Читать книгу Miles from Nowhere - Barbara Savage - Страница 10

Bicycle around the world? Because it was such a spur-of-the-moment idea, and because we refused to dwell too long upon the dangers, it had a good chance for survival. It began in early 1977 while Larry and I were eating dinner in our tiny apartment in Santa Barbara.

“Ever notice how often people say, ‘I wish I’d done something really exciting and challenging when I was younger, because now I’m too old and don’t have much to look back on’?” Larry mumbled through a mouthful of potatoes.

I nodded my head.

“Well, pretty soon we’re going to have enough money to make a down payment on a house. But once we do that we’ll be tied down to the monthly payments. And then again, if we don’t buy but instead spend our money on something else, like traveling, we might find ourselves priced out of the market by the time we return.”

I nodded again and Larry went on.

“But on the other hand, we’re both in good physical shape right now, and who knows what’ll happen in the next ten years. One of us might get injured, and then we wouldn’t be able to bicycle across America like you’ve been talking about lately. And as for seeing the rest of the world, the way things are going, who knows how much of it will still be around years from now.”

A thoughtful silence followed. We both knew the conclusion to Larry’s ramblings. It had been building up within us for months now. We were tired of our monotonous, dull security, and we were ready to plan our break.

After graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1973, getting married, working in Spain for a year, and traveling through Europe for a summer, Larry and I had returned to Santa Barbara to settle down, begin our careers, and save money for our own home. We quickly fell into the eight-to-five workweek: Larry as a mechanical engineer and I as a Spanish-English bilingual welfare worker. And soon that warm, secure sensation that accompanies a steady job, company benefits, and regular paychecks enveloped our souls. We bicycled to and from work each day. On weekends we played beach volleyball and backpacked; and every few months we traveled to San Diego to visit my parents or to San Jose to visit Larry’s.

But by 1977 both of us had grown restless. I’d developed the traditional welfare worker burn-out syndrome, losing my ability to cope with or care about the mountains of paperwork, reams of ever-changing government regulations and forms, forms, and more forms, and a caseload of 130 demanding clients. Larry felt walled in, sitting at a desk every day designing and redesigning computers. Were we to spend the bulk of our lives toiling at unfulfilling jobs inside sterile office buildings? we wondered. Society kept answering yes, keep working, buy a house, start a family, save for retirement, and along the way be sure to pick up a color television, microwave oven, stereo, new car, and an electric knife sharpener.

But what about adventure and the outside world? I’d recently attended a slide presentation by a Santa Barbara couple who had pedaled across the United States. Before I’d seen the presentation, if someone had asked me how long it might take to pedal across the continent I would have figured years. But now I knew it could be done in three months or less and that hundreds of people were doing it each year.

I wanted to bicycle across the United States, then fly to Spain and bicycle. Larry was all for that, and more. He wanted to visit Egypt.

“Well, then why stop there?” I answered. “I’ve always wanted to go to Nepal and have a good look at the Himalayas. Maybe we could fly up there after our jaunt through the Nile Valley.”

We were picking up momentum now. We both agreed that if we went all the way to Nepal, we might just as well continue on around to New Zealand. We had heard a lot of good things about New Zealand and had occasionally thought of moving there. And then there was Tahiti, the mystical lure of a South Sea island paradise. Travel around the world? Why not? If we were going to quit our jobs, give up our apartment, and pack away our worldly belongings, we might just as well take full advantage of our freedom and continue traveling after Spain. If we saved our money for one more year, through the rest of 1977 and into the first part of 1978, we could afford a two-year journey on the cheap.

“OK, so it’s decided. We’ll quit work in a year and travel around the world,” I proclaimed at the end of our discussion. “And since we’re going to start out bicycling, why don’t we just keep right on pedaling and do the whole trip on bicycles. Now that ought to be a real adventure!”

I was shocked to hear such words spring from my vocal cords. What the hell was I saying? Me, a five-foot, four-inch, one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound human being, bicycle around the world for two years? I chuckled out loud as I swallowed the last of my meal. It was a thoroughly stupid idea.

Larry, however, was not laughing, and I looked up to see a pleasant, selfconfident grin form on his lips. The smile sent a chill through my body. Oh my God! I thought, he’s taken a liking to the idea.

“Sure we can do it!” Larry burst out. “If we can make it across the United States, then we can make it the rest of the way. It’s a great idea! It has everything: challenge, adventure, accomplishment—you name it. Forget flying from place to place or sitting comfortably in some super-duper deluxe tour bus that stops at all the catchy tourist spots. We’ll hit the world on bicycles and camp out everywhere. We’ll struggle and sweat and meet the people and experience the world as it really is. And we’ll learn to be self-sufficient and tough. It’ll be an experience to treasure for the rest of our lives!”

“Wrong,” I muttered to myself, “we’ll die. Pure and simple death.” The whole idea was too overwhelming—absurd, to be exact.

But Larry’s enthusiasm began to grab hold of me. He honestly believed that we could make it, and the more he talked about it, the more I was caught up by his emotion. He cleared the dishes off the table and spread out our world atlas. We were like two small children sharing a new Christmas toy. Each of us tried to edge our way in closer for a better view. The United States, Canada, and Europe looked familiar enough, but as we headed east the questions started to pop. Could a woman bicycle in the Muslim countries? Would I have to wear layers of clothing and a veil while I pumped through the hot desert sands of the Middle East?

Larry worried most about India, about the starving masses. He wondered if crowds of begging Indians would follow us everywhere, and if so, how we would react. With his gargantuan appetite, he fretted about a possible food shortage. We had heard about the road from the Indian border into Kathmandu, Nepal, a two-hundred-mile stretch of unpaved switchbacks with no food or water available anywhere along the way. Impossible to cycle, I figured. But Larry was optimistic.

“We’ll make arrangements with the bus drivers at the border and have ’em drop off food and water when they pass us each day. We’ll figure out something. By the time we reach Nepal we ought to be pros at solving cycling problems,” he reasoned.

I drew a blank when we came to Southeast Asia. We knew almost nothing about Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. My notion was that they were primitive countries. What if we got there and found nothing but snake- and tigerinfested jungles? I wondered. I’d never been real keen on snakes.

There were heaps of unanswered questions to worry about, but Larry and I chose to ignore them. If we started thinking now about all the things that might go wrong, the trip would vanish beneath the weight of our hesitations. Instead, we talked about snorkeling over beds of coral in Tahiti, climbing through King Tut’s tomb, and conquering the Rockies, the Alps, and the Himalaya. In the back of my mind I continued to believe that the trip would kill me, but it sounded like a great way to go.

Months after our momentous decision was made, I decided it might be prudent to give long-distance bicycling a try. After all, I’d never done it before. I based my enthusiasm for cycle touring on one slide presentation and Larry’s not-too-reassuring claim that his one and only bicycle tour, a 350-mile, fourday pedal between Eureka and San Jose, California, was “overall, one hell of a lot of fun, even though my body experienced excruciating pain those first two days.” The farthest I’d ever bicycled in one day was twenty-five miles; yet Larry expected us to cover over three times that distance a day across the barren stretches in the United States. So one Saturday in the spring of 1977 I decided to jump on my bike and pump eighty miles just to see what it was like.

Larry and I rode southeast from Santa Barbara over some mountains into Ojai, turned south to Ventura, then north back home along the coast.

The ride went smoothly until Larry got a flat tire halfway between Ojai and Ventura. His tire wouldn’t seat properly unless it was pumped up to 110 pounds, and our hand pump couldn’t do the job. He bounced into Ventura. None of the gas stations in town had air pumps, but one attendant advised us to check the Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership at the edge of town.

We took the attendant’s advice and wheeled our bicycles into the back room of the dealership. There, we were confronted by seven men, each of whom had the distinct appearance of a genuine, membership-card-totin’ Hell’s Angel. Nude women, heavy chains, and mom were tattooed on arms and chests. Who looked more concerned when Larry and I rolled in was anyone’s guess: the seven men at the sight of us two pencilnecks with our featherweight wheels entering their den of chrome and steel hogs, or us at the sight of seven big mothers glaring us down. The expressions on the faces of these burly, beer-bellied motorcycle men as they watched us creep into their sacred domain were like those one might expect on the faces of the proud French circuit officials had a racer shown up at the starting line of the Tour de France with playing cards clipped to his spokes, an air horn, and colored streamers dangling from the ends of his handlebars.

Larry was the first to speak. I knew that nonchalant tone, meant to disguise his nervous embarrassment.

“Howdy. How’s it going? Lotta nice-looking machinery here.”

His words were met by silent, cold stares.

“Say, my wife and I couldn’t find an air pump in town, so we were wondering if we could use yours to put some air in my tire so it’ll seat better?”

Someone spit a wad of tobacco at the floor, and I began edging toward the door. But before I got there, the biggest fellow in the group broke the silence by indicating that we should follow him. Larry and I tiptoed our skinny bike frames past rows of mean machines to the center of the room.

“Here’s the pump, man. Now you take it real slow and keep eyein’ that gauge,” the man growled. “Shit, that tire ain’t gonna hold no more’n thirty pounds, so you pay lots attention ’cause I don’t like no loud explosions, and that’s what you’ll likely be gettin’ usin’ this here big pump on that no good strip of rubber.”

“Fifteen—twenty—twenty-five—thirty—thirty-five.” The broad, knowing smiles began to fade.

“Forty—forty-five—fifty.”

Knitted brows indicated outright concern.

“Fifty-five—sixty—sixty-five—seventy.”

The announcer jammed his fingers into his ears and squinted. A few of the men moved to the far end of the room.

“Seventy-five—eighty.”

I looked up at the big man. His eyes were so wide now they took up a third of his face.

“Shit man, you’re gonna blast me with them tire pieces!” he yelled as he ran for cover. Larry carried on the announcing himself, and there was a tinge of malicious delight in his voice.

“Ninety—ninety-five—one hundred—hundred-five—hundred-ten. There, that should do it.”

Larry and I looked around the room. Beady eyes glazed in disbelief could be seen peering from behind fat chrome spokes. Larry disconnected the pump and yelled to no one in particular, “Thanks! That did the trick just fine. I’ll put more air in when I get home. Don’t want to take up any more of your time.”

Not a single biker moved from his position of cover as we rolled out of the room. The bumper sticker on the front door read god rides a harley.

Grinding out the thirty miles between Ventura and Santa Barbara against a brutal, coastal headwind proved to be the first truly religious experience of my life. The pain set in almost immediately. Within an hour, my knees, legs, feet, hands, and shoulder muscles were in piercing agony. Ten miles before Santa Barbara tears began to blur my vision. A creeping fog dropped the temperature, and I began shivering. My whole body hurt, and I felt delirious.

One-half mile from home, at the foot of the hill we lived on, I quit. It was not a quiet surrender. My wailing sobs brought the occupants of the nearby houses to their windows and front porches.

“Oh Lord, I’m gonna die,” I screamed. The worst thing imaginable had happened. When I finally admitted defeat, I consoled myself by thinking that my misery would ease once I got off my wretched, pain-inflicting bicycle. But instead of experiencing a rush of relief when I slid off my bike, things got worse. My muscles tightened up as they cooled down, and I soon found that I couldn’t move. I stood in the middle of the road balancing myself against my bike, slightly bent at the waist and neck, drooling. I was gasping for air.

“Get me home! I’m dying! Oh help me! Help me! I am dy-ing n-o-w!” I wailed.

“Wait right here. I’ll go home and get the van. I’ll be right back to drive you and your bike home,” said Larry.

“The bike? Forget the bike! I don’t care if I ever lay eyes on this damned instrument of torture ever again. Just get ME home. Oh please, help!”

Fortunately, no one called the ambulance or those little men with white jackets and butterfly nets while I stooped in the street uttering a frenzied mixture of curses and pleas. Larry was back in an instant. I was too stiff to climb up into the van, so he picked me up and placed me on the front seat. The short but bumpy ride home about did me in. I kept shrieking, “Oh please don’t let me die!” but as comical as my fear of death seemed to him, Larry knew enough not to laugh.

I’ll take a hot shower and everything will be all right, I thought as I shuffled into our apartment. We didn’t have a bathtub, so it had to be a shower. But the force of the water felt like a sledgehammer smashing against my aching muscles.

“This can’t be. Just can’t be,” I breathed. “It even hurts to shower!”

Shivering and streaked with ribbons of foul-smelling mud, I headed for the bedroom. Larry toweled me off as I hobbled across our apartment, then I moved onto the bed and curled up into a ball as if to guard myself against any further blows.

By then it was seven-thirty. We hadn’t eaten a thing since noon, and there was no food in the refrigerator.

“Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll go get a pizza,” Larry shouted as he raced out the door.

While he was gone, I prayed for a swift return to normal life. I hurt all over. How long would it be before I could sit and stand upright again? I wondered. Weeks? Months? Years?

The aroma of the pizza when it came through the door helped ease my worries. Larry had to feed me because I couldn’t straighten out my arm to pick up the food; but even so, I never tasted anything so delicious in all my life.

By morning I felt fine. However, I now harbored some real doubts about those eighty-mile days. I had barely survived the previous day, and that was without the forty or fifty pounds of gear that would be strapped to my bike throughout the trip. I decided that I’d better start cycling for an hour or more each evening after work to get into shape. Larry, who worked in the outskirts of Santa Barbara, was already pedaling thirty miles each day to and from work. Yet both of us knew that the real training and conditioning would occur during the first few painful weeks at the start of our journey.

When 1977 drew to an end, we began to research equipment, study maps, and set up a vague itinerary. We wrote to the embassies of those countries we knew the least about, explaining our plans and requesting information. What we received back from the Thai and Malaysian embassies alleviated some of our fears: the pamphlets had pictures of modern roads and buildings. We still wondered about Nepal though. The Nepali embassy sent us nothing.

We spent months studying and comparing equipment before we started to buy what we needed. Larry picked out a lightweight backpacking tent high enough for me to stand up in and large enough to hold the two of us and all our gear except our bikes. The cookstove we bought ran on white gas but could also tolerate regular gasoline, preferably unleaded or premium, if we cleaned the jets regularly; and it fit inside a lightweight cookset, which consisted of two bowls and a lid that doubled as a fry pan.

Both of us already had our down jackets and sleeping bags, and we each bought a sleeping pad (which, because of its closed-cell construction, would not absorb water), and a waterproof nylon rain jacket. Next, we looked into panniers, the bike bags that would carry our minimum of clothing for all four seasons, the stove and cookset, fuel cannisters, food, spare water bottle, tools, spare parts, towel, toiletries, maps, candle lantern, books, and camera—the tent, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads would be strapped to our aluminum rear racks. We decided on the largest capacity Kirtland rear panniers and handlebar bags.

We also took a couple of weeks to outfit our touring bike frames—Larry had an American-made Eisentraut and mine was a French Follis—with Campagnolo and Suntour parts, Avocet touring saddles, Super Champion twenty-seven-inch clincher rims, heavy-gauge spokes, and fenders for the rain. Larry was designated the trip photographer, while I would keep a journal and send installments home to my parents for safekeeping.

As the last few months before our departure crept up on us there were passports to renew, money to be deposited in a bank account in our names and my parents’ names (so they could wire us funds throughout the trip), travelers’ checks to buy, and shots to flinch under. When we explained our plans to the nurse at the immunization center in Santa Barbara, she pulled out handfuls of tiny bottles of liquid for typhoid, typhus, tetanus, diphtheria, and smallpox shots. Since they only lasted a year, our cholera immunizations would come later in our journey.

By then, our friends and acquaintances had come to realize that we were, in fact, perfectly serious about our strange undertaking, and they all hurried to voice their reactions.

“There’s no way I’d survive without a shower every night. I couldn’t sleep with my smelly body all covered with dirt and sweat,” said Mrs. Hazard, the owner of a local bike shop.

“Hey you can’t do that!” said a good friend. “You’ll never make it. There are too many unknowns. I mean, how do you know you won’t be killed by restless natives somewhere? Besides, it’s got to be physically impossible to bicycle that far.”

“Great idea. Do it. I envy you your courage.”

“You’re both crazy.”

“Now that sounds like a typical idea for a college-educated punk. Can’t you two settle down, take on responsibilities, and spend your lives making an honest living? You should be starting a family and saving for your kids’ education. You’re just spoiled!” There was a disdainful tone in this man’s voice. He worked at the same company as Larry, and to him Larry was an overpaid, know-nothing, cocky engineer about to throw away his easy money and waste two years of his life indulging in world travel. The man saw no adventure, no challenge, no conquest, no sweat, and no sense of accomplishment in what we were about to do—only stupidity. There was no way to explain to him our need to explore, to find out about the rest of the world, and to discover and develop ingenuity, endurance, and self-reliance—that pioneer spirit that had been buried under the comforts of modern society.

“Don’t you hate it when your husband comes up with such unladylike things for you to do?” an elderly woman friend whispered to me when she found out about our plans. “Imagine bicycling around the world. It just ain’t natural for a woman to want to do a thing like that.”

The reaction we heard more than any other, however, especially after we started our journey and rode through the western United States, was “I’ve always wanted to do something like what you’re doing, to travel the world and see all those far-off places and peoples. But I never did. Just got caught up in the routine of work and buying things, I guess. And now it’s too late. I really feel bad about that. So what you’re doing is real important. Don’t ever lose sight of that.” During the rough times on the trip these words helped us to keep going.

When May of 1978 rolled around, and we decided that the fourteenth would be the day to leave, there remained one haunting doubt, which continued to shadow us both. It had nothing to do with pedaling twenty thousand miles, or being filthy, or being robbed or murdered or stricken by some exotic disease. Rather, we wondered what effect our constant togetherness would have on our marriage (which during the past three years had been shaky at times, as Larry and I were both very independent). After all, being with one’s spouse for two years, day in and day out, oftentimes under physically and mentally trying situations, might sound like the perfect path to murder or divorce.

As it turned out, there were moments throughout the two years we were bicycling around the world when we nearly molded our bike frames around each other’s necks. The most horrendous statements we ever made and most probably ever will make about one another were ragingly proclaimed—and accompanied by some choice threats of desertion and eternal damnation—along the blacktop and dirt and cobblestone roads of our journey. But partway through our adventure, in a ditch in Spain, after one of those screaming matches that so often flared when physical and emotional exhaustion or a gnawing homesickness got the better of us, we discovered that our constant companionship had changed our feelings toward each other in a way we hadn’t expected.