This Road I Ride
Page 9
Now, however, we come from nowhere. We blend in everywhere, yet never really belong anywhere. With a shared history as intangible as a waking dream, we find each other in Internet chatrooms, where we swap stories and stupid slogans like children trading shiny stickers, desperate to confirm that our memories are real, that our strange childhoods did actually happen.
No matter where I go around the world, I can always find the same unspoken understanding. It’s like belonging to a secret society. We take care of one another for no other reason than our shared cultural identity, even though it’s one that most of us would prefer to forget.
SEPTEMBER 10–11, 2012
Jesse cycles the first miles down the Gold Coast with me. Most of the roads have spacious cycle paths, something I did not encounter often in Europe or the United States. “Drivers don’t have much patience for cyclists here, so be careful,” Jesse says as he waves goodbye and peels off the highway to go to work, leaving me alone on the road to Sydney.
It’s dead flat as I head south along the east coast, which makes for fast cycling, especially when coupled with a pleasant tailwind. Pegasus has a new rear derailleur, my legs are feeling strong, and I’m in a great mood. The sun is shining high overhead when I notice the shadow of a bird hovering. Then it swoops down, flapping next to me, squawking conversationally.
“Well, good morning to you too, Mr. Birdie. You’re awfully friendly. What the—!” With a warning screech, my feathered friend plunges headlong into my helmet. I remember hearing stories of infamous magpie attacks in Australia and rather belatedly put two and two together. So this is a magpie, and I am not, after all, a bird whisperer. I wave one hand over my head and pedal hard as the bird continues to circle, looking for an opportunity to swoop again. It gives up after a few miles, but another soon takes its place. It is early spring, peak nesting time, and magpies across the country are all on high intruder alert.
There is plenty of advice and information on the subject of magpie attacks. Apparently the birds are able to recognize faces, and they don’t attack familiar local residents. Passing around-the-world cyclists are obviously fair game, though. They also seem to hate helmets: in one study, they targeted helmeted cyclists while leaving bareheaded ones alone. I am not about to take mine off to confirm that theory, particularly as it’s the only thing standing between their beaks and my skull.
I reach the small coastal town of Evans Head at sunset. Strolling down the quiet, empty roads to find something to eat, I end up at a pub where I am promptly invited to join the self-proclaimed “Publican,” “Lunatic” and “Gigolo.” This diverting trio try to keep me entertained throughout dinner: the Publican with free refills; the Gigolo with smooth come-ons; and the Lunatic with off-color jokes. At the end of the evening, the Publican of this fine establishment presents me with a Bundaberg rum key ring as a parting gift.
“I just want to give you something so you won’t forget us,” he explains, then slides a shot of the famous local rum liquor across the counter to me.
I suddenly realize why I’ve been pedaling through fields of sugarcane all day. I tear myself away from the trio’s endearing company with great difficulty. In their minds, having to get up at dawn to cycle 125 miles is a poor excuse to end the night so early.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
It is with even greater difficulty that I rouse myself at six a.m. and hit the road with some Metallica blaring to get my legs pumping. The pounding rock music fills my ears, so I don’t hear the furious barking of a guard dog as it tears across the road toward me from a nearby farm. I do, however, feel its wet jaws snap at my ankle as it tries to lock on.
“Woooaaaahhhh!” I shout, as much in surprise as in the vague hope that a high-pitched holler might startle the dog long enough for me to dash out of chomping range. My adrenaline soars in a seismic spike as I pedal hard, fangs still snapping close at my heels.
No sooner have I outridden the dog and my heart rate has slowed than I hear the telltale preplunge shriek of yet another magpie. Great. I pick up the pace once more, waving one frenetic arm overhead. Unsure whether the bird is still around, I continue to flap my hand for the next few miles, just in case.
By midday I’ve suffered five magpie attacks, with the more desperate of them dive-bombing, kamikaze style, straight into my helmet. I am beginning to develop a complex. Every shadow and birdcall sees me hunched over and waving like a lunatic. Faces in passing cars stare out at me curiously. Some wave back. But if I look like a crazy person, I hardly care. A special freedom comes with not worrying about what people think. Imagine what would happen if one day everybody stopped caring, though. Something out of a Dickensian madhouse comes to mind.
SEPTEMBER 15, 2012
I reached the periphery of Sydney yesterday and decided to circumnavigate the city by taking Putty Road, the scenic route through Yengo National Park, which borders the Blue Mountains. Maneuvering through big cities is a great time-consumer. I always try to avoid it because I tend to get lost. My sense of direction is good out on the open road, where I can follow the sun and know whether I am heading the right way. A loose route plan with the names of major roads and towns along the way is all I really need. But put me in a city, and I am as confused as a toddler in a giant shopping center. Up, down, left, and right—it all looks the same. Few things are more stressful than trying to find your way through a metropolitan maze on a bicycle.
Much like New Zealand’s Desert Road, there is nothing on Putty Road for over eighty miles. Remembering how I fared last week, Antonio was less than thrilled with my route choice, especially when I mentioned feeling feverish and weak when we spoke at the start of the day. “What if something happens to you? What if you get really sick? You’ll be in the middle of nowhere, with nobody to help you.”
“The other choice is to follow the coast, which would mean passing through the center of Sydney. Putty Road is the better option.”
“Please, Ju, don’t go that way. It’s not a good idea.”
So of course, I headed that way.
And of course, there is no phone connection out here. By nightfall, I find myself once again in freezing temperatures, without water, in pitch blackness with my headlight battery nearly dead, and no idea of how far I am from civilization. The one thing of which I am absolutely certain is that Antonio is developing ulcers, and his first words when he finally manages to reach me on the phone will be “I told you!”
Unlike in New Zealand, though, I am not particularly worried. Antonio knows which road I’m on, and he knows the number for my two childhood friends who live nearby—Ruth and Marty—who have invited me to stay the night. I’m confident that he will rouse a search party when he fails to hear from me, which is exactly what he does. Only it’s not Ruth and Marty who find me first. Up ahead the headlights of an approaching car are illuminating the road. It slows down and pulls over, and the silhouette of a waving woman gets out. As I ride closer, I can make out a long-haired brunette who looks remarkably like Cher sans the plastic surgery.
“Juliana!” she says. “I’m Karen—Donna’s friend.” After putting me up in Seattle, Donna alerted some of her friends along the rest of my route. Karen lives in the Blue Mountains, and she’s driven down to find me on the road.
“You’ve come at a good time,” I tell her. “I have no idea how much farther it is to the nearest town, but I’m pretty cold and thirsty, and my light is about to die. I expect my friends are coming to find me, but I can’t contact them. There’s no cell signal.”
“Well, there’s a service station a few miles farther down the road. I saw a little cafeteria next to it. We could go and have a drink and use their phone. I’ll show you where it is.”
“That’d be perfect.”
Near the station, I get one signal bar on my phone, so I can contact Ruth and tell her where I am. Karen treats me to some food while we wait and I hear her life story. She uses a lot of hippy talk, with words like “sister” and “man” cropping up frequently.
A face suddenly peers in at us through the window. Ruth has found me! Her expression is one of relief, and she signals a thumbs-up to Marty in the car. She comes straight in and gives me the kind of long, tight hug you would give a missing child at the lost and found. Her tension is palpable.
“I’m guessing Antonio called you?”
“Yeeeees.” She starts to laugh.
“In a panic?”
“Yes! He insisted we drop everything immediately and come to look for you.”
“Thought he might. Poor Antonio. I’m always doing this to him.”
“Well, we’re just glad you’re all right. After speaking with him, we thought you’d be in some kind of desperate trouble.”
“What can I say? He’s a Neapolitan. Keeping calm is not exactly his strong point.”
Karen says goodbye after a round of beers, and we put Pegasus into the back of Ruth and Marty’s car. Marty drives, and Ruth pulls out a bottle of whiskey. She must have read the memo.
“Before we talk, get this down you,” she says, pouring me a glass.
“Only if you’re joining me.”
“Absolutely.”
We drink all the way down the mountain road. There’s so much to say, but it can all wait, because in this moment we are young again and some things never change. It’s been almost twenty years since we were kids together in Thailand. At nine years old, Ruth and I were sent to the same training center in Samut Prakan, on the periphery of Bangkok, together with some two hundred other kids. Marty was there, too—a couple of years younger, in the group under ours. Whereas most of the children got to see their parents once a week, we never saw ours. Like my father, Ruth’s parents worked for the leaders. Like me, she was labeled a rebel.
Warm and bathed, we sit in her kitchen over dinner and a bottle of wine.
“I remember when you were sent to live with your father in Japan at thirteen years old and came back from the school there a year later,” Ruth recalls. The 21st Century International School, in Tateyama, was considered one of the more “progressive” training centers at the time. Many of the cult’s videos and teaching materials were created there, and the pupils were allowed to wear fashionable clothes and makeup. As a result, our Southeast Asian counterparts considered us tainted or “worldly.” “I was so happy to see you again, but then the teachers told us that we weren’t allowed to speak to you, because you were ‘out of the spirit.’”
I was considered a potential troublemaker who might put rebellious or “open-minded” ideas into the heads of my peers. As a preventive measure, I was punished and isolated without ever committing a “crime.” This included hard labor—carrying rocks, digging ditches, sweeping, mopping, waxing, and buffing the entire one-third-of-a-mile building. Then there was the enforced silence, suspension from playing sports, and daily written reports on all my thoughts, words, and actions.
But that is a story for another day. Another lifetime, maybe. Chatting with Ruth about it now feels a lot like sharing prison stories with another ex-inmate. After dinner she whips up an old childhood treat that we called “rice cereal”—a thick milk powder paste mixed into a bowl of rice. The more milk powder, the better. We ate the stuff as a snack twice a day, every day, as kids. It’s strange sitting together again now as adults, eating rice cereal and reliving memories that seem fantastic at best.
Ruth tells me about her struggle to figure out life and get started in the “outside” world. She and Marty married while still in the group and decided to leave the same year I did. They arrived in Australia with their three kids in the middle of winter with just three hundred dollars and clothes they thought were warm. Marty’s first job was as a kitchen hand, washing dishes. He would walk the two miles to work and back as they had no money for the bus fare, let alone a car.
“I think rock bottom came the night Marty twisted his ankle going to work,” remembers Ruth. “It got progressively worse throughout the night, and by the time he finished work he couldn’t walk. He had no money for a taxi, and since we didn’t have a phone, he couldn’t even call me. He tried hopping, but the vibrations made the pain worse, so he ended up crawling all the way home on his hands and knees. We are doing well now. We have money to buy nice things. But I think that knowing what it means to struggle, to pull yourself up from nothing, makes these moments of success so much sweeter.”
Once again I think, There is no satisfaction in achievement without struggle.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2012
Today I have returned to Putty Road—to the exact spot where I encountered Cher’s doppelgänger last night. Marty is a motorbike buff, and he explains that this is a popular road with bikers. He has ridden it a few times at night himself. Every five to ten minutes motorbikes race around the bends, often in large groups. I assume they have come up here for the scenic ride and the empty road. I can see the attraction of biking, the rush you get from speeding down an open road. Even from a touring aspect, it beats being in a car, watching it all pass by from behind the glass, insulated from the sounds, the smells, and the elements, like seeing the world on a TV screen. On a motorbike, there is no barrier between you and the environment: you can feel the wind, you can smell the smells. But you are still in fast forward. Speeding by, you cannot possibly notice all the small things.
On a bicycle, you are inside the movie, an essential part of it. Completely reliant upon your environment, you observe and absorb every sensation around you. You feel every change in terrain, the texture of the road, the direction of the wind, every ascent and descent, the constantly shifting weather. You smell every plant and flower, every rotting roadkill carcass. You hear every birdcall, every insect and animal. You take in the country, and the country takes you in.
If you really want to experience the world, get on a bicycle.
SEPTEMBER 17, 2012
Australia has to be the most costly country I have passed through to date. Just a coffee is almost five dollars. So consuming the recommended calories of two grown men each day is burning a giant hole in my wallet. The cheapest fuel I’ve found is the service station steak pie, which supplies an instant hit of energy and protein. Occasionally supplemented by an “everything thrown in” Oz burger, these pies have been powering me across the continent.
I am fortunate to have many friends in Australia. They have put me up along the way, which has helped to keep the costs down. Another economical sleeping option is the Australian pub, which offers basic food, board . . . and bedbugs. Every little town has at least one of these “hotels”—usually a historic building dating back to the 1800s, with high ceilings, long halls, and creaky wooden floors. Many boast a resident ghost with an endearing nickname like Nellie or Ned. I’ve taken to milking the pub staff for stories about their apparitions.
Tonight, in Tarcutta, I have been billeted next to the pub’s infamous “ghost room,” and the proprietor imparts the delightful tale of the in-house phantom: a young man, down on his luck, hanged himself in Room 31 some fifty years ago. Since then the room has been the subject of some inexplicable goings-on.
“For instance, one day, after I’d cleaned and made up the rooms, including number thirty-one,” she recounts, “I closed and locked them all for the night. The place was empty at the time, as we were doing our annual spring clean, so I was surprised when the next morning I found the door to number thirty-one cra
cked open. The bed was a mess, like someone had slept in it.”
This, she informs me, was not the first time the room had appeared haunted by a nocturnal visitor. “A few times we’ve had guests complain about the racket in number thirty-one, like someone was moving furniture around. Of course we never put anyone in that room, so it couldn’t have been occupied.”
I’m rather disappointed not to encounter any paranormal activity myself. Thirteen hours on the road means I sleep soundly—unlike the dead, who apparently do not.
SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
A fellow cyclist, Shaun, is waiting on the road outside Melbourne to accompany me into the city and guide me through the sprawling metropolis. A seasoned bike tourer, he has cycled all around Europe and the Middle East. We met in a Facebook chat group of long-distance cyclists a few months ago and have kept in touch ever since. I spot him sitting on a patch of turf by the side of the M31 highway.
“You want a cereal bar? Water?” he offers intuitively as I pull up.
I gratefully stuff down two of his bars, and then tell him, “I’ll probably need to stop for something more substantial soon.”
It’s already three p.m., and I’ve pedaled 100 miles or so without stopping for food because I want to make the most of the strong tailwind and cover the fifteen miles all the way to Melbourne. Fatigue is starting to creep up on me now, though. We spot a Subway along the highway and pull over for a late lunch. It’s here that I discover their luscious brownie, and my chocolate love affair officially begins. One is simply not enough. From now on all brownies will be purchased and eaten in pairs.
The sun is just disappearing below the horizon when our wheels touch the city periphery. Shaun knows all the scenic cycle routes to avoid the worst of the traffic. It’s a nice change to be pedaling next to another person. Time flies by faster—or at least the hours in the saddle are less tedious—with company. Another friend, Vincent, has offered to host me for the night, and he is waiting by Shaun’s house when we arrive.