Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 6, 2002

Day Five (13 out of 97 miles) Pittsburgh
Today we were forced to consider something earlier than we’d anticipated-the possibility of failure.

We set out, quite simply, to bicycle across America. We knew that not everyone would have a continuous cycling trek-there would be a day of van driving for each of us every two weeks, and one can never foresee emergencies. I don’t think any of us considers it a personal failure to have one or two driving breaks in the journey. But this afternoon we found out what happens when the whole group, en masse, discovers that it is not up to the day’s challenge.

Last night we heard the statistics-97 miles, our longest day yet by at least 25 miles, including the last flickers of the Appalachians. We would have to be pedaling by 6:00 a. m. at the latest, and maybe, with the right amount of fortitude and the motivation of previous days’ trips behind us, we could make it to Akron before sundown.

It was, admittedly, a wonderful feeling to start with-knowing that the day would be difficult but having a real, true confidence in our impending success. And the glory felt upon seeing Akron would be thus far unparalleled this summer; never before had we set out tasks as difficult as those ahead of us today.

And then it rained.

We put on rain slickers, warm jackets, and leggings. We braced ourselves for the little stinging drips that would make the excursion all the more trying but all the more memorable. And we left the Pittsburgh YMCA, sunglasses off, pedaling as steadily as we could toward the reward we believed the evening would bring.

As fervently as we insist that Mother Nature is not our enemy, sometimes we must come to terms with the fact that she can at least be a real witch. The mist became a drizzle, the drizzle became a downpour, and the downpour became a six-bike pileup that left us bruised and bleeding by a set of abandoned train tracks outside Pittsburgh. Five miles and a bent derailleur later, we huddled in a clay gnome shop/nail parlor (don’t ask-we didn’t), shivering, our shoes and helmets full of cold water, wondering how we could possibly bike the next 85 miles along the highway in this condition.
Long story short, a suggestion that we trade bikes for vans was welcomed by all, and after a day in a Laundromat (an entire day, which included card games, sleeping, television, soccer, and trips to the local 7-11), we caravanned to a very kind Richfield, OH Holiday Inn that gave us rooms for the night.
When we crossed the Pennsylvania border on Sunday, we took triumphant pictures of ourselves standing next to “Welcome to Pennsylvania” signs on our bikes. When we crossed the Ohio border tonight, packed in the back of Avis Rent-a-Vans, a single photograph was snapped through the windshield. In the foreground sat two of the trip leaders, dry and wearing street clothes. In the background, partially obscured by a wet tree, stood a sign that mocked us with the phrase “Welcome to Ohio.”

You don’t feel failure when you’re sleeping in clean sheets, and you don’t feel failure when you’re browsing quality first-run movies on the Holiday Inn’s complimentary HBO. You don’t feel failure in the hot tub, and you don’t feel failure playing pool. But the moment right before you fall asleep, the air conditioner humming at the window, the doubts come: “Didn’t we…not…make it today? Isn’t there a hundred-mile gap in our journey?” Worse: “Will this happen again? How soon? How much discomfort shall we allow ourselves before we get back in the vans?”
As with all matters contemplated late at night, the questions come, and they come quickly and hurtfully. But the answers do not.
Until next time, I remain as we all do: ambivalent but hopeful. Good night.

-Adam Ruben