we will rocket the sky.

ryan adams. "la cienega just smiled;" currently my favorite song. sitting in a park outside the cedar city shakespeare theater, watching the students walk by. the pinkish-red hills off to the east, lit by sun. spiders with long legs, walking delicately across a man's tired arms, attached to a body with legs more tired than the arms. the spider drifts to the red bench and crawls beneath. oh, what a brilliant song. seek it out i say, seek it out. "raise my glass, 'cause either way i'm dead..." how strange it is to emerge from the desert, and a mere day or two later, the comforts return. the clean skin and cut nails. scabs that heal. hair that does not smell so poorly. food, from somewhere other than a gas station. oh, thank god. the laughter, a bit less maniacal.

so yesterday we rested. and rested and rested and rested and rested. and we are blessed. blessed with sun and a light breeze, and grass to lie upon and nap. black licorice ice cream at a drugstore where we sit to order, feeling lost to another era. a grocery store with terrible produce, which reminds me of how amazingly spoiled i am.

i call eterprise to rent my car to drive to salt lake and the far from affable gentleman tells me that they do not rent one way vehicles. i tell him this is absurd. i call avis. same deal. i call u-haul. far too much money. i call the 800 numbers for the rental companies, which proves useless. the brain turns. is there any way i can ride the 300 miles to salt lake by friday morning to catch my flight? possible, but doubtful. do i buy a used car and sell it when i get there? no, too risky. i call the cedar city travel beaureu and find my path. an airport shuttle from st. george {a city south of here} that will retrieve me thursday morning. ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

as we laze about on the grass, a woman approaches and asks where we're headed, the most common of questions these days. "maine." "are you staying here tonight?" we reply "yes." she offers her home and dinner and an evening with her husband and daughter.

oh, the gifts of the universe.

lannie and erin and the 18th month old addison whom is described as "grave." adorable, but grave. we walk to their home and pick wild raspberries in the back yard. addison's nose runs rivers. it drips from her nostrils, over her mouth, down her chin, and onto her chest. she cries, shatters the sky really, until lannie rides his own bike off to the hardware store with her screaming along behind in a trailer. we hear the piercing drifting away, as we chop spinich. for dinner we will have chips and homemade salsa, salad, and calzone. beer. it feels so amazing, to sit here in this back yard {on a chair for fuck's sake} and talk about music. bicycles. camping trips. fresh fruit. their friend paul is there, whom addison seems to be absolutely smitten with. she does not eat all evening, until paul feeds her. she stares at him endlessly with her endless blue eyes and puffy cheeks.

i call my mom to wish her a happy birthday, nearly missing it as i just can't seem to keep track of the date out here. she apologizes for leaving the phone abruptly days ago, but said that she got so sad, and worried and missed me so much that she couldn't take it. she wanted to cry out, "jeff, just come home...we'll go out and try on hats and have lunch like we did when you were ten." her love brings tears. oh how quickly we all grow, how quickly life runs by.

we sleep like kings. on beds in a house. we wake and have tea and coffee {respectively} in a kitchen. lannie has gone to work. erin, addie, mike and i drive up the canyon and hike for a few hours. the water is stunning. cold, cold, water, running down from the mountains. we jump rocks, and soak our feet in the running ice, the frigidity of it shaking the bones.

again, in the park. writing. reading. gerardo nunez arrives in the headphones. and i move north, which will send me even further north. across skies and borders and into arms. the bikes rest in a shed, awaiting our bodies. our lust. the pushing of our legs.

a highway littered with cars. 4 lanes each way. the first since sacramento, ca. i am amazed by the number of people on the earth. the number of places. i sit in the shuttle van from cedar city to salt lake, a van full of white haired women and a few younger by a decade. we talk about the strange culture of polygamy. the sickness, that they marry off the 13 year old girls to 50 year old men. nothing new i suppose, as it has happened for centuries, millions of years really, the world over, but it burns me nonetheless. feels wrong. i think about moving to canada, and marvel at the fact that there are people there too, living their lives. people, all over the earth, living their lives. loving and dying. suffering broken hearts. riding bicycles. the woman in the front seat, tells of fishing in canada with her one-legged husband. i want to ask how he lost his leg, but can tell that she will not speak of this. they caught halibut. 400 pounds of it. took it home for the freezer. "we got so damn sick of that stuff. my god. finally just threw it all away." she laughs. i do not think this is funny.

these women do not like the fact that i do not "walk with jesus." the woman with the hawaiian husband understands. sharon. the women speak of the traffic. they despise the traffic. why is there so much obsession with traffic? they also dislike the fact that i am moving to canada~ "no way...i would never leave the home of the free," the woman in the front seat with the one-legged husband says. the white haired woman to her right adds, "the home of the brave!" i shake my head. they complain of the road construction. i comment that they appear to be adding lanes to lessen the traffic. "why can't they do it at night?" they all chime in with a buzzing of "yeahs."

alas, how selfish we can be. the road moves quickly. my dizziness begins {i happen to have a rather sensitive equilibrium}. i will close the computer. watch the cars. listen to my growling belly. be patient. i imagine that man, hobbling along on crutches, the air blowing past where a leg once was. a knee and a shin and a foot. i grab my own calf and massage its tired muscle. it is a string, a path, a river unto my hip. it is all connected, all tied together like the days of the desert. a plane that leaves at 6am will hold this leg of mine. both of them.

we will rocket the sky, a big shiny mess of metal, that moves a great deal faster than a bicycle. amazingly fast. relentless. stunning.

the falling apart of two men in the desert, about which it is impossible to write.

day thirteen. 83 miles. {33 by bicycle, 50 in the back of a pick-up truck} eureka, nevada to ely, nevada.

day seventeen. 39 miles. east of minersville to cedar city.

the disclaimer of sorts:
let me first explain that none of these things are possible to adequately describe. no way. secondly, this post will not be broken up by the specific days, as it has all become one giant mush of time. a complete blur. hopelessly smooshed together.

it is now june 22nd, and i have returned to finish the unfinished writing, the gaps in the stories, noticing that the words herein don't even begin to convey the extremity of emotional/psychological/physical discomfort felt. plus, it is all a blur. all of it. i can recall exact moments here and there, but for the most part the last five days are all one day. one long and confusing day. a piece of thread, unraveled from the spool, spinning out endlessly before us all, without change. long and white. a path from somewhere to somewhere else.

alas, where is garcia marquez when you need him?

nevertheless, the reader reads. a jumbled mess. like the body and mind of this man. all twisted and turned inside out. "like wire come into the heart." ~ck

day thirteen. this was without question, the most physically challenging day of my life, excepting the extremity of several broken bone incidents. {though SOME of the broken bone incidents were much easier to stomach than this} horrible and atrocious and seemingly unbearable, mike and i are pushed to places of endurance that we have never before been. physical and emotional. how do i write this? oh.
i guarantee you, it is not what you expect.

we leave the hotel in the morning and notice the black sky. black. it looks quite a bit more like an ocean than a sky. it reminds me of the midday darkness that fell over sevilla that one day so long ago, when i stood on the rooftop and watched the light crash down. and then we see the thunder. the white flashes of light high up on the brown hills. we stop at the "grocery store," the walls of which are covered in large animal heads {75?} and a few complete specimens, to buy garbage bags to protect our things from the forthcoming rain. we stand out front bagging things. computers, phones, cameras, sleeping bags, a few items of clothes. we feel smart. we feel as though on this day, we will be victorious. we will conquer the foul mood of the earth. we feel invincible with our black plastic bags and our smart little brains. oh, but we are incorrect. amazingly incorrect.

so we begin the climb out of town. the rain falls. it is light at first, and we laugh at the brilliance of our rainjacket selections. we giggle. compliment one another's color selections. jeff in a pale green, and mike in a muted but shiny yellow. we stop to add/remove layers at the top of the hill three miles in, as the rain has increased a bit. i put on my legwarmers and gloves. mike puts on another shirt beneath his jacket. we carry on. the rain increases. the drops grow in size. everything gets worse. we make it to the summit and put on our headlamps and red flashing lights in the back. they blink.

^&*$%(^&%@ *&$@*&%@*$ *&@^$*&^$@ (@$*&@^$&*

it becomes virtually impossible to see as the rain falls harder. highway 50 is not designed to accept water in the desert. it is a floodplain. we ride through 6 inches of water. we grow more and more wet by the moment. the rain becomes ice. hail. the hail drops are large. peanut sized. they hurt. i fall into a state of mild despair, as i realize that the rain is not going to stop, but will instead grow worse, steadily by the moment. the headwind remains. my brain spins. our panniers and bodies are soaking wet. at somewhere around mile 30, i begin to to the math to ascertain how much longer it will take us to get to ely. it is nearly 4 in the afternoon, and we have another 53 miles to ride in this hailstorm. uh-oh. we're fucked. simple as that. we are moving at a pace between 8 and 10 mph which puts us there somewhere between 9 and 10pm without lunch or any breaks. this is unacceptable. impossible. dangerous. mike and i pull over and discuss the gravity of our situation. though mike is reluctant, i convince him that we absolutely MUST hitchhike for a ride. it is the only release from this situation. freedom. we are also somewhat afraid of being struck by lightning, as irrational as that may sound.

and then comes the real pain. at mile 33, a white truck finally pulls over. we rejoice. we are saved. the man steps from the truck, laughing nervously at the crazy guys riding their bicycles through the nevada desert, in the middle of a hailstorm. he feels bad for us. his heart is enormous. i can tell. we lift our monstrously heavy bikes into the back of the truck, which is full of construction gear {ice chests, duffle bags, tools, etc.} and attempt to figure out just where we will sit. there is no room in the cab, as it is full of people. we smile, and tell the man that we are imminently grateful, and we will be fine riding outside in the back, which in hindsight was completely absurd. we feel as though we are imposing a bit, and thusly DO NOT put on any more clothing. we climb in the back amongst the things, and fight to create a place for our bodies. my left leg is bent at the knee, and resting on an ice chest, while i squat on my right leg. by the end of the ride, my right leg is shaking as though i am having a seizure, which i may have been close to as a matter of fact.

the truck pulls away from the side of the road, and we begin laughing at the situation. this is where, the reader must keep in mind that we are at an elevation of nearly 7000 ft. in a hailstorm. it is so fucking cold, it is amazing. we are on a boat in the middle of the norse sea, but we are riding in the back of a pickup truck in shorts. i cannot really describe the physicality of the situation. i can only describe the mental places that i was forced to visit. my seating position was the most uncomfortable seating position i have ever experienced, but i could not move, as the weight of my bicycle was pressing up against me with great force the entire time. if i moved, i was afraid that the bike would break my ribs {yes the force was strong enough to make that concern valid} and crush my lungs, leaving me dead in the back of this stranger's truck. mike would not have been able to tell that i was dead, as i had to hunch forward, crunching down as tightly as i possibly could, so that the hail would not attck me. there were times {twice?} when i raised up for some reason or other. i would estimate that this man was driving between 80 and 90 miles an hour, which meant simply that i was pelted with hail at speeds of approximately 100 miles an hour including the headwind. i cannot describe how painful this was. and it just kept getting worse. i began to shiver violently. my entire body shaking. i have never in my life, been anywhere near this cold. i kept telling myself not to cry, as that would not help me at all. i did not cry. i began speaking to myself. speaking to keri. my mom and dad. christian. my dead grandfather. i stared at the ice chest. i tried to sing songs to hold my mind together. i began to worry about hypothermia. in hindsight, i still believe that this was a valid concern. i began to think about frostbite. amputation. i am not exxagerating or joking. i considered my options to attempt to rectify my miserable state. where is my fleece? could i possibly get it on? shit. it is in the pannier that the bike is laying on. what about my sleeping bag? what if i could undo the bungee cords, open the bag and pull it down over my head. hmmmmm. i extend my arms, but realize that i would have to stand to reach it, which would most certainly send me flying from the truck into the arms of death. the only other time in my life, that i have felt my mortailty come this close to the precipice, was when i found myself staring at the mountains in some giant lake, attempting to swim another mile when i was certain i would drown. "doggy-paddle." it is an absolutely terrifying experience. and while i type, i know that it must ridiculous that i was pondering my death in the back of a pickup truck, but i just ask you to trust me. really.

my mind went in and out of moments where i felt strong and moments where i felt weak. i was afraid that i would fall asleep and never wake. a coma. i spoke spanish to myself. sang a spanish children's song about mosquitos. "no moleste mosquito, porque este mosquito es mio." i made up my own song about ice chests. i yelled out. "fuck!" "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" i begin to ponder trying to yell at mike and tell him to tap on the windshield, asking the guy to stop. how much longer can i take it? and then a moment of genius. i remember that i packed two extra garbage bags, and that they are within reach. i raise up, the ice attacking me from behind, and grab them. my intention is simple. i will open them, poke holes for my head and arms, and will thusly have two extra layers to save me from this hell. but of course i open the bags, and the wind catches them. it is impossible. they are black kites in the sky. after about three minutes, i get a hole poked in bag # 1, and try to put it on myself. of course the hole is far too small and all i manage to do, is get my left arm through, which means that now i have a big black kite flying off my left arm. i try again. bag # 2. i am quicker with the hole this time, and manage to get it over my head somehow, but then the wind catches it. i hunch forward in despair. i now have one bag flying and flapping from my neck, an oversized plastic scarf, attempting to pull my head off. the other makes it difficult to keep my arm down. i cry. i stop crying quickly. i find the strength to raise up, and ask mike how much further he thinks we have to go. i am screaming at the top of my lungs, and though he is three feet away, we can barely hear one another. "ten miles," he says. i fall back into my ball, and tell myself that it will be over soon. tell myself that i will appreciate the intensity of this experience for the rest of my life. i hum to myself. tell myself to focus. focus jefferson, focus. i could write about this for pages and pages. this place i went. but i need time. time to process and time to comprehend. the truck finally stops and we climb down laboriously, most of our bodies numb. we are laughing and shivering. we shake the man's hand, our own grip, a block of wood. unmoving. ungrabbing. we stand there on the roadside laughing for minutes as we scramble to get more clothing on our bodies. we talk about this all day.

we get a hotel for the night. we shower. nap. go to dinner in a disgusting casino/restaurant. we watch sadly as the old people gamble and chain smoke. we sleep. we rise, our things still soaked. the panniers have puddles in the bottom. we eat breakfast and ride.

i ask myself, "when, oh when will this bloody desert end? how much can one write about the desert? how many times can one shake their head at the goddamn relentless headwind? how many towns can we ride 64 miles to reach, 73 miles, 85 miles, only to find that there is no grocery store...only crackers and other such crap for dinner?" it is simply not wise to eat crackers and cookies when one is putting their body through such turmoil. "how can i endure another 140 miles of this place of psychological ruin?"

i run desert facts through my mind:

1. it is not very enjoyable to eat your breakfast in the desert sun. one simply wants to hurry up and finish, as it is too fucking hot. how can it possibly be this hot at 7am?

2. it is not very enjoyable to eat your breakfast while standing up to avoid the constant influx of bugs into your food. i have finally given up, and just eat them. one gives up on many things while in the desert.

3. there is no comfortable seating in the desert.

4. i am still afraid of rattlesnakes.

5. i am still afraid of spiders, especially ones that i think are mice in the dark due to their size. why, for the love of god, are there spiders the size of mice?

6. what is happening in my nose is miraculous. {the content specifically}

7. one should not have to rise as they attempt sleep, to remove several fist sized rocks from beneath their bed. it is frustratingly uncomfortable.

8. i despise nevada. gambling, and whores, and trashy people. there was not one town that we rode through {granted there were only six or so} that i liked at all. i found all of them to be awful. just fucking horrible.

9. distances in the desert are terribly deceiving. things are always much further away than they look.

10. the desert is much, much, much, much, much {etc, etc} longer than i thought.

11. i do not wish to ever ride my bicycle through the desert again.

12. to those of you that think i am complaining, and being unappreciative of my trip: ride YOUR goddamn bicycle through the desert for 9 days. there.

we leave ely, and ride for what seems like far too long. oh, the hope. the hope that lives in the name of a town. the amount of time spent daydreaming of the magical little cafes and restaurants that will live there. no. none. these simply do not exist here. we arrive in baker to find the grocery store closed, and one shitty little restaurant. with the store closed, we cannot ride on. we eat at the shitty little restaurant and ride back up some dirt road to camp. i walk downtown and call keri from the lone payphone. she is the light in a dark, dark room. her laughter, an angel. the conversation is at times heavy, as the time apart is seemingly unbearable. a sickness. i walk back into the desert and sleep. awaken to the relentless sun. breakfast. we fuck around in town four hours. writing. reading. eating. loading up on water.

we leave far too late in the day. 3:30 pm. what were we thinking? at some point during the day, mike fall apart completely. mile 26. i pull away, far away, a mile or two. i finally look back and no longer see him. i flag down a car {the first in an hour or so} and ask the driver if he might check on my friend back there. i can see down the road approximately fifteen miles {we have measured it...no joke} and see mike a few miles back rise and walk into the street. the car drives off. he is okay. i ride back to him. we drink coffee and tea respectively and ride on. we ride and ride, into the darkness of the night. cedar city has become mecca. our only remaining hope. the sky drops and the moon rises. we ride until nearly midnight, fighting up a ten mile climb. we camp. the desert is killing us. our spirits.

we rise and leave. it is only 30 miles to milford, nevada {the next town} but things get bad. the headwind is relentless. we are riding downhill at 9 mph. i fall apart. completely. i drift in and out of consciousness. i begin to count the lines of tar that intersect the pavement, fixing the cracks. i reach 342 without really noticing. i begin running a sentence through my head: "please let there be a payphone in milford. please let my credit cards work with it, or let the collect call work. please let keri be home. please let her answer." i say this sentence repeatedly for 15 miles. at one point, i shake my head, and feel exactly as if i just woke up. i am frightened. i drool on purpose. it feels interesting running on my chin. i talk to myself. i speak german. i say the word "strawberry" over and over and over in german, then in english. i am falling apart. i know this, but do not give a shit.

we reach the town, and it is as hopeless and miserable as all of the others. we sit at the gas station for hours. keri is not home. mike calls his parents and i hear him arguing. i try everything. i listen to music, which does not work. i write, which does not work. some man is now on the payphone. i panic a bit. i feel trapped. locked in a box beneath dirt. finally, she is there. she calms my restless heart. she tells me that the desert will end. mike and i know this, but we cannot seem to swallow the truth of it. somehow, we eat and ride on, with more hope in us. it says on the map that there is a grocery store in the next town 16 miles up. there is not. there is only a gas station. oh god, help us. we eat dinner at the gas station. the despair becomes funny. we laugh quite a bit.

the trashy people stand around and talk to us. to young boys {13 and 14} ask us questions for hours. "do you chew?" "do you hunt bears?" "why didn't you buy a quad {4 wheel drive atv} instead of those bikes?" we leave. i cannot describe the exhaustion with everything that we feel. everything.

we ride another three miles into the desert and camp.

we wake in the morning and ride through another fifteen miles of mormon crickets to our slavation. farmland. cattle and horses. humans. cedar city. i have not the words.

salvation i suppose. what else can i say? we leave the endless desolation and arrive in a city of 20,000 people. it feels like mecca. we get a hotel for the night and do laundry. eat in a restaurant for the first time in days. go to the grocery store. buy fruit. fruit fruit fruit. how much we of the west, the gluttons of the world, take things for granted. fruit. my god, the fruit i will consume. and now a break. we stay here tomorrow, look for a place to camp nearby, and wednesday i drive a rented car to salt lake, while mike does something else. what will mike do?

keri grows closer by the minute.

day eighteen. zero miles. what else can i say?

the endless desert

day ten. 58.2 miles. the middle of nowhere in the desert to the middle of nowhere in the desert. {20 miles east of fallon, nevada.}

i sit typing in my tent, feeling quite a bit less afraid than last night. it is this expanse of nothing that soothes me. we now find ourselves more in the middle of nowhere than i have ever been, and i am somewhat dumbfounded by the fact that we have ridden our bicycles here. i listen to a live recording of "ours" at the moment. stunned by jimmy gnecco's voice. my god, he can sing. have i said that enough?

so the air drifts into the tent slowly and gently from the west, cooling my sticky skin. it is amazing how quickly and completely sticky we can become. tonight we had corn tortillas, rice, and avocado for dinner; we lost the beans and cheese somewhere along the way. the geography here is incredible. we must have stopped every half mile tonight as we rode, the sun dropping slowly behind us, to take photos. we passed the most delapidated of buildings advertising "girls, girls, girls." paint falling from the walls and cracked windows. barbed wire keeping the protitutes in. some sick slavery out here in the middle of the desert i wonder?

the salt flats. the white ground, that crumbles and crunches beneath one's feet; it is stale merangue {sp?} the rolling, and twisting brown hills. it is shocking to me in a way that this exists. {it reminds me of the cover of REM's disc "new adventures in hifi."} it is bleak, and yet miraculous in its perpetual nothingness. i feel like the young boy in one hundred years of solitude, with his father showing him ice for the first time. this is all new for me. the endless road, and the sky. the clouds are wispy, but strong; their compostition like cotton sketches of jellyfish. yes, they have tails, trailing down beneath them. down, down, down into the floor of this dry sea.

we hike up off the highway, pushing our bikes laboriously through the sinking, crunching, salt-sand, and set up our homes for the night. it falls dark. black. like blue coal. the sky is shocking. it is fucking unbelievable. there is no way to describe this, other than to say that the stars reach the horizon, on all sides. i feel as though for the first time in my life, i can see the curvature of the earth. i feel infinitely humbled by this. simultaneously more and less afraid than i have ever been. i feel grateful for my existence. all of it. this experience especially. the people i love. perhaps someday, when i am 62, i will have the capacity, the grace with words, to describe this. for now, know only that it makes me cry, this place. this world we inhabit.

before the closing of the night {the departure to my tent} i walk up to the ridge, way off to the west to attempt cell phone service. {how absurd a statement no?} mike leaves his headlamp on until my return, to save me from getting lost in the desert. i simply cannot believe how dark it is out here. i feel as though i am stumbling about on the moon. another planet for certain. my mind drifts to the film 'jerry' and i wonder if going so far is smart. likely no. i stop, when mike's light is but a dim hint of something off in the distance. the memory of an old lover. faint. the cars up on the hill look like candles in a distant window on a rain soaked night. they flicker. i'm terrified of the vastness. the completeness of the dark. while i suppose it is the opposite of claustrophobia, the feeling of helplessness is similar. profound and overwhelming. i have never been in a place like this, and the beauty in being here with nothing but my bike, and some things that i can carry on it, is just fucking unbelievable. i don't know that i have ever felt so humbled by anything. well love, but nothing else. nothing else. not even the forthcoming sleep.

day eleven. 45 miles. 5000 ft climbing. the middle of nowhere in the nevada desert to the middle of nowhere in the nevada desert. where the fuck are we?

planes overhead. amazingly loud. military planes flying so fast and so high. my father would just sit here on the roadside all day, watching them explode through the jellyfish sky. it is frightening in a way, their endless and invisible power. mike and i ride singing. stuck on "ours" from the morning music hour. though we do make a conscious effort to conserve battery time on our computers, we have begun listening to music in the mornings and nights. this is a gift. a blessing. as the days roll on, i miss my guitar{s} and music so greatly. i feel a bit lost without making the sound. oh, patience jefferson.

our dear friend kenny says that the trip was conceived in passion, but that patience and persistence will get us to maine. true. so true.

so we continue to inch along through the desert with tired legs. tired, brown legs and red hands. this desert sun, is a completely different beast. sunscreen on the hands? yes sir. i will not neglect the hands tomorrow.

and tonight it is damien rice. "older chests reveal themselves, like a crack in the wall. starting small, they grow in time...and we all seem to need the help of someone else to mend that shelf with too many books...read me your favorite line..."

and then "the be good tanyas." {how can i think of anything but you, my beloved sender of songs?} yes, the selection is made on purpose for that reason.

so we stopped in a "town" called middlegate, which was the last of any type of services for 65 miles. this, my dear reader, is overwhelming. yes indeed. now "town," does not really conjure adequately what this place was. essentially, it was a few clapboard buidlings, housing a bar, a gas station, and a mini-mart, which mainly sold cookies and crackers. oh, the healthy eating of a long bike ride. the gas station was one pump. there was an old, nondescript brown payphone in a broken shed. the ceiling of the bar is covered with dollar bills. i have no idea why. we eat lunch, play a game of pool {which we are both quite bad at} and endure the cigarrette smoking of the people at the bar watching television. television. how miserable. we charge our computers and write a bit. the woman behind the bar asks where we're headed. maine. she suggests that we take highway 722 for the next sixty five miles, as opposed to highway 50. she desribes it as gorgeous. a creek that snakes along the road all the way up the hill and many less cars. wild, big-horn sheep.

this woman was wrong. period. first of all, i did not assume that "less cars" would mean 5 in 24 hours time. yes, we saw 2 cars. the creek, was not a creek, it was/is a creek bed, with no water in it. the small/short climb she described, has turned out to be about 4000 feet of climbing. as the sun dropped, we finally stopped for the night and set up camp, having nothing but crackers, and some nuts to fuel our ride to austin, nv tomorrow morning wihch is 49 miles from here. shit. though we do have plenty of water this time. no more of that nonsense. what she doesn't tell us, is just how amazingly remote this road is, how terribly removed from any inkling of society we will be, or the mormon crickets. the degree to which this is out in the middle of nowhere {how may times can i type that} frightens me. i think of many possible scenarios in which something terrible could happen. i am not so fond of living on this edge if you will. it serves to greatly increase my feelings of claustrophobia. a bright light, shining on the fear. i am immensely thankful for mike's presence in this moment.

so we ride, reaching exhaustion from climbing endlessly in this desert heat, we are constantly swerving to avoid these enormous crickets. they look as though they are made of some synthetic rubber, and are bigger than my thumb. they squeal, which is a haunting and unpleasant sound. creepy and disgusting. we try to avoid them, but frankly there are so many, that we ride over them now and then. the sound is awful. imagine stepping on a cluster of twelve snails in one cute little pile. we discuss the possibility of eating one and filming it for the site. "i am not that man," i say. "nor am i," says mike. after noticing that they seem to be carniverous as they are munching away on other types of bugs, birds, a mouse, etc. we ponder how long it would take for them to completely consume one of our bodies if we died out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. i say six. mike says five. they would swarm in the thousands, a busy street in a busy city, up on this hill that we seem to climb all afternoon and evening, without ever reaching the summit, in the middle of nowhere. have i said that enough? i think i would lose it out here if i were alone. i begin to ponder just why i feel comforted by the cars going by on the road which we earlier traversed. the other humans, be they strangers. should i be comforted by this? well, no matter, i am. we discuss proper procedure for saving ourselves if one is bitten by a rattlesnake after seeing a dead one in the road, flattened. about five feet long. goddamn. why did we come this way?

we eat and prepare for bed. it is currently 10:28 pm on monday night, and i will switch off the computer and find sleep. say goodnight to "the be good tanyas," who i listen to for the simple sake of missing she who sent me the songs. perhaps she will feel me out here listening. does it work that way? yes.

oh the music. oh the music.

and a quick diversion from the bike. i keep forgetting to tell you folks that there will be two above the orange trees songs on compilations coming out this year.....one is a will oldham tribute record that you can read about and hear a clip from here,, and the other is a wire tribute record which you can read more about here,. enjoy.

day twelve. 70 miles. the middle of nowhere in the nevada desert, to the middle of nowhere in the nevada desert {30?} miles east of austin.

the descent of great dissappointment. the premature ejaculation of descents. the not-so-great sitting. ahhhhhhh. we rise, climb 2 miles or so, and begin the descent. into the headwind. we then proceed to ride into a headwind for the next forty miles on that vacant road of nothing. a strong and miserable headwind on the wrong road. i should disclose here, the fact that while it is told when riding west to east, one should have primarily tailwind, we figure the tailwind to have comprised about 5% of our trip thus far. i am not kidding. 5% tailwind, 55% headwind, 40% crosswind. bullshit. can't we do something about this? we shake our heads over breakfast out here in the desert, as the strength of this wind, cuts our distance in half. we begin to grow frustrated. very frustrated. we climb into austin {another 1000 ft.} and stop for lunch. i find myself amazed that people live their lives here. we buy food and copious amounts of water again{6 gallons...can you say HEAVY?...at a gas station} as there are no services for 68 miles. this is beginning to grow tiresome. i want fruit. vegetables. something other than crackers and cookies really. we climb again {another 1000 ft} reach the summit and descend, commenting that the mormon crickets seem to be increasing in number. oh, just you wait jefferson. at some point before the sun falls, you will feel them splattering all over your legs, arms and face, as you ride down out of the hills, the road a moving path of these giant bugs.

fuck the mormon crickets.

just after the summit, you stop at a woman's house {instructed by her son john, who works in town at the restaurant} to fill your water containers from her well. john is a good man. thirty-four perhaps. big, like his heart. he smokes too much, but he knows this. his voice is gruff. he speaks of his dreams of going to budapest. please john, go. he has come here from vegas, to help his dad as he fights a losing battle with cancer. you think of your grandmother. your grandfather and his miserable decline into darkness. the death of his spirit coming first. you think of keri's mother, and wish so badly that you could have met her. laughed together. shared your love for her daughter. something shared. perhaps she can hear you out there, from wherever she spins. you meet john's daughter, who is sweet and has blond hair and blue eyes, and a "big girl bike," and loves rocks. maybe even as much as you. she collects them. you giggle to yourself about the fact that you have had to resist gathering rocks almost daily, as the weight is a concern. perhaps next time {will there be a next time?} you will ride a motorcycle. you climb yet another hill, and begin the descent. the mormon crickets grow in number and in size. their squealing is haunting. like the crying of a baby, its mouth smothered by a rag. two cats, fucking in a sealed cardboard box under your bed. the sound of demons as they suck your breath. yes, it is eerie and creepy and haunting and awful. but the worst part, is their sheer number. since the first mention of these creatures, they have grown in number far more than you {or anyone else for that matter} could begin to imagine. it becomes impossible to avoid them, as there are literally thousands of them every few feet. the road is absolutely covered. it looks as though the road itself is moving, as the majority of them are a deep blackish brown, though some are indeed a bright red or orange. you speed and break down the hill, crunching the entire way, their guts and parts flying up onto you. at first you cringe at this, and after miles and miles and miles of it, the absurdity and strangeness and utter disgust of it all, makes you laugh. where is david lynch? you must ride slowly, as the road is slippery with their smooshed bodies. your legs are stained with their blood, your glasses covered in their leg parts.

you ride on into the night, to near dark, so that you may camp without the burden of these crawling, swarming beasts.

but there are others...giant spiders, and scorpions {i think it was a scorpion} and rattlesnakes. you do not like rattlesnakes. you do although, feel calm out here at night. unafraid. as if perhaps your ancestors were from some part of the world like this, your fear living in the unknown of the trees. but this place, this vastness, lays its fingers into some ancient part of your history; your blood. you feel a certain connectedness and warmth. and now you will sleep. you will sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. your tired legs cry out. they say, "do you still love me? can't i have a day off." you tell them, "no. maine is a long way off, and a canadian detour {not by bike} looms {or shines really} on the horizon." there is some semblance of a timeline after all.

yes, canada. the arms of love, the most soothing of all things. i restlessly count the days.

day thirteen. 50 even. the desert. to eureka nevada {still the desert.}

#1. fuck the desert.
#2. fuck the headwind.
#3. i currently write from a hotel. yes indeed.

into it all we go.

day eight. 40.1 miles. kirkwood ca, to minden nv

dead birds on the roadside. flat on their backs, permanent sleep within. one in california, the other nevada. 30 feet apart. across the line. a post with a blue sign atop, explaining the history of the states. young cattle collapsing under their own weight, on their shaky-calf-legs. bony knees. perhaps the birds were in flight. the last rising and falling of wings, as they meet in a certain tree. the racing of love. sometimes, faraway love grows stronger by the minute, infinitely helped by technology these days. a man in a tractor spins circles beneath the road, beneath the tree, beneath the shining sky. the mountains that surround us. always. always, there are mountains. an older woman leans her elbows on a rusted, white, truck, a scar above her left eye. her hair, gray and thin. she too, has a sunburn. cigarrette lines. another woman, hair dyed red, all jumped up on caffeine, sells an oatmeal cookie to a filthy man on a bike in her tiny little store in the eastern sierras. the big semis tow someone's bright yellow house off to a new world. the closing of one chapter and the opening of another can bring so many things. such elation and joy. pain too. the driver wears a red cap. beavers scamper under piles of rocks by the water. children fish with their fathers. the motorcycles go by, the woman on the back clutching at the man. her chest pressed hard against him. envy. i see my own longing. midnight scooter rides in canada. rabbits in the field, brown like the earth, break left and right, darting in their cocaine way. i see the dust on the sides of my legs, which matches the barns. some of them. others are red.

clandestine and quiet, we are the seekers of a place to sleep. the sleep-seekers. truth-eaters. afternoon tea in nevada, which we make in a field by the highway. the spirits rise with the changing of states, the descending of hills. nevada. the beginnings of the high desert. vacant fields, the near antithesis of the sierras. we are flanked on all sides by mountains in the distance. the geography, is frankly staggering. i spin in my head, trying to soak it all in, to my heart. my brain. my blood.

a stop at the oldest bar in nevada in a town called genoa. we meet ed and donna and mike. we talk about travel and the big mountains. ed and donna offer a front yard to sleep in, and a shower in the morning. mike offers a ride out to their house in his enormous truck. the bed, reached my sternum. i am amazed by their trust and willingness to share. the size of their hearts and generosity. we arrive and play with 'precious' the pot belly pig. i walk through the fields before bed, quieting my restless mind. how is it, that the brain can sometimes impact the heart so quickly and strongly? sleep comes fast, but broken. i toss and turn and toss and turn, and begin to ponder strapping a full size, down pillow, on the back of my bike. we wake in the morning and ed invites us in. we do laundry and shower. he offers breakfast. he tells stories about riding with the hells angels, and getting stuck in calgary with some woman who was not his wife. his wife did not like this. he talks of his children and their worlds away from his. we play with the two bulldogs, one of which weighed ninety pounds and looked quite a bit like a seal. {see mike's journal} it was fucking amazing. when i told him i wanted a photo, he went inside and put water on his hair. combed it back. there is a great soft place in this man's heart. he wishes us well, and we are off. there is a sadness in the departure. i feel such an amazing amount of gratitude. it is painfully beautiful this gift he gives. and nevada moves out before us. flat. hot. another day.

day nine. 48.7 miles. minden nv to somewhere in the middle of the desert, past carson city quite a ways.

carson city is awful. deserted buildings, and strip malls. casinos. we make several stops for several things. mike acquires a new cell phone battery as his old one died. we have lunch and write a bit. we stop at a giant, i mean enormous, monlithic grocery store called smith's and buy food for the night, as there is nothing for miles. we carry gallons of water. heavy gallons of water. we stand in that parking lot of the store, charging our electronic devices {what a brilliant idea to bring the power-strip...and by the way, if you ever need to charge anything, most grocery stores have outlets mounted on the exterior wall. yes!!!} and applying "highly reflective tape" all over our bikes. all over. yes mom, i thought of you when i did this. we take tylenol as we both have bad headaches. mild fevers. and off. the sun high above the ridges to the left, throwing light, dropping it really onto the brown hills. the further we ride from minden, the more the hills seem to drop off. slowly disappearing. melting like ice. the cars begin to diminish, as the man outside the grocery store said. "goddamn, there aint nothin' out there fer days. you fuckers are crazy." we ride and ride, {is that redundant yet?} heads thumping. just after 8, as the sun has dropped behind the hills we pull off highway 50 and push our bikes 30 yards or so through the sand. set up the tents. how terribly strange it feels to be camping in a field of dirt and sand, the trees living elsewhere. not here. the wind shakes its tongue. we cook. rice and beans and cheese and chips and salsa. tortillas. just as we're finishing up dinner, the spotlight hits the open land and blinds our eyes. shit. we aim our headlamps downward, and walk to the cop, making certain to leave our hands visible. we can see nothing, save but the light. he approaches and asks simply, "what are you doing?" i reply, "camping. we're riding our bikes to maine." the expression on his face was priceless. confusion, and the complete opposite of suppport. we can see immediately, that he thinks this is a terrible idea. i begin to justify our potential illegality, when he cuts me off and says, "no it's fine, but there are a lot of wacko's out here. tons of 'em. weirdos. i wouldn't camp out here. no way." of course, we have no other option. until that moment, i felt calm and safe, having settled into the trip. a night without fear. alas, how quickly our minds can bring it back. he asks if we have cell phones. we say yes. he says, "well don't be afraid to call us. i mean that. there's tons of weirdos out here." goddammit. we stumble back to our tents, half laughing and half scared to death, for it is not the animals, but the existence of weirdos that scare me most. we leave our dirty dishes, lumber into our tents, and shut off the lights. i lie there just before drifting off, regretting the timing of deciding to make my bike ever so visible. wonderful, now all of the cars will see it perfectly as they go by. all of the weirdos.

but we are fine.

the heat rises fast in the morning. we eat, drink tea, and pack up. i shit in the open field as the cars shoot by. this is a new thing. we hit the road. the desert spins out before us, unchanging. it is an ocean of dirt. the "bike lane" which is really not a bike lane, is corrupted with the bumps that keep people from falling asleep. it leaves us about 4 inches of riding space. the winds push us. trucks lean out. the occassional wave. a thumb up. only one middle finger thus far today. we stop at a small lake/reservoir to swim {read: bathe} and due some laundry if one can call it that. we ride on through the sun {91 degrees the sign says} which feels good after the cold mountain air. though i will confess to an unnatural amount of dry and mildly bloody boogers. why? the desert seems to cause an increase in this problem.

we currently sit in a cafe in fallon, where we will soon leave. stock up on food, as this is it for 60 miles or so. nothing but nothing out there. and the trip grows. i find a deeper place in it, and find more patience in my heart. i find grace. love. it is always there jefferson, just listen. it does not ever go away. nor does it drift or change or diminish. it grows stronger constantly. it is bigger than the desert. bigger than everything. into it all we go.

many gunshots

Day six. 28 miles. Placerville to sly camp{?}

Why oh why do I find myself afraid in the woods? Is this the work of suburbia and our cultural movement away from nature {the agrarian lifestyle} or is it simply in some of us to be scared in the woods? Some biological mechanism to protect us from danger. Or? Well I happen to be one of those afraid of the woods, which thusly means that I sit here in my tent typing away and feeling scared. Somewhat soothed by the fact that I am in my tent {yes I know how completely absurd that is} and longing for sleep to come on strong and fast. I can’t decide whether listening to music will make me feel better or worse. Hmmmmm. I confess to feeling rather embarrassed by this fear, and have in the past pretended that I am completely comfortable in the woods, but quite frankly I am not. Ah well. just after 9 pm i hiked up the ridge hoping to find some reception for the cell phone which worked {albeit poorly} but meant that i had to hike back down in the dark. i was lying on my back in the middle of the road, speaking on said phone, when a car came speeding and squealing around the bend. i leapt from where i was, ran to the small incline over which i had climbed, and dove, sliding my body down into the brush.

thought #1. this could be a park ranger and as mike and i are camping illegally, do not wish to get caught. we had attempted to sneak into a group site at a campground a few miles back as they wanted to charge us each $16 for the night, but were met with a fat, relatively stupid woman from wisconsin, whom we interrupted watching her sattelite television. mike said, "they don't usually have a miserable fat woman from wisconsin at these groups sites guarding them." alas, some peoples' lives are so different from mine. their souls, living in some other atmosphere.

thought #2. this could be the tough guys who earlier in the day {about three miles back} had yelled "get off the road you fucking faggots" at mike and i. Why? Why do they do this? it makes me feel such a powerful mix of anger and sadness and despair for this culture of ours. needless to say, i did not wish to encounter them either.

thought #3. it could be some couple driving out into the woods to drink a bottle of wine and have sex in their car. envy.

thought #4. this could be some deranged wacko. i should hurry back down the ridge in the event that i find mike hog-tied, his face pressed up against some tree, while said wacko buttfucks him. hurry jefferson, hurry. enter the hero.

and now built to spill comes on itunes. i move my body about to the power of three electric guitars. the the sliding bass line and punching of the snare.

It is 9:57 pm on Wednesday night. Tomorrow is that day that mike and I act in character as Irishmen {I am jerry o'keefe and he is franklin mcguinness} and to be completely honest, that isn’t going well at all. Amazingly difficult to do for long periods of time. We seem to find that more often than not, we remain terribly quiet. more on this in time.

We sat in Placerville for quite some time this morning typing away. We finally left town at about 1:30 and began the climbing. It seemed as though we were stopping every few miles, so we finally embraced the fact that perhaps today was supposed to be an easy day full of stopping. Photos and caramel covered apples and laughing about various things. There really isn’t all that much to say about the day, that wants to come out. I mailed package #2 home to my folks in an attempt to lighten the weight a bit, which I’m sure helps but remains unnoticeable.

and the sleepiness arrives. we had salad and pasta for dinner and hot chocolate and pim's cookies {biscuits} filled with raspberry. and as i prepare for sleep, the mind rambles. thinks of hearts. happy ones and sad ones. oh these fragile but seemingly indestructable hearts of ours.

and the world cariies on in, as it always has and always will. my, there is something so strangely beautiful about sitting out in the woods, typing on my computer and listening to miles davis. our world, so full of such rapid change. the spinning of a spinning planet.

day seven. 38.7 miles. sly camp to kirkwood. estimated 10, 000 ft. climbing. now at 8000 ft. elevation.

day seven begins with mike standing before me and waving his arms about. i sit listening to music. i hit mute. "many gunshots. very close by," he says tersely. we hurl our things into our bags as quickly as we can. run out laughing. i give my whistle a few tweets, hoping that the gunmen might slow their fire as yes, there are other humans out here. their shooting is fast and frantic. erratic. too many shots, too close together. and then the climbing. as we wind up the mormon emigrant trail through the sierras, the roadside is littered with red shotgun shells. the empty, empty road. empty empty empty. which brings us to problem number one.

la lista. {number two} more problems.

1. the adventure cycling association {whom is linked to from the links page of this site} has overlooked some things when making their maps. their rather expensive maps. first of all, their milage seems to be offbase quite often, which is a problem when one is physically, and emotionally spent, making decisions based on these not so small details. secondly, and perhaps the most important point here, is the fact that i really feel they should tell people when they are going to be riding 40 miles endlessly uphill, with no services along the way. no food, no water. none. come on you motherfuckers. you charge me $150 for what are basically road maps {with incorrect milage and nearly non-existant info. about restaurants etc...} and you cannot mention that i should buy something at the last gas station for 40 miles. needless to say, when we ran out of food and water and ran into some trouble with mild {somewhat mild} elevation sickness, i felt their oversight to be absolutely cruel. which brings me to #2.

2. for whatever reason, or collection of reasons {see #1} i shat my pants a bit yesterday. just a bit, but just a bit is far too much in this context. one pair of cycling tights. three pair boxers. just a bit though. cut me some slack.

3. my mouth is full of cankersores. my father has passed this on to me genetically, a fact about which i am not thankful. nor am i thankful that i clear my throat all of the time as he does. i love you dad. i know it's not your fault. anyway, the cankersores are the real problem here. my body reeling from the fall of such change, and strain both physically and mentally.

4. we have not showered since monday. while the handi-wipes help, they fall a bit short.

5. if one were on a long bicycle trip and wanted to masturbate, what would one wipe up with, choosing not to soil their sleeping bag?

6. maine is amazingly far away by bicycle. i believe this is only beginning to settle in now. feelings of mild despair arrive like turkey vultures. looming. creeping at me. staring me down.

7. snow. goddamn it is cold up here. the beauty though, not to be overlooked. how absolutely majestic it was to break the turn and see the mountain ridge exploding through the sky to our right.

i listen now to ryan adams. "i wish i had a sylvia plath..."

the sadness of clear cut forests. animal skulls picked from the roadside debris and attached to the back of a black touring bike. a man who misses his guitar {s}. dirty, dirty, finger nails. a horseshoe pit. memories of playing horseshoes in davis with dana. men on motorcycles laughing at the men with computers. the repeated shaking of a head as the hills seem endless. a black bird on a brown post, watching the trucks roll by. gliding. they drift along the cement light lights on water. how fast they all go. my world slows and crawls and curls in upon itself. there are moments where i just want this trip to be over right now. right fucking now. while i am having such a great collection of wonderful moments, i am so tired, so early on. i wish to write that i could ride for years, but it just doesn't feel that way.

i say to keri today, that i want my writing on the site to be great, and it doesn't feel that way. i feel heavy footed. cumbersome. don't we all want to be great? she tells me to just write. stop thinking about greatness. wise words.

and the bikes await. one leg up over the bar. the hands on the brake hoods. the feet click in. dirty socks. helmet. there is love and truth and joy in this, i must simply dig deeper. while it may not seem as such, i know that time is a tameable beast. the love is there jefferson, it is there. it is in your heart, you must simply trust and run. run run run run run.

{new day} and now it is day nine. we sit in an internet cafe in carson city nevada...limited time. words about day eight, and our night spent in ed and donna's front yard and the pot belly pig and the ninety pound bulldog that looked like a seal to come soon. and really, i'm having a great time. it may not seem as such, but i am. trust me. download below files for a bit of singing. ah yes. singing.

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the slow and somewhat methodical

day four. 17.9 miles. davis to sacramento. sunburn. s u n b u r n. would you like to see my sunburn? goddammit.

why did i conclude that riding for two hours with my shirt off would be a good idea? no jeff, that was a terrible idea. fucking terrible. one knows that it is a bad thing when they step from the shower with their shirt off, and the three other people in the room all say something to the efftect of, "oh my god jeff!" yes yes. my back is indeed red. the strange feeling of shoulderblades squeezing together, and compressing the fragile skin. so christian kiefer picks us up in sacramento. drives us around running errands. we go to rocklin. the sacramento traffic on the highway clogging the ugly roads. welcome my friends, to the land of strip malls and noise. oh how i have always despised sacramento. feeling hopelessly trapped inside of it's hopeless landscape. we drive to retrieve christian's son and drop him at his piano lesson. afternoon tea. the heat rising off the pavement in waves. dinner. the dog "bob," moves slowly about, his old body lumbering and creeping. creaking. his movement is labored, as though he weighs quite a bit more than he does. a hippopotamous in the wrong body. christian tells stories of ice climbing and his proximity to death. i marvel at how close we seem to come sometimes. and then it is reading time. i am gifted with the honor of reading harry potter to a young boy. i do the voices. the accent. i read in my gorilla mask. we listen to some early rough mixes from christian's new record, and i am stunned. what a gift he has. we play guitar for a while. i miss the feeling in my hands, and the sound rising up from my chest. sometimes, it just feels magnificent to sing. we sleep. i attempt to refrain from rolling over much. we wake. we drive to a cafe while christian teaches, and await his return for our drop-off, back on course. perhaps a detour to buy a new pair of sunglasses. yes. placerville is the goal today, but it grows late, and some things have been mistakenly left at the kiefer household, which may change everything. such it is no?

day five. 59.8 miles. sacramento to placerville. {100 to 2000 ft. elevation}

christian drops us back in downtown sacramento and we ride along the river. the river trail was monotonous and winding, with trashy folks smoking weed and getting drunk on the bank. fishing from the overpasses, which baffles me. why? vast nothingness spread out on all sides, save but the delta vegetation along the river. we find ourselves mildly lost here and there, as the trail splits off in places. the hills begin as we approach the nimbus dam, beneath a motionless sky inflated with white. we wind back and forth on both sides of the river and stop to watch the birds exploding at the breaking water. a pile of rocks beside the fish ladder, where the hollow-boned flutterers flutter. the nimbus hatchery. they look like rocks flying violently up from the giant wheels of some giant truck. we then proceed to climb three miles uphill on the wrong road, which we later backtrack. must get better at reading these damn maps. focus jefferson. we stop {tired, tired, tired at this point} for snowcones. cherry. we speak to a polish woman and her daughter named kasha who runs about in circles. she is like the birds, arms flailing. jumping. squeaking. the mother's heart is warm and soothing. perhaps the energy of a mother is a blessing in this moment. she sends us back in the right direction and we make our way back to downtown folsom to find the correct road that we climb and climb and climb. up out of the valley, into the foothills, and the rising elevation. as the heat crashes down, warming my miserable sunburn, the shakes begin.

the slow and somewhat methodical unraveling of the mind. i find trouble imagining ourselves making it to placerville any time before dark. i cannot begin to think about maine. fuck maine. my legs are weak, and the choice against spandex under the shorts is a bad one. no chafing or numbness, but my penis feels mildly uncomfortable all day being uncontained. flopping around. as my fatigue grows, i find myself constantly shifting it about and moving it from side to side. we stop at a junior high as we've run out of water, and i put on my red tights under the shorts. drink water. contemplate the beauty in just pitching our tents there for the night. but no. no, no, no. we will {unknowingly, thinking it would be about twelve} ride another 25 miles. oh. and the complaining rolls in. i'm hot, my legs are tired, my chaffing is bothering me, there is too much fucking weight on my bike, i would like to bathe, i would like to know where i am going to sleep at night and am feeling uncomfortable about that, and feeling uncomfortable that i feel uncomfortable, and more than all else i miss keri. i cannot speak to her enough. not even close. and while i feel her in me, i feel lost out here sometimes. dizzy and disoriented. alas, the comfort of love is the most priceless of comforts. immeasurable.

yesterday, as i showed christian's son on a map how far we were actually riding our bikes, he giggled and said, "whoa, that's cool!" meanwhile, it struck me. i could have begun crying for the fear in this. my god maine is far away. i was instantly completely overwhelmed. instantly. it has not left yet. nope. as i drew my finger slowly across the map, i shook my head, saying to myself, "this is fucking crazy!"

so we arrived last night around 8, after a fearful and exhilarating 1.5 miles on highway 50 with trucks speeding by at 85mph. we pull into town and ride the winding road into the shops and restaurants and quiet streets. people stand outside of bars smoking. pints in hand. we eat dinner and ride up the steepest hill of the day, to a middle school where we pitch our tents on the field. sleep comes fast and hard. i am woken at five am by the sprinklers somehow miraculously, {a wonder of the natural world really} finding their way up through the rain fly and into my tent, liberally spraying my face and arms. goddammit. come on man. come fucking on. i tought of that before going to bed, but was far to tired to place the tent in a more intelligent location. i rise an hour later to find a good majority of my things soaking wet, as i staked out the rainfly quite poorly and lazily. alas jefferson. alas.

breakfast. a quick stop at the cozmic cafe {the old placerville coffeehouse} with the old mines used for places to sit and read. today, we attempt to ride to the top of the sierras. hmmmmmmmmnn.

in cars, sitting greatly

Guest blogger Christian Kiefer here, who has mysteriously forgotten his password to this site and hence has momentarily stolen Jefferson's (with permission) in an effort to relate my crossing paths with the early stages of the Great Sitting.

...

The Great Sitting, it seems, is something of a seated vortex. As many of you readers may already know, I am a fan of sitting, a huge fan. I like many things that require standing, but quite frankly I enjoy sitting far more. Not only that, but I enjoy sitting with a cup of coffee and a good book. For me, these are the requirements for a fundamentally good (dare I say "great"?) sitting.

My friends Jeff Pitcher and Mike Schwartz, having recently embarked on their own "Great Sitting" are, needless to say, doing a lot of sitting (5000 miles worth) as they ride their bicycles (!) to the fair state of Maine (made famous for me by Thoreau having written a book about it and for it being this nation's fat, erect cock (Florida of course being its flaccid counterpart; but alas I digress).

Nonetheless, Jeff and Mike, while sitting, are doing far more exercise than I care for while recumbent. I suppose one could sip a cup of coffee while riding a bicycle to Maine, and, with the miracle of iPods and audio books, one could even read, but frankly the quality of the experience, for me, lacks some fundamental quality. Ride my bike to Maine? I say nay nay.

I was, however, quite happy to receive a couple of phone calls from them a few days ago indicating that they were in the area and that they would shortly be in Sacramento, having ridden something like 90 miles the previous, foolhardy day (the thought makes me want to take a nap). I have seen Jeff only briefly over the past year, mostly at shows that one of the other of us have played. Seeing friends at shows is like watching a piece of space debris break through the atmosphere and burn planetside: beautiful, indeed, but so fleeting. Mike Schwartz I haven't seen since he put on the Dreamchasers showcase at UC Davis, wherein Pitcher put on a performance that made my jaw drop.

Any reader would probably suspect, then, that we would sit down (!) in the living room, perhaps drink some tea, and talk. What we actually did though, is drove around in my wife's absurdly large SUV. There was talking, of course, and there was much laughter (particularly at Mike Schwartz's spot-on perfect renditions of Bill Cosby), but it is primarily done in a moving car. Sitting, indeed, but not self-propelled.

It occurs to me, however, that I was somehow made a part of the Great Sitting through this fact of driving. Picking them up in midtown Sacramento, driving them to my home, then to my work, then back home, then back to midtown put me in the negative space of the Great Sitting: the final miles that accrue while not under their own power. It is not ironic that I chocked up my mileage at the behest of 2-soldier-per-gallon gasoline while Pitcher and Schwartz do it by muscle and joblessness. Fuck yes, says I. Furthermore, this is essentially the last friendly port before the trip out: up the Sierra and then through one of the most desolate stretches of road in the U.S.: Highway 50 through Central Nevada. (When I told my father, a long-haul truck driver, that they were riding this route on their trip, he said, simply, "Well, I hope they have everything they need." Needless to say, there's nowhere to stop and no one to help.) It's an incredibly long, flat stretch of desert. Beautiful, if frightening.

Of course, I can understand the trip in some ways. It has something fundamentally human in it. Our first piece of narrative English language literature is the Scandanavian tale Beowulf, a story which starts with young Beowulf setting off to find adventure. That is what you did in the year 600 (or whenever it was written: scholars disagree) and that is what you do now if you are of a certain bent. Jon Krakauer has written famously of this in his Into the Wild, but the Great Sitting is significantly more prepared than that ill-fated trip. Beowulf, incidentally, was successful in ridding the world of the terrible monster Grendel and, a bit later, Grendel's equally terrible mother, and lived to be an old man until he was finally met a rather heroic death at the claws of a huge dragon. Frankly, I don't think the heroes of the Great Sitting are any more or less crackpot than Beowulf: the motivation is practically the same: a pressing of human limits, a search for heroism (or the possibility of heroic deeds). Granted, freeing the world of a monster and riding your bicycle to Maine don't quite equate, but the event of the Great Sitting is still one of the bizarre moments of beauty that frankly make our rather dismal lives worth living. They are, after all, wearing gorilla masks for 1/2 hour each day. Why? Because they can. (I'm not kidding about the gorilla masks, either.)

So here I am, having sat and, in fact, sitting at this very moment, considering, at this late hour, diving into my soft bed while our two adventurers are at this very moment sleeping under the stars somewhere above Placerville (Pollock Pines, perhaps--or maybe beyond that). Maybe a falling star overhead. They are riding for themselves, to be sure, but also, in some way, they are riding for you: for your beauty and for your light--gorilla masks and all.

Godspeed you, my friends. And dream on, sweet life.

i will without hesitation request a shower.

day 3. 95 miles. santa rosa to davis

late night, tent in backyard musings. today there were new problems...

as i just rolled over in my tent, i disvovered that my boxer shorts were stuck to a part of my buttocks. the chafing was so bad today, that i have a few areas where the skin has been rubbed raw, and will most likely scab over by morning. at mile 70, mike and i pulled over so that i could stumble off into an orchard, take off my pants, and pour water on the pained area. this problem is brought on by the fact that i am experimenting with a new saddle. thankfully, i have been experiencing no numbness, but i guess there is a price to pay with the rubbing of new areas. i am not so sure how tomorrow will go. i suppose there is a certain poetic simplicity in the fact that if one sits on a really small leather seat all day, shifting around, one will have some trouble in some part of the general groin/butt area.

new day. i fell asleep. it is now 7:41 am. a long and hard sleep with dreams of things i cannot remember. yesterday was a long, long, day. we figured the milage would be quite a bit shorter than it turned out, and the heat quite a bit cooler. we left santa rosa in the morning, and flew the country roads for a few hours. trees hanging their giant arms over the road, and farmland scattered with cattle and sheep. goats. we stopped at the sonoma square and watched the wine country tourists flaunting their wealth and shopping. are those two somehow intrinsically tied at the hip? i read yesterday in the paper, that some big, special businessman bought a 3 litre bottle of wine at an auction in napa valley for $225,000.00. the sickness of excess. fancy cars and sun hats. loafers with no socks. tan tan tan tan tan people. i recall years ago, standing at a friend's house with a girl whom i was in the midst of a rather absurd fling. she announced to my friend's father apologetically that she was a bit pale, as she hadn't been to the tanning salon for a few weeks. at first i thought she was joking. when i realized no, i thought, "what the fuck are you doing jefferson? who is this girl?"

so we rode through the sun on highway 12, with the cars speeding by. at some point, we had the relatively treacherous task of riding on the highway up over some overpass/bridge which we rode as speedily as we could, but nervously nonetheless. miles later found us merging, breaking the air of a highway {highway 80} onramp, as six lanes of traffic exploded past. oh, the monolithic sound of cars. they are now the monsters of the earth, simply by their engines and their number. and of course the large footprints they leave behind.

we made our way east into the farmlands of the valley. there was indeed a moment of dismay, when thinking that we were close, we discovered we had 35 miles to go. let me say simply, that 95 miles with and extra 70 or so pounds on the bike is physically taxing.

we stopped at some amazingly "trashy" store to buy water and spoke with a young {16?} year old boy who was limping. mike said "looks like you hurt your leg." he replied, "yeah, fell off my quad...can't hardly walk. i messed it up real bad." he proceeded to pull up his pant leg and show us a mangled and bruised and swollen left knee, that looked to be in absolutely miserable shape. miserable.

we rode on along interstate 505 north towards winters. the sparse farm houses and rows of trees. wlanut orchards, heavily sprayed with pesticides, their leaves white from the bug killing snow, green nuts hanging tightly from their fingers. then the bike path. freedom from cars and familiar terrain. roots breaking up through the cement, sending the bumps of a shaking bike through my arms to the wrist. a slow ride across the davis campus to the downtown yard where we pitch our tents. strangely enough, the yard next door to mike's old house where i lived in a tent for 6 weeks those years ago, when dana made her rather sudden departure. oh, how often we seem to travel the same roads with different eyes to see. even stranger, was the fact that in the precise place where my tent lived those years ago, was some young man, sleeping in a tent. perhaps the universe has some predestined plans for that small piece of grass. i wondered, "is his heart slipping through his hands too?"

dinner at sophias thai restaurant and ice cream for dessert. strawberry and vanilla, which keri proclaimed as "boring" but i defended as delicious.

sleep hard and fast, though i am contemplating strapping a full size down pillow onto the top of my rack. yes, i know this is absurd on one hand, but brilliant on the other. i am not ashamed.

breakfast with greg. the enormous joy in his eyes for the direction of my life. i gave him one of the cards keri designed for us to pass out. we hand them to the people along the way. a simultaneous hello and goodbye. they are beautiful and we love them. so today we ride to sacramento to see christian, our brains full of new decisions:

1. henceforth, we will be riding in "street clothes." we have abandoned the spandex and cycling shirts for the comfortability of not feeling funny.

2. we have established a system of alternating paying for meals. mike's turn, jeff's turn, mike's turn, jeff's turn. the system is beautiful. like volleyball rotation.

3. i have acquired shorter bungee-cords which is a beautiful thing. trust me.

4. a few days ago, we made a trip to bananna republic {no, i am not proud of that} so that i could buy one more pair of boxers {a total of three} as my clothing seem to be growing dirty really fast, and yes i will admit to an unnatural amount of gas. it was there, that while trying on a shirt, i set my $170.00 cycling glasses down, and never saw them again. god dammit. i will be posting an open letter to deanne mccartle of oakley in a few days, asking for a reimbursement. stay tuned.

5. i have concluded that if someone lets me pitch my tent in their yard, i will without hesitation request a shower. i typically don't like imposing on people, but this is different.

there are more, but i am tired of writing and feel the words stumbling out clumsily today. a mouthful of rocks. i will from now on, be posting the distances of the days. perhaps you will like that. perhaps not. i don't really care to be honest, because i like it. so there. big love from davis.

upon the sea.

and the boat finds itself upon the sea. lifted, tired, and shot to the sky. no longer lost to the dry arms of the land, it lunges and moves forth, swallowing the giant water; a no legged beast on the earth. and like the boats, tomorrow we ride. tomorrow {sunday that is} {today? my god, am i still awake?} we make our way from santa rosa to davis. the wheels spin their constant chatter. the buzzing of bees. a school of shiny fish between the black rubber. minnows darting. the slow crawl to nevada. utah. colorado. maine. yes, our work here is done. one last night in a bed for now.

oh the immeasurable deliciousness of a comfortable bed.

orange? shiny red? green?

listening to teitur this morning as i type. moments of missing that old home slip in through the cracks. yesterday was a day of work; hammers and nails and sawdust and paint. a simple and great reminder of how rewarding physical toil can be, and how immediately tangible the progress. oh my dear progress, how obsessed with thee we humans are. it also served to remind me that i don't much care for construction work. nope. my soul protests.

the moment of the day, was driving down the street at dusk, the windows down, cool air running its course inland from the ocean, as a strange man in big pants and big boots, lunged, kicking a large {cantelope-sized} rock down the side of the road; his arms flailing and body shaking about. the convulsions of the mind shaking their way out through bones and blood and skin. he looked absolutely insane.

or perhaps it was the moment laughing at dinner about forthcoming silly things, like roadside haircut stands to raise money. haircuts and lemonade? or the bartering of ten pound bags of oranges. or perhaps it was sitting in that scooter shop, daydreaming of a sky blue vespa. orange? shiny red? green?

the traces linger

day two. oatmeal and tea in the morning. my tea steeping system is absolutely perfect this year. last summer, on the ride to mexico, i would simply submerge the loose tea in the water and drink, which worked but was far from optimal. the leaves would mush up against my lips, making the drinking experience less enjoyable, as i was constantly spitting the leaves from my mouth. restless sleep at the end of night one. what the hell am i afraid of out there in the woods? perhaps it is simply the product of a healthy imagination, but fear seems to creep in quite easily; as though i have left the door ajar. this is an aspect of my personality? that has bothered me for some time now. i recall last summer a night alone at Mt. Lassen feeling terrified in my tent, thoughts of bears and weirdos, and spiders and mortality on the mind. good lord. nature. oh how our cement world destroys us in so many ways. i should be afraid of San Francisco, not the inverness ridge, miles from "civilization."

so we have breakfast #2 in point reyes station where we sit and write, then ride on. i am forced to shit at a gas station before leaving town, which is a less than great experience. i despise shitting in public {as i imagine many do} for several reasons. first, so many public washrooms are filthy, yesterday being an absolutely perfect example. i spent several minutes "cleaning up" before i could in good conscience rest my ass on the seat, which even then was covered in paper towels. the floor was so filthy, that i was concerned about my shorts touching it. then {as is often the case} the door handle is 'jiggled' several times and i holler out "nope...occupied." as the minutes tick by, i become mildly obsessed with the fact that the people outside waiting, are now certain of the fact that i am shitting, and i then begin to feel remorse for the fact that it will smell awful by the time they enter. this is simply not relaxing. no sir. which is essentially the second problem: the overall lack of privacy. in my old house {how strange to type that} the bathroom upstairs had "shutter doors" which provided visual privacy, but might as well have been a thin sheet of paper for the auditory and psychological privacy provided. i felt like i was sitting at the kitchen table for all intensive purposes. i cannot count the number of times i sat up there running the faucet, fake-coughing, rustling magazine paper, flushing prematurely, etc., so that the housemates might think i was just in there doing something else. why oh why oh why do i do this? what is it about us that makes us afraid of such things? is it our cultures' obsession with privacy and cleanliness? hmmmm. reminds me of the time i had to take a crap in spain while a painter stood a foot away from me painting the ceiling. goddamn. i suppose i overcame it a bit while wandering through europe, but the traces linger.

we then ride on. up through the hills into petaluma. farmhouses and cattle on the roadside. a red barn, faded by the sun, with tattered blue fabric hanging from its sides, catching the wind and mixing in with the sky. old oak trees, littered with lichen and moss, falling like ghosts from its arms. many, many, many, cars, some that honk and others throwing out a supportive and friendly wave. great big salads at whole foods, and a stop at REI where we pick up a few things we've concluded we need after two days. a shower and a bed for the night. a bed which i did not take for granted. heavy slumber. mild sunbrun and tired legs. a sore butt from my riding with a different saddle yesterday, in hopes of alleviating the numbness of my penis. and today, work on the house. we announce today the winner of the marmot letter writing contest. hooray, hooray. congradulations leslie tate, we send out the biggest of love. you can read the letter here,and we will post it on the site just as soon as we overcome a few technical difficulties. onward. day three begins with no bike. coitus interruptus.

we are here now, in the midst of it all

day one. the shift begins. the changing from day to night. something grand at least. a different light cast down upon my earth. i rush to clean the shower, empty out the shelves, clip the nails {though not saving them in the jar, as i decided to cease the habit at least for the summer...room is limited when your life is on your bike...we'll see about its reinstatement.} other little things. making sure nothing was forgotten, though i'm sure things were.

"i love you mom and dad. yes, i'll be safe...thank you for the compliments."

a visit to the bank. saying farewell to a home that has been my sanctuary for two years. oh, dear nautical {yes the room feels boatlike} room of mine, i thank you for the warmth {not literally as it was not heated being an old converted porch} and the comfort. i say goodbye to a time, and feel much less nostalgia and emotion than i expected. perhaps this new adventure is simply so life changing and full of giant things, that the transition itself is fluid like water. no white caps live amonst these oceans and mountains. hearts. i bid keri adieu on the phone, my brain drifting into the pain that new love can cause old love. i have refrained from writing about her here for so long now, to protect the old love and the notion of privacy, and because some things are sacred. some things feels indescribable. but i feel sad that i cannot hear her voice as often as i'd like, as the veil falls. day one.

so i step outside to meet the bags at the bottom of the stairs that will miraculously live on my bike for the next 3? months.

two men stand at a truck chatting and ask where i'm headed. maine. maine. maine maine maine maine maine. i don't think that the reality of the distance, or the physical difficulty, or the time have really set in yet, but they will, i'm sure of it.

and then i am at the north berkeley bart station, speaking to the australian guys.

"maine," i say.

the immediate bond between travellers is wildly beautiful. reminds me of how open and unafraid humans can be. willing to engage with strangers, and let them see at least some small part of our souls, which so many of us conceal so much of, so much of the time.

the golden gate bridge is miraculous. living here, we forget such things. i stand in wonderment at its arresting beauty. somehow, this structure of metal feels so natural there in the sky. this example of human creativity and extremely hard work. as i ride across narrowly avoiding the tourists taking photos, i stop often to look back at the city, and down at the water. somehow, though much higher, riding across this bridge is much less terrifying than walking across the granville st. bridge in vancouver. yes, there is something absolutely TERRIFYING about walking across that bridge. keri and i would stop again and again to look over, that strange human impulse of pushing ourselves back into the most difficult of moments. fear of heights, and the possibilty that one could indeed plummet, a sack of weight, to the water below.

lunch in sausalito, with the porsches, and fancy shops. i treat myself to a cappuccino from cafe trieste. sometimes, i miss coffee so dearly.

i ride and ride. breaking through into the hills and the redwood trees lining the road. i stop for an ice cream sandwich, and to smell the smells. hikers walk gingerly down the dirt into samuel p. taylor state park. then olema. my road comes to a dead end and i turn right. then left. bear valley road. and another left. the sing says "limantour-8 miles."

and then i am fucked. riding uphill, the legs so so so so tired from the extra weight of the panniers. up up up up up. i call mike to make sure i'm not lost, as these hills simply are not going well, but the service on my phone is gone. i stop to rest far too often. i run out of water. shit.

and finally i am there. sky camp trailhead. at the entrance of the trail, is a red card on the ground with a drawing of a bicycle and the words thegreatsitting.com. i had not seen this yet, and my heart leaps as i love it so. thank you keri. we have already passed out fifteen? wow. the joy and beauty in this is stunning to me.

and then i push my heavy heavy heavy bike up this 1.2 mile long gravel and dirt path, cussing and cussing. whose fucking idea was this? mike. let me just say, that it is AMAZINGLY difficult to push a bike, loaded with gear up such a hill. really, really, really fucking hard. and the lower back agrees in case you were wondering.

we set up camp, share the details of our packing tecniques, and head off on the unloaded bikes to the beach. a cold and hilly ride as the sun sets. we splash the water on our faces, and laugh at the fact that the next time we will see the ocean, we will be facing the other way. east. the atlantic. we ride back, watching the moon break the sky as the sun descends over the ocean. we walk the hill {much easier without the weight} and make dinner. gnocchi and pasta. our desert {kristina made brownies} have been devoured by an animal {a terribly efficient animal} of some sort. we sit and talk a bit, then sleep. i toss and turn, dreaming the most vivid dreams i've had in some time. i think about what i feel at the moment and conclude it is too much to decipher at the moment. too many places of my heart flying and floating and spinning. soaring. moving off to a new life.

we now sit outside some cafe in point reyes station, and have miraculously found ourselves online via the airport. {the computer did it on its own!?!#@?#?!?}

today, we ride back to santa rosa to finish last minute things on mike's house, things which neither of us want to do, but must be done.

day two. we are here now, in the midst of it all. the great sitting.
i welcome thee.