As you begin to talk about your proposed TransAmerica bicycle ride, the reactions you can expect will range from supportive to discouraging. And if you can't seem to explain why you want to cycle from one coast to the other, some well meaning people will even try to solve that riddle for you. If you agree with the ones who try to convince you that you want to ride a bike across the United States simply 'because it's there', you will have shrunk both in your eyes and theirs. Unless you want to minimize the importance of such an accomplishment while assigning absolutely no value to how you allot the time, energy and other resources that will be required in order to make your all consuming trek happen, I suggest you don't acquiesce to such words.
It is important, then, to know, even if only for yourself, why you feel so drawn to make such a ride a part of your life experience. And since over the last 24 years since my first TransAm I am still getting answers to that question as the dividends continue to accrue, I will prepare you for that query as well as show you what to look for once you are finally enroute.
Probably the single most important benefit one can derive from a completed coast-to-coast bike ride is the tremendous sense of accomplishment you will have derived from it. You will be able to look at a map of the United States and know that you used your own two legs to cross it. No task will seem too big because you will know that, just like your successful TransAm, which was not one big leap frog from one point to another but a daily progression of advances, that any seemingly grand success is no more than a collection of small sometimes hardly noticeable steps that march you toward your goal.
When you realize that crossing the US is no more than making it to the next town or park on your map on a day in day out basis, you will see that any grand achievement is no more than somewhat small accomplishments held together by a common thread; the Goal, the Dream, the Vision, the Unifying Purpose. And as you kept your goal in mind, amidst all of the setbacks you can be sure to expect (our purpose here, of course, is to minimize them first in thought and then in deed), you will have learned a lot about the dynamics of success -- of being able to overcome the "bad", even making it work for you at times, in reaching your ultimate desired outcome .
Knowing all this, you will then have a base upon which you can readily build other large accomplishments. The awareness that the hardest part of any noteworthy achievement is in just thinking about it will become your own inner mantra. You will know to break any large undertaking down into it's smaller component pieces, bite sized chunks that you can handle, so you can just begin. And in this way, as we said in the chapter entitled "TransAm Mindset", you will really KNOW what the shoe manufacturer, Nike, means when it says "Just do it!".
In getting to this awareness, you will have gotten to know yourself pretty well. Within the miles and miles of the solitude of the prairies and desert and forested back roads that will lay ahead of you, a best friend will emerge. Yourself! And as you learn your limits together, you will learn that the way to conquer fear (the opposite of love) is to do what you are afraid of; to expose it with the tremendous light of the love and respect you will have acquired for your very own you.
Your journey will teach you a lot about people and yourself as you relate to the inhabitants of the lands along the way. Here, a tremendous opportunity will exist for you to take any of your exchanges with such natives out into the quiet of the open road where you can then see your part in their success or failure. And as you do, you will see how it is really you and not anyone else or anywhere else that makes you happy or sad in all of your dealings in the bigger game of life.
Taken a step further, you will learn that strangers are no more than friends you just haven't yet met as it becomes easier and easier for you to open up to new people. Soon, you will discover that you can influence the outcome of your exchanges with not only those that you've not before known but all people, whether on the road or off.
If yours is a life in the city, you will greet the proliferation of mirrors that at first astound you upon your return not as blandishments for the ego but as tools to remind you to keep shifting your gaze inwards. You will stop looking to others for approval, joy or support as you realize that it all begins and ends first with you.
And wherever it is that you end up, having then internalized the sayings, "After we leave school, the people we meet become our textbooks" and, "Every person met, makes you that much richer", you will welcome both familiar and unfamiliar faces as never before. You will find yourself less willing to take anyone for granted. Your newfound desire to overcome the fear of the unknown will find you reaching out to others with a far higher degree of frequency.
Time will then show you how it was the victories or the losses with the people along your route, that will help you remember or forget the various areas you will have passed through; that give them any charge. For example, when I am asked what my favorite state was, I don't think about flora and fauna but automatically begin to think about how the people of any such territory helped me to enjoy their lands. My mind shifts into an analysis of that region's shopkeepers, the people I met in its stores, those who played in its parks and how the drivers of its roads treated me.
You will learn a lot about resourcefulness and the value of recycling those things that had at one time seemed expendable. Finding that that rubber band you saved can be used to hold your tent stakes together will be cause for celebration. When that zip tie from your last loaf of bread effectively then silences a rattling bike part out in the middle of a prairie, you will know you are on your way to assigning a different value to how you view garbage and junk. Heck, you may even find yourself, as did I, with a new appreciation for yard sales and flea markets once your ride is completed.
You will learn appreciation for little things. Whenever in transit, you will celebrate a good tailwind and understand the importance of cool days mixed in with those that are hot . A good road surface for your riding efforts, no matter where they may be, as well as a wide shoulder will show you why we need the National Bicycle Greenway and cause you to bubble up with joy as never before. You will welcome the occasional downpour and see how it is a needed component in the bigger picture of things.
Upon your return, no longer will the ringing telephone be seen as an annoyance but as the miracle it really is. You will marvel at the phenomenon of the postal delivery system whenever letters with your name on them appear at your doorstep. And after all of the lukewarm bottles of water you will have hydrated yourself with as well as the detours your trips for food will have taken you on, you will appreciate a refrigerator filled with your favorite food and beverage in a way you had not before known.
Water will take on new meaning for you. No longer will you take it for granted either. You will see how it gives birth to life and the green parts of America that were so soothing to your eyes. You will savor a cool glass of the stuff as you find yourself in even greater awe of the modern miracle of refrigeration.
You will find yourself looking for essence instead of style and form. In other words, you will become more real as a new importance will be assigned to how well the tools you will use to get through life get the job done instead of how they may look to others. When you learn that only one extra clean change of clothes is all you need to happily cross this great land of ours, you will see the folly of maintaining a big wardrobe. Quickly, you will find that others accept and love you for who you are whether or not your clothes are ironed or designer labeled, your hair is freshly barbered, or if the bike you ride and the gear that outfit it don't keep pace with the latest such items found in the bike shops or on magazine pages.
Not always having to be on the move will become a welcome relief for you. A home base with a familiar toilet, shower and readily accessible toiletries such as that bar of soap, tube of toothpaste and bottle of shampoo that you don't have to rummage for will make for a most grateful heart . A comfortable easy chair will almost seem like an extravagant indulgence while switches for lights and plugs for other conveniences will remind you how easy your life away from the road really is.
Your ride will also have brought you closer to nature. The smell of rain, and prairies and deserts and forests will remind you what your real roots are. The sound of crickets at night will remind you that life is so much more than machines and deadlines and what the media is or isn't saying.
With regard to the media, you will have successfully extricated yourself from its hold on you. You will have proven to yourself that America really is filled with beautiful people who want the best for you and not the isolated troubled ones that the television and newspapers march through our frontrooms on a daily basis. Your ride will have shown you how much more peaceful you are when not being continually bombarded with the problems of the world. There is a high probability that you will come away with an understanding of the fact that a happy you is the most important gift you can give to this planet and that you don't need the media to continually rain on that parade.
In minimizing the distraction that keeps you from knowing your own thoughts, you will also learn how it is the very thoughts you think on a daily basis that shape and form your experience of life. In 1979, for example, I wanted to prove how tough I was, how much adversity I could withstand in crossing the US on a bicycle. And that is exactly how my ride showed up. I had innumerable flats in desolate areas. I ended up on those tar and graveled roads that left stains on my bike's undercarriage and fused my shoestrings and shoes into one inseparable glob. I found myself so sick on certain days that I couldn't even ride, etc.
In 1986, however, I wanted to do it differently. I am now able to see how, just slightly beneath my conscious, I first wanted to earn the bike that Via Cycles provided for the ride and then I wanted ease. In order to fulfill this wish, I arranged to ride from California to Houston, as part of a "shakedown cruise" on the loaner recumbent package they had shipped to me. In their Texas town I would get the bike they built just for me. And sure enough, I found a way to make my journey to Houston a worthy "shakedown" indeed.
In hindsight, I can see how the bike and trailer problems that I talk about in my book "Awake Again" could have been avoided; how they were a direct result of my faulty thinking. Once I then made it to Houston, having brainwashed myself into believing that any trouble with my bike would only occur wherever help was readily available, things changed for the better. For example, having made up my mind that if I got flats, they would only happen in front of bike shops when I needed to replace the tires anyway, that is what happened. From Houston on, I worked hard to convince myself that my ride would be one moment of magic after another. And it was.
Consistent with the spiritual teachings found in ancient books such as the Bhagavad Gita, you will also have learned a lot about detachment. Because you will not be able to fully savor all of the great people, experiences or breathtaking views that will make up your ride if you want to make it all the way, you will find it easier to just let go as you keep moving on. Just as your ride will reinforce the notion that as certain doors close, new ones open, this lesson really began as you started releasing people, places and things back when you were preparing for your ride.
Looking back you will have seen that all of those things which you gave away or sold, even the people you said good bye to had to be released in the faith that what you were endeavoring to do was more important. And as you did, the challenge and excitement of what you found while enroute then served to keep you only in the adventure of the present. You will continue to know that you did the right thing when upon your return everything you ever let go of is replaced by greatly improved renditions of that which you left behind.
It is this whole process of release, of surrender, that is important if ever you want to strike a powerful alliance with the only thing that is permanent in the midst of it all: your true self, the spiritual being that you really are. The pace with which change will have occurred, moving from one experience (where you are totally immersed; seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling a land and its people) to another, will help you understand the temporary, ever changing nature of all that you will have encountered. And as a result, your focus will shift away from the world and all of its illusion. You will find that home in the greater journey called life, the place all of us are trying to get to, is our individual highest selves where we are all just one.
Whether you know it or not, this experience of the sacred, of the omnipresent God within, is what you are seeking and what you will be touched by. I feel blessed to be able to share in this joy with you as bikes keep traveling across the US, because, for all of you reading this, your ride has already begun!
