The ride went smoothly until Larry got a flat tire halfway between Ojai and Ventura. His tire wouldn’t seat properly unless it was pumped up to 110 pounds, and our hand pump couldn’t do the job. He bounced into Ventura. None of the gas stations in town had air pumps, but one attendant advised us to check the Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership at the edge of town.
We took the attendant’s advice and wheeled our bicycles into the back room of the dealership. There, we were confronted by seven men, each of whom had the distinct appearance of a genuine, membership-card-totin’ Hell’s Angel. Nude women, heavy chains, and mom were tattooed on arms and chests. Who looked more concerned when Larry and I rolled in was anyone’s guess: the seven men at the sight of us two pencilnecks with our featherweight wheels entering their den of chrome and steel hogs, or us at the sight of seven big mothers glaring us down. The expressions on the faces of these burly, beer-bellied motorcycle men as they watched us creep into their sacred domain were like those one might expect on the faces of the proud French circuit officials had a racer shown up at the starting line of the Tour de France with playing cards clipped to his spokes, an air horn, and colored streamers dangling from the ends of his handlebars.
Larry was the first to speak. I knew that nonchalant tone, meant to disguise his nervous embarrassment.
“Howdy. How’s it going? Lotta nice-looking machinery here.”
His words were met by silent, cold stares.
“Say, my wife and I couldn’t find an air pump in town, so we were wondering if we could use yours to put some air in my tire so it’ll seat better?”
Someone spit a wad of tobacco at the floor, and I began edging toward the door. But before I got there, the biggest fellow in the group broke the silence by indicating that we should follow him. Larry and I tiptoed our skinny bike frames past rows of mean machines to the center of the room.
“Here’s the pump, man. Now you take it real slow and keep eyein’ that gauge,” the man growled. “Shit, that tire ain’t gonna hold no more’n thirty pounds, so you pay lots attention ’cause I don’t like no loud explosions, and that’s what you’ll likely be gettin’ usin’ this here big pump on that no good strip of rubber.”
“Fifteen—twenty—twenty-five—thirty—thirty-five.” The broad, knowing smiles began to fade.
“Forty—forty-five—fifty.”
Knitted brows indicated outright concern.
“Fifty-five—sixty—sixty-five—seventy.”
The announcer jammed his fingers into his ears and squinted. A few of the men moved to the far end of the room.
“Seventy-five—eighty.”
I looked up at the big man. His eyes were so wide now they took up a third of his face.
“Shit man, you’re gonna blast me with them tire pieces!” he yelled as he ran for cover. Larry carried on the announcing himself, and there was a tinge of malicious delight in his voice.
“Ninety—ninety-five—one hundred—hundred-five—hundred-ten. There, that should do it.”
Larry and I looked around the room. Beady eyes glazed in disbelief could be seen peering from behind fat chrome spokes. Larry disconnected the pump and yelled to no one in particular, “Thanks! That did the trick just fine. I’ll put more air in when I get home. Don’t want to take up any more of your time.”
Not a single biker moved from his position of cover as we rolled out of the room. The bumper sticker on the front door read god rides a harley.
Grinding out the thirty miles between Ventura and Santa Barbara against a brutal, coastal headwind proved to be the first truly religious experience of my life. The pain set in almost immediately. Within an hour, my knees, legs, feet, hands, and shoulder muscles were in piercing agony. Ten miles before Santa Barbara tears began to blur my vision. A creeping fog dropped the temperature, and I began shivering. My whole body hurt, and I felt delirious.
One-half mile from home, at the foot of the hill we lived on, I quit. It was not a quiet surrender. My wailing sobs brought the occupants of the nearby houses to their windows and front porches.
“Oh Lord, I’m gonna die,” I screamed. The worst thing imaginable had happened. When I finally admitted defeat, I consoled myself by thinking that my misery would ease once I got off my wretched, pain-inflicting bicycle. But instead of experiencing a rush of relief when I slid off my bike, things got worse. My muscles tightened up as they cooled down, and I soon found that I couldn’t move. I stood in the middle of the road balancing myself against my bike, slightly bent at the waist and neck, drooling. I was gasping for air.
“Get me home! I’m dying! Oh help me! Help me! I am dy-ing n-o-w!” I wailed.
“Wait right here. I’ll go home and get the van. I’ll be right back to drive you and your bike home,” said Larry.
“The bike? Forget the bike! I don’t care if I ever lay eyes on this damned instrument of torture ever again. Just get ME home. Oh please, help!”
Fortunately, no one called the ambulance or those little men with white jackets and butterfly nets while I stooped in the street uttering a frenzied mixture of curses and pleas. Larry was back in an instant. I was too stiff to climb up into the van, so he picked me up and placed me on the front seat. The short but bumpy ride home about did me in. I kept shrieking, “Oh please don’t let me die!” but as comical as my fear of death seemed to him, Larry knew enough not to laugh.
I’ll take a hot shower and everything will be all right, I thought as I shuffled into our apartment. We didn’t have a bathtub, so it had to be a shower. But the force of the water felt like a sledgehammer smashing against my aching muscles.
“This can’t be. Just can’t be,” I breathed. “It even hurts to shower!”
Shivering and streaked with ribbons of foul-smelling mud, I headed for the bedroom. Larry toweled me off as I hobbled across our apartment, then I moved onto the bed and curled up into a ball as if to guard myself against any further blows.
By then it was seven-thirty. We hadn’t eaten a thing since noon, and there was no food in the refrigerator.
“Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll go get a pizza,” Larry shouted as he raced out the door.
While he was gone, I prayed for a swift return to normal life. I hurt all over. How long would it be before I could sit and stand upright again? I wondered. Weeks? Months? Years?
The aroma of the pizza when it came through the door helped ease my worries. Larry had to feed me because I couldn’t straighten out my arm to pick up the food; but even so, I never tasted anything so delicious in all my life.
By morning I felt fine. However, I now harbored some real doubts about those eighty-mile days. I had barely survived the previous day, and that was without the forty or fifty pounds of gear that would be strapped to my bike throughout the trip. I decided that I’d better start cycling for an hour or more each evening after work to get into shape. Larry, who worked in the outskirts of Santa Barbara, was already pedaling thirty miles each day to and from work. Yet both of us knew that the real training and conditioning would occur during the first few painful weeks at the start of our journey.
When 1977 drew to an end, we began to research equipment, study maps, and set up a vague itinerary. We wrote to the embassies of those countries we knew the least about, explaining our plans and requesting information. What we received back from the Thai and Malaysian embassies alleviated some of our fears: the pamphlets had pictures of modern roads and buildings. We still wondered about Nepal though. The Nepali embassy sent us nothing.
We spent months studying and comparing equipment before we started to buy what we needed. Larry picked out a lightweight backpacking