Flashback: Kansas, August 2012

Source: http://www.marietta.edu/

The asphalt simmers beneath our feet, little bubbles of molten licorice bursting through the road and smearing on our new tires.  We push our Surlys up that wretched hill by Jenn’s mother’s house, the one that felt so impossible to climb just a day before, and now, after two days of riding, feels equally impossible.  I jump when an Osage orange, one of Satan’s own knobbly green testicles, drops from a nearby tree and rolls down County Road 1 to meet its fellows in the gutter; its journey, unlike ours, is over.  Now it can get along to rotting into a puddle of orange-brown ick destined to explode on somebody’s shoe.  The Osage orange, I ponder, is exactly like a naturally occurring tennis ball in size, weight, and, I am told, taste.  My bike nearly clatters into Jenn’s, so caught up am I in the life cycle of inedible fruits.

“Everything OK?” I ask, puffing.

“Water break!” Jenn returns.  She snaps open the cap of one of our six water bottles and drinks the last drops.  I still have most of a bottle left; I offer it to her and she takes it gladly.

Despite all of our fears about the equipment, this test run to Lone Star Lake had gone swimmingly, all things considered.  Oh, sure, we made it there a little later than we had meant to, so we had to pitch our tent in the dark.  And sure, we made a few mistakes putting up the tent, so it shook in the wind all night long.  Also, holy shit, somehow there was a scorpion in a park in Kansas.  But hey, that was why we picked an easy destination for our first bike camping trip with our new gear: to figure out how everything worked in a low-stakes, close-to-home setting.  And the gear had worked, more or less!  Now that we were almost back home, tired and stinky, all of those little problems we encountered seemed like nothing compared to just how much fun we had (except maybe the scorpion).

“Ready to go?”  Jenn asks, closing the water bottle.

“Hold on, I want to drink some water, too.”  She passes it back to me and I finish it.  Now we would just have to tough it out for the last stretch.  With a grunt and a sigh respectively, Jenn and I start pushing again, once again overtaking some of the local vegetation in speed.

"As fun as a Kansas rainstorm" is
something that nobody says.

Christ, I think, but we have a lot of stuff!  Sleeping bags, air mattresses, tent, pots and pans, plates, cutlery, cutting mats, camp stove, fuel, dish soap, lighter, locks and chains, hoodies, headlamps, mirrors, rags, notebook, sketch pad, pencils, multitool, batteries, rain ponchos, change of clothes, towels, camera, water bottles, bike pump, puncture repair kit, sunglasses, ukulele, and I’m probably forgetting a few things.  All of them go in our brand new, expensive-as-heck panniers, or else we strap them to the racks with bungees, our bikes and backs groaning with the effort to keep it all together.  And yet, as we discovered over the 24-hour trip and the previous week of training, none of it is unnecessary.  Those items that seem unnecessary while we push up the hill -- say, the ponchos -- we had learned were indispensable while biking through Kansas City in the rain.

And how hard it was finding some of the damn equipment!  We had vacillated between cheap panniers and expensive ones, between buying them from the Internet for slightly lower prices or buying them from the Lawrence, KS bike shops that were furnishing so much of the rest of our supplies.  Sleeping bags were another story entirely: since there is no REI anywhere near Kansas City, we had been forced to go to Cabela’s, a dark, amusement park-esque den of Red State bloodsport.  We had found sleeping bags, sure enough, ones that are comfort rated to an absurdly low temperature and zip together to make a comfy bed for two, though we had paid too much into what we were certain are the coffers of a donor of the Republican party.  Great sleeping bags, though.  Thank Darwin that Jenn’s mother was generous enough to lend us everything else we would need for a life on the road.

Jenn stops again, and this time I am with it enough to stop with her.  “One more rest?”  I ask.

She nods, panting.  “Let’s make base camp here and take the rest of the hill in the morning.”  We smile at each other.

Pictured: the steepest hill in Kansas.

Getting in shape for the road doesn’t seem as hard as I was afraid it would be.  As we are both on the fatter end of the spectrum, society discourages us from attempting physically challenging activities like biking.  As a fat person in America, I have to say: the world hates to see you sweat.  Exercising in a public place is met not with looks of approval or congratulation but of scorn, shame.  In general, we are seen as disgusting for not looking like we live up to the common standard of fitness, but we are also discouraged from doing any sort of physical activity that is enjoyable as well as fat-burning, i.e., taking long bike trips, swimming in a public place, non-bowling sports.

That said, living in Japan and walking (and biking) as much as we did just as a part of daily life helped us a lot; when we departed Kansas for Japan three years ago, we had been living the sedentary life of the college stoner.  We drove everywhere, ate a good amount of garbage, and only occasionally took Diane’s dogs for long walks in the park.  Now, a lifestyle of chasing kindergarteners and zipping around Osaka on our mama-charis had us much fitter than we had ever been.

Shigi-san, also known as "Mount Shigi" or "The Mountain Without Bicyclists."

“Man...fuck this hill,” I say.

“Seriously.”

With great relish and even greater perspiration, we reach the top of the hill.  Diane’s house is nearly in sight.  The grade here is so steep that we can almost reach her driveway without pedaling.  With relish, I kick my bike over the summit and a six-year-old’s smile splits my face as the bike picks up speed, kicking up bits of asphalt into the air behind me.

Are we crazy?  Everyone else seems to think so.  We left good jobs, good friends, a good apartment in a good city, and we were about to blow our savings undertaking a physical challenge greater than anything we had ever attempted before (even more difficult than drying mud, albeit a little more fun).  What if we can’t hack it?  What if our bikes break down and we have no idea how to fix them?  What if we are robbed or injured?  What if we run out of money?

A worst-case scenario.

We glide along the asphalt, wind in our eyes, our towels that we had bungeed to our sleeping bags flapping in the wind.  The sweat is wicked from our faces, and we pass fields of wild sunflowers that dapple the Kansas ditches as we approach Diane’s house.  At least the bikes are great, I think, the gears smoothly sliding into a lower gear as I tackle the steep gravel ascent into her driveway.  Gary, the proprietor of Lawrence Cycle Works, had not done great by us generally -- incorrectly adjusting our seats then blaming us for their mismanagement, overcharging us for some bike equipment, talking down to his female employees in front of us -- but he certainly had sold us a couple of beauties.  I didn’t know from bikes when we walked into the shop (in fact, I still don’t), but I learned that, at least with Surlys, you get what you pay for, and we had paid a lot; more what I had made in a month of getting punched in the groin by small children, as it happens.

And hadn’t we had such fun tooling around Lawrence (“The Good Part of Kansas!”) these last few weeks?  Riding to see Jenn’s grandparents for brunch, riding to Clinton Lake for a picnic, riding to yoga class, riding just to ride.  How much better would traveling be by bicycle than by public transit and on foot?  How many times had we been stuck waiting for buses in Japan when we could’ve zipped right along to our destination, seeing the hidden backsides of Tokushima or Beppu?  Since getting Gladys and Sally, we’d seen things we would never have seen in Lawrence otherwise, from the hidden parks and woods of the city to the weather robot with sunflowers bursting from its chest cavity.

For instance, Weatherbot 5000, sunflower-powered sentinel of the road! 

At last, we pull up to Diane’s garage to the sounds of furious barking -- Mac and Connor have been alerted to our presence (Lexi and Penny remain quiet, as in their old age they have probably heard neither our bikes nor the other dogs).  I prop my bike against a wall and, dismounting, limp to the front door to let us in while Jenn pushes her bike up the driveway.  I lick my lips as I dig for my key in my pocket, thinking of the treasures within: water, a hot shower, air conditioning, the Free State beers in the fridge.

“Even if we can’t make it, even if we hate doing this,” Jenn said the night before as we looked at the Kansas stars, our bellies full of the pasta we had cooked for dinner, “what was ever gained by only doing things you know you will succeed at?  And what’s worse that not trying just because something is difficult?”  She’s right, as always.  And besides, we didn’t hate it.  Even if this trip was just a test run, we had had so much fun that, at that moment, sweating, red with exertion, muscles stiff and aching, I already couldn’t wait to do it again.  After a shower, anyway.  And those beers.

Postscript: I am writing this now from the balcony of an amazing cafe nestled in the mountains of Luzon.  The sun is shining, there’s a cool breeze blowing, we’ve just finished our second cups of coffee and have no plans to disturb inertia anytime soon.  We have nothing to do but sit, write, draw pictures, and enjoy ourselves.  And yet, all Jenn and I can talk about is how much we can’t wait to get back on our bikes.