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My first time in Maine was when I rode a Greyhound bus up there with my bicycle, then biked back home to Pennsylvania. I spent several hours exploring Bangor, before biking off to Carmel and staying in a youth hostel there. I loved biking through Maine, stopping to swim in cool lakes, traveling through pine forests. I camped mostly, staying on the shores of China Lake one night. I stayed overnight in a Catholic church in Limerick, thanks to the kind priest there. In 1998, my girlfriend (now my wife) and I drove up to Maine and explored Portland and many small communities between there and Bar Harbor. We had a great time, visiting lighthouses, camping, hiking, biking. Maine is a great state.
My first real visit was on my big bike trip from Pennsylvania to Florida. I spent several days biking on Maryland’s back roads, past horse pastures, through woods, alongside streams. It was an enjoyable ride. I overnighted in Baltimore, wandering around in some bad parts of town in search of Edgar A. Poe’s grave site, and looking at the unimpressive Inner Harbor. I met some nice hippies in Ellicott City. I stayed with my friend John McCloskey a number of times over the years at his various homes in Maryland. He took this picture. Once we biked to the Lock Raven Reservoir, stupidly bringing no food. We were starving to death and there were no stores where we could buy any grub. Plus it was really hot out.
I drove to Boston in 1989 to visit a college friend. I had a good time biking around the city and over to Harvard. I also explored Concord, and all the historic sites in that area. I had a devil of a time getting into Walden Pond. They closed the pond and stationed a cop to prevent anyone from entering. There were just too many people swimming there. So I had to sneak through the woods with my bike, dragging it up and down hills, until I finally reached the water. I went to Thoreau’s cabin site and swam in the lake. I also biked through Massachusetts from New Hampshire to Connecticut in 1991. The back roads and small towns were lovely. I stayed at a hostel in Dudley. Recently, my wife and I spent a week in Cape Cod, overnighting in Eastham, Hyannis and Oak Bluffs, on Martha's Vineyard. We loved the island. We biked to Edgartown, and also to Vineyard Haven, but the best place was Oak Bluffs, with its colorful old cottages. We enjoyed Provincetown's galleries and cafes, and stopped at a lot of towns like Sandwich and Brewster (loved the Chowder House there). Read more about that trip here.
My brother lives in Flint, so I’ve been there twice. We drove across the state to Traverse City and also went to Frankenmuth, a town modeled after a German village. Also, I once stayed in Iron Mountain on a business trip in December. What a cold, lonely place. Two feet of snow, and icicles reaching five feet in length. I took a walk around the neighborhoods one night, as residents cowered indoors from the biting cold. A cop stopped to ask me what I was up to. I did not put him at ease when I answered that I was just out for a walk. He watched me a while.
My first time in Minnesota was when I was only a few months old. My parents drove up past Ely to Snowbank Lake to pick up my dad's canoe. (At one point they put me in a box and dropped bread all around me so the ducks would come up to feast and I could see them. It didn't really impress me.) I went back with my parents several summers when I was 5, 6 and 7. We stayed in a cabin in Wilderness Bay. My dad and his uncle Mike Beck went fishing, while my mom and I hung around and went swimming. It was a great experience, and I especially liked that they took me and left my brother and sister back home with my grandparents. I've been back to Wilderness Bay a few more times--once in 1979, again in 1984 and again in 1999. It's a great place. Additionally, I was in Minneapolis twice for conferences. I wasn't impressed with the overhead walkway system; too hot up there. I found myself in Mobile, Alabama, once for a conference. It was killing me that I was so close to Mississippi but that I couldn't get there, since I didn't have a car. I wasn't going to rent one just to drive five miles to the border, so I started trying to think of a way to get someone interested in going there. One fellow who lived in Alabama, when he was very drunk one night, began talking about Biloxi, Miss., and what a great time he had at the casinos there. He promised to get a group together the next night and take us there. He probably forgot all about this promise, but I reminded him the next day. He didn't want to go back on it, but we couldn't find anyone else interested in going either. In the end, it was him, his wife and me in their mini van, driving an hour or so to Biloxi so they could gamble and I could say I was in Mississippi. I may have wasted a few quarters in machines at one of the gambling ships there, but mostly what I remember is taking a walk along the water and thinking, "I'm in Mississippi." I’ve now been to Missouri several times, but before all that, I once had to change planes in St. Louis. Having a couple hours, I left the airport and went for a walk. I walked about a mile and into a neighborhood of apartments. It was nothing exciting, but I wanted to be able to say I was in Missouri (airports don’t count). Since then I was in St. Louis once for business. Went up the arch and wandered around a lot. My overwhelming impression of St. Louis was that everyone was rude. I had at least five run-ins with rude people. The counter woman at a cafeteria was rude, yelling at me for some stupid little thing. The guard at the arch was rude. A janitor in the supreme court building was rude. The only saving grace of St. Louis, in my mind, was the very nice president of a printing company whom I was there to interview. He gave two of his staffers several hours off to show me around. We went to the Busch brewery and took the tour, and I had a good time there. Another time, I was in Kansas City for a conference. My impression of this town was that it was dead. As I walked around downtown on a Sunday, I could hear my footsteps echoing off the empty buildings. Was anyone else there? It was just dead. I did come upon a nice arts festival at the other end of town, which was pleasant. I was driving around out west after a conference in North Dakota, and I decided to cut through Montana just to see what it was like. When I reached the Wyoming/Montana border, there was no bilboard to welcome me to the state. Just a small sign that said, "End State Maintenance." Exactly at that point, the pavement changed to a lighter color, signifying that Wyoming had stopped paving and Montana had started. I parked my car just before the border and walked up to it. Then I stepped across into my 47th state. I felt a certain elation at finally being there. Overhead the skies were cloudy and the wind blew a bit colder than it had before. I drove on into the "town" of Alzada. A closed and boarded up store was spray painted all over with warnings to stay away from it. I turned onto 212 and headed northwest. It was a straight road going over mostly flat ground with a few small hills. I could see for miles ahead of me, and on all sides. There was nothing but wide open prairie all around me. No houses at all. On both sides of the road ran a continuous wire fence. No matter how remote the road, the fence was always there. Since there wasn't much to look at, whenever I passed a house it was a big deal. I would look at it closely, an object of curiosity. I had been looking forward to hitting some of the towns along the way that were on my map. I counted down the miles till I hit Hammond. Then I finally got there. It comprised three buildings. No stores. Then I was back in the prairie again. It's funny how your perspective changes when you're in a place like this with such wide open spaces and such emptiness. There was a truck about a mile behind me. Every time I looked in my mirror he was there. It was really pissing me off too. It felt like he was tailgating me. I tried to outdistance him, but since I was already doing 80 that wasn't likely to happen. So I just had to endure him there, right on my ass, a mile away. I made it to the town of Broadus, a dusty little outpost town of gravel streets, weathered houses, old pickups and a few small stores and less-than-modern gas stations. It was a kind of mirror to the bleak openness all around it. The ground in front of its old buildings was littered with bikes, old tires, dog houses and other discarded items, the wind kicking up dust all around them as it blew across the dusty plain. I stopped for gas and chatted with the woman at the counter. She worked at the school, which bused kids in from ranches many miles away. She said she really liked Broadus and that the people were "terrific." She tried to expand on this point, but ended up just repeating herself: "They're just so…terrific." The next town was 80 miles away. I set off into the prairie once again. This time there were no cars in front of me or behind for miles. And only a few cars passed me going the other direction. The good thing about the dearth of traffic was that you didn't have to pay much attention to the road. You could look off at something to the side and swerve into the left lane without worry. Still, the occasional white roadside crosses that I passed told me that the roads weren't as safe as I supposed, streaking along at 80 MPH. I stopped once on this stretch and got out to stand in the wind and look around me. A herd of mule deer about a quarter mile away eyed me suspiciously. On both sides of the road, about a mile away across the plains, rose rocky hills. I just stood there a while, feeling the lonely prairie wind and looking out at the plains and big sky of Montana. In Miles City I got on I-94 and headed northeast, back towards North Dakota. At about 5:10 I reached Glendive, MT, and asked where a church was. I found it and saw that a mass started at 5:30. I grabbed some food at a Hardy's, then returned and went to mass. It was an old church with Spartan décor. Mostly farmers and their families in attendance. The priest talked about "haying" in his sermon. I chatted with him briefly at the end. Then I headed out of town. It got dark about
8:00, but the sun illuminated some clouds bright red. I
watched them in my rear view mirror until they faded away
into blackness. And so ended my visit to Montana.
Omaha is quite a
place. I was invited to give a talk there to a group of
local printers, and while I was there, some of them took the
time to show me around. Though I detailed this visit
elsewhere
on this site,
some of the sights that most impressed me were the
Lied Jungle in the
Henry Doorly Zoo, Heartland of America Park, Boy's Town
(Father Flanagan's Boys Home), the Old Market, and the
Joslyn Art Museum. I was really impressed with Omaha.
I was in Reno once
for a conference and returned for another conference in
Carson City. I'm not a gambler so I didn't contribute much
money to the state, to the chagrin of nearly every resident,
who encouraged us to play the games. I visited
Lake
Tahoe twice,
and had a great time there, going horseback riding, swimming
and hiking. (I also mountain biked, but I was on the
California side of the lake at the time.) On both Nevada
trips I went to Virginia City. We had dinner at a ranch near
there on my recent visit.
When I took the bus up to Bangor, Maine, to begin my two-week bike trip back to Pennsylvania, I purposely slept when the bus passed through New Hampshire so that I wouldn't be introduced to it through the bus window. A week or so later, after biking down through Maine, I reached the New Hampshire border early one morning. It was on a back road and there was no marker signifying the momentous crossing I was about to make. My only clue was that the road, which in Maine had been paved and well maintained, suddenly deteriorated after crossing a small stream and became a pot holed, gravel lane. With head held high, I pedaled across the stream and into New Hampshire. My strongest memories of New Hampshire are of intense heat and biting flies. It was staggeringly hot as I biked through the state. Black flies tore into my back while I sweated and groaned my way up the many steep hills. Really, it was torture. I set up my tent one night and lay awake till 5 a.m., sweating and listening to the mosquitoes on my tent's netting. There was an up side, though. A nice priest in Pelham let me stay overnight in his guest room, which was absolute luxury after the sweltering night in the tent. Having lived in Pennsylvania for most of my life, it's inevitable that I've crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey on more than a few occasions. I've been to the shore, in locations like Margate, Cape May, Brigantine, Ocean City, Atlantic City and Wildwood. I've been to the Pine Barrens, which are my favorite part of the state, especially canoeing down the Wading River. I've hiked on the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey. And I've biked the southern coast of the state, passing through Salem, Greenwich, Bridgeton and Fortescue. The shore is not my favorite part of New Jersey, so I try to avoid it, though it's pleasant walking along the Ocean City boardwalk in winter when it's deserted.
Most of my family moved to Albuquerque in the past 20 years, so I've visited many times. I've also been to Santa Fe. My cousin and I drove down to White Sands once, and another cousin and I drove to the Grand Canyon, passing out of the state via scenic Gallup. I've toured most of the sites around Albuquerque, including the Cortez monument, the petroglyphs and Sandia Crest. I biked along the arroyos, visited UNM, and went to a few pueblos, including Acoma.
My first visit to New York was as a child, when my family made the obligatory trip there. I remember the UN building and climbing the Statue of Liberty, but not much else. But my most profound experiences in New York occurred in 1988-1990 when I lived in Brooklyn and worked at 49th and Broadway. I lived in a renovated brownstone in Park Slope--the poor section of Park Slope. I rode my bike everywhere, even through Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesent. I walked all over Manhattan, sitting on park benches and watching the daily life dramas of homeless people, going to bargain movies and plays, and just learning about the city. I worked as a messenger, which enhanced my observational opportunities. I made $4 an hour, so I lived cheap, but I got by. What a time it was. My first time out on my own in a big city, and I made the most of it. But eventually it got me down, and I admitted I wasn't happy with the career I was trying to eke out for myself, so I left. But New York is not just one city. I've been many other places. I walked around Albany for an hour once on my way to visit a friend in the winter woods north of Lake George. I visited Rochester, a dead town if ever there was one. I could not find a cab anywhere in that city, and wandered for an hour before I thought to go to a hotel and call for one. I stopped to see Niagara Falls twice, and even visited Letchworth Dam.
Nineteen years later I biked through N.C. on my way to Florida. I had a great evening in Plymouth, where I met a nice elderly lady named Bessie Brown. She introduced me to the preacher of a church there, who let me sleep in one of the air conditioned classrooms of the school building, a kindness for which I'm eternally grateful. Sadly, most of my ride through the state was miserable. My bike malfunctioned, and I couldn't find the parts I needed in any bike store. I went through Bath, took the ferry and biked to Cox Corners where I stayed in a scout camp. Then I struggled on to New Bern, had a miserable time in Camp Lejeune Marine Base, then got preached to by a masochistic minister in Sneads Ferry. It got worse after that. (Read the full traumatic tale in my book.) Eventually I got to Wilmington, though, after hitching a ride in a truck. There I got my wheel fixed at a bike shop called Two Wheeler Dealer, and rode on out of the state. I went to Bismarck, N.D. for a conference. Nice town. Went to an Indian pow wow in the pouring rain one day. Not much happened there; the dances were cancelled. Heard some Indian chanting/singing. Mostly I was indoors at the conference, though we had a nice boat cruise down the Missouri River and dinner at an old military fort. Had a funny thing happen while there. One morning I went for a run. It was sunny out but in the 40s, if not the 30s. I ran into this park near the river and as I was looking off through the trees, I saw a caribou. I stopped and doubled back. Sure enough, he was standing there in a meadow, huge rack of antlers on his head, munching grass. I started to creep closer, hiding behind trees, trying not to spook him. He looked up once, but I hid, and he went on eating. Closer and closer I got, stealthily creeping. I peeked out at him from behind a tree, and only then noticed there was a large fence between he and I. All at once I realized I was sneaking up on a caribou in the zoo. Ohio | Oklahoma | Oregon | Pennsylvania | Rhode Island | South Carolina | South Dakota | Tennessee | Texas | Utah | Vermont | Virginia | Washington | West Virginia | Wisconsin | Wyoming |
In
1971, my parents loaded me, my brother and sister into our
station wagon and drove us to Florida. On the way we stopped
in North Carolina to visit my uncle John in Charlotte and my
uncle Ralph and his family in Asheville. It was nice to play
with our cousins and go fishing, but we didn't do anything
really amazing there.|
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