This was not my first bike. I don’t remember anything about my first bike, except that I rode it around the vast weedy parking lot of an abandoned amusement park. My father would haul us kids out there every now and then to give us riding lessons in a place safe from cars. He would pull each bike from the back of the truck, hold it steady while one of us clamored aboard, and then give us a gentle push so we could pedal up to balancing speed without falling over.
I don’t remember how many times he did this, but I do remember one of the last times, when I clamored over my bike, put my foot on the pedal, and pressed down. I thought my Dad had his hands on the back of the bike and was steadying me, but he was actually turned around and hauling out another bike. He saw me take off and let out a whoop of happy encouragement. “Look at you, you started all by yourself!” Astonished, I turned my head and smiled, wobbled slightly, and then kept riding.
I don’t remember what happened to that bike but a while later it was replaced with that beast you see above. A single-speed BMX with kid-friendly upright handlebars. To brake, you pushed the pedals in reverse. I was delighted to have my own bike, but what really lit up my eyes was how shiny it was, like a gleaming metal space robot, big enough for me to ride around and pretend I was a rocket.
I remember that it seemed to weigh a ton. I remember not caring. I remember crashing it dozens of times, mostly while trying to do jumps. Plenty of holes in my pants and skinned knees. I remember riding it up and down the patchy gravel road near my house endlessly, standing up in the pedals to grind slowly up the biggest hill. It gave me a sense of personal freedom and mobility that encouraged my already developing habit of quiet, semi-random exploration, inside and out. It was easy to get around on a bike, and easy for me to think about things while riding.
8 years old and ready to roll!
I rode it for years. I don’t remember what happened to it, but it was probably stolen one day after I rode it to elementary school and didn’t bother to lock it up, one too many times. After that I got a larger bike with gears and handbrakes, but it was awkward and I didn’t know how to maintain or adjust it properly. It got covered in rust and it too was eventually stolen. For a while – years perhaps – I didn’t have a bicycle at all.
Then in my last year of high school, one of my sister’s boyfriends sold me his old bike. He’d assembled it from mail-order parts, using a Bridgestone mountain bike frame as the foundation. The components were all excellent, and his price was extremely low.
With that bike, I finally started paying attention to basic maintenance. I learned how to change a tire, how to adjust brakes, and so on. I rode it sporadically for about ten years, but for big chunks of time it just sat in the weeds of the back yard, leaning against the side of the house.
Then things got serious. I began to spend a lot of time working behind a desk, which starved me for exercise, and the thought of sweating on weight machines in a gym felt depressing. I hauled out the bike and started commuting to work, once or twice a week. It was ten miles through dense urban sprawl. I stayed late at work so the return trip could happen at night, when the air didn’t stink so much.
That got me familiar with long rides, in a way I’d never been before. And then, one day at my workplace, a man walked on stage and unveiled a device that would rearrange the world: The iPhone. I got one for free. In just few months I found a way to attach it to my bike.
Now I had a way to stay connected and socialize, while pedaling far afield. On the weekends I took trips way up into the San Jose hills, and sometimes over them and down into Santa Cruz. I stuck bags on the bike to hold sandwiches and extra clothing. I installed different pedals and gears. I got a generator so I could go for hours in the dark. It was exercise and adventure, with music and audiobooks and texting and phone calls. It was glorious.
Somewhere in there it moved from a hobby to an obsession. The idea of a multi-day tour, with a tent and sleeping bag, snuck into my mind and began quietly rearranging the furniture.
Just before I was set to embark on my first tour, I got a recumbent. It was a total impulse buy. A co-worker was selling his, and gave me a test ride, and in two minutes I was hooked. It was the bike for me. In a few weeks of frantic adjustment, the recumbent was kitted out for my first major tour, and off I went, starting at Crater Lake and zig-zagging into the middle of Idaho.
As I write this in 2023, I have ridden that recumbent and its successors at least fifteen thousand miles.
Got ambitions to go bicycling all around the world? Got fond memories of playing the Carmen Sandiego games on your old Apple II computer with the fuzzy color monitor? Well I sure do, on both counts!
I put these slide shows together from the original games, just following my sense of nostalgia for an afternoon, and when I was done I realized they could serve as hyper-ambitious checklists for bicycle touring.
“Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego” from 1985:
Currently I can only claim London, New York, and Reykjavik, and I feel pretty accomplished already.
Update: As of June 2023, I can also claim Paris.
“Where In Europe Is Carmen Sandiego” from 1988:
I built this slide show to run a little slower, so you stand a chance of reading the scattershot descriptions on the right. On this list I can claim Reykjavik (again), Amsterdam, Brussels, and Copenhagen.
Update: As of July 2023, I can also claim Edinburgh and Luxembourg.
There’s a wilderness of land and people out there. More than anyone could know. And then there’s this other wilderness, almost entirely decoupled from the first one, that exists in people’s heads. It’s made of shorthand summaries and untested assumptions about the first wilderness, and it’s cramped and twisted like a funhouse ride and teeming with deranged fictional characters.
People who have done some traveling across the first wilderness – especially if it’s for fun – just love to creep into conversations and point out features of the second wilderness, all the time believing they are saying something meaningful, accurate, and wise about the first. They sorely want it to be true. Sometimes, sounding knowledgeable in the power play of the conversation at hand is what matters. We all love to play the wise mentor role.
This is how you get twenty-something know-it-alls at parties who say stuff like:
“Seattle is just a worse version of San Francisco.”
“People from Missouri are bigots.”
“New York is gross.”
“Everyone in Paris is so rude!”
“There’s more to do in Los Angeles than anywhere else.”
“All these new people moving to Austin are ruining the place.”
“People in Italy really know how to live.”
“Watsonville is full of Mexican illegals and if you go there you’ll get stabbed.”
(That last example may seem especially upsetting, but unfortunately, the inner wilderness is a place that can foster opinions that are not just pointless, but vicious as well.)
I know about this because I’ve caught myself doing it many times. It’s very tempting to point out some very personal, very subjective chunk of my own second wilderness and declare that everyone else will see exactly the same thing if they just go where I did. I keep trying to rein myself in, and talk about statistics instead, or give purely logistical advice.
But, paving the world around us with generalities and wishful thinking is a very human behavior. We do it to stave off madness in the face of an ultimately unknowable universe, because we are all far less capable of dealing with uncertainty than we want to admit. And sometimes our confidence needs the boost we can get by talking out loud, and we say something at a party like, “Oh I would never enjoy living in Canada.” … Conveniently forgetting the fact that 37 million people live there, and if they have a pretty good time of it, we probably could too. It would be no less honest – but far less flattering – to rephrase that confident statement as, “I’m mostly ignorant of how to enjoy life in a place like Canada and I want to remain that way, because I need to narrow down my choices for the sake of sanity.” After all, learning is work, and sometimes we prioritize.
I have to be okay with this, and so does everyone else, because we’re all only human. I really only bring it up because sometimes it’s very useful to recognize that we’re wandering around in the second wilderness – in the funhouse of our own assumptions – and if we just wake up a little and look around in more detail, we can find really useful connections, and gain new confidence. Every new place I go I’m astonished at how poorly I actually see things, and how much I lean on previous knowledge and trust that things will be predictable. I have to stop and go back, sometimes more than once, and ask “What did I just see? What did I just ignore?” and most important of all, “What’s being hidden from me because I’m a stranger?”
If you’re traveling, take a page of advice from a slow-ass bicycle tourist, and slow way down for a bit. Ask yourself a couple of those questions and give yourself time to seek an answer. Chances are, it will lead you somewhere way more interesting than the next picturesque monument on the madcap package bus tour you were offered by the tourist bureau. It was hard enough getting to that new place — so don’t forget to be there when you get there.
I woke up early, checked the time and listened to the announcements, then tried to nap a bit more. The captain’s voice blared out from the speaker on the wall inside my room, declaring that we all needed to be out and gathered in the hallways, and making my heart bounce off the top of my skull. No more sleep for me. In half an hour I was out sitting next to my bags in a hallway with only 5 hours of sleep.
I felt exhausted. I had to move my bags to be nearer a window and get cell signal, and from there I looked at maps and prices and found a hotel in a city 15 miles south of the ferry dock for a decent price. The weather report was good so I figured I would ride there even though I was tired, keeping the day from being a total waste in terms of ground covered.
When I moved my bags I accidentally left behind my Airpods case, and when I went back to look for it, it was gone. I double-checked all my bags and it was definitely missing. I threaded my way up the long hallway to the reception desk, passing a long stream of people exiting the boat, and asked an attendant if they’d seen a headphones case. I held up my other case to show her. She nodded, turned around, and pulled my case out of a drawer. True to that Danish sense of courtesy, someone had found the case and walked it all the way over to the lost items desk. Back home in Oakland, someone would have just jammed it in a pocket and strolled away.
Thank you, kind stranger who found these, wherever you are!
You need a vehicle like this, in case you need to, like, run over a beer can in the road or something.
I had to stand around for a long time waiting for cars to move, since me and the other cyclist had been boxed in by three very long tour buses parked too close for a bike to squeeze between. I moved my bike several times to make space for the buses to turn, and the other cyclist followed my lead. Finally I got a gap in the outgoing traffic, and I was down the ramp and in Denmark.
It was a pretty grand entrance, actually. The first thing I saw beyond the ship was a busy staging area full of moving vehicles, then a procession of metal cylinders in the distance, disappearing up past the ceiling of the cargo bay. When I emerged I saw that each cylinder was the trunk of a gigantic wind turbine, the blades gracefully rotating as flocks of birds sailed between them. Then the shadow of the boat ended and I felt a wash of warm sun all over my face and arms — the first I’d felt in weeks. I was so distracted I had to pull the bike over into a cargo stacking space and just hang out there, absorbing sunlight, for ten minutes. I also took the time to remove my sweater. Wouldn’t be needing that…
The wind gently guided me onto a side-road, and after only a few minutes I was well away from the ship and moving into town. I was starving so my first stop was a little cafe. The woman behind the counter had light blond hair and a deep brown tan. She reminded me of being a kid at the beach in California, running around in Junior Lifeguards class with all the other little tan blond kids. I settled down at a table outside in the sun, and ate a massive open-faced sandwich and most of a mocha.
Back on land that can grow vegetables! Eaten open-faced, of course.
Back on land that can grow vegetables! Eaten open-faced, of course.
As I ate, I chatted with my Mom and gave my impressions of the country, and learned a bit of family history.
Me
Wow, Denmark is as amazing as I remember it for biking… Bike lanes in many places, extremely polite drivers, nice and flat, and SUNSHINE!!!!
A 70 year old man held the door for me at the cafe I visited, since I had bike bags in my hands. I just saw two women in their 80’s out for a walk together with sticks and a walker, and both waved and grinned at me.
Mom
That’s how I remember the people too! Friendly, slightly reserved, and very polite! I believe “gracious” is the best word.
Me
Good word!
Going from extreme hills and 90mph winds to this is quite a shock. Camping in the Faroe Islands weather would have been a disaster, but there are campsites all over Denmark, more than anywhere else I’ve seen. I wonder if grandpa got an interest in camping from memories of Denmark? Or was he too young?
Mom
Your grandad was only five when they came here, so I doubt it.
Me
Hmm, well perhaps even at the age of five he had some interest in camping already cultivated.
Mom
Part of his growing up was in San Francisco very near Golden Gate Park where he spent a lot of time. Later there were many trips to Muir Woods.
Me
I did not know that!
Mom
Also, my uncle Happy, Denny’s father, was in the class above my mother at Berkeley High, so later they must have lived in Berkeley.
Me
I assume Berkeley is where grandpa met grandma?
Mom
I think so. Mother had a friend Essie in her dance troupe who was his cousin, so it was through her that they met.
Did you visit Copenhagen the last time you were there? That was where your grandad was born.
Me
It’s on my itinerary! I fly out from there.
I was now both nourished and totally wired, and it was time to ride. The Danish countryside did not disappoint, and I stopped constantly for photos.
It was wonderful. A enchanting reminder of just how relaxing and healing a bike ride can be. The sun warmed me, the air was fresh, the wind was behind me, the hills were gentle, the cars were shockingly polite and no one was speeding, and there were nice separated bike paths and birds and farm animals all around.
I stopped near a field and saw a mound of apples, left out for horses and cattle to find, and picked a few out for myself.
I sliced it with my pocket knife and used the backpack as a kitchen table, and stood there eating perfectly ripe apple by the side of a field on a quiet country road for half an hour.
I don’t care who you are, I could convert you to love bicycle touring in one week by getting you a long-wheelbase recumbent bicycle and putting you at the northwest end of Denmark, and giving you a phone and a sweater and telling you to cycle to the southeast corner. By the time you arrived you would be in such a state of nourished relaxed sun-tanned bliss that bicycle touring would forevermore be part of your life.
I also passed through a bunch of little towns. I felt very slightly disoriented by the transition between houses and countryside, and when I realized why I laughed to myself: I come from a place where farmland is in one region, and communities are usually pressed together in another. Mostly because of the presence of suburbs defined by the automobile, but also because parcels of farmland are generally bigger back home, with the houses on them set way back from the road.
There are parts of California where one can cruise from farmland to houses to farmland in the space of a few miles on a bike, but they aren’t typical. I was getting the impression that in Denmark, it’s like this by default, everywhere outside major cities.
I learned later on that this is the pattern in the north of Denmark, but suburbs and sprawl appear as one goes south, making the experience more like California.
Also, you know how I could tell this was a low-crime area relative to Oakland? Two things: Unlocked bicycles are everywhere, and even the young women out jogging alone look up and smile hello as I ride by.
One woman was out walking her dog, and she saw me and made her dog sit down on the grass next to the sidewalk so I could pass more easily.
I saw people out and about, but even as I entered an actual city, I consistently saw fewer people in public than I was expecting. Were the Danes still largely sequestered due to COVID restrictions, even a year and a half after the pandemic? Perhaps the vaccine roll-out was slower here than back home? Or was life just slower here?
By the time the 15 miles was done I was in fine spirits. The city had a quaint central area, and I took a bunch more photos, then checked into the hotel without trouble and re-fitted the bike for an evening out. From there I imported and sorted photos in a cafe while enjoying another tuna sandwich.
In spite of the lack of sleep on the ferry, I felt awake. On a whim I decided to see a movie. The local cinema was showing a recent American release, “Dune”, in English with Danish subtitles. I rolled the bike over and almost wondered if I should bother locking it to the rack or just leave it standing there like most of the others.
Everybody milling about with snacks, before the movie.
The movie itself was kind of disappointing, but I still had a good time. It was a very posh theater experience, and hanging out in close quarters with a bunch of Danish people felt oddly comfortable. They stood very near each other and made a low hum of conversation, sounding more like a classy dinner party without a band, instead of a bunch of strangers in public. It was interesting comparing it to the standoffish Icelanders I’d been dealing with. In fact, I couldn’t remember seeing that many people so close together anywhere in Iceland, except inside a few of the tourist-filled restaurants in the capital city, and the noise in those was appalling.
