Borders - Day 85: Geneva, OH to Chautauqua, NY

Ever since I neared Lake Erie, Ohio's roads had gotten a lot less friendly with more traffic and extremely narrow shoulders despite the constant signs reminding me that I was on an approved bike route. Crossing into Pennsylvania improved that situation significantly and even brought me to an excellent peach stand. I bought four. Crossing into New York improved road conditions farther, providing enough room for two cyclists to ride side by side if desired.

Speaking of two cyclists: thanks to my lack of social energy, ironically, I was getting kind of lonely. At the New York state line I met another cross-country rider for the first time since Illinois. I was a little anxious about talking, but I didn't need to be, as Takahashi didn't speak much English. I knew he was going cross-country because he had written "LA -> NY" in sharpie on a white cloth hanging from his bike. He introduced himself by pointing to himself, saying his name, thinking a bit, and then announcing "I like beer." I knew we would be good friends. We worked out that he was aiming to end in the same place I was today, so I called my next Warm Showers host and confirmed that Takahashi could stay there instead of camping out.

Then came the part where I tried to explain the Warm Showers host via charades while he politely tried to express that he not in need of help. Eventually he understood that he would be able to sleep in a house and get free food, after which he got excited. Understanding thus achieved, we took off. I enjoyed that conversation with Takahashi was an intellectual puzzle instead of a typical social interaction -- an intelligence roll instead of a charisma roll, to use gaming terms. I always have the energy for puzzles. Not jigsaw puzzles, but real problems, and in this case I had the added motivation of actually being able to help someone. That might be the best way to put depression aside for a little while.

It turned out that our host lived about 800 feet above the actual town, which was the first real test my knees had faced in a long time. They didn't like it. It seems inappropriate to call this a good thing, but perhaps luckily for me, Takahashi had a spoke break on the way up the hill. I had a spoke wrench, so I lent that to him and gave my knees a rest while he worked on it. I was glad to have a way to help, because I assumed that I'd probably just get in his way if we couldn't actually communicate. He indicated that I could go ahead and he'd catch up, but I stayed in case he needed a translator. We stayed on the side of the road until it got dark, but he finally got it to be at least somewhat functional. I lent him one of my lights and we carried on up the hill.

I let our host know what was going on, and he actually drove out and found us a few miles from his place. Knowing how cyclists are, he went on ahead and said he'd see us there. We headed deeper and deeper into the forest, eventually discovering that his house was really a large cabin in the middle of the woods, completely off-grid. We met his dogs, he showed us a bunk bed in his basement shop, and brought us large plates of pork chops, mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables, along with a few cans of Bud Light. Takahashi was very excited about this, and I went ahead and dug into the porkchops. I was very happy to see food and didn't think I had much to gain from rejecting meat that was already made. After the fact, I realized that I could have packaged up some of it and stuck it in his icebox to delay whenever he would next have to buy meat, and would have possibly felt better about sticking to my newfound principles.

Takahashi and I had managed to make some conversation while he worked on his bike, so I tried to relay what I learned about him to our host, who seemed a little weirded out to host someone he couldn't talk to. Takahashi and I filled out our host's log book, he in Japanese and I in English. There were only maybe six entries in there, as this place was pretty far out of the way.

Looking through the logbook revealed that, amazingly, Hamish and Angus, the Brits I had met in Yellowstone, had actually been here a few weeks before we arrived! I tried to express to Takahashi how crazy this was, but I don't think I was successful. I couldn't contact them about it, of course, because there was no cell service. That also means I couldn't translate it. Takahashi and I tried to talk about what we like to do in normal life and discovered that we're both bass players. It was a little difficult to go too in-depth about anything, but we both kept trying whenever we thought up a concept that we thought we could express. We had some success and talked for longer than I thought we would before finally going to sleep.

Lots of images today. Apparently I take more pictures when I don't talk to people as much: a turkey family in Geneva; one of the few sandy beaches on Lake Erie; a drawbridge outside of Erie, PA; obligatory state line photo; an old Mountain Dew ad; a vineyard on a hill; the peach stand; Takahashi at the next state line; sunset climbing the mountain (my phone isn't great dealing with varying light levels); our accommodations for the night; and our dinner.

Urban life - Day 84: Oberlin to Geneva, OH

Most of today was spent dealing with Cleveland. My knees had repaired themselves enough that I was able deal with frequent starts and stops relatively effectively, which was convenient. Partway into the city, a deafening roar overhead signaled that the Blue Angels were practicing, which that all drivers would be constantly distracted. Some were, but Google did an admirable job of finding bikeable streets all the way to the city center, so I didn't have to worry about it too much.

I stopped at the waterfront to eat my lunch and watch the Blue Angels fly. This was actually my first real view of Lake Eerie, too, even though I hadn't been far from the waterfront for a while. I spent a while in a park further on, but mostly just spent the day grinding my knees away after the city riding caused them to flare up again.

Eventually, I made it out to my Warm Showers host, where I had been instructed to "just go inside" because he wouldn't be there right away. Another guest was there already, a pedicab driver from Washington D.C. We talked for a while, I shared some peanut butter and honey because he didn't have enough vegan-friendly food, and he farted a lot. Being in a socially anxious mindset, I don't remember much of what we discussed, or what we talked about once our host came back. I do remember that the other guest offered to put me in touch with his roommates so I could stay in his bed if I ended up in DC, which I definitely considered.

Since the other guest arrived first, he got the bed. I slept on the ground at the foot of it, which I really didn't mind. Indoors is plenty good enough for me.

Pictures for today: fluffy clouds, a bike lane that disappears in the middle of an intersection, a couple Blue Angels shots (two are upside down in the second image), my bike at the Cleaveland waterfront, and more fluffy clouds.

Oasis - Day 83: Bowling Green to Oberlin, OH

My cemetery hideout didn't feel very well-hidden, so I left around 5 AM which meant I didn't get much sleep. I treated some early-rising college faculty to the sight of a dirty hobo coming to life in their nearby Dunkin' Donuts and continued through Bowling Green to Fremont and the Birchard Public Library, which seemed like a good place to recharge my lights.

The trip was becoming a tour of public libraries instead of breweries, but I didn't mind. Libraries facilitate solitude and let you use internet and power without expecting you to buy anything. The Birchard library was particularly neat, as it was built on the site of an old fort and had a cannon out front, as if to blast knowledge into passersby. Perhaps it was meant to intimidate people into using their inside voices, I don't know. In any case, I really enjoy buildings that have been repurposed from a mission that I dislike -- in this case, war and colonization -- to serve a cause that I like. Usually that means that they become libraries, makerspaces, art venues, or if it's in Oregon, a McMenamin's pub.

In front of Birchard, I spoke with a woman who was herself considering riding across the country. As I always do, I encouraged her to go for it. I believe that the desire to do it is pretty much the only qualification necessary, assuming a very basic level of ability and enough time and money to achieve their desired pace and level of comfort. People walk the whole route occasionally, so really, it's cheating to be on a bike at all.

Inside the Birchard library, it occurred to me that I could go north of Lake Eerie through Canada to get to my next major waypoint, Niagara Falls. I didn't have the Northern Tier maps anyway, and not only would this take me through the exotic land of Canada, perhaps I could even talk to a doctor about my knees without risking my entire savings account! Ultimately, I decided against it for two reasons. One, there were more Warm Showers hosts on this side of the lake, and I would be depending on them a little more since it would be getting more urban shortly. Two, I didn't want to be committing minor crimes in another country while sleeping in "unapproved" areas.

A nice rail-trail took me most of the way to Norwalk, and a short hop to another rail trail brought me into Oberlin where I had contacted a Warm Showers host. The town of Oberlin had a very unexpected artsy, bohemian vibe to it, which was a major surprise in the middle of a conservative area. Turns out that everyone but me knows that Oberlin is home to a prestigious liberal arts college. My hosts Mike and Mari were both curators at an art museum on campus and decorated their home in an appropriately artistic Japanese style. They fed me and gave me a key, suggesting that I check out The Feve, a popular local bar. I did, as I still had some energy and thought it might be good to force myself to socialize.

I didn't socialize. I ordered the strongest, darkest beer I could find and hid in a corner telling myself I would work on my blog until someone looked approachable. Everyone there was tragically hip, though, and every introduction I could think of sounded pathetic and uninteresting. I consider myself an extroverted and energetic guy by nature, but that's how depression works. I didn't even work on my blog, I just kind of stared at people and hoped I wasn't creeping anyone out. I did manage to write the next episode of my short story, though, turning the character from before into a kind of hero, which was a nice distraction.

I returned to to Mike and Mari's right as Mari was returning from a Taiko drumming class (so cool!). I was just far enough behind that I couldn't catch up and say hi before she got to the door, but close enough that I thought it would look weird if I showed up immediately without having said something, like I was following her. I spent a few minutes trying to entice a nearby cat before working up the courage to enter their house again and go to sleep.

Images from today: a random creek, some rail-trail, an advertisement for the Super Gun Raffle, and an abandoned gas station.

Stowaway - Day 82: Morrowville, IN to Bowling Green, OH

I cleaned up the community center and headed out at a somewhat reasonable hour, which happens more often when I decide against the tavern visit. Even minor depression has a silver lining, I guess.

My knees finally allowed me to keep a reasonable pace, assuming I popped ibuprofen frequently and didn't have the gall to climb any hills. More farm roads took me through places with names like Independence and Defiance before taking a lunch break in Napoleon. That turned into a dinner break after I stopped in the library. I think their router had run out of internal IP addresses to assign -- that is, it wouldn't remember any new device that hadn't connected to it recently. Whatever the problem, I got around it by just by telling my computer to use an existing IP address instead of waiting to be assigned a new one. I tried to share my solution with the librarian, but all he heard was that I had ignored their prior warning that "the internet is broken". He appeared to be upset that I would defy him in this, the one domain he had control over in his life. Fine then, less competition for wifi. 

I sat on a balcony in a remote enough corner of the library to avoid the surly librarian. It was far enough from anyone else that I felt it wouldn't present a public health danger to take off my shoes, which led to the discovery of a large cricket that had somehow managed to survive the trip snuggled up next to my foot, apparently unharmed. I tried to catch it to set it free outside, but it escaped with a dramatic leap over the balcony and plunged into the stacks below. Sorry, surly librarian guy. Godspeed, horribly traumatized shoe-cricket.

I killed time on things like Facebook conversations, failed attempts to update my blog, and writing a silly short story in order to explain why someone hadn't been able to respond to my messages in a while. I hoped that I could wait around to make sure I had cell service to call my girlfriend when I said I would, but I forgot to account for timezones and the library closed before phone-call time. I hung out on the library steps with a local cat and listened to a heated conversation about why it wasn't this kid's fault that he had been absent from school that day.

The cat tired of me, so I tired of that place. I got a snack and headed to the edge of town before phone call time, which of course meant that phone call time occurred in a place with no shelter, in the rain, across from a foul smelling and strangely-high-security Campbell's Soup factory. The humidity meant that the rain wasn't terrible, at least, and a guy driving his riding lawnmower on the highway (???) stopped to give me a water bottle.

I thought about camping soon after that somewhere along the Maumee River, but everything was damp and I was kind of eager to keep my mind occupied anyway (due to the depression, not the phone call), so I just put on my reflective vest and lights and kept going. I made it all the way to the outskirts of Bowling Green before I finally decided to turn in, and slept between two pine trees in the back of a cemetery, leaving what I hoped was a respectful distance from any actual graves.

Took a few pictures today, surprisingly. Here's Scooter the derby car on the way out of Morrowville; an obligatory state line photo (apparently with flash, oops); a lonely bench on a massive levi overlooking a resrvoir; and, of course, the cat I hung out with for about an hour in front of the Napoleon library.

One small step - Day 81: Yoder to Morrowville, IN

As it turns out, it's really nice being able to shift with a flick of the wrist instead of having to get my entire body involved to convince it to move, especially when my knees, though somewhat better, still required me to constantly shift to ensure minimal effort. I only made it 20 miles from the McCombs', but only because Morrowville was a surprisingly hospitable place. Morrowville, Indiana, population 1280 (about the same as it was in 1991, according to Google) shows up in Google search results behind Morrowville, Kansas, population 151, so I assumed not much goes on there.

When going inside any building, I tend to disguise myself by putting normal shorts over my Lance pants to avoid discouraging normal human interaction. Also to avoid stares, or getting called a grape or banana "smuggler" (think about it). Morrowville has a very nice public library, so I suited (shorted?) up and checked it out. I left my smelly bike gloves on, though, so the librarian saw through my disguise and suggested that I stay in town, as the community center was open to all passing cyclists. I forgot I was back on a mapped Adventure Cycling route, in this case the Northern Tier!

I called the phone number provided by the librarian and an older man directed me to the community center, where he met me, showed me around, gave me the key, and chatted for a while. He gave me the same advice he gives all passing cyclists: that, out on the road, I've "got the world by the ass". I can go where I want, do whatever I want, with no time constraints or bosses to obey, and I should appreciate that and make the most of it. I assured him that I intended to do exactly that and shared a few stories. He shared (many) more stories about adventures with his car club in his '40s-era convertible. He also spoke at length about how inconsiderate it was that the previous community center users had left a projector screen in the middle of the building, as if I would be somehow inconvenienced having access to only 1,995 square feet in this gigantic building instead of the whole ~2,000.

I locked my stuff in the community room and headed out for a night on the town, which in Morrowville meant hitting the world-famous Whippy Dip. It's really a fairly typical fries-and-shake stand, but I'm making sure to indicate its fame here because the proprietor (?) of the community center was "absolutely tickled" that a passing cyclist from France had already learned of it through trail gossip before getting to town. It was good, but everything is good when you're burning >4,000 calories per day. Maybe not on this particular day, of course, but the appetite remained.

I thought of hitting the Toadstool Tavern, if I remember the name correctly, but headed back to the community center instead. As I mentioned in my last aside, I was having a little trouble being social, though I also didn't expect that alcohol would do any favors for my knees. Or my wallet, for that matter. Back in the community center, I inspected some bike route maps helpfully posted on the wall, as I hadn't yet bothered to get any maps of my own. Posted nearby were some letters of appreciation from the Adventure Cycling Association and the Indiana state legislature recognizing the community's hospitality to passing cyclists. I filled out the cyclists' logbook and found that Deanna, Sonia, and Mike had all stayed here. The restroom had a medicine cabinet with various leftover toiletries including a sample pack of Buttonhole Cream, a chamois (pronounced "shammy", or crotch) paste that served a function similar to Butt Ice or Butt'r. I believe that all chamois creams are required by law to include the word "butt". Not that I'm complaining, I'm 12 years old and I giggle at farts.

Finally, I turned off the AC to save on the energy bills the proprietor complained about, unfolded a collapsible cot (they really thought of everything!), and went to sleep.

Here's a very welcome sign in the community center:

Celebrity - Day 80: Zanesville, IN

The McCombs were nice enough to let me stay for two nights, so day 80 was also spent with them. They provided me with all sorts of things: for the bike, new pedals, shifters, brakes, and grips, plus a sleeve on my rear brake cable so it wouldn’t continue cutting a channel into the frame. For me, some excellent zucchini bread, muffins, delicious peanut butter “energy bite” balls, and some brownies, in addition to a place to sleep and some excellent dinners while I was there. I have to admit that my bike was in pretty sorry shape, since I beat the crap out of it on singletrack (minimal mountain bike trails) in the hills around Corvallis before even starting on the cross-country trip, not to mention whatever its previous history was when I got it at a bike swap. Rigid mountain bikes aren't even typically used on singletrack. It's just what I had.

That doesn't even mention what I got to see and do while there, besides just hobbling up and down the stairs on damaged knees. The McCombs have two kids and several animals, including a painted turtle and a whole bunch of gigantic hornworms retrieved from their tomato plants. I learned a new game called Sequence, at which their older son and I are currently 2-0 as a team.

I felt like some kind of minor celebrity during my time there. They even know my blog better than I do – several times, I was asked about particular stories where I’d be hazy on the details, and they’d fill me in. I feel bad that I kept them waiting this long to post this entry, actually. I had no idea I was so interesting! The kids were excited to have me around and were even sad to see me go, which was hard to comprehend in the state I was in.

I should also say that I really appreciated staying in a place that wasn’t intensely politically conservative. I’ve been trying to take that on when I can, because I feel it's pretty much the only responsible use of my privilege as someone who won't be directly harmed by the racist, sexist rhetoric that surrounds Donald Trump. More discussion, not less, is what will help bring people back together after this is over, or so I hope. Further, I want to provide an example of a real, human liberal, hopefully in contrast to the images that a lot of people in red states might have. But none of that was necessary here! It was nice to not be met with extreme suspicion, and nicer still to find others that recognize the importance of racial and gender equality in the US.

Apparently I only took one terrible picture of the painted turtle, which is a shame, because the hornworms were also magnificent.

Aside: Technical difficulties

For anyone that only has contact with me through this blog: I'm still not dead. That reassurance is extremely late, but I figure I should at least write something. Spoiler for the rest of the trip: I had a nice time recovering in Indiana, had a few more adventures, and made it to the east coast. I rode a train full of loud babies back to Urbana and am now living there, trying to figure out what's next.

I took notes on all the days that I didn't post, but I haven't been able to turn them into blog posts yet. I'm still planning on doing that, and soon, but I think I need to write about anxiety first. I suppose this is some of the personal detail that I originally thought I might include.

For whatever reason, I fell into a minor but extended depressive episode that started as far back as mid-Kansas and lasted most of the rest of this trip. It was nothing major, especially compared to earlier times in my life, and there were certainly no significant negative events that triggered it. Even unemployed, my life situation is much more comfortable than that of many people I know, thanks to savings and a lack of external pressure. But that's the problem with depression: it's not logical. Maybe it happened because I was marinating my brain in distress chemicals from the knee pain, maybe I developed some unhealthy thought patterns, maybe I have poor genetic wiring, or maybe it was a combination of all those things or more. Whatever the cause, these technical issues in my own head made it difficult to fully engage with the rest of the trip how I would have liked, and it became especially difficult to interact with other people. Instead, I focused on anxiety about weather, about covering ground, about ways I should be atoning for embarrassing actions, about emails I should be writing, about retirement savings and the growing hole in my previously-solid resume, about stalling my life while the rest of the world carries on, about being unable to perfectly control my emotions, about the lack of positive contributions I've made to the world, about lying to myself that I have value to contribute in the first place, and about anything else I could use to justify the lingering unhappiness resulting from all the thoughts above.

A lot of these ideas are still on my mind, and even while making progress on one topic, I'll get anxious about progress not being made on others. That anxiety triggers what I think of as meta-anxiety, a kind of self-hate for being anxious in the first place. Being distracted by unproductive self-hate does nothing to solve the problem, of course, which feels pretty pathetic compared to the good that could be done with the resources I have. That triggers more self-hate, which feels bad, so I avoid it by distracting myself with easy, immersive things like games, beer, or fantasies about things that could be true if I hadn't spent my time fantasizing about things that could be true. Those do nothing to solve the issue, which means I've wasted time sucking my thumb, which of course feels worse. Just snap out of it, right? But if I'm telling myself that, I must not have "snapped out" yet, which means I have one more failure to hate myself for. It goes on from there, spiraling downward until I go to sleep and my neurochemicals restore some kind of temporary balance. That's the difference between my current situation and real depression: I can still go to sleep and reset. Those self-hate thought patterns haven't been worn in thoroughly enough to become my default, even if I can tell that they're primed from past episodes.

With that out there, I feel much more hopeful about finishing the blog and moving on to more useful tasks. Acknowledging a depressive or anxious episode as a genuine "thing that happened" helps it to feel real, which validates my feelings and makes it easier to forgive myself for succumbing to it.