Tying Up Some Loose Ends

Hi Y'all!

I'll explain the picture to the left in just a bit. For now, suffice it to say that it represents the most beautiful sight in the world, a true Mecca.

Because of the whole Today show thing I explained yesterday, Bret and I are going to drive toward New York City and I'm going to bike in as far as I safely can (and we are still in the middle of that heat wave -- the temperature should be over 80 all afternopn), then we'll go in the rest of the way. In the end, we will have made a trip of around 1600 miles, and I will have biked close to 1100 of it. Most folks didn't think this was possible. I was talking to Bret last night about some thoughts I have -- is it important that I've ridden pretty far on a bicycle? No, not even a little bit (outside the context of my life).

To me, the important point of this ride continues to be that anyone can do a lot more than they think they can (or, more importantly, more than others think they can). If I can do this ride, then a heck of a lot of folks who think they can't, actually can. And anyone can find ways to be better, to do more than they think they can, or than others think they can.

Okay, enough soapbox. Thanks for indulging me.

The last few days of riding have included some pretty hard-core night riding, and that is pretty much what I wanted to share with you.

Night riding can either be extremely cool or it can be very difficult. It is cool when the terrain is flat (like it was the first night in Ohio). Man, that first night was great, for the most part (until it got very cold, sometime between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m.). It was the flattest portion of the entire journey, so it was safe to go fast and I could cruise along at a pretty good clip.

At one point, when I was getting a little desperate for a stop, I stumbled onto a small local bar called "Bada Bing by the River." As I parked my bike beside the building, the first thing I heard through the wall was "Rock Star," the current top-10 Nickelback hit and the bain of Bret's existance (because every rock station seems to play it every five minutes or so). Inside the bar, I found 20-30 locals, all of whom seemed to know each other, ranging in age from 21 to 60. It was the kind of place I don't get to go to very often. The music was pretty hard-core for the first 20 minutes or so I was there (I stuck around for about an hour), with "Rock Star" being the softest thing I heard; after that, there was "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" to Toby Keith. And, of course, they played "Rock Star" a second time in the span of an hour or less, before I left.

Jeez, there were some drunk people at this place. I watched two guys (older) get carried out. Everyone was friendly and I had a few conversations. Mostly, I was struck by the comraderie of the local crowd. It was kind of fun to be on the periphery, if only for a short time. At one point there was a lot of shouting from one end of the bar to the other, "Hey, this guy's riding his bike over a thousand miles!" They said they were glad I was drinking soda, so as to avoid a DWB.

Later, around four in the morning, I found myself at a gas station somewhere in Ohio. I ended up talking to a guy in his 60's who has been trained by the Red Cross to do post-flood cleanup and recovery. He'd just returned from helping in northern Ohio (apparently he goes all over the country). He obviously needed to get some things off his chest and he unloaded a bit about his experiences looking for missing people, post-flood. Just in the last week, he'd found a five-year-old boy wedged in a wall, caught there in the flood. Sorry to be so shocking, but you can imagine how it might feel to hear this story, in pretty graphic detail, at an Ohio gas station at 4:00 in the morning after biking 50 miles or so. People have a need to unload their burdens; for this guy, I was one of the places (perhaps one of many places, perhaps not) where he could do that.

Speaking of gas stations, the picture above -- the most beautiful sight ever -- is of the 24-hour gas station I found at about 2:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, after riding 30 miles in the dark (about five miles before Ebensburg, PA). Let me tell you, there is nothing more beautiful in the world than a 24-hour gas station after that kind of ride. Remember how I said that night-riding on flat territory is pretty cool? Well, night-riding on hilly or mountainous territory is not. Everything is slower -- uphill because that's always slower and downhill because going too fast when you can only see about 15 feet in front of you is not very smart. My entire Monday-Tuesday ride was incredibly hilly and curvy. It was safe, but hard, hard, hard. You may not believe this, but my riding day was roughly 17 hours from the time I started until the time I stopped (including short breaks and meals) and I only made it 62 miles because the terrain was such a killer.

For example, when I pulled into the Sheetz gas station around 2:00 a.m., I told the lady at the counter that I'd just been up the two largest hills I'd ever seen in my life. She asked if I'd come from the West on Highway 22 and I said yes. "Honey, those aren't hills. Those are mountains. Penn and Chicory. Trucks have trouble getting up those things."

One was over a mile up and the other was over two miles. Ugh. And going down was almost as difficult as going up because I had to ride the breaks so hard or I would have been going 50 miles an hour. To reiterate, nightriding is fun when the terrain is flat, otherwise, be ready for a long night.

That's enought writing for now (perhaps too much at once). I'm going to send some fundraising e-mails right now, trying to get some more money in for the MS Society. Then Brett and I will figure out our driving and riding schedule. Tomorrow we'll try to make our appearance at the Today show and then start heading home.

See ya!

- sean

Sean Spence

MS Advocate

www.MissouriToManhattan.com

seanspence@earthlink.net