Hiking Boots Wheels
I told my family and close friends almost immediately about my plans to walk to Vermont. Over the past six months we’ve had numerous discussions about the logistics, route planning, gear, food, contingencies, communication, safety, and getting in shape. One of the topics that came up from several different people was the idea of biking instead of walking. The idea has both pros and cons but making a decision felt like riding the short bus.
Biking is faster. Is that a pro or a con? Well, if the destination is the primary objective, it is a pro. If the journey and experience is the primary objective, it is a con. It is my belief that God has arranged for me to meet someone specific and to share the Good News of God’s Grace with that person. I don’t know who that person is. I don’t know when or where our paths will cross. I do know that God exists outside of time and is present everywhen as well as everywhere, so He knows exactly how this encounter happens. He also knows when it needs to happen to be most effective. If He needs me to bike to that place and time, He will enable me to ride a bike. If He needs me to walk to enable the encounter to happen, He will cause biking to become undesirable or unattainable.
So, ignoring speed for now, what are the pros and cons?
Pros
- Being able to attach a trailer and transport a larger load.
- Faster movement and further distance means more likelihood of getting from one way point to the next in a single day.
- Rolling means less effort on level or downhill ground.
- Riding to Vermont means transportation of some type for life in Vermont.
Cons
- Much greater effort moving uphill. (Rationale: without a bike, I am carrying one backpack and transporting both its weight and my own uphill by walking. Although hard, it is less hard than also towing a trailer loaded with additional weight and transporting everything by pushing the bike uphill, which is still walking by the way.)
- Greater hazards of getting hit by traffic when there is no bike path, footpath, or shoulder. (Rationale: Standing alone as traffic approaches, I can rapidly respond by squeezing as much as possible to the left or right to give that traffic as much room as possible. On a bike, not only is there no place to safely move left or right, but I also present a larger target.)
- Less overall control over the weight. (Rationale: The only control I have on a bike is through the handlebars and by shifting my own weight left or right from the centerline of the direction of travel. Micro movements of the legs and torso do not enable greater control.) In other words, I have both slower and less capacity for moving out of the way.
- I wobble. That is likely to improve with lots of practice, but at least at first, I am a danger to myself and traffic.
4×4 With No Decision
Four bullet points pro versus four bullet points con. Make a decision, any decision, and it would be the wrong one. For supposedly being a smart guy, this sure felt like riding the short bus.
I bought a bike. Accessorized it for the trip. No, not with streamers on the handbar grips and an Ace of Spades playing card on the mud guard, slapping the spokes. Not even with dinosaur and Foghorn Leghorn decals on the bike frame! (Although, in retrospect, that would have been funny in a dad humor sort of way.) No, I added a tire pump with a needle gauge, a water bottle holder, a smartphone holder, a 53-billion lumens headlamp, a 400-lumens tail lamp, a storage rack, and I changed the seat from a Devil’s Colonoscopy style seat to a Harley-Davidson Fat Butt style seat. Plus, a helmet, of course. The bike has both front and rear shock absorbers, 21 gears, 26″ mountain tires, and some kind of alloy that is lighter than aluminum and stronger than titanium called “Madison Avenue Hyperbole Alloy”. This beauty cost me over $400, total.
The 5th Con
10 days after buying my bike, I fell off the bike. I discovered, much to my dismay, that the old adage “…like riding a bike,” is NOT true. I was an excellent long distance bike rider as a teenager. It was nothing for me to ride 60 miles in a day. I grew up in the Napa Valley of California. I have ridden from Napa to Calistoga and home again in a single day, not once but many times, which is a 60-mile round trip.
Now, I can’t ride on a level surface for five miles without spiking my heart rate to the maximum, according to a heart rate calculation for a man of my age. Talk about a short bus!
Worse, I’m now a terrible bike rider. I wobble like a kid just learning how to ride a bike. I have to downshift for even the slightest, nearly undetectable rise in elevation. Worst of all, my pelvis gets sore almost immediately.
Could six months of practice make me a better rider? Probably…
…if I had six months to practice. Which I don’t.
…if there was a safe place to practice, away from all traffic. Which there isn’t.
…if there was a level place to practice until I built up the leg and torso muscles necessary to handle inclines. But nope!
So, What Happened?
Which brings me to falling off my bike. I rode to Walmart wearing my empty backpack. When I finished shopping, I put all my purchases into the backpack and mounted up to ride home. The main road is a very busy four-lane street with no bike lane. There is an asphalt rolled edge next to the curb with a drop of an inch-and-a-half from the level of the asphalt to the level of the gutter. I was so nervous about the traffic, and so unsteady in my balance, that I kept rolling off the pavement into the gutter and it took everything I could muster to keep from locking the front wheel against the curb. At least the road was level. The turn into my apartment complex is a surprisingly steep uphill grade. Fortunately, it is short, perhaps only 50 or 60 feet. I geared up and pushed hard to build up a burst of speed, then downshifted repeatedly as I struggled to reach the top. Where it levels out, one can continue forward, or one can turn both left and right onto spurs that take one to different buildings in the apartment complex.
In my case, I turn right. However, as I was nearing the leveling off, a car had turned into the drive behind me. It caught up to me just before I could turn right and it wanted to turn right also, so it crowded me a little bit. I tried to micro-control my course to move slightly right, but being so wobbly, my front tire caught the curb and the bike came to a complete stop. I teetered for a moment, then fell to the right onto the lawn. As I fell, I tucked my right forearm up against my bicep and braced with my shoulder for impact. Balled up and tightened up like this, when I hit the ground, my arm was driven into my ribs, cracking one of them. I heard the crack. I felt the crack. Then I felt the crack move as I struggled to breathe in and out.
- Fifth bullet point on the CON column is this: I can’t ride a bike safely any longer.
Decision made!
I will be walking to Vermont. Making this decision felt like I was finally getting off the short bus.
If there is anyone out there reading this who would like to buy a four-week old, $400+, 21-speed, front and rear shock-absorbed, 26″ wheel cruising/mountain bike for $200? If so, please text or call me on either of the two phone numbers I have: