Three Eyes Between Us

Last night, after spending the day running around doing errands town, my husband insisted that it was time to spend some time with my maps. I think this is because he is excited to begin to plan where he might come to join us for a few days. I have announced that being apart for three months is too much for me so he will try to meet us somewhere along the route for a few days so I can grab some kisses…and have a shoulder to cry on.

So, I sat down on the floor with my 144 maps that cover the minute details of our route, and a big map that covers the expanse of America, and a blue Sharpy. I began to slowly trace the route, city by city, park by park, big wild expanse by big wild expanse across the country.

One of the many issues we will have to contend with out there is my vision. It sucks. 10 years ago I was diagnosed with a melanoma on my retina. The treatment for it consisted of eye surgery as well as radiation. It was not super fun, but I was lucky. I got to walk away alive and kicking, with only the loss of my vision in that eye. Most of the time this doesn’t affect me. Nobody would ever know unless they saw me pour a glass of wine, and miss the glass (when I am stone cold sober), or misjudge whether a bird is coming or going, or, watch me try to read a map. My good eye quickly becomes fatigued and little words and roads and numbers seem to wander about the page doing pretty much whatever they feel like. It is exhausting. I can do it (don’t worry, mom), though it is just really frustrating and takes a while. Oakley will have to become the expert.

One notices how damn big this country is when one attempts to transpose 144 maps across its width with one squinty eye! Drawing it took forever. Many times I had to remove my glasses and rub my eyes and lean my head against the wall. Truth is, I had to finish the second half of it this morning. However, after sitting there diligently squinting and marking, now I can see it in my mind’s eye. It is pretty amazing.

We will be riding on endless little twisty and crooked roads through the most obscure places! We will pass through Crow Heart, Sweetwater Station, Amy, Colorado, and Sugar Grove. There are, of course, huge mountain ranges, but also immense deserts and grassland! We will pass through the Wind River Reservation, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, and the Shenandoah National Forest. We will climb over Bear Tooth Pass and descend down onto the long (and thankfully flat) plains of Kansas. We will pedal by the Mammoth Caves and Hot Sulfur Springs and hopefully finish by the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia.

A friend who did this trip told me that he would often find himself biking through deserted prairie lands ringed by barbed wire until it got dark, and then he would just jump a fence and wheel his bike over and around a small hillock to set up his camp out of sight of the road. I wonder about the coyotes. I am no wimp, but that chortling, yelping, screaming sound that they make as they stream across the prairie like a hungry mob decimating everything in their path, pulling little cute bunnies apart limb from limb and playing catch with their heads haunts me.

Yes, studying all this expanse of wild land between where we will start and home was a bit disconcerting. I am truly excited to think of all we will see and experience, but I won’t deny that I am a bit apprehensive about the fact that I am really signing up for sleeping under the stars with nobody but Oaks and some coyotes…or snakes, or vultures, or bears for 80 nights or so We will be okay, right? I have one good eye and Oakley has two.