I met “Pat” in a small café in the small town of Julesburg, just west of the border from Nebraska into Colorado. I had to wait out the morning rain in that small café before setting out. It took till near noon. And so I had a chance to meet many locals who came and went in those morning hours.
“Pat” is a name I ascribed to one local, after the androgenous character on Saturday Night Live. Was “Pat” a he or a she? Many skits over many shows attempted to put Pat into situations where gender would be revealed. All failed.
But I was successful with my Pat … it wasn’t really my doing … it just took quite a while for the fact to “out” itself.
Very tall, very large frame, blonde hair down to the shoulders, and the killer confusions: a hot pink long-sleeved tee shirt plus enough extra poundage to exhibit what might be a woman’s chest. (Boobs!)
I was facing the rear of the café so only saw Pat from the side and back, until Pat took a booth in front of mine and faced me. No help there. It seemed like a lot of time for me to wonder about this, but then Pat ordered breakfast … in a deep voice. No mistaking that.
In a metropolitan area, nowadays, you see all sorts. In a tiny town in the West, given his age (he looked to be in his mid-forties) Pat had to be quite the character.
I decided that Pat liked the notoriety and the recognition of being the only one of his type around.
Pat was literate, getting many chuckles out of the typos in the local weekly newspaper, pointing them out to me. (I did learn a new word, however: “chemigation” refers to the mixing of crop treatments with the irrigation water.)
But was Pat a farmer? A silo worker? A railroader? A trucker? A merchant of I-don’t-know-what? A professional? My conclusion was that he was financially independent and a man of leisure; I decided that he owned most of the town, or the land thereabouts. He was probably the provincial lord of the manor. Who knows? Right or wrong, that’s the way I will remember it.
But it was fun guessing about Pat and his place in the scheme of things.
I had met someone like that in rural Georgia, in 1964. It was a one-factory town, and she owned the factory. Everyone in town worked for her, one way or another. She also owned the retail shops, thus getting back a lot of the wages she dispensed. It was right out of a cliched movie about a closed Southern community.
It had been raining steadily … for days, in fact. I was driving the dinky American Motors used car I’d bought a few days earlier in New Orleans, to replace my very dead Jaguar XK120M, may it rest in peace (I dearly loved that car!). The dink was the model that had the shift lever sticking out of the dashboard. Oy. It was going to take me all the way back to NY. How was a dumb Northerner to know that Detroit would sell cars in the South without heaters in them? No heat means no effective defrosters and permanent fogginess when it rains. I holed up in a café for days, nursing coffee after coffee. The short-order cook/counterman/owner befriended me and after many conversations, he offered me a job as a short-order cook. “I’ll teach you. Don’t make nuthin fancy anyhow.”
He allowed as how I was a breath of fresh air, being college educated and smarter than most anyone in town. “This town needs someone like you … and someone she don’t own! We could really liven things up around here.”
He introduced me to “her” when she came in with an entourage of toadies. She was quite civil, but acted every bit the Queen of her realm. She even asked me to come by the factory and make a job application so she could see where I might fit. I politely refused.
Cookie also took me a private club, just across the border, where we had some of the finest liquor I ever tasted. Moonshine! And on the house, to boot. In two days, I had met all the important locals!
Well, I was broke and out of a job, so I couldn’t say “no” straight off. But with my big mouth and not a small measure of arrogance, who knows how long I’d have lasted? Who knows how they would (and could) dispense with the wise-ass when the time came?
And, of course, there was no future in it. It might have been fun … for a while.
When the rain cleared, I cleared out too.
And that’s how I first got to NJ for home and career.
Why a Bike Ride?
Summer of 2009:
More adventure. The plan: Ride from St. Louis, MO to Upper Saddle River, NJ, via Ann Arbor (to visit my brother), then across Ontario and thru Buffalo to Hobart College (Geneva, NY), then south to the Delaware River, which I'd follow into NJ and continue southeast to home. From Ann Arbor, it is the reverse of the route I took across America 2 years ago.
With a meeting to attend in St.L., it seemed a good idea to ride back.
St.L. departure date: 6/15. Estimated distance: about 1,150 miles, or one-third my Cross-America trip. Theoretically, the wind would be at my back. The hope: a 100-miles-a-day average and 12 days in the saddle. Total elapsed time: dependent upon weather and equipment outages.
My son says it will be dry every night and drenching during the day, the other side of the road will be smooth whereas I'll ride in under-construction rubble, the wind will be in my face, and all roads will be uphill. With my luck, could happen.
No official money-raising, but if you want to contribute, the trip ain't cheap.
I will make the blog entries at sporadic points, with fuller descriptions at trip's end.
Summer of 2007:
It was a personal challenge, short and simple. I needed to prove to myself that this 70-year old man wasn't over the hill yet.
So, while I was at it, I appealed to 4 different constituencies to pledge financial support for my ride. The consitituencies do not overlap in any way. I raised money for:
The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, of which I was the President (2006-8): (http://www.ethicalfocus.org/). ECS is a caring humanist community that believes in deed, not creed, as expressed in social action.
Upper Saddle River, my home town, in support of all the volunteer services: the Fire Department; the Ambulance Corps; the Rescue Squad.
The Interact Club, at the Bergen Academies (a county high school with competitive admissions, where I am a substitute teacher). The club helps the hungry and homeless, and also pays the fare for children from the 3rd world to come to the US for medical treatment.
And last but not least (they are all equal in my mind), I hoped to kindle the giving for my alma mater, Hobart College, so we could present them with a sizable class gift in June, 2008, at our 50th reunion.
So you now have both the real reason ... and the good reasons.
And while I was at it, I wanted to try to show up those who said I wouldn't make it on the (ambitious) schedule I set for myself. I didn't, making an average of only 81 miles per day, when riding. I was done in by the steeps, the weight I carried, some bike problems, headwinds and afternoon thunderstorms. Color me humbled.
And now that the ride is over, I slake my need to write by adding occasional longer-view essays based upon the experience.
To summarize the trip, I covered 3,467 miles, solo. My route ran from home, in Upper Saddle River, in northeastern NJ, to Buffalo, across Ontario, then through Michigan to Wisconsin, across Minnesota, Nebraska, and into Colorado at the northeastern corner. I went southwest from there to Denver, then south to Albuquerque, and due west to L.A., across the Mojave Desert.
I lost approximately 4 days to weather, 3 days to visits en route with my brother in Michigan and my oldest son in Denver, and about 3 days to various bike issues. That leaves 39 days for being in the saddle. Never had a leg issue. Ate like a pig and lost weight.
A great experience. Read on.
Bob
More adventure. The plan: Ride from St. Louis, MO to Upper Saddle River, NJ, via Ann Arbor (to visit my brother), then across Ontario and thru Buffalo to Hobart College (Geneva, NY), then south to the Delaware River, which I'd follow into NJ and continue southeast to home. From Ann Arbor, it is the reverse of the route I took across America 2 years ago.
With a meeting to attend in St.L., it seemed a good idea to ride back.
St.L. departure date: 6/15. Estimated distance: about 1,150 miles, or one-third my Cross-America trip. Theoretically, the wind would be at my back. The hope: a 100-miles-a-day average and 12 days in the saddle. Total elapsed time: dependent upon weather and equipment outages.
My son says it will be dry every night and drenching during the day, the other side of the road will be smooth whereas I'll ride in under-construction rubble, the wind will be in my face, and all roads will be uphill. With my luck, could happen.
No official money-raising, but if you want to contribute, the trip ain't cheap.
I will make the blog entries at sporadic points, with fuller descriptions at trip's end.
Summer of 2007:
It was a personal challenge, short and simple. I needed to prove to myself that this 70-year old man wasn't over the hill yet.
So, while I was at it, I appealed to 4 different constituencies to pledge financial support for my ride. The consitituencies do not overlap in any way. I raised money for:
The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, of which I was the President (2006-8): (http://www.ethicalfocus.org/). ECS is a caring humanist community that believes in deed, not creed, as expressed in social action.
Upper Saddle River, my home town, in support of all the volunteer services: the Fire Department; the Ambulance Corps; the Rescue Squad.
The Interact Club, at the Bergen Academies (a county high school with competitive admissions, where I am a substitute teacher). The club helps the hungry and homeless, and also pays the fare for children from the 3rd world to come to the US for medical treatment.
And last but not least (they are all equal in my mind), I hoped to kindle the giving for my alma mater, Hobart College, so we could present them with a sizable class gift in June, 2008, at our 50th reunion.
So you now have both the real reason ... and the good reasons.
And while I was at it, I wanted to try to show up those who said I wouldn't make it on the (ambitious) schedule I set for myself. I didn't, making an average of only 81 miles per day, when riding. I was done in by the steeps, the weight I carried, some bike problems, headwinds and afternoon thunderstorms. Color me humbled.
And now that the ride is over, I slake my need to write by adding occasional longer-view essays based upon the experience.
To summarize the trip, I covered 3,467 miles, solo. My route ran from home, in Upper Saddle River, in northeastern NJ, to Buffalo, across Ontario, then through Michigan to Wisconsin, across Minnesota, Nebraska, and into Colorado at the northeastern corner. I went southwest from there to Denver, then south to Albuquerque, and due west to L.A., across the Mojave Desert.
I lost approximately 4 days to weather, 3 days to visits en route with my brother in Michigan and my oldest son in Denver, and about 3 days to various bike issues. That leaves 39 days for being in the saddle. Never had a leg issue. Ate like a pig and lost weight.
A great experience. Read on.
Bob
Monday, September 10, 2007
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