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Ben and I play cribbage. It is the only card game we have ever played in earnest and we have only ever played it while we were either camping or traveling or both. There is some history here: we first started playing on our trip to the Grand Canyon. We didn’t have a cribbage board or pegs — we kept track of it all on paper — but I had purchased and brought a miniaturized deck of cards in order to reduce the overall weight of our rucksacks. I thought myself to be rather clever and economical — a camper of the truest school. The irony, of course, is that in addition to the miniature deck of cards, Ben and I also packed an entire container of Ghee and forty pounds of other unnecessary items. Each time we drew forth the tiny deck there was much eye rolling and muted laughter because we had opted to forgo ease of shuffling in order to carry long johns and rain gear in the eighty degree heat. Regardless of the size, however, we still played lots of cribbage — in the tent, on the plane, even in the car while driving.

The next spring, Ben, his girlfriend, and I went to California (ah, you say, so the two men and a girlfriend routine was not something new? Why yes, I say, how quickly I forgot the sacrifices I, too, had made — or, really, that his girlfriend had made for she had to put up with not just Ben on this trip, but me, as well). On the return flight, having packed the playing cards in our checked baggage by accident, I ran into a souvenir shop and bought some San Francisco Fire & Earthquake History playing cards for more money than I care to mention. I tore up the receipt (and the credit card) quickly thereafter and promised never to tell a soul. I have managed to keep the secret to this day. It is my “rosebud” — my clandestine cover-up. Regardless of the price, we were able to play cards on the flight back and that was good and, what is more, we learned wonderful tidbits of information about the great earthquake in San Francisco. I can’t remember any of the facts of the matter but I do remember that we did learn them. There was an earthquake — but that is not hard. Something about a fire too.

In preparation for our Summer of 2005 bike journey, the cards, the paper, and the writing implement went onto the master list. There would be no forgetting and no stupidly small baby cards. Instead, I brought the San Francisco deck (in honor of the fortune I had lost) and we played cribbage when we had the time. After leaving Crater Lake on July 4th — we began to have the time and we began to set about playing cards again in earnest.

After seventy-two unplanned miles of coasting we arrived at a Kampgrounds of America in Gold Hill, Oregon. After gliding down the western side of Crater Lake, we followed Route 62 past Union Creek and through Prospect, skirting alongside the Rogue River Valley on a quiet road aimed towards Grants Pass. It was a short ride of great distance and it didn’t taken us long to fall back into the two boys and two bikes routine. In Gold Hill we arrived hungry and immediately found greasy food and soy ice cream and brought it back to our suburban campsite and drowned ourselves in tomato sauce and processed soybeans. We wrote letters (me, of course, to #6 who I left only five hours earlier) and read our books and Ben was able to call his girlfriend on his cell phone. In the setting summer sun, we stood alone among the permanent RVs and trailers parked along the outer edge of the campground — those RVs with the wood decks and in-earth gardens that are carefully maintained and manicured by year-round occupants — and our bare feet took in the dirt from the road and our faces, the sun from the sky. Others cooked food or swam in the in-ground pool or sat together and drank beer and smoked filter-free cigarettes. Ben and I simply threw our Frisbee back and forth, and back and forth, and hollered and laughed at one another as we always had.

And when it got too dark to see the Frisbee anymore and our hands were blistered from our long-distance competition, we took a shower, shaved, and then crawled into our tent, donned our headlamps, and began to play cribbage.

Ben and I are expecting a grand reckoning when we die. We would like it to be in front of the Pearly Gates and we would like St. Peter (or whoever is working the shift at the time) to come forward and present to us a ledger. And in this ledger would be kept the definitive record of Ben and my friendship. Every meal that one of us has bought for the other; every piece of sporting equipment purchased for both of our use; each gallon of gas, each minute on the calling card, each stamp of postage, each meal prepared, each pen borrowed, every last anything that could ever be measured and compared we want to see it. And then, we would like it all tallied and aggregated and — regardless the result — we want to know who won. We want to know who spent the most on Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks and we want to know who paid for the most movie tickets and we want to know who gave out the most quarters for video games. It’s not about winning or losing, or about having one of us owe the other for that time in Las Vegas or when the dog bit my leg and he gave me the last of his Neosporin; it is entirely about curiosity and finding the answer to the grandest and most terrific statistical quandary any number junkie could ever ask for. We want to know the grand score.

The only thing that Ben and I see no need to be tallied, have no desire to see totaled, are uninterested in the standard deviation, is for our standings in cribbage. Chess, football, skiing, tennis — fine: we want to know who comes out on top and we want to know who the victor be. But with cribbage: we both know very well who wins and it is not a matter of contention or ill-feeling between us. There is just the simple fact of the matter: one of us always wins at cribbage.

And it is me. I am the cribbage champion. It doesn’t matter if Ben is forty points ahead of me and only needs one more to go out: odds are in my favor. It doesn’t matter if he cheats: I will win, no questions asked, no bets taken. It is as obvious as two feet of fresh snow. I will win. This is not to say Ben has never won. He has. But it is such a rare occasion that you are more likely to jump out of a commercial airplane and land safely in your own bed. If — and this is a huge if — if Ben wins we both cheer and throw the cards in the air and roll around on the floor of the tent tossing our socks towards the sky in celebration. I have seen him defeated so many times when he should not have lost that it simply doesn’t make sense. And, let’s be fair, it has nothing to do with skill. I don’t know what it has to do with. There is no earthly reason that I should actually be that much of a better cribbage player than he is. Some other greater force is at work. Something much bigger than either one of us.

Case in point: not long before the bicycle touring trip, I had to fly to Minnesota for work. I shared the trip with a colleague and friend of mine and — in the spirit of travel — I brought the cards with me. She claimed to have just learned to play cribbage and wanted to practice some with me. I obliged. I had been playing cribbage since I had learned basic arithmetic — it was a rite of passage in my family. So when she asked to play cribbage I was happy because the time went by easily and we weren’t faced with awkward silences brought on by touching knees and elbows. Being with someone cute and of my age range and available is often more uncomfortable than castration.

She beat me the first game. And the second game. And the third. And every game after that. She beat me in the plane, in the taxi, at work, in the hotel room half-drunk and half-asleep. I never won and we played for four days straight. We even stopped using the friendly rules (the ones where you can’t steal points due to counting errors) but still I lost. I was cursed. We even played Gin Rummy, just to test the waters, and again I lost. Over the entire four days I never won at anything. It was shocking. But it all makes sense and it all comes back to the karmic wheel of life — I have been given a great gift, a power even: I can beat Ben at cribbage. And, in order for this skill to be maintained, I had to lose to someone else. And I didn’t mind losing to her at all. She was cute; I might have even kissed her if she had been inclined but, alas, she was not. And besides: by then I already had the idea for “In Search of #6″ kicking around in my head and it just wouldn’t do to make it “In Search of #7″. That doesn’t have the same ring to it. Just like me losing to Ben at cribbage doesn’t have the same ring to it. It just isn’t right. I suspect that if he ever starts winning both of us will be so uncomfortable with the turn of events that we will probably give up card playing altogether.

DAMON: July 4th, 8:50 in the PM, Ben and I are at a Kampgrounds of America in Gould Hill, Oregon. It’s probably our last night sleeping in Oregon we should be in California by tomorrow morning. This is a wonderful little campsite full of beautiful little rednecks and all their campers and trailers and little dogs. But in all seriousness it’s got free showers, laundry, a telephone, and everything a man could want including a surprising lack of mosquitoes. So: we went about 72 miles today — they were possibly the easiest miles ever because it seems like it was all downhill. And then Wednesday we will be around the Redwoods in Crescent City and we’ll be heading down the coast. And then on our way to San Francisco and perhaps farther south. Who knows where our travels will take us then. Over and out.

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