“Honey, can you move over to the other side of the white line? I’m afraid that you’re too close to traffic.” This was my way of coaxing my girlfriend and soon-to-be fiance’ as we headed east in Northern Ontario on the trans-Canadian highway.
“I’m afraid of the wind if I’m too close to the edge,” came the reply. Gabriela had never been on any kind of long distance bicycle tour before I convinced her to accompany me on this Minneapolis to Toronto excursion.
“Angel, this is the trans-Canadian highway and there will be lots of trucks, so we should be as far to the right as possible.”
No reply. Nothing.
I shifted slightly to the left, now riding directly behind her, to the left of the white line and slightly in the lane of the eighteen-wheelers that seemed to shake the earth every two or three minutes. I somehow felt better and more comfortable in the knowledge that if anyone was going to be clipped, it would first be me.
This was my seventh long-distance bicycle tour and first with a companion. Gabriela and I had been dating for about six months. We knew that we were very fond of each other and that the relationship was full of long-term promise. A bicycle tour would bring us to a new level, I just knew it. I sold the tour to Gabriela with all of my faculties, ensuring her that it would be full of joy and enlightenment.
“Are you out of your mind Jim?! This could destroy your relationship!” my friends warned over and over again. “She’s going to catch a bus somewhere in Michigan and leave you along the side of the road like roadkill.”
Many of my closest friends could not begin to grasp the concept that a bicycle tour might actually be good for our relationship. Sure, it was full of hardships, I thought, but when two people struggle together, it deepens the relationship as they learn to help and support each other. We’d see each other at our worst and at our best, I thought. What better way to prepare for a possible life together?
Our first day leaving Minneapolis was on a beautiful, wooded rails-to-trails Trail, flat as can be. I kept warning Gabriela that this was about as good as a trail can get, but that we’d be spending much of our time on roads with no shoulders and heavy traffic. I was afraid that our very serene first thirty miles might paint a false impression in her head of what bike-touring is all about.
The second day cured her of this experience. The map told us that the road would be two lanes, but we found ourselves on a busy, four-lane highway, with no alternative routes in sight. Every other car made a point of blasting their horn at us as they sped past, letting us know that we were not welcome in their 4-wheel jungle. I could see by the look on Gabriela’s face that she was both frightened and uncertain. We continued until finally the road returned to two lanes and the traffic decreased. That evening, around 6 o’clock, a car slowed as it passed us and hesitantly pulled over about 100 ft. in front of us. As we passed, a voice from the window proclaimed, “Gabriela?!” It was an old friend of hers from Minneapolis, passing us on this country road in the middle of nowhere. Who runs into friends on bicycle tours? That night, as we dined and slept at their farmhouse, I knew that this tour, like all others, would be full of the unexpected.
“I’m having fantasies that a good Samaritan will pull over and drive us to the next town,” she began to say around day three.
“Gabriela, you don’t accept rides on bicycle tours unless there is some kind of emergency or breakdown. You just don’t do it.”
Pause.
“I’d just see it as an act of kindness.”
It was a challenge for me to adjust from my usual 90-100 miles per day to our 60-65 miles/day pace. I was impressed with her ability to pick up a bicycle (which she bought the day before we started the tour) and ride it 60 miles a day, but a part of me missed the experience of pushing my body to the absolute limit, flying through countryside, sweating, and hiding in the meditation that is complete bodily exhaustion. I didn’t realize it then, but I was entering a new kind of meditation, one I had never before experienced: the meditation of togetherness….feeling, thinking, and being in sync with another human being. I was learning how to take care of another person and to allow myself to be cared for on the same level.
“I’ll never have sex again!” she screamed on day five as we bicycled through rural northern Wisconsin, “That Butt'r I bought for my butt isn’t helping much.”
“Try to shift in your seat,” was all I could think of to comfort her. I knew the struggles of beginning tourers with problems on the Behind. I had learned that it was a matter of constantly adjusting the seat, one’s position on the seat, and working that area of the body until it adapts to the rigors of constant riding. The winces on Gabriela’s face and the way she walked slowly with her legs apart was all I needed to see. She was in pain and my worst fear was that she would decide one day that she had had enough. I was pushing her along every day, making sure our breaks weren’t too long. We needed to be in Toronto on a certain day so that we could spend time with her sister, who had just had twin girls, before we headed down to Pennsylvania and my family. Gabriela was dying to see those two girls. Every day that we fell behind, meant spending one less day with our loved ones.
“Twelve more miles to the next town,” I’d whisper from behind her…..hoping that it would make each mile a little easier…that she would block out any inclinations to give up.
Each night in our tent was our salvation. We’d lie close together after cleaning up…the worries of finding a place to camp and setting up the tent behind us….and we’d whisper. Sweet whispers would fill that tent, whispers of the fears we had faced that day, whispers of our hopes for tomorrow, whispers of what we admired about each other at moments in the day. The trees would sway above us and the clouds would boom with thunder, and below it all, in some state park, these two lovers would whisper. A whisper can never be a lie, not after 65 hard miles, 28 tractor trailers, 43 different forms of roadkill, a rainstorm, and intense pain in the Behind. I may not have traveled 100 miles, but together we traveled 200 spiritual miles straight into the refuge of Love.
“I wonder what those girls are doing right now,” was usually her last thought before we passed out in each other’s arms.
Gabriela was seeing through her pain, she was finding the joy in the people and in the landscape. We met some nuts along the way. At one stop to fix a broken pannier, an elderly man asked us what we were doing. When we explained that we were bicycling from Minneapolis to Toronto, he exclaimed, “Around here, we call that Polock!” Some people inspected our bicycles and studied the way that we carried our panniers. In the eyes of some, I could see their own sense of possibilities expanding as they watched and listened to our story.
One day in Ontario, as I was anguishing with a wobbly rear tire, our spirits were low as we learned that there wasn’t a bicycle shop within 150 miles in any direction. The locals, though, would mention a man named Gus McIntyre, the “Bicycle Man,” as they called him. Gus, it is said, ran a bike repair shop out of his garage for years before retiring a couple of years ago. If we could find Gus, we were told, he’d be sure to take care of my wheel. Everywhere we stopped, it seemed, they knew of Gus. As we approached the town where he was said to live, we received specific directions to his house. We had to bike about 5 miles down a gravel road through the country and look for sculptures at the end of the driveway made out of old bicycle wheels. We found Gus that day, and he opened up his garage and fixed my wheel. He invited us to stay for the night. Gus McIntyre, the legend of bicycle tourists in northern Ontario. Gus McIntyre, the kind of person whose life represents the wisdom of the bicycle…..slow and steady, we all must represent something in our brief lives. Thanks Gus.
I introduced Gabriela to my superstitions about locals. “Everytime a local says ‘good luck’ to you, that means that you are safe for as least the next 20 miles……..a ‘god bless’ is worth 30.” Our new view of the roads led to discussions about automobiles, roadkill. Gabriela introduced me to the tastes of apricots, almonds, and the ritual of washing fruit before eating it………and every single time we stopped, as I set my helmet on my seat, she carefully would attach it to the handlebars of the bike, snapping it into place, securing it so that it wouldn’t fall. “Everytime your helmet falls, it loses something. I don’t want my baby’s head squished.”
Through the Michigan Upper Peninsula we rode, beautiful state parks for camping, something called a Pastie in every restaurant, old, broken-down American-built cars, and everywhere we turned: WATER. Living in dry Colorado makes a person aware of water. Lakes in every valley, large rivers, and of course the Great Lakes, which would be our constant companion for the remainder of the trip.
Finally, on a rainy and gray morning, we made our way into Sault Ste. Marie (“The Sooo,” as locals call it) and onto the international bridge into Ontario. The bridge was narrow and over two miles in length. Cars barely had room to pass us and to make matters more difficult, the bridge involved steep up and down sections.
At the crossing, we found ourselves behind a single motorcyclist. From behind, he appeared a scary man: a black helmet with a spike at the top, dark leather jacket, cut off at the elbows to show both forearms covered in tattoos. He looked to be about 250 pounds. A sticker on the back of his helmet proclaimed, “Mean People Suck, but Nice People Swallow.”
Gabriela is just about the friendliest person I have ever met. She can make even the coldest, most hardened person feel immediately comfortable. I could tell that she was edging closer to kicking up a conversation with this man on his motorcycle.
“Honey,” I whispered, “you might not want to talk to this guy.”
“Hi, how’s the ride?” she spat out before I could stop her.
The man slowly turned his enormous head. As his face came into view, we could see that he had absolutely no expression at all. At this point, I was searching for another line that we might be able to jump into.
Silence. We studied each other…..he on his monster bike and us in our nylon biking tights. Finally, he spoke. I was braced for the worst. Would I be called out to have to defend my maiden?
He smiled.
“I thought I was a tough guy with my bike….but when I see people like you, I see real bikers. You guys must be tough.” He turned back and drove up to the border agent and we were left to contemplate how appearances deceive.
Gabriela was immediately joyful when we entered Ontario. We were in the same province as her nieces. As we rode toward the sunset and the old mining town of Bruce Mines, through misty fields and under the orange canopy of the sunset, I knew we were going to make it. We rode 77 miles that day.
“Those girls….what are they doing at this instant?”
Our best rides were in the evening. With sunset at nearly 10 pm, we could ride in the cool evening air until usually nine o’clock. This was until the most challenging day of our tour. We cut south from the trans-Canadian highway onto Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron. A ferry at the southeast corner of the island connects to the Bruce Peninsula in southern Ontario and o
nto Toronto. We had to put ourselves into position to make the ferry the next day. We found ourselves slowed by remote mountains south of the town of Espanola, Ontario. It was after 9 pm and darkness was creeping in. These were the first mountains of our tour and they had beaten us up a bit. We were exhausted. We stopped at one point as we climbed a hill, the sun was down and we were nowhere close to hotels or campgrounds. Gabriela looked scared. A tear rolled down her cheek. I knew that it was time to find a safe place to camp. We found a lodge that allowed us to camp on their property. The mosquitos devoured us that night. Morale was low. We were nearly 70 mile from the ferry and the last one left at 5 pm. We didn’t sleep much that night, knowing that we needed to get up early and have the ride of our lives to make that ferry. We did. In the heat, we rose at 7 and rode all day, making the ferry with time to spare.On that ferry, on that day, as the mist of the lake engulfed us into its bosom, I fell asleep in my angel’s arms. We made it.
Bicycle touring can be the greatest gift to a relationship because it involves struggle. Struggle built us a new foundation; struggle allowed us to see each other’s tears; struggle allowed us to help each other. Struggle introduced us to the true meaning of reciprocity. Gabriela took care of my helmet and washed our fruit. I took care of the directions the storytelling. We rode under incredible orange sunsets, with the air cooling, and the promise of a shower and a hot meal.
We’re now engaged to marry. In seven weeks, we’ll commit ourselves to each other forever. For the rest of our lives, we’ll always tell and retell the stories of our bicycle tour.
“I wonder what those girls are doing right now,” she said as we drifted off to sleep.
Holding Bailey and Sydney Kirsch-Flora for the first time upon our arrival in Toronto (with mama Natasha).
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