A Change of Plans

In Portland minutes before departure

The bicycle has been taken out of the picture. It is now sitting in a barn in Ohio. I'm depressed about this, but not totally. I think there are some good things that can come from finishing the trip without the bike. All the signs were pointing me to continuing the journey without it, and who am I to argue with signs? Especially ones that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways.

The last time I actually rode my Jamis Aurora was in California. I had it in a box, ready to follow me to Oakland so I could use it to tool around the bay area. When I arrived at Jack London station my bicycle didn't. In fact, when I departed 3 days later the bike still had not made the northern voyage. I was concerned. I like my bicycle. I paid a lot of money for my bicycle. Why hadn't it made it to Oakland yet?

The explanation I received was because it couldn't fit on a bus. Here's the thing: I had to take a bus from L.A. to Bakersfield in order to hop on a train that went up the San Jacquin Valley to Oakland. The bicycle had to wait for a train that left L.A. and went straight to Oakland. I'm not sure why this took so long, but it wasn't until I was in Denver that I had a verbal confirmation of where my bike was.

Leaving my bike in LA

I stayed in Denver for six nights. It was on the second night that I learned my bicycle had finally made it to Oakland. On the fifth night it arrived, lights blinking I'm told, in Denver. So I could have easily been sans bicycle for the duration of my mile high stop. Fortunately for me I have nice friends in Denver. One of them is Mariel.

Mariel loaned me her bike for most of the time that I was in Colorado. Because of this I was able to get around town with ease and do most of the things that I had wanted, which included a night of trivia on the other side of town and the baseball game.

Denver also has a great system set up to rent bikes. There are these stations all over the city where bicycles are locked up, waiting for someone to pay for their use and then deposited at another station. The loan from Mariel, the ease with which I used public transportation in San Francisco and the bike rental experience fused with the trouble I had transporting my own bicycle to lead me to the decision of leaving the bike behind.

A bike rental station in Toronto

Another side of this is that many friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers have reached out to help me along my trek. I've found that it is often convenient for those offering a bed or a meal to meet me with their automobile and my bicycle use has the potential to gum up the works of generosity. I am extremely appreciative of everybody's help and don't like adding inconveinece to the list of favors.

Things changed, or maybe it was my perception of the way things were that changed, and I had to adapt. Isn't that what we do? Anyways, flexibility is a part of travel. Or at least a major portion of the prescription of travel enjoyment. Rigidity and parameters added to a diet of over-planning and tight schedules can lead to hyper acute travelosis.

From this I hope to be able to focus more on the public transportation in the cities I visit. I am composing this from a restaurant in Toronto, ON, watching cyclists casually ride alongside cars and trucks along Church St. I got to the restaurant on Toronto's kick ass subway system. If their subway sytem wasn't so good I'd probably have taken a bus, like I did in Cleveland with my sister Julia.

I'm excited to see what the other cities have to offer and who the people are that use public transportation. A person I know wrote a poem and sent it to me the other day. In her poem she talked about seeing people on the bus and making up the stories of their lives in her head. I tell you, that is a lot of fun. Beyond the obvious societal benefits of a healthy public transportation system (we can all agree on that, right?) riding buses and city trains is an entertaining exercise in imagination.