The Bike Trip

I endured a "runaway excursion" that turned out to be a fantastic adventure. I left Provo, Utah, and stopped in Salt Lake City to buy a bicycle. After disassembling the bike and putting it in the car trunk, I spent two weeks driving across the country all the way to the Canadian border in Maine. Then I drove back to Bangor, Maine, reassembled the bike in a parking lot, and drove off on the bike.

I rode through Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, traveling roughly 1500 miles. I carried 4 or 5 gallons of water in a double-sided bicycle basket around the rear tire. I packed a tent, clothes bag, food container, rain suit, jacket, tarp, aluminum blanket, and road map atlas, all stacked in and on top of the basket.

Traveling through New York, I encountered a ten to twenty mile long stretch of highway, where a freak storm had blown down, torn apart, and ripped out by the roots: thousands of trees. It was a spectacular sight.

The trees in the Appalachian Mountains, are like multicolored waves on an ocean, overlapping each other in densely packed hills and vales. Riding a bike there, I was constantly going up and down and all around on continuously curving mountain curves.

Not all of the highways were clearly marked with direction markers. I remember traveling through one city with practically no highway signs to tell me which direction that a certain highway went. So I finally stopped in at a bank to ask directions. I must have been quite a sight, all dirty and scruffy, inside the immaculate interior of such a fine edifice.

At a McDonalds restaurant, I asked a policeman for directions on how to get over to the proper exit or entrance that led to a particular highway. I suppose he thought I was pretty stupid, when all anyone driving a car had to do was just follow the overhead road signs. He gave me a funny, half sneering look, and said, "Can't you see the road sign across the bridge over there?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him that I was driving a bike, and therefore did not have the long-range perspective of someone in a car. In a car, highway directional signs spaced a half-mile or more apart, are generally quite easy to keep track of. But on an overloaded bike that I have to push uphill, and treacherously dodge cars at entrance and exit ramps, it definitely helps to have extremely minute instructions, even though they may appear to be rather dumb to others.

So I asked the patrolman, "How do I get over there?". He gave me a "What kind of a crazy nut are you?" look, and loudly replied, "Go up over that bridge, make a right at the second exit, cross over the other bridge and take the first exit to your left. Then drive straight for three quarters of a mile to where the highway forks to the right and left. Only you don't turn off either way, but just keep going straight ahead. Got it?!".

I immediately answered, "Yes sir. Thank you sir.", rushed out the door, got on the bike and drove off. The policeman's explicit directions were very helpful. It made it much easier when I knew ahead of time where the exits were, so I didn't have to dodge cars at the same time that I was trying to figure out where to go. It also gave me a certain confidence to know exactly where I was going.

Perspective of distance and direction is much different to a pedestrian or slow-moving bicyclist, than it is for someone driving a fast moving car. For example, a sign marking a right turn two hundred feet ahead, may appear to a pedestrian to be marking the right turn as being "right where the sign is". And if you throw in a few distorted autistic visual perspectives, things can really get mixed-up.

Vehicular orientation: My vision is very flat. I have practically no depth perception whatsoever. The world around me is like a gigantic mural painted on a wall or on the side of a building. Now imagine me driving a bike straight ahead into that mural.

I am near-sighted and wear bifocals. So, while riding a bike, the scenery constantly shifts in and out of focus, and my peripheral eye perception is very hazy and indistinct. Since the greatest danger (of running into things) lies directly in front of me, this forces me to stare directly ahead in tunnel vision.

I can turn my head from side to side to get a better view of what's going on laterally. But I unconsciously turn the handlebars toward the direction my head moves, and that maneuver is not too swift if there are cars passing you on a narrow mountain road. Then too, whenever I turn my head, my perceptual orientation gets all mixed-up and confused, and it takes me five to ten seconds thereafter, to get a correct fixation on the rhyme or reason of my surroundings.

Some of those roads had no shoulders, so I was forced to drive in the traffic lane with the cars. Several car drivers emphatically told me to "Get off the road!". I felt like saying, "What am I supposed to do? Drag this thing through the bushes and trees?". But being a mild-mannered news reporter, I ignored them and kept my mouth shut.

I dragged the bike up, down, through, and around some mighty tight places amongst the trees, bushes, and rocks in the wilderness. Several times I had to dead lift the bike, pushing it up in front of me, to get it up a steep hillside. More than once, I was forced to brace the bike against the side of a tree to keep it from falling down the mountainside. I was blessed with an amazing bicycle. It made it through the entire 1500-mile trip without even so much as one flat tire.

To me, distance, terrain, and incline, are meaningless. I ignore them, and drive on. I drove next to the edge of a narrow two-lane mountain road, with heavy traffic rushing by me constantly. The loud, roaring automobiles severely upset my extremely high-strung nervous system. I was in a state of pending nervous collapse, constantly, for half a day on the bike

In another city, a man, noticing what direction I was moving my bike toward, said, "You don't want to take your bike that way. That's a bad road." But I persevered onward toward the "bad road" anyway. I soon found out what the gentleman was referring to. This particular highway went parallel to a railroad for twenty or thirty miles. I passed numerous hobos waiting for trains to jump on.

The roadway was so close to the train tracks, that I had about no place to walk or ride the bike without getting on the narrow two-lane road, and being run over by cars. And at one or more places, I had to wait while a long train crossed the road. It was fun though, waiting for the train. I saw all kinds of railroad cars going by: box cars, tank cars carrying assorted liquids, and open top cars carrying coal.

My eyeglasses were rather interesting. The ear pieces kept sliding off my ears. The frame slid to the bottom of my nose. The glasses fell off two or three times as I rode the bike.

One time, the right lens fell out of the frame, after the glasses hit the pavement. After placing the glasses back on my head, I had quite a time trying to find the lens, looking through only the left lens of the frame. I could see quite clearly out of my left eye, but the vision in my right eye was blurred and unfocused.

I was bumbling and stumbling around all over the place trying to see even remotely straight to begin with, and fumbling hither and yon in a desperate attempt to locate the missing lens. I finally found the thing, and after several failed attempts, managed to awkwardly force the eyepiece back into the right side of the frame.

After that, all went well until the same lens popped out again. I stopped the bike, and began looking for the impertinent little rascal, again. Ultimately, I found it, and crammed it back into its proper place once more. By this time, the lens had become quite dirty, and was smeared with a waxy coating of finger oil. This, of course, had wondrous effects upon my vision.

This "pop goes the eyeglass" scenario occurred perhaps a half-dozen times over the next three or four days. I discovered that if I held my head stiffly a certain way, the lens would generally remain in place. However, this headstrong maneuver was definitely a pain in the neck, both literally and figuratively.

I had an agonizing routine. Waving my hands continually to shoo away biting flies, keeping the eye lens in place, shoving the sliding glasses back up my nose, getting rid (one way or another) of my constant nasal discharges, and trying to keep the unstable load of luggage from falling off the rear wheel, all made my bike tour very rigorous, contrary, and inconvenient, to put it extremely mildly. It was a severe exercise in patience, and then some. In addition, my hat kept flying off into the breeze. I was also constantly drenched in sweat, from head to toe.

I finally stopped at a K-mart store, and bought some silicone (waterproof) glue. I glued the lens in place, and from that time on, had no further problem with it. Thank goodness!

Aha! Yes! Before my mental synapses lose their grip on past events, I have got to tell you about the packaging, arrangement and carrying of the load of supplies for the bike trip. Not every idea just instantly popped into my head. Much of the planning, provision, and preparation occurred as I went along.

From previous experience with another bike, I knew that carrying supplies in a handlebar basket over the front wheel, was extremely unstable for me. Therefore I bought a double basket apparatus to fit over the rear wheel. It had a basket on each side of the back wheel, with space on top above the tire, for stacking a few things.

I used the baskets mainly for storage of drinking water. I carried several gallons of water in a half dozen or so of plastic 2- and 3-liter soda pop bottles. I would buy a liter of pop, drink it, and then use the empty bottle as a water container. In the empty space left in the basket, I stashed a road atlas, several cans of food, an aluminum blanket, and a tarp.

With the baskets now filled to the brim and overflowing, I next placed everything else on top of the baskets. This included a jacket, a plastic container holding a loaf of bread and various small grocery items, a tent, a clothes bag, a plastic rain suit, and maybe several other small articles that I have totally forgotten about. I had a delicately balanced pile of stuff, a foot or so high, perched precariously over the rear wheel behind the seat.

I held the whole menagerie in place with a series of large rubber bands linked together. Toward the end of the trip, many of the bands broke, and before I managed to replace them, variious things dropped off the bike while I rode it. In a busy city, one of the water bottles fell off and rolled down the street a ways, before someone picked it up and handed it to me. I had several other close calls, where at least half the load threatened to abandon ship, but I was able to repair the rubber band linkages, just in the nick of time.

The water and other apparatus weighed 40 or 50 pounds. My bike was around 30 pounds, and I weighed 210 pounds. (I lost 20 pounds on the trip. I weighed 190 pounds when I got to Lexington, Kentucky.)

There was no way to peddle nearly 300 pounds uphill on a 10-speed heavy-duty bike. So I pushed the bike uphill and rode it downhill. Going up steep hills on a bike is rigorous and difficult. But going down them is fast and fun. I sort of got carried away many times in coasting down the hills. You know you're traveling very fast, when the cars seem like they are going slow as they pass you.

I may have easily exceeded forty miles an hour on several of the down hills. I could have easily hit fifty or sixty miles per hour. However, I frequently pumped the brakes, as a precaution against going too fast. When you go faster than forty miles per hour, the slightest navigation error can mean certain disaster, due to the gyroscopic effects of inertia. There is no way to stop or turn fast enough. There were a number of times when I was scared stiff, and just hung on for dear life.

Getting on and off the bike, with everything up high over the rear wheel, was more like mounting and dismounting a horse. I had to swing my leg up and over it all, as high as possible, to keep from kicking all of the stuff off the bike. I could, of course, swing my leg frontwards over the bar. But since my legs are not all that long, it was actually much slower and more awkward and unbalanced, to do it that way.

Carrying forty to fifty pounds of gear, over and around the back wheel, provided excellent traction for the rear tire. Unfortunately, it also made it quite easy for the bike to tip over. Although that didn't create much of a problem while traveling slow, it made my nerves raw and ragged when I rode fast.

The slightest bump in the road, could have had disaster written all over it. Going down steep hills, I was hanging on for dear life, since the added weight accelerated the bicycle that much faster. If I remember correctly, I did tip over quite a few times. Fortunately nothing was seriously hurt or damaged, except for my pride and composure.

Along the way, I braved mosquitoes, biting flies, rain, darkness of night, a rain-leaking tent, heckling motorists, vicious dogs, long steep hills, road construction, and a loose lens that kept falling out of my eyeglasses. I would get up at sunrise, eat breakfast, load the bike, and travel all day. At night, I'd pull off the road among the trees and set up camp.

During the five week bike trip, I camped in most every condition imaginable. I was fortunate 2 or 3 nights to actually sleep on soft, flat, level ground. Most of the time, I camped on hillsides, on top of rocks or fallen twigs. Some nights, I braced against a tree trunk, to keep from sliding downhill.

Dragging a loaded bike off the road and then uphill or down hill through densely packed trees and brush, over logs, through dips, holes, and crevices isn't easy. I finally got smart and unloaded the bike first. But then I still had to make several, often precarious, trips to move all my gear up and down the hills, back and forth to my camp. I have read about some autistic people who seem to be able to endure extreme hardships and long rigorous endeavors much better than the average "normal" person can. Maybe I am one of them.

Such was my routine, day after day, night after night. Terribly out of shape for the first week on the bike, I didn't go more than 150 to 200 miles. But by the second week, I was "getting into it" really good, and thereafter averaged about 300 miles a week. Some days, I pushed the bike uphill most of the time, and could only make about 20 miles. Other days, when the terrain was mostly level or downhill, I did 50 to 60 miles or more. Traveling by the river and on a really smooth highway, I went 75 to 80 miles in one day going through Ohio.

In Ohio, I rode on a highway next to the river for thirty or forty miles. It was a gently sloping downgrade, so I drove quite fast and made excellent time. People in cars waved and said hello to me as I moved along. I remember seeing several large barges floating down the river.

Oh, and then there were many locks on this one canal. I got quite close to several of them. One of them was gigantic, spanning a waterway two or three hundred yards wide.

There seems to be an extremely powerful attraction between dogs and moving bicycles. I must have been chased by five to ten dogs each day on the trip. I found that if I pumped the pedals for dear life, I could out run most of the dogs. The dogs would eventually get tired and stop chasing me.

In the farming areas, just about every farmhouse had at least one dog. And of course, every single one of them just "had" to try their hand, or paw, at chasing me. One night, I made camp in a grove of trees across the road from a farmhouse. This one dog was yelping his lungs out, making all kinds of noise. He crossed the road and sniffed around through the trees, until he eventually came over to where I was. Not wanting to cause trouble or lose my privacy, I sat still and looked away from the dog, as though everything was peaceful and undisturbed. The dog seemed to be satisfied that everything was okay, and soon walked away back to the farmhouse.

I battled dogs the whole trip. In five weeks, I must have been chased by a hundred dogs. I never got bit once; but I had some close calls. One dog declared the road as his territory and dared" me to get past him. We stood there on the road, facing each other for several minutes, before the dog's master finally called him off.

Another time, I was passing a farmyard, when three yelping dogs broke away from the place they were tied to, and came tearing out after me. One of the dogs stuck its nose through the bike frame, gnashing its jaws at me. The lady of the house and I had quite a time trying to get that dog away from the bike.

At the top of a hill, a dog was waiting a hundred yards downhill from me. I raced down the hill, shifting gears every two seconds, and passed the dog doing 30 or 40 miles per hour. The dog's head zipped from one side of its body to the other as he watched me go by. I don't think it even had time to bark.

Yelping Dogs: I swear, most dogs are born to bark! In the farming neighborhoods, one dog started barking, and then the next dog down the road picked up the signal and began howling away, too. Then the next dog, a quarter mile off in the distance joined in and sounded off his vocal canine impressions. And so on. Often, I could hear many dogs all barking together in unrelenting continuity. Just as the canine chorus began to die down, some isolated dog exercised its options in a rather vocal manner, and the whole cacophony commenced all over again.

Then there were various dogs who had somehow lost track of the whereabouts of their turn-off buttons. They would yelp and bark endlessly, on and on, even after my bike had long disappeared beyond the far horizon. Surely the average dog's attention span can't be "that" long. Maybe their own voices have a hypnotic effect on them, which makes them keep on barking just because it is the "thing to do", even though the source of their provocation has long since left their most remote range of perception.

In addition, or subtraction, or whatever, dogs seem to use their vocalization as a form of long-distance communication, like signal drums in the primitive jungle. When one dog barked, its neighbor, half a mile further on down the road, picked up the signal and passed it on to the next dog in succession, and so on. By this "phoning ahead to the others" means of communication, every dog, for miles on end, would be properly informed of my coming, and be ready and waiting for me when I finally got to its territory.

Pushing nearly 100 pounds of bike and gear up a hill was very interesting. I pushed the bike up a two-mile hill through construction site gravel. To keep from going totally nuts, I counted the telephone poles as I passed them.

One steep uphill section of roadway had various heavy duty construction vehicles going up and down, back and forth, to and fro, and all around. I was pushing the bike along through about a mile of dirt and debris, trudging right along, in spite of hazard to health and sanity.

As I neared the end of the construction, a construction worker came over and said, "A lot of the crew were betting you couldn't make it through here on that bicycle. They said it was impossible. But I believe anybody can accomplish just about anything, if they just put their mind to it. Keep right on going!". He flashed me a big toothy grin, and waved at me, as I waved back and then kept right on going clear on through to the end of the construction area.

I went up a steep hill for 5 or 10 miles before reaching the top. My heart pounded so hard, I had to stop every few minutes to rest. And it was hot. I made most of the bike trip during August, 1994.

I pushed the bike up a 50 per cent grade residential street. I had to. That's the way the highway went. I put one hand on the rear of the bike, the other hand on the handlebars, leaned forward as far as I could, gritted my teeth, and whomped that bugger with all my might clear up to the top.

I got caught in the rain several times. During and after one torrential storm, I walked for at least ten miles in totally soaked socks and shoes. I made a squishy sound with every step; and my feet were so sore, I had to walk flat-footed to endure the pain. When I stopped for the night and removed my socks and shoes, my soles were white, severely wrinkled, and badly blistered on the ball and big toe areas.

Next morning, I got up and walked and rode all day long on those same tortured feet. I rode the bike most of the time this particular day, to lessen the stress on my feet. After three or four days, my feet gradually healed and accustomed themselves to the stress and strain.

Rain was "interesting". I was prepared with a rain suit, right? Well, I quickly put on the rain suit, hood and all, jumped on the bike and rode off, in total defiance of Mother Nature. Guess what!? My glasses fogged up inside the hood, and the plastic rain pants ripped apart down both legs. Then I had to push the mess up the hill, half-soaked in the pouring rain. I must have looked pretty ridiculous hefting that stupid bike up the hill in the rain. A passing motorist had pity on me, and hauled the bike and me up the hill in his pickup truck. I love good Samaritans!

On another occasion, it rained in torrents. I pulled the bike off the road, grabbed the tarp, and held it over my head. The rain ran off the tarp in torrents, and the wind almost whipped the tarp away. But somehow, I managed to stay dry except for my shoes.

One time I got caught in a continuous downpour that lasted at least half a day. Now the rain jacket and hood were still okay, so I basically just got soaked from the legs down. I was so weary at one point that I parked the bike at the side of the road, and leaned my weight on the bike, just trying to hang on to my sanity. A passing motorist noticed my condition, and came back 10 or 15 minutes later. With a cheerful, "Here you go!", she leaned her arm out the window and tossed me a small object. I reached down to the road and picked up two dollar bills that had been rolled together. That was really nice of her! It brightened up my whole day! I stopped later on at a roadside fast food place and bought a submarine sandwich with the money.

Speaking of money, I had barely a hundred and thirty dollars on me when I left Bangor, Maine; and I planned to ride the bike all the way to Phoenix, Arizona. So I was budgeting my food supply to around ten dollars a week. I drank water constantly, and didn't really get very hungry. I would usually eat twice a day: breakfast and supper. I ate lots of sandwiches and fresh fruits and vegetables. I rationed one container of orange juice throughout a whole week. Other than that, I drank water.

The nights got a little chilly, but weren't bad. I used an aluminum emergency blanket that preserved body heat. Each morning, I folded it into a space no bigger than a large paper back book.

There were many encounters with people. One night, I had to change lodgings twice to avoid the eyes and ears of prying humanity. I heard things like, "What is that strange man doing over there?". Upon which, I immediately left and went elsewhere.

One time, I spent the night across the road from another farmhouse. Someone was out practicing their rifle accuracy, and made a terrific "bang, bang" racket for two or three hours, before they finally quit for the night. I have extremely hypersensitive hearing; so my brain was banging against the inside of my skull, with every shot he fired.

I had many unusual experiences while filling water containers. I usually filled bottles in the rest rooms of grocery stores or fast-food places. I developed some pretty clever maneuvers for walking into McDonalds, Arbys, or Burger King, to quickly fill a bottle in the rest room, get back out to my bike, and take off down the road again, without attracting much attention.

Most of the stores were quite nice about letting me use their rest room, although a few convenience markets would not let me use their conveniences, because they were not available for use to the general public.

I also filled the water bottles from several handle pump wells at roadside rest areas. There were several places along the side of the road, where a pipe was draining mountain spring water out into the open air. I filled the water bottles at a couple such places. At one of them, I descended a wet, slippery mountainside to get to the water pipe. It was quite tricky, going back and forth with each bottle, and especially when the bottle was heavy after being filled with water.

People occasionally dropped by and gave me food to eat. I remember one time when two hillbillies invited me to drop in at their cabin and rest for a spell. They gave me a quart of ice-cold water, and several tomatoes fresh from their garden. They were delicious!

A man in a pickup truck stopped to ask me where I was going. Upon learning my next destination, he said, "You don't want to drive your bike through that city. The route is a mess." So I put my bike in back and rode with him in the cab. He bypassed the heavy traffic, and dropped me off in a less-traveled rural area. That was nice!

A motorist handed me a dollar bill in a parking lot while I was pushing the bike. A guy in a pickup handed me a bag and said, "Here's your lunch". A lady had me put the bike in the back of her van, and then drove six miles out of her way to haul me to the top of a hill. While I was resting at a park, and refilling my water bottles, a couple drove by and gave me two dollars. There are plenty of nice, helpful people in this world.

I carried one or two changes of clothing, and did laundry once or twice during the five-week trip. I bathed twice during the trip. One such cleansing event was in a cold shower at a public swimming pool. I shaved two or three times during the excursion.

So, most of the trip, I was quite dirty, ragged, and unkempt in my appearance. My nose was constantly running, and since I quickly exhausted my supply of handkerchiefs and Kleenex, I was forced to catch the nasal stuff in my hand and either fling it into the wind or wipe my hand on my clothes.

A word on those biting flies. They are the most ornery and persistent little critters I have ever known. They don't just bite (which is quite painful, by the way). They ingest your blood as well. So if you slap and kill one (after it has bitten you), you get this bloody mess all through your clothes.

The flies often light on you so gently that you don't even notice them. Then they crawl under your hat or beneath your shirt collar or underneath your shirt sleeve. And when you least suspect it, they bite. Hiding under your shirt, they can bite several times, before you finally get rid of them. They're obnoxious little devils. I put up with them constantly all the way from Maine to Pennsylvania.

I saw a number of other bicycle riders on my trip. Many of them drove by in "sight-seeing" bicycle tours of from 5 to 20 bicyclists in a group. They would wave and say things like, "Hello! How's it going? Where are you headed? Have a nice day!".

I had several people ask me, along the way, "Where are you going?". One man remarked (somewhere in West Virginia), "You've gone 1200 miles on a bike?! I have enough trouble just walking across the street!". Another man, while I was at a rest stop, remarked, "You're going clear across the country on a bike!". After a short pause, he continued, "You know, that's not a bad idea. Maybe I ought to try that sometime. It sounds like a lot of fun." Who knows, maybe I inspired somebody else to go bike riding.

Another time, I stopped at the side of a street, to get a drink from a water bottle. A man standing on a porch, hollered out, "Hey! Whatcha doing?". (Cars were rushing by, so we had to yell to be heard.) I hollered back, "going to Arizona!". He said, "What was that?". I said, "I'm traveling on a bike clear across the country!". He asked, "How far have you gone so far?". I replied, "about a 1,000 miles". He answered, "Wow! You must be in good shape! You've probably lost a lot of weight!". I said, "Yeah! about 20 pounds so far!". He said, "Well, watch out for the cars! Have a nice trip!". I replied, "Thank you! I will!". And off I went again.

I didn't always put up the tent. Sometimes, it was too dark by the time I found a spot that wasn't on someone's private property. Or I was too weary to make the effort. One night I lay on the tarp with the aluminum blanket covering me and was quite comfortable. (If the mosquitoes got bad, I just pulled the blanket over my head.) Anyway, all of a sudden, I hear this tremendous crack of thunder.

I'm thinking, "Okay, what do I do now?". I realize that the aluminum blanket is waterproof, so I'm thinking, "All I have to do is stay under the blanket, and I'll be fine." It rains harder, and now the aluminum is denting in all around me, due to the force of the raindrops. But at least the raindrops can't make holes in the aluminum. So far so good. But the rain water is forming puddles on the tarp and creeping toward me.

I move to a high dry spot, and huddle in a sitting position with the aluminum above my head. At least I'm staying dry this way. It could rain hard all night this way, and I would still stay dry. Except that how am I supposed to get any sleep in this awkward position? And the incessant pounding of the raindrops on the aluminum is going to drive me insane shortly.

It rains for what seems like at least another hour. Finally, the rain stops. I'm thinking, "Okay, this gives me a break. I could shake the water off, lay back down, and everything will be fine. But what if it starts to rain again? What then? I had better try to set up the tent."

I drain the water off the tarp and put the tarp back on the ground. It is a little tricky, but I manage to find a spot on some leaves that have fallen off the trees in seasons past, and have made a nice ground cover, free from the mud. Now for the tent. During the break in the clouds, there is some moonlight; and I can see a little bit in the dark night, but not much. I stumble around, looking for the tent, getting my shoes rather soaked, by stepping in the wrong places.
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I eventually find the tent. Only by now the wind has started to blow again, which doesn't help much in setting the tent up. And the ground is so rain-soggy that I can't get the tent stakes to stay in the ground. Well, I eventually get the tent up (the best that I can, anyway), toss in a water bottle, a flashlight, and the aluminum blanket. I crawl into the tent and shut the door flap just in time, because it has started to rain again.

I lie down, get nice and comfy under the blanket, and think, "Ah, at last my troubles are over." Only I failed to read the fine print of the tent instructions. It is a water-shedding tent, and normally will stay dry inside. But I made the mistake of putting the tarp underneath the tent. Since the ground wasn't even, rainwater built up in little puddles on the tarp and seeped through the bottom of the tent. I managed to find a few dry spots in the tent, but had to place my body in a very uncomfortable position. However I was so exhausted, it didn't really matter. I was soon fast asleep.

The next morning, I was thoroughly dragged out. I could hardly move. I wasn't going anywhere that day. So I ate some breakfast, crawled back into the tent (after draining the water out), and slept like a baby all that day, and all the following night. It had stopped raining; so I was dry that next night.

I set up camp in some mighty unusual places. One time I was right next to a swamp. Another time, I was on a steep hill, right next to the fence surrounding a farmer's property. Once I was right under a railroad; and every time a train went by, the whole ground shook like an earthquake. In several places, I would wake the next morning to find slugs crawling on me. I flicked most of them off, but now and then I'd miss one. Later in the day, I would feel this slimy "thing" crawling on me.

About the only forest creatures I came in contact with were birds. I may have seen an occasional rabbit or fox, but I really can't remember. The birds had an interesting vocal pattern. A certain type of bird call would start right at sunset. Then gradually another type of bird would begin its call, and then another bird call, and so on. It reminded me of an orchestra tuning up, where one instrument starts and then another, and then a few more, and so on until finally all the instruments are playing. The birds would keep this up for a couple hours or so, and then gradually tone down, until it was practically quiet. I suppose they ultimately all went to sleep.

I rode the bike on a freeway. I drove for twenty to thirty miles on the right-side parking lane, dodging all of the cars that were entering and exiting the on-ramps and off-ramps. I kept pumping along, through city, countryside, and mountains. Eventually I found a large open area off from the side of the road, pulled the bike up a hillside into some trees, and set up camp for the night. Except for occasional bird chirping, it was nice and quiet.

Oh, before I forget, I have just got to tell about the "crossing-the-bridge" experience. There are several bridges that cross one or two rivers along the border between West Virginia and Ohio. One of those bridges is a very shaky suspension bridge. I was pushing the bike on a narrow walkway on the left side of a half-mile long distance on the bridge. I walked it very slowly, no more than a mile an hour. I had to stop every so often, when the bridge began shaking, to keep from losing my balance.

Occasionally a big logging truck would rumble across, shaking the entire bridge from one end to the other. It took me half an hour to move the fully loaded bike across the bridge. I was hanging on for dear life, and didn't fall into the vehicle traffic lane; but I came mighty close a couple of times.

I pushed the bike on another narrow half-mile long walkway on a bridge crossing the Potomac River. But at least that bridge didn't shake.

Well, I got to a city in Kentucky, just before dark, and stopped to buy some groceries. It was dark when I left the supermarket, and managed to get the bike out of town and into the rural district. By the time I was several miles farther, there were no street lights; and I had trouble seeing where I was going. I couldn't even see where the trees were. I finally pulled off the side of the road into a thick grassy area, put down the tarp, lay down, and covered myself with the aluminum blanket. It was actually quite comfortable. The thick grass made a nice soft mattress underneath the tarp. I was exposed to view; but I was five feet away from the roadway, so it was relatively safe.

About midnight a car with flashing lights stops, and a man holding a flashlight walks toward me and says, "Do you know who I am?". Before I can respond, he continues, "I'm the county sheriff! What are you doing out here by the side of the road?". I told him it had got too dark to see, and I had pulled off the road because I was too tired to go any farther.

He then asked for my I.D., and ran a quick check on it. Satisfied that I wasn't wanted by the law, he returned my I.D. and said, "I don't have any objection to your being here; but I'm just a bit concerned that some car might accidentally hit you. Are you going to be alright here?". I replied, "Yeah. It's a warm night. I'll be okay." Then he drove off.

The next night following the "sheriff incident", I made sure I found a safe place off amongst the trees. Unfortunately I dumped the luggage off the bike, when I put the brakes on. But I managed to reload the bike before any cars demolished my stuff. I dragged the bike through a thicket of thorny briars and brambles, into the trees for the night.


Next day I passed through "blue-grass" country, with miles upon miles of nothing but horse farms. By nightfall, I hadn't found any trees, except those on private property. It started to rain. I'm not usually one to panic, even in the worst of situations. But I was starting to wonder where in heck I was going to spend the night. (I didn't want to meet up with another sheriff, for sure!)

So I finally prayed, and asked for the powers of Providence to intervene on my behalf. About ten minutes later, a pickup truck stopped. The man and his wife were traveling to Versailles, Kentucky, and asked me if I could use a lift into town. So I hopped in back with the bike, and they drove me into Versailles. The man slipped a ten-dollar bill into my hand, and said, "God bless you!". Then they drove off.

Well, in my autistic state of mind, I might have kept going on down the road, eventually reaching Arizona. But time and circumstance have a way of often changing even the best laid plans of rodents and humanity. I wandered around the streets of Versailles in an autistic "stupor" for awhile, trying to grab a hold of whatever sense and sanity I might still have. I gradually realized that the only sensible thing to do, no matter how difficult under the circumstances, would be to stop in at the police department and seek some help.

So here I am, pushing a rain-drenched bike with my rain-soaked body, in the pouring rain, toward the police department. I park the bike outside the building, and walk in. The lady dispatcher says, "Can I help you?".

I said, "Yeah, I need a place to stay for the night, and maybe some psychiatric help as well." She asked for my I.D., and then said, "Why don't you sit down in a chair, while I make some phone calls. Can I get you anything to drink?".

I drank some kind of a soda can, while she made the calls. A few minutes later, she said, "I have a reservation for you at the Hope Center in Lexington. But our officer won't be back to take you for perhaps an hour. Can you wait that long?". I answered, "Yeah! I'll be fine."

About an hour later, the police officer drove me to the Hope Center. And thus the bike trip was over. I stayed at the Hope Center for a few days, and subsequently returned to Provo.

I remained in Provo for awhile and then left again, this time on the bus. I was in a state of deep autistic depression, like a walking zombie, when I left. I soon checked in again at the Hope Center in the first part of April, 1995. I stayed there three months, during which time I discovered my autism. I then rode the bus to Phoenix, Arizona, and spent a month at Central Arizona Shelter Services in central Phoenix, before going to a home for handicapped adults in Scottsdale, Arizona. I now live in a private residence in Scottsdale.

Copywrited © by Frank N. George 1998. All rights reserved.
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