Biking Across America (17 page)

To my new friends at the Commodore Hotel Linden, our contractual obligations have been fulfilled: you have a lovely inn with friendly reception, beautiful rooms, and no elevator. I had to carry my bicycle up two flights of stairs. Readers, mention this book and get a discount. (Maybe that last statement wasn't part of the deal?)

Leaving the Commodore the following morning, I noticed something I had missed the previous day. Hanging over the front entrance was a plastic bag filled with water. I had seen that before somewhere. Yes, back in Newport, Oregon, while waiting for Andy at the Red Door Café. The water bag at the Commodore, however, had one additional ingredient. A shiny penny lay at the bottom of the bulging bag.

“Does it really work?” I asked a maintenance man working on repairs at the front door. He assured me it did. The yellow jackets see the penny and think it's another yellow jacket staring back at them. They'll buzz about for a long time bumping up against that bag, and in their confusion they forget they were planning to check into the Commodore and eventually buzz off.

My ride to Hohenwald was beautiful, if somewhat harrowing. The route was used heavily by truck traffic, and the lack of a shoulder forced me out onto the road to compete for riding space.

One mile outside of Hohenwald, I took a break at a service station. A local truck driver and I struck up a conversation. From his trucking experience, he recognized the name of my hometown.

“You're from Amish country, then,” he said. “We have an Amish community just east of here, over toward Summertown.”

“What's the best way to get to Pulaski?” I asked.

“Take 20 over to Summertown, then 43 will take you all the way down to Lawrenceburg where you'll intersect Route 64 heading east to Pulaski. That's a very busy road, though; you'd better be real careful. Lots of trucks use that route, and you'll probably encounter some Amish buggies from here to Lawrenceburg.”

Back on the road again, I soon heard a familiar sound, the clip-clop of a horse's hooves on pavement. If I closed my eyes, I might have believed I was back home. And if I closed my eyes, I would also wreck my bike.

An open buggy was clip-clopping toward me. An older man and wife were heading into town. I wanted to stop, but there was too much traffic. Instead, I yelled a Pennsylvania Dutch greeting across the road as we passed. The poor man almost fell out of his hack when he heard the biker with the fancy blue and white helmet and bright racing shirt speaking his language.

Several miles later, I arrived at Yoder's Homestead Market, a small country store. I surprised the young Amish girl at the front counter with another Pennsylvania Dutch greeting and then enjoyed a large deli sandwich. Browsing through the market, I inquired where they bought the meats and cheeses on display at their counter.

“We get delivery from Troyer's Cheese once a week,” the girl replied.
Small world
, I thought. Troyer's Cheese is located in Berlin, Ohio, where I live.

By the time I rolled into Summertown, my ice cream gauge had fallen to an alarmingly low level. This situation was rectified at a small grocery store. While I ate my ice cream and chatted with the clerk, her son entered the store, obviously agitated. He told his mom that a high school classmate had been shot and killed the previous evening in Lawrenceburg, in an argument about his girlfriend. What a sad ending to a young life.

After I left the store, I recalled another sad ending for a young friend of mine. When Ivan and I took that fateful bike ride on Labor Day weekend back in 1966, my cousin from Florida, Marv, had been the third rider that night. He and I had been boys then, having fun together on our bicycles. After the accident, we had parked our bikes and never rode together again.

Now we were going to bike together once more. Just slightly older—and hopefully wiser—boys, still trying to have fun.

We were meeting at the motel in Pulaski. Just before eleven o'clock that night, my phone rang. My cousin had arrived. I walked over to his room to greet him and go over plans for our ride the next day. I had ridden through ten states in fifty-four days. Tomorrow, Marv would dispatch his first state and begin his second all within just a few hours. Alabama was only thirty miles away.

Walking back to my room, I realized it was September 1, 2010. Precisely forty-four years ago, to the day and hour, three boys had rolled out the long country lane together for a moonlight bike ride.
Dear God, are you thinking what I'm thinking? You wouldn't dare; you couldn't. You didn't bring us together to wipe another one of us off the map, did you?

I know that sounds silly and maybe juvenile and certainly not theologically correct, but I will admit I was a little shaken by the coincidence.

I felt safe; I was convinced I was where God wanted me to be. But was Marv where God wanted him to be? I knew he was prepared spiritually, should the worst occur. But how would I ever explain if anything happened? I do not believe in coincidence; I believe God's hand is in the timing of our lives. But why now, why on September 1?

One thing did worry me though. I can be somewhat daring, but Marv is even more of a risk-taker than I am. We had hiked together in the past, and at places where my fear of cliff edges
kicked in and common sense prevailed, my cousin's fear had not even wakened to the danger.

Marv's wife, Rita, assumed I knew what I was doing and would look out for her husband, but knowing his boldness, I expected some nerve-racking miles ahead.

E
very time I glanced in my mirror that morning, another rider was on my tail. I was no longer biking solo, and I was amazed how the presence of one other person changed my journey.

Thirty miles into our morning we arrived in Ardmore, Alabama. At a gas station, I spotted an air pump and decided it was probably time to check my tire pressure. I'd given no thought to that preventative maintenance since Colorado. My laying on of hands and little prayer each morning had kept my bike rolling along trouble-free. Several pounds of pressure had indeed escaped somewhere back in the plains, so I added a few pounds of Alabama air.

Route 53 took us south toward Route 431, the highway we planned to take all the way to Columbus, Georgia. Our course led through Huntsville, one of Alabama's largest cities. Passage through this urban region was a harrowing experience for my riding partner on his first day on the highway. When we had biked together in adventurous boyhood, the two of us had owned the
quiet country roads; now constant vigilance was necessary. Thousands of cars and trucks rushed by us, only a few feet from our unprotected bikes and bodies.

We cautiously maneuvered our way through busy city streets and at last reached Route 431 on the eastern side of town. The city quickly disappeared behind us, giving way to rolling Alabama farm country. Although now free of the heavy traffic, we had a new concern: in this rural area, motels were few and far between.

A store clerk told us of a new motel in Hampton Cove. Stopping there would shorten our day to only fifty-four miles, but it was hot and muggy, and if we bypassed this motel we would be forced to pedal another thirty miles to Guntersville. Several restaurants and a Wal-Mart near the new motel sealed our decision, and we ended our day early.

Later that evening I replaced my expensive instrument of torture acquired thousands of miles ago in California with a new twenty-four-dollar comfort station I purchased at Wal-Mart. The new seat was big, it was wide, it was high. It was unsightly, but I was desperate.

After several adjustments the next morning, I went sailing along atop my new perch. And I was . . . comfortable. Could it really be true that four thousand miles of backside distress were finally behind me?

Alabama was a surprise. I'd always thought of the state as flat and covered with cotton fields. Instead, the rolling green countryside, small farms, and grazing cattle reminded me of home. It was a very scenic ride. The cotton fields were there too, interspersed with the green pastures, and they reminded me that this was not home.

The cotton looked ready to harvest, like fluffy white popcorn growing on low bushes. I've traveled quite a bit, but these were the first cotton fields I'd ever seen. We stopped at one field and invited ourselves in for a closer look. The weevil was once cotton's
most feared pest; now, destruction is visited upon cotton plants by bicycle riders who pull, pry, and dissect the innermost workings of a cotton boll. I was fascinated by the plant and how important it is to our lives today. Bath towels, robes, denim jeans, and even coffee filters result from these fluffy white mounds.

Since the previous day's ride was relatively short, we wanted to get in a longer day. Towns were not spaced to our liking, though, and lodging was difficult to find. We had eighty miles behind us when a large hill loomed ahead. My legs were extremely tired. Marv's muscles had less conditioning, and he was suffering greatly. We dismounted and slowly pushed our bikes upward.

A Good Samaritan passed and then pulled off the road just ahead of us.

“Hey, fellows, do you need a lift somewhere?”

He assumed that we were pushing our rides because we had mechanical difficulties. We explained that it was body mechanics that had caused us to dismount.

I noticed the bike rack attached to the rear of his vehicle. In our conversation about my ride across America, we discovered that he was an avid rider and very knowledgeable about the area. I asked about the road conditions we would encounter through the rest of Alabama.

“This road is four-lane and very busy, and you'll have even heavier traffic tomorrow as you go farther south. Auburn University has a football game, and the people around here are rabid fans.” Our goal for the following evening was the town of Opelika, next door to Auburn. He advised us to rethink that goal. “Those motel rooms will all be taken by fans attending the game.”

I commented on the poor and sometimes nonexistent road shoulders we had encountered that afternoon. The gentleman was well versed on biking law in Alabama and informed us that motorists were required to give bicyclists a three-foot zone of safety when
passing. This was the wrong thing to tell my biking partner. Marv had no fear of man or beast, and so he embraced that law and claimed three feet of highway as his personal space.

“I have a right to it, and I'll use it,” said the voice riding behind me. “I can't keep my bike on an eight-inch shoulder like you do. You've had four thousand miles of practice. I'll just use my three feet.”

I was now certain of it: Marv would be run over by some monster truck, a massive RV, or maybe even a little VW bug. But it was going to happen, no doubt about it. I wondered if he remembered what weekend this was. I cast supplications, begging and pleading for safety over my shoulder, all the while rehearsing my conversation with his spouse when the inevitable happened. “But he was within his three-foot zone,” I could add when telling the story.

We pedaled ninety-three miles that second day and stayed at the first place we found, just outside Saks, Alabama. Once in our room, Marv refused to leave. The day had completely exhausted the poor man. We had Chinese food delivered, and my cousin did not move far from his three feet of safety on his mattress. His last words before passing out were, “I didn't think it would be this difficult.”

The following day we were entertained by revelers heading toward the Auburn football game. Hundreds of vehicles, with banners and flags waving, headed down Route 431. At a grocery store, the clerks advised us to stop in Roanoke for the night. No place between Roanoke and Auburn would have rooms available, they predicted. And so it was a short fifty-five-mile day through the Talladega National Forest to our motel in Roanoke.

The motel was called the Key West Inn. I took this as a good omen, since Key West was my destination. At the front desk, we were given directions to a restaurant rated highly by the local folks.
It was a barbeque joint that did not disappoint. As we walked back to our motel, a sign in the shape of a large ice cream cone screamed for our attention. We decided that another five hundred calories might be just what our bodies needed.

Among the boards describing various ice cream indulgences, a sign propped against the window read, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Prov. 3:5). The Scripture summoned up good memories. My dad had taught his children that verse long ago and quoted it often to his family over the years.

The small sign also reminded me of all the church signs I'd been reading as I pedaled along. In Paris, Tennessee, one sign had proclaimed, “Children will not listen to your advice and ignore your example.” Another in Hohenwald had announced, “Win a new house, free chances at every service.” And one I had spotted earlier that day read, “Church attendance is not an elevator to heaven.”

Now here in Roanoke, an ice cream shop posted Bible verses. I admit, I wondered about the sincerity of the proprietor's intentions. A stocky man inside shouted out a friendly greeting. “What can I do for you?”

Remembering my dad's King James Version quote, I replied, “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths” (Prov. 3:6).

He laughed and replied, “That's on the other side of the sign.”

“I like the sign,” I said. “I've noticed there are many churches in this part of Alabama; I suppose I'm riding along the Bible Belt?”

That opened our conversation, and any doubts I had about the man's sincerity vanished.

“I'm a pastor at a church here in Roanoke. I believe we're on this earth to help other folks,” he explained. I told him about my ride and some of the desperate folks I had met. He also had a story to tell about helping someone in need. “Several years ago, a fellow
came through here on a bicycle, pulling a cart. His dog sat in the cart, along with all the man's belongings. The fellow was looking for work and happened to stop at my church, so I put him up in my basement for several days and gave him odd jobs around the church.”

Another fellow in the church had an RV, and they parked that behind the church and allowed the man to stay there. He was still living in the RV, several years later. Now he worked around the church and just recently committed his life to Christ.

“We never pushed him or made demands of him,” said the pastor/ice cream man. “We just loved him. Finally one Sunday he responded to an invitation, and his tears showed true repentance.”

What an example of the church reaching out to help someone in hardship! Perhaps I had been too cynical about those church signs and folks not responding to a traveler in trouble. All that is necessary is that one person's response—the person to whom the need is revealed.

At the 1886 Philadelphia Exposition, Japan gifted America with the kudzu vine. Kudzu has the ability to grow at an incredible rate, up to sixty feet per year. During the Great Depression of the '30s, the Soil Conservation Corps hired hundreds of men to plant kudzu in areas where erosion was a problem. The plan worked like a charm.

As a matter of fact, the planting was too successful. The kudzu spread over those troublesome, washed-out areas—and then kept on growing. Now the plant is marching across the South like an army, growing over anything in its path. Kudzu overwhelms entire forests, and trees and bushes soon die when deprived of sunlight. All over the South, interesting green shapes rise from the landscape as kudzu encases anything in its path, including abandoned cars and even houses. Almost indestructible, the plant is only inhibited
for a short time by chemicals; then it roars back to life. Some cities have sent goats and llamas to the battlefront to fight the advancing green legions.

Kudzu is a fair-weather vine and does not thrive in cold climates, so it only dines on the South. Thank you, Japan.