Biking Across America (8 page)

“We're going to take a rest day here tomorrow, then we'll start across Nevada. You're welcome to join us if you'd like.”

Several thoughts flashed through my mind. Another whole day here would certainly be interesting. I was meeting some eccentric characters, and my trip was all about meeting the people of America. And they had a support vehicle. And this might be my chance to meet Cynthia McKinney. And I would not be alone on the loneliest road in America. The decision was easy: I would ride with them across the desert.

I dubbed the group the Peace Train and became the seventh rider. As more riders trickled in, I was introduced to the other passengers on my night train to Utah. Our group had two Universalists, folks who believed in numerous gods; one atheist, who believed in no god; one agnostic, who didn't know what to believe; one congresswoman; one gay person; and one Christian (yours truly). God does work in mysterious ways.

Later, back in my small room in the makeshift motel, I felt the entire trailer shaking. An earthquake perhaps? I investigated. Attached to the outside wall was an open deck with a washer and dryer where Bill was now doing laundry. The dryer was unbalanced and dancing a jig, causing the entire deck and my walls to shudder.

As I walked across the parking lot to my room that evening, I was granted my wish: Cynthia McKinney and I met. She was a liberal African American congresswoman from Georgia; I was a politically conservative Mennonite from Holmes County. And in the twilight, we had a conversation that can only be described as divine.

Her father had passed away and she had also recently lost her favorite aunt after an unsuccessful surgery. This bike trip was not
just a ride for peace for her, but a healing journey much like my Appalachian hike had been for me. We discussed loss and the pain of those left behind. I knew immediately that this was a God-ordained meeting. This was one of the folks God had in mind when he sent me out on this ride.

We discussed politics; Cynthia had been the Green Party candidate for president in the 2008 election and was now mulling over her political options. She was never far from her cell phone, taking calls from her advisors, and she good-naturedly accepted my offer to become her newest political advisor. My first duty was to inform her, with a grin, that she needed to move just a smidgeon to the right.

“Cynthia, there is so much hatred in Washington, DC. Isn't it time to put aside all those divisions on Capitol Hill? Can't you all start speaking out of love for one another instead?”

“Hate sells,” she informed me. “Hate wins elections.”

“Hate may sell for a season, but love will eventually conquer all. God has you out here in the desert for a reason. You could be the person who starts the change in Washington.”

We hugged each other and agreed to continue our conversation throughout the week.

During the night, I awoke to discover the door to my room was hanging wide open. A shift of the rickety mobile home had unlatched the door. I stepped outside and was amazed by the brilliant stars twinkling in the desert sky. Those stars would be the canopy I rode under for the next week.

Morning came, and I needed coffee. Russell, the biologist, was again behind the counter and our conversation continued. Russell was an atheist and believed that there was no god. He also believed the world would end on December 21, 2012. Apparently, this day was the end of the Mayan calendar and time would cease to exist.

“Well, Russell, if you are correct and the world does end on December 21, 2012, that will also be the day you'll no longer be an atheist,” I told him.

Russell just grinned at my reference to meeting God on that date. He laughed when I asked if I could bill my breakfast and pay for it on December 22, 2012.

Throughout the day, Middlegate Station was the stopping point for other weary travelers. On the front porch, I met seventy-six-year-old Passin' Through. He drove a pickup truck pulling a small Airstream trailer.

“I'm Don, but I'm known as Passin' Through,” he said.

“Where are you headed?”

“Oh, just down the road.”

That was his standard reply. His “down the road” meant about thirty-five miles a day. He'd pull off the road and spend the night wherever it pleased him.

Tears filled his eyes as he explained that after forty-four years of marriage his wife had informed him she wanted a divorce. He had worked as an airline pilot flying 737s and had flown the F-105 Thunderbird in air shows. Retired at last, he was looking forward to traveling with his spouse—but she instead wanted out, and had left him. Their home and possessions were sold and, in the end, he was also alienated from his children and grandchildren.

“My home was in Denver, but I've been on the road for six years. The divorce tore my family apart, and no one really knows the truth about what happened. My children don't want to see me. My grandson is an all-state football player, and sometimes I drive past the stadium and wish I could see him play. Now home is wherever I stop for the night. I'm happiest when I see Denver in my rearview mirror; then I know my family troubles are behind me.”

Fresh, red scars reached across his forehead. Several weeks before, while he was parked beside the highway, a golden eagle had
mistaken his white hair for a rabbit and had landed on his head, scratching those furrows across his face. Passin' Through had ended up at the hospital and was sutured up.

Our conversation was interrupted by a commotion in the parking lot. A white van careened to a dusty stop and all forms of humanity crawled out. A group of gypsy girls had arrived. Bizarre haircuts topped bodies decorated with all manner of piercings and tattoos. I picked out the girl with the most outlandish appearance and asked her where they were headed.

They had no destination, and were simply drifting from one part of the country to another, playing their guitars at places they stopped, depending on donations to pay for food and gas. They'd pick up anyone along the way who needed a ride. Everyone who hitched a ride in the van autographed the interior walls before parting with their company. She invited me to check out the van. The inside walls were completely covered with names and messages. Many of the notes were quite vulgar. A bumper sticker on the side of the van announced, “The party in hell has been cancelled due to the fire.”

Perhaps that would be humorous if it were not so serious. There's a whole generation of kids out in the world who think hell is a joke. Sadly, many moms and dads have failed their kids, and these children are wandering out there on life's highways.

Back on the porch at Middlegate Station, I asked my new gypsy friend where home was and if she missed it. She was silent for several moments.

“Mom and Dad got divorced and I hated them both. I couldn't even talk to my mom until just recently. But, yeah, I do miss her, and I often wish I could go home.”

A loud boom thundered from the other side of the building. Then came more explosions. Sleeping Bag Bill had filled several plastic two-liter bottles with water and baking soda. As the pressure
expanded the containers, Bill took his pistol and shot them. His targets were right next to the old gas pump. Why wait for Uncle Sam to accidentally drop bombs on Middlegate Station when Sleeping Bag Bill could blow up the place all by himself?

I had one more place to visit. Several folks had talked about a “Shoe Tree” down the road. They'd taken me out to the parking lot and pointed to a tree far in the distance. Legend says that a young bride and groom driving down Route 50 on their wedding night had an argument and the groom stopped at that tree and kicked his wife out. He left her under the big cottonwood to cool off and he drove to Middlegate Station for a drink. When he returned and she was still angry, he threw a pair of her shoes up in the tree and went back to the bar for another drink. The third time he came back to his bride she had calmed down, but the shoes were stuck up in the tree and they could not retrieve them. The newlyweds left the shoes hanging there, and later other folks added shoes of their own. Now the cottonwood had hundreds of pairs of shoes hanging from its branches and several thousand more scattered around its base.

“It's only a mile down the road,” the storytellers had said. But, like everything else in the desert, it was farther than it looked. I visited the tree, but pedaled a six-mile round trip.

In that barren desert, I watched the tumbleweeds skid along the highway and over the sand. Separated from their roots, the brown and dead-looking clumps of weeds are blown along, scattered in whatever direction the wind takes them. I thought of the many people I met that were also drifting—vagabond lives tumbling along, separated from their roots, human tumbleweeds.

All of us wanderers seek a place called
home
, a place of refuge, a place where it is safe to be ourselves and still be loved. Some search all their lives and never quite find it. I felt like I was tumbling across this country too, on a solitary journey, far from home. But I wasn't a drifter or a vagabond; I tumbled along firmly anchored to God.

Coming back to Grand Central Station, I found the place hopping. The gypsy girls were banging away on guitars and wailing and howling like banshees while folks were eating supper at the counter. I would have gladly donated money to stop the howling if I had wanted to stay in the diner, but I needed to get some rest. The night train would be departing the station at midnight.

I
was awakened at midnight by shuffling on the wooden porch outside my door. The Peace Train was preparing for departure. Seven of us would be riding; Cynthia would follow several hours later in the car with extra water and snacks.

Our tires crunched over the gravel parking lot as we left the sleeping Middlegate Station. Rarely in life does a person hear as many diverse stories as I had during my short stay. Had I stayed several more days, I believe I would have enough material to write an entire book. The night air was cool and I had slipped on my rain jacket. Back in Fallon, I had replaced the headlight I'd lost back in Washington State. My new light was intended to be used as a headlamp, but I wrapped the strap around the handlebars and that arrangement worked quite well, allowing me to grasp the lamp and shine it in any direction I wished.

The stars were blazing across the desert sky as I pedaled past the Shoe Tree with its hundreds of shoes dangling eerily from its branches. Off in the distance, unusual lights glowed on the hillsides
and the pungent aroma of burning sagebrush wafted across our path. A brush fire had been burning for several days and already had scorched several thousand acres. Over the past two days, firefighters had been using Middlegate as a base as they attempted to keep the fire under control.

We spent most of the night climbing, first over New Pass Summit at 6,348 feet and then Mount Airy Summit at 6,679 feet. Our destination was the town of Austin, halfway up a third climb called Austin Pass.

The members of the Peace Train were all considerably younger than I and were stronger riders, but my stubbornness and pride kept me with the group most of the night. At last, though, I had to admit that the smart plan would be to ride at my own pace and get there whenever I got there. This meant riding alone in the dark, deserted desert.

The miles rolled by and the darkness of night slowly faded away. Out over the Toiyabe Mountain range, a faint glow emanated. Soon a bright red sliver of sun emerged and the desert floor was bathed in early morning light. I stopped and soaked up the warm sunbeams that rejuvenated my spirit.

At eight in the morning, I arrived in Austin. This had been a stop for the Pony Express, a mail delivery system covering eighteen hundred miles from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The qualifications for being hired as a rider were to be young and wiry. The dangers were great and the chances were high that a rider might be killed, so the company preferred to hire orphans. The story in Austin was that a Pony Express horse galloped through town one day and kicked over a rock, exposing a vein of silver. Austin soon became a silver-mining town, and by 1863 had a population of over ten thousand people.

It appeared that nothing as exciting as a horse galloping through town happened here nowadays. The population has dwindled to
about three hundred, and I walked the length of the town and spied only one other person roaming about.

After checking into my room at the Lincoln Motel, I crossed the street to the café and joined the rest of the group for breakfast.

That night, I decided to depart an hour before the rest of the group. I had pushed hard to ride the seventy miles to Austin. The stretch from Austin to our next stop, Eureka, was another seventy miles with no services. At midnight, I climbed the long hill out of town under a waning crescent moon that glowed in the star-speckled sky. Rounding Austin Peak, I started down a steep, three-mile downhill. My lamp lit the way as I careened down the highway. Then another steep uphill over Bob Scott Summit and another extended downhill. The miles were flowing by swiftly, with not a car in sight. Except for the yipping of coyotes, the only sounds were the hum of my bike tires and the whirring of the chain.

Then, far ahead, a speck of light glowed. Miles later, I passed a farmhouse with a pole light casting its pale yellow hue over the quiet farmhouse and yard. The scene tugged at my heart. This was a home. Not mine, of course. But to someone, that little area lit by a yellow circle in the desert night represented home. I felt very alone, far from comfort and safety. I pedaled harder and faster, feeling the loneliness creeping ever closer.

At three o'clock, several specks of light bobbed in the darkness behind me. The Peace Train was slowly gaining on me. Just knowing they were nearby gave me comfort and staved off the palpable loneliness stalking me.

Back in Ohio, Leonard Hartmann was following my journey in
The Budget
, a newspaper widely read in the Amish community.
The Budget
printed weekly updates on my journey, and Leonard realized I would be passing through Eureka, Nevada, where his
daughter and son-in-law, Jean and Cervin, lived. He had emailed their phone number to me in case I needed a place to stay.

I checked into a motel in downtown Eureka and walked across the street to the Owl Café for a hearty breakfast. After that, I planned to sleep the Sunday away.

While I waited for my food to arrive, a group of motorcycle riders roared up to the café. This was not a church group out on a day trip. These riders were members of Hell's Angels, the most feared motorcycle club in America. A group of fifteen rough-looking men, leather jackets emblazoned with club regalia, swaggered in and seated themselves. A hush fell over the other tables. These were not people to be messed with.

Finished with breakfast, I got up to leave and was tempted to ask one of the riders if bicyclists could join their gang, but better judgment kept me walking.

I had noticed that every now and then a member would leave the rowdy group and step outside the restaurant. As I left, I passed one gang member outside, apparently on the phone with his wife. These men were coming outside to call wives and girlfriends. While inside with the gang, everyone was loud and boisterous. Now I overheard one telling his wife he would be home soon and that he loved and missed her. He was macho with the gang, but when removed from the group he became a teddy bear.

On the sidewalks of Eureka, in front of a row of Harley motorcycles, I again was reminded that the solution to the ills of our society is love. Whether in the halls of Congress or in our homes and churches, only love can bring us together.

Back in my room, I decided to call Cervin and Jean to let them know I was in town. Their family had just returned from church and were sitting down to their noon meal. I hesitated for about two seconds before accepting an invitation to join them. Soon I was seated at their table, enjoying a great home-cooked meal. It was
my second meal in two hours. The next night's ride to Ely would be a difficult eighty miles, but I would ride loaded with calories.

At one o'clock in the morning, I pedaled through a deserted Eureka. Stars again sparkled brilliantly overhead. Off in the distance, the coyotes yipped night messages across the plains. Crickets serenaded me as I passed. Many times I paused to rest and gaze upward at the vast heavens. Millions of stars and constellations formed patterns across the night sky. It was as if God himself had written a message of love to me. Occasionally a meteor blazed across the heavens, a veritable exclamation mark to the starry message.

It was a night of four big uphills followed by exhilarating downhill charges through the darkness. In between the mountains lay vast stretches of open desert. Several times during the night a pinprick of light would appear far off in the distance. Ten minutes later, the single pinprick would slowly turn into two growing orbs of light, and eventually a car or truck would pass me.

Just before dawn, the desert turns cold. Even wearing my jacket and gloves, I shivered until the welcome sun peeked over the horizon.

Morning brought visitors out of the sagebrush. Rattlesnakes slithered onto the highway, seeking the warmth held in the pavement. Many had met a fateful end when introduced to the Michelin Man and Mr. Goodyear. Even dead, those snakes gave me a start whenever I happened upon one.

It was a difficult night of climbs, and with great relief I at last pulled myself over Robinson Summit. I was at an elevation of 7,588 feet and had fifteen downhill miles into Ely. But what should have been a swift flight into town was complicated by strong air currents heading west. For the next fifteen miles, I wrangled with the headwind.

The Peace Train had long ago passed me, and twice Cynthia drove out from Ely to check on my progress. She insisted that I
get in the car and let her drive me into town. I just as insistently turned down her offer. But I'm convinced that having to pedal on a downhill slope is not what God intended bicycling to be.

Located in White Pine County, Ely was another stagecoach stop and Pony Express station. Ely was a late arrival to the mining scene. In 1906 copper was discovered, the railroad came to town, and Ely boomed. Later in the twentieth century, though, copper prices dropped and mines were closed. There are still six open pits gouged out of the desert, the largest of which is one thousand feet deep, one mile wide, and two miles long.

My stop was the Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall in downtown Ely. In 1929, this hotel opened and claimed the title of the tallest building in the state; it was all of six stories tall. Once a stop for many public figures and Hollywood stars, the hotel may have been an attractive and impressive place in 1929, but it has lost its luster. Very little has changed over the past eighty years. My room was forty dollars, a bargain. Several rows of slot machines on the main floor offered diversion to those wishing to pay extra for their stay.

The old cast iron tub, sitting atop curved legs, cradled me in hot water and melted away my aches and pains. It had been a hard eighty-mile ride.

Later, I strolled through the streets of Ely, virtually alone. Ely still has a population of around four thousand. After the copper mines were abandoned, gold was discovered; now a large mining operation sifts through the copper tailings in search of the precious metal. The area encompassing Ely and nearby Ruth is still the largest producer of gold in the state, but the town's streets and buildings are faded and neglected. It was a story I saw repeated again and again in Nevada. Robust mining centers, previously hubs of wealth and commerce, are now veritable ghost towns.

The next day's ride would take our group to a little town just shy of the Utah border. I left a sleeping Ely at one o'clock in the
morning. For several hours I rode in silence as the lights of the town receded into the darkness behind me. It was always comforting knowing the Peace Train was somewhere behind me. Around three o'clock they caught up with me and then, one by one, disappeared into the night ahead.

Two large mountain climbs and one vast valley lay between me and Baker. Five miles west of Baker, I passed the entrance to the Great Basin National Park. I would leave Route 50 here. The lonely highway across the Nevada desert had lived up to its reputation.

A secondary highway, Route 487, took me into the town of Baker. Several times in the early morning I heard water rushing out from the desert. Baker has the good fortune of sitting atop a huge water reservoir. This good fortune has also brought bad fortune: the small settlement of Baker is at war. Its enemy lies 250 miles farther south.