This is the second in a series of stories and essays from the Pacific Coast Adventure Cycling Route—a 2000-mile bike ride from Canada to Mexico. If you’d like to support Dressing Like a Kangaroo, consider sharing this post with someone who dresses like a garbage monster.
A line of logging trucks screamed down the road every few minutes spraying sludgy water at me in the shoulder. Their thick black exhaust hung in front of me as its own rotten mass. On the worst days, I felt the diesel living in my lungs, and breathing became labored and uncomfortable. The rainy days rinsed the air, cold and crisp, but came with their own dark clouds.
Glass and rocks littered the side of the road, which was occasionally less than a foot wide from ditch to speedway. I rode my bike balanced on the fog line, the buttery white layer of paint that separates the road from the shoulder; the front line of a war I didn't know I was entering.
Behind the wheel, otherwise decent people, hold an uncharacteristic anger towards cyclists. Not so decent people, on the other hand, are consumed by a rage that in the matter of seconds simmers, boils and bursts into explosive expressions. I formed a theory, while truck after truck threatened my life: the bigger the vehicle, the more inhuman I appear. The 40 ton logging trucks didn't seem to notice me, like a boot to an ant.
I might be perpetuating a stereotype, but the drivers of non-commercial trucks, who have purchased a big truck out of pocket, have the biggest need to express their disdain for cyclists. It soothes their fragile egos. On a daily basis I was harassed by men in big trucks with bumper stickers that said things like "These colors don't run, they reload". On the better days, they just rolled down their window and yelled slurs at me, and ran away. In a laughable display of their lack of perspective, their trucks were often too loud for me to hear what they were yelling. If they truly wanted to torment cyclists, they should consider an electric vehicle.
The night before, I'd found a guest bedroom I could occupy with a gentle woman named Anne. She was about my mom’s age and she was a teacher. I showed up wet and shivering and threw my things in the drier, while Anne made me tea. She sat on a green velvet chair, and I sat on the couch. We traded stories from the road.
"How are the drivers so far?" She asked.
"Pretty mean. I've gotten yelled at a few times, and a couple of trucks have spit that nasty black smoke on me. So thick I could hardly see."
"That's called rolling coal," She explained.
Many of them came prepared with trucks modified to roll coal on unsuspecting cyclists. Rolling coal is when one of those tiny men in their big truck forces too much diesel through the engine which sends a big plume of black smoke mixed with unburnt diesel out of the exhaust. It involves removing the particulate filter in the engine, and installing a little red button so you can do it on command. It's illegal in some states because of the health and environmental problems it's associated with. Though, Washington State views the problem as more of a freedom of protest issue. The truck owners are protesting against the wellbeing of the people around them.
Anne had gotten her fair share of abuse from the men in big trucks. She said she hadn't been touring in a while, but about a decade ago, her and her ex-husband took their son, Alex, on a trans-America route from Seattle to Washington D.C. Somewhere in the back roads of Virginia a tiny man threw a Big Gulp cup out of his truck window. It hit ten year old Alex in the back of the helmet and soaked him in syrups. Anne said that he doesn't really do adventurous stuff anymore. And she tries not to push it.
"Maybe we took him too soon," she said solemnly.
While I rode I contemplated the different tiers of fun. If you don't know about the fun scale, then you're probably a "Type I" kind of person. Type I fun is simply known as "fun." A typical vacation is loaded up this kind of fun: quality time with friends and family, dancing on the beach, and drinking margaritas. I've got nothing against a good time, these are the kinds of moments that you cache in your memory to distract yourself from "Type II" fun. The second kind of fun is not fun in the moment, but you'll laugh about it later. I was teetering on "Type III" fun. This might sound counter intuitive, but the third type of fun isn't fun, during or after.
For the first time, the responsibility for my situation was all my own. My previous expeditions were managed and executed by more experienced outdoorsmen, so when I wasn't having fun I could just point to a difference in taste. I couldn't get any of them to sign on to this one, and it quickly became clear why. As it turned out, I'm either a glutton for discomfort or just plain ignorant of what makes for a fun vacation.
Bike touring on the thin shoulder of a highway, under constant assault by logging trucks, in the kind of cold and wet weather that makes your bones ache, was classic "Type III" fun. It had none of the majesty of nature, and none of the comforts of modern living. It was the worst of both worlds, and the best story I got out of it is mostly about how many socks I was wearing.
I probably would have packed up and called it quits, but I could count on one cold and pruning hand the number days it had been since I packed up my things and boarded a train to Seattle. I had constant daydreams about just taking a bus to San Francisco, skipping a thousand miles of biking. In my daydreams, I'd linger for a month or so bumming on friend's couches, and then hop on my bike for some of the best riding in California.
Unfortunately, I was determined to have an expedition. And, as every great expedition goes, four days in I stumbled into a Chevron station dressed like a garbage monster that had just crawled out of the Puget Sound. A stout mustachioed young man had just started his shift behind the counter. He actively avoided looking at me as I stood under the buzzing heater in the doorway. He knew it, I was more trouble than I was worth.
This Monday in the middle of March was no different than any other Monday for a Washington local. The rain was moderate though unrelenting, and it was a tad chilly outside. Maybe slightly colder than usual. However, if you moved quickly between the heated seats of your sedan and your appropriately warm three bedroom house, then you’d spend your days comfortable, biding your time until the sun comes out in May. This is by no means the worst weather that mother nature has to offer, but that was a toxically optimistic admission to make when I packed my bags a week earlier. In the wrong clothing, 40 degrees and raining feels like the edge of livable conditions. So, while everyone around me acted out their Monday routine, I was at war with the elements.
The beginnings of frostbite—cutely called frostnip, which brings to mind images of rosy noses and puffy ear muffs—had started to eat at my feet. My toes were swollen and sporting unsavory colors. When I was a kid I used to watch this show on the Discovery Channel in which wilderness survival stories were reenacted. I knew that if my toes turned black the frostbite had progressed to permanent damage. I was monitoring the situation closely as the reds turned into purples.
The pulsing ache in my toes was consuming at night when my brain was unoccupied and free to spiral. In my wool socks, my feet were finally warm enough to feel anything but numb, and so they ached. I was determined that my expedition would not end at a hospital with a prescription for warm socks and hot cocoa, so I systematically protected my feet more and more heavily as the sky continued to piss on me. My efforts to keep my feet stable were partially responsible for my appearance as a trash monster in the doorway of a Chevron station.
To start, I had on two base layers of socks. These were my last two socks, the ones I slept in. They had to stay dry at all costs. The best that I could fashion as a water barrier was a layer of plastic produce bags. On top of that was the wretched pair of socks that had been wet for a week, and another layer of plastic bags that were constantly caught and shredded in the crankset of my bike. All five layers, which had essentially doubled the volume of my feet, didn’t fit in a seasonally appropriate pair of shoes. I had them strapped to my feet with velcro sandals that I’d packed for beach days once I got to California. Up top I had my crinkly rain pants, with holes worn in the crotch from the bike saddle, two rain jackets, a scarf, and a bike helmet. The whole getup was saturated with sweat and rain. My feet were still cold.
I moved to the Pacific Northwest about a year prior. Preparing for my first winter, I was advised by born and raised Oregonians that “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear.” I think, if they lived in Washington, they might hold a different opinion. In the coastal regions of Washington, rain is measured an average of 190 days out of the year, sometimes going two months without a dry day. My peers with more cycling experience warned me that in these conditions my feet would get cold. “Ha! cold feet,” I laughed in my head, “Bring it on!” I ate my words. I was just a few days into an expedition I expected to last half of a year, and I was getting cold feet.
I asked the cashier at the Chevron what hot water would run me for. He looked at me, confused. It was probably the only time he's been asked about a cup of water in a land of coffee and sodas. Nobody drinks water anymore. “Probably, uhh, 25 cents,” he said. My numb fingers encased in sopping gloves dripped around in my pockets. I had a quarter, but before I could get to it he nimbly moved one from the “take-a-penny leave-a-penny” cup into the register. I walked outside with my cup of hot water steaming, and poured it straight into my socks.
Great job...so descriptive I was totally convinced my feet were freezing by the time I was done reading . Also totally understood you objection to the vulgar manners of the logging trucks. It is terrifying ! It reminded me of my years living in Wahington where they consumed the roads and clearly had size on their size...but I was in a car...not on a bike! Nosireee!