BICYCLING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES – WHAT CAN HAPPEN ON A BIKE RIDE

Travel is rebellion in its purest form. We follow our heart. We free ourselves of labels. We lose control willingly. We trade a role for reality. We love the unfamiliar. We trust strangers. We own only what we can carry. We search for better questions, not answers. We truly graduate. We, sometimes, choose never to come back. 
– Author Unknown

Thursday, January 8, 2015 (DAYS 1,039 – 1,044)
Returning from the warm cool breeze of the Gulf of Thailand, it is a dramatic change as I shiver walking off the flight and into the Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China. Since I was on the red-eye flight I feel a bit disorientated from the lack of comfortable sleep, but this is nothing new to me having traveled in ways that would probably make most people cringe. As I sat waiting for my connecting flight back to Seoul, I couldn’t help but reminisce about how it is already 2015, and I am quickly approaching the three-year mark of this amazing journey. I know that I’ve mentioned that I hope that people don’t just choose to live vicariously through me, but that they become inspired and motivated to live out their dreams. Recently, I received an email from an amazing travel blogger, Kristyn Bacon that has inspired me. We began exchanging emails and decided upon exchanging one another’s travel adventures through each other’s blogs. I feel as though she is even a bit more courageous than myself being only 22-years-old and having accomplished some pretty amazing feats, Kristyn has; hitchhiked from the East Coast to California at 17, Traveled solo and worked In Peru at the age of 19, worked as an au pair in Berlin for a year, completed ultramarathons, bike races and tours in the States, France, and Germany, and finally, the story she decided upon sharing, was bicycling across the United States alone at the age of 18-years-old. Here is her inspiring story.

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BICYCLING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES - WHAT CAN HAPPEN ON A BIKE RIDE by Kristyn Bacon Travel Blogger and Chief Editor of Trainless Magazine

I was eighteen when I rode my bicycle more than 5,000 kilometers from Connecticut to Seattle, Washington. I had a hiking backpack that I strapped to the back of a 30-year-old racing bike that I found on the side of the road. I had a tent and a tarp and a sleeping bag and second hand bike clothes and a new helmet. I had $2,000 and a cell phone.

About two months before I left, the superintendent of schools came to visit my high school. She came into my art class and spoke with all the seniors about their plans for after high school. When she asked me, I told her I was going to ride my bicycle across the country.

‘Are you crazy?’ She accused.
‘It’s actually pretty common. People do it every year,’ I told her.
‘Who’s going with you?’
‘No, I’m going alone.’
‘Are you crazy? What if something happens? What if someone abducts you? What if a van pulled up to you on the side of the road and pulled you in and drove away? No one would know!’

I was still a polite teenager at the time so I told her that something like that could happen whether I was riding in Connecticut or South Dakota. The superintendent said it was more likely to happen in South Dakota.

A week before I left, my grandmother sat me down and told me she was proud of me just for starting a trip like this. Just for planning a trip like this. She said if for some reason I didn’t make it, if I got to Chicago and decided I wanted to come home, she’d pay for my flight. No one would be angry with me. Everyone would be really proud of me just for making it that far.

My best friend told me I’d better ride fast because if I was in the mountains in the winter, I’d freeze. She said, ‘Careful when you’re going through the Midwest. They might shoot you.’

I ignored all of them. I knew I would be tired and sunburned and sometimes cold and wet and in over my head. But that was the point. I took my last final, said goodbye to my dad and my dog, and rode off with everything strapped together on the bike. And believe it or not, everything they said would happen, actually happened.

First, I rode 1,500 kilometers through New York, up to Canada, and skimmed through Indiana and Illinois. I camped in the woods and I slept at friends’ or strangers’ houses. I rode in the rain and the heat and I swam and hiked and went cliff jumping. I made great friends and I made great memories, and I made it all the way to Chicago where someone stole my bike.

I thought it was over. I thought that my grandmother had been right, and that I’d have to turn around in Chicago and fly home. I thought I’d have to throw away my pump and my helmet and my gross bike shorts, and get on a plane, and be home before I even made it to the halfway point. I thought that horrible drug addict jackass just stole two months and all of my money and all of my plans and my bike that I loved.

So I bought a new bike. It was even heavier, older and uglier than the first, and the rack was shit, but it was mine. And it was going to get me to Seattle.

Then I was in Wisconsin and Minnesota and I stayed on a bunch of farms with hippies and fifth generation farmers and wives and cows and goats. I told them I’d ridden through New York and they said, ‘Through New York? Weren’t you afraid you’d get shot?’ I still swam and hiked and met cyclists on the road and convinced one of them to ride with me.

And then we were in South Dakota, and a van pulled over on the side of the road and a man in a three-piece suit and hat got out. He opened his trunk and stood waiting for us to ride up to him. He told us he would take us to his town for lunch. We were hungry. So we got in the van and he put our bikes in the back and closed the doors and no one saw a thing except maybe one or two cars that had passed us on the road.

The man took us off the main road and over a few unpaved hills until we were in a town with no signs or houses. It was made up entirely of about twenty huge trailers lined in neat rows with sidewalks between every trailer. There were no men in town, only women wearing long skirts, aprons, and bonnets, carrying baskets of laundry and food. The man told us that he was in charge of the religious commune, and that the other men were out in the fields working. He brought us to a huge hall with ten long tables in neat rows. He asked two women to start cooking.

‘Are you two married?’ the man asked my bike partner, Matt.
‘No, we’re not.’
‘Maybe you’ll come back here and get married,’ he said. ‘After the bike ride.’
‘We’ll keep it in mind,’ Matt said.

We ate and the man told us about the Lord and the commune and that the men worked and the women had children and did laundry and cooked. On our way out, we saw a boy in a three-piece suit with a hat on doing nothing. We got back in the van and the man drove us back to the main road and the hill where he had picked us up, unloaded our bikes, and wished us luck. He said we could come back when we were ready.

And then we kept going to Wyoming and Montana and we made it to the mountains. They were beautiful and tall and in the very far distance, they looked purple. We went through the foothills and camped by the lakes and in the deep woods. It was colder but we still swam. My father mailed me cold weather riding gear.

We made it to the passes and one day, it rained freezing rain. We couldn’t see even two meters ahead of us. The roads were soaked and slippery and winding. I only knew a car was coming when the headlights were two meters away. I couldn’t see the curve in the road until I was already turning with it. I couldn’t use my brakes because my hands were too cold to squeeze them. I was soaked and crying, wishing I were at home on my couch with my grandmother in the kitchen and cookies on the table. But instead I was on a wet road with a thousand kilometers to go.

We made it to town and walked into the first store we could find, which was a grocery store. There were three women working that day, and one of them said, ‘Oh, look at that cold cyclist.’ I spent three minutes trying to get my helmet off and I couldn’t speak from shivering so they took me to the butcher and told me to put my feet in the shower, where they washed the meat. They took my wet clothes, wrapped me in butcher coats and towels and put me in the bathroom with the heat running. We stayed for two hours until I was dry, and warm, and fed. They sent us to the country store and their friend gave us thicker jackets. He let us sleep in his trailer.

And then the rest of Montana, which was green and beautiful, and Idaho, which had lakes and rivers, and Washington, which was bare and brown after Spokane. And, finally Seattle.

Everyone tells me I was very lucky, but I don’t think that was the case. I think I was pretty young and dumb, and very excited and in over my head. People can see that pretty easily, so they took care of me. They showed me that I wasn’t alone, or cold, or irreversibly lost. They helped me get to Seattle.

About the author: Kristyn Bacon is 22-years-old and the founder of Trainless Magazine. She lives in Berlin, Germany while writing, traveling, and learning the German language. Her stories have been published by literary journals such as MOOKYCHICK and DEW ON THE KUDZU and are included in anthologies by BOOKIMBO and SWYERS PUBLISHING. Her sports
writing has been published by INSIDE DIRT and DAN HOLLOWAY, EIGHT CUTS. An architect read her work and compared it to George Saunders.