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The loneliest day in my life was the day I said goodbye to my girlfriend in Ann Arbor, Michigan,
and pointed my bike wheels west. Not just west, but west across the United States. My goal was the
Pacific Ocean, more than 2,500 miles away.
That day of overwhelming solitude took place in late June. I was a senior at the University of
Michigan. I had spent the previous few months steeling myself for the solo transcontinental trip.
I studied maps. I went on training rides on the weekends. I wanted to average about 75 miles a
day.
My first day in the saddle lasted a mere 45 miles. I was beat, whupped, frazzled. I was
unaccustomed to riding with all that extra weight-a front handlebar bag and two rear panniers
stuffed with clothes, maps, tools, and a copy of Dostoyevski’s Brothers Karamazov. An
eight-pound Eureka tent was added ballast.
Rather than find a campground near Jackson, Michigan, I decided to check into a motel. I wanted to
hear human voices, even if they came from a television. There was no phone in the room so I didn’t call my girlfriend, who was not a chatty person to begin with. In fact, we rarely talked as I slowly pedaled across the United States. She never quite understood what I was trying to prove.
As I recall that day more than 20 years ago, I can remember so many emotions swirling through my
head. I was frightened by the unexpected, I was unnerved by the magnitude of the undertaking, I
was angry with myself for not getting in better shape. Two weeks earlier a car ran into me and
knocked me off the bike, and although I was relatively uninjured, I didn’t get on my bike again until the trip because I was fearful of being jinxed. I was relieved to have finally started the trip, and I was filled with the trepidation of embarking on a journey into the unknown. Finally, I had to ask myself: Could I handle the endless hours of solitude, of riding solo cross-country?
These thoughts ebbed and flowed that first day punctuated with roadside realities that included
having a car full of teenagers lob a firecracker at me. Several other motorists tried to run me
off the road. This was Michigan. I was too close to Detroit. I needed to leave this
automobile-crazed state behind.
One other fact intrigued me that first day: the number of dead, squashed animals. So much
roadkill—squirrels, opossum, birds. I did my best not to extrapolate from this flattened
fauna my own life expectancy while on the road.
It took me the rest of the summer to voyage across the belly of the country, then up its
Continental Divide spine, then due west to the ocean, where I finished at Lincoln City, Oregon.
Ironically, that final day in the saddle was another of the loneliest days in my life. I reached
the beach after about five hours of riding. I had started that morning from a motel just outside
Portland. When I saw the slate-gray Pacific, I joyously dropped my bike on the sand and ran into
the surf, splashing around in the waves. I looked around to see if there was anyone else around
with whom I could share my excitement. No one. It was an overcast day. The beach was empty. So
what. I dunked again and again in the water. I had covered 2,800 miles by bike!
When I got out of the water I needed to become practical and put on some dry clothes. I found a
nearby restaurant and changed in the bathroom. I then went to a Laundromat to dry my wet clothes.
The place was empty.
I decided that I had enough cycling for the summer and wanted to visit San Francisco. I was going
to hitchhike with my bike to the Bay Area. It took one hour to catch my first ride-in a frozen
fish delivery van. That ride took me 10 miles. It was a start. I then waited for another two hours
before another driver stopped to pick me up.
This driver was a hippie-type who drove a broken-down pickup with a flat bed. As he helped me tie
down my Trek bike to the truck’s wooden bed, he said, “I saw you standing by the road, and drove a few miles up the road, then decided you looked like you needed a lift, so I drove back and here I am.”
I thanked him profusely for his kindness, and as we headed down the Oregon Coast in the twilight,
I told him all about my trip. I was glad I was able to share my journey with someone, even if he
was a stranger. Since he was going only as far as Coos Bay, Oregon, he let me out near a deserted
state beach that was closed for the night.
I tried sleeping on the beach but it was too windy so I spent that night sleeping on the floor in
the men’s bathroom. Though I was all alone, in a deserted state beach, miles from civilization, I didn’t feel the pangs of loneliness that night. What I experienced instead was the feeling of triumph. I slept well. I had just biked across the country.
The next morning, I tried hitchhiking again, but I was near a logging town, and two hours of
hitchhiking only got me dirty stares from passing motorists. I had a few dollars, so I bought a
Greyhound bus ticket and spent the next 12 hours barreling down the coast. The miles flew.
I was groggy and disoriented when the bus deposited me in the bus terminal in downtown San
Francisco. It was 6 a.m. The first thing I did was reassemble my bike. An alcohol-soaked bum
walked up to me as I was putting my Trek back together. He laughed at my efforts. He then tried to
assist me, but I graciously waved him off.
I spent the rest of the morning exploring San Francisco on my bike, then decided I needed to
divorce my iron mistress. I found a local bike shop and asked the owner if I could store my bike
with him for a week. I told him that I just cycled across the country. (I depended on the kindness
of strangers.) He agreed, and relieved of this obstacle, I easily hitchhiked down to Santa Cruz,
and spent a week hanging out in the town, and at night I found refuge by sleeping on beaches,
beneath the boardwalk, in people’s backyards. I even spent one night on a nude beach.
It was one experience after another, and when I finally returned to the University of Michigan for
my final two semesters, I had great difficulty explaining to my friends the nature of my trip. How
could I sum up all my experiences? Strangely, I felt quite alone, or apart, on campus. I had
changed. In a myriad of ways, that bike trip was the pivotal experience in my
life.
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