Why?
So many times during my trip people asked me WHY?
I didn’t always have an answer, or want to answer honestly.
I mean, there were so many reasons to do it—or not. It wasn’t exactly apparent
during a pandemic why I was subjecting myself to danger. Or why in the face of
30 MPH winds, or traffic, or just the daily physical grind, I was doing a
cross-country bike tour.
Even the word tour wasn’t quite it. That word evokes
vacation, being a tourist, discovery along with relaxation. Whereas most days
that was not the case. Some days I just pedaled to get anywhere but where I
was, pushing through exhaustion and boredom.
So why? And, why now?
The short answer: When I was 16 I wanted to do this trip,
but I couldn’t get my parents permission. Now at 61 I was free to do it.
But it goes deeper than that—at 61 I was able to do it. I appreciate the fact
that I am healthy. So many people because of one reason or another could not
just get on their bike and ride from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean. I can barely
believe I did it. Mortality plays a large part to my decision. As I get older I
realize time is running short. It is a motivator to check things off a to-do
list. We ask ourselves, If not now then when?
It is precisely because of Covid that this was possible.
Suddenly my life was interrupted and I was thrown into semi-retirement. I had a
job where people depended on me, literally. As a morning cook I prepared
breakfast for up to 300 people five days a week for over 15 years. In the past
whenever I took a vacation it threw a wrench into everyone’s routine. I always
heard when I returned that I was missed, that things were not the same. Covid
did away with breakfast service. Meals were boxed and only for take-away. The
menu went down to only dinner. I filled in by volunteering at our homeless
shelter in their kitchen, and, even though cases were under control and all the
CDC guidelines were in place, I felt like a leper within my own building and
social community. Once people heard I was at the shelter it raised their
anxiety level and they stayed away from me. Isolation became a real issue for
me.
On top of all this a certain tension had been building inside
of me. Call it stress. The news was bad and there was soooo much of it. Every day
I was drenched, inundated with it. Most of it of my own doing. I went
frequently to the on-line Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Map to see where cases were
active. I worried about people I loved and cared for. Numbers don’t lie, and I
could see the wave sweeping over the country. I’d wake up several times during
the night to check the news. It wasn’t a matter of if but when we would all succumb to disaster. A mood of impending doom in
a spring of never-ending winter descended upon me. We were all shut in. It was
a crime to even go to the lake. Movement was circumscribed; we could only go
outside if necessary. The food I ate stuck in my throat; it didn’t seem to feed
me, even though I gained five pandemic pounds.
Finally, there was the constant questioning. Of everything.
People my age usually take solace in that things are settled. They’ve always
been this way. It’s just how things are. If we were completely honest with
ourselves we would acknowledge the inequality, that we aren’t in this thing
together, that leadership has failed us, that the adage that God is love has
been shot through by reality. But then, what is real?
(You see the questioning.)
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not one to shout FAKE NEWS, but I
didn’t believe I was seeing the full picture. We’re only seeing the extremes.
The people protesting masks, the people in the streets with guns. The awful
police videos of cops kneeling on necks. The rioting and marching, the unrest.
The grandstanding in front of churches. On and on, the divided politics, people
I love taking polar positions without the fundamental sense that we are all
human beings. Entitled to our own opinion—even if wrong. I argued constantly
with my parents—maybe a bad example as Dad wrote me out of his will—but it didn’t
mean I disowned him. We were still bound together. This isn’t compromise, it is
love.
So reality acknowledges we all have stories, there are
several parallel narratives simultaneously being told, and we must find a path
through them to our own. That’s what I was attempting with a ride across
America. Okay, half of America, the 2,464 miles I rode. I was trying to make my
way forward.
Through the ups and downs, the hard, the easy. I talked with
a man on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, a self-made man who enjoyed trapping
and fishing, a woman with the state legislature in Pierre, SD who identified as
a conservative, a grandma in Ft. Benton, Montana whose politics much resembled
my own. Yes, people are deeply divided and suspicious of the “other,” but they
also seemed restless and unsatisfied by these divides. Not everyone. A guy
outside Eddie’s Corner in Montana was pretty sure everyone in Oregon was a
socialist when I told him I was trying to get there. After two minutes of
chatting I realized he didn’t like a lot of people and said so to him. He
agreed, I only like it here. Here, meaning, I thought, inside your own head. I
wasn’t going to change his mind.
So why? Because I had to live my own dream, find happiness
whatever way I could, turning to what I love, what has set me right in the
past, to the thing that brings me peace, that thing that makes me feel like me,
the authentic Jane. I rode my bike.
Much like the 2020
Tiny Desk Winner, Linda Diaz who was inspired by Green Tea Ice Cream. Her
winning song encapsulates this feeling. To slow down, pay attention to yourself,
and be mindful, All this give me hope.
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