the moment is there.

canada.

we are there on the couch, tangled into a ball. it is night. the lights are out, and only the faint glow of the city drifts in through the tall windows. she is thirty-four today. the first moment is an explosion. she is there, amidst the sea of people and the man pushing luggage, making his beeping noise {with his mouth} to clear away the crowd. she yells out, cries into my heart really, and throws up her arms. her white shirt and her brown skirt and her black shoes. we hold each other, and do not move. but it is now night. we have laughed at the airport, found ourselves waiting in the wrong place for the wrong bus, distracted by each others' lips and eyes and hands. we have ridden the bus with the slow talking man, and we have walked through the busy streets. oh the beautiful clutter of a city. {how terribly different from the desert.} we have walked to dinner and eaten wine and pizza, and sat on a small street that reminds one of st. marks place in new york. we {i} have eaten ice cream from some cafe, where a woman with the biggest of bellies scoops for me. i wonder if her child will be allergic to ice cream as i was. we walk. we ride the streetcar. we buy something to quench our thirst. we make our way back to the hotel and become one body of tangled limbs. we collapse onto the couch and breathe together. her arms around me, my hands upon her face, covered in her hair. there is nothing else in the world. i look up at her, and know the moment is there. it comes into me like air and i speak slowly.

"keri smith will you marry me?"

her eyes do something which i have never before seen them do. they come alive in a different way. she says, "yes." we fall into one another. we do not let go.

we spend the week celebrating. looking for rings. walking in the woods, and stepping in the mud. we lie on the couch watching movies. we cook dinner {the pasta with shrimp was the meal of the week we decide.} we have bacon with breakfast, and cook it to the perfect degree of crispiness. the tea is superb. we watch the mouse eat mookie's {the cat} food. we laugh endlessly. it is all a blur, and the moments come in now and then {quite frequently} and tickle my belly. it was, without a morsel of doubt, the best week of my life. we are engaged, and the joy flies from me like birds. it flutters across the sky and paints the world entirely new. and there is no way i can explain it all. no way. there are some things in life about which one cannot really write. i have been sitting here for some time now, trying to find a way to adequately explain this week of my life, but know inside that it is ultimately impossible. in some way, it feels so deeply mine, that i have no desire to share. this, my friends, is life. this is what it means to me. this love.

and then i am on the plane. where oh where am i going?

day 18 {only counting days on the road...i will not specify this again} cedar city to panguitch lake. 47 miles, 6500 ft. climbing.

i am a mess of fatigue. i slept only three hours after flying and flying and driving from salt lake back to cedar city in the middle of the night. i am a mess of emotion. i am so amazingly happy, and so terribly sad. i miss her beyond any capacity to explain. it feels so absolutely wrong to be away from her right now. but we ride. we ride uphill for 26 miles and i am a complete whirlwind of tired. everything is tired. i cannot quite deal with the fact that i am back here on this fucking bike, riding up this goddamn hill, a mere 24 hours after i was in a bathtub with my future wife. how does one deal with such a thing? we stop somewhere along the way to get water. it is some birthday party or something in some lodge. we stumble into the kitchen amidst stares. i fill my bottles and take a banana. they do not like this. they confront me, but i am too tired on too many levels to deal with any of this, so i simply shake my head and leave. we reach the lake as it falls dark and eat at a market. we camp. i sleep perfectly. my heart aches. lunges, but she is still so far away.

day 19. 65 miles. panguitch lake to somewhere east of henriville in the middle of the utah desert.

we stop in some little town after descending for 20 miles, where lannie {the man whoom we stayed with in cedar city} meets us as a guest rider on the great sitting for a few days. erin {his wife} drops him off and we eat pizza and ice cream. we fly off into the utah desert, the mountains of sandstone. we camp in the middle of nowhere and listen to music beneath the stars. lannie and i cuss at our useless cellphones, as we cannot call the women we love. the phones tease us with one bar of service, but it comes and goes by the nanosecond. it is hopeless. we sleep amidst knats and mosquitos. no me molesta senor mosquito. por favor.

day 20. 46 miles. east of henriville to boulder {utah}

i am slow. i drag behind lannie and mike all day. we find ourselves stopped at a gas station on a hill, with the sun dropping slowly. a valley. green pastures scattered with horses. mustangs. we see commotion of some sort in a field by a restaurant {one of three establishments in town} and give up on the idea of riding over the 10,000 ft. climb in the dark. and the night is all a blur of the perfect meetings. we meet blake who owns the devil's backbone grill. she offers her yard for us to sleep in, and gives us free dinner and wine. boulder, utah is a beautiful place. we watch the tailend of a talent show, and tell stories. we are on a large piece of grass, beneath a cloudless sky, on a blanket. it quickly becomes life without the bike trip through the middle of nowhere. we are in love with this night. i find myself, hours later, playing guitar and singing for a roomful of people in the restaurant. i immediately remember how much i love this. i sit about, telling people about my future wife, and my joy. we ride the mile down to blake's house and i go to sleep, while lannie and mike go to a party. i toss and turn. i wake and shower. call keri. we eat at the restaurant, whcih is a true oasis, and savor the wondrous breakfast, which blake gives to us for free. some humans, are so full of love and life and generosity. we are amazingly grateful for this. it is without question, the best stop of the trip thus far. it is filled with magic.

day 21. 48 miles. boulder to torrey.

we rise and climb the hill. we are joined on the climb by blake's friend margaret who is without question one of the greatest female athletes alive. she completed her double century in utah in 8 hours, 44 minutes. how? how, how, how? we make our way into torrey, planning to ride further, but the dark skies, and the continually growing gap between myself and the others, compels me to compel them to stay there for the night. we eat at some terribly expensive restaurant, where lannie has rattlesnake. mike and i do not embrace the possible karmic retribution of this. no way. we sleep in the desert after long payphone conversations to the loved ones. i sleep like a king, but begin to question why i feel so bloody tired and worn out. hmmmmm.

day 22. 52 miles. torrey to hanksville.

the day is shit. i simply cannot keep up with lannie and mike. not even close. for the first time since leaving home, i fall so far behind that they drift out of my vision. i miss keri and feel so alone. i wonder how people ever cross that desert alone, for i think it would ruin me completely. we stop at the most miserable establishment of the trip for lunch. later that night, as i huddle over the toilet vomiting for hours, i come to despise the place quite a bit more. the taste of thos disgusting beans, will simply not leave. we stop in hanksville, and i feel worse than ever. mike wants badly to press on, but i don't feel like i can. we sit about for a few hours, laughing with lannie and erin, feeling quite sad about his departure, but ever so grateful for his presence. our dear lannie achord is a great man. i finally confess to mike that i don't feel well, and simply cannot go any further. we stop at a campground and set up our tents. we shower and i call keri. my stomach begins to twist and turn itself into a mess of anguish. i feel dizzy and feverish. i lay on my back in my tent groaning. i come to accept that i have either the flu or food poisoning, and feel myself falling deeper and deeper into the chaos of sickness. and at some point it begins. i unzip my tent, and walk painfully and slowly to the bathroom, the firts of many trips, where i spend my night vomiting and shitting. the vomiting is awful. one forgets how violent of an act it is. i am covered in sweat. i am shaking. choking. the vomit leaves both my mouth and my nose. it is in my hair and on my chest. it is precisely the same color as the diaharrea. my face is littered with tears from the choking. it continues through the night, these painful walks back and forth to the campground bathroom. i lay in my tent, attmepting to find solace in the fact that i am here, and not in the middle of the desert. i think about my future wife and find pieces of grace amongst the disgust of sickness. i sleep maybe a half hour finally as the sun is rising, and i am weak. i am pale and unshaven. at some point, after the worst of the vomiting, i stood there staring into the mirror, wondering who i am and what the hell i am doing here in the middle of nowhere. why am i not in canada with her rubbing my belly? placing a cool rag on my head. why am i here? why am i here? this is miserable, this sickness out here. this is simply not the place for this.

day 23. 135 miles. {40 by pickup, 95 by motorhome} hanksville to blanding.

we rise ever so slowly, and i tell mike that i simply cannot ride. i am still suffering a fever, have not eaten in nearly 24 hours, and have no strength whatsoever. the problem is, that we have a stretch of 135 miles without services, and cannot imagine staying in hanksville for another moment. so again, we hitchhike. we cover the first forty miles in a giant red pickup towing a boat to lake powell. roger and his son nate, who wants to be a businessman. something has sucked the life from this young, just finished college man. he is half-asleep in his world. they drop us at an intersection, and i feel like hell. it is hot and there are no cars going our way for over an hour. and then it comes. it is an angel. a giant motorhome. we leap from the roadside and flag them down. they are dutch, and cold. he was really only checking if we were okay, when i began walking to the door of the motorhome saying, "let's see if we can get these babies in there." he doesn't know what to do. we load the bikes and gear. he asks us if we are going to kill them. we say, "no." the conversation is stilted and slow. i fall alseep. they drop us off at the first inkling of town and we rejoice, thinking that we could have been stuck on the roadside all day. we find a hotel. shower. i call keri. my mom and dad. i take a four hour nap. i go to bed three hours later and sleep another nine. it is mecca this hotel room. it really is.

and we are currently sitting in a hotel in blanding, utah. i push the tylenol down the throat, and nurse the belly, which still turns a bit. perhaps a short day. 20 miles or so, as the body still feels so very weak. i would prefer a day off, but we cannot imagine staying in this hotel all day. so slowly we will move. colorado looms a mere thirty miles or so from here. the vomiting has stopped, but the fever remains. damn. and yet the heart swells. as we near colorado, and grow closer and closer to being halfway across the united states, we grow excited. i listen to catpower covering the velvet underground. i listen to joni mitchell. i listen to louden wainwright. old smashing pumpkins b-sides. {la dolly vita} i daydream of the fall. the changing of leaves, and the wearing of sweaters. the holding of hands beneath the night sky. the discovery of ice. a wedding ring on a finger. it finally feels as if i am riding home now. this feeling is priceless. eternal. it means everything to me.

for more details, photos, etc, go to mike's journal. onward.

Posted by jeff pitcher at July 8, 2004 10:40 AM

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