Kevin’s Thoughts

When we were planning and preparing for this trip, I knew one thing for certain – no matter how much I planned or prepared, I’d never be able to predict just how the trip would go. The nature of this type of travel, as I’m sure anyone who’s read this blog knows by now, is inherently reactive. It’s a practical impossibility to plan a trip this size in detail, and so all you can do is respond to the needs of your day-to-day. This leads you down paths you’d never have expected, towards sights you’d never have thought you’d see, and is part of the inherent beauty of the whole process.

Sitting here, outside a coffee shop in Downtown LA in early November, I can look back on our first three months on the road and say with confidence that my hypothesis was correct.

We developed a mantra about halfway through the trip that has served us well a handful of times already: whenever we’re presented with multiple options, the correct answer is always the hard answer. Take the graded highway up the mountain or take the unpredictable dirt track? Option B. Put in extra miles to make sure you can hit an extra National Park? No brainer. The effort not only makes whatever place we arrive all the more sweet for it, but also adds a variety to the trip that makes the journey itself all the more sweet, too. We didn’t quit our jobs and put our lives on hold just to do 100 mile days on the side of the same state highway, day in, day out. Every time we’ve made that call (as difficult as it can sometimes be to opt in to riding straight up a mountain, for example) it has been 100% correct, and made our trip a more whole and beautiful experience.

We’ve had some conversations about what, if anything, we learned after 3 months on the road. Speaking solely for myself, this trip has confirmed that the average person we encounter is kindhearted, willing to help, and willing to share their lives with us – regardless of place, politics, or circumstance. Frankly, even in 3 months, I’ve come to take that comfort for granted; I’m not even surprised when someone opens their home to us. Not because we’re special in some way, but because it has been reinforced so many times throughout America that people see us and offer their resources without prodding.

I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t think privilege played some role in that experience. I think being a genial, fresh-faced young white couple probably allows us to skate past the preconceived notions that some people might have of folks who literally live outside. But speaking purely of our experience, the average person we encounter pretty enthusiastically wants solely to help us.

In terms of self-reflection, I have also come to realize over this trip that I am just much more of a wilderness person than a city person. I already knew this; the noise, light pollution, and hustle and bustle already weighed on me living back home in Chicago. It’s been reinforced and shaped over the course of this trip, especially since we hit the real actual wildernesses available beginning in the Mountain West – the calm, undisturbed feeling of existing far out in nature, away from the static buzz of collected humanity, has become a perennial comfort. When we crossed over the mountains from the desert towards greater San Diego, it was a bit of a shock. We’d existed largely unobserved, away from people in close proximity for weeks, and arriving suddenly back into one of the largest metropolitan areas in the US was startling. After this trip, I could see myself compromising again and living in a city for its myriad other benefits (access to cultural events, healthcare, food, et cetera) but I don’t think I’d prefer it in the long run.

Reflecting on the travel itself, I have also noted something of a mismatch of expectations based on our past bike trips. There are many beautiful and energizing aspects of this lifestyle – seeing new things every day, experiencing rare and unique things, using your own strength to move through the world on a grand scale; but one thing I didn’t have the capacity to anticipate was the attrition of not having a home for extended periods of time. It gives me great sympathy for the people who did not have the luxury of opting into an itinerant lifestyle (to put it generously), because it takes a lot of time, energy, brainpower, and willpower to constantly need to answer the questions, ‘Where am I going to sleep tonight?’, ‘Where am I getting my next meal?’, and ‘Where am I going tomorrow?’. It seems a losing battle at times, by which I mean, it often takes more energy to answer those questions than I get back from answering them. After 3 months on the road, I found it difficult to summon the energy to do much more outside of answering those questions – making art, playing music, even socializing often cost more gas than I had in the tank after a day traveling. There are ways to combat this that Alyssa and I have talked about at length – going slower, staying inside more frequently, perhaps landing in places for longer stretches of time – but the fact that it’s a conversation in general caught me off guard and remains an interesting quirk of this lifestyle.

As a whole, I’m so incredibly thankful to be able to experience this insane, wonderful, beautiful, hard, exciting, weird thing we’re doing. I’m also intensely proud of how far we’ve come under our own power, and I often catch myself looking at a map in disbelief that I rode my bicycle from our apartment to Los Angeles, California. I can’t wait to see what this trip offers us as we take it abroad, starting with Spain on November 22.