First Day Exploring Paris

I heard Nick leaving in the middle of the night, to catch his flight down to Portugal. The bike would be staying here until our paths crossed again in a few weeks for the journey to Edinburgh.

I fell back asleep and brought my total to 7 hours. Not bad. When I sat up and realized the sink and bathroom were up two sets of stairs, I decided I would sleep in the little upstairs room for the rest of my stay. I didn’t need all this mattress.

I took my first shower, and discovered that the bathtub was made of plastic and not anchored to the floor, so it tipped alarmingly when I reached for a towel.  The curtain didn’t go all the way around, so the floor got wet. That was fine because the floor was a shower stall: The drain of the bathtub went into a hose, which went into a shower drain in the corner.

Why does this AirBnB have so many plants to take care of?
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Why does this AirBnB have so many plants to take care of?

A plastic tub shoved into the shower stall. Classy.
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A plastic tub shoved into the shower stall. Classy.

It was pretty funny. I’d been in some really janky places all over America, and yet I’d never used a setup this janky. Even the bare cement showers in RV parks usually compensated for their brutalist vibe by being spacious. It was a fact I would be learning repeatedly: Physical space is clearly the most expensive commodity in Paris.

I also noticed a sign by the dishwasher that I’d never seen before, even in the most uptight AirBnB units of Iceland or New Zealand:

Why leave high-maintenance silverware in a flat you’re renting out to people on a daily basis? This makes no sense.
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Why leave high-maintenance silverware in a flat you’re renting out to people on a daily basis? This makes no sense.

This little apartment generates something like five grand a month for these people. What do they care if the silverware gets tarnished? Shouldn’t grandma’s fine utensils be somewhere else?

I shrugged. It’s not like I would be doing any cooking in this place more elaborate than heating up bread. Time to go see the city!

Heading out for some breakfast.
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Heading out for some breakfast.

I rode directly down to Ten Belles, since it was on my “must try” list, but it was exploding with people. There was one tiny free table and a long line out the door. I picked streets at random and wound up near the canal again. On the other side was a cafe named “Residence Kann” that looked interesting, and not too crowded.  They advertised a “mochacchino,” which turned out to be a lot like the mocha from Bluebottle back home. Very foamy and smooth, but with enough chocolate to make it a “real” mocha.

I decided I would eat at a different cafe at least once every day, and always order a mocha or the closest equivalent, so I could rank them all against my very severe and subjective 1 to 10 Worldwide Mocha Ranking Scale. “Residence Kann” got a respectable 7.5! They also served avocado toast, which is catnip to us middle-class wankers, so I got some.

This was the first place where I saw little signs on the tables indicating “no laptops”. I hadn’t seen any Parisians with laptops anywhere yet, so perhaps this was a city-wide custom and the signs are for the crude tourists (like me) to get a clue.

What? NO LAPTOPS? Lame.
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What? NO LAPTOPS? Lame.

Computers not allowed on WEEK-END, ya dot-com wankers!
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Computers not allowed on WEEK-END, ya dot-com wankers!

Computers are TOLERATED for a certain time. Otherwise, we Parisians hate you remote-working yahoos. Get out!
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Computers are TOLERATED for a certain time. Otherwise, we Parisians hate you remote-working yahoos. Get out!

I wondered if it’s also considered insulting to the waitstaff to be sitting there doing the thing that makes you a much higher wage than they do, while they bring you food and wipe up your crumbs. But surely being a waiter in Paris earns a good wage?

Also, I wondered if a similar anti-laptop rebellion was coming to San Francisco and New York…  If it wasn’t rolling in already.  Back home I wasn’t seeing “no laptop” signs directly on tables yet, though I was seeing polite signs on walls asking that people limit their computer time to an hour or so. Maybe the Bay Area is too aware that people on laptops account for at least half the money being made there, and no one wants to upset them…?

Well, the cafe is nice even if they don’t like laptop users.
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Well, the cafe is nice even if they don’t like laptop users.

I sipped my drink and felt fancy, and tried to conjure up a first impression of Paris, or at least this region of it. It was far more cramped and busy than I was expecting. The press of people was constant, and could easily get overwhelming. The importance of open spaces like the canals and gardens felt very clear to me.

I remembered reading somewhere that people often experience a kind of emotional shock, some time in the first few days, when they realize that the Paris they’re walking around is extremely different from the Paris they imagined. A depression sets in; what one might even call … ennui, and it lingers until they surrender, and adapt to the city on its own terms. Perhaps I was due for that kind of emotional journey in a few days.

I did a little reading, and learned some statistics:

2 million people live in the city of Paris. Somewhere between 7 and 13 million people live in the “metropolitan area” of Paris, depending on how you slice it. 68 million people live in all of France. So, as much as one fifth of all French people live in or around Paris. That’s a massively influential city.

For comparison: 8.5 million people live in the city of New York, while the entire state of New York has 20 million people in it. So if you’re “a New Yorker”, one third of the time that means you’re living in the city itself. This assumption by outsiders is so strong that people have to say they’re from “New York state”, just to make it clear that they’re not living in the city. Along the same lines, it would be plausible to change the name of Paris to “France City,” because when travelers think of France, they think of Paris. Meanwhile, four fifths of French people would have to start pointing out that they’re from “France THE COUNTRY, you dang tourist! Don’t lump me in with those urban jerks!”

I’m sure they would love that…

What’s intriguing to me is that, bustling as it is, Paris used to be much more populated, until the mid-20th-century when huge amounts of people migrated outward due to enhancements in rail and auto travel, and created massive suburbs.  Only in the tail end of the 20th century has the population begun to move inward again.

I took a scroll through the history of Paris, and found an epic of war and revolution going back many hundreds of years, casting a long shadow, even over the World Wars. It was one bloody synthesis of king and church after another for 800 years until the French Revolution, then a bloody sequel in the form of the Napoleonic empire, then a confusing run of coup d’états and collapsed governments, with modern reforms and counter-reforms beginning some time after World War II and continuing through the century.

Thinking about this, and based on what I was seeing Parisians do around me just with regard to things like crosswalks, public gatherings, demonstrations, and trespassing, I concluded that the French must have a strong sense of independence from their government, and the laws and order it tries to impose. It’s truly an inspiration for the American attitude that if a law does not promote the common good, the law should be changed.  Or in the case of Parisians, the law should be ignored, because the whole damn government is suspect, and may be collapsing some time in the near future anyway.

While I was musing over this, I had an interesting side-thought: Many of my fellow Americans have a strong aversion to talking about “politics” in public, or even in private when they’re not among friends. I suddenly had two questions about that. First: Why this aversion? And second: What does it even mean, to separate “politics” as a subject out from everything else?

As I packed up my stuff in the cafe and headed for my bike and another random ride around the city, I tried to conjure a few answers.

I figured that Americans try to avoid “politics” because it can cause friction among people who would otherwise just get along with the business of economic exchange, and relating to each other in their immediate context, e.g. at a baseball game or while standing in line at a supermarket. And Americans want to get business done, because they want to survive.

Put another way: There’s a subconscious feeling that peaceful coexistence with neighbors who disagree with you is more important than agreeing on how your government should be run, because you and your neighbor are right here face-to-face, and the government is way over there, potentially in another state, potentially thousands of miles away. This feeling might actually be the reason America still exists as a single country at this point. But what is this “politics” that people are so averse to discussing? My take was, it seems to be something encompassed by “policy” but actually more specific: “Politics” to the American seems to be about the people in government, and the political parties they belong to, and what those people and parties are like, or what they endorse.

For example, the regulation of America’s border with Mexico is certainly a political subject, and people will discuss that – cautiously – while considering details like our shared sense of responsibility to take in refugees, our collective status as a nation of migrants, our desire for respect of the rule of law, and our desire to prevent human trafficking and the movement of narcotics. But, statements like “The Democrats want lawless chaos instead of a border!” or “The Republicans want to separate migrant babies from parents!” … That’s what we call “politics.”

There are a lot of Americans talking “politics” online, on television, on radio… But there are also a lot more Americans who find it aggravating and would rather talk policy. Sadly, those discussions don’t drive mouse-clicks, finger-pokes, and ad revenue dollars, so it’s easy to get confused about whether they exist at all. At the same time, a lot of Americans have the luxury of not engaging with politics – or even policy – at all, because they do not belong to one of the sub-groups that the law is currently victimizing in some way. E.g. migrants, users of illegal drugs, pregnant women looking for medical care, people with non-Christian religious practices, and so on. So from one perspective, these people create stability, which is great … but from another, they create complacency, which is infuriating … and they need to be reached and told what their tax dollars are doing to other people.

Well, that was my quick packing-the-bike take on it, anyway. Next stop: Caféinoman, for a “detox juice blend” and a muffin.  (I couldn’t handle any more coffee.) They were both pretty good!

Looking around, I got the sense that most of the dozen-or-so people in the cafe were fellow tourists. I wondered if I would ever get a clear picture of what Parisians are like, separate from tourists. Probably not.

Next I decided to check out “Jules Verne Park,” which sounded cool. I dropped my muffin in the street as I was riding along.  Dangit! Well, food for the rats I guess.

“Jules Verne Park” turned out to be a kid’s play park, packed full tiny humans and larger humans chasing them, or sitting around looking exhausted. Not what I was hoping for. The noise made me crave a quiet space, so I rode back to the apartment, and used the remaining hour before my first work meeting to sort photos.

Three hours later my work meetings were done and I’d written everything useful into a page of notes, so I walked around the corner to the cafe Nick and I had gone to, and ordered their all-day brunch. I chatted with folks on the phone and did more snacking – what a life I lead! – then strolled to the apartment and pitched myself into the upstairs bed. My brain was full of French history, computer code, and the roar of a thousand conversations that had pressed in around me all day.

Would this be the Paris routine for me? Cafes, history, parks, work, and bicycling? If so, I’ll take it!

The Moselle meets the Rhine

Well, it’s not a great round of sleep, but it’ll have to do.
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Well, it’s not a great round of sleep, but it’ll have to do.

A pretty bad night according to my fancy watch. My sleep apnea mouth insert was not working right. Bah!

Reading the morning memes.
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Reading the morning memes.

I packed up my stuff relatively quickly, though I had to unroll the tent again because I accidentally wrapped my headphones and GPS tracker inside it.  Nick had commandeered one of my folding chairs and was browsing memes while slowly waking up. He looked so comfortable I decided I would leave him be and go take a shower.

Oh boy, shower time… Looks a bit grody… Here we go.
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Oh boy, shower time… Looks a bit grody… Here we go.

I’m keeping these on, thanks.
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I’m keeping these on, thanks.

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I wheeled the bike over to the restaurant just in case, but it was closed. The shower was alarmingly grody, so I changed out of my clothes while standing in my biking sandals and showered with them on. Still way better than no shower at all!

Nick packed up, and on we went.

Putting the bike shoes back on.
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Putting the bike shoes back on.

As a Californian, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how many brick arches there are around here.
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As a Californian, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how many brick arches there are around here.

I bet this town has exactly the right number of pets.
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I bet this town has exactly the right number of pets.

*slurp*
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*slurp*

I wonder if that’s what the baker actually looks like?
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I wonder if that’s what the baker actually looks like?

We found a bakery groovy bakery in the next town, and sat down to a solid breakfast.

Place the money on the right, get the snacks on the left!
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Place the money on the right, get the snacks on the left!

Gotta keep the butter cool.
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Gotta keep the butter cool.

Not bad for an all-you-can-eat ten dollar breakfast.
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Not bad for an all-you-can-eat ten dollar breakfast.

Just as we were starting to chomp, Nick realized he’d forgotten his battery back at the campsite, so I spent some time at looking at train schedules and moving photos around.

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So this is what that kind of wall looks like when it hasn’t been maintained for a couple dozen years. Hmmm.
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So this is what that kind of wall looks like when it hasn’t been maintained for a couple dozen years. Hmmm.

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After that we rode along the riverbank, absorbing the pleasant air and sun.

A few hours later we stopped for drinks at a roadside restaurant, just because we could. I got hot chocolate and he got a coffee drink.

We talked a lot about urban planning, about the paranoia his parents had about strangers and getting lost that was imposed on them by the suburban life, about how different it was when I was a kid.  We tried to think of ways we could adapt urban environments, so they were better for families, and turned people away from the madness of car-based environments.

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Remember back in the day when they would haul cargo upriver by tethering it to teams of horses? (Me neither.)
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Remember back in the day when they would haul cargo upriver by tethering it to teams of horses? (Me neither.)

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It’s hard to tell what’s going on here because it’s a bit rusted, but it looks like … that king is stabbing infants with the end of his sword…?
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It’s hard to tell what’s going on here because it’s a bit rusted, but it looks like … that king is stabbing infants with the end of his sword…?

Arrr the Monk Wino and Captain Craggy, and their friend … Mr. Duck.
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Arrr the Monk Wino and Captain Craggy, and their friend … Mr. Duck.

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We pedaled on, drifting apart and then back again. Soon we threaded into Koblenz, large town sitting at the juncture of the Moselle and Rhine rivers, and stopped in a plaza. There we found a tall monument depicting the history of the region.

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Nearby was a pedestal with a section-by-section breakdown:

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Contemplating such a massive span of time, and scraps of earlier conversations, Nick sat down to work through some things in his head. I walked around and gazed at the people and ate a snack.

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From there we squiggled a bit farther north and found some other interesting sculpture, eventually reaching a park right at the confluence of the rivers, with an enormous statue of Kaiser Wilhelm overlooking the slowly churning water.

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Tourists, musicians, and locals wandered around.

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It was a nice day for lingering, but we did have more ground to cover. We rode west, following the Moselle. Going was very, very slightly tougher because now we were headed upriver instead of down.

We stopped at a greek cafe up a hill, next to a train station.  I got gyros and wolfed them down, and Nick got some tortellini which he ate at a more sensible pace.  I planned a train ride for tomorrow to make up for lost time.

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As we were readying the bikes, I noticed a few tiny bricks set into the street.

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On closer inspection I got a chilling reminder of what had happened here before, and during, World War II.

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How do you make amends, as a government or a nation, for an act of murder that was so complete that there is no family, even extended family, left to return stolen property to? When they’re dead, and the people who killed them are dead, and the officials and the lawmakers who were “just following orders” are dead by firing squad or rotting in prison, and your bombed-out, ruined country is now one enormous crime scene, how do you set it right?

I don’t know. These little bricks are obviously no compensation. I’ve done a fair amount of reading about what happened on the path to World War II and how it played out, but not much on what the Germans did afterward…

I made a note to do that, then dragged my mind back to the present, and the fine weather. The steep vineyards along the river were ridiculously pretty.

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It felt like a privilege to be here, during a narrow slice of history where things are relatively peaceful.

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As I passed through a quiet intersection I heard a kid’s voice coming from a side yard.  He said “Alahoo Akbar, reep reep, Alahoo Ahhkbarr,” and made a bunch of snorting noises like a pig.  I was confused, then suddenly realized he was saying this at me, because he saw I was wearing a bandana, and decided that it must be some kind of keffiyeh under my bike helmet, and was mocking me with a religious phrase he connected to them.

I felt quite incredibly offended on behalf of everyone in the Middle East, and turned the bike around slowly, and rolled back by the yard.  The kid who’d made the noises was still muttering nonsense to himself and kicking a soccer ball against the gate.  I didn’t say anything, but grinned rather intensely at him, and when he saw me he jerked back, then stiffly gathered his ball and about-faced to walk to his friend at the far end of the yard.  If I’d had more forethought I would have said something sarcastic to him in English.  Hopefully I at least surprised some caution into the little shithead.

The incident was unsettling, and made me very thoughtful about the degree to which I was able to assume that the people around me in this foreign country meant me no harm.  I mean, I’d known going in that I already looked very German, so as long as I didn’t open my mouth I could blend in; to the degree that a dude riding a recumbent festooned with too many bags could blend in anywhere.  It honestly never occurred to me that they might also assume I was Middle Eastern because of my freaking bandana, which is, okay, an exceptionally thick white cotton cloth with an elaborate pattern on it in bright red ink, but generally smaller than any keffiyeh.  Were Germans looking at me with some suspicion because of that?  Was the shitty rambling of this little kid just an overt sign of an internal bigotry churning below the surface of the adult minds all around me?

I passed out of the town and down a steep hill, then zig-zagged to the campsite.  The woman at the booth spoke broken English and was very friendly, though I also detected a strange note of nervousness in her demeanor, and I couldn’t help thinking it was the bandana again.  It probably wasn’t.  But the sense of discontent lingered with me.

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I looked for Nick on my map and saw that he’d blown past the campsite.  I called him and told him to read his texts, which he did.  He turned right around.  “Dang, I was just cruising along, feeling good.  I could have gone a bunch more miles today I think.”

I ordered a giant glass of ice with tapwater in it, and they brought it to me, plus a refill.  For that I was charged six dollars.  Nick hemmed and hawed over the menu and eventually chose a rhubarb soda, which tasted a bit like a carbonated sports drink but came in a very nice tall glass.

We chatted about cultural differences, and the presence of so much designer label clothing around us.  Nick pointed out that it was very expensive to get a drivers license in Germany.  I opined that it was typical of Europe to make rules designed specifically to shut out the lower classes, as if they weren’t allowed to exist.  I came to Germany expecting to find everything either the same as or better than the United States.  Better land, better customs, better laws…  Instead I’m finding that it’s a mixed bag, and some of the stuff they do seems outright crazy.  I thought crazy was a mode that belonged only to Americans.

We found an open patch and set up our tents, then I bought more laundry tokens in the restaurant.

Two 7-minute showers and two washing machine runs.
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Two 7-minute showers and two washing machine runs.

The majestic entrance to the showers and toilets. So grand!
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The majestic entrance to the showers and toilets. So grand!

Pssst HEY KID, wanna buy a smoke?
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Pssst HEY KID, wanna buy a smoke?

We loaded laundry into two machines.  Then we sat around organizing the campsite for a bit, then just reading our devices. One of the dryers ate two of my coins, so we consolidated. 

Evening at the campsite.
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Evening at the campsite.

By the time our laundry was done it was fully night, and we snuggled in, listening to the occasional bird calls from the swampy inlet on the far side of our little peninsula. It felt a bit like summer camp. Tomorrow we would wake up and go climbing around on ropes, and decorate pinecones to look like Mr. Potato Head, then have a sing-along around the fire.

How I Got Into Touring

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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!
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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.

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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.

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As I write this in 2023, I have ridden that recumbent and its successors at least fifteen thousand miles.

Same coffee shop from two years ago!
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Same coffee shop from two years ago!

Don’t forget to be there

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.

Island Pizza Run

Hooray for indoor amenities!

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A washer and dryer? Oh hell yes! I like it here.
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A washer and dryer? Oh hell yes! I like it here.

I sat around for quite a while in the morning, trying to decide if I should leave the AirBnB a day early to save time. Eventually I realized that if the decision was this difficult, I should probably be resting. It was raining pretty hard out there anyway.

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In the afternoon the rain cleared, so I stripped down the bike and rode to Joe Pizza.

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They fried me up a pizza, and a burger, and an order of fish and chips. I strapped it all to the bike and rode back through the intensifying rain, using the promise of a meal to motivate my legs.

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The evening colors were astounding.

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The food was still warm when I unboxed it: A decent burger. Really sad looking fish and chips. Frankly awful pizza.  But it was food, and I had a raging furnace in me labeled “bike tour metabolism,” so I devoured about half of it, then reluctantly set aside the rest for breakfast. As I ate I watched terrible Marvel superhero movies. Vacuous entertainment for my overdriven brain.

Tyler

Hey uncle, my grandpa says the dried fish tastes like seasoned cardboard. Or a real bad pork rind. 

Me

Your grandpa speaks the truth.