May 19, 2017
The Most Incredible, Indelible, Important Era of Our Lives
The road out of Danville is a busy, noisy, four-lane piece of shit with car parts strewn all over the shoulder, flanked on both sides by fast food joints, cheap shoe stores, and factories that shut down years ago. There is no charm, no peace, no space for anything except trying to staying safe and counting down the miles until we can leave it all behind.
There are more flashes of lives not our own as the city becomes the country: long line of cars at McDonalds; rural estates worth a million dollars; a serious car wreck on the way to work; inmates in red jumpsuits climbing out of a white pickup truck, getting ready for a day spent picking up roadside garbage.
Our lives are talking to cows and dodging caterpillars and, hey, where did all of those dark clouds come from and why is it getting cold and windy and did I just see lightning beyond that hill? Somehow we fail to notice the huge band of thunder, lightning, hail, and driving rain headed straight for us. We pedal as hard as we can and reach Perryville before the worst of it shows up.
Lucky.
As soon as we roll to a stop under cover in town I hear a steady stream of air shooting out of my front tire.
Luckier.
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"Yew need to take that outside," says the young man behind the counter at the Dollar General to the old man in the overalls smoking a cigarette near the front door. "Yer gonna set off the fire alarm."
The old-timer says nothing, does nothing.
"He does that ever' time he comes in here," says the other cashier after the man leaves. "I tole 'im not to once. I won't make that mistake agin'."
U.S. 150 is the Dollar General of rural highways, predictable and busy and uninspired. Instead we spend the rest of the morning riding on the old highway. It snakes back and forth around its replacement almost the entire way between Perryville and Springfield. We ride side by side, waving back at the farmer who waves to us from the seat of his old blue Ford tractor while talking about how fast we could demolish a cinnamon roll right now.
Springfield has a pizza place at the center of its quaint downtown. Okay, we'll compromise.
"If it starts to rain," says the short-haired man behind the counter, who introduces himself as Chris,"You can pull your bikes inside and lean them up against that wall. And before you leave, if you need water, feel free to get some out of that machine over there."
I thank him profusely, as you do.
"Are you from around here?" I ask.
"Yes, sir. I was born here, raised here, went to school here," he tells us. "Now I own this place, I'm on the city council, and all a-that. Lived here all my life."
"Is there pressure on the council from people who just want the town to get bigger?"
"Well, you want it to grow. But you don't want to lose Main Street to do it. You see it in a lot of places out here, everything leaves downtown and it's all out on the bypass, away from everything. That shoe store, over there on the corner, that just opened back in April. And there's another place down — a couple more minutes, Miss Nancy!"
In between chunks of conversation with Kristen and me, Chris talks to the steady stream of people who file into and out of his shop — about grand-kids and donating to a local fundraiser and Little League baseball and what to do with three teenagers now that school's out for the summer. Soon, a group of four middle school girls and three boys pop through the front doors, vibrating with the energy and lightness of possibility found only on the first day of summer vacation.
"I suppose you know everyone around here?" I ask.
"Oh yeah. I known this one here since he was about this tall," Chris says as he leans over to the right with his arm extended toward the ground to about knee height. "I know 'em all. And they know that if they get in trouble, I'll go tell ya daddy."
This is not the edge of Danville that we saw this morning.
Kristen still feels a little tired, a little sick. Instead of pedaling out of town, we ride three blocks to the town's beautiful new library. We both head inside. As I pull out my laptop and start working, Kristen disappears from view. I assume she's gone off to check out the children's section or find a recent edition of the New York Times. Neither is true. She can explain:
"Place the testing strip directly under the stream of urine for ten seconds. Replace the cap and lay on a flat surface. The results will be visible between two to ten minutes."
In the first stall of the extremely clean Washington County Public Library women’s restroom, I count to ten while holding the pregnancy test between my legs. I put the cap back on and prepare to lay it flat on top of the toilet paper dispenser. But before my arm even bends downwards a plus sign appears in the tiny results window.
“No way,” I breathe. This was just a measure to rule out the suggestions that kept appearing in my search results of symptoms. I had picked up the cheapest test along with groceries for the next two days. The ninety-nine-percent-effective, lasts-for-ten-years IUD pretty much ruled this out as a possibility.
But the unmistakable purple cross remains in the window. For a few moments I remain frozen in place, staring at it.
I walk through the stacks of non-fiction and pull a chair up to Jeff’s side, facing him, sitting still while he notices me, finishes what he was typing, and pulls out earphones.
“Jeff,” I say, “I just took a pregnancy test and it came back positive.”
A look of wonder and happiness spreads across his face. His smile hits me and in that moment I realize all of the wonder and happiness this could bring. Then the expression fades into calculation: the slight furrow of his brow, a look off to the side, followed with, “What does this mean?”
What it means is another ride to Rite Aid, gagging on the smell of the cheese processing plant as I now analyze my scent sensitivity, taking two more pregnancy tests, and contemplating the rest of our lives from this day forward.
I pay for our night at the motel. The woman behind the counter tells me details about checkout times and continental breakfasts and parking passes but the words fall to the floor. An hour ago we were riding bicycles across a continent. Now that trip is over, done, finished. As the heavy latch of the motel room door slams shut with so much force that it shakes the mirror and paintings that hang on the wall, I wheel my bike over to the wooden dresser and lean the bike and all of my gear against it. Then I collapse onto the bed behind me. I turn inward.
Where do you get an ultrasound in rural Kentucky on a Saturday?
How are we going to get our bikes and all of this stuff back home?
Where are we going to live once we get back there?
At what point do I tell my friends and family about what just happened?
How much is this going to cost with our piece-of-shit insurance?
What if Kristen miscarries when it's time to take out the IUD?
Do we just keep on riding if that happens?
What if everything goes fine when they take out the IUD but then the kid is born with some terrible health problem?
What if the last unbounded adventure of our lives just ended earlier this afternoon?
After spending the last first thirty-four years perfecting the art of selfish living, how hard will it be to do the exact opposite?
I go over variations of every question, then come up with new questions, then go over variations of every one of those. It's all too much. I need to go somewhere, or do something, anything, to distract my mind. This is how I end up walking down the hill to the nearest grocery store and buying a king-sized bag of E.L. Fudge Elfwich cookies, which I pay for after waiting in line behind a heavyset child whose heavyset mother buys forty-five dollars worth of soda using her food stamp card.
Hours pass. I eat the cookies — the entire bag of them — while laying on one of the room's two queen-sized beds, having returned once again to my own world of thought. Kristen lays on the other, still lost in hers:
Part of contemplating the rest of our lives from this day forward includes researching what it means to be pregnant with an IUD. The possibility of removal depending on how far along the pregnancy has progressed, the risk of miscarriage during removal, the risk of ectopic pregnancy. I prepare myself for the worst. I’m not going to get excited. We even discuss continuing the cycle trip if the pregnancy ends.
But later that night it comes over me in a moment of quiet, away from the computer screen. I sit next to Jeff on the bed, waking him from a doze.
"Jeff," I say, putting my hands up to cover my mouth, my smile, "I’m getting excited."
As the initial shock of existential change starts to taper off, it's impossible not to. For every moment I spend thinking about the fact that the most transformative era of my life has come to an end, I spend another nine trying to wrap my head around the notion that the most incredible, indelible, important era of our lives is upon us.
Kristen is a mother. I am a father. And if all goes well, seven months from now we will welcome into this world to the most wondrous person we will ever know.
The great unwind, it turns out, has only just begun.
Today's ride: 32 miles (51 km)
Total: 861 miles (1,386 km)
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WhoooooooHooooooooo!!!! Congratulations!! I had a hunch this might be what caused your bicycle adventure to end. What a great reason to end it though. I am so very happy for you two. There is absolutely nothing better than having your own child. It changes you forever. I wish for you that the pregnancy and delivery go well. You will have to continue to at least take short bicycle trips so that we all will get to see the three of you periodically. Please keep in touch with your readers. Have a Merry Christmas and an absolutely wonderful 2018!
Sherry Lang
6 years ago
6 years ago
All the best to you and yours.
6 years ago
One of the only pieces of parenting advice I've taken the effort to remember is the idea that if you want your kids to live a passionate, interesting life, they need to see their parents doing the same. We aim to do that the best we can.
Great to hear from you.
6 years ago
None of our three children were "planned".
Now you should start looking at trailers, Wee Hoos, Tag Alongs etc
Mike and Mary
6 years ago
It's a small Kentucky-based chain that started not too far from where I'm from.
Now that I'm moving back to KY, maybe there will be one nearby!
5 years ago