States Of Mind

New state crossings always feel like a decent proxy for progress, and Monroeville would put Indiana under our wheels. We dodged a couple of storms along the way and stacked mile after mile into our first real headwind of the trip. I had tried calling ahead to a man in town who opens the community centre for cross-country cyclists, without any luck, so we arrived at the edge of Monroeville short on options. We scouted the community park, found a pavilion with another number posted for calling, and before we’d even got that far the door swung open. Nick, an eastbounder who had started out in Anacortes, Washington, had beaten us to it.

We had a great evening with him. He bought us ice cream in exchange for a couple of Blue Moons we’d been carrying, and in return gave us a string of tips for the road ahead, including several names of hosts further along the route, though I couldn’t offer him much back since we hadn’t ridden the stretch of Northern Tier he had coming. The Monroeville place itself was excellent, full kitchen, hot showers, a washing machine, and it carried Adventure Cycling’s “June Curry” award, a certificate given to only a handful of places across the country for kindness and generosity to touring cyclists. It was a strange thing to notice it that particular week, because I had just learned that June herself, who I’d stayed with in Afton, Virginia, back in 2010, had died at ninety-one. In thirty-odd years she must have warmed the heart of every cyclist who ever knocked on her door.

Anybody tell me what these things are for?

June Curry, aka “The Cookie Lady,” who I stayed with in Afton, VA two years ago, has a special award named for her.

Eastbounder Nick.

Nick had told us he’d gone weeks without much company, and it was a surprise, then, to cross paths with another eastbounder almost the moment we set off the next morning, who said exactly the same thing. He looked worn down, ready for the whole thing to be over, which is the trouble with a ride this long, it becomes as much psychological as physical. Not two miles later we met a third, Traci, from Kansas, riding a recumbent that looked far too comfortable for the rest of us to bear. We traded tips and stories the way riders do out here, passing rumour and advice up and down the route like a game of Chinese whispers, until you have a mental map not just of the road but of everyone riding it. Eal and I had both just swapped tyres to eke out a bit more life from them, since the rear always wears faster than the front, but the one I’d moved to my own front wheel had already worn thin enough to expose the kevlar underneath. There was a bike shop in Huntington, a short detour that doubled as a shortcut down busier roads, and I earmarked it for the afternoon.

On the edge of town I did a genuine double take at the sight of large brown shapes moving across a farmer’s field, a bison farm, in the middle of Indiana, and my first ever sighting of one in the flesh. The sky was already turning black again for the afternoon’s ritual thunderstorm, so we ducked into a bar for a few beers, and within minutes every man in the place seemed to be lining up to buy us a round once they’d heard we were riding cross-country from Boston. We had to cut the party short so I could reach the bike shop before it closed. A big thank you is owed to Larry Buzzard of Spokesmen Cycling and his team, who fitted my new tyre and then tuned my brakes and Eal’s gears in a matter of minutes, free of charge, on top of everything the Hoosiers in the bar had already given us.

Eastbounder Traci.

Bison!

We’d camped that night in a state forest and hadn’t slept much for it, thanks to a couple who arrived late, thoroughly wasted, and set up a small party of their own in the plot next to ours. I wouldn’t normally have minded the music, but by one in the morning, then two, then three, four, five, six, it stopped being charming. They were too unpredictable to approach, and there’s a rule of thumb when you’re travelling by bicycle, which is to keep a low profile and never invite trouble you don’t need. So I woke ten or fifteen times through the night, and we were on the road early the next morning for the first of two ninety-mile days meant to blitz us across Indiana. On the longer days it comes down to focus, breaking the distance into pieces small enough to hold in your head, twenty miles at a time, or the next state line, the next town, sometimes just the next gas station, and starting fresh from each one.

Nick had also tipped us off about a man further along the route who would let cyclists stay on his land. I called ahead and he told me he’d be out that evening but had already arranged for us to let ourselves into the small house beside his own. It was a glorious Saturday on quiet farm roads, right up until the last twenty-five miles, which turned into one dog chase after another, too many to count. It was hot, it was a weekend evening, and everyone seemed to be out on their lawns, which meant every driveway was a small crisis. We’d build up as much speed as we could and try to glide past unnoticed. Some of the dogs were enormous, scarred veterans of earlier skirmishes, others hunted in packs, and the safest response, we’d learned, was to get off the bike and walk, since running only invites the chase and the nip at ankle, sock or pannier.

We reached the house of a man named Kyler and let ourselves into the spare house with the keycode he’d left us, a place with a kitchen, a shower, real mattresses, and, best of all, ice cream, blueberries and strawberries waiting in the fridge, which did more for a tired body and mind than almost anything else could have. The only catch, and it seemed to apply across the whole state, was that Indiana’s water carries so much iron it tastes faintly of blood. We either got used to it or bought bottled.

Home for the night at Kyler’s.

The second ninety-mile day carried us to Odell, Illinois, and a free night’s camp in the city park. A few road closures forced us to walk the bikes here and there, nothing worse than that. A man outside a gas station tried to hand us a twenty-dollar note simply for telling him we were riding cross-country, which we declined, suggesting instead he put it towards ice cream for the kids circling the forecourt on their own bikes. We had a good lunch stop talking with another eastbounder, Peter Lovett, and it struck me how much nicer it was to be back on a well-travelled path, trading stories with someone new almost every day. We rolled the last stretch into Odell that evening, pausing once to answer a text from Joe about the bangers and mash he was in the middle of cooking back home, and made for the city park, which backed onto a swimming pool where we finally got a shower. We sat on the benches waiting out a children’s birthday party that had claimed the space before us, and the locals ended up handing over free cake and pulled pork sandwiches, sparing us the trouble of cooking.

Peter Lovett from Lowell, Massachusetts.