30 Year Ago Tomorrow

On May 13, 1979 (Mother’s Day that year) I took off on a cross-country bicycle trip by myself from Providence, Rhode Island to San Francisco, California. I mapped out an up-and-down, zig-zag route so I’d be able to visit friends and relatives as well as see theatre and sights from Canada to the deep south to the far west. The places I stayed varied from bedrooms to my tent, trailers, hostels, empty model homes, the floor of a grain mill, and a university dorm couch. Along the way I would spend time with family and friends, sometimes interrupting my trip for a few days to a week. I even took a tangential trip to Illinois in the midst of the ride to be Best Man in the wedding of the first man I ever slept with. More of that anon. Though there were certain parts of the country I had no intention of riding across -- Texas, for example, as well as the desert from Arizona to California – I did end up riding 3,400 miles. It was a grand and varied adventure and I cannot get my mind around the idea that 30 years have passed since then.

In addition to other blog writing in the coming months, I intend to include a daily check-in from the small journal I kept on that trip. I reserve the right to edit, but I’ll try to keep the editting to a minimum with some background information when needed. Following is the first installment I made in the small beige steno pad which I tucked into the side pack hitched to my dependable Fuji cross country bike through rain and wind and sun:

“Prologue May 12, 1979

Providence – rainy, heavy, off & on humid & cool. Rain forecast for tomorrow & no bed in Northhampton, but I’m going. Good test, I suppose. Caution advised though fortune & Tarot are seemingly on my side. Feel fat, jittery – want to get going. Set for rain, packed efficiently.

Nice day with Greg – breakfast, paddle boat, “Manhattan”, Chinese food & preparations. Now beers & the future. I love him, but thoughts are basicly on tomorrow & days to come. God bless Greg – (have) a good summer & don’t forget me.”

I was 24 and in my first gay relationship with a beautiful, kind hearted black man named Greg, also from Indiana. We’d met in Trinity Square’s production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that past autumn; Trinity was the regional theatre in which I was a member. In addition to acting, Greg was a fantastic singer, an expert tailor (picked up from his father), and a trained instructor for disabled patients at the local hospital. I was pretty frisky sexually that first autumn in Rhode Island and couldn’t imagine being with just one man, but we decided to move in with one another and give it a go. Over the course of the ride, we had decided to have an “agreement” and open the relationship somewhat. I’m sure I had some say in that matter.

What brought about this idea to ride cross country? It was a confluence of things. I’d always loved bicycle riding. Growing up, I used to tool all over the place on our family’s gold Schwinn tandem bike, rarely with another rider. I’d take off to my dad’s drugstore, 10 miles out in the “country” on highway 3. (“country” that doesn’t exist anymore replaced by non-stop developments.) Or I’d go across to the south side of town to visit my friend Jeff Silverman and then call my mom to tell her what I’d done. She was none too pleased.

The idea of a cross country trip had been swimming around in my mind for awhile. I forget what had set that in motion, but an extra fanning to that ember came from Ken Cheeseman, a student at the Trinity Conservatory, who had made several cross country trips himself and who became a kind of mentor/factotum and began suggesting different routes. That winter, I just decided to do it and bought a bike and sent off for the needed packs and tent and sleeping bag. I was in good shape, but once the equipment arrived, Ken urged me to get used to the difference in weight disbursement on the bike by taking rides fully packed. The month before I took off, despite a full schedule at the theatre rehearsing and performing, I would get up early every morning and do a 20 mile trip, fully weighted and packed. The weekend before, again at Ken’s suggestion, I got a 100 mile day under my belt. I was psyched and ready.

On top of the air of adventure surrounding the trip, the main reasons I was doing it was to break up my rigid habit of planning everything. I knew that on a trip like this, weather would change, tires would blow, spokes would break, life would happen and I would have to deal with it as it happened. Of course there would be a route mapped out and a time table of sorts, but plans would definitely change.

The journal entry above refers to “fortune & Tarot” cards. I’m a believer in most everything, sometimes a skeptical believer, but a believer nonetheless. A member of the Trinity company and dear friend, Amy Van Nostrand, offered to read my cards before the trip. She laid them out and was beginning my reading when she discovered that she had inadvertently left one of the cards out of the deck, so she reshuffled and laid the cards out once again and to our surprise and delight with the exception of 1, maybe 2 cards, the chosen cards and placement was almost identical to the first layout. We decided this boded very well.

The trip was definitely on.