Retrospect: Leg 1 from San Francisco to Salt Lake City

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Miles 856 Miles, 33700 feet of climb , Days 1-11, CA, NV, UT

Discovery of My Limits




Plane landing over San Francisco Bay

I am actually glad I did not know what was going to happen. Thanks to my airline, I started off on the wrong foot by being late for check-in. The reception by America by Bicycle staff was, “Dave’s late, but he’s here now.” Don’t get me wrong, they truly were glad I finally made it. Little did they know this was going to be a recurring theme for the next two months.

I had heard that the best vacations were those where your world gets turned upside down, you exit your normal life, and you diligently seek discovery and change. Hopefully that change is good, and that you live through it. This vacation was all of that, and all of that multiplied by fifty two days. I looked around the room at that first meeting and saw nobody like me. The most striking difference was that these folks were ready to ride and to ride fast. I was a bundle of fears (and rightly so), whereas my fellow riders were the epitome of confidence. The first fear that came over me was my perspective. I saw this as a vacation, my peers saw rightly that this was a high risk - high reward challenge.

Our Initial Briefing - I was scared to death!

I actually suffered for weeks on how I was going to introduce myself at the opening meeting. I had planned to have a potpourri of somewhat humble comments spiced with humor. I discovered after hearing the first ten riders synopsize their credentials that I had no business being allowed in the same room with them. Their concerns were quite different than mine, and I didn’t want to risk ridicule right out of the box. When my turn came to speak I told them that 50 pounds ago at Christmas my wife purchased for me my very first road bike and this tour package. She decided to sacrifice her summer this year so that I could fulfill a dream I have had since childhood, and helped me with diet and scheduling training time to get me here that day. It was the best gift a husband could ever receive and I was determined not to disappoint her. When asked about any charity I mentioned methodology, not message, not wanting to get branded and isolated as the tour’s evangelist. If my faith was to become apparent, it would come later through deeds and not words. I included no humor, and shelved my prepared remarks to tell my fellow riders that I was open for any advice that would help me make it to New Hampshire.  After hearing the others I decided not mention my professional background or other interests. I truly was an alien in this foreign world. Upside down? Absolutely, and hanging by my toes!

So what were my goals going into the ride?

1.  Using the ride time for active deep thought. The focus was first on how to honor God through my conduct, and second in formulating the content of my next books. Specifically I wanted to flesh out the outlines I have made for books three, four, and five. My third book has the theme of goodness and my hope was to find examples of goodness as I rode my bike across America. The tangible goal was to have the storyboard complete by my crossing the Mississippi River.

2. Honor my employer by keeping our prearranged work schedule. My absence in the office increased the work load on my teammates and I was determined to do what I could to help. They are not just peers, they are friends.

3. Honor my commitment to keep all those who are praying for me informed on my progress. One friend installed on my smart phone an App to trace my route and post pictures. My daughter took on the impossible task of teaching me how to blog in HTML. My personal goal in this was to divorce myself from my world of statistics and analyses and focus on producing a short daily narrative that my dear friends would enjoy reading. This was my most challenging goal.

4. Honor those who have faith in me to complete the challenge. This would mean taking care of my body, watching out for those riding with me, dealing with daily issues and disappointments, and hopefully gain the physical and mental conditioning to make it all the way to the Atlantic.

Those who began the ride in San Francisco

The first days of the challenge was a week of rude awakenings. Adrenaline got me to the Pacific, through the hills of San Francisco, and over the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we headed east and the enormity of the challenge slammed me as we rode over the ghastly littered roads that followed the north shore of San Pablo Bay. My rear tire suffered a massive blowout as we approached the city of Vallejo. When the SAG support wrote me a $61 bill for parts to repair my tire I thought to myself this was going to be a long trip. When we checked into our first hotel I became terrified. It was a crack house with dopers at the pool using their needles to openly shoot up or snorting their drugs. At least they weren’t noisy once they mellowed out. (In Alabama the mitigation for such risks have pearl handles, not pearl izumi's.) The SAG support was great, and by bike shop standards a fair price for parts. That did not counter the AbB corporate route planner’s choice to house us in such unsafe conditions. I felt sorry for Michelle, AbB lead for this ride, to be subject to repeated requests to explain the corporate decision. She never did answer. This first round of accommodations negated all the goodwill AbB had earned up to then. The most obvious act of goodness on our first day of riding was divine protection for all of us from those who might have done us harm. Maybe I am too sensitive to this.



Paul, better known as Sarge, at a SAG stop in California

As we rode east through California we left the ugly underbelly of society and feasted on the delights of the lush California Central Valley. Everything was so healthy, places looked prosperous, and we had the fog of the City by the Bay well behind us. It was clear to all that I was not of the caliber of the good riders but yet was graciously adopted by others. We enjoyed getting to know each other and hearing each other’s stories. Once past Sacramento the serious business of hill climbing started and until we reached Sparks, NV the hills just came on coming. I was woefully unprepared for this and the downhill was ten times as terrifying to me as the uphill. There are no hills in Alabama that compare in grade and thin air we encountered. By the time the Sierra Nevada was behind us I firmly sealed my membership in the elite “Final Four.”  And then the heat… Sparks, Nevada treated us to temperatures up to 109 degrees. The first critical test of my ability was now over. I was still hanging in there, friendships were being formed, and better yet, California was now behind us. Soon Nevada passed under our pedals too, and on the last day of that state I accomplished my first century with an average speed of 17 mph. This was amazing, and I was feeling good. It didn’t hurt my outlook on life that the accommodations and restaurants were improving too.  And then the Great Salt Lake… too bright outside to even take a picture. It was a nose down day, the day to get it done, and then soak in the shower.  

One of the judgment errors I made in Nevada was not seeking medical help when I needed it. Shortly after leaving Sparks I came down with something I thought to be a urinary tract infection. It got very bad to the point where the tough-guy wishful thinking within me surrendered and I went to the emergency room in Winnemucca, NV. Part of that decision was the fact there was no hospital for the next four days. The news was worse than I expected. Although similar in effect, I was not suffering an UTI but most certainly a repeat of what put me in the hospital last year in Huntsville. The doctor and I talked about what to do about it and I left there with what he thought would counter the problem.  I slept that night seeing my dream ride of a lifetime slipping away from me. Worse, I feared the possibility of a repeat of the pain that waylaid me so seriously last year. Greater than my tough-guy error, I also erred on my approach in telling my family. That little faux pas will forever be ensconced in the main corridor of my life’s Hall of Shame. I am such an idiot sometimes.

What the first 11 days were like.  (6 Flags, CA)

So how did I do on my goals? Miserable. We rode too fast to enjoy any solitude, and the noise of riding on the interstate was deafening. What about helping at work? Miserable. The security that hotels had set up for their internet access did not play with the security in place with my employer. What about keeping up with informing my friends of what was going on? Good, but a bit disingenuous. I majored on the good and overlooked the bad. There would be time later to reflect on the unpleasant, and maybe when I would look back at the end of the ride, I hoped the bad wasn’t so bad. What about completing the ride? I was meeting the challenge, but barely, and certainly at risk. I was honestly scared I would not finish. I refused to sightsee in Salt Lake City. My body was spent, and I wasn’t going to do anything to tax it more. My body needed rest, my mind needed rest, and my spirit needed calming.

But what of the unexpected? There are some explainable events and reputations that I had no control over or sought. The strangest was my being dubbed as an intellectual in the group. (This really speaks poorly of these guys if I’m the intellectual). Whenever a question arose like ‘What is that?’ it was me that was asked, and I gave them the right answer. I don’t have an explanation for my uncanny accuracy. Another reputation was my role as the clean-up guy.  As I rode down the road I found stuff (coats, gloves, hats, SPF30 Chap Stick) that obviously belonged to other riders, scooped it up, and asked at dinner who owned it. It always belonged to somebody. This led to a third reputation of being the guy who noticed everything. I was Mr. Detail of the group and the collector of stories. Lastly, I was also the guy that worried about everything. God was planting these seeds for His later use, and He didn’t bother asking me if I wanted to enjoy those reputations or not.

Lonely Days

Bottom Line: My ability to put a smile on my face grew more difficult each day, yet knowing what I had already gone through gave me a reasonable expectation to hope that something good would grow from this. I have never been so lonely in my life, or so aware of my limitations.