Both of us already had our down jackets and sleeping bags, and we each bought a sleeping pad (which, because of its closed-cell construction, would not absorb water), and a waterproof nylon rain jacket. Next, we looked into panniers, the bike bags that would carry our minimum of clothing for all four seasons, the stove and cookset, fuel cannisters, food, spare water bottle, tools, spare parts, towel, toiletries, maps, candle lantern, books, and camera—the tent, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads would be strapped to our aluminum rear racks. We decided on the largest capacity Kirtland rear panniers and handlebar bags.
We also took a couple of weeks to outfit our touring bike frames—Larry had an American-made Eisentraut and mine was a French Follis—with Campagnolo and Suntour parts, Avocet touring saddles, Super Champion twenty-seven-inch clincher rims, heavy-gauge spokes, and fenders for the rain. Larry was designated the trip photographer, while I would keep a journal and send installments home to my parents for safekeeping.
As the last few months before our departure crept up on us there were passports to renew, money to be deposited in a bank account in our names and my parents’ names (so they could wire us funds throughout the trip), travelers’ checks to buy, and shots to flinch under. When we explained our plans to the nurse at the immunization center in Santa Barbara, she pulled out handfuls of tiny bottles of liquid for typhoid, typhus, tetanus, diphtheria, and smallpox shots. Since they only lasted a year, our cholera immunizations would come later in our journey.
By then, our friends and acquaintances had come to realize that we were, in fact, perfectly serious about our strange undertaking, and they all hurried to voice their reactions.
“There’s no way I’d survive without a shower every night. I couldn’t sleep with my smelly body all covered with dirt and sweat,” said Mrs. Hazard, the owner of a local bike shop.
“Hey you can’t do that!” said a good friend. “You’ll never make it. There are too many unknowns. I mean, how do you know you won’t be killed by restless natives somewhere? Besides, it’s got to be physically impossible to bicycle that far.”
“Great idea. Do it. I envy you your courage.”
“You’re both crazy.”
“Now that sounds like a typical idea for a college-educated punk. Can’t you two settle down, take on responsibilities, and spend your lives making an honest living? You should be starting a family and saving for your kids’ education. You’re just spoiled!” There was a disdainful tone in this man’s voice. He worked at the same company as Larry, and to him Larry was an overpaid, know-nothing, cocky engineer about to throw away his easy money and waste two years of his life indulging in world travel. The man saw no adventure, no challenge, no conquest, no sweat, and no sense of accomplishment in what we were about to do—only stupidity. There was no way to explain to him our need to explore, to find out about the rest of the world, and to discover and develop ingenuity, endurance, and self-reliance—that pioneer spirit that had been buried under the comforts of modern society.
“Don’t you hate it when your husband comes up with such unladylike things for you to do?” an elderly woman friend whispered to me when she found out about our plans. “Imagine bicycling around the world. It just ain’t natural for a woman to want to do a thing like that.”
The reaction we heard more than any other, however, especially after we started our journey and rode through the western United States, was “I’ve always wanted to do something like what you’re doing, to travel the world and see all those far-off places and peoples. But I never did. Just got caught up in the routine of work and buying things, I guess. And now it’s too late. I really feel bad about that. So what you’re doing is real important. Don’t ever lose sight of that.” During the rough times on the trip these words helped us to keep going.
When May of 1978 rolled around, and we decided that the fourteenth would be the day to leave, there remained one haunting doubt, which continued to shadow us both. It had nothing to do with pedaling twenty thousand miles, or being filthy, or being robbed or murdered or stricken by some exotic disease. Rather, we wondered what effect our constant togetherness would have on our marriage (which during the past three years had been shaky at times, as Larry and I were both very independent). After all, being with one’s spouse for two years, day in and day out, oftentimes under physically and mentally trying situations, might sound like the perfect path to murder or divorce.
As it turned out, there were moments throughout the two years we were bicycling around the world when we nearly molded our bike frames around each other’s necks. The most horrendous statements we ever made and most probably ever will make about one another were ragingly proclaimed—and accompanied by some choice threats of desertion and eternal damnation—along the blacktop and dirt and cobblestone roads of our journey. But partway through our adventure, in a ditch in Spain, after one of those screaming matches that so often flared when physical and emotional exhaustion or a gnawing homesickness got the better of us, we discovered that our constant companionship had changed our feelings toward each other in a way we hadn’t expected.
CHAPTER TWO
Aching Muscles
Neither Larry nor I slept much the night before we set out on our journey. We were too nervous. Our stomachs were bundles of twitching, raw nerve endings, and both of us had a royal case of the runs. My hands and feet were damp with sweat. No matter how hard or how often I swallowed, I couldn’t dislodge the huge lump in my throat.
Lying on our living room floor in my sleeping bag, I stared at the darkness. Our apartment was completely bare except for our bikes and the two piles of gear that would accompany and sustain us through the next two years of our lives. The emptiness made me feel uneasy and insecure. My mind whispered, no jobs, no earnings, no home, over and over. In the morning we would leave behind everything that was familiar to us and step off an invisible ledge into a way of life we knew almost nothing about. Now that the day we had so anxiously planned and waited for for over a year was almost here, I was frightened. I wondered if maybe we shouldn’t leave after all.
The next morning at six o’clock, on May 14, 1978, Larry and I dragged ourselves out of bed and began packing our panniers. We didn’t say much to each other while we packed. We were too jittery to carry on a decent conversation. As is the case with most inexperienced bicyclers, both of us had too much gear, and we could barely cram everything into our packs. It wouldn’t be long though before we’d begin tossing out or mailing home a good portion of our clothing to reduce the weight and bulk of our panniers. After two months on the road, we would each have scaled ourselves down to a couple of pairs of shorts, a few T-shirts, one pair of long pants, a sweat shirt, rain jacket, down jacket, some socks and underwear.
Once our panniers were packed and attached to our bikes along with our sleeping bags, mats, and tent, we pedaled—wobbled is a more appropriate description—into town to catch the train to San Luis Obispo, a city one hundred miles north of Santa Barbara, where our journey would officially begin. A young friend of ours, John Warren, had convinced us that San Luis would be a good place to start out from.
“I want to ride with you your first day out,” he had told us at the beginning of the month. “And I’ve always wanted to take that ride from San Luis out to the coast and north a ways; so let’s combine the two. Besides, we’ve all done a lot of cycling around Santa Barbara already. Let’s start out from someplace new.”
The short ride from our apartment to the station was our first attempt ever at riding our bikes with the full weight of our gear. A few days earlier Larry and I had strapped part of our gear onto our bikes and ridden to Carpinteria and back, twenty miles round trip, as a trial run. “No sweat!” Larry had quipped along the way. “Carp today, tomorrow the world!” But now that his bike weighed ninety pounds and mine seventy we discovered it took all our concentration and strength just to keep ourselves wobbling along in a