Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America

by Brian Benson

Later, lying in our bunk beds, Rachel and I whispered about how much Sherri reminded us of our moms. We kept talking—about everything besides “I don’t know.” I got down from my bunk, leaned down to kiss her, and she kissed back, pulled me down beside her. After some time, she whispered good-night. I climbed back to my bunk.

  • • •

  The next day we set out to explore Great Falls. We parked the bikes downtown and walked the length of Central Avenue. The street was fairly bustling with people, but it had this lonely quality neither of us could name. Later Sherri would explain that the bustlers were likely addicts, that Great Falls was ground zero in the Montana meth war, that all the horrifically graphic roadside billboards we’d seen were part of the Montana Meth Project, a massive campaign funded by one crusading billionaire, which had in four years halved meth abuse among Montana teens. I didn’t know any of that at the time. Just knew that after five minutes I was ready to retreat back to Sherri’s.

  But Rachel wanted coffee, and she spotted a little café, which ended up being as cozy as Central Avenue was creepy. This was a special skill of hers. You could blindfold Rachel and dump her in an Albuquerque exurb, and within a half hour she’d have located strong espresso and comfy couches. For hours, we tucked up on said couches, slugging coffee and reading while the barista curated a playlist of nonstop indie music. It was a lot of syrupy emo horseshit, but I drank it up, because I’d heard almost no music for a month, and because Rachel and I could maybe do with a bit of syrup, even if she had seemingly shrugged off what I’d said.

  After less than a day in Great Falls, in fact, Rachel had again become her confident, competent self. She had asked Sherri all the right questions at dinner, while I’d lapsed into a midmeal food coma, and buzzed around the house all morning, calling friends and writing postcards and making a grocery list for the dinner she’d volunteered us to cook, while I’d spent a solid half hour sitting in a recliner, watching her and wondering what I wanted to do with the sprawling, empty day. Months earlier, this dynamic would have been grounds for an anxiety attack. But now I just felt relieved that Rachel could still make me feel cluttered and insecure.

  From the café, we headed to a bike shop. Rachel was still suffering from buzzy hands and shooting back pain and was convinced she needed a taller stem, so she could sit more upright. One of the mechanics, the dudeliest of dudes, scrounged up what he could find, but didn’t have what she was looking for. He shrugged and said, “Guess you’re just gonna have to suck it up.” Rachel made it out the front door, then burst into tears. I’d been expecting some good old-fashioned rage, but here, again, were the tears. And I understood, even more than I had on the swing set, or while I’d watched her fight the Candid Camera winds, that she was suffering, that it wasn’t about her “wanting it enough.” I felt I should tell her this, but I didn’t know how to put it. So I just squeezed her hand and said, “Fuck that guy.”

  That night, we cooked up some gnocchi and marinara for Sherri, and after dinner, we joined her on the couch to watch the local meteorologist confirm that the wildfire smoke was, in fact, going to continue ruining Christmas. And then we all read our books, together in the living room, like real, normal, sedentary humans, before turning in.

  I lay in my bunk, staring at the ceiling, and said, “I needed this.”

  “Me too,” Rachel said. I heard her take a long breath and hold it. Choosing her words. “I’m really looking forward to Glacier.”

  “Uh-huh. Me too.”

  “I think we should stop there.”

  “Forever?”

  “No. Just for a year.”

  “Cool.”

  “Or at least a week.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “Seriously.”

  Part of my brain was, as always, droning on about going forward. But why? It was mid-August, and we had nowhere to be. Better put, I had no idea where to be. And I owed it to Rachel to be way better about compromising. And, come on, it was fucking Glacier. How often would I get to decide, on a whim, to take a weeklong vacation in Glacier?

  “Why not, right?” I said. “As long it’s not all smoky.”

  “If it’s smoky in Glacier, I’m chartering a plane to Portland.”

  “Fair enough. That’s a good idea, though. Stopping.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “Yes it is.”

  I lay awake for a while, thinking of Glacier. We would be there in two days. And a week off would give us the chance to reconnect, to escape the on-the-road stressors. It was something real to look forward to. I prayed, to no one and nothing in particular, that the skies would clear.

  • • •

  Come morning, the smoke was thick, and traffic was nasty, and by the end of the first mile we were already fighting. We hadn’t even made it to the farmers’ market, where we were going to get snacks, and Rachel was already in tears, saying, “I can’t do this,” and, “You don’t even want to be out here with me,” and I was muttering okay-I-know-there-are-no-take-backs-but-what-do-you-want-me-to-do-now?

  We did the only thing we could. Rode. That day our destination was the tiny town of Dupuyer, home to more friends of Kelly Markle, who had pretty much become our Montana booking agent. Dupuyer was ninety-two miles from Great Falls. And I was really hoping the next ninety-one would be a bit smoother than the first.

  West of town, 200 merged with I-15 and two other major highways, so we were relegated to a frontage road. This was kind of nice, because the whining engines gave us a good excuse for not talking, but also kind of sad, because I knew that in a short while we’d finally be saying good-bye to the road we’d ridden for nearly a thousand miles. Once 200 split from I-15, the traffic calmed, and Rachel rode up beside me and asked if I remembered where we’d picked the highway up. Fargo? Sykeston? I knew she didn’t particularly care, was just making conversation, and so I guessed with her, threw out more names, though I knew exactly, because I’d logged it in my journal, which I’d read cover-to-cover at Sherri’s.

  Soon we hit the junction with Route 89. We took the north fork, and I watched 200 fade toward the southern horizon, and though I’d been expecting teary eyes or nostalgia needles or at least the urge to sing “This Used to Be My Playground,” I now found myself feeling not sentimental but relieved. I was ready to leave those miles behind. Ready to go somewhere new.

  • • •

  A few miles after the junction, we caught a light tailwind. Nothing to call home about, but it made for an easy enough ride to Fairfield, a quaint little town cowering beneath a half-dozen massive steel silos that held enough grain to give Fairfield the (self-proclaimed) title of Malting Barley Capital of the World. Said silos would have cast some pretty impressive shadows if not for the persistent smoke. It seemed a bit lighter now, but not light enough to betray the location of the sun, which we hadn’t seen for four days. We picked up fixings for the trip’s umpteenth sandwiches, and as we ate in Fairfield’s well-treed park, I pored over our map. We were within thirty miles of the Rockies. And still no sign of them.

  Past Fairfield, the traffic just kind of disappeared, and the wind kept rising, from pleasant to “hey now” to “holy shit I’m flying,” until I was barely even pedaling, not a pilot but a passenger, just kicking back and appreciating the wind-tickled grasses and the distant, silvery splotch that appeared to be a lake and the gnarled cones of rock that were now rising around us like inverted tornadoes. It was one of those days when I felt I could actually see the land changing. When momentum felt like something I could photograph.

  As we approached Choteau, a faint spot of gold stained the gray sky. “Do you see that?” I asked Rachel. She did. And together we watched as the stain deepened, the solitary patch of gold glowing brighter and brighter until, finally, it burst into flame. Scattershot sunshine poked through the smoke, touching down upon a knuckled heap of distant purple.

  The Rockies.

  We pulled to the shoulder, and I dug o
ut the camera. I took a picture, shook my head, deleted it. Tried again, and again, until I got it right. And though the day was far from over—though we’d end up riding another forty miles, including a hellacious finale involving resurgent smoke and foothills that felt a lot more like mountains, such that we barely made Dupuyer by sunset—I felt then like we’d reached the end of something. The beginning of something else.

  • • •

  We sat with our hosts, Leanne and John, eating homemade granola and picked-from-the-property berries over a lacquered slab of hardwood, listening in rapt adoration as Leanne talked about yarn spinning and sheep farming while John quietly took his breakfast. I was picturing these two double-dating with Kelly and Forest, smiling at the thought, and wishing we had more time. We’d spoken little with them the previous evening, having arrived so late, but now, after just a half hour in their company, I wanted to stay a full day and learn how to spin wool and see all the cool shit they’d built on their property. Rachel, too, was enthralled by the pair. She was an on-and-off knitter—had never really diversified her work but could make a mean fucking scarf—and seemed to have a legitimate crush on Leanne.

  But we couldn’t stay. We’d seen the Rockies. Glacier beckoned.

  Before we left, Leanne brought out a huge, multicolored mound of yarn, and Rachel bought a few skeins to stuff into her pannier. She wanted to knit a (wait for it) scarf by the end of the trip. While they talked knitting, I took a peek into Leanne’s office, and hanging above her adorably huge computer was a sheet of paper with these words:

  Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body. But rather, to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow! What a ride.”

  At the time, I didn’t have any idea where that quote had come from. I only knew that this woman—who I’d respected from the moment she shook my hand, who had tethered herself to property and committed to a singular pursuit, and who in all ways appeared to be a capital-A Adult—had this quote on the wall, in her office, in the place she’d be most likely to see it. This quote that pretty much encapsulated my whole philosophy. And, silly or not, it felt like an affirmation of what I was and wasn’t doing. An affirmation that wherever I was headed was less important than how I was getting there.

  • • •

  Turned out my “this is the end of something” prognosis was off by one day. One smoke-drenched, agonizing, spirit-crushing motherfucker of a day.

  It started well enough. The moment we left the driveway, we plunged into a valley, then dragged ourselves up and over the first of a great many foot-mountains. The terrain was now like a two-to-one enlargement of that roller-coaster hillscape we’d found in eastern Montana. The domes here were comically huge. Some seemed on the verge of popping. But we’d both had a good- night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, so we attacked the hills like Wheaties-box superstars. For about twenty miles. Then it was twenty more to Browning, the next town, and the hills kept coming, and the hearty breakfast worked its way through my bloodstream and bladder, and this funny thing happened. I started to feel like shit, and I just said so, verbatim, to Rachel.

  “I feel like shit.”

  “Me too.”

  “Let’s stop.”

  “Okay.”

  We stopped in a valley, had a snack, and while Rachel started casting on some yarn, I sprawled out and napped. Twenty minutes later, we were riding. And there was zero tension. It was that easy. Misery, when shared, became something less than misery. Of course. I knew the tired little aphorism. And it had only taken me 1,642 miles to remember it.

  • • •

  West of Browning, it was a ninja wind. I took two jabs to the right kidney, an uppercut square on the chin, a series of roundhouses and leg sweeps, striking from all directions. I tried to stay vigilant and figure out where the attacks were coming from, but the air was hazy from so many smoke bombs, and I could see nothing but short grasses dancing every which way, feigning northwest but darting east, betraying nothing but the capriciousness of their tormenter.

  By the time we stopped for a break, at a closed-down building that was the spitting image of the snack depot at a summer camp I’d once attended, the ninja wind had pulled off its mask and revealed itself as a freight train barreling down from the northern horizon. A mile back, Route 89 had turned ninety degrees, so we were now heading due north, which was unfortunate. And from our perch at the snack shack, I could see the pavement snaking up a ragged heap of earth, then disappearing into the thicker-than-ever smoke. Somehow I’d believed the mountains wouldn’t start until Glacier. I’d been so very wrong.

  You know how, in old-school side-scrollers, the ultimate megabosses always ended up being a constellation of every evil you’d faced over the course of the game? The final 18.9 miles were a lot like that. A boss fight. Rachel and I now faced a wind so violent that even the Candid Camera producers would have been like, nope, totally unrealistic, they’ll never buy that. The grade was as steep as any we’d seen, the smoke a woolly mitten reaching down to smother us, the surrounding forest scorched to blackness, and in that blackness I pictured grizzlies and mountain lions and other somethings preparing to pick us off like à la carte items.

  Rachel and I couldn’t talk, couldn’t even really scream, over the wind. But I could see—via the rearview and, in moments of exceptional bravery, via direct eye contact—that her eyes were bleary, reddened, defeated. I’m sure I looked just as haggard. After ten miles I was possessed by a seething hatred for the wind, struggling to keep my legs moving, terrified of the mountain lions and the setting sun and the knowledge that if this kept up much longer Rachel and I would never speak again. I tried so hard to go her speed and tell her I love you in eyelid Morse code, but it was worthless, and she was slowing more and more, until she just stopped, in the middle of the road, and got off her bike. I stopped too and stood beside her, and yelled encouraging words and asked questions and waited patiently, but she didn’t respond. Just closed her eyes. Breathed. And after a few minutes, she got back on the bike.

  When we finally crawled up to the summit and saw it, I braked so suddenly that Rachel almost rear-ended me. Before us were mountains upon mountains upon mountains, dusted in snow, bathed in glorious platinum light bursting through the overhead murk. After so many miles in the Plains, this landscape seemed logically impossible. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see unicorns, Care Bears, Jesus on a golden chariot. The wind was still deafening, and neither of us could really think of much to say beyond “wow” and “fucking wow.” So we just smiled giddy smiles, eyes glistening from the exertion or the wind or the relief or all of the above and more, and then we pushed off, tucked low, and dove into the valley.

  PART IV

  A PLACE VERY CLOSE TO WHEREVER WE WERE GOING

  CHAPTER 16

  An Arrival

  In a hiker-biker campsite on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park, I sat on a picnic table, sipping Scotch ale and cataloging all the ways the hellride from Dupuyer had maimed me. My skin was windburned, my eyes puffy, my legs a molten mess. The muscles of my neck and back had fused into one throbbing megaknot, and my knuckles ached from hours of strangling the handlebars. Rachel was in even worse shape. Beyond the exhaustion, she was suffering from a needling burn in her right hand, a backache, and, as she put it, an acute case of crotch stink. But none of that mattered now. We’d made it.

  Rachel began stripping her Fuji of its panniers. She placed them on the table, one by one, then wheeled her denuded bike away and parked it behind a big pine.

  I nodded at the bike. “Behind the tree?”

  “Yep,” she said. “I don’t even want to look at that thing.”

  “You’re going to hurt its feelings.”

  “Well, it hurt my wrists. And my butt. And my sunny disposition.” She came back to the table and dumped out he
r panniers. “Fair’s fair.”

  I looked over at my Fuji, blew a kiss, and said, “Don’t worry. I still love you.”

  Now Rachel began picking out the items she planned to use in the park: toiletries and towel, journal and pens, camp clothes and book, phone and yarn and needles. She repacked this pile in one of her panniers, then crammed the other three with Lycra, her gloves, her helmet, basically everything that might remind her she was on a cross-country bike trip. These bags she stuffed, rather unceremoniously, into the bear box.

  “Much better.” She opened a beer. “I am so ready to be off that bike.”

  “I get that about you.”

  I drained my can and pulled another from the six-pack. We’d stopped at a store in St. Mary, the but-for-the-grace-of-Glacier town just beyond the park’s eastern border, and there we’d found a cooler brimming with microbrews. It had been nothing but Bud and Miller since we left Minnesota, and so I’d felt something close to arousal while considering that wall of stouts and IPAs, ambers and Scotch ales. We’d chosen a six-pack of the latter, and the first sip tasted something like my first orgasm had felt—surprising and personal and possibly life-changing.

  “Wanna set up here?” Rachel asked. She pointed toward a spot behind the table.

  I shrugged. So far, we had this hiker-biker site to ourselves. A fire pit, a couple of picnic tables, and a half-dozen sandy tent pads to choose from. For five bucks apiece. Back at the ranger station, we’d both made sure to note (loudly) that car campers were paying four times that much, just for a parking space and a bit of privacy. And, well, now we had this quite private site, and I’d parked my bike on a tent pad, which was kind of like a deluxe parking space. I smiled a smug smile. No one was around to notice, but I figured a little practice couldn’t hurt.

  The sun was sinking, the temperature with it, so I set up the tent while Rachel prepared a feast of boxed mac ’n’ cheese, Fritos, and two beers. An hour later we were in the tent, well fed and half-drunk and groping for each other. And twelve minutes after that, I was asleep.