Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America Read online

“Yes,” she said. “You can leave.”

  • • •

  Later that night, Rachel and I lay together on the couch, our feet tangled under a mess of blankets. She was scribbling in her journal, and I was trying to do the same. But I couldn’t focus. I was paying attention to my body, just like the nurse had said I should.

  All morning, and during our drive to the clinic, I’d been struggling, disease-ridden, dying. But now, after a few magic words from a straight-talking nurse, I felt like a different person. Though I still had the headache, the face full of snot, the goopy weight in my chest, these discomforts were no longer harbingers of impending doom—just garden-variety cold symptoms.

  “You can leave,” the nurse had said, and I’d believed her. I could leave. Now I just had to decide if I really wanted to.

  After returning from the clinic, Rachel and I had huddled up in the den, playing rummy and listening to an Etta Baker CD I found under the coffee table. “One Dime Blues” came on just as we were finishing a game, and I dropped my cards, closed my eyes, and listened. When it ended, I got up and played it again. And again. I loved that song. Wasn’t sure what Etta had in mind when she wrote the music, but something about it—the delicate arpeggios climbing upward, damn near sliding off the neck of the guitar, then sinking back into the sweet, sure melody—always made me think of coming home.

  At dusk, we prepared a stir-fry, again using vegetables from the garden, then, midmeal, burst outside to fight off whatever snarling predator had suddenly stirred the chickens into a frenzy. Turned out it was the black lab puppy, who had somehow broken into the run. He thought he was playing—didn’t understand why the chickens were shitting all over themselves and squawking bloody murder. Rachel pulled the dog inside, then returned to snap pictures as I bumbled around, herding the birds into their coop. By the time I coaxed the last one inside, a full twenty minutes later, Rachel and I were cracking up, tears in our eyes.

  After we finished dinner, Rachel had put down the bowl she was drying and said she was kind of glad I’d gotten sick. She’d really enjoyed our day here, and she almost didn’t want to leave. Now, as I stared down at my journal, I wondered what she was writing in hers—if she’d meant it when she said she didn’t want to leave. I mean, I knew she didn’t actually want to stay here, in Andrew and Jennifer’s living room, and neither did I. But being with her, alone in this space, had given me a taste of what we might have if we made up our minds to stay somewhere. It seemed brilliant, full of potential. Coops to build, gardens to grow, ideas to follow through on. Supposedly, we were going to do all that after the trip. But I knew there was no guarantee we’d make it to “after.”

  I walked to the kitchen and put on some water for tea. As I waited, I stared at the kitchen island, the cards from our rummy game scattered across its surface. I was reminded of yet another visit to el lago, when Rachel and I had spent an entire day playing cards and drinking wine by the water. Every few hours one of us would tug the other into our rented room, where we would tear off our clothes and attack each other as if we’d been apart for years. That day together, and every one that had followed, had only been possible because I’d ventured into the big unknown. Because both of us had. That’s what made our story so fucking romantic, right? We’d found each other far from the places we called home, and found a new, shared place. And that’s what we were doing, again, with this trip. I had no guarantees when I loaded up that backpack, but I’d let myself wander and stumble and second-guess, and if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here with Rachel, seeing Wisconsin as I’d never seen it before.

  I looked over at Rachel, who appeared to be nodding off, her journal spread open on her chest. Then I walked to the front window. The bikes were still lying on the lawn, right where we’d left them. Patiently waiting to take us home.

  PART III

  THE IN-BETWEEN

  CHAPTER 7

  What Awaited Us

  This day, our tenth on the road, would be a day of firsts.

  For starters, day ten would mark our (1) first Minnesotan miles. We’d arrived in Duluth three days earlier, only to stall out again. This time, at least, it wasn’t on my account. The morning after my clinic visit, I’d woken feeling good, and by the time we finished our seventy-mile, Corny-to-Duluth journey I had shaken my symptoms . . . and given them to Rachel. While she battled a lumpless version of my not-mono, we holed up in another comfy home, this one owned by Tonia Simeone—daughter of Bob and Terry—and her fiancé, Mike. Tonia, a grade-A midwestern sweetheart I’d known since my diaper days, was happy to host while Rachel recuperated, and it was great catching up with her and Mike. But after three nights, I got restless. Impatient. I mean, it helped hearing that Galen, now in western Ohio, had taken a little spill and banged his knee and stopped to heal up for a few days. But still, I felt like Rachel and I were somehow falling behind—not behind Galen, or really anyone in particular, just behind. And so when Rachel announced, on our fourth morning in Duluth, that she was officially healthy, I was beyond ready to get back on the bike—and ride the wrong direction.

  Indeed, on day ten we would take (2) our first due-west-is-for-suckers detour. Neither Rachel nor I had seen Lake Superior’s North Shore, and dozens of people—Mike and Tonia, especially—had insisted that we had to check it out or we’d die miserable and regretful deaths. Mike recommended we ride as far as Illgen Falls, apparently the best cliff-diving spot in the universe. This would entail heading sixty miles east-northeast. Quite different from west-west. A big detour, but why not? This was the reason we’d shunned the Adventure Cycling maps. We were individuals. And sometimes being individuals meant riding sixty miles in the wrong direction.

  On that note, day ten would also be (3) our first foray outside Simeoneland. Up to this point, Bob and Terry had hooked us up with places to stay every night. At their cabin, then with Donn and Ann—who in turn pointed us toward Jennifer and Andrew—and finally, with Tonia and Mike in Duluth. I was grateful for their help but ready to step away from the safety nets and into uncharted, unknown territory. And we were about to do exactly that.

  • • •

  Rachel bit into a carrot, her eyes fixed on the lake, and said, “I wasn’t expecting this to look so much like the South Shore.”

  “Well,” I replied, “that’s because you’re a bad listener. Tonia and Mike said it wouldn’t get all big and dramatic until Gooseberry Falls.”

  She threw a chunk of carrot at me. It bounced off my cheek. I picked it up and ate it.

  “I know that,” she said. “It’s just, we’re in a new state. I guess I thought it’d be different.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  All morning, we’d been riding north on a series of lake-hugging side roads, and I had to admit the North Shore looked an awful lot like the South Shore: the same infinity-plus-one-mile views, the same puny waves lapping onto pebble-strewn beaches. It felt like a final embrace with Wisconsin, a long kiss good-bye. Too long perhaps. I loved the South Shore, but I was ready to leave it behind, to explode out into the big unknown. The Lump, after all, was deflated. Dead. It had softened from Ping-Pong ball to matzo ball and now merely resembled a healthy zit. I was at full strength, eager to see what I was capable of, incredulous that, after nine days, I still didn’t know. Thanks to the spokes and the Lump, we hadn’t been able to push ourselves—hadn’t banged out any big-mileage days, hadn’t so much as touched our beer-can stove, hadn’t gotten sunburned or battle scarred or built up baseball-size calves or T. rex quadriceps.

  And, well, no time like the present, right? I was ready, as was Rachel—the color had come back to her cheeks, and she was really wearing that grease-inked, chain-link calf tattoo. Even the Fuji looked poised. Its spokes were in fine fettle, chain oiled, tires topped off, down tube newly adorned with a neat oval sticker I’d bought at a Duluth brewery. I planned to pick up many such stickers along the way, to both personalize and uglify the bike. So
on the corporate logo would be hidden, the frame festooned with enough hideous fonts and clashing colors that even the most desperate of thieves would be like, uh, no thanks.

  Rachel had attached the same brewhouse sticker to her bike. At first I whined, because I had seen it first. But then Rachel reminded me that she had first shown interest in the Fuji I now loved so dearly, and so hadn’t she perhaps made the bigger compromise here? I relented. She had. And really, given the ridiculousness of our matching bikes and bags, it did kind of make sense to just ham up this barfy his-and-hers thing.

  We were all ready, then. Me and Rachel, Fuji and Fuji.

  The four of us now rode the final quiet miles into Two Harbors. Here, Old Highway 61 unceremoniously dumped us onto new Highway 61, which, like all (new) highways, was designed for big-ass vehicles to go stupidly fast. Logging trucks and tourist-toting SUVs and rusty old junkers clogged both lanes, burying the minty-fresh breath of the lake under the sulfurous reek of the tailpipe. To make matters worse, the highway now veered from the coast and into second- or third- or fifteenth-growth forest. Our “view” was reduced to scrubby pine, airborne chunks of gravel, and, depending on who was riding out front, each other’s butt cheeks.

  I was eager to get these miles over with, and so I mashed the pedals, all the while eyeing the speedometer, watching the numbers climb. Once I hit fourteen miles an hour, I checked the rearview. Rachel was right there, her jaw set, brow furrowed, shoulders rocking side to side. She was hugging my rear wheel, just begging me to speed up, so I dug harder, until my heart was racing, my legs screaming, my lungs begging for oxygen. I gulped greedily, not caring that the air tasted like rotten eggs, suddenly loving this highway. After so many days of blown spokes and Lump rubbing—of being held back—it felt amazing to actually work for something.

  Now I looked to the rearview. Rachel was gone. In her place, a tiny, wavering figurine. She must have been five hundred feet back, but I’d fallen so profoundly into a three-cheers-for-me reverie that I hadn’t noticed the gap I was opening. My first impulse was to feel annoyed that I had to notice, to check my speed, to abandon my reckless abandon just because Rachel couldn’t fucking keep up. Then, a tsunami of guilt. A familiar voice telling me I hadn’t earned my speed or muscle structure, hadn’t earned a goddamn thing, ever, and that this wasn’t about Rachel, or anyone else, keeping up. It was about me recognizing why I found it so easy to pull ahead.

  I was usually quite attuned to all this. But after a year of following—no, chasing—Rachel, I had begun to lose focus on the whole male privilege thing.

  Not knowing what else to do, I downshifted, spun the pedals, discreetly checked the mirror. Once Rachel caught up, I kept my eyes on the rearview, carefully adjusting my speed, trying to match hers without seeming like I was trying to match hers. We continued this way for five miles, still sandwiched between traffic and yawn-inducing, scrubby forest, until at last we rounded a bend and saw a bike trail, the one Tonia had told us about, the one that would carry us straight to Illgen Falls. It was called the Gitchi-Gami State Trail, its name a bastardized version of the word the Ojibwa had long used to describe the lake: gichigami, “big water.”

  We climbed the trail up to the top of a pine-Mohawked dome of granite, dropped our bikes, and gawked at big water. From this vantage point, it looked bigger than ever. The lake now seemed to extend forever, a shimmering sheet of blue uninterrupted by ships or seagulls, by islands or driftwood or even a lonely whitecap. And to the north, chiseled cliffs rose high above the blue, proudly bearing their age-old scabs and scars. Here we were, at last, at the beginning of the real North Shore. Now we could look forward to miles of peaceful riding on the Gitchi-Gami, a dip in the cool waters below Gooseberry Falls, the jagged splendor of Split Rock Lighthouse, and, of course, twilight cliff dives at Illgen Falls.

  As if reading my thoughts, Rachel nodded at the shoreline before us and said, “This is going to be amazing.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Yes, it is.”

  • • •

  It wasn’t.

  Just north of the dome, the Gitchi-Gami State Trail disappeared. Bewildered, we backtracked, asked a guy in a wayside parking lot if we’d missed a turn or something. He grinned, said this was a teaser of sorts, that the continuous, fourteen-mile section began at Gooseberry Falls, nine miles to the north. We’d have to hop back on (new) 61, with its flying rocks and farting tailpipes.

  These were not my favorite miles of the trip. Still, I wanted to love them—had been daydreaming about them for days—and so I mustered up a midwestern dose of excessive enthusiasm. As I rode, taking pains to go neither too fast nor too slow, I kept yelling over my shoulder about the boat I could barely see through the trees, or the roadkill on the shoulder, or the fact that it was only four—wait, sorry, five!—miles to Gooseberry Falls. Rachel, maybe because she couldn’t hear me over the traffic, maybe because she was tired and needed to focus on moving forward, didn’t respond. At best, she offered a tight-lipped grin and kept riding.

  At three o’clock, after riding nine miles in just under an hour, we arrived at Gooseberry Falls. As I locked the bikes to a dented guardrail, I peered into the canyon. River water the color of iced tea was spinning in upstream pools, dribbling through tiny grooves and channels, free-falling from cliffs. This was it, the North Shore I’d been waiting for, and I wanted to tell Rachel how happy I was to be here with her. But she was frowning, glassy-eyed. It was like she was barely even seeing the falls.

  “What a spot,” I said. I kept my eyes on Rachel, looking for signs of life. “Wanna head down to the water? Maybe have a snack and take a swim?”

  She looked at me and shrugged. “I guess so.”

  We’d been waiting for this all day, and that’s all she could muster? I guess so? I dropped my head, trying to find the right words. Then I opened my mouth, and this came out: “Could you be a little more boring?”

  These were not the right words.

  Rachel’s eyes froze over. Silently, she got off the bike, pulled out some snacks and her journal, and started walking down to the water. I waited a few seconds, then followed. She settled on a ledge overlooking the falls, and I sat beside her, apologized, and said what I had meant to say: that I just wanted to find a way to share these moments with her.

  “It’s okay,” she replied. “And I’m sorry for being so . . . I don’t know.” She looked to the opposite bank of the river, where a giggling toddler was dipping his toes into the water. “It’s just hard. You’re stronger and . . . It’s just hard sometimes.”

  I nodded, unsure of how to respond. Usually, I was the one being all pissy and vulnerable.

  “Well,” I started, “regardless of speed, I think it’s awesome that you’re . . . that we’re doing this.” I hesitated, then added, “It’s hard for me too.” This was true. In a sense.

  Rachel accepted these words, or at least pretended to, and we made the first of many promises to be open and communicative and such from here on out.

  We wandered downstream, stripped off shoes and shirts, and waded into an armpit-deep pool between two falls. The river was too cold to stay in for long, so we climbed out and lay on the rocks. The water soothed my sunbaked skin, and the rapids trickled and crashed, drowning out the hum of highway traffic. For a few minutes, I slept.

  • • •

  North of Gooseberry Falls, the Gitchi-Gami started behaving like that well-intentioned host who shows you every homemade quilt, every inherited-from-Grandpa bookcase, every photo of Jeffrey when he was a baby, when all you’re looking for is the fridge. As the trail headed north, it plunged into valleys, climbed heaps of granite, chased birch groves and lake vistas, so that every highway mile seemed to require two trail miles. This might have been fun on an afternoon joyride. But we were hauling freight, had been all day, and no longer needed a roller coaster. We needed to get to Illgen Falls, fast. It was pushing six, and the sky was cloud
ing up, and my butt hurt, and this meant that Rachel’s butt probably hurt too, and her butt hurt might cause her to get cranky again, and then I’d probably end up saying something stupid, and then she’d call this whole thing off and leave me out here, alone.

  So we barely even stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse, just gave it the obligatory, two-minute ponderous gaze; chugged right through Beaver Bay, which was less the quaint town I’d been expecting and more a collection of gas stations; and suffered through the final miles on 61, which was getting downright ominous. The pavement dipped and dove, wind tumbled off the water, and cauliflower clouds rolled in overhead. My legs were burning, my neck and back stiffening up, but I ignored all the aches, focused only on the rearview, on Rachel, who was struggling too. I did my best to find a speed that neither patronized nor exhausted her.

  It was dusk when we pulled up to the barely marked trail that led to Illgen Falls. The path was narrow and brambly, and we walked it gingerly, steering the bikes around roots and ducking under branches, until we emerged at the basin Mike had described. Before us, river water shot from a sheer face, falling forty feet into an inky lagoon. I dropped the bike, walked to the edge, and focused on the spot where falling water hit waiting water. It was all blue and black and mist and foam. I tore off my clothes, and before I could cool down, before I could get squeamish and second-guess, I took three steps back, two bounds forward, and flung myself over the edge.

  Forty feet is a long way to fall, long enough to ask yourself why the hell you just decided to step off firm ground and launch yourself into the void. Then your feet slap the water, and you plunge through the black, and everything becomes a seething, swirling mess, and for a nanosecond you believe you’ll never stop falling, never be able to claw your way back to the surface. But then you do.

  Hours later, after our first cooked-on-the-beer-can dinner, after some making-up-for-the-fight-we-almost-had sex, after Rachel fell asleep, I crawled out of the tent. Listening to the roar of the water, pulling sweet mist through my nostrils, I thought about the day, our first without the safety nets. I had to admit it hadn’t really been that enjoyable in the moment. It was only now that I could smile about the ugly highway and the meandering trail and my own idiocy, only now that I could construct the stories I’d eventually tell others. The stories I’d tell myself.