Why I Tour

"Because I was alone, however, even the mundane seemed charged with meaning.  The ice looked colder and more mysterious, the sky a cleaner shade of blue. The unamed peaks towering over the glacier were bigger and comelier and infinitely more menacing than they would have been were I in the company of another person. And  my emotions were similarly amplified: The highs were higher; the periods of despair were deeper and darker." - Jon Krakauer, describing his solo accent of Devil's Thumb in Alaska in Into the Wild.

This will be my last wordy post for this particular adventure.  I've decided to combine my last two into one.  I'll still post here with other adventures, but this one is wrapping up.  Thanks for reading and getting to know me.  If you were to pick a post to read entirely in order to learn about me, this would be the one. I'm sorry about the mispellings, apparently I can't function like an adult without spell check.

One of the most frequent things that people asked me when I met them on this tour, besides the puzzlingly ubiquitus "how many tires have you gone through?" was "Why are you doing this?"

I just don't know how to answer that. I feel obligated to try and give an answer that the asker will accept, but frankly, if you have to ask then you won't get it without a long discussion.  I say things like "because it's fun" and inevitably the asker doesn't accept my answer.  They try and get more... but nothing will satisfy them. Nothing I can say will fit into their paradigm or world view. I must be insane, have suffered a loss, be doing this for charity, or sacrificing in some way for me to do something so outside their accepted view of what a person would do.  But I'm none of those things.  I'm a traveler, and travelers travel.  It's as simple as that.

That being said, if you know me then you have a chance of understanding, even if you live in a different world than I do.  If you've been reading this blog all summer, and I've done an adequate job as a writer, you do know me.  Or at least you know the person I've decided to project to you while tired late at night typing on a tiny keyboard in a mosquito filled city park.  Good enough.  We are all the same, after all - and if I do this right you'll find some of me in you and that's how you'll understand why I bike tour.

There are several reasons.  I will list them here.

1) I tour because some things are worth doing just because they are hard. Doing something like this gives me the ability to do anything else I want in life.  It makes me mentally and physically hard.  It allows me to do the impossible.

Doing something like this mines the stone that I build my twin life pillars of strategic over-confidence and tactical self-delusion out of.

This is the Alexander Supertramp Into the Wild aspect of why I tour - but really this tour wasn't that hard.  If my main motivation was an Into the Wild level self-test I'd have toured Africa, or gone without a cell phone, or not blogged daily to relieve my loneliness.  My first tour in 2003 was a self-test - with my crappy equipment and naivety - but the only thing new for me on this trip was the solititude.  I knew what I was doing, was well prepared, and had tremendous confidence backed up by real tested ability.  Touring paved roads in the US isn't hard for someone with experience. (except for the being solo part)

So, while I did do this trip to test myself, that was not the main reason.  When I tour the Great Divide off-road trail next, then we'll talk about a mental and physical test that is new to me.

2) I tour to re-affirm my faith in humanity.  Now, much more than in my 2003 and 2007 tours, we are living in a world where we are told that we are all different. We are told that the country is hopelessly divided. We are told that we hate each other. 

This is bullshit.  I knew this was bullshit before my trip because of my past trips (especially 2007).  I needed to make sure this was still true.

70-80% of the people I met I think were conservative christians.  This is because I primarily stayed in small rural towns.  I'm not a conservative christian.  I'm sorry if you are one of the people I met in those towns reading this now and this is upsetting.  I purposefully did not talk politics on this trip because I didn't want that to get in the way of me getting to know you as a person. I didn't correct people's assumptions about me because they didn't matter to me. I don't find being thought of as something I'm not insulting, because being something different from me is NOT BAD.

We are all the same.  We might disagree on things, but we are the same.  We are all born. We all die.  We all love.  And, if you are one of the many people who selflessly helped me on my trip, knowing nothing about me, you have proof that we are both good people.

I deliberately sought out people who were ideologically different from me on this trip (although it would be hard to avoid them). I listened to them. I learned from them. I became good friends with some of them.  If this seems wrong or difficult to you stop watching the news and start listening to people like me.  Those people on TV are making money off your fear and hate.  Stop letting them and start getting to know that "evil person" next door.  Get off the polarizing hatebook if you need to, and get into the real world where real people are good to each other.

Listen to your grandparents and avoid conversations about religion and politics until after you'd made friends with someone.  Then learn from each other instead of arguing like middle schoolers.

Another question I was asked frequently was if I ever got bothered by sketchy people or if I carried a gun.  Now, I understand that my male, white privilege has something to do with this, as well as my staying in small towns, but in 3 seperate 4,000 mile bike trips I've never had to deal with a sketchy or scary person once. Not once.  I've only met nice people. Period.

3) To learn about the world (or just the US in this case). A place is only half it's scenery. The other half is the people who live there and their ways of life. When in a car you go through an area too fast, and you aren't special enough to warrant attention. When you come through on a bike people talk to you and invite you into their home.  Then I learn.  There isn't much more to explain here, but this is a huge reason of why I do what I do.

4) I tour because I never say no to adventure.  This is the biggest reason, and it will the hardest to explain.

There is a unique and lovely state of being, an existence, that can only be reached by multiple days on the road.  It's like crossing an ocean or going through a train tunnel.  The trip must be sufficiently long enough to enter the tunnel and then no-longer see the beginning or the end.  Time slows down. Days became weeks. Weeks become months.  You change.

You become a traveler. A rolling stone.  An object in motion that stays in motion. You gain a momentum that is just... powerful.

This existence becomes everything you've ever done and will do. When you are so deep in the tunnel that the beginning is ancient history and the end is an impossible to predict future, your life becomes eternal.

Personal redefinition is required. You adapt and that adaptation forces the release of all that is fake, extra, or superfluous in your life. 

When you hear people talk about wanderlust, this is what many of them are lusting after.  It's impossible for someone to really understand unless they've done something similar - a long bike tour, hiking the appalacian trail, etc. 

This narcotic takes an incredible investment of time and energy. A small tour doesn't do it. RAGBRAI? A three day hike up the McKenzie? A 12 day trip around Oregon on a bike? Not long enough.  The tunnel just isn't long enough. You never reach a point where you can't see either side.  There is no unknown blackness in front of you, where you don't know how everything is going to unfold, and when you look back near the end of your trip you can account every day easily. That doesn't do it. It helps to be going somewhere you've never been. I don't even think a month long trip would do it; I think 60 days might be the least amount of time possible unless it's in a really foreign area. Then there are those who tour much longer - years - I can't even imagine...

Those shorter adventures are still amazing and worth doing, but they don't give you ... it.  They don't give you the feeling of... it's not a feeling... they don't change you mentally and physically into someone else. Forever.

I love going to this place, but I also love other things.  I love Iris.  I love other types of adventures. Like with everything in life, I need I go here in moderation.  Because of the extreme time investment I must say no to other adventures to say yes to this one... but this high can only be achieved in one way and I am hopelessly addicted.

 Next time I go here I hope Iris will be with me, although I doubt she's interested in the Great Divide trail.  At least that's shorter and will be less of a time investment, yet because it's much more isolated and I don't know what to expect I should be able to reach the existance in less time. But leaving her for any length of time is hard. I've never bike toured without her waiting at home for me, even way back in 2003.  She is my rock. My ocean.

Well there you have it. This is why when someone whom I've just met asks me with a look of "you're crazy" on their face why I bike tour, I shrug and say "because it's fun," and they never believe me.

I bike tour because I am Seager, and Seager goes on bike tours.

ILYI