Excerpt from Lucky in Adventure Cyclist!
“Mile 5000.” This story is the first time I’ve been published in print media since grad school. Feels good to be back!
the freedom life
Laura was the first and only solo female touring cyclist I met on my trip, and I was her first too. Lest you think I’m badass, this girl finished a ride across Australia and decided she wasn’t ready to go back home to France yet, so she flew to L.A. and biked to New York City, by way of Michigan.
“This is my first tour,” I told her.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“I love this life.”
She nodded and smiled. "This is the freedom life.”
ken and nancy
The light was deep and gold, and the shadows stretched long, and I was starting to get that ol’ end-of-the-day, where-am-I-gonna-sleep anxiety. Turns out Ohio’s pretty flat and doesn’t have a lot of trees, which adds a whole other level of stealth to stealth camping. It’s such a vulnerable feeling, searching for a place to sleep along the road.
I passed a man and woman working in their front yard, and they gave me a friendly wave. I was struck with a pang of longing. Look at these nice, normal people finishing up their chores. I bet they’re gonna go inside and eat dinner in a cozy dining room. And here I am, all alone, looking for a place to pitch my tent before it gets dark.
I should ask them if I can camp in their yard, I thought.
No, don’t, I thought.
They seem nice though! They actually acknowledged me.
Don’t be a freeloader.
For camping in their yard?
The road ahead crested and sank through empty farmland.
You know what? Worst that happens, they say no, and I’m no worse off than I am right now.
And so I doubled back. They were still there, and they gave me a smile as I slowed to a stop at the foot of their driveway.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Can I ask you a question? My name is Brooke, and I’m biking across the country. I’m looking for a place to camp for the night. Could I camp in your backyard?”
“Only if you agree to play for our high school basketball team!” laughed the man.
And that’s how I met Ken and Nancy.
Without a trace of hesitation, they offered me a spot in their yard… and a shower, a conversation, a giant bag of snacks, and a $200 donation to Represent the Village.
I laid in my tent that night and laughed at myself. Back in Oberlin, I’d perused satellite photos and asked a waitress where the safest place to camp might be. But when I decided to just wing it, a pair of complete strangers gave me $200. More than that, they gave me sanctuary. They extended kindness to someone who was lonely and afraid.
I don’t think kindness is inherent. Nor, for that matter, is cruelty. Or maybe they both are, lying dormant in our nature like seeds in the earth. What I do think is inherent is our power to choose which of these qualities to cultivate. But what is kindness without someone to receive it? By asking for help, and accepting it with gratitude and grace, we’re giving kindness a place to grow.
Thank you, Ken and Nancy, for treating a stranger with love.
score
I woke up early and was just about to tiptoe out into the early light of the morning when Evan came out of his room.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, did I wake you up?”
“No, not at all,” he said sleepily. “I just wanted to say it was really nice meeting you, and we should keep in touch.”
“Absolutely,” I said, and we hugged goodbye.
He went back inside and I headed north, along the narrow streets of his neighborhood, through a park and a back lot and to a main thoroughfare with a roomy bike lane that would eventually take me to Tufts. And I thought:
What if everyone you knew was a melody? Each person with their own time signature, key, instrumentation, theme; with beginnings and endings, patterns and evolution, a story to tell. With some of them you might harmonize, and I suppose you could call that love. Others might be dissonant, but what’s life without a little discord?
I found harmony with Evan and his friends, but then I moved on. I’m always moving on. My family so far away, my friendships so temporary, sometimes even just an evening. In their symphonies a faint pianissimo, a measure or two of music, and then a fermata suspended over a rest.
The melody of a traveler: a solo no one else can hear.
ghost stories
The first thing I saw when I pulled up to Wayne’s house was Hummer with Trump 2020 bumper sticker. It may surprise you to learn that I, a woman with a shaved head who is riding a bike across the country to try to convince an Ivy League school to give a full scholarship to an African Muslim, disagree with Trump’s politics.
But contrary to popular belief, liberals and conservatives can get along! Thanks to my many years of hitchhiking[1], I’ve developed a strategy for exactly this sort of situation: Be their friend. Friendship starts with common ground, which in our case was alcohol and ghosts.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” I demanded.
He laughed. “Not really.”
“Wait — no or not really?”
“Well…”
“DID YOU SEE A GHOST?”
“… I’m a logical man. I’m analytical. I need the facts.”
“Dude, of course. Everyone knows ghosts aren’t real.” I paused to take a long sip of the anise wine. “Oh my god, did you really make this?”
“I did!”
“This is the most delicious wine in the universe.”
“You think so?”
I nodded. “Where was I?”
“Logically, we know that ghosts aren’t real.”
“Exactly. But there are things in life that we can’t explain.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“So with that being said… dude, my house growing up was totally haunted.”
And then I launched into my favorite ghost story:
Jill and I were young when this happened — as in, not only were our parents still married, we also still had cows[2]. Mom and Dad were off doing barn chores, and we were deep in a game of Crash Test Dummies, which largely consisted of running face-first into the wall. We were gearing up for another round when we heard the unmistakable sound of plates shattering in the kitchen. It sounded like a shelf must have given out. We both looked at each other — we both heard it — and then wordlessly ran to the kitchen.
Not a dish out of place.
“That’s a good one!” said Wayne. His cat Lea, half-blind with a single long snaggle tooth, jumped up in his lap.
“So even though we’re both rational adults and we know they’re totally not real… have you ever seen a ghost?” I asked. “Besides this bottle of anise wine, I mean?”
“Wanna open another?”
“Do I?!”
After perusing the dozens of bottles in his cellar, I decided on the cherry-rhubarb. And then he told me his tale:
He was in the bathroom at work. It was small, just a urinal and a single stall, so he checked under the partition to make sure he wasn’t interrupting someone taking a dump. Coast clear.
“So I whip out Little Wayne—” (this gets a laugh) “and I start doing my thing, and then I hear a grunting noise in the toilet stall like someone’s taking a shit.”
He figured whoever was in there must have had their feet up... but when he glances through the crack in the partition, the stall is empty.
“DID YOU RUN AWAY??”
“No, but I’m just sorta confused, you know? I wasn’t scared, I was just baffled. And then, while I had soap on my hands, I heard clearly the rustling of a newspaper.”
“WHAT.”
“My mind is going through loops, and it’s overwhelming. So I ran out of the bathroom. And I never went in again. Six months later, I found out that a guy had a heart attack on that toilet and died.”
“WHOA!”
We were up past midnight, and the strong coffee and Puerto Rican pancakes he made for breakfast the next day took only the barest edge off my hangover. But I left his house smiling. A headache is a small price to pay for the knowledge that even in these contentious times, ghosts are more powerful than conflicting political beliefs.
And everyone knows ghosts aren’t even real!
[1] It’s the safest way to travel in Malawi, and the easiest way to get to town when you’re hiking the Appalachian Trail, and a perfectly acceptable mode of transportation in wild Alaska.
[2] Our parents split up when I was 9 and Jill was 7. They haven’t spoken in 20 years, and our mom now freely admits she fucking hated farming.
what it’s like to ride in a car with me
“Rob, I get to choose the music.”
“Okay.” Rob has learned to be agreeable when I demand control of the stereo[1].
“It’s Nahko and Medicine for the People. You have to love them.”
“I love them!”
“No sass!” I yell. “Hey, I have a present for you.” I hand him the bracelet I found outside Kim’s Kitchen.
“‘Liberty or Death’?”
“Because your kyiiiiiin is from New Hampshire. Hey Rob, say kin.”
“Kin.”
“No, say it like this: kyiiiiiiiin.”
“Kyiiiiiiiiiin.”
I cackle. “My kyiiiiiin is from New Hampshire too. Live free or die!”
“Live free or die!”
*
“HEY ROB wanna play a game I just made up?
“Sure.” Rob has learned to be agreeable when I propose games[2].
“It’s called ROBROBROBROBROB. Here’s how you play, are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“ROBROBROBROBROBROBROBROB! Now it’s your turn!”
“BROOKEBROO—”
“NO!”
“What?!”
“You’re doing it wrong! It’s called ROBROBROBROBROB not BROOKEBROOKEBROOKEBROOKE! Now do it again!”
“ROBROBROBROBROBROBROBROBROB!!”
“I see you’ve played ROBROBROBROBROB before! Hey Rob!”
“Yes?”
“Wanna play a game I just made up?”
“Is it BROOKEBROOKEBROOKEBROOKE?”
“HOW DID YOU KNOW?!”
“BROOKEBROOKEBROOKEBROOKE!”
I screamed and yelled, “ROB LOOK!”
Time slowed and our jaws dropped as we slid past a sign that said, I shit you not, Brook Road.
“ROB YOU MANIFESTED IT!”
And that, dear friends, is how Rob Campbell became the world champion of BROOKEBROOKEBROOKEBROOKE.
[1] Even though he has literally the best taste in music in the world.
[2] Even though they inevitably have no rules, no winners, and no point.
the mojo bag (part 2)
Deborah closes her eyes and nods. She rises and glides to a shelf, where she begins selecting from an assortment of crystals, stones, and trinkets. Peter takes her seat and looks at me, a little blearily but earnest.
“I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was a teenager. And when I got my first motorcycle after Deborah and I started dating, she made me a mojo bag — like a good-luck charm, to keep me safe. So I carried it in my motorcycle jacket.”
Deborah, satisfied with her selections, comes back to the table. She lays out a cloth.
“And then, one day, I got rear-ended, by a car. I was stopped in traffic, felt the impact. I had enough time in my head to say ‘Oh fuck’ before the lights went out.”
“Oh my god!”
He looked at me intently. “And I got up and walked away.”
“You physically got up and walked away?”
He nods. “After I regained consciousness, the EMTs untangled me from my motorcycle and we walked to the ambulance. I had no injuries.”
On the cloth, Deborah has laid out a small figurine, a folded piece of paper, and three stones: cloudy purple, brown striped, inky black. She’s gripping a crystal the size of a bar of soap and the color of glass, and uses it to draw fast, tight circles around the cloth. Every so often, she flicks whatever she’s gathering off to the side with a grimace of distaste.
“Peter, that’s incredible!”
“At the emergency room, the doctor goes, ‘You’re really lucky.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I get that.’ He goes, ‘No. 1% of the people that get rear-ended on a motorcycle walk away.”
I am silent.
“It was a miracle.”
Deborah squints, searching overhead. She’s has changed her grasp on the crystal, and now she’s tracing an ellipse, skimming the air for some nameless, invisible particles, and splashing them down onto the assortment of stones. When she is satisfied, she places them one by one into a small black velvet bag and hands it to me.
“Can I look inside?”
“Yes, of course. The purple is amethyst. It moderates your energy, and repels things that are negative. But it transmutes that energy, and sends it back into the universe in a positive way… And that’s black tourmaline. It creates a forcefield of protection. It’s my go-to, because for me it’s the strongest of the protection stones. The brown one is a tiger eye, for focus and balance. But it also has protective properties as well. And that’s—”
“— Ganesh!”
“Yes, the road opener. He clears away the obstacles.”
I unfold the paper. On one side is an illustration of a monk with a ring of curly blonde hair cradling a child in one arm and holding a lily in his free hand. On the other side, a prayer addressed to St. Anthony, Saint of Miracles.
“Anthony of Padua,” Deborah says. “He helps you find lost objects, but you lose your way, he’ll guide you.”
“Assure me that I am not alone,” I read. “And teach me to be humbly thankful as you were for all the bountiful blessings I am to receive.” I replace the charms into the bag and say, simply, “Wow.”
“Keep it on your person at all times, and it will protect you from harm.”
“That’s right,” Peter declares.
“Oh, and you can recharge it in the light of the full moon.” Deborah says this in the same by-the-way tone as when she told me where I could find the bath towels.
In moments like this, “thank you” is a meaningless utterance. Just two empty, oafish syllables. But they will have to do.
“You’re welcome,” Peter says, and then adds with emphasis. “Be safe. You’ve got people who love you looking out for you…” He gestures above.
From up on a cloud, Uncle Rich tips his pipe with a smile, and Uncle Dean raises his root beer and says, “Be safe, baby!” Gummi, perhaps wielding a turkey leg, adds, “Gawddamn right you better be safe… or I’ll give you the business end of this drumstick!”
the mojo bag (part 1)
Peter’s eyes are faraway and misty. He sips red wine and drifts absently around the room, like a balloon in the current of an oscillating fan. Deborah and I sit at the table, talking intently about the occult: ghosts, tarot, auras, energy. When I mention that I found a turkey feather earlier that day, she says with authority, “That’s auspicious.”
It’s not every day you meet a real-live psychic, let alone one who buys you pizza and gives you a place to stay!
Deborah’s hair spills over her shoulders in whorls and corkscrews as intricate as a fingerprint, and behind her black-rimmed glasses, her eyes are bottomless as hot diner coffee. She exudes a powerful energy, like the rush of wind before rain. I sit up straight as she turns her gaze on me, angling her head slightly to the right — the better, I imagine, to peer into the immutable essence of my being.
She seems to like me, and I am very, very grateful. If this person likes me, I must be doing something right.
I’m glad Peter likes me too. I’d forgotten we’d met until he opened the door: the nerdy glasses, the graying ponytail, the boyish smile. That’s right, Uncle Dean’s second funeral[1], the one in New Jersey.
The first funeral centered largely on Jesus, and the mortician shaved off Dean’s mustache, combed his hair and put him in a suit. I remember standing over the casket, trying my hardest, but I couldn’t summon the tears to mourn this skinny Christian man who bore a passing resemblance to my uncle.
But in Jersey, it was light-hearted. At the reception, I sat at a table with Peter and a bunch of Dean’s other friends, and we told rollicking stories and laughed so hard we tilted back in our chairs. From up on a cloud, in flip-flops and a NASA t-shirt, his hair pointing every which way, Uncle Dean raised a root beer in a toast.
Peter is a link to my ancestry, to the memory of my mother’s family. He helped her through the death of her father when she was just a teenager. He comforted her when her eldest brother Rich died at age 38, leaving behind his wife and their 3-year-old son and tiny 1-year-old baby girl. He offered support when my grandmother was dying, over six long and painful years. And he was there when Dean, the only other remaining member of my mother’s family, finally had to go too.
My mom lost her entire family. It’s a testament to her strength that she has reached out and created a new one, of fine people like Peter. Don’t let anyone tell you different: The bravest thing a person can do is to love again.
I can see the love Peter has for my mother and my uncles in the way he looks at me. Abruptly, he breaks his dreamy silence. “Deborah,” he says. “Make her a mojo bag like the one you made for me.”
[1] If you knew Dean Powell — whose self-appointed nickname was “Mr. Famous” — you would understand why he had two funerals.
patrick and gina’s house
Patrick and Gina are never going to finish fixing up this house.
First of all, they’re never here. Patrick is the captain of a wooden sailing ship — and he’s the stable, sedentary one! Gina’s off working as a marine tech off the coast of Antarctica.
Second, there’s stuff everywhere. Art and antique tools all over the walls, books in the shelves, plants spilling over every windowsill, and how exactly are you going to move that massive model ship in the kitchen?
Third, it’s a tremendously ambitious project. They didn’t just buy one house — they bought two, and converted the second one into a barn/workshop. You know, for all their other carpentry projects — restoring boats, constructing props for cabaret shows, and whatever it is they have planned for that pile of old bicycles.
It’s just unrealistic. They’re living in a dream…
… and Patrick and Gina and every other dreamer knows that’s exactly the point.
real badasses don’t look like what you think real badasses look like
For Charna, who gave me a place to stay and shared her story with me.
Charna is soft-spoken and small, as imposing as a wintertime shrub.
But talk to her. You’ll find out she left behind a career as a biologist to be a wild land fire fighter, and spent decades jumping out of helicopters with men young enough to be her sons. She had to give that up when she turned 50, of course, but she couldn’t bring herself to go sit still in a laboratory, so now she works as a handywoman and goes on long bike and kayak trips on the weekends.
What’s tougher than bare, living branches in the cold winter wind?