Most good things have an end to them, preferably before they turn bad. Every ending, despite its accompanying grief, can become an opportunity for exciting beginnings.
The world abounds with good things and happy endings. The world also sags under things that turn out badly, beneath sad endings. Mostly, the true tale tastes bittersweet. Or it may be slightly charred, like the piece of chicken my teeth once crunched in a carry out order of chicken fried rice. That was the best chicken fried rice I've ever eaten.
Here in eastern Pennsylvania the wind blows hard and leafless tree limbs knock against the house. It gets down into the twenties at night. The colors outside mostly come from the drab end of the spectrum, nothing like the vibrant greens and browns and blues and whites of coastal California, nothing like the yellows of Montana river valleys in their full fall glory. Still, I am happy to be 'home' from my wanderings for awhile, even if it is winter. The weather channel says rain still falls on the California coast as far south as LA, the Pacific storm that finally sent me home still wringing itself out over the soggy coastline. It is nice to be inside in a warm, dry place.
The decision to end my trip was not an easy one. It came after a hard day of pounding rain and headwinds as I sat in a laundromat/internet café in Santa Cruz and agonized over ending or continuing. I knew that the pressure I felt to make a decision now was a false pressure; still I agonized. We only have the present to live in and to decide things in, I've learned. After checking airline fares from San Francisco to Pennsylvania and sitting down with a cup of Mexican hot chocolate to try to reason things out, it came down to this-in the present moment, do I want to go home for Christmas or do I want to keep biking in the storm that I know is forecasted to last for the next week. I decided I wanted to go home.
Of course it's been a bittersweet, or perhaps slightly charred, ending. Just after I bought my ticket home I found out I had a place to stay that would have been an easy next day's ride away. The next morning dawned and it was not raining; the clouds even appeared to be breaking a little. The whole bus ride to San Francisco I struggled to be at peace with my decision to quit. Then, biking from the bus station to my friends house, the rain come down in horizontal sheets and the wind blew me sideways three or four feet and I remembered why I decided to stop.
So maybe now's a good time to share with you some of the events leading up to my decision to end the trip. Thursday, December 12, I rode south from San Francisco. I had been there about a week and a half and, though I was having a wonderful stay, it was time to either leave or look for a permanent address there. I had taken a peek at the extended forecast and knew that rains were coming, but I figured that if I stayed in the city any longer I might be stuck for the winter. It was either get south before the winter storms hit or get drenched trying.
It's never easy to leave people you love, especially when you're setting out alone, so I didn't get out of my friends' place until one in the afternoon. Once I got going it was great to ride up the steep hills to the Haight-Ashbury district then down through Golden Gate Park to the ocean, great to be biking in view of the waves again. Despite carrying a little extra gear like the pots and pans, the stove, and the tent rods, it felt good (as usual) to be back on the bike. I smiled often to myself, wondering what people who saw me thought of me, a lone biker with touring gear pedaling slowly through San Francisco streets. As I rode I often caught myself pointing out a pothole or some other obstacle on the road beneath, even though Glen was no longer behind me.
Much of the afternoon I picked my way through the suburbs clustered south of the city proper. Soon enough though I was riding Highway 1 again along stunning coastline, even more stunning for being familiar. In Half Moon Bay I stopped for some groceries. Being alone, I simply wheeled my bike into the front of the store and locked it there. It wasn't quite time to stop yet, so I decided to ride further south to San Gregorio State Beach and try to find a camping spot there.
Arriving at San Gregorio I realized I was out of drinking water. After scouting out a suitable camping spot in the trees not far from the beach, I rode in toward town and stopped at a house to fill my bottles. The owner happened to be a biker also and not only gave me water, he also came out with an Odwalla bar and some string cheese in his hands. Back at the state park area I slowly unloaded my bike and got ready to make some dinner in the dark.
I knew I was in a day use area not designated for camping, so I switched my headlamp off when a truck pulled into the parking lot. Alas, it was a ranger who had spotted my light. He came up to where I was and told me I was camping illegally and needed to leave. When I tried to feel him out to see if he would overlook the letter of the law for one night's lonely traveler he threatened me with a citation, so I treated him very courteously and started packing up. He was a nice enough chap, just wasn't about to not do his job. I was camping in a closed park, which was illegal, and that was that. Understanding that I didn't want to get back on the road in the dark, he was nice enough to point out a flat spot in the bushes on the other side of the road, so I set up there instead.
A bit out of sorts over the inconvenient move but trying to take it in stride, I got settled at my new location and started to cook dinner. Then I looked down at my pants and saw it- a tick! Now there's not much in the world that I despise more than ticks. I'd rather take a dump in the wild than have the little bloodsuckers anywhere near me, and that's saying a lot. Now all night long I was checking my shoes, my legs, my socks and pants, and was very anal about making sure none came into the tent with me.
Other than finding that my campsite was infested with ticks the rest of the evening went fairly smoothly. I fell asleep around 10, praying that the rain would at least wait to start until after I had packed up in the morning.
Friday, December 13 (I should have anticipated this given the date) began with wind and rain. Shortly after midnight I awoke to the tent flopping and rain drops splattering. Wind and wet continued all night, and I had to venture outside several times to restake the tent. Still, I stayed dry inside. In the morning I slept well and, having little motivation to get out into the rain, didn't start packing up until 10 or 11.
Breaking camp in the rain was no fun, but I got it done and started biking. With no overnight water source I had little water to start the day with, and I remember thinking how ironic it was that water was falling all around me while I went thirsty. Riding was an immediate struggle. Our adventures in the Olympic Peninsula's rain forest area had taught me how to bike in the rain, but this rain was accompanied by 10 to 25 mile per hour gusty headwinds that occasionally threatened to blow me off the road or, even worse, out into the road and its traffic. I inched along painfully on the uphills. On the downhills I could barely see for the water pounding my face. Sometimes the rain drops hit so hard they hurt.
For an hour I struggled against the wind, then realized I had only gone six miles. Stopping at the Pescadero fire station for water, they told me the storm will last like this for another three or four days at least. I don't know what to do except get back on the road, so I pedal for another hour or so and make it another eight miles to a hostel. Drenched and wanting respite from the rain and the road I go in to check the place out. It doesn't open until 4:30. There's no way I'm waiting for two hours in the rain, so I eat a Power Bar and get back to it. Thankfully I notice that my front brake is rubbing, so I fix that and am able to go a little faster.
Despite the rain and wind, all day long I am happy to be where I am. Sometimes I just stop and watch the big surf and treasure the moment, out biking the coast in a Pacific storm. Not every day one gets to do that. Early in the day I think about just turning around and letting that wind blow me right back to San Francisco, but I have little trouble choosing to keep pedaling, even though at times I have to consciously make that choice several times a minute!
Though I could handle the on-the-bike struggle, off-the-bike logistics began to pile up as it got dark and I needed to find a dry place for the night. Around 4 p.m. I found myself on a nearly deserted section of coast and had to pedal hard to make it the big town of Santa Cruz by dark. I remembered a hostel there that I had stayed at on a previous car trip and found my way to it. (I stopped at a bike shop to ask directions. The lady said, "I can't believe you're touring in this rain!" "Neither can I," I replied.) Paid my twenty bucks to have a shower and a dry room for the night and went out to find an internet café.
Soon after reaching the hostel I had decided that I would at least locate a computer and see if I could find any reasonable fares home, which is how I came to be sitting in a laundromat watching the rain outside and trying, over a cup of Mexican hot chocolate, to decide the fate of the next section of my life.
Sitting there I realized several things. One. For some reason I needed to leave San Francisco by myself, but in the two days that I had been out (including one day of toughing it through some of the worst weather conditions we faced on this trip) I proved to myself whatever it was I needed to prove and I didn't need to be doing it anymore. Check one for going home for Christmas. Two. Sometimes during the day I had caught myself almost wanting something bad to happen so I'd have an excuse to give up and end the trip. And if I'm waiting for something bad to happen, I reasoned, it probably will. Check two for going home for Christmas. Three. I wanted to go home.
I bought that airline ticket.
The next day I put myself and my bike and my stuff on a series of buses and went back to San Francisco. My friends there welcomed me warmly and I spent a few more treasured days with them, days of surprising contentment, laughter, and joy. Monday I put my bike in a box to be picked up by UPS, got myself on a plane, and here I am.
I am happier than I expected to be back in rural Lancaster County for a time. Of course it is good to be with family and friends, and the excitement of Christmas coming keeps everything alive despite the chilling weather. Still, I expected to grieve more for the loss of freedom, the loss of the California coast, the lost dream of reaching Mexico.
Perhaps this trip has made me more adaptable, taught me to be comfortable and content wherever I find myself. Certainly I am living more externally, more happily than I have for awhile, taking more joy in people and in simple activities and being less obsessed with inwardness and melancholia. I never expected to so soon be at peace with calling Lancaster County 'home.' Maybe somehow this trip, without my conscious knowing, has settled some old grudges or perhaps put some ghosts to rest.
The road still calls to me. Glen is trying to start a rumor about a bike trip to Newfoundland summer of 2004. I'm already planning to, whenever I am ready to pursue my goal of learning Spanish, fly back out to San Francisco and resume the trip. It shouldn't be too hard to pick up where I left off, then pick up the language as I bike through Mexico and Central America, maybe finding places along the way to stop for awhile and receive formal language training. Hopefully Glen will be with me again. But that won't happen for a year or two at least.
For now I plan to hang out here at my parents' house in Lancaster for the holiday season. Sometime I'll find a place to live in DC and find a job there. I can always go back to catering, though that won't get busy again until March. I've thought about being a bike courier. Perhaps I'll find some part time work at a sandwich shop downtown. Mostly, though, I want to concentrate on writing a book about my home neighborhood of Kenilworth and about my family's involvement there. It's time to try the writing life, I figure, or stop talking about it, and this project seems a good place to start.
Speaking of the writing life, some poems composed on the trip should be showing up on this web site soon; perhaps they are already here. Check them out if you want. It would give me great joy to know my poetry is being read.
I guess this is a goodbye of sorts. It's been a great ride, and I've rather enjoyed sharing it with you all. I've heard that you've enjoyed it also. One person who got on the site in the middle of our trip emailed Glen that she's found her bedtime reading for awhile. Many people have told us that reading our stories about the goodness we found in others has helped to 'restore their faith' in humans in general and Americans in particular. It's also been great to get home here and find that some people know our stories just about as well as we do.
As always, thanks for listening. If you don't want to lose track of me and Glen make sure we have your email address and we'll let you know when (or if) the adventure continues sometime in the future. Merry Christmas and a wonderful Fourth. Peace!
Keep in touch - Joe (lappjoe@yahoo.com) and Glen (glapp@juno.com)!