Amid the current American crises of finance, fuel and fat, one man is fighting back on all fronts by riding a bicycle 400 miles from New York City across the State of Pennsylvania for a week, camping outdoors and carrying everything he requires, to help a friend move into her new apartment in Pittsburgh, PA.
That friend is Ms. Joey Goe, a young librarian, formerly of Oakland, CA and Portland, OR. Ms. Goe [pronounced "go,"] 28, is moving from Oregon to attend the University of Pittsburgh and pursue a Master's of Library Science.
By way of a MySpace bulletin announcing the move, Ms. Goe casually threw in a pitch for ‘anyone who wants to come to Pittsburgh to help me move in to my 3rd floor flat, I’ll have lots of stuff in a truck and a bad back.’ I've never been to Pittsburgh. As a freelancer, my schedule is as open as I like it. I check train ticket prices. Amtrak has raised their rates to cope with fuel and energy costs. A car rental is out of the budget, as is gasoline, as most everyone nowadays is painfully aware.
What if I were to ride my bicycle? Borrow a tent. Train for the ride, burn off my belly. Chart an Approximate Route. Back home in California in the year 2000 and 2001, I did two rides from San Francisco to Los Angeles, 585 miles in seven days. NYC to Pittsburgh is approximately 400 miles foregoing the highway. Seems do-able.
These past rides I took were “crewed” rides, though-- rides in which all of my gear was tossed onto a truck and carted to the next site 80 miles down the road, and awaiting set up. These rides also had pit stops every 15 miles with festive disco-dancing drag queens handing out orange slices and banana halves, pieces of Clif Bar® and Gu® energy shots, cups of cold ice water and gatorade® and bike techs ready to patch a flat or true a wheel at the drop of a hat.
This trip will have no grand caravan, though. There will be no dining tent, no bike techs, no drag queens with hydrating beverages and electrolyte boosts. There will be no truck to carry my tent, my bike tools, my food for each day. No prep crew to plan the route. No massage tent. No leather daddies on motorcycles directing me towards my destination each day. Just a self-plotted route, a borrowed one-man tent, some borrowed tools, and a spartan selection of the barest necessitites to carry with me on a borrowed rack on the back of my bike.
There will also be a learning curve.
When i sold my car five years ago, i treated myself to a well-crafted bicycle as my new primary means of conveyance. The Bianchi Milano: a gorgeous cruiser-hybrid bike-about-town. Expertly machined, smooth in it’s function and easy on the eyes in sleek chrome with red trim. Not the ideal beast to ride cross-state, saddled with gear for 60 miles/day, but it’s my baby and the only bike i’ve got. The only downside--
The rear wheel meets the frame with a complicated system of bolts, clamps and cables through which it operates the 7-speed internal gear-shifting hub and drum brake.
So, perish forbid i should sustain a flat tire in the rear, it is immensely complicated to remove the wheel to change. Consulting with Queens local Mechanic Andres Jimenez at The Bicycle Repairman in Long Island City, I found that without a mechanic on hand, I will have to learn to dismantle and re-attach the wheel, and that the process requires “mucha practica. [much practice.] As of yet, I have had no practice, though as if in a touch of fate to give me pause, I sustained a rear flat tire just minutes after leaving the store. [Harumph.]
Next, we must consider the physique of the rider in question.
Your author, a Queens resident, also formerly of Oakland and Portland both, is a spry 28-year old, [seen here while visiting New Orleans on a friends’ bike.] Seemingly the picture of health from the ribcage up, I have recently arrived at the age in which metabolism slows and cheeseburgers and beer don’t melt from the midsection as they once did. A considerable paunch has settled on my belly and hips due to my persistent affection for beer and a ‘bon vivant’ culinary disposition. To my credit, I ride about a mile or three every day in my errands throughout Queens, with the odd trip over the Queensboro bridge once a week to see a show at the Society of Illustrators, or to visit my favorite paintings at the Frick Museum or the Met.
However, like many who suffer from the arrogance of youth, I’ve yet to adapt to the waning forgiveness my body retains for over-use and lack of maintenance. My legs are consistently tight and touching my toes is not easy. A considerable amount of training will be required in the month ahead to prepare for the 50 - 60 miles of travel each day, lugging gear and my own considerable heft over ridged Pennsylvania terrain for over 360 miles.
This bicycle trip From NYC to Pittsburgh is to be the picture of health-in-action on many levels:
Fiscal responsibility for traveling on a spartan economy.
Physical training to re-mold my body to the best semblance of fitness I can manage.
Proper nutrition to fuel these efforts.
A tearless farewell to reliance on fossil fuels to travel hundreds of miles.
The Self-Improvement of learning how to maintain my own vehicle.
And the discovery of the state of Pennsylvania as only one can while touring on a bicycle, with the open air, the open road, and an easy pace of ten miles per hour.
Ms. Goe, having heard of my plans, is delighted and insists upon buying a train ticket home for my bicycle and I, which I’m not inclined to refuse.
The final product of this trip, deliverable one week after my return to New York, will be a full report of the travels from New York to Pittsburgh, the roads, towns, and natural wonders in between and the trials and exhilarations of traveling alone across the vast breadth of a state. This record shall come complete with full-color illustration, travel sketches and stories from the road, along with the brief introduction laid out herein.
In summation, I propose an illustrated record of one man’s journey across a mammoth state on a bicycle to see a friend, and to lend a hand. It will be a tale of a vacation taken without a drop of gasoline. It will be a journey of self-exploration, travelling solo for seven days. An exercise in fiscal responsibility, making the journey on the most spartan budget possible in these financially trying times. And, should the story be picked up and published, it shall be an entrepreneurial success, financing this dream trip by dint of my labor as an Art-Journalist. Next time around, I might even invest in one of these extended models, known in the bike touring world as SUB’s:
Cheers,
--rz
"Rusty Zimmerman is a freelance illustrator and painter based in New York City. A partial list of clients includes The Wall St. Journal, The Nation magazine, Nokia, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Wells Fargo. Rusty is currently exhibiting at the WCO gallery in Chelsea. More of his work can be seen at http://www.rustyzimmerman.com."
Sample Travel Sketches:
NYC Subway:
Man Sleeping on NJ Transit:
Conversation/Interview sketch:
Scenery sketch [Bethesda Fountain, Central Park:}
