Carnies

April 30, 2017

The skin of my back pulls away from the sleeping pad like the end of a post-it note from its pad. My shirt and socks are hard to put on because they're wet as if they got rained on in the night. The inside of the tent has the faint smell of a garbage can filled with used gym socks where the lid of the can has been left closed for eight days.

Yep, still humid.

We ride out of town on a smooth, narrow road where the only traffic this morning is bicycles and white-hairs speeding by because they're late for church. We hear the wind rustling the leaves in the trees and can pick out half a dozen different bird calls.

The hills are gentle, rolling. We ride alongside pastures and horses, through tunnels of tall old trees, and over a river where we can hear all of the rushing and gurgling sounds because there's no other noise to drown any of it out. Then we're passed by a tractor, where the farmer behind the wheel gives us a smile and a wave as he rumbles slowly past.

These are the roads I love. And they stand in such stark contrast to where we were at this time yesterday that it makes their beauty all the more sharp.

My heart swells. My mind feels light.

We coast down the backside of a low hill, cross a little creek, then crank slowly up the front of the next hill. It's a preview of what our life will become in the coming days and weeks, with the hills growing longer and steeper and greater in number the farther we go.

But that's for the future. Today it's butterflies that wander through the air in front of us in jerky, drunken movements. It's Baptist churches with full parking lots. It's the harsh crowing of competing roosters.

The wind grows with the day. When we pass a field of tall wheat off to our right, the stalks dance and sway and make the field look like the rippled waters of some green and landlocked bay. In time the road narrows and the center line falls away. My mind becomes more open and clear with each passing mile.

I can tell we're getting farther from the coast. When we stop at a chidboy that appears in the middle of what seems like nowhere, to find the bathroom I have to walk down a long corridor past a bunch of cleaning supplies and decades-old Sprite displays. The bathroom itself is full of hot, stale air, with a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. You know those news stories you hear about, the ones where a guy kidnaps a woman and holds her against her will for like ten years until one day she finally escapes? That's the general feeling of this bathroom. Next to the table where we eat lunch stand tall stacks of fifty-pound bags of dog food. There are half a dozen kind of pork cracklins to choose from, whatever those are.

Capital R rural America is coming.

And then, as if on cue, we see signs for a little town called Bumpass.

I say to Kristen that I bet it's named after a some early settler from long ago, with a name like Clodfelter J. Bumpass. In the deep voice of a man who's proper and serious but annoyed, I tell her how I imagine he always had to say things like, "It's pronounced bumpus! Bumpus! Not bump-ass! Why is that so difficult?! Bumpus!"

Jerry catches up to us at a country store farther down the road. The three of us take a break from the heat on the grass in the shade of a little tree off to its side. He tells us that he has two dogs, and that when one of them was younger and didn't get have a name, he asked one of his granddaughters what they should call it. She thought about it for a moment, then decided: Lunchbox. I can't explain why, but I feel better about the world knowing there exists within it a dog named Lunchbox.

The three of us were stopped to rest at the side of the road. A car sped past us, then stopped, turned around, and pulled up next to us. An older man hopped out. "How y'all doin' on this beautiful day heah?" he asked. We told him we were doing great. "Good, good," he said. "I just wanted to let y'all know that God loves ya." And then he handed one of these to each of us.

I'm dragging from heat and hunger and the line of short but steep hills we have to climb to reach Mineral. The fire department lets cyclists camp on the grass behind the station, so we do. And then we see them: carnies. You know, circus folk. There was a fair in town all last week; rides and carnival games and elephant ears, that sort of thing. But it ended only last night, so they're still in the process of tearing everything down.

Working for a traveling fair is not a job one chooses when there's any other option. One of the guys tells us they work every week for six months in the late spring and summer and early fall. They are to a man tired and grizzled, forever smoking, often within arm's reach of a bottle of Yuengling or a can of Mike's Hard Lemonade. They were awake until five this morning drinking. They describe themselves as happily divorced. Another guy tells me he's been doing this for fifty years. That's half a century! There is no pride in the words when he says it.

We eat dinner with Jerry at a Mexican place down the street. He tells us about what it was like to fly tankers for the Air Force during the Cold War, refueling fighters jets over the Atlantic and seeing nuclear missiles sitting at the ready on the tarmac and running through doomsday-type drills where each aircraft takes off only twelve seconds after the one before. We talk of the virtues of a simple life and the limits of money. We worry about our knees with the hills ahead.

Jerry's a good guy; one of the most earnest guys I've ever met; the kind of guy you'd create in your mind if you had to imagine the person you'd want to bump into over and over again on a trip like this. We're better off for knowing him.

Late in the evening, a car pulls up and a guy gets out and comes up to where the three of us stand near our tents. He wears a hat that says Bill on the front and nothing else. The guy's name is Bill, so the hat checks out. He's like the unofficial Mineral welcoming party, telling us how he's happy we're here, giving us tips on what's ahead, and reliving for us the time back in 1972 when he rode from Seattle to Boston to Georgia on a racing bike wearing cut-off jean shorts.

It's quite the image. But before my mind gets too far down that path, he pulls out three quarters, each encased in clear plastic. He hands one to each of us. They're quarters from 1976 that mark America's bicentennial, the year that the TransAm first became a thing. It's a simple gesture, but it's moving. He must have had a bunch of these things made up, and now he keeps them in his car, so that if he happens upon a cyclist camping behind the fire station he can come over and say hello and give them one. I can't think of anywhere else in this country where you'd see that.

When Kristen and I decided to ride the TransAm, a part of me wondered if the magic I found when I rode parts of it six years ago would appear again. I didn't know if what I'd experienced was some great collision of fates — a series of happy accidents — or if there was something more enduring at work.

I shouldn't have worried. Looking out at the stars and crescent moon above Mineral, Virginia, with car tires clunking over the train tracks and crickets chirping and the warm evening breeze tickling the hairs on my forearms, it's clear that the magic is alive and well.

Today's ride: 40 miles (64 km)
Total: 154 miles (248 km)

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