Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures

by Nancy Sathre-Vogel

  “We’re in trouble, guys,” I mumbled as I crammed another Lay’s into my mouth. “It’s a long way to the next town. And from what we’ve heard it’s not much of a town.”

  Davy and Daryl weren’t complaining. They had potato chips. “I know these chips aren’t the most nutritious thing you’ve ever eaten, but it’ll have to do,” added John. “There’s nothing between here and Juntura. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. We’re going to have to pedal hard today, guys. The water bottles are full, but we have no grub at all – except a few bags of Cheetos. You understand that? No food. That means that if we don’t make these thirty four miles, we’re toast. Think we can make it?”

  The boys nodded their heads as they crammed in more chips.

  John and I dared not get our hopes up. We knew we couldn’t continue on without something edible to carry on our bikes. From what we had heard, the prospects of finding portable food in Juntura weren’t good. We climbed aboard our bikes and set off, hoping beyond hope we would find the provisions we so desperately needed.

  Hours later we arrived, famished, into Juntura. As promised, there was a restaurant in town, but no store selling food we could easily carry. The boys figured they had died and gone to heaven as they hungrily downed hamburgers, but John and I ate them with knots in our stomachs. “What are we going to do about food?” John asked me.

  We had fifty eight miles over two passes ahead of us – the first passes of our journey. It was hot, our bodies weren’t used to the demands of bike touring, and we would be passing through desert. We had already seen enough of the desert to know there would be nothing but miles and miles of sage brush and sand.

  “Okay. Let’s consider options,” I replied. We both knew there weren’t any. “We could talk to the people here in the restaurant and ask them for something. Maybe we could just order a bunch of sandwiches and carry them with us?”

  “Yeah right – that’ll work real great. It’s over a hundred degrees out. You think we can carry enough sandwiches for two days without them going bad?” We began to seriously reconsider the wisdom of cycling through this desert, and wondered silently just what the chances were of arriving back home alive.

  Our eyes wandered out the window to the steady stream of RV’s passing by. “What about…” I pondered. “Those RV’s… They’ve got food.” I headed out the door to see if I could flag down a passing RV to beg.

  An older couple stood next to our bikes. “How are you folks today?” I asked.

  “I’ve never seen a bike like this before. That’s some machine,” the man told me.

  “Yeah – it is kind of like a rolling wagon train, huh?”

  It was one of those conversations that meandered around like a creek snaking through the mountains, and we soon discovered just how small our world is. Their daughter was one of the other Grade 8 science teachers at our school – John’s co-teacher.

  “Hey listen,” I said. “We’re in a bind. A big bind. We need food, and can’t continue on until we manage to get some.”

  Dorothy and Norm very willingly scoured their car and pulled out every morsel of food they could find. We stashed trail mix and bread and cheese into our panniers, strapped a Styrofoam container of leftover Mexican food to the top of my trailer, and pedaled away knowing our bodies wouldn’t appear as desiccated piles of skin and bones out there on top of one of the passes in the middle of Oregon’s no man’s land.

  We crawled at a snail’s pace up the first pass we encountered, using every ounce of strength we had to propel our heavy cycles up the grade. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I complained as I huffed and puffed to get enough oxygen to fuel my leg muscles. “This is only the first of hundreds of passes we need to climb, and I’m dead. What were we thinking?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never bicycled this slowly – ever. You’d think I could get up this measly hill after pedaling hundreds of thousands of miles all around the world. The say tandems aren’t good on hills, but I never dreamed a triple would be this tough.” John collapsed beside me as the kids scampered off to play in the desert.

  The two of us looked at our bikes leaning against a rock. They were both stuffed to the max. My bike was bad enough – loaded down with four panniers and a trailer – but the triple was fourteen feet of sheer madness. The bike and all the stuff on it weighed nearly one hundred twenty pounds. Then there was another hundred forty pounds of kid piled on. That meant that John was hauling nearly three hundred pounds around America.

  “This is tough,” John mumbled. “We’ve only been on the road five days and already my shoulders are killing me. Every time one of the kids wiggles it sends sharp, stabbing pains shooting through my shoulders.”

  We lay on the side of the road for a while pondering the clouds floating gently across the clear blue sky and thought back on how wonderful these past few days had been. Sure, it had been hard. We were physically and mentally exhausted. Our bodies cried out in protest at the punishment that had suddenly been thrust upon them, but there was something wonderful about it all too. All this time together – just us and the kids. It was a marvelous adventure and one we couldn’t imagine quitting. Not yet anyway.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but we’ll never make it if we sit here complaining all day. Let’s get to the top of this blasted hill.” Coaxing the boys away from their newfound playground and back on the bike, we continued up.

  “What the hell is that” questioned John a while later when he spotted a bizarre tree up ahead. “Is that all that’s left of hundreds of poor travelers like us who perished our here like we’re gonna do? All that’s left is their shoes?”

  “It’s a shoe tree!” shouted Daryl.

  “Yeah, it’s a shoe tree! It sprouts shoes like leaves!” added Davy.

  We ground our way up to the tree, sweat pouring off by the bucket-load, and stood looking at the not-quite-dead tree with hundreds of pairs of shoes hanging on it – big shoes, little shoes, new shoes, old shoes, sandals, sneakers, boots… You name it, they were hanging there.

  “What do you think, guys? Why are those shoes hanging there?”

  The Shoe Tree - There were hundreds of pairs of shoes of all shapes and sizes hanging from this tree.

  Stinky Meat and the Shoe Tree

  By Davy & Daryl

  As we were riding we saw a shoe tree. This is why we think it is there: There is a monster named Stinky Meat. He lives in the mountains. One day four explorers were exploring a cave. The monster is usually small, but when he’s right in front of someone during the week he turns big and eats them. So he ate one explorer. The rest of the explorers went back and told some shoemen. Little did the explorers know that Stinky Meat was following them. Stinky Meat was sort of kind, so he made a deal with the shoemen. The shoemen wouldn’t tell anybody where the cave was and Stinky Meat would give them shoes. Now every time Stinky Meat eats someone, he takes the shoes and puts them on the tree. The shoemen go there to collect them. So the next time you buy a pair of shoes, think about the person who died.

  * * *

  After a rest day in Burns where we hung around the park and John and I did absolutely nothing and the boys kept themselves busy at the playground and city pool, we headed into the desert once again. I packed plenty of food for the two-day journey to Bend and we figured we could refill our water bottles in Hampton, forty-two miles of scorching hot desert away.

  I grew up in Boise and like to think I’m used to the desert, but pedaling through the desert and driving through it are two entirely different animals. In a car, those forty two miles would have passed in about as many minutes. We would have sat in our air-conditioned cubicle and not even considered a need for water. But on bikes? That’s a different story.

  On bikes those miles were long – very long. And hot. Daryl discovered fairly early that the only shade he was going to find was under what he called “rabbit bushes.” Every time we stopped, Daryl jumped off the bike and made a mad dash to the largest sage b
rush he could find and crawled under it. The rest of us sat in the blistering sun on the side of the road and basked in the glaring rays of the sun. And our water supply slowly dwindled away.

  Ten miles from the tiny settlement of Hampton, I drank my last sip of water. My bottles were empty, and I knew I was in trouble. My well had gone dry.

  “We still have enough water on the triple,” John told me. “We’ll be okay taking our time to get to town, but I’m concerned about you, Nancy. You always need so much more water than I do anyway, and it’s hot today. I really think you need to take off. Just take off now and go – don’t waste any more time. You need to get to water!”

  Through the shimmering haze of my thirst-induced hallucination I saw a woman with a baby in one arm and a glass of water in the other. I reached out and grabbed the water, downing it in one gulp. Her arm reached out with a pitcher and I gratefully held out my glass for more. As I downed glass after glass of wonderfully cold refreshing water the haze began to lift and I began to wonder if this was truly a hallucination or if she really was standing there in front of me.

  I remembered pedaling through the desert and running out of water. I remembered leaving my boys and taking off on my own in search of liquid refreshment. And I vaguely remembered seeing that big sign out front of the café – “Best Burgers in Town.” But then it all got fuzzy… climbing off the bike and stumbling in… the water… the blast of air conditioning… the water… the smiling faces… the water… I guess you could say water is the essence of life. It was for me that day anyway.

  I had just barely convinced myself that it was all real, not some bizarre hallucination when John and the boys tumbled in. “Water!” they cried. “Where’s water?”

  We were learning quickly that the learning curve of bike touring through deserts was steep. As it turned out, we had finally reached the apex and were on the downhill side of that particular learning curve – the cycling in the desert one.

  There were other learning curves we hadn’t mastered yet though. Regardless of how many miles we had toured in the past or how many nights we had spent in a tent, it just didn’t seem like we could get ahead of the game. No matter how well-planned our trip was or wasn’t, it just seemed like nothing went according to plan.

  There was the basic stuff like food and water that we had to figure out. Then there were the strength and endurance issues on top of that. We were putting in sixty mile days and all four of us were just plain tuckered out.

  Water sources and shade were few and far between in eastern Oregon. We took breaks while standing in the hot sun - not very relaxing at all!

  “I’m tired, Nancy,” John mumbled as we took a break the next morning. “I’m exhausted, and my shoulders are killing me. A big butcher knife jabs into my shoulders every time the kids wiggle. I can’t do it. I just can’t. You’ve got to help me out here. I can’t go on.”

  I took over as captain of the triple. The kids and I did okay, albeit a bit slow. John rode alongside us on my bike joking and laughing with the kids, encouraging them to pedal hard. And they did pedal hard – in spurts. We would all settle into a nice comfortable cadence, and then John would come up and say something and the kids started pumping like mad. I shifted to accommodate their burst of energy. Then shifted back down when they got tired.

  “Last one to the campground has to cook dinner!” John shouted as he sped past us.

  The boys rounded up a burst of energy and started cranking. I shifted. A few seconds later they petered out. I shifted back down.

  “First one to the store gets an ice cream cone!”

  It was wearing on my nerves. I was mighty tired of the irregular pace after captaining the bike for twenty five miles so when John came up, once again urging the kids on, I snapped. “Shut the fuck up would you?” I shouted.

  And John shut up. For good. He refused to talk to me and rode way behind us. In short, he wanted nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with me. I can’t say I blame him.

  The kids and I set our pace. We pedaled. We took breaks under trees. At one point we even got out our mats and took a nap in the woods. And all the while, John was nowhere to be seen. He stayed behind us, being sure to keep an eye out to make sure he wasn’t too far behind.

  It was getting dark when we arrived into Bend after cycling sixty five miles that day. I wearily pulled into a store to call our friends when John rode by. My boys and I ran to the road.

  “John!” I shouted, as I waved my arms in the air.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” the boys yelled while jumping around trying to catch his attention. “Daddy! We’re back here!”

  John didn’t see nor hear us, and simply continued on. The three of us jumped back on the bike and pedaled like mad to catch up with him. We pedaled like demons possessed, but he had simply vanished.

  The sun had set and darkness was quickly settling in. I finally accepted the fact that John was lost. Or we were lost. I wasn’t sure which. I called our friends to get directions to the campground, and that’s when John rode by.

  “Where the hell have you been?” John screamed. “A driver told me you were behind me, so I circled around to go back but you weren’t there. What in the hell are you doing?”

  The four of us set off together to get to the campground outside town and, thirty minutes later, pulled into the campground in complete darkness, absolutely exhausted after our longest day yet. We had no food and weren’t about to climb back up the hill to get to the store. We decided to eat the last of our snacks for dinner and go to bed.

  The boys and I had headed to the showers while John set up camp. Daryl finished showering first and wanted to return to our site. “Not a problem,” I told him. “Do you know where we’re camped?”

  “Yep – hiker/biker site in Loop A.”

  And that was when Daryl got lost and I had reason to seriously question the wisdom of what we were doing.

  Davy and I took a leisurely shower and ambled back to camp to discover – no Daryl. Panic set in. It was pitch black and the campground was enormous. I could just picture the little tyke wandering off into the woods to become some kind of tasty snack for a big bad wild animal. I set out in one direction with Davy in tow, while John headed another direction, both of us shouting his name into the darkness.

  Eventually, I heard his little voice calling to me through the trees and, as I stumbled toward him in the dark, I couldn’t help but feel indebted to God himself for returning my son to me.

  That night I as I lay in our tent with Daryl snuggled up on one side and Davy on the other, I thought about all the quarrels and squabbles of the day. It was so trivial, and yet it had seemed like such a big deal at the time.

  In retrospect, all that mattered was that we were together, the four of us, exploring America and learning together as a family. All that bickering? All that arguing? For what? I set my sights on a new day, resolving like never before to delight in the magic of time together as a family; of learning and growing together. Our journey was such a gift – and I wasn’t about to throw it away quite yet.

  By the time the end of June rolled around a mere ten days into our journey, I couldn’t wait until winter darkness forced us off the road at a reasonable hour. The long summer daylight hours were dragging us down. Each evening we tried to go to sleep early, but it was difficult to sleep with the sun beating down on our tent. By the time the sun set and we managed to settle down, it was nearly 11:00 p.m. Every morning we wearily dragged the kids out of the tent bright and early in order to be on the road by 4:30. It was just so bloody hot later in the day and the only time we made any decent mileage was early – but that didn’t give any of us much time to sleep.

  “I’m tired, Mom,” complained Davy one day as we pedaled along a beautiful country road.

  “Me too,” murmured Daryl. “I wanna sleep.”

  “I tell you what,” John told them. “We’re almost to Redmond. We’ll stop there and take a break in the park, okay?”

  “A long en
ough break that we can sleep?”

  We arrived into Redmond and headed to the park so the kids could play.

  They took one look at the playground, and another look at our laps, and made their decision lickety-split. They both climbed up on a lap and fell asleep. There we were – glued to the park bench by sleeping kids. And they showed no indication they would be awaking any time soon. Eventually we gave up and decided they really did need to sleep, pulled the mats off the bikes, and laid the kids down on the grass.

  Figuring out a workable schedule was a chore. None of us wanted to go to sleep while it was still light, but we did want to take advantage of the morning cool – and therein lay the quandary. The boys wanted to sleep in late, play during breaks, and go to sleep after the sun set. John and I wanted to be on the road at first light. Could we ever find a compromise?

  Long summer days and early morning starts led to very tired kids. I couldn't wait for fall to come to provide some relief.

  In time Mother Nature came to our rescue by making shorter days, but in the meantime, it was a daily battle and we never truly figured out a workable solution to the problem. We just stumbled on, knowing these long summer days would soon be a thing of the past.

  Those first few weeks on the road were filled with figuring out solutions to problems. Even though John and I had toured on our bikes a lot, there were always new problems to solve and creative solutions to be found. Touring with kids added a whole new dimension to the experience and somehow we never seemed to be able to foresee what was coming.

  “Nancy!” John called out in the middle of the night when we were camped in the fairgrounds in Madras, Oregon. “Wake up! It’s raining!” We scrambled out of the tent in the pitch black to put the fly on our tent. As I emerged from our nylon home I looked at the rain pouring from the sky and the multitude of odds and ends scattered about on the grass and I realized we were sorely unprepared for rain – in fact, we were about as unprepared as one could be. Our fly was about the only item we owned that was properly packed away. Everything else was receiving the full brunt of the rainstorm.