little (I mean little) panniers. I worried about them. Such long distances through the desert meant you HAD to get to your destination. What if something went wrong? What if ‘weather’ happened? What if . . .? From our experience it is not always possible to reach destinations and carrying all of our stuff gives us options.

Take yesterday for example. We have been going 58,  61,67 miles a day. While the days have been long, they also have been smooth. Tailwinds have added an extra perk. But ask any cyclist, what is their biggest enemy and I’ll bet they’ll answer, “Headwinds.” That is what happened yesterday.

We’re  working at slight incline all day and battling against a headwind. Our destination is 60 miles away and we start the day at 8:00 in the morning. By the time we make 36 miles at Melrose, NM at 2:30 in the afternoon, we know we’re in trouble. We can’t top 7 - 8 mph and the math means (which I constantly calculate and recalculate in my head while spinning pedals around) 3 or more hours of grinding. After Melrose, the incline mellows and we are able to get the speed up to about 9, but the northeasterly wind is icy cold. Our bones are chilled. Charley begins to look at the alternatives around us; we are going to wild camp. Finally, a small group of water elms appear along the road. Charley stops and goes checks it out. Wow! What a sanctuary! Looks like someone else saw it too, because they left a camp stove gas cylinder and a clearing where they pitched a tent. The trees provide perfect camouflage from passing cars. I watch as traffic passes by, and I can see that drivers are just mesmerized by the road directly in front of them and they don’t see us. We set up with stiffening cold fingers just in time. As Charley gets into the tent, the sun says goodbye for another day. We snuggle in our cozy down bag to warm up. The train rambles by on a nearby track tooting its horn of safety. We fall asleep, warm and snug, ever grateful of the cargo we haul around.

Leaving an old friend

Charley: Alas, we're leaving an old friend behind in Albuquerque, our tent. It has accompanyed us on several adventures but it has begun to take on more and more weight in the form of duct tape patches. Not long ago Kamala replaced one of the door zippers by robbing an old sleeping bag. Each new patch made it a little it heavier. We thought it had one more trip left in her, but after the other door zipper began to malfunction we had to consider putting her out to pasture and even though Kamala worked her magic, deftly bringing said zipper back on line, we both knew it was time. So we are of mixed feelings as we leave our old Mountain Hardware behind in Albuquerque with friends and take off on the next part our journey with a brand new REI half dome. A new tent is good, but because of our habit of atttibuting anthropomorphic qualites to things there's just a touch of sadness in our spirit.

Wandering

Charley: Bicycle touring lends itself to the wandering side of our spirits. Sure, there are goals, but they are loose and malleable. Wandering infers a mindset that is more empty and open than one who is seeking. In another life we were seekers, seeking God, wisdom, success, money. You know, all that golden floss of youth, but somewhere along the way all of that kind stuff just fell into the background and we became more and more enthralled with this world that we are passing through with all it's beautiful, strange and interesting creatures.

Wandering allows a person to witness the world with more empathy, from the struggle of the ant heroically carrying off a piece of our picnic scraps to the emotion charged experience of wave after wave of hundreds of honking, squawking, talking geese landing on a darkly mirrored pond at dusk.

People tend to open up and tell you their story once they sense you are not out to judge them or use them. Like the itinerant worker who invited us to share his food and told us stories of his homeless, 1500-mile bicycle trip, his fascination with the bible, aliens and Edgar Casey and his positive experience with a highly tattooed ex-con who had spent more than half his life behind bars. In addition, the fellow at the Laundromat who explained that he was using retirement to explore the Caballo Mountains, looking for archeological sites. His biggest find was a giant carving of a skull and a radiating sun, probably of Aztec origin perhaps marking the entrance to a mine. As he shared his passion while meticulously folding his clothes, he came upon a George Strait T-shirt which he exclaimed, “I met George Strait! I shook his hand! We drove all the way to Houston to see him!” He went on to explain how his ‘better-half’ loves country music and bought seats in the front row but would never tell him how much she paid.  To start off our trip, friends on the west side of El Paso, welcomed us into their home to start of our first night’s rest . In addition, this trip our wandering has lead us to a couple of doorsteps of Warm Showers hosts’ homes. We were welcomed in, fed (even though they don’t have to do that), and made to feel comfortable and at home. When we left the next morning we had made new friends.

Poster at Hatch restaurant

Enchanted bicycle tour

Kamala: Guilt trip or the road calling? Call it what you will, but one of those finally got to us. Yes, we know, we haven't taken a bicycle tour this year, until tomorrow. We take off north on our two-seated, two-wheeled chomoly steed heavily laden with cold gear. It's late fall and on top of that we're headed north into the Land of Enchantment. Are we nuts? A distinct possibility. But hey, it's a guilt trip or the call of the road and we are enchanted either way. Stay tuned for updates. Hey and now, you or your friends can sign up for an email notifications of new entries. Just look on the left-hand column of the blog--Kamala

Green Lake "Mystery Loves Company"

This is turning out to be a year that is a bit out of step with our usual. Usually, by this time, June, we are either spinning the pedals around, making our way across the country on a bike journey or have already gotten our yearly cycling tour under our belts. But this June finds us in Wisconsin attending a 'sit-down" Road Scholar program on the writing of mysteries and then a week in Eagle River canoeing.

By "sit-down" I mean that there were no outside activities like paddling, cycling, or hiking. While we brought the bicycle and we did get some rides in, it was outside the program. So during our first week in Wisconsin we found ourselves deeply involved with murder.

First I've got to tell you that while Kamala and I watch a few mystery programs on TV and have read a couple of Grisham novels, listened on Audible as Kinsey Millhone kicked some ass, and a few others over the years, we are definitely not experts on the subject and, God forbid, I cannot even tell you the name of Charlie Chan's number one son (oh the shame, because many of the other participants could).

Now Green Lake, is first of all a beautiful lake, the deepest in Wisconsin. And secondly, it is a conference center on the shores of.....you guessed it--Green Lake. The Conference Center at which we stayed is run by the Baptists, but open to all faiths (although I didn't see a lot of Muslims or Hare Krishna devotees hanging around). Actually, it was mainly aimed, if I'm reading this right, at fundamentalist Christians, especially ministers, who kind of needed to "rejuice" the joy in their spiritual life. At any rate it was a spiritual retreat of sorts and all the people I ran into were just as pleased as punch that we were there and treated us really nice. I couldn't get over the sense of irony that while everyone in the whole setting was there to find a "closer walk with God", there were thirty of us in a conference room spending our

time exploring all the myriad of ways to kill someone.

While there were some good points about the program there was way too much sitting and I think that, as much as we like the Road Scholar programs, that this will be our last "sit-down" type of program. Although there were a few times I felt I was sitting at an in-service meeting back at ol' Irvin High School (insert high pitched scream here), I'm still going to rate it a C+ because, the people were friendly, the presenters were really trying, the area was beautiful, the food was good and best of all I got to experience it with Kamala.

The art of travel

As our master canoe instructor deftly explained the art of canoeing with the use of a small canoe that he had borrowed from a local garden gnome, I was suddenly struck with a realization that was, at once enlightening and joyous, and yet stirred up an extreme sense of sadness of opportunities lost. As he held the little paddles in his fingers, moving them around in tiny circles as if stirring coffee, I flashed back to my days as a football coach and realized that I had really missed the boat by not using Barbie dolls to demonstrate blocking techniques to those freshmen.

Mastering the Canoe 101

Here we learn how to paddle a wooden dock. OMG, it was soooooo realistic! I mean after a few minutes we were expert canoeists, capable of paddling any canoe that sat 2 and 1/2 feet out of the water and anchored deep in the lake bottom. Bring on the whitewater! And on top of the wonderful life changing instruction I was nostaligically transported back to Miss Higbothom's 5th grade dance class with footprints on the floor and everything.

Okay, okay, so the start was a little slow. Maybe he hadn't quite realized that we were all old enough to be his parents and that he could have actually tried to pass on information in a bit more sophisticated manner (8th or even 9th grade level would have sufficed). Anyway the program was all uphill from there and in the end I give the week an A.

Eagle River turned out to be as beautiful an area as Green Lake was and the week was filled with paddling pristine lakes and rivers, sloshing across floating jelly-like bogs, calling owls, watching bald eagles soar, and meeting interesting people. Our guides were knowledgeable and friendly. Troy and Jill injected humor into the outings. The weather cooperated with pleasant cool days (I'm not really sure yet if they have summer up here).

The original plan was to find a place to leave the truck and trailer for a couple of weeks and cycle-tour Michigan's Upper Peninsula. After a long and serious discussion and reading the entrails of sheep (for clarity of mind), we have decided upon deviation.

"The art of travel is to be able to deviate from one’s plans."

This quote comes from a class B movie (plot quite forgettable) but the message has stayed with us. The Northwoods of Wisconsin have wonderful roads to cycle and plenty, I mean plenty, of water to paddle. Plus, someone has to feed these darn mosquitoes.

What? No Posts?

There's something magical that happens when we ride a bike all day. The turning of the pedals mile after mile; the reward of simple pleasures of becoming one with the landscape, butt breaks, food, downhills, scenery, being able to stop to take that breath-taking, awe-inspiring snapshots which all add to philosophical introspection which lead to magical notes. It's amazing that no matter how many years have past and the thousands (literally) pictures we've taken we can always remember the moment the photo was captured. The true ontological observations.

Floor art

Tiled counter

We've been busy. We've done home projects and we have traveled. Pics have a blur as the landscape rushes beside the car. We've used our little camper as a base camp and discovered areas. We went back to Palm Springs this past January to cycle the beauty and watch movies at night at their annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. Movies of note this year: Life of a Fish and the Japanese Wife.

Bosque de Apache Wildlife Refuge

New single kayak

We've hosted close to a dozen cross-country cyclists this spring via Warmshowers.org.  They arrive tired and grateful to have a safe place to bed down for the night as we surprise them with a good meal. We recently hosted a young man who flew to El Paso to start his journey to Canada via the Continental Divide. We recognized the anticipatory energy as he readied for his wheeled trek and we were infected with desire for our own bicycle adventure. While we have been preparing for an upcoming adventure, he just prodded us on.

So we are off Wisconsin with our little Ontological research base to do a little canoeing and then we plan to cycle-tour Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

New paint job

Enjoying a warm winter day in Palm Springs

Death Valley

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--Kamala