What it was like to bike across the country
10 Years Since Northern Tier: Part II
This is Part II of a three-part series on my first bike trip across America. Part I is here
(Suggested listening: Punching In A Dream by The Naked and Famous)
Once you escape the bubble of a car windshield and slow your speed to around 15 miles per hour, you’re able to absorb all of what’s around you. It was overwhelming at times, taking in so many new things every single day.
Having time to literally stop and smell the flowers made me feel like I got to intimately know each and every area we rode through. Bike touring has, in some ways, ruined traveling for me. I now want to take in the entire world at that pace and examine it all under that fine a microscope.
I find myself wanting to explain to you everywhere we went, like Odell, Illinois and Route 2 in Montana, which stand out more than others in memory. Those 10 weeks on the road left a giant tattoo on my soul.
New England hamlets gave way to the Adirondacks in New York before we reached the Midwestern desert of food: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. Most days the crops stretched on past the horizon line each day, swallowing me whole.
The rural towns we rode through felt like true slices of Americana. Take Monroeville, Indiana, where locals would congregate each morning at the Blueberry Pancake House, where nothing on the menu cost more than $10. We got a few honest-to-god “You ain’t from around here, are you?”s but generally the locals would ask us about the trip and where we’re headed, and we’d ask them about life in their section of this country. I learned that people everywhere are all generally doing their best and trying to be kind. I still try to hold that in mind.
We crossed into Minnesota, where the rolling hills and lush bluffs along the mighty Mississippi were a welcome change of scenery. The Midwest was where my routine set in. Each day I got a bit faster at pitching my tent, more confident in my legs, and less concerned about anything beyond the day at hand. Repetitive activities like pedaling a bike are good for thinking, in my experience, and my mind quieted with each passing mile.
June 25 journal entry in Brownsville, Minnesota: “I feel very good. I have energy, I’m not sore and my butt is holding up.”
The Northern Tier 2014 team ranged in age from 18 to 68, and we all got to know each other quickly. Those nights spent at rickety picnic tables where we’d spill our guts to each other, talking about our lives back home and the people we love and miss are among the most cherished memories I have. The challenge of each day’s ride stripped away all of our collective pride and left us all vulnerable and eager to bond. I loved spending all that time with my teammates so very much.
The trip gradually became less about chasing the feeling that feeling Nora felt in the Pacific. Reaching Seattle was the North Star, sure, but the real joy in the trip was anticipating what the next day held. What would each town be like? Is there a swimming hole nearby? Or a laundromat? And would we ever find a diner that would rival the Blueberry Pancake House? (We wouldn’t).
Minneapolis was the de facto halfway point, and with it came two rest days. But Joe, Drew, Steph, Kate and I couldn’t resist the idea of doubling up the mileage one day and going into the Twin Cities early, earning ourselves a whole three days off. The five of us crammed into an Aloft hotel room and got a taste of forgotten luxuries like a real bed, cotton towels and air conditioning. I remember realizing I didn’t miss them as much as I thought I did.
Minneapolis stretched my emotions in every direction. Meeting patients at the Fairview MS Achievement Center was a powerful reminder of the charitable side of our ride, and rolling into a major metropolitan area after weeks of not passing through a town with more than 10,000 people gave me a little social whiplash.
I also met a girl in Minneapolis. We met at a bar in Dinkytown and stayed out late, talking about our lives and all the question marks our futures held. I was smitten. I was also just 23, out chasing a dream, and perfectly ripe for heartache. Many of the miles after Minneapolis were spent listening to Jack’s Mannequin and debating whether or not I should text her.
We continued north to Fargo, North Dakota, which would be the last “big” city we’d see until Seattle. I recall writing postcards to send home at a bar near NDSU, eating an entire pint of Half Baked at camp, then promptly falling asleep. An unspoken beauty of bike touring is the license to have as many calories as you please.
We turned west again and the winds returned. The deeper into North Dakota and Eastern Montana we got, the more muted the colors in the landscape became and the longer each mile felt. At one point we went around a corner and Theodore Roosevelt National Park came into view, its badlands and mesas stretching to the horizon line, leaving me there to imagine how goddamn long it took for them to form. I grew to love the desert and the feeling of being where the earth definitely does not want humans to be.
July 9, Bismarck, North Dakota: “I feel kinda homesick, but not really.”
July 15, Havre, Montana: “I know I’m gonna miss this life once it’s over.”
Crossing the plains of Eastern Montana takes one week, and if you’re going the “wrong way” as we were (east to west), you’ll face unrelenting headwinds for ~500 consecutive miles. On the longest day of the trip — 108 miles from Glendive to Wolf Point — I looked down at my bike computer. We’d been riding hard yet averaging only 10 miles per hour. Tides of dread washed over me as I realized we had at least 11 hours on the bike ahead of us.
Then comes Glacier National Park, boasting a 100% success rate of flooring people with its beauty. Throughout that week through Eastern Montana, the promises of Glacier’s majesty began to feel like a mirage in the desert, but it was real and it delivered. Glacier National Park is out of the way from damn near everything, intimidating, and completely worth all the effort.
We rode the legendary Going To The Sun Road and set up camp in Apgar, one of Glacier’s little villages. Cell reception finally came back and I called my parents. They asked how the trip was going. They also told me they had bad news. Our family dog, Rudi, died the other night.
I broke down in a campground bathroom, one of those rustic ones without any plumbing or paper towels. Glacier was supposed to be perfect, and I had to digest some of the worst news I’d ever gotten there. A decade later, and I’m still not over losing Rudi. I don’t think you ever get over losing a pet, certainly not your first.
July 20, Lake McDonald, Montana: “She was on her way out of this world, and I was thousands of miles away.”
Onward we rolled into the high desert of Eastern Washington, and then to the Cascades, which much like Glacier, made me feel extremely small. By this point in the trip we had only a few mountain passes to summit, no more state lines to cross, and no more time zones to break into. Adrenaline and sentimentality started to kick in.
The last camp site of trip were some soccer fields in Snohomish, Washington. We all stayed up, thanking our route leaders and talking about what the hell we just did and how surreal it was to be a day’s ride out from Seattle.
Everything about August 4, 2014 was perfect. We rode bike trails into the city, stopped at a bike-themed brewery to present the Swedish M.S. Center with a $20,00 check, then made our way to the Puget Sound.
Celebrating with everyone in the Pacific set a high bar for joy in my life, and I will remember that feeling forever. We did it. We rode coast to coast. Every fucking inch. I still get emotional, sometimes, when I look at maps of the U.S., knowing I pedaled my ass from one side of the country to the other.
We spent two and a half months pushing ourselves to our physical limits, but saying goodbye to the everyone on August 5 might have been harder than the all the headwinds of Eastern Montana combined. I was so excited to get to Seattle that I never considered that it would actually mark the end of the trip, and that we’d all have to go our separate ways.
Kenny, an Irishman with whom we all grew extremely close, started crying before he hopped in a cab to go to the airport, and I couldn’t hold back the tears either.
There’d be no more heart-to-heart chats at camp, no more scenic vistas to take in together, no more breakfasts together at greasy spoon diners.
There was nothing left to do but pack up and go home.
Thank you, so much, for this excellent essay, Mike. I made the same trip (east->west), at the same age (23), in 1987, albeit via a slightly different route (Wrightsville Beach, NC, to Westport, WA, following the TransAmerica Trail from Berea, KY to Missoula, MT) and with only my girlfriend, fully-loaded panniers and the kindness of strangers for support. Though mostly dormant for nearly 35 years, your eloquent and earnest recollections reminded me of the indelible quality of those memories...8 weeks that "left a giant tattoo on my soul," indeed. Coach Seidel and his lovely family in Lyons, KS, who compelled us to take a day off, go waterskiing and stay over at their place for a cookout after hearing my girlfriend crying over breakfast at the prospect of another brutal day of those "wrong way" headwinds....Rounding a bend in Wyoming and, seeing the Tetons for the very first time, having to pull over for fear of going off the road, as my eyes insisted on devouring every aspect of that impossibly steep, large, otherworldly sight. So many memories from those life-changing 8 weeks on the open road, outside the bubble of a car windshield, rolling along wide-eyed at 15mph (more or less :). You're right - it's hard to tell the tale of such an experience without wanting to divulge the full details of every mile, every town, every person, every act of kindness and beauty (and, rarely, terror-inducing recklessness - hello, Kentucky Coal Trucks!). Anyway, you made my day....Thank you!