dam

Signs clung to the chainlink fence like monarch butterflies, bearing words like WARNING and CAUTION and AVISO. There were exclamation marks trapped inside triangles, and a hapless clip-art silhouette thrown back by his nemesis, the lightning bolt. Beyond the fence, the Leesville Dam spanned the slender throat of a manmade lake. It was a somber fortress of tear-streaked concrete with turrets of scaffolding surrounding machinery that looked like an industrial Play Place. It was also, Google Maps insisted, the most direct route to my destination.

If I could cross here, I had 20 miles to go. But if I couldn’t, I’d have to backtrack 11 miles just to get to the next river crossing — not to mention the climb back up the steep, winding hill I had just descended as slowly and cautiously as an octogenarian walking down a flight of stairs.

A light breeze rattled the bare branches of the trees and ruffled the surface of the water, sending up the flat, metallic smell of river. The gate clanked. There was a small white sign to the left, a moth among the monarchs, with a few hopeful words: GATE ACCESS CONTACT NUMBER.

Now, honestly, what’s 11 miles in a 6,000-mile trip? And as for the hill, well, hills are the price you pay to eat pecan pie with whipped cream at 10 a.m. No, the real reason for what transpired was the simple thought: Wouldn’t it be funny if I could convince somebody to open the gate for me?

So I called the number twice; both times it went to this guy Andy’s voicemail. No worries — there was another sign with another phone number, this one for the American Electric Power headquarters. Why not? Like that magical incantation my mama taught me, “Can I speak to your supervisor[1]?”

It took all my schmoozin skills, but not only did I get Andy’s cell phone number, the guy I talked to wished me good luck. Unfortunately, Andy didn’t pick up when I called… nor when I called again. So naturally, I texted him:

hi Andy! my name’s brooke, and I’m biking cross-country. google routed me to your dam… any way you could open the gate so I could bike across?

Then I decided to give it five minutes. In those five minutes, I:

• contemplated the logistics of jumping the fence 

• tried two of my own PINs, as well as 6969, in the keypad

• Googled "Leesville Dam gate code" (to my surprise, there were no results)

The time had come. I called Andy’s office. No answer. I called his cell. It rang once, twice, three times, four— 

“Hello?” asked a gruff voice.

I couldn’t contain my excitement. "ARE YOU ANDY??"
"Yes," he laughed.
"Andy my man, you are the person I want to talk to. See, I'm trying to bike to Seattle, and Google Maps routed me over your lovely dam, but your lovely gate is blocking my way. Is there any way you'd let me cross? Otherwise, I have to bike 11 extra miles, and I know you don't wanna make me bike 11 whole extra miles. Look Andy, I promise I won't get hurt, and if I do, I double-promise I won't sue, so whaddaya say?"

There was a pause, swollen as a river surging against a set of watertight floodgates.

“Heh-heh, all right, I'll letcha over."

"ANDY YOU ARE A TRUE AMERICAN HERO!!!"

[1] And ohhhh I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to say it nicely. Say it like an entitled bourgeoisie and you are a nightmare. Say it like, “Hey man, I get it, I’m a pain in the ass and this is above your pay grade,” though, and you’re usually golden.

"bridge closed"

“bridge closed,”

warned the orange construction signs a mere two miles from where I was planning to camp. I wasn’t worried; it wasn’t like I was trying to get a whole car over the bridge. Construction signs tend not to apply to bicycles, I thought smugly, and approached the cluster of guys in fluorescent vests.

“Sick vests,” I said. “Any way I can walk my bike across?” 

The construction workers gave each other a look, and then parted to reveal a small chasm were the road should have been.

I smiled through the heartbreak. “I guess not! Where’s the nearest river crossing?” 

“About 10 miles that way,” said the foreman, jutting his chin back where I came from. As he launched into detailed instructions, one of the laborers stepped forward. He nervously avoided eye contact, but he straightened his shoulders and asked softly, “How much does your bike weigh?”

And then before I knew it, he had hoisted Lucky onto his shoulder. He leaned way back as he slipped down the crumbling walls of the pit, gracefully avoiding a face-level pipe at the bottom, climbed one-handed up a ladder, and finally made it to the catwalk on the other side. I scurried behind with a pannier in each hand.

“just shave it all off”

is what I told the barber as she tossed the cape over my shoulders.

There’s a powerful letting go when you watch your hair fall away from your scalp and fall to the ground in big tufts. Your face transforms as the shape of your skull emerges. Who is this stranger? You feel naked, vulnerable, ugly, tough, stripped-down, brave, anonymous, pure.

Of course, if you’re a woman, people start trying to figure out why you’d shave off your pretty hair[1]. They probably assume it’s something to do with sexual or gender identity. Or maybe you’re just crazy!

Fine, let judgmental people put me in their boxes[2]. Meanwhile, I no longer have to worry about helmet hair. And when I got to Seattle, with a halo of new growth emanating from my scalp, I can measure my cross-country bike tour in centimeters as well as miles.

[1] Well, unless it’s pubic, leg, or armpit hair, in which case we’re expected to obliterate it entirely.

[2] Which I’m pretty sure my very first WarmShowers hosts did later that night. They still shared their home with me, and I’m grateful, but I detected a little coolness in the way they explained my hair to their toddler, and they left me a neutral review on WarmShowers. Naturally, I obsessively went over every detail of my behavior — did I eat too much? should I have tried to stay up later? be more entertaining? was it wrong to stay with a host on my first night? — but I wonder if they would have been nicer if I had long hair.

what do you wear when you're riding your bike across the country?

answer: the flyest threads imaginable.

This is the reality of my existence: I can decide to ride my bike across the country — no problem! how do we get this done? — but picking out a tank top to wear to the grocery store takes 45 minutes on a good day. It’s that mirror. Oh, the mirror! My arch-enemy[1]. Fixed and wriggling, I am helpless to look away from this cruel truth: No matter how carefully I cultivate my inner self, it will always be housed in a vessel I didn’t choose and that everyone can see but me.

So anyway, that’s my thought process on a normal day. Now imagine me trying to pick out the only outfit I will wear for the next five months. I am catatonic.

[1] When I was 17, I went 40 days without looking at my reflection. Around day 20, I forgot what I looked like, and in that void, I just assumed I was beautiful. Like Nicole Kidman.

Completely by coincidence, the last day of this experiment was my senior prom. The lady who did my hair was like, “Honey, don’t you wanna see how beautiful you look?” and I just said, “Noooope!”

(Just to paint a complete picture, I also wore a red dress with matching Converse. The fringe of my hair was the color of lime Jell-O, because, of course, that’s what I used to dye it. I made jewelry out of my leftover ID stickers from my AP tests and stuck a couple of pipettes I stole from the chemistry lab in my hair.)

 At midnight, after 40 days, on my way home from senior prom, I looked in the rearview mirror. Damn if it wasn’t just like seeing an old friend.

you don't need a car

this is mr. bear, a frankenstein single-speed i rode around atlanta for years.

It’s been nine years since I’ve owned a car. In that time, I’ve hitched rides with friends and strangers and taken the bus. But I’ve mostly ridden a bike.

I’ve been sunburned and sweat-soaked and caught in torrential downpours and frozen numb. I’ve ridden on an empty stomach, on no sleep, after a few too many beers, crying hysterically. I’ve hit loose gravel and slick pavement and sand. My chain has fallen off and my brakes have given out. I’ve flown over the handlebars, skidded on pavement, and toppled over sideways. I’ve patched flats and replaced frayed brake cables and trued my wheels. I’ve ridden a beach cruiser in Japan and a mountain bike in Africa and a fat-tire Surly in Antarctica. I once biked eight miles with probably 40 pounds of books in a backpack; another time, I rode 77 miles in a blazer and tweed shorts because who says you can’t ride 77 miles and look cute doing it?  

And I’ve biked from Raleigh to Seattle.

traveling alone

sadly, this is the only surviving picture from my first trip abroad. i believe the phrase on the chalkboard translates to, “i am a rubber panties woman.”

The first time I traveled alone was when I was 20. I had a volunteer gig teaching English in Slovakia and Hungary for three weeks each, and I decided to take a couple weeks before that to bounce around Western Europe. Not only was I completely convinced I was going to be raped and murdered, I also felt like a total loser because I couldn’t afford to go with my friends on an expensive tour package. 

But shortly after I arrived, I discovered the unexpected benefits of solo travel, in the form of 10-cent dinner rolls at a bakery in Berlin.

“10 cents?” I asked incredulously.

“Ja.” 

And that’s how I ate for two days in Berlin on one Euro, with no one around to shame me.

For fun, I walked to all the free attractions listed in the Lonely Planet. At the East Side Gallery, I met a Sudanese refugee named Ouda. We smoked a joint on the banks of the Berlin River, and he told me about fighting in Darfur.

“I saw too many dead bodies,” he said. “Too many arms and legs. It was real bullshit.”

I thanked him for sharing his story with me, and we split a dinner roll. Later that night in the hostel lounge, these two German guys shared their beer with me, and I goaded one of them into writing me a love poem.

For the love that she from me took / Her hair was blond, her name was Brooke…

Traveling alone means there’s no one to protect you from all the most interesting parts of travel.

dream

In America, you’re urged to “chase your dreams” and “make your dreams come true.” If you’re doing well, you’re “living the dream.” But also, what did your parents tell you when you woke up from a nightmare? “It’s just a dream. Dreams aren’t real.” So… which is it?

The roots of the word “dream” stretch back to the proto-Germanic draugmas, which means illusion or deception. Chase your deception? Living the illusion?

It’s just a word, you might be thinking. But in anthropology, there’s this idea called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It says that words both reflect and define the scope of reality. My favorite example of this comes from Chichewa, one of the languages of Malawi. Kuchingamira means “to wait excitedly for a guest to arrive.” Isn’t that beautiful? It’s such a common feeling in their culture — ooh, I can’t wait for my guest to hurry up and get here!! — that they had to invent a word for it. Meanwhile, in English, it’s a clunky eight-word phrase.

There’s no Chichewa word for “bored.”

So what does it mean that we Americans conflate dream with desire? I think it subconsciously perpetuates this idea that our dreams are somehow separate from our “real” lives. What’s real is tangible: our cars, our houses, our phones. A dream is just something to talk about doing, not to actually do.

But what if you did? What if you pursued your dreams with the same focus that you’re supposed to reserve for school, career, and relationships?