Day 8 - Reno, NV - rest day.

Today was misnamed. Just because I was not on my bike does not mean I rested. All morning and afternoon I painted curbs red ("No Parking" in West convention) along the city's most used bike path...sweeping away the dirt and pulling out the weeds before we layer on the rubberized red stuff. Hard work, but we get to wear those cool orange vests. I paint my front wheel in red polka dots. Donated Taco Bell for lunch (I have chips and salsa), then a ride to the bike shop with sells us stuff at cost. I get a softer seat to try, find a biking top that finally fits: just in time for the desert where a fabric that "wicks away" your sweat is important. I get new handle bars put on by a friendly mechanic, this way my aero bars can be more spread out and fit my body better. Cushiony grips for my bar ends. A squishy panda squeaky horn to attach somewhere. My bike is beginning to feel like my bike, but as yet has no name. Any suggestions?

I woke up today feeling lonely and homesick. I could hop on a bus, or plane and be home in a few hours. It took us a week of hard work to get here. I walk over an overpass of I80 and look at the cars below, many of which will be home with their family and friends in San Francisco having dinner tonight. My mom says, "you've already gone a tenth of the way." After all the work it's taken to get this far, that does not manage to encourage me. It's good to hear her voice and know that life goes on while I'm gone. Donated vegan dinner, a game of pool, stretching out my left Achilles heel which is painfully sore. An evening meeting to discuss safety (we've had a rear wheel fall off, people seriously lost, several falls from collisions caused by poor communication, some dehydration and bonking (running out of food energy), and one serious accident caused by faulty breaks on a downhill which put 47 y/o Wendy in the hospital with a sprained should, banged up knee, concussion and a seriously cracked helmet. Her lover, Doris, has always feared this and rode past as Wendy crawled out of the bushes. Wendy will not ride for a week, but take greyhounds from town to town and greet us when we arrive) and quiet hours, and other contentious issues. Then to email, then to bike repairs, then to writing down directions for tomorrow's 95 mile day, then to folding laundry, then to a midnight snack, then to bed. Hopefully the loneliness will dissipate in tomorrow's desert heat.

Day 9 - Reno to Lovelock, NV

Today was our first day in the desert and our first of 11 days on I80 to Salt Lake City. The desert was kind: only in the 80's, the highway improved once we got away from Reno and the "triples" (that is in local parlance, trucks with 3 trailers...illegal in most other states) started to thin. Today was also the first day that I was involved in a slight altercation: I noticed that Allen, one of our 16 y/olds from Brooklyn was not riding safely on the highway, and several times almost got winged by passing semis. Riding with no hands is not cool when the wind currents from a passing truck are enough to pull you into its wake. Allen wasn't pleased when I called him on it, not exactly mean, just not exactly pleased that someone was telling him what to do.

Similarly, Annette, 19 from Boston and a conscientious if awkward rider (she keeps falling over on her bike while standing still…not a pro move) was riding with Sparkle from the Philippines. Sparkle is 37, a professor, the mother of a young child and a very active organizer for the rights of women and girls in the Philippines, especially freedom from domestic violence and the sex industry which the US navy supports in force (that's really why Gen. MacArthur said, "I shall return"). But Sparkle has a terrible sense of direction and has already gotten seriously lost twice...as in missing-for-a-whole-day-lost, as in turning-right-instead-of-left at the first intersection of a ride and going-40-miles-out-of-her-way lost. So the group has been razzing Sparkle about it, cuz it's a big stress, a big drain on the vehicle and its time helping other riders, and it's pretty funny. Annette noticed that Sparkle was riding practically on the white line of the shoulder with trucks narrowly missing her. When she brought it to Sparkle's attention (Annette is pretty tactful mind you, at least by our culture's standards) Sparkle snapped back, "I can take care of myself thank you very much, I'm not a child that needs to be found every time she goes the wrong way." A little anger that I wasn't aware of there, and too bad it came out when Annette was trying to protect her life. I was pretty livid at Allen for blowing off my concerns, I would have been REALLY pissed if Sparkle had thrown that on me.

One of the reasons that Allen was like that is that our last rider has joined the group: Khayam, 16, from Brooklyn. Allen and Khayam are friends from the Recycle-a-Bicycle program they work with in Brooklyn...Khayam was late because he was taking important tests which are required for graduation. Khayam wants to be an actor, and he told me that he helped make a video for the recycle-a-bike program, but that he was too serious in it. "Why?" I asked. "Because it was winter and it was cold...I should've waited until it was warmer and I wouldn't have been so serious."

Had dinner with many of Lovelock's citizens on a private ranch that has hosted Bike-Aid for the last 10 years. Alan and Wendy List are farmers, mostly wheat and alfalfa, and Alan treated us to an explanation of why he uses pesticides and herbicides (nothing like a little propaganda over your baked beans and Jell-O). We got into it a little with him, but it's his turf, so mostly we chatted up the town folk who were all real, real friendly. They all laughed when I introduced myself as "Stefan from Toronto Canada, but I now live in San Francisco...which you probably guessed from the holes in my ears." When Raj, from Sri Lanka via Beverley, MA introduced himself, he complimented Alan on his farming and said that this was true development, the kind that his country needed to avoid famine.

Raj is an interesting fellow...he believes that colonialism is good because it imposes order on unstructured societies, but he bemoans the British influence on Sri Lanka and feels that as a member of the class the British empowered, he is separated uncomfortably from his country and people. Raj also believes that the key to Global peace and prosperity is a global economy. He doesn't think that the third world will get anywhere until economic barriers are taken down and capital can do its work. Definitely a believer in trickle down economics. Yet at the same time he says that the global economy has made his country rely on one crop: tea...while many starve for lack for local food crops. "Tea" he says, "Who REALLY needs tea. It's nice in the afternoon or with your buddies after a cricket match, but what a silly thing for a whole country to depend on." Raj's politics and perceptions are very much in flux, but unlike the set -in-stone-heads like myself, he's open to change from a good conversation or "hard facts".

Jackie, from San Francisco via Oklahoma, used to drive trucks in the Central Valley of CA, a huge agricultural area. She argued with Alan about the safety of pesticides which she was constantly sprayed with, and he did back down a bit to say that certainly they are not the safest thing going and you really shouldn't be standing under a crop duster, or driving through its wake. Jackie is the kind of feisty person who will speak her mind, even if she's a guest at someone's house...and since she's so comfortable with it, she can do it without seeming rude. A nice skill. Jackie is also the kind of person who will make friends with anyone, especially if its towards her ends. A fly fisher on the riverbank by the road becomes access to a cooler of Pepsi. A group of slimy guys who invite a bunch of "you girls" from our group over to their campsite, become a way for Jackie to get a huge spaghetti dinner. Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco found himself writing out a hundred dollar check to Bike-Aid after Jackie paid a visit to him. It's a pleasure to see her in action and a pain to be on her bad side.

Had a fun flirtation again with Abby tonight...that's the one that gave me a massage a while back. Tonight our bedrolls are next to each other, though it's too intimate in here for any shenanigans. And besides, she has a boyfriend waiting back home in MI. But it gives the day a nice little twist.

Not feeling so lonely today, but I'm glad I have my radio on the bike, though, cuz this road is lonely in itself...and even though I get only Christian country music stations (not my fave) it's company. Today, a very animated radio guy went on about how we don't need to look in the sky or at the X-files for UFOs, they are in the Bible. Ironically, the song that came on after this show was called, "He's a High-Tech Red-neck" and one of the lines was "he watches Beam me up Scotty while sittin' on the potty."

Day 10 - Lovelock to Winnemucca, NV

The town through the local sayings (as relayed to me by a journalist who recently moved here from Portland, OR. We were a bright spot in his otherwise humdrum life. "Last week." he told me, "I interviewed the CEO of Winnemucca Potato Processing, the largest potato processing plant in the U.S. The only thing I can remember him saying is, 'There are interesting things happening in the Canadian french fry market,' and then I zoned out.")

Winnemucca: If You Don't Stop, Who Will?

Winnemucca: Where The Roads are Paved.

Winnemucca: Two Schools, Three Stoplights, Five Brothels

Winnemucca: No Sea Lions, No Caverns, No Mystery Spot.

Winnemucca: Five Billion People Have Never Been Here.

I played baby-sitter for four hours this morning: the last rider is never to be alone, and Allen, one of our 16 y/olds from Brooklyn was, again, feeling slow. And for the second time in three days I ended up riding with him in back. On I80 I should be able to do an average speed of 15 mph comfortably, making a 75 mile day like today go pretty quickly, even with breaks and lunch. But Allen was doing about 5 mph. And doing it dangerously (no hands on the bars, swerving around, riding at the edge or even in the lane with trucks going by at 85 mph) and I think, intentionally. He seems to be engaged in some sort of teenage limit testing or attention getting, and since I don't recall ever doing that, I'm not exactly sure of how to deal with this. I ask him to stop for his own good and he shrugs it off. I tell him I don't feel safe when he's swerving around, and he shrugs it off. Then I just get pissed and want to ground him (which is a laugh since I was never grounded in my life...where did I get that feeling?) or yell at him, and I don't know what good that would do.

Other people have had similar or worse reactions from him when making comments about his riding. I want to say that it's just because he's young, but I know that when I was his age I hated that generalization. Being young does not mean you're stupid. It doesn't mean, as so many insist, that you don't have a sense of your own mortality or others', and it doesn't mean that you can't respond productively to constructive criticism. But these are the issues right now with him...and frankly I'm ready to personally put him on a plane to JFK when we get to Salt Lake City. Dana, one of the vegans, and a great, great woman, hung back with me for a few hours, so instead of me being the caboose, we were the co-boose. But eventually she couldn't stand what she sees as Allen's intentionally slow and awful riding. So we stopped to talk and let him go ahead, and guess what? Once he realized we weren't riding with him anymore, he took off at a normal pace and didn't ride as crazily. It was good to know what to do under those circumstances, but it also sucked to have our suspicions of his intentionally bad riding confirmed. It's tough not to trust one of the people who is supposed to be watching your back: a couple of times when I was riding with him, I stopped to do something and instead of stopping with me to keep the caboose a co-boose, he just kept on riding...what if something had been seriously wrong? This pushes all my safety/mortality buttons.

And then coming in last and John, our insensitive new age guy (Blonde pony tailed, deep-voiced, anti-mass media, veggie/organic, anti-pc, one of those guys who can't talk about a woman without qualifying her, "That Jackie is Feisty" "Christine, you're such a Cherub" "we've got a lot of uppity women on this trip." Somehow I seemed to have gotten his respect...maybe because we both don't have TV's, but when I pointed out to him that he can't talk about a woman without giving her a nickname or an adjective, something for him to think about, his response was to start, and continue to call me PC boy. Oh well...you try.) John says to me when I come in as the last person, "Hey slow rider," as if it was a race, as if I intended to be riding at 5 miles an hour stuck behind an uppity kid, as if I meant to have my first two flat tires of the trip, as if it would kill him to just say, "how was the ride?" or "Hot day, hunh?" So I've been having a bit of an Anger day...lucky I got to play Ultimate Frisbee after the 75 mile ride (Ultimate is like soccer with a Frisbee) which was a good way to unwind.

It was also a lonely day. The desert gives you a lot of time and space to think. The big questions like, Why am I doing this and the little ones like how did the staple that punctured my tire end up on the side of i80: Office Depot doing some illegal dumping? Instead of ruminating on my homesickness, I think I'll just accept it as a hazard of the road, and deal for tonight. After all, more french fries are made here than anyplace else in the country: which in a bigger sense, makes the ride so far a hajj to my personal (Winne)Mecca.

Poem for the Day:

Ode to Roads of Butter - by Stefan Lynch

Those gravel paths are really great,
If you ride a mountain bike.
And sidewalk riding is the best,
If you're a young one on a trike.
Rumble strips can be a jolt
But keep the trucks awake,
And if you need a tough massage,
They give your butt a shake.
In truth, any place you ride a bike
Is worth its weight in gold,
But if I could pick and choose,
They'd all be Butter Roads.
The Butter Road is freshly paved,
The Butter Road is newly cleaned.
Cars on them are well behaved,
And bikes are speed machines.
To kids, blacktop's a place to play,
And practice b-ball moves
To my bike and I it's a sign that reads:
Your life is creamy smooth.

Day 11 - Winnemucca to Battle Mountain, NV

Summer Romances. Never had one, but everyone is always talking about them. Pros: clear ending time allows for lots of fun without the fear of commitment; If you don't like the person all that much, you don't have to worry about finding an excuse to break up; brings some companionship to those far from home for the summer; if l'objet d'amour isn't your type, the folks back home never have to know. Cons: What if you really like each other at the end of the summer? Dealing with the inevitable gossip of other attention-starved, romanceless fugheads; things could go awry, creating a mess for the rest of the summer; two words: cyclist's rash.

And what if, say, there is a boyfriend back home in Michigan waiting with bated breath for his beloved to return from her summer trip, therefore wracking one of the romancees with confusion and Christian guilt? And what if, say, one of the romancees thinks he's finally getting the hang of this heterosexual thing (for instance, let's just say, he brought up the subject of "The Kiss" first) and he thinks he might want to practice his new-found skills with others? And what if the chances for privacy are the same as the chance of the Nevada desert ever fucking ending, hmmm?

Clearly the Summer Romance isn't just Matt Dillon and Tatum O'Neill's Little Darlings co-star doing it in a boat house...this is serious stuff. Hypothetically speaking.

Battle Mountain, pop. 1,500 (give or take) is in north central NV. This is our fourth day on the road in NV, and we've got several more to go. I never thought I'd be excited to get to Utah.

Despite having been on the road for 11 days, we have yet to establish a solid routine for getting up, eating, cleaning, and departing, so after the local church treated us to a potluck (those Methodists can cook vegan!) and showed off the stained glass windows that they'd made themselves for the sanctuary, and after we'd been swimming at the local pool (where we watched as a 12 year-old girl broke up with her sullen boyfriend in a screaming fit), we had a meeting to discuss Morning Routine. Joy. All I can say is: if you don't have something useful to say, don't say it. If you want to block the consensus of a group, fine, just don't do it to express your individuality without any other reason. And one last thing: unless you want an artificially quick ending, don't have a consensus meeting in a swarm of mosquitoes.

Day 13 - Battle Mountain to Wells, NV

I am writing this in my sleeping bag under a folding table in a church trailer because although Wells, NV may not have a Walmart, or a McDonalds, or a stoplight, it has no shortage of cyclist-eating mosquitoes. Some of the industrious critters have even found me here, typing on my little keyboard, munching on Texas Grill Fritos, half listening to the movie playing in the other room, although they have not survived to tell the tale. Wells does have a video rental place...well actually its a little side room at Burger Barn. Oddly, Burger Barn had one of my favorite movies: Bob Roberts, the Tim Robbins mockumentary about a folk-singing neo-conservative multi-millionaire who runs for a senatorial position in Pennsylvania against the thoughtful and ethical incumbent, Gore Vidal. John, our resident manly-man, and I actually had a bonding moment when we discovered that it was a favorite of ours, but no one else in the group had heard of it. Side note: Texas Grill Fritos actually have real grill stripes painted on to them. Neat-O.

Wells has two events of interest this weekend: a traveling carnival and Bike Aid. Tonight the two combined for an improbable "Brady Bunch in a B horror movie" scene as our troupe of giggling young-folk, shouting "Go Bike Aid" from the top of the ferris wheel moved among the zombie-ish townies and sadistic carnies.

One townie in particular deserves special recognition for his friendly welcome and encyclopedic knowledge of Wells, where he was lived all of his 14 years. My new friend Cody says he knows about 1,000 of the 1,200 folks in Wells, "I don't know all the Mexicans, but I'm trying." Cody told us the names of the managers of the restaurants in town for meal donations; Cody told us why the pizza and Mexican food place next door has an old sign reading "closed due to illness": the owner was actually jailed for trafficking in stolen motor boats. The motel across the street is filled up not because its popular, but for the funeral: its owner died of a massive heart attack two days ago. He told us to lock our bikes up, "people take 'em and paint 'em blue." He told me which parts of his bike he bought where for how much and when the last time he oiled them was. He even offered to weld anything onto a bike, a skill he'd recently learned in his 125-kid high school. And, as cars rolled past the church gate where we sat, he told me who was driving, and since auto accidents are a common killer of young men in Wells, which one of their brothers or sons had been killed by reckless driving.

Day 14 - rest day in Wells, NV

Wells has never had a queerer day, to the best of my knowledge, than this one. When I was growing up, Gay Pride Day was a big deal...there was the parade and the outfits and new t-shirts to buy and people to see and kids to play with and pizza to eat and then there were the brunches or dinners to go to afterwards, the out-of-town guests to amuse, the television coverage to watch, etc. Of course there were those years that I didn't have as much fun, those years that I lived in Marin for the summer and only heard about Pride all the way off in San Francisco, but never went, even though my mom's lover Pat was onetime the Grand Marshal.

There were the years I was too young to remember, and only know that I was there from family stories. But in large part, Gay Pride Day has been a very important annual event in my life...more than almost any other save my birthday. It's been the time to reaffirm personal and political commitments. Its been the time to discover new things about the community, its been the time when I and we all got to see just how many of us there are...possibly no greater natural high than that. San Francisco's Pride Parade brings out over 500,000 people...second in the nation to the Parade of Roses at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Toronto's Pride Parade reportedly drew even more than that last year...quite a difference from those first pride days to which I (a toddler) and a few hundred others came. With all the hullabaloo about this grand day which commemorates and celebrates the Stonewall Rebellion in NYC where drag queens, butch dykes and all manner of queer folk got tired of all the police raids on gay bars and fought back in the streets for three nights. This is where most mark the beginning of the modern movement for queer liberation...within a year hundreds of organizations and publications by and for gay people sprung up around North America, and gays were clearly going to stay out of the closet.

The prospect of spending Pride in Wells, NV was thrilling me as much as the rash on my butt. I'd joked about it, included it on my web page as a thing most dreaded, and in all honesty I truly did. But rule #1 is: you should know better than to count out the indomitable queer ability to make a scene wherever and whenever a scene is what's needed.

Believe you me, the clerk at the Wells Food and Drug bakery counter had her day made yesterday when Wendy C., lover of Doris whom together make up the 47 year-old lesbian couple and recent corporate refugees from Wells Fargo, ordered a Sesame Street Cake (because that's the one with the rainbow background) without the characters, but the words "Happy Gay Pride Day" in lavender icing. According to Wendy, "She only had me repeat it once, and when I said 'it's gay pride day tomorrow and we're going to celebrate' she even managed to smile, weakly. As I was leaving she motioned to several of the other clerks to come over...maybe they were scoping me out?"

This morning our merry band was greeted with the whiteboard that usually has the day's directions, water and lunch stops, mileage and other random bits of info which we all diligently copy down (or in my case commit to memory, forget, then hope someone else has them) but this morning it said, Happy Gay Pride Day Bike-Aid! Then Julie went around putting pink chalk triangles on all the queer folk (that's about 7 if you count me...but that's a whole other issue) and a day of question and answer ensued...Raj asked me how he should respond when people say he is gay; a whole lot of people had heard through the grapevine that I had two gay parents, so they wanted to know how that happened, Anthony and several others listened on as Wendy and I discussed the factors which have lessened the gaps between lesbians and gay men (she see a special contribution by lesbian/gay bands, of which there are many, that I had never thought of) thus complicating their view of the Community (a good thing...I remember when I first learned about the tensions around light and dark skin within the African American community: it was the first time I realized I couldn't pigeonhole a whole minority).

There were rainbow stickers (a washed-out, plagiarized symbol which stands for a very generic "unity" or "diversity"...I used to hate them, but I guess I've sold out as I've aged) to paste on bikes and on Wells, NV road-signs, there was a lot of public affection between Wendy and Doris which folks seemed comfortable with (16 y/o Allen and Sparkle from the Philippines seemed to finally figure out that Wendy and Doris are NOT sisters), and then, near the end of the day I explained the political significance of this day, and we cut the cake and sang "Happy Gay Pride to Us, Happy Gay Pride Day to Us, Happy Gay Pride Day dear Bike-Aid...". Doris found a very appropriate video at the Burger Barn, and so as the day closed we watched as a merry troupe of queers stuck in a small town in the middle of nowhere transformed it into an alive and fabulous place before they moved on across the country in "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar." We may not have turned Wells, NV around with our own fabulousness, but we did turn a few heads.

And so all my worrying has ended in one of the most memorable Pride Days ever: because we made it fabulous all ourselves.

Day 15 - Wells, NV to Wendover, UT

I'm going to say a word, and I want you to say the first word that comes to your mind. Okay? Here we go.

"Utah."

What was that? Mormons...Salt Lake City...Zion...Brigham Young? Hmmm. Good ones.

My turn.

"Utah."

"Wind storm." Wind storm? "Yep, I said, 'wind storm.'"

It started on the road today out of Wells, turning a leisurely, loping 65 mile ride into a grit-drenching, forced-lane-changing, leg-wrenching, eye-tearing, truck-fearing, torture session. Welcome to Utah, the chosen land of the Latter Day Saints and home of the Wendover Wildcats, regional high school sports powerhouse according to the pennants adorning the gym where we are staying the night. My hope is that these pennants, our stuff, and ourselves will still be here in the morning instead of in Oz or some other never-never land. The wind raging outside, fluttering the aluminum siding, making the supporting beams moan and groan, flickering the lights and generally pointing out how puny we all are, may have other plans.

But let's assume that since you're reading this we haven't landed on the wicked witch of the East, I still don't own a pair of ruby slippers, and we're following some interstate and not the Yellow Brick Road.

The big question remains: with semi's being blown over on I80, which we are intended to ride on for 105 miles tomorrow - our longest day so far - what will we do? Stay tuned for the stunning conclusion in tomorrow's episode, "24 Hours on the Salt Flats of Hell."

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