July 31: Raining in Juneau
When I started this tour I explicitly planned to not bring anything to read. I told people I didn’t want the distraction of getting lost in someone else’s world — made up or otherwise — when I had my own real world right in front of me to explore and experience. Plus, it was extra weight I would have to carry with me over every hill and mountain I rode over between Salt Lake City, Utah and Juneau, Alaska.
Well, as it turns out, I decided it would be good to have something to read while I was on the ferry. I picked up a copy of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley in Search of America” at one of the many local booksellers in Bellingham, Washington.
It’s been a fascinating read so far. Even before I got through the Introduction (by Jay Parini), I knew this was going to be a book that would really speak to me. For one thing, it’s about a journey across America taken by John Steinbeck when he was in his late 50’s. I’m no John Steinbeck and I’m not in my 50’s; it’s the journey across America part that speaks to me. He talks about the urge to travel, the preparations for it, the day-to-day reality of it, and the rusty, rural countryside you experience when you’re not on the freeway. That’s what speaks to me.
I’d like to share with you something he writes on the very first page:
Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.
My plan, my schedule, for today was to get an early start and ride thirty-two miles or so to the “end of the road” at Echo Cove. Along the way would be excellent opportunities to see whales and, of course, bears. Well, true to what Steinbeck writes, that schedule is now wreckage on the personality of the trip. And around Juneau, a big part of the personality of the trip is the weather. It’s raining hard this morning and I’m not sure I, or my bike, can can stand another extended ride in the rain.
If today is anything like the previous three days, the rain will let up by midday. That still leaves plenty of daylight for my planned ride. In the meantime, I’m doing laundry, getting my new Dexcom receiver connected, enjoying the luxury of a tall cup of coffee from the local coffee shop, and, of course, doing some writing.
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