damonjustisntfunny.com

In some liberal town in California we met a guy in a hot tub — it sounds strange, I know, but it’s true and it was California. We found him flirting with a girl who didn’t deserve to be hit on even by enlisted men. This man claimed to be bicycle touring. I neither saw his bike nor him riding on it so I can neither confirm nor deny the claim. He also claimed to have ridden one hundred and fifty miles during each of the past two days. I learned this after he asked how far Ben and I were going each day (which, I might add, is a question that immediately sets apart those people I like and those people that I wish didn’t know English). As his story went on, however, it became less and less clear whether there were separate days of one hundred and fifty miles, totaling three hundred; or whether he went one hundred and fifty miles over the course of two days; or whether he had once heard a story from a friend of a friend about a guy who rode his bike one hundred in fifty miles during his lifetime.

We called him Bob, after meeting him, because he also claimed to have a Bob for his bike. And in this Bob he claimed to be carrying seventy-five to eighty pounds of gear, water and food all for himself. And just himself. And he said it with such pride and cleverness that Ben and I refrained from telling him that that was more than the two of us were carrying combined. Ben, instead, made a comment to the effect of:

“Wow: that’s a lot.”

And Bob explained that, since he was “so used” to riding in the desert, he packed enough food and water to last him for three days. He leaned in close, to gather just how impressed we would be. Ben said:

“Really? Fascinating.”

What I didn’t say was:

“Were not in a desert loser-face. We are in coastal California. There is bottled water for sale every sixty feet. You could ride a unicycle from one gas station to the next. I could stop and ask one of the sixteen million frickin’ tourists who passed us just this instant for a sip of H2O. The people here eat and drink so well I could dine on their piss and think it was distilled water from Fiji. This isn’t the Sahara, you idiot, so pack accordingly, stop making up mileage, and quit hitting on women with such reckless abandon. You are hurting me.”

The Bob is a terrific piece of equipment. If you have never seen one it is like a little flatbed tow-behind trailer for a bicycle. I’m glad Ben had one. I like it and I like Ben pulling it. He took the bulky items such as the tent, the sleeping bags and mats; I carried the clothes and Umberto Eco in the panniers. Mr. Eco now holds a special place in both our hearts: I carried him almost one thousand miles and Ben read every word of his book — which was more than I could do. Carrying it was bad enough. When Ben finally finished I asked that he please just tell me what happened so that I wouldn’t have to read anymore. Please, God, please! He thought I was just being silly until I threw out the remaining one hundred pages and said that not knowing was better than having to finish reading it. And then he told me what happened and it was awful and I was glad to have thrown it away.

But I didn’t know that all this would transpire when I packed up little Umberto in a zip-lock bag that Ben handed across neutral territory on June 20th. I just put him in the pannier.

Sometime during that afternoon, after eight consecutive hours of packing and preparation, the following was recorded in our audio log. It is the ACTUAL GOD’S HONEST TRUTH and would be our second entry:

DAMON: June 20th. Afternoon. Ben and Damon are no longer speaking. End of note.
[Laughter is heard]

Four hours later, twelve in all, we had packed our bikes and gear and were prepared to leave New Hampshire. Ben and I utilized over nine pages of excel spreadsheets with lists of necessities which were checked and cross-checked against older versions of lists from past trips and from other people; we each read them aloud, checked our own, and double-checked it against the other cross-checking it with the French version. We counted each item, placed them in order of largest to smallest; heaviest to lightest; according to the various places the molecules held on the periodic table of elements.

Lesser men would have given in. Lesser men would have cried like children and thrown things at one another and stalked off to skulk in the grass while staring teary-eyed at the setting sun. Lesser men would have thrown it all in a big bag and said screw it. But not Ben and not me. We were ferocious; we were diligent; we were incorrigible; we were the kind of men books that are written about. Just when we thought we had it we knew it couldn’t be and so we would re-pack it all again and re-count it all again and re-list-ify it all again and only after we were sure we had forgotten something did we feel satisfied. And then we slept.

I was awake at 5:45 AM on the 21st not because I wanted to be awake or because our flight left particularly early, but because that was about the time that my mind began re-evaluating our list for the fourteenth million time. And eventually enough is always enough. As of that morning it appeared that we were only missing three items: fuel, a book for me to read, and ear plugs.

For some odd reason a decision was made at certain levels of the government to no longer allow combustible fuels to be flown in checked or carry-on luggage. I can’t imagine why not. I have always thought that the airline food (even the vegan option) was rubbish and, what with the financial woes experienced by most airlines, since they had stopped serving free food on almost every flight (except first class between the United Emirates and Prince Abudali’s private airfield) I feel that being able to start an open flame and cook some sustainable sustenance would add great pleasure to any given flight.

Obviously, some other people disagree with me. Ben and I had to purchase our fuel in Washington, when we arrived. We had cleverly scheduled an entire day before the start of our riding to take care of such matters in the greater Seattle area — this worked to both of our benefits for it afforded me more time with #6. And for that, I am grateful.

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