May 12, 2017
That Was Six Weeks Ago
We've been cranking over mountains and steep hills day after day after day. When we look at the road ahead, we see only two options. One is sixty-two miles from Elkhorn City with almost 5,000 feet of elevation gain between here and there. The other is just twelve miles away with many, many fewer thousands of feet to climb. Either way, it's supposed to rain and storm for most of the day.
It's not a hard choice. We have plenty of big-mile days ahead of us in Kansas and Colorado and Wyoming. No sense getting soaked and exhausted if you don't need to.
With no reason to rush, we don't. We sleep in, get breakfast with Jerry where we had dinner last night, and spend a few hours under cover waiting for the rain to pass. But with storms blowing through all afternoon, the three of us agree that we need to make the most of the break.
Riding through Elkhorn City, a town of just over a thousand people, I see three pharmacies. They sit in some the most attractive buildings in town. They are not hurting for business. Jerry tells us that as he was rolling his bike back up to the road this morning, he saw a bunch of syringes lying on the ground under the bridge.
I also see many buildings related to health: health care supplies, the health care clinic, and so on. But of course it's really a story of unhealth. It's about trying to deal with intractable problems the best you can, knowing there's never going to be a fix. This is a place of obesity at all ages, of hacking coughs, of hitches in steps, of trouble getting out of vehicles. And that's to say nothing of all the unseen cancers and respiratory problems and illnesses I'm too privileged to know anything about.
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Skinny dogs chained up to the underside of a rusty old shipping trailer bark and lunge as we roll past. Homes stand silent and abandoned, all of the doors open and most of the windows cracked or missing. We pass massive lots full of decaying vehicles and piles of scrap metals and a base layer of garbage spread throughout.
But when I take a more analytical approach, I see that most of the dogs aren't like that. They're fat and happy and maybe a little bored. Most of the homes aren't like that. They're faced with newer vinyl siding or brick, lived in and loved. Most of the yards aren't like that. They're tidy and mowed with care. And all but a few of the cars that pass us are newer and nicer than mine. Poverty is a big part of the story out here, but it's not the only story. It's easy to lose sight of that.
Multiple roosters crow as we crank up through the hollow that leads toward Lookout. Jerry notices how they're all big and beautiful, all standing in separate pens. That's when it dawns on us: no one needs that many roosters unless they're raising them for cockfighting.
This is not the West Coast.
We roll up to the Freeda Harris Baptist Center just after noon. They host traveling cyclists, but the guy in charge won't be around for another three hours, so we sit around a picnic table in front, watching the rain fall and fall and fall. An hour later Jim shows up, followed by Keith a few minutes after. They met on the road awhile back and have been riding together since. Jim was born in Denver and lives in Singapore. Keith has a farm in eastern Ohio. They're closer in age to Jerry than to us.
An hour after that, Kristen and I ride a quarter mile down the road to a chidboy. As we're about to get on our bikes and head back to the church, I see a man fall out of the open driver's door of a beat-up old Ford Explorer. He literally falls to the ground. He flails about as he gets up, trying to find the balance that has left him. I assume that he got his shoe caught up in the footwell and took an awkward tumble but is about to steady himself. This, it turns out, is not possible. He fell out of his vehicle and stumbles and sways around near the gas pumps because he is as drunk as anyone I've ever seen in my life during daylight hours. Not just in the context of driving, but in any context ever.
It's not clear how he's still functioning. He wanders over our direction, notices us, and launches into speech so slurred and heavily accented it's almost impossible to understand. He cannot form complete sentences. He cannot make sense of our answers to his nonsensical questions. He says that if he had money, he'd give it to us. If he had alcohol, he'd give that to us, too. The man can't stand in one place for more than a few moments. Walking a straight line would be impossible. He shouldn't even be outside, let alone with the keys to an SUV.
"Gotta look out for those ones," says a Pepsi delivery guy who watches the whole scene unfold.
He says it like this is entirely normal. He doesn't do anything to stop it. Nor do the half-dozen other guys standing around the front of the store who saw exactly what we did. Not their problem; not their worry.
Back at the church, I call the sheriff's department. But of course neither of us thought to get the plate number of the Explorer, so there's not much they can do. We just wanted to get out of that awful scene. Not our problem; not our worry.
And then it becomes our problem and our worry. Half an hour later that same beat-up Ford Explorer flies past the church. Just beyond where Jim and Keith and Kristen and I sit there's a left turn. It's subtle; not at all sharp. And yet we all watch as the right-side tires drop off the edge of the road and kick up rooster tails of dirt and mud. We see the car subtly swerve as the drunk fuck behind the wheel tries to regain control despite a field of vision that's all blurred lines and uneven horizons and hands that respond as if numbed by the bitter cold of a winter storm.
Our first response is something along the lines of holy shit. Our second: is Jerry still alive? Because we know that Jerry was on his way back from the gas station at the exact time that terrible son of a bitch was barreling down these back roads with only the slightest idea that he was even behind the wheel and not in the middle of some realistic dream.
It's two minutes of anxiety and anger and dread. But the dark cloud disappears when we see a smiling man in a yellow rain jacket on a goofy looking bicycle roll into our field of view, blissfully unaware of the horrible fate he may have avoided only by a matter of moments or feet.
"Wanna try some of this chocolate milk I got?" Jerry asks, as sweet and kind and easy-going as always.
I don't say anything. All I can do is wonder, Did that bright yellow rain jacket save his life?
We're still processing all that's just happened when Greg shows up. He's an older guy who is the director of the center and the pastor at a Baptist church up the way. After unlocking the front door, he gives us a rundown of the place.
"We built it back in the eighties to give kids a place to go and have fun, and to give people a place to get together. And then we thought, Why not let the travelin' cyclists stay in here? So that's what we do. Y'all are welcome to anythin' in here. Ya can set up down here on the floor, or upstairs; we have some beds up there. We got bathrooms and showahs down here. Anythin' in the fridge you find, you can have it, long as it doesn't have someone else's name on it. You can use the stove and all that if ya want."
He goes on.
"If ya need ta make a call, use the phone. Local is fine. Long distance too, even ta Washington state, we got a callin' plan for that. If there's any kinda parts or supplies ya need, let me know and we'll see what we can do. I'm sorry we don't have a washer and a dryer for all ya wet clothes. That's the one thing we don't have. Now the important thing ya gotta remember is that when I leave I'm gonna lock the door, and I'm gonna be gone til about nine, and I'm the only one with a key. Okay? But if ya do get locked out, even if it's midnight, even if it's the middle of the night, just come on ovah to the yella house and knock on the door and I'll let ya back in."
Greg is one of the most generous people I've met, and I've met many in the last few years of traveling like this.
Someone asks him how he ended up in Lookout, if he was born here. He wasn't; he's lived in many places over the years.
"But this is where we put down roots. This is where we raised our kids."
He pauses for the briefest moment.
"And where we buried 'em, too."
I feel a weight fall on top of me as I do the math in my head. This man is only as old as my dad.
"My daughter, she died six years ago," he says. "She died in a car accident. My son, he was workin' at a school, as a janitor, and he was talkin' to the principal, and he got this pain in his chest. Turns out he was havin' a heart attack. He was forty-two years old."
He pauses for another moment, also brief.
"That was six weeks ago."
It's like the air is being sucked out of the room. Here in front of me is this man, so kind and generous and caring and trusting and good and rich in faith, telling us about the most important people in his life being torn away from it forever. All of the work he's done for his congregation, for his community, for the thousands of bicycle travelers that have passed through here in the last thirty-five years — none of it could keep these terrible things at bay.
Life is not fair. But sometimes life is so goddamned unfair.
"We feel our sadness from time to time," he says a moment later. And then he moves on.
I cannot imagine. I hope I never have to.
Rain lashes down on the sheet metal roof and walls all afternoon and evening and into the night. At many points I look around the giant room at nothing in particular. I don't know what to make of where I am right now. This place, it brings with it such wild swings of feeling and emotion. It's so beautiful and so ugly. The people are so wonderful and so terrible. It's so safe and so dangerous.
We rode thirteen miles today, yet I go to sleep exhausted.
Today's ride: 13 miles (21 km)
Total: 606 miles (975 km)
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