From the Archives - Bike Tour Journal Part II

Introduction

Twenty-eight years ago, my wife and I did a cross-country bike tour. As the journey unfolded, we kept friends and family apprised of our exploits via email. This digital correspondence wouldn’t seem remarkable today—I guess email is even considered old-fashioned now—but back then it was cutting edge. I carried a laptop in my bicycle pannier; it was roughly the size and weight of a big-city phone book (if you even remember those). The power supply alone was several pounds. The modem, which was external and attached via a 9-pin RS232 serial connector, was the size of a pack of cards and connected at 2400 baud, which is roughly 1/42,000th of the speed of my current Internet connection. I couldn’t email very often because most of the time we were camping. Even when we splurged on a motel, many of those fleabag places didn’t even have phone lines. When we stayed with friends or family, I had to time my CompuServe session carefully, as it took our hosts’ phone offline.

Recently I came across some email chronicles that somehow didn’t make it into my bike tour memoirs. (The first of these was written twenty-eight years ago to the day.) I’ve cherry-picked some of the more interesting passages to give you a little travelogue. Enjoy please enjoy.

(The photo below was snapped by Erin’s great-aunt; she wrote on the back of the print, “7-5-94 Erin & Dana waiting at Coop to weigh bikes & gear before going to Iowa.”)

Kansas – June 30, 1994

I had a good birthday: we went to the Barbed Wire museum in La Crosse, Kansas, which I’d really been looking forward to. (I wrote my high school research paper on barbed wire, which turns out to be a fascinating topic.) But when we got there the sign said “Post Rock Museum,” so we were confused. Turns out there are three museums in a row there: the Post Rock one, then a Historical Society museum, and then the Barbed Wire museum. This little old lady in the Post Rock museum was incredibly knowledgeable. “I’ve been here longer than the museum!” she quipped: and it was true, she’d been in La Crosse all her life and had taught in a 1-room schoolhouse there.

She knew all about post rock, which is the limestone they dug up from quarries to use as fence posts. There was a whole piece of quarry resurrected inside the museum (which was an old house). You could see the layers of soil, then rock. The crew would dig down through the limestone, which would be fairly soft since it hadn’t been exposed to the air. They’d drill holes, then tap in these rods just until they were about to split the rock, then stop and put in another one.  Once a whole row of these pins was put in, they’d tap the end pins extra hard, and the whole rock would split along the pins. Then they’d haul up this whole piece of limestone, and within twelve hours it’d be hard as, well, rock.

Then we went to the Barbed Wire museum, which had gobs of fascinating displays, but a very poor so-called guide who watched TV the entire time. That was a disappointment. The Historical Society museum, though, was amazing. Stuff in there from the 1700’s, and another little old lady who knew everything. This museum was built in an old Union Pacific depot that had been moved from a little town called Timkin, named after a ball bearing magnate who owned the land on which the depot was built. The depot, too, goes by the name Timkin. This little old lady worked there back when it was a depot, and she pointed to a bench and said, “I’m gonna have them move that over by the door, which is where it belongs.” They had a whole collection of ancient typewriters, some so old (1726, I believe) that the shift key hadn’t been invented, so it had two entire sets of keys, one set for uppercase and the other for lowercase. This museum had dozens of photo albums from the 1800’s and thereabouts, and old books and diaries, and old dental equipment, and clothes, nothing in any particular order but all of it absolutely fascinating. We hung out there until 4:30 in the afternoon when it closed, then finally hit the road. It was 106 degrees out there, the sun blazing, and we stopped 25 miles into the ride for Dairy Queen: my birthday treat.

By 9:30 p.m., when it was just getting dark, we were 50 miles outside of La Crosse in a little town called Caskill or something: I can’t remember the name and I don’t feel like digging out the map. We found a cop and he gave us permission to camp in the city park. There, Erin set to work on my birthday dinner, but it was not to be. The little fuel line gasket in our camp stove had given out, so the stove was worthless. So we had cold chili and cold canned corn—but good! These little kids wandered up, and it seems in a small town like that kids are allowed, probably even encouraged, to talk to adults. So they chatted with us until about 11:00, at which point a few of the parents who had heard the legend of our bike tour came out and talked for another hour.

The policeman we’d gone to for permission to camp had been driving by every so often to make sure we were okay, and at about midnight he came by and we talked until like 1 a.m. He manages a Rug Doctor franchise by day, and is a part time policeman (two weekends a month) for $5/hour, mainly as a community service to his town. He bought a house in that town for—get this—$6,000. No, I didn’t slip a decimal point there. Heck, Erin and I could’ve bought a house there with cash, on the spot, and lived there the rest of our days, supporting ourselves on a minimum-wage job!

Now we’re in Topeka, staying with Erin’s Great-aunt J— and Great-uncle V—. They’re a 60-something couple, retired (she from the phone company, he from the police force), in a very nice house they designed themselves on a couple of acres. They’ve got a pond and pasture land, a brand-new John Deere tractor, and a horse, and chickens and pigeons and even several hundred pet catfish. Uncle V— walks out to his pond every evening with a giant pail of pellet-style fish food, and yells “Here, fishy-fishy-fishy-fishEEE!” while rapping the side of the pail. Even though the pond is easily 200 feet from his front door, you can see the ripples where the fish are approaching. He strolls down there, and the fish converge. When he feeds them, you can see them all plain as day, their huge (4”) mouths wide open as they thrash about. We were sitting out there one evening after feeding the fish, and V—’s son J— (a policeman himself) said, “Look, dad, a snapping turtle.” To my amazement, V— whipped out a small handgun and fired at it. “Missed him, Dad. Too high,” said J—. “Yup,” said V—. Erin protested, horrified, and V— explained that the turtles eat the fish.

Speaking of eating, they feed us gobs here. At every meal my gut ends up ready to bust open. If I stop short of being stuffed, V— seems to sense it and says, “Nope, you better finish it up. No sense feeding it to Harley” (i.e., Harley Davidson, their Rottweiler). We’ve had pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, handmade egg noodles with chicken, bacon and eggs, a picnic, all-you-can-eat-fried-chicken, biscuits-&-gravy, a patty-melt, and ham with scalloped potatoes. J—, Erin’s great-aunt, is so happy: “Just like having our son at home again!” I can’t believe how much they feed me. I eat until I’m sure they’ll be exchanging glances and shaking their heads, making comments about tapeworms, trying to figure out how to get rid of me—but no, they don’t seem to think there’s anything strange or wrong about me eating 10,000 calories at a sitting. Since we had a late dinner tonight (with about twenty relatives visiting, invited over in our honor), our hosts insisted we have a big afternoon snack—so we got onion rings and ice cream at Dairy Queen. And they are absolutely refusing to let us leave before the 4th of July. So we’re here, living high on the hog, until then. I’m loving it, needless to say. Thing is, I’m eating so much I just can’t seem to stay awake between meals. I walk around in a stupor, yawning, my body working overtime to convert all that food to fat. I’ll look like Big Boy by the time we leave.

Kansas itself is really nice. Rolling hills are the rule out here—don’t let anybody tell you it’s flat. (Sure, it might seem flat when you drive along, but with our loaded bikes we feel every little rise.) Although our hosts say everything’s brown and dead right now, it’s greener than Colorado or California ever get. And they’ve got lightning bugs here (fireflies, by another name) that are just amazing to watch. I can’t get over them. Everybody here thinks I’m crazy for thinking they’re anything special.

Cracked rim – July 19, 1994

We have arrived at [my stepfather’s brother’s] place in Northfield, Minnesota. Earlier this evening they fed us a very spartan dinner: this strange casserole made with brown rice and veggies, and just a smattering of cheese on top. It was almost non-caloric. I asked for seconds and our hostess seemed taken aback, like I was some absolute glutton or something. For dessert they served the tiniest, most stingy portion of ice cream I’ve ever seen. When I channeled Oliver Twist and asked for more, she frowned and said she’d already put it away. In desperation I offered to fetch it myself, at which point she relented, but she seemed really put out. I hate to be an ingrate, but man, what’s wrong with these people?

After dinner it was still light enough out for me to check over my bike and troubleshoot a braking problem. One of the most common questions we get from locals along our route is, “Have you had any major mechanical failures?” This is asked with the same sort of enthusiasm you see in bike race spectators who watch from the most dangerous corner, hoping to see a good crash. So far, we haven’t had an exciting tale to tell—we’re on only our second pair of tires, with zero mechanical problems—but that just changed. It turns out my rear rim is imploding. Like a star collapsing on itself, it is trying to achieve a smaller diameter. The rim has huge cracks along the surface that the brake pads contact, and the metal is beginning to overlap there. At any time it could crush flat like an aluminum can.

Thanks to the time zone difference, I was able to reach my former boss at the bike shop in Berkeley and order a new rim. He’s FedExing it, to arrive tomorrow morning. I ordered a model of rim identical to the old one so I can use my old spokes (i.e., tape the new rim to the old one, and swing the spokes & nipples over), to avoid the nightmare of trying to buy the right length spokes from an old geezer in a small town bike shop. I know full well it’s unwise to lace up a new rim on old spokes; last time I did that, the wheel came apart on a fast descent during the Berkeley Hills road race, and someone yelled out, “Get away from him, HE’S GOIN’ DOWN!” But I’m not of the racer or bicycle mechanic mentality anymore. I’m a tourist now—I really ought to be fixing this thing with duct tape. Then I’d have more stories to give people goose bumps with.

Solo Joe Nobody – July 22, 1994

While riding along near Mondovi, Wisconsin we met the most amazing guy. He calls himself Solo Joe Nobody and has written (and self-published) a book, which we bought. His bike is loaded up to 150 pounds, so he’s the closest person I’ve come across to my state of lunacy. (I weighed my bike at a grain/feed lot, on the accurate scales, and it was 180 pounds.)

But this guy is different: his bike is loaded up like a homeless person loads his shopping cart—stuff just tied on, willy-nilly. He’s even got a portable stereo dangling precariously from the handlebars. All his equipment looks at least twenty years old. Hard to tell what kind of bike he’s on—it’s covered with the stickers advertising the bike shops he’s stopped in at. He has them from all over the country. He rides along smoking a pipe; even has a little leather holster for it. He wears mirrored sunglasses … for reasons I shall get to in a minute.

Within a minute of talking to this guy, we knew he was not your typical bicycle tourist. He’s a Vietnam vet and suffers from brain damage. After three years in the Navy, including a combat tour in ‘Nam, but while still on active duty back in the U.S., he was in a heinous car accident—forced off the road by an oncoming car in the wrong lane, he went off an 80-foot cliff. I could see the scar in his throat from the resulting tracheotomy. He was in a coma for two months and in the hospital for another thirteen. Because he was on active duty when it happened, he receives disability money and can eke out a living. The sad part is that he really can’t do anything productive because his left arm—indeed, the entire left side of his body—shakes visibly, all the time. In addition, one leg is now shorter than the other, and together with badly disrupted balance (related to his brain damage), he can’t walk right. He looks like a drunk, which alarms a lot of people. In fact, he’s been picked up many times by cops thinking he’s drunk; when they look in his eyes, they fear worse: for his eyes, since the accident, don’t work right. They roam totally independently of one another, each pointing off in a skew direction. So the cops often think he’s on drugs. His solution for avoiding public scorn and whatnot is to wear mirrored sunglasses, and not walk anywhere. Everywhere he goes is by bicycle. How he balances with all that load, given his balance problems, is beyond me, but he insists it’s easy.

Another strange idiosyncrasy of this fellow is that he swears like a sailor all the time. He apologized profusely, saying he couldn’t help it, “it’s left over from the Navy.” I wonder if it’s from the brain damage; remember Phineas Gage, that 1850s railroad worker who was tamping down explosives with a 4-foot long iron tamping rod, and the explosives exploded (as explosives tend to do), launching the rod through his head, and though he survived he began cussing all the time? Maybe when Solo Joe Nobody says he can’t help cussing, he literally can’t. (This is all my own speculation; I’m only 130 pages into his autobiography.) Anyhow, for whatever reason, he throws more profanities into his speech than anybody I have ever encountered, but is the nicest, most easygoing guy you could imagine. For somebody with his disabilities, or even for somebody bicycling into a headwind for thousands of miles (as he was doing, coming from east to west), we found him an amazingly upbeat and cheerful person. We spent an hour chatting with him.

He tours about half the year, every year, all over the country. He prefers the interstate highways, because they’re the flattest and most direct routes (never mind that he’s not trying to get anywhere in particular). He tours, amazingly enough, with only one chainring on his bike: the big one. I can’t imagine how he gets over the hills, nor why he would want to tour without low gearing. We asked him why he doesn’t prefer scenic routes like we do, and he said, “Aw, fuck, you can see all that shit in a library!” He uses a German-made Ciclomaster bike computer, because its display has enough decimal places to record tens of thousands of miles. Imagine breaking 10K on a single bike computer battery!

At the end of our conversation, Solo Joe said to me, “You know Dana, you and I have something in common. We both love your wife!” That was a good cue for Erin and me to wrap things up, shake Joe’s hand and bid him adieu, and get back out on the road.

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From the Archives - Bike Tour Journal

Introduction

The recent train trip I took with my family couldn’t help but remind me of another grand tour of the U.S., which was a cross-country bicycle tour that my wife Erin and I did in 1994 (getting married in Boulder, Colorado along the way). I carried a laptop computer along with me and, using command-line terminal emulation software, a 2400-baud modem, and CompuServe, e-mailed reports to family and friends as we went. These dispatches were somewhat infrequent because we were camping and had very little access to electricity, much less a phone line. Still, I managed about 38,000 words and have in my archives an account of the trip that is a lot better than nothing.

We didn’t pack light. We figured we’d be out long enough not to want to do without various comforts. Plus, since Erin hadn’t been a bike racer, I needed a certain amount of ballast to make my energy expenditure roughly equal to Erin’s. Here’s a list of what I had on my bike:

Below is my final dispatch from the road. I’ve edited it a bit for length (having become, believe it or not, slightly less verbose in the sixteen years since I wrote this). I’ve sprinkled in a few photos as well.

Bike Tour Final Dispatch - November 11, 1994

Now we’re in CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. Our bike tour is over! From here, we fly back to San Francisco, find a place to live, and get jobs. Our final tour statistics:

· 7,450 miles

· 24 states covered and one Canadian province

· 203,660 feet of climbing

· 8 months on the road

· $5‑6,000 apiece in expenses

· 3 cracked rims

· 2½ pairs of tires each (the last pair, 2-inch-wide Continentals, lasted 6 months!)

· 1 broken rack (in two places—It broke for the last time on the very last day!)

· 5 chains

· 1 chainring (though both drivetrains are wasted now, along with both our headsets)

· 1 exploded bottom bracket

· 2 crashes (both Erin, and both minor)

· 1 broken bike frame

Having completed a journey of such length, of course, I feel I should offer more details, more thematic commentary: something, perhaps, that might synthesize the details into something of meaning, a lesson somewhere. Throughout out tour, I’ve simply taken mental note of a million things I’ve seen, with no effort to organize them. However, an odd thing happened as we travelled through Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: certain truths about travelling in North America assembled themselves more convincingly than they had before.

We hadn’t actually intended to visit Myrtle Beach at all, having heard it was congested and touristy. We considered a roundabout route to Charleston, but decided to take the direct route—U.S. 17—in the interests of having plenty of cushion before our non‑refundable flight, and to arrive here when our friend expected us to. Well, U.S. 17 was a nightmare around North Myrtle Beach, a giant 6‑lane highway with hundreds of buffet restaurants and tourist schlock stores on either side. One had a sign out front that said, “Ray Bans $14” and “Super Clearance Sale” and such things; my Ray Bans broke recently and Erin needs a new bathing suit, and we both needed a break from the hellish traffic, so we stopped in. For sale were 25‑cent sunglasses, beach towels, salt water taffy (never did try this), and just gobs of other stuff, like $2 Myrtle Beach t‑shirts, which say “MB” on them, like the place has become its own brand.

I looked at some Ray Ban Wayfarers like my old ones—marked down 50%, from $104 to $52. Of course, actual suggested retail is only $50, and any army surplus store sells them for $35. I asked about the $14 Ray Bans advertised, and the clerk brought out a different pair. Totally fake. They said Ray Ban on them, but were obviously cheap junk made in China. I told the clerk, “These are fake.” He looked at me as if surprised; then, he looked down at the glasses for a few seconds, looked back up at me with a visage of profound disappointment, and—as if he’d just learned a painful lesson—he said sadly, “Yes. They are.” We left without buying anything.

The Myrtle Beach strip runs for 15‑20 miles, and is comprised of three highways: State 49, which isn’t bad and is the closest to the water; Business 17, which is a hellish phantasmagoria of tourist shops, restaurants, hotels, and motels; and, regular U.S. 17, which is only slightly less built‑up than the Business Loop. Because this is the off‑season, the motels were actually really cheap—$23, a sign advertised. Since the KOA Kampground was $21, and we were stressed out from all the traffic, we decided to see about the motel. Erin talked the proprietor into not charging us extra for a second person. The room was fairly seedy; all the lights were broken except one lamp. The beds were lasagnes of mattress: a broken‑down box spring; a smashed, fruit‑leather middle mattress; a slightly newer but also hammered top mattress. My feet hung over the end, causing the foot of the bed to slope drastically towards the floor, almost like a reverse hammock. Dozens of cockroaches were visible to the trained eye.

Our room had a kitchen, though, which was nice. We had no towels and no toilet paper so Erin went back to the office. When twenty minutes passed and she still hadn’t returned, I knew the newspaper reporter in her had come out. She came back with some amazing facts about Myrtle Beach, which I want to share with you. These are from memory, but I think they’re mostly accurate….

Back in the ‘30s or so, the beach was accessible only by ferry. Then, a railroad bridge was built, and eventually a road. Back then it was nothing, just a small beach that farmers went to occasionally. Then, it became the yearly vacation spot for plantation laborers. These poor souls worked 364 days a year, and as their reward they were taken to the beach once a year. Then, South Carolina decided it wanted to have a public beach, since North Carolina and Florida had beaches, so it was made a public beach. A motel was built. From there, it just somehow became a popular vacation spot, despite having no particularly distinctive merits. Motel after motel went up, and people thronged to the area. It became known as a cheap place for middle class people to vacation, and its reputation somehow spread. (Today, it is still known as a cheap vacation spot; its year‑round residents rank 37th in average income for resort residents.) Enough motels and restaurants had been built by the ‘50s that Myrtle Beach was incorporated as a city. Most of the motels look, judging by their architecture, to have been built in the ‘50s.

Today [i.e., in 1994], Myrtle Beach is the 3rd most popular tourist trap in the nation, with only Disneyland (#1) and Disney World (#2) ranking higher. There are between 15 and 20 miles of motels and hotels, totaling more than 24,000 rooms. During the summer, every single motel is at 100% occupancy, all the time. Our little room goes for $65 during the summer; Erin asked if that was why he could “give it away” during the off season. “Give it away!?” cried the owner. “Hell no, I’m not giving it away—I’m still making money! You know how much I pay for that room? $4.50 a day, including the mortgage, electricity, everything. The maid is another $5 or so. At $20 a room I’m still making good money. At $65 a room I’m making a killing.” Now, he says, Myrtle Beach is supposed to be getting its own major airport, because people travel there from all over the world. This past summer, he said, it was thronged with Germans, because they get a favorable cash exchange rate. Last year, he said, it was full of Japanese because of the strong yen.

We were surprised to see that there were still a fair number of tourists there, even in November. And yet, the beach itself was deserted. The strangest thing about Myrtle Beach is that the beach itself is not all that big. It runs along the ocean for miles and miles, but so do the motels and skyscrapers—and the beach is very shallow, a thin strip of sand compared to the densely packed motels that run row after row inland. From an airplane, Myrtle Beach would look like a giant urban complex, gilded scantily at once edge by a thin fringe of beach. It’s amazing.

This isn’t the first time I’ve marveled at the proportions of natural beauty to garish commercialism. Niagara Falls was 5% breathtaking geographical phenomenon, 95% wax museum, restaurant, souvenir shop, motel, Ripley’s Believe‑It‑or‑Not Museum, etc. But Myrtle Beach isn’t even a one‑of‑a‑kind place—the motel owner assured us it isn’t unique in any way. I myself have seen many beaches, both in California and along the Outer Banks of North Carolina, that are just as pretty. Its popularity is the result of some queer kind of social inertia—it developed a critical mass of tourist traffic that afforded more and more motels, restaurants, and souvenir stores, and people come simply because it’s there, because it has buffets, because it has a Ripley’s Believe‑It‑or‑Not, because it has miniature golf, because it caters to tourists.

Perhaps the success of fried foods, cookie-cutter gifts shops, and tourist-targeted paraphernalia is why so many touristy places we’ve been to have seemed alarmingly similar. Why should I get continual déjà‑vu’s of Estes Park when I’m at Niagara Falls? Why should I be reminded of Niagara Falls when I visit that Amish settlement in PA? Why does Gettysburg, one of the oldest cities in the east, remind me of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco? It’s as though all these places were designed and built by the same developers, the same commercial geniuses, all selling souvenirs built in the same factory.

Not that there aren’t all kinds of great places to visit that aren’t tourist meccas. The Au Sable Chasm in New York, which (like Niagara Falls) claims to be the first tourist attraction in the U.S., is likely nothing you’ve even heard of. It was a peaceful bike ride getting there—none of the gridlock we encountered in Maine or Niagara Falls. It has enough beauty to be a destination for all kinds of folks, but it’s not heavily promoted. To somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit, it might be thought of as mismanaged—an opportunity that slipped through the cracks.

We’ve seen and appreciated some really fine things on our tour without being saturated in the trappings of the tourism industry. The White Sands National Monument was breathtaking, and is the only place in the world with giant gypsum dunes. We enjoyed, as I have in the past, the odd lunar‑looking landscape and vast panorama of Mount Evans, the highest road in North America. We saw the roots of giant trees hanging above us, suspended in mid‑air: the Loess hills, a strange collection of highly erodible hills that exist only in southern Iowa and China. We can proudly say we’ve walked along the widest main street in America. And we’ve enjoyed the most absolutely breathtaking mountain landscapes we’ve ever seen, in Mora County, New Mexico. Why haven’t these places been exploited?

Well, White Sands is in a missile testing area—development there is impossible. And nobody wants to camp in an undeveloped area like that with no running water or indoor toilets. Mount Evans doesn’t have enough oxygen for comfort, even if you drive up in a car. And, unless you stop to talk to a trucker or farmer you won’t ever learn about the Loess Hills; they’re more of an oddity than anything striking enough to make into a wax statue or souvenir. Our tour was fun because we went to out-of-the-way places and had non-dazzling but pleasant interactions we had with locals all along the route. We’d roll into a place like Waltham, Minnesota, or LaCrosse, Kansas, and the locals would say, “You came all the way across country to come here!?” They were flattered, and thus friendly.

Tourist traps defy casual conversations with locals, because to make money requires a high ratio of tourists to locals. Moreover, places like Mora County are resistant to tourism because it threatens the character of the place. Locals will talk to bike tourists because we aren’t threatening; we’re not going to fill their town with tour buses and parking lots.

Travel—especially of the backpacking and bike touring variety—can be exciting, but the flip side of excitement is unpredictability and discomfort. We are aware of travelers who don’t want any surprises. For example, we camped at a KOA in Virginia (having no other options) and to our surprise and delight, it had trees, which most KOAs we encountered did not. Leaves fell on our table, offering us instances of natural randomness in an otherwise perfectly manicured camping environment. Erin mentioned to the cashier how much we liked the trees. The cashier responded, “I had a guy in here the other night who registered, went out to his site, and came back complaining about the trees. He said they weren’t supposed to be there. He said he’d been camping at KOAs across the country and had never seen one with trees. He was really mad, and in fact he left!”

Bike touring isn’t for everyone. Erin and I fought a fair bit during this trip. During a freak spring snow, we suffered freezing cold feet, and had to jump up and down in the road to beat blood back into them. We were feasted on by insects throughout the Midwest. We ate cold meals on a number of occasions when I couldn’t get the camp stove to work. We had our bags burgled several times by raccoons or squirrels. We spent hours each day packing and unpacking our bikes. But every day was an adventure. We don’t have a lot of souvenirs from our trip, but then, how often is a tourist spot an adventure?

dana albert blog

dana albert bike tour blog

Teens Gone Wild

Introduction

As I’ve mentioned before, “Outside” magazine shows up in my mail unbidden. I’m not a big fan of it, but the April issue had an article I found interesting about a thirteen-year-old named Jordan Romero who hopes to be the youngest person ever to climb Mount Everest. (Jordan flew to Nepal yesterday and will attempt the climb within the next two months.)

I have all kinds of reasons to think this is a completely dumb idea. First of course is the prospect of a kid needlessly dying in the wilderness. As a parent, I’m irked by the irresponsibility of the kid’s dad, who will lead the effort (instead of a professional guide); the difference between glory and tragedy is largely up to nature, and luck. And as a person who was a teenage boy once, I fear for the kid’s ego; if he succeeds, and gets an SUV named after him, his own line of clothing, and endless adoration, he’ll probably become the most insufferably egotistical teenager on the planet. I mean, who wouldn’t? Meanwhile, having this distinction would beg the question, “Now what?” What does he follow this up with—being the youngest teen ever to climb Everest without a chaperone? Without supplemental oxygen? Without a shirt?

The writer of the “Outside” article does a good job of not weighing in too heavily on whether or not this is a good idea (he can’t afford to burn bridges, after all, if he wants to write the follow-up story). He does cite the perspectives of various climbers, guides, a medical researcher, and a climbing historian, all of whom think this is a bad plan. I know nothing about mountain climbing, but I believe I have another useful perspective to add here: as an irresponsible teenager I undertook a vision quest of my own, a 130-mile bike ride featuring Trail Ridge Road, a mountain pass in Colorado which—peaking at over 12,000 feet—is the highest continuous highway in the U.S. Now, I’m not trying to compare my feat to this kid’s goal; obviously climbing Everest is a much huger deal. But I got in enough trouble on Trail Ridge to shed some valuable perspective on the problem of teenagers with mountainous ambitions. In this post I will tell my tale, comparing it to Jordan Romero’s aspiration as I deem appropriate.

How it started

The idea of riding up Trail Ridge was born in the summer of 1983 when my mom drove my brother Max, my friend Aaron Pickett-Heaps, and me up it and down the other side on the way to Steamboat Springs for a bike race. It was cold, foggy, and raining on the pass, and as we rode along in the car Max and Aaron were arguing about whether Max’s professed bike handling skill meant he didn’t need a helmet. They abruptly stopped talking when we saw a lone cyclist making his miserable way up the mountain. We took in the guy’s suffering for a good while, and then Aaron said, “I want to do that.”

It seemed like an abominable idea to me, but also intriguing. That was the summer I turned fourteen, and I was doing a lot of cycling. A favorite ride was up to Estes Park, an eighty mile round-trip from our hometown of Boulder, with a couple thousand feet of elevation gain. That ride had almost come to seem routine, and having done a number of centuries (organized, supported rides of at least 100 miles), I was ready for a bigger challenge. Some weeks later, Aaron announced to our bike club, during the Saturday ride, that the next week we’d tackle Trail Ridge.

Here’s what I looked like back then. It was my third year of racing. My helmet was as hot and heavy as it looks. I was years away from needing to shave my legs, much less my face.

The route would take us from Boulder, via Highway 36, through Lyons to Estes Park, where we’d enter Rocky Mountain National Park, take the Park Entrance Road to Highway 34 (Trail Ridge Road), and climb some twenty more miles to the summit. Then we’d come right back to Boulder via the same route. For a map of our route, click here.

Purity of motive

I want to emphasize that our motive with this ride was simply to have an adventure. We couldn’t do this for bragging rights, because nobody we knew had even heard of Trail Ridge Road. Besides, we had no idea what the elevation was, and that it was the highest pass in the country; we just knew it looked like a really hard ride. Moreover, in 1983—even in Boulder—cycling was not a sport you talked about to other teenagers. Being a cyclist was almost a stigma.

We also didn’t have any pressure from our parents; at least, I didn’t. Quite the contrary, in fact: I made sure not to mention the idea to them. Why? Well, on the morning of one of my Estes Park rides, I was heading out Highway 36 towards Lyons with my friend Nico, and suddenly my dad showed up in his car and stopped just ahead of us on the shoulder. He’d been oblivious when I’d done this ride before, but somehow on this day had caught wind of it, and now gave me a stern lecture about the frequency of thunderstorms at higher elevations. He handed me a backpack with a space blanket in it and ordered me to take it with me. I was embarrassed, of course, and then I had to schlep that backpack for the next seventy miles. I learned my lesson and thereafter kept my plans to myself. No way was I going to carry a backpack all the way up Trail Ridge.

Contrast this to Jordan Romero’s case. His dad has set up a fund-raising engine to raise the $150,000 it will cost to make the Everest journey; is coaching his son through the preparation; has borrowed hypoxic tents to simulate the high altitude; and is home-schooling Jordan so he’ll have more time to train during the day. That puts a lot of external pressure on the kid, of course. His dad unconvincingly claims otherwise, saying, “If Jordan comes home tomorrow and says he’s done with mountain climbing and he wants to play basketball, we’ll shut this whole thing down.” Yeah, right. There’s also the matter of the article in “Outside” and all the other publicity the kid has already gotten. You don’t just walk away from that without feeling some disgrace.

So why does the motive matter? Well, the way I figure it, nobody can tell how that thirteen-year-old is really holding up on Everest except for the thirteen-year-old himself. So when his dad says, “Can you keep going?” that kid will need all the judgment, maturity, and humility in the world to admit it if he’s had enough and needs to turn back. External pressure will interfere with all of these traits, which in my experience teenagers don’t have a lot of to begin with.

Our ride

On the appointed day, Aaron and I met up at the bike shop (the High Wheeler, or Thigh Feeler as we called it), and to our great surprise not a single other rider showed up. There were normally at least a dozen guys on the 9:30 ride; looking back, I’m guessing that—being adults—they didn’t want to admit that the ambitions of a couple of kids were too much for them. In other words, they chickened out. I was frankly relieved; I figured Aaron and I wouldn’t attempt the ride without a couple of adults along. But Aaron was undeterred, and being a natural-born follower I went right along with him.

According to tradition, we stopped for provisions in Lyons, about twenty miles into the ride. I cannot remember what I bought, but it can’t have been much because I remember really envying Aaron, who had enough cash for a large bar of Tangy Taffy. I was saving my last few bucks for the entrance fee into Rocky Mountain National Park. We made our way up the gradual twenty-mile climb up to Estes Park, entered the Park, and then the real climbing began.

As long ago as this was, I well remember well some steep sections and sharp switchbacks at the beginning of the climb. Right away, Aaron dropped me. Why? Because he could. Because thirteen-year-olds don’t differentiate between the hardest physical endeavor of their lives and a run-of-the-mill opportunity to show up another guy. I don’t fault Aaron whatsoever for leaving me behind; if I’d been stronger, I’d surely have dropped him instead. That “never leave a man behind” ethos just doesn’t occur to a teenager. You don’t believe me? Go ask one.

Soon after that, that the sun went away and the afternoon got kind of dark. As I climbed, it started to get cold. Then wet. As of around 9,000 feet in elevation, I was inside a cloud. I’d never been in a cloud before. White and puffy it was not. Despite my exertion I was getting cold and damp. I didn’t have a jacket, or arm warmers, or leg warmers; in those days I owned exactly one jersey (purple, wool) and one pair of shorts (Shaversport, Lycra, which was a pretty new thing at the time). I washed this outfit about once a week. I don’t even think I had socks, or gloves.

Out of gas

I ate through my food—all I remember was a little bag of gorp I’d brought from home. At some point I bonked, but didn’t realize it at the time. I tended to bonk a lot in those days, but I didn’t know the term bonk and didn’t really grasp that a sudden loss of energy could be food-related. My bike had just one water bottle cage, and I never had energy drink. There was nothing methodical about my preparation for a long ride; I simply brought whatever food I could scrounge up. So whenever I bonked, it just seemed like a spontaneous failure of my musculature. My body was to me utterly unpredictable, even unreliable; I envied the older teenagers and the adults who could go hard for a long time without spontaneously blowing up.

The immaturity of my body in those days made me think of a chicken wing I’d had once at Red Barn. The bone was a reddish-pink color and oddly rubbery. My dad explained that the chicken it had come from was so young it hadn’t even fully developed. That was how I thought of myself. It seemed a shame to have to wait for several years until I would magically grow up and be robust and resilient. Until then I just did my best.

At perhaps around 10,000 feet I came upon an elderly couple whose  car—a big old American station wagon—had overheated. They were making the most of it, having a picnic on the tailgate. They asked if I’d like something to eat, and I spent the next ten minutes stuffing my face on everything they had, washing it down with Coke. At the time I didn’t fully appreciate how that had saved me. It was just free food from nice folks.

This isn’t to say I felt good after the picnic. I was still completely blown, and just churned away in my lowest gear, endlessly. Incidentally, my Campy-equipped Pro-Miyata had a 42-tooth inner chainring, and the Suntour New Winner freewheel had a 22-tooth large cog. This wasn’t a particularly steep grade, but that’s not very low gearing by any measure, and it dictated my pace as much as anything. At least as long as I kept pedaling I wouldn’t get too cold.

Higher

Two hours into the climb I had become a total zombie, , my body locked in position as if from rigor mortis. Perhaps I figured I’d be warmer if I didn’t move, like a fragile film of warmth might build up if I didn’t tremble and knock it off. Still, I managed to notice that the terrain started to get really weird. The tree line here was at about 11,000 feet; beyond this point, conditions were too harsh for most vegetation to thrive. I knew none of this at the time, of course; I merely wondered at the sudden lack of trees.

In fact, it was tundra. There was a thin, scabby layer of vegetation over everything, like varicolored Astroturf, with pale rocks poking out there and there. Though it was still only afternoon, it was pretty dark, so the effect was like being on the moon or something. There must have been stunning vistas, but I don’t remember seeing any. Probably my neck wouldn’t turn far enough.

For some reason, cars started backing up all along the road. Something must have blocked the way far up ahead; I never found out what. All I knew is it was stop-and-go for the cars. I compared notes with Aaron recently, and he remembers seeing the same cars and passengers over and over again—they’d pass by and wave, and then he’d come rolling by again and, their windows being down, he’d hear them say, “Here he comes again!” A few people cheered me on, but mostly the line of cars was just another obstruction to my progress.

Suddenly I saw Aaron coming back down the hill; he’d reached the summit. I don’t think I even waved to him; I was in a daze and my attention was completely absorbed by one thing: he had a jacket. My entire response to seeing him was to think, “Luck-y!” I didn’t ponder the foolishness of not bringing a jacket (I didn’t own one); I didn’t consider cutting my ride short and joining him; I didn’t wonder how far I might be from the top, knowing he’d been there already; I just thought about how nice it would be to have a jacket. I don’t believe Aaron waved at me, either—probably too busy working the brakes in the wet conditions.

At no point did I consider turning around. This wasn’t an internal battle between my will and my desire to be off the mountain; I was just mindlessly resigned to continuing my struggle until it was over. You could say I was tenacious, but I think it’s more correct to say I have a talent for resignation. The loss of face I’d suffer by quitting never entered the equation, because I was simply climbing the mountain as if I had no choice.

This isn’t to say Jordan Romero might find himself similarly resolved in his effort. I have to hope he’s acutely aware between an endeavor that’s unpleasant and one that could be fatal or at least life-altering. (The current record-holder for the youngest to climb Everest, a sixteen-year-old, lost five fingers in the process. I wonder if he feels it was worth it—he must really miss those fingers, every day of his life.) The other big difference with a Trail Ridge attempt is that giving up is a simple process: you can just turn around, whenever you want, and literally coast all the way back to Estes Park. If the weather turns on Everest, giving up doesn’t necessarily buy you anything—you still have to fight to survive.

Summit

I reached the summit without realizing it. There was no celebration, no glory, and no sense of relief, because I was so disoriented I didn’t even notice the climb had ended. By this point, there was no vegetation of any kind—just heaps and heaps of broken-up stone, like the whole place had been bombed. It is no exaggeration to say I was in a trance, just turning the pedals like an automaton. I had descended for quite a ways before I realized, wait—something has changed! I’m not climbing anymore! (It is a pity I didn’t realize this a minute or two later, actually; I’d have reached the visitor’s station at Fall River Pass, and could have warmed up.)

I turned around and started pedaling up the backside of the pass, and this time I was paying more attention when I reached the summit at 12,183 feet. I didn’t have a camera, though I’m not sure I’d have bothered to take any photos. Here are some I took six years later when I repeated the ride with my brothers Geoff and Bryan and our friend Bill. Needless to say we had much better weather that day. (I also had much longer hair.)

I still wasn’t celebrating, though: I was dreading the descent. If I wasn’t drenched yet, I would be soon, as I heard thunder and presently it started to hammer down rain. Within minutes I was caught in a major thunderstorm and was completely drenched.

Even at fourteen, I was very competent at descending. Flagstaff Road in Boulder had been washed out and thus closed to cars the year before, and my friends and I practiced until we could carve through the curves perfectly, taking the optimal lines. So now, to get my suffering over with as soon as possible, I absolutely bombed the descent. I was running the Modolo Professional brakes, which had pretty good pads for riding in rain. The black rubber dissolved against the rim, causing my wheels to fling black water all over me, but I did have pretty good braking control. Perhaps halfway down the mountain I passed Aaron. He had those Suntour Superbe Pro brakes, with these shellacky orange-ish pads that really suck in the rain. He was having to ride the brakes the whole time to keep his speed down, so there was no way he was staying with me. I don’t think we said anything to each other as I passed.

I was so cold I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering, and my body from shaking. I had absolutely no sensation in my hands or feet. I couldn’t even feel the brake levers against my fingers; the only way I know I was gripping them at all is that I could feel the bike slowing down. The rain just wouldn’t let up. As fast as I was going, the descent nonetheless seemed to last forever. I carried on in quiet desperation. I made up my mind I would head into the first building I could find to try to warm up, and hoped they wouldn’t throw me out for not buying anything; I had no money left.

Frozen

Finally I made it to the bottom. As it turned out, the first building I encountered was the visitor’s center at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. I left my bike outside and went into the lobby. I collapsed on a bench and tried to stop shaking. I closed my eyes. I just couldn’t get warm. I was a skinny teenager, even skinnier than I am now; I imagine I looked a bit like this photo, only even paler and of course twenty years younger (this is from the end of La Marmotte in 2003):

After some time—five minutes? ten? twenty?—I was too messed up to tell—I heard some women talking in concerned, maternal tones, and it dawned on my they were talking about me. They summoned a park employee, who brought me back to a little office and wrapped me in a shiny silver space blanket. She disappeared and I sat dazed for a spell before she returned with a giant thermos of hot cocoa. This she administered to me over the next half hour or so. I must have drunk a gallon of it, and felt my body gradually returning to service, like a flattened inner tube being slowly reinflated.

I became increasingly aware of my surroundings and started to appreciate the care I was getting. Eventually I could actually fathom the thought of getting back on my bike. “How are you feeling?” asked the park employee. I said I felt much better. “Great!” she said. “Now, when you get home today, be sure to tell your parents you were treated for hypothermia at the visitor’s center at Rocky Mountain National Park!” I promised to relay the message, thanked her again for the space blanket and cocoa, and left. The rain had stopped, and other than my squishy, soaked saddle, being back on the bike wasn’t so bad.

On home

As I dropped down from Estes Park to Lyons, the sun came back out and it got nice and warm again. (I miss that about Colorado.) The ride from Lyons back to Boulder on Highway 36 is kind of infamous based on how many guys have suffered inordinately on it. It’s not such a bad stretch other than some rolling hills, but it’s often the last bit you have to contend with after an epic mountain ride, and really dreaded it. But oddly, I didn’t feel so bad (probably because of all the cocoa) and even got into a rotating paceline with a couple of grown-ups and made pretty good time. I got home just before dinner. I’d covered more than 130 miles, and more than half of them solo.

I wasn’t sure whether to mention my exploit during dinner. On the one hand, it was a pretty cool way to have spent the day. On the other hand, I remember the lecture from my dad about thunderstorms at higher elevations, and that was on the occasion of a mere Estes Park ride. Moreover, our dinner table discussions, though lively, didn’t generally center on the doings of us kids; the general format was for the oldest boys, Geoff and Bryan, to ask some really good question about science so our dad could give us a fascinating lecture. It wasn’t easy to hold the floor.

Ultimately I decided to mention my ride, because of the promise I’d made to the woman at the visitor’s center. At a lull in the conversation I said, rather casually, “I rode up Trail Ridge Road today and got caught in a thunderstorm. I was treated for hypothermia at the Rocky Mountain National Park visitor’s center.” What happened next I cannot recall, other than to assert with confidence that it was no outpouring of praise or astonishment. My best guess is that my dad gave a short response, something like “Good” or “Good show.” (This would have been consistent with my dad’s background as a naval officer; I’m told that onboard ship, such brief responses are typical of those given by a senior to the report of a junior.) My brother Max, when I asked him recently, said it was more likely that our dad said something dismissive or even hostile, such as “You’re not very bright, are you?” I really doubt he said that. The brevity of his response, whatever it was, may have been the result of his being conflicted about how to respond. On the one hand, I'd achieved something pretty cool; on the other, I'd ignored his warning about thunderstorms at higher elevations, with exactly the consequences he'd feared. I think I came away simply relieved that I didn’t get in trouble.

What does it mean?

What is the point of such a journey? Certainly I had a memorable adventure, and I don’t doubt it was character-building, but the better answer is that it doesn’t need to have a point. After all, what had the venture cost me? Less than five dollars and a day of my summer. It was simply a grand day out—certainly not in the context of Everest, of course, but scaled to the proper ambitions of a fourteen-year-old.

Contrast this to Jordan Romero’s enterprise. “I just focus on the goal I set when I was nine,” he tells the “Outside” writer, “which is to climb the Seven Summits.” I see a bit of a disconnect here. Climbing the seven summits, especially (perhaps) Everest, is largely a matter of serious logistics—planning, research, preparation, a lot of checklist-type stuff. Is this the stuff nine-year-olds’ dreams are really made of? I have an eight-year-old and I’m trying to picture her saying, “You know what would be really cool? Borrowing a couple of hypoxic tents to simulate oxygen deprivation.” Uh-huh.

My dad clearly wasn’t a champion of my athletic exploits, but at least I never had to worry about the point where his ambitions ended and mine began. Aaron and my Trail Ridge experience wasn’t the stuff of legend, but it was our experience—nobody else’s. One thing that struck me about the “Outside” article was how lopsided it was: I got a very clear impression of Jordan’s father, his ideas, and his ethos, but Jordan himself was barely quoted. The father describes the Everest team of himself, his son, and his partner as “Team Romero.” Why not “Team Jordan”? I couldn’t help but wonder if Jordan was just part of the human payload being dragged along on his father’s ego trip.

Of course, a kid climbing Everest isn’t just an adventure, it’s a symbol—and Jordan says he wants to use this effort to inspire American kids to put away their video games and go outside. But I don’t really buy this. A journey that costs $150,000 and requires you to be home-schooled and have a professional adventure racer and life-flight medic for a father isn’t really within the reach of most kids’ dreams. It’s kind of like a supermodel saying her career goal is to inspire young women to have more beautiful skin and better chins. Frankly, I can think of a lot of ways that $150,000 could do more good than shaving three years off the Everest age record.

Epilogue

As you’ve gathered from the photos, that wasn’t the last time I rode up Trail Ridge Road. When I rode it with Geoff, Bryan, and Bill in 1989, it was part of a larger ride that totaled 200 miles. In 2001 my friend Peter and I rode it again, and instead of turning around at the top we descended through Grand Lake and came back over the divide via Berthoud Pass, making for an even harder 200-miler. I was much better prepared for these later ventures, and of course bigger and stronger, but this was a mixed blessing in that it made the effort a bit less epic. That original journey, precisely because it lacked that space-blanket sensibility, was much truer to the spirit of being a carefree teenager than the later trips. Trail Ridge Road in 1983 was the perfect adventure for a youth who, though a bit reckless, was intent on getting home alive, with all his fingers and toes intact, and without anyone knowing where he’s been. dana albert blog