Some more technical notes: People

As you’ve already read, I have mostly positive interactions with people, including some truly wonderful connections that I cherish and that inspire me. But I’ve also limited my interactions; I do as much avoidance and gate-keeping as I can because, well, I thought I could just say “because I’m the kind of person who wants to ride across the country alone.” But it turns out many people who also want to do that are social, really enjoy conversations with the people they meet along the way. For me that’s being on, and it can be hard. Talking to strangers is not my favorite thing. I do like it, the same way I like all things: on my own terms. But I also accept that I’m highly visible (literally wearing a high-viz vest) and I do want to be gracious and a good ambassador of bike tourists. And I genuinely *like* some of the people I meet—they feel like friends I’m just meeting—which you’ve read about. Others have been so kind and I never even got to know them at all. But people can be work for me. I say all this by way of contextualizing these technical notes.

Final prefatory note: When I state things as facts, know that I’m aware they’re perspective. It’s just a lot to keep typing “I think” and really messes with the narrative flow, man.

On bike tour there’s a sense of being a public good, like an information kiosk or a really good interactive museum display. And it’s true that while you’ve gone sort of feral and slipped the reins and rhythms of workaday life, you’re very visible and existing primarily in public or quasi-public spaces. Other than in a motel room, you live outside or in commercial spaces, where anyone has a right to be. Joyce and I could at least form a closed unit; folks still sometimes approached us, but we had cover in each other. Alone I’m wide open. People talk to me outside gas stations and stores, in parks, at campgrounds, on street corners as I’m looking at directions.

When people approach they usually have questions: where from/to; how far do I go each day; really, all alone? (Do solo men get asked that same question?) Sometimes they want to tell you about bike trips they’ve taken, and sometimes they want to tell you how cool it is that you’re doing it. Sometimes they want to tell you you’re crazy. I’m thinking of the bulldozer guy outside Munising, for example, cheerily telling me I couldn’t be having any fun as I was trudging through road work muck pushing my bike in the pouring rain. The pilot truck driver had rolled down his window as I pulled up to yell that I was nuts as well. (I told him to watch out for the 80-person teen church group riding through the next day. More on them shortly.)

I’ve found I prefer talking to women over men. That’s not universally true; the owner of Java Junction and I had a great conversation as he made my coffee and puttered around doing opening activities. Kevin at Sully Creek was fascinating; I would have loved to talk to him for hours. I don’t know if it’s them or me, even. I do know that fewer women feel free to approach me at my campsite while I’m eating or on my phone or setting up my tent, and I am more open to random, informal (not, e.g., commercial) interactions with women.

An illustration of the different feel of the interactions comes to mind: Sometimes when it’s really break time and I can’t find a spot to lean my bike near shade, I’ll lay my bike down on the side of the road and sit near it. It can look like I’m in distress, and a few times folks have pulled over to check on me. On this occasion (Michigan? Probably. I basically moved there for a while.), I was taking such a break, and a woman going the other way stopped, turned around, and pulled up to see if I was okay. An hour or two later at a gas station I was stashing my snacks, and a guy getting into his car asked “Oh was that you I saw broken down at the side of the road earlier?” 😒

As I said, the approaching to talk also happens at campsites, which I struggle with more, since it’s sort of constructively private, and we mostly try to maintain that polite fiction. Macedon was probably my most public campsite, or at least it felt that way, so this is an extreme case, but the following is sort of an evening in the life.

As I sat at the picnic table at my “site,” I was approached by a young man named Von who’d just moved there from 165th and Jerome in NYC; he wanted to know about the trip and told me about how he didn’t yet know anyone in Macedon. He invited me to a bonfire with his friends later, but was unbothered when I laughed at said I was usually asleep by 9:30.

After Von rode away to find entertainment elsewhere, a woman with two dogs and guy who turned out to be her son walked by. He washed something in the spigot, but she lingered with intention and eventually asked me a question about the trip. She said she was 68 and had recently tried her first long trip—78 miles in two days—and told me a bit about it. I was genuinely excited. Good on her! We chatted for 10-15 minutes, and I was encouraging, and then the dogs got itchy and her son had wandered off, and she took her leave.

I got myself set up and started dinner, and soon after Steve, the cyclist from the pavilion, walked over to say hello. He was gregarious and had a strong NY accent; as it turned out he’s a retired cop from the Bronx. We talked the day a little, and as I finished making dinner, he asked if he could sit down. I hesitated internally for a moment, but he wasn’t bothering me, and I was too hot and tired to object. We had a good conversation, one I enjoyed somewhat despite myself, and when I was done I sort of waved my pot and made noises about washing it, and he promptly and gracefully excused himself.

Lastly, sometime thereafter, as it was nearing dark, another cyclist arrived. I saw him go chat with Steve, and then he worked his way to me. He rode up and said “You know you don’t have to camp all the way over here.” We never even got to an exchange of names; he mumbled some stuff, and I made perfunctory but polite replies, and then I waved my toothbrush around and said I was going to wash up, and he headed off to talk to yet another cyclist apparently camped there, whom I didn’t see until morning. Luis taught me more than two decades ago to trust my instincts about people. Maybe it’s something obvious, like someone mansplaining camping at a place he’s just arrived at, or maybe it’s just a twinge or body language. But I get good feels for people and less good ones, and I try to attend to them.

Which gets me to the category of folks I’ve been avoiding writing about: other cycle tourists. Kathy asked me when I was staying with her I’m Bismarck whether anyone ever wanted to ride together, and I said “I live in dread of someone asking.” I love seeing cycle tourists across the road and waving and the occasional chat with someone going in the other direction. And I really dug talking with Katherine and Tom in Glacier and Chris in East Glacier. And no one has asked me to ride with them, let me be clear; this is my own problem. But I like being solo. Joyce was my perfect touring partner—and will be again, I hope!—just as Wendy was my perfect roommate, and I lived alone after she and I moved apart (until Andrew!). I don’t want to ride with anyone else, unless it’s a visiting friend; it’s hard enough work already without having to make conversation with a stranger, and I like the anonymity of the road.

The one time I briefly rode with folks was when I encountered the church group from Greenville, Illinois. They were doing a supported 700-mile trip, about 80 adults and teens, they told me. They were very dispersed, and a couple of clusters of them passed me; the adult in each cluster would ride next to me for a few, ask some questions, tell me about their trip, then pull ahead. Then a group led by a young woman pulled up next to me and began chatting; she was warm and personable and had lots of questions, and there were several teens behind her, and eventually I had to say that I didn’t want to hold up her group and they should go ahead, and she asked if she could say a prayer for me before they did. And I assented, and she prayed over my tires and my accommodations and my hydration, and then her group pulled ahead. I saw a bunch more of them pulling into the KOA in Munising as I rode past to wherever I was going, and that was the last I saw of them.

Bike tour, too, turns out to be made of people.