Biking Across America (14 page)

This was the America I was hoping to discover—families having fun, laughing and talking to each other. I was reminded of my walk down the streets of Dalton, Massachusetts, on the Fourth of July during my hike. That day I had decided to ride across America in search of the soul of our country. Here it was in Van Buren, Missouri.

What holds this community together is what holds any home, church, or community together—love and acceptance. The only true source of love comes from God. When we honor God, we will also honor our families and communities. Any nation that rejects God will fall into disarray.

I needed one more thing to complete my day. At a small grocery store, I purchased a Coke and my day ended as well as a day can—with chocolate and Coca Cola.

August 28, my fiftieth day on the road and my last full day in Missouri, would be a ninety-eight-mile ride. The temperatures approached the mid-nineties, but the wind had died down and the miles passed by quickly. I pedaled through the towns of Poplar Bluff and Dixon on my way to Sikeston.

I was confused about just where in Sikeston my route would lead. My map showed Route 60 ending at the intersection of two other interstates. I-55 headed north toward St. Louis, while I-57 headed east and then north. Eighteen miles east of Sikeston on I-57 was the town of Charleston, Missouri, where I wanted to pick up Route 60 again to cross the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers into Kentucky.

Coming toward me, on my side of the road, were two old relics. An old man wobbled toward me on an old bicycle. I hollered a
greeting. It also served as a warning, since he was on my shoulder and coming straight at me. He was obviously startled.

“Who's there?” he said, and we both stopped.

“I can't see well, and I don't hear so well,” he told me. That explained why he apparently had not seen me coming. “I've been ill for some time, and this is my first bike ride in quite a while. What time is it? I lost my glasses and my watch back on the highway somewhere.”

Seeing and hearing are two essentials for safe bike riding!
I thought.

“Do you need help?” I asked. He seemed confused, and I feared for his safety.

“No, I live just a few miles down the road. I've lived in this area all my life and I'm quite capable of finding my way home. Where are you headed, young feller?”

“I'm heading for Key West, Florida, but I'll be in Sikeston tonight.” I mentioned that I was planning to eat at a restaurant called Lambert's. “I believe this road I'm on will take me right past it,” I said confidently.

“It won't,” he said emphatically. I insisted that it would. “Young man, I've lived here over eighty years and I knew the people that built that restaurant. I was here when it was just a small café. I know exactly where it is. You go fifteen more miles, and at the intersection of 60 and 61, you turn left onto 61. Take that to Malone Street and hang a right and that will take you to the restaurant.”

He could barely see or hear, he had somehow lost his glasses and watch, and he was on the wrong side of the road. Should I follow his directions? He might have sensed my hesitation.

“Have you ever heard of the magazine
Ford Times
?” he asked. I knew it well. When I was a boy, my father used to bring home that magazine from the feed mill. The periodical was published by the Ford Motor Company and sent to owners of Ford trucks. “Back
in the early '60s, there was an article about Sikeston in that magazine,” the old man went on. “It was a story about an intersection in Sikeston where three consecutively numbered highways intersect. Routes 60, 61, and 62 all meet at one intersection.”

This convinced me the old man did indeed know Sikeston. I thanked the old-timer for the information; as we parted company, he called out, “Look for my watch, would you, young feller? Keep it, if you find it.”

Just as the old man had said, after about fifteen miles Route 61 appeared, and a left and then a right did indeed take me past Lambert's Café to a motel where I booked a room for the night.

A short stroll back up the street took me to Lambert's, the home of “Throwed Rolls.” Servers walk through the restaurant with freshly baked rolls. The cry goes out, “Hot rolls!” If you want a roll, just raise your hand and a roll will come flying in your direction. The roll tossers are deadly accurate. All evening, dinner rolls were called up yonder and flew about me. Other servers walked around carrying pots of potatoes and other vegetables, offering samples to anyone not full of rolls.

I was one full and contented biker when I walked back to my room that Saturday evening. I was looking forward to the morning. Even though I'd only been in Sunday church services one time on this trip, Sundays were still special days out here on the road. Perhaps it was because Sunday traffic was not as heavy as weekday traffic, or because I was more open to inspiring, reverent, or thought-provoking experiences simply because it was Sunday.

If nothing else, on the next day I would be entering Kentucky, and that thought delighted me. I would also be meeting several folks the next day. One meeting had been on my schedule for days. The other encounter was something God had scheduled that I as yet knew nothing about.

When I pushed my bicycle into the lobby early on Sunday morning, I paused to chat with the lady at the front desk. She asked where I was headed, and I explained my trip across America; but when I told her the circuitous route I intended to take to Charleston, she offered a suggestion.

“It would be easier and quicker to take the interstate down just one exit to I-57,” she said.

“Interstates are not welcoming or friendly to bicycles,” I lamented. However, it was a Sunday; the traffic would be light. What was the worst that could happen?

I pedaled up the on-ramp to I-55. I'd have only one mile to the exit for I-57. At the end of the ramp, just outside the flow of traffic, a man sat on the roadside, backpack on the ground beside him and a cardboard sign with “LOUISIANA” printed in large letters. I braked to a stop and greeted him. He did not appear as disheveled as some hitchhikers I'd seen.

“I'd give you a ride if I had a bicycle built for two,” I joked.

“My name's Joe,” he said. “I'm surprised you even stopped.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Most people are afraid of me. Folks are just afraid to pick up hitchhikers.”

“Well, I'm not afraid of you. As a matter of fact, if you were to steal my bike, then I could go home.” I nodded toward his sign. “Why Louisiana?”

“I had a job in Michigan and got laid off. There were no jobs available anywhere I looked, so I decided to hitchhike to the Gulf coast to help with the cleanup from the BP oil spill. I heard they're looking for workers and paying well.”

Joe went on to tell me his story. He had no job, money, or family. Drugs had put him in prison for many years. He made no excuses for his misdeeds, but acknowledged he had done wrong and deserved
the prison sentence. While he was in prison, his wife had left him. And recently his son had committed suicide.

“I miss that boy so much. My life is a mess, and now here I am, sitting on the roadside, begging for rides.” The poor fellow had tears slipping down his cheeks as he recounted his misbegotten past. He looked at me. “I'm honored you stopped to speak with me. But I have a question for you. Your face . . . you have such joy on your face. How is that possible? You're riding your bicycle across America alone, yet your face radiates joy.”

“Joe,” I said, “that joy comes from only one source, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That is the only source of joy.”

“I used to have such high hopes for my future, then I messed it all up,” said Joe.

“You can reclaim that, my friend. Jesus can put that joy on your face too,” I assured him.

“I want to show you something.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a writer's tablet. “At one time, I wanted to be an artist and a writer. Now, when I'm sitting under a bridge at night, I write my poetry and draw pictures.” I paged through his drawings and skimmed over the poetry that expressed his most inner thoughts. How his talents had been squandered by bad choices!

“Tonight I'll write a poem about meeting the man with joy on his face,” said Joe. I scribbled my address in his book and he promised to send me a copy of the poem.

I pulled out my wallet and handed a twenty-dollar bill to Joe. “I'm not asking for money,” he said.

“Joe, I know you didn't ask, but I want to give you something. You have no money, and I can easily make it without this twenty dollars. I'm honored to be able to help you a little.”

I pedaled away into the morning traffic heading east, but my thoughts stayed with Joe. I had purpose and meaning in my life. Joe was sitting by the roadside and sleeping under bridges, hoping
only for a ride to Louisiana, and who knew what kind of life awaited him there? What had made the difference between our two lives?

I was born into a Christian home that started me on the right path. But I had made good choices and bad choices in life. All choices have consequences attached, and sometimes those consequences haunt folks for a lifetime. Joe's story was a sad example of the consequences of wrong choices. We all make wrong choices at times, and I knew that I could easily have been the one sitting on the roadside.

Joe wept as he mourned everything he'd lost; he looked at a solitary traveler and saw a joy he could not explain. The difference between our lives was that I had made one choice that has ramifications far above all the other choices I have ever made or will make.

You have the same choice to make, my friend, and that decision is whether or not to allow Jesus into your life. This one good choice really can make up for a lifetime of bad choices. Choose wisely. The decision will affect you for all eternity.

I was the only biker on the interstate that Sunday. I suspect I was the only bicycle rider ever on that interstate, but it was also the only time Joe was going to be at that intersection. If I had followed my original route, we never would have met.

I pedaled furiously to the exit for I-57. The next eighteen miles on the shoulder of I-57 were the smoothest ride I'd had since the new road construction back in Colorado. This stretch was uneventful, although I was great entertainment for the dozens of eighteen-wheelers that rolled past me.

At Charleston, I exited I-57 and was reunited with Route 60. Several hours later, a long, narrow bridge appeared in the distance. Bird Point sits at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Huge coal barges floated down the Mississippi as I pedaled over the high and narrow bridge.

I was just south of Cairo, Illinois, when the road made an abrupt right. Ahead rose another giant steel structure, the bridge across the Ohio River. As I approached it, I spotted a highway sign indicating that US Highway 62 also crossed the river here. That same road runs within several hundred feet of my home in Berlin, Ohio.

The very road I was riding on held the promise of a journey home. As a boy, my world was defined by Route 241. My awareness of the world was determined by whatever distance I could pedal along that highway. When I was old enough to drive a vehicle, Routes 62 and 39 expanded my horizons. My world grew as I drove longer distances on those highways. I never really questioned where those routes started or ended; I just knew that they had always been a part of the world I called home.