The Return - Days 100-101: New York City, NY to Urbana, IL

Today was two days.

Also, I know this is another melodramatic title. For some reason I felt obliged to reference the final stage of the "hero's journey" despite my lack of heroism. Let me know if anybody finds the "gift of the goddess" I'm neglecting to bring back, because as it is, this feels pretty anticlimactic.

This time period started by marking myself "safe" from a pipe bomb attack in the NY metro near Penn Station, where I dozed uncomfortably on the grimy floor while waiting for a train to Chicago. New Yorkers are excellent at being sick and tired of things, and this was no exception: reactions decayed from "oh shit" to "why hasn't this been solved yet, I have places to be" in less than five minutes, and snarky complaints were shared freely among strangers in a touching display of community bonding. I'm convinced this town is built upon mutual fed-uppedness.

Not much else really happened, as the bulk of this time was spent on a train. I disassembled my bike, stuffed it into the Amtrak-provided box in New York, reassembled it in Chicago, put it on another train to Champaign, and rode it to my new home in Urbana. The 28-hour train ride via Washington, DC was only really remarkable for the sheer number of babies that were brought in and out of the train along the way, providing fresh reinforcements whenever previous squadrons became tired enough to nap.

The vivid fall colors I saw throughout the Appalachians made me question the decision not to simply ride by way back to Illinois. I could've stayed with the pedicab driver in DC, experienced the fall colors in their full glory through the Blue River trail in Virginia, taken part of the Trans-America trail that I missed all the way back to Carbondale, IL, and bushwhacked my way up to Urbana from there. Seeing these colors through a window felt profoundly disappointing even though I knew it was probably best not to put my knees through the dramatic ups and downs of the Appalachians. I tried not to think too much about whether my presence on the train represented some fundamental character flaw; logically, I know it doesn't, but I wish somebody would tell that to my more intrusive thoughts.

I'm not in much of a state to provide a satisfying conclusion right now, so I'm leaving that for a later post. I do have a fittingly patriotic image to leave you with after my trans-America journey, however: please stand for the red white and blue!

I had considered getting a tattoo to commemorate this experience, but I'm fairly certain this tan line is permanent.

Shitshow - Day 99: Pathogue to New York City, NY

Today I just hung around Patchogue doing nothing of note until it was time to take the train back to Manhattan for the penthouse party. The part itself is succinctly described in the title of this post. I almost don't want to write about it, but it seems unfair to withhold details now.

I considered buying a black collared shirt from K-mart. This was the after-party for a fashion show, though, and I decided that dressing up would be futile on my budget. I did try to at least smell alright, but it ultimately didn't matter. By the time we arrived the formerly beautiful three-or-more-story 5th Avenue penthouse, it had been transformed into an absolute wreck with sticky floors, broken furniture, and no remaining alcohol. The elevator kept vomiting out fresh loads of aspiring party-goers who would repeat the same cycle: fight through the crowd of aspiring ex-party-goers, discover that coming here was a mistake, and then join the mob to fight their way out again while cursing whoever told them to come here.

Conversation was almost impossible and the novelty of the situation wore out quickly, both for me as a relative peasant failing to masquerade and for my host who quickly lost interest once he realized that nobody was excited about the scraggly-bearded vagrant he scraped out of the gutter. He couldn't brag about me without yelling directly into someone's ear, so after trying that a couple times to no avail, he left me to fend for myself. Bewildered and alone, I wandered off to survey the chaos.

The sizable and increasingly irritable crowd all agreed to respect the space around a red-carpet-style photo op near the elevator. Nobody dared cross the gap between the professional lighting and a backdrop with some designer's logo tiled across it. This void established a pressure gradient that spat me out into this sacred space through no action of my own, blinking stupidly at the lights. After a moment, a tiny model appropriated me as arm candy and I tried to look... some kind of way while a stranger used my new friend's phone to collect, I assumed, photographic evidence of how terrible the event was. After a few shots, she managed to communicate that she had lost track of her friends and was basically terrified by the whole ordeal. She hoped I could clear her a path to the elevator.

I did as requested. I learned she was 19 and Australian, but she didn't know the guy who brought me here -- dumb question, in retrospect. I didn't have the chance to pry much more than that before she found a ride. I have to say that I really enjoyed being identified as a safe person when I figured most people there expected me to ask for spare change.

Only now am I realizing that I will never get to see the photos she took. I hardly took any photos, but I feel like I should at least provide some evidence of how my bike ride ended with an abysmal 5th Avenue penthouse party, so here's a funky art piece and picture from the street afterward. I assumed this was a light fixture that was turned off to encourage people to leave, but I really have no idea.

And so we beat on... - Day 98: Montauk to New York City, NY

Forgive the melodramatic title. I just can't help but think about The Great Gatsby after achieving a goal and having no idea what to do with myself, as the moral is that everything goes to shit if you run out of goals to strive for. Can't say the book really illustrated that well when all the bad things that happened were pretty much unrelated to any lack of striving, but that's beside the point.

Something fell on me and woke me up. It weighed about as much as a light sandwich, I thought. I started to peel back the tarp I had thrown over my face when the sandwich started walking around on top of me. I paused. The sandwich cooed. I finally poked my head out to see a morning dove performing some kind of victory dance on my stomach. I only lasted a couple seconds before I had to laugh, which unfortunately scared it off.

It was really nice to wake up to a sign that nothing needed to change after achieving my goal: interesting things could still happen, and the adventure wasn't over until I decided it was. Hopefully I'll find some way to never decide that.

I caught the Long Island Express to Patchogue and wandered around the town for the rest of the day with Jon and his girlfriend. We saw a giant telescope in somebody's shop, went to a nature reserve, caught a frog, and handfed some unfortunately-tame wildlife of various sizes, then returned to eat pizza and hang out at an event where Jon was doing sound. I again slept in a bed pre-warmed by Jon's small dog.

 

High end - Day 97: Patchogue to Montauk, NY

Today's road to the end of the road was much less confusing than yesterday, running through fancy East End communities with architecture, yards, and fences all carefully designed to aggressively declare that the residents of this area are very much Not Poor. I enjoyed being there while my beard, hair, and general state of being was at peak scruffy.

No one gave me any trouble, though, and I made it past large green lawns and expensive cars all the way to Montauk, where I overpaid for a mediocre sandwich and set out for the Montauk lighthouse on the easternmost tip of Long Island. I suspect that my glasses transformed a lot of my scruffiness into eccentricity, anyway.

The tip of the island is a nature preserve, which provided a bittersweet flashback to the wilder places I'd experienced earlier in this trip as I neared its end. I arrived at the lighthouse and bumbled my way down large, sharp rocks, half carrying and half dragging my bike and all my stuff with me to dip my front tire in the Atlantic, completing what I started by dipping my back tire in the Pacific. A bemused tourist watched my awkward display, and I ignored them until I realized I should probably take a picture or something. I told my audience about the momentous occasion they were witnessing and they happily took some pictures to send me later. I tried a few selfies as well, observed that I still didn't know how to smile like a human, and then sat down to reflect. I figured I was supposed to do that. It was windy and uncomfortable and nothing really came to me, so I got up and hauled my stuff back up to steady ground.

I really hadn't planned beyond this. I went back to town to check the rail schedule and found I was too late to go back to Patchogue for the day, so instead I followed a sign for Montauk Brewing and found a small place with a bunch of well-dressed folks working their way through flights of tasters. I got my own and joined a table with some younger folks who happened to be an Australian film director and his buddies, visiting New York for some reason that I promptly forgot thanks to my distracted state of mind.

For most of this trip, I enjoyed being a novelty for the folks I encountered. I didn't feel that way today. Maybe I was in a bad headspace because my trip was ending, but I've felt this way at other times, too: rich folks who are used to being rich seem to approach new people differently. If associating with me won't provide benefits down the line, I'm left as entertainment. Instead of engaging over bare, vulnerable curiosity, I feel prodded to deliver an inspiring TED talk that lets my audience feel vicariously enlightened. When they do reveal things about themselves, it's the cool stuff, the things that I'm supposed to be impressed by. I'm not proud, I'll perform for a treat, but I didn't have it in me today.

Despite my surliness, I genuinely liked the director's best buddy. Apparently that allowed me to be pleasant enough to get invited to a penthouse party in Manhattan. That should've been exciting, but it felt bad, and it took some introspection to realize why: I had no way to determine whether it was genuine or simply polite. I resolved to go, though, because at best it would be fun and at worst I'd get to call them on their fake hospitality. I would go for spite, I guess. And because I didn't have anything else to do.

That gave me a purpose for the next couple days, but I still didn't have much of a plan for that night. After hanging out at the brewery for far too long, I headed back into the nature reserve, wandered down a service road until I found an out-of-the-way spot, and set up camp. Of course, that just meant throwing my bag on the ground and getting in.

I felt like I should've felt more than I did, though I wasn't sure what. Those kind of meta-feelings, feelings about feelings, are rarely productive... but the feelings I did have seemed empty, to the extent they existed at all. That felt wrong. Wrestling with this made it difficult to sleep, as did the strangely energetic deer that occasionally ran past with loud, heavy footfalls that I worried might land on my face. I imagined I looked like a low rock in my bivy that still had no pole to keep it off my face.

Eventually, I thought about Mothman, the local cryptid legend. Jon explained that it had escaped from some secret government genetic engineering program and had taken up residence out here in the nature preserve. I liked Mothman because it seemed like the least threatening animal/human combo imaginable. Thankfully, this absurdity was distracting enough that I finally fell asleep.

Labyrinth - Day 96: New York City to Patchogue, NY

My destination today was Jon and Ethan's hometown of Patchogue, NY, which added a nice touch of coming full circle and ending with the same folks I encountered near the start. Getting to Jon's house was a little complicated due to the general bike-unfriendliness of Long Island, but after a few failed attempts to get on the bridge that would let me out of Manhattan, I made it to where I needed to be. I didn't find much occasion for photography, though, since I spent most of the day worrying more about cars than scenery.

Jon was still recovering, and had sold some astrophotography from his trip. This was the first time I saw the results of his labors, and it's genuinely awesome -- you can check out his work at circaorion.

I also met Jon's dog and two cats. In accordance with species stereotypes, the dog kept my bed warm for me while one cat tolerated my attention and the other couldn't even be bothered to come down from its perch atop the kitchen cabinets. I wouldn't want it to trouble itself on my account, of course.

After my thoughts yesterday, I found it quite rude of the sign pictured below to remind me that my trip was coming to an end.

Tourism - Day 95: New York City

I was an urban hiker today, which felt like a more standard form of tourism. I wandered through Central Park, where I met a smiling monk who attempted to attach a friendship bracelet to my wrist in order to sell it to me after the fact. I went to the Natural History Museum, which was surrounded by heavily-armed and heavily-armored guards for some reason. I assumed it was dinosaur control. I went through Times Square and experienced the incredible density of advertisement. I also made it down to Battery Park, where I vaguely kind-of saw the Statue of Liberty at a distance.

I also saw the Atlantic Ocean, which felt... scary. Technically, I made it. I could be done. To avoid the pressure of needing to actually reach the other side of the country, I had been telling people that plan for this trip was just to ride east until it sucked or I hit an ocean. The latter had basically occurred. But I didn't want to be done, and made it a point not to touch the water. I'm not sure how I would've accomplished that without doing something drastic anyway.

When traveling, my concerns are simple, immediate, and actionable: eat food, go east, and keep my bike and body somewhat functional so I can continue eating food and going east. Every day, these tasks take a slightly different form, just enough to be novel and satisfying to complete. Even better, I can do whatever I want without guilt once those tasks are complete.

When stationary, the immediate challenges are taken care of: food is in the refrigerator and my body only really needs to sit comfortably. Somehow, that makes things more complicated. Eating, traveling, and other simple concerns aren't engaging, they're just distractions from long-term anxieties that never go away. I need to act and will never be done.

Obviously, this is a mindset issue more than a physical reality, but one's state of mind is just as real as anything else. I can theorize about how to straighten myself out and be happy as a normal member of society, but I'm not sure how useful that would be until I'm in a better headspace. For now, I'll just avoid touching the Atlantic so I don't have to think about it. Especially since that might force me to confront the idea that this entire trip was just an ill-fated attempt to deny my responsibilities.

Chase - Day 94: Poughkeepsie to New York City, NY

I woke up to find that I had camped in manicured grass, squarely in someone's backyard. The backyard was huge and made from a series of connected clearings, and luckily I was in a portion that wasn't visible from the house. I wondered if maybe the animal I heard last night was a small dog let out to pee.

I left quickly and rejoined the bike path, which provided a pleasant ride all the way into Manhattan. I had to leave the path eventually, which meant battling NYC's special brand of constantly-honking city traffic. At one point I was almost hit by two men on a moped blazing down the sidewalk, where I was standing because I specifically wanted to be out of the way while checking directions. The driver was shouting into a cell phone in what sounded like an African language while the passenger balanced on an important-looking box.

My destination was a friend's apartment in Manhattan, east of Central Park. Traffic became more chaotic as I got closer, but like in any city, there's a pattern to the chaos when you don't have to wonder who will cut you off. Everyone will, so plan for it, and you'll be fine. I spotted a bike courier cutting her way gracefully through the congestion and fell into her wake for a while. My sweaty T-shirt and mountain bike with fat panniers and a giant sleeping roll felt pretty rough and clunky compared to her aerodynamic jersey and sleek road bike, but I managed to keep up and achieve kind of a state of flow flitting through the mess. If she knew I was there, she never acknowledged it.

I made it to my friend's apartment, but one challenge still remained: her unit was up five very narrow flights of stairs. After a few attempts to lug my entire rig up in one go, I admitted defeat and brought my gear up in several trips while she stood guard below. She introduced me to her partner and her gerbil before returning to the lab she worked in to do sciencey things. I used the combination laundry room / bomb shelter beneath the building and slacked off on my computer for the rest of the day. I failed to establish whether the gerbil had any YouTube preferences. He also wouldn't stay still for pictures.

The traffic didn't leave a lot of room for photo ops today.

Bump in the night - Day 93: Waterton to Poughkeepsie, NY

I woke up before the day's tugboat festivities and took the chance to check out the boat show in peace before leaving the Erie Canal toward Manhattan. In the process, I discovered an even tinier minitug that I hadn't noticed the previous day. Nobody was around to tell me if it represented a separate class of microtug.

Google's directions took me along a riverfront bike path, across the Hudson, and up into the hills toward Poughkeepsie. I was happy to learn that my knees had recovered enough to deal with the hilly roads. I encountered some wild turkeys and a giant spider during a snack, after which some powerful winds blew in and dropped the temperature low enough that I dug out some warmth layers I hadn't used since near the continental divide.

Later in the day, I found the bike path that Google had promised me and started looking for a camping spot somewhere along it. The amount of foot traffic made it difficult to find something secluded, so I stopped at a restaurant to eat, get some water, and let the pedestrians go home. It wasn't a fancy place, but the looks I got from the hostess made it clear that neither I nor my scraggly beard were welcome, so I just ate my own food in the cold. Hopefully my existence made somebody uncomfortable.

The bike path appeared to continue into a more populated area, so I returned the way I came and snuck off into a less-tamed portion of the woods, far enough off the path that I figured I wouldn't be visible, though that was hard to judge in the dark. I crawled into my bivy with all my clothes on and tried to sleep, but had trouble due to a mixture of noisy, invisible animals crunching through the brush and anxiety about perhaps being too close to the path. I never saw what was making noise, but I figure it was just some deer. Something smaller definitely came to check me out at one point, approximately possum-sized but more energetic. It wasn't worth unsealing my cocoon of warmth to find out what it was, especially since that'd just give it a chance to maul my face if it happened to actually be a threat. Playing dead is pretty easy when you're already in a body bag.

Tugboat Roundup - Day 92: East side of Erie Canal to west side of Erie Canal, Waterton, NY

Everyone I spoke with yesterday was abuzz about the imminent Tugboat Roundup, so even with my recent lack of social energy, I had to stay and see what the fuss was about. I moved my camp across the canal to make room for vendor tents, took a shower in the welcome center, got stung by a bee immediately on exiting the shower, and hung around until the tugboat parade was supposed to start. Then I continued hanging around for another couple hours until it actually did start. Tugboats aren't built for speed, I suppose.

When it finally arrived, the tugboat procession was heralded by celebratory sprays from fireboats, assumedly in a display of utility-boat solidarity. More than a century of tugboat technology was represented. Familiar shapes reminiscent of Thomas the Tugboat, like an elf shoe with an upturned toe, represented the modern era. The old guard was represented by flatter barge-pushers like the flagship Grand Erie, which later served as a stage for live music. The larger boats proceeded in an orderly queue, tying up one by one in front of the visitor's center as the vessels and captains were announced via loudspeaker. Much more interesting to me, however, was the small flotilla of "minitugs" that zipped lawlessly among them.

As once stated in the webcomic XKCD, "Human cultures are nested fractally. There is no bottom." Accordingly, not only is there a faction of tugboat enthusiasts within the larger boating community, there is a division of tugboat lovers dedicated to building and piloting fully functional miniature tugs. I'm sure I could've had many long conversations about the categories, trends, and scandals within the world of minitugs if I wanted to dig even deeper, but I was content to just watch them zip around like unruly children. One boat was particularly comfortable flouting no-wake restrictions, doing donuts and generally harassing the larger boats like an overly-energetic border collie at a dog park. I decided that one was my favorite.

While the boats came in, I talked with a self-identified traveler woman who described her own solo adventures back in the 70's, and how the world had gotten far too dangerous for her to attempt something like that now. I listened attentively, but I don't think the statistics support her lament. On the whole, we're far safer now than we were then, even if the news has become better at finding and spreading reasons to be afraid.

Once it got dark, I wandered around town by foot until I found a bar named the Angry Penguin and decided to find the story behind its name. Instead, I got an extensive description of an ongoing struggle with the property owner about building maintenance. One wall was lined with stout steel I-beams, apparently installed after half the building fell down. They were painted bright red to match the color scheme of the bar -- perhaps red signifies the penguin's rage? -- and I got the impression that though they held the building together, they were mostly prized as a monument to the massive I-told-you-so moment that followed the building's collapse.

A nice older couple of tugboat enthusiasts insisted that I try the famous Angry Penguin Bread Pudding, which was an offer I couldn't refuse. It was good, but rarely will anything with that many carbs taste bad.

Progress - Day 91: Fort Plain to Waterton, NY

Today I discovered that no one minded my camping spot because camping was formally allowed at any of the 30+ locks along the canal, meaning that I had been carefully hiding my sleeping spots for no reason. I guess that's what I get for being too demoralized to research anything. It was convenient that I was allowed to be there, because I had trouble getting motivated to actually leave. I woke up late, and finally got moving after a large drop-bug ambushed me from a tree, landing with a loud "thunk" on the tarp I had sloppily thrown over myself to protect from some light rain. It was some kind of caterpillar, yellow and fluffy. I flicked it away from beneath the tarp and it exploded into a cloud of tiny yellow hairs that I figured I shouldn't breathe. Sorry buddy.

My knees were finally feeling mostly better, thanks to the flatness of the canal. This was actually the first day I managed to avoid taking painkillers more than once since I'd left Chicago. I forgot to mention that my knee problems were another motivation to follow the canal instead of taking straighter roads.

I loaded up on food at a particular Family Dollar for two reasons: one, I'd learned that they have a lot of cheap, calorie-dense food. Two, they had a parking spot just for horse buggies, and I thought that was great. I sat outside next to the horse parking to eat my cheese danish and bananas, and sure enough, a buggy full of women and children pulled up and hurried inside. I sat and ate with the horse. I realized I wasn't sure what horses eat, so instead of becoming pals I just accidentally taunted it with my food. It pointedly used its blinders to block me out once it figured it wasn't getting fed.

The past couple days had given me much poorer roads, but as I approached Albany things began to improve, eventually becoming paved again. More water scenery showed up, too, as the canal and Mohawk River -- I wasn't sure whether they were the same thing all the time -- became less decisive in their courses.

Technically, you're supposed to call ahead to ask about camping at a lock, so I actually did that for Waterton instead of just inviting myself in. I arrived with time to spare and camped outside the visitor's center, bracing for an incoming storm while answering a barrage of questions from some local kids. I have to admit that I enjoyed the company, especially since they seemed to really appreciate that I showed up to kill some boredom. They wanted me to hang out at a local diner later, and insisted that I stay for something called the Tugboat Roundup tomorrow.

I found the diner they mentioned, but didn't find the kids anywhere. The place was great, though. Nothing had changed in many years, including the prices. It felt like a truck stop for dockworkers, where everyone was just surly enough to give you space but not enough to be actively unpleasant. The food was prepared to match, making no effort to hide the use of sliced American cheese, or to include any frivolous spices. If you had a problem with it, that was your issue. I had no problem, because no one cared when a scruffy dude like me sat down for two hours, plugged a mess of wires into the wall, and took his sweet time working through two cheese omelets, a soft pretzel, and a large bowl of rice pudding just trying to exceed the minimum credit card purchase.

I went back to my tent and buckled down for a very intense storm that lasted about 20 minutes before completely clearing up again. I was proud of how well everything held up since it hadn't been seriously tested for a while. I probably could have picked a better spot, though, because I did end up digging a small trench to redirect water around my tent and keep things from flooding. I went to sleep after the storm passed.

Ugh - Day 90: Fayettesville to Fort Plain, NY

More pretty stuff. The past few days were actually some of the most enjoyable riding I'd had since the Rockies, but I'd become immune at this point. Everything nice just served to remind me that I was the problem here, not anything happening around me. Depression can twist most anything to be bad.

I got pretty far regardless of my mental state, deciding to follow the canal north to Rome and back south to Utica instead of just following roads that were a straighter shot. Traffic was just more than I wanted to deal with, and I didn't particularly care where I was riding as long as I was able to tune out. I also told myself that the exercise would at least make me a more desirable partner for my girlfriend, which bizarrely did manage to provide a little solace. Eventually, I made it to Lock 16 late, and camped next to an inviting-looking picnic table that made me feel like I was supposed to be there. No one seemed to mind.

The "Whitestown" sign below managed to make me conscious of my beard and tan. The fort was in Utica, though I didn't stop to read about it, which is unlike me. Also, the graffiti along the canal was strangely nice, like the image below wishing me a nice trip.

I Should Buy a Boat - Day 89: Fairport to Fayetteville, NY

More pretty stuff and unfounded depression today, almost as if the pretty stuff around me provided contrast to highlight how I felt. Something I ate in Syracuse absolutely destroyed my intestines, too, which brought my body into alignment with my mood and made for a painful night. Syracuse also required me to divert from the canal quite a bit, as signs indicated that I should take a wide loop around the edge of the city instead of going straight through like Google Maps suggested. I followed the signs, but the extra distance may have not been a smart decision with the state of my digestive system. The route I posted doesn't account for this loop, because I wasn't able to accurately retrace it without more effort than I really felt like putting in.

Not all of today actually followed the canal. I didn't understand exactly why I had to divert from it, only that there was a difference between the "main channel" and other branches that had been used at different times in the past. None of this would be a problem if I had just hopped on a boat, so I thought about ways to turn my bike into a raft if I wanted to do that. I wanted to say I effectively rode the whole way, though, and continued heading generally eastward. The only especially memorable point was when I was diverted out onto some rolling fields where I rode, half-naked in skintight shorts due to the heat, past some embarrassed Amish women selling peaches.

I rode until very late, and eventually settled into the bushes north of Fayetteville. On the graffiti image below, note that someone named "Frank" seemed confused about the purpose of that mural. Also, the train station in Syracuse is a very imposing building.