Don't Worry Nate or I'm Off to Look For America

Sometime earlier this year I wrote a blog post saying modern backpackers are pussies compared to the average Civil War soldier on campaign carrying his gear and food without any aluminum tent poles, nylon tents, freeze-dried food packages, goose-down vests, or fancy thick soled light weight boots.  In 1863 hikers and soldiers had wool, wood, canvas, and leather to make all the stuff they carried and wore.

Today, I’m reversing myself and applauding a young couple who “ain’t no pussies.”  They proved that by bicycling 3,000 miles over 62 days from Boston, Mass. to Sunnyside, a little farming town in Washington state.  My hat is off to Nik Walther and Molly Heyman, who resigned from their jobs in Boston, she as a special education teacher and he as a brewer at Harpoon Brewery, stored their belongings, and crossed America on two high-tech vehicles whose only motors were the couple’s legs.

Nik grew up in Lockhart next door to us and his parents are close friends of three decades now. In the summer of 2014 we spent a great week in Boston to attend Nik and Molly’s wedding in a park.

Even though I’m stuck these days vicariously living in the 19^th century through writing about and reenacting the Civil War, I’m forgiving Nik and Molly their use of nylon and high-strength light-weight steel bikes and other such modernisms, because they rode roads and crossed states that didn’t exist in the 1860’s.

Thanks to the wonders of digital technology they blogged several times a week and kept their family and friends engaged with their trip.  Their blog is “Don’t Worry Nate” on Google’s blogpost. Here’s the link if you are curious enough to read a bit about their trip to find America.  Simon and Garfunkle would be proud of them.

http://dontworrynate.blogspot.com/

Nik and Molly camped some nights in parks, one night behind a gas station in a town in Wyoming. They stayed with extended family, friends, and friends of friends, and begged showers. They discovered craft breweries and local beers in every state crossed. Mostly, they pedaled and pedaled and pedaled and pedaled through towns and cities, forests and crop land, over America’s tallest mountains, and across wide, wide prairies. I’m impressed. You’d have to be dead not to be impressed.

The end days of their trip were through an area in Idaho where forest fires are a major issue. The threats of the fires caused them to eventually get off their bikes and hitch a ride in a local couple’s pick-up truck when the smoke was too heavy to continue pedaling and breathing, even with their paper masks.  

They didn’t write if they ever saw flames in the trees, but if they had blogged that they did, or posted such a photo, both mothers would have been unduly stressed. So the question of “Just how close were you to a forest fire?” will have to be answered later. Probably with cold Texas beers in hand.

And now I’m compelled to go back forty-three years to 1972 and mention Nita’s and my trip across America when we were newly-weds and young people still listened to Simon and Garfunkle music.

A month after our wedding we took off on our version of pedaling across America, except we did it using the gas pedal of a 1964 Chevy pick-up with a homemade plywood camper shell on the back painted blue and green on the outside and yellow and orange on the inside. Our families thought we were nuts because we too had quit our jobs for the trip and I’d not yet finished my college degree.

We probably traveled some of the same roads that Nik and Molly rode. We stopped in parks and the driveways of extended family to sleep in the camper.  Both couples traveled through Yellowstone National Park and marveled at the geysers and wildlife. I won't mention that in 1972 Nita slipped a Fig Newton cookie through a crack in the truck window to a bear while our dog went beserk.

We enjoyed borrowed bathrooms and showers as much as Nik and Molly did. Well, probably not. We both took about two months to complete our trips.  I expect Nik and Molly will have the same warm lifelong memories of their trip to find America as Nita and I still have, and they'll have better looking legs.

In 1972, we came back to Texas and worked in Nita’s mom’s family café in Dallas to earn enough seed money to return to Austin and resume our pre-trip lives. To the surprise of my parents, I did finish college.

I expect Nik and Molly will flirt with moving to one of the wonderful places they discovered on their pedaling journey, and might even return to Colorado or South Carolina to try a new life. Or the siren call of Boston may pull them back. Because even after two months of discovering America, there’s no place like home.

There’s no Civil War or novel writing point to this post. Maybe next week.

This week I read a John Grisham thriller, The Racketeer, and kept thinking, damn, this guy can write.