Manna from Heaven

Just 40 miles into the day, heavy rain forced me to stop turning over the pedals—welcome to Hanksville, Utah. I stayed dry in my tent and read some Doug Adams to pass the time but by nightfall, an electric light show joined the rainfall and robbed me of any sound sleep. Is this the lightning […]

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Wolfcreek Pass

I was a broken man by the time I crested Wolfcreek Pass Colorado, 10,857ft. Nine days and just about 1000 miles into my journey east. Both Achilles’s tendons were swollen as wide as my ankles while the attendant pain narrowed to a point and stabbed each pedal stroke with a seared flesh kind of misery. It […]

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Eighteen Days in October

Bleary-eyed and sore, day three saw me to Cedar City, Utah, 415 miles from where I began. The day before I sped down NV-375, the so-called Extraterrestrial Highway, with more vigor than I had originally planned. Little gray men with their invasive probes must have weighed on my psyche because I pushed the pedals with […]

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Squeaky Chains and Haggard Bikes

And then there is the transportation gang, often heard before they’re seen with squeaky chains propelling haggard old bikes, for whom there is no choice…or perhaps the choice is to ride or hoof it, as the bicycle is their sole means of speedy A to B. Maybe they ride to work, maybe they’re unemployed. Maybe they’re homeless, lost their […]

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Yes, I Wear Spandex

To another group within the group “cycling”, the club riders and racers, the bike is a recreational activity; like hunting, fishing, or…er…umm…Irish road bowling. The problem here is, seeing the bike as a pastime and the paved road a playing field has with it inherent contradictions to the motor-dominated status quo, no? As a recreational […]

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European Distrust

What I’m asking here is, though the people come and go, can a feeling, a sentiment, or responses linger on? Of course it can, safe in the continuity of a civilization’s ethos. Much like the schoolyard game of telephone, where one child would say a short phrase into another’s ear, then that phrase would get […]

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Rick Derringer Said So

There are times however, when I’m on my bike, that I don’t feel welcomed by others on the road. Sometimes, it goes well beyond a feeling of being unwelcome, it feels like loathing or hatred even. It feels…well…horrible. Once, a while ago, someone threw a cup of tobacco spit at me from a car window. . . at that moment, I had some hatred myself. I […]

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