Between Kosovo and Alaska- part six (Indiana, Minnesota, and Norway)

(Link back to Part one of this series)

So this is sort of about Norway. Obviously I wasn't driving there, but in stopping to see friends in Indiana and Minnesota, I was going back in time almost thirty years. 1989 was when I left home to spend a year as an exchange student in Norway, an act of teenage rebellion (I was 16) that set me on my current path. It was a tough year, especially in the age before email, cable news, or cheap phone calls. When my best friend Erich died a month after I arrived in Norway, I was cut off for a year from my friends and family, and immediately turned to those who understood best my situation-- other exchange students. (They could also reply to a letter within days, compared to the two-week turnaround for letters to the US.)

Me with Terri and Julia in Paris, May 1990

Julia and Terri were two of those friends- and with whom I also saw much of Europe, from East Berlin and Prague to Nice and Paris. Julia was a fellow Badger from La Crosse (and later a classmate at UW-Madison), Terri a Hoosier who spoke with an Indiana twang. It was perhaps appropriate that they lived along my route to Alaska, and that I'd planned to stop and see them along the way. Like 30 years earlier, I was in trouble and needed them.

The last time I'd seen Terri was on the broad steps in front of the Oslo train station in 1990. A year older than me, she'd gone on to college after Norway, while Julia and I had to endure a final year of high school back in the US. Terri and I had kept in touch for a time after 1990, then a long hiatus until Facebook reconnected us. Thirty years. Had I ever gone that long without seeing someone? How was that possible, I was barely even 30 years old, right? Right?

I was having a hard time comprehending this as I left Maryland in the early hours on Monday, July 15. I left the DC area on I-270 toward Rockville, a route I'd taken countless times when I used to commute between Pennsylvania and DC. Most of the traffic was going into DC, so once off the Beltway it was quick driving to the northwest, past bedroom communities and Civil War battlefields. Once I reached Frederick I had to remind myself not to exit toward Gettysburg, the old route that Kent Butts at the Army War College had taught me as a way to avoid driving through Philly and the I-95 mess. I then took I-76 toward Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania and then Ohio turnpikes. In retrospect I should have taken the backroads, but was in a rush to reach Indiana.

In Pennsylvania I stopped at a roadside waystation, the sorts of places you can stop for slightly overpriced gas and food and avoid exiting the turnpike and paying extra tolls. I had driven without being able to decide what to listen to, and was too distracted to be able to listen well to audio books. I knew the University of Alaska board of regents would be meeting that day, and while I didn't question the outcome of that meeting, it still felt ominous. The state legislature had failed to override the governor's line-item vetoes the previous week (on July 10), which would have restored university funding. The legislature couldn't even agree on where to meet, with some stubbornly staying in Wasilla as the rest tried to reset the budget in Juneau. So in many ways, the fate was already sealed unless the governor himself agreed to change things. But a vote of financial exigency would allow the university to start slashing programs and positions, including tenured professors. As a new administrator, I would only have a legal right to two month's notice before losing my job. Assuming I even started in August.

All this was going through my head as I stood in front of a Quizno's Subs, waiting for my order. A short woman with long, brown hair was standing next to me, and said something small-talkish meant to be friendly. The usual thing for Americans was to remark on the hot weather (it was baking outside) and how far one had to drive. But asking me that second question, this woman got more than she bargained for. She was from Ohio, she explained, where was I going?

"Indiana, at least for tonight."
"So Indiana isn't where you live? Where are you driving after that?"
"Alaska."
She was trying to be nice, but my answers just kept bewildering her.
"Alaska. Wait, what?! Alaska? You can do that? You're, wow, that's far. Where are you coming from?"
"Kosovo, in Europe."
[uncomfortable silence] "Um, I've been to Europe before, but please help me out."
"Former Yugoslavia, north of Greece. I'm American but was based there for four years."
She was beginning to look slightly panicked.
"I taught in Kosovo, and did defense work in Ukraine. Now I'm transferring to Alaska, but because of massive budget cuts to the university I don't know if I'll have a job once I get there." I briefly explained the political situation and the scale of the cuts.
This wasn't the conversation she thought she was going to have. She did rally a bit, but I hardly understood her when she then asked, "Is there some way I can pray for you?"

I saw her t-shirt then, something about a Catholic summer camp. Oh, I was back in the US. I don't remember exactly what I said in response to that- I know she meant well and was confused, so it was along the lines of, "Thanks, I won't stop you." I had grown used to the habit of avoiding asking how someone was in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, you opened yourself up to all manner of answers from personal to war-related tragedies. Greetings were more direct, or a question would translate to "you good?" which didn't require an explanation in response. These crazy Americans were actually asking how I was.

The rest of the drive was unremarkable, and I regretted not taking the backroads instead of the construction-plagued turnpikes (and I had to pay tolls for these?), but DC to Indiana was a long distance, and I wanted to arrive as early as possible. After all, it had been twenty-nine years. How was that possible? Was I even that old? Where had I been during that time? What was I connected to back in the US?

I'd last driven this turnpike in 2006 on the way to a new job in Pennsylvania-- same car, but the car hadn't been this far west since that time. I tried listening to a PG Wodehouse book on audio (The Girl on the Boat) but the characters were annoying me. I shifted to Jane Eyre, which is dark but my Audible version has a wonderful narrator and the cadence was a bit soothing. Besides, I knew the story so didn't have to pay attention. 

I finally hit the backroads just before crossing into Indiana, heading south toward Terri's hometown of Auburn. It was a pleasant evening, and the country roads were far more relaxing than the turnpike had been. Lesson to myself: avoid the interstate when possible in coming weeks. I followed the Google directions into Auburn, into a green area outside of town, and found a large house next to a golf course. Terri and her family warmly met me, and immediately put some heavily vodka-ish drink in my hand. I hadn't checked my phone for news yet.

So, there it was. Not a surprise, but things were not improving. 

Terri and her family were great at distracting me. There was a large dinner, smores (including with Reeses peanut butter cups-- note: traditional chocolate still works better), more drinks... I sort of lost track. I remember being amazed at Terri's daughter Khloe, in the sense that many of my American friends had kids, but young ones. Khloe was 24, a professional engineer, asking me not about bike glasses but hybrid war and Chernobyl. It was a bit disorienting, not just to see Terri after so long, but to see how different our lives were. While Tracy and I often said that we didn't crave stability, we were at the time on the far end of instability... and I was envious of my friend. Terri herself looked great, in better health than I had known her before, and still had that empathy I had known her for years before. It's the rare friend who can look right into you, where there's no point pretending because she already knows whatever truth you want to hide from the rest of the world. Perhaps I looked just as damaged and shell-shocked as back in 1990.

Smores with Khloe

I considered getting up early and taking out the bike, and even had a Strava route mapped out on loaded on my Wahoo. But I was tired, and figured I could take off a day or two without penalty (the 100-mile ride in eastern Maryland had been just the day before), and again I wanted to get to my next destination (my hometown in Wisconsin) as early as possible the next day. I hated leaving after so little time, it was like a drive-by visit even though I went with Terri and her husband to breakfast the next morning, and wasn't out the door at the crack of dawn or anything. But I was still in a fog as I left Auburn and took the backroads toward Chicago and then Wisconsin.

Terri and me again after 29 years

Wisconsin is worth discussing separately, so let me skip ahead a week to Minnesota. I was admittedly in a bad mood by the time I left Wisconsin for Minneapolis. I had stayed in LaCrosse, the intention to retrace the 100km Killer Hill route that Erich and I had ridden in summer 1989, thirty years earlier. It was the last long ride the two of us ever did together, and before leaving Kosovo I had followed down a GPS track of someone who'd ridden the same route. I'd made some modifications, loaded it on my computer, and planned on riding it before then driving to see Julia in Minneapolis.

Well, it didn't work out that way. The day before I'd tried a 60-mile ride through the Drifltess region of Minnesota, crossing over the Mississippi River and following a route given by a local rider. Crossing the Mississippi was great (I'd done it before, long ago), but I seemed stuck on busy roads in Minnesota, following a long track south along State Highway 26, which was choked with heavy truck traffic. I finally turned off the highway in Brownsville, MN, climbing a steep hill and then a descent toward the town of Hokah. But here the route really fell apart, with a sign stating that the road I wanted was closed, cutting off the loop to the west. Frustrated, I turned back toward 26 and LaCrosse, and while 37 miles is respectable, it was not at all a good ride. (Strava)

But then it got worse. I woke up early the next morning, still intent on riding the Killer Hill loop on the Wisconsin side of the river. I started packing up the car, when something was niggling at my head about what was wrong. My mountain bike was gone. It had been on the car for a few hours already, it had been locked but I was too trusting, as it was an older bike I'd bought in California in 2002. But it was gone, the lock cut right through. Even more infuriating, the front wheel was still on the rack, meaning they'd taken an old, 26 inch wheel MTB but would probably receive almost no money for it. It was 6am, and calling the police would be useless, just a lot of waiting around for someone to appear. And I lost all motivation to try the Killer Hill loop. I was angry, after the day before I could see the roads I needed being cut off somehow, and I just wanted to get away. I texted Julia if I could show up earlier in Minneapolis, and she told me to get in the car and go. I finished loading up the car and my Trek5200, and left Wisconsin.

With Julia in the Minneapolis suburbs

LaCrosse (coincidentally Julia's hometown) to Minneapolis was not a long drive, so I arrived still in the morning. Julia runs a company (SuperCubes) from her house and couldn't just walk away for me, but I think like Robert in Virginia she sensed that I was better off if I got on my bike again. I drove to Minnehaha Park along the Mississippi River, where I could catch the municipal bike trails that wind through Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Heya Minneapolis

Again, it was a good distraction for me. Not at all a fast pace, I had to keep slow for the trail traffic, and especially the fact that while the trails were well kept, they weren't well connected to one another. Doing a 37-mile loop around the Twin Cities was an effort of Google navigation, of constantly referring to a photo map of the trail system, entering an intended destination, and hoping my Wahoo GPS could help me get there. 

This is a metaphor

The trails and roads were quite a sampling of the cities-- from leafy and wealthy lakeside neighborhoods, to rail yards, to the UMN campus, I was certainly wasn't lacking for variety. The ride took over three hours, with forty minutes of that spent stopped and staring at my phone for directions. I could only really get speed up at the last leg east down the Minnehaha Parkway, pouring on power to pass annoyed motorists. (Strava file)

The evening was spent with Julia and her family-- as I'd not seen her since 1994, I didn't know her husband Arvind or her five-year old son. Julia had studied in Russia, so asked a fair bit about Ukraine and also the situation (or what I knew of it) in Alaska. Like Indiana, it was odd to sit on the deck of this nice house, leafy neighborhood and yet know I wasn't the only one feeling uncertainty from the larger political environment. It was also still such a contrast from Kosovo (look, trees!) it would take some getting used to.

I don't want to get into details of other people's lives and their kids, but it's worth noting that Julia and her husband sang their son to sleep using football songs from the University of Wisconsin. Jump around and then collapse, I guess. (Varsity, my Badgers.)

The roadtrip for this part of July was intended to be easier. I had spent about a week in Wisconsin, a short drive to Minneapolis, a shortish drive from there to Fargo. It was after that the distances became truly long and epic, with at least five days planned where the driving would go more or less from dawn to dusk. In some ways, this felt like the next step off into the unknown, really jumping toward Alaska and the uncertain future. That's why I was reminded of Norway, not just because of Julia and Terri (though that link was undeniable), but because thirty years earlier I'd done something equally reckless of a sort. Leaving for a new home in the North that I barely knew except from studying, where I had no idea what would happen. In Norway bad things did happen, and in Alaska Very Bad Things were happening, so ... why didn't I choose an easier path than this?

In many ways I didn't have a choice. Erich's death had spun me adrift, there was nothing normal for me to go home to after that. I tried, I seriously tried, but there's that saying "you can never go home again." I was lucky to have met someone who couldn't really go home, either, and found uncertainty more comforting than a fated future. But what I was sensing was that no one felt certain, that by being adrift we were perhaps luckier than many. As I'd written before, while I was torn apart by the news from Alaska, how much worse would it be for students trying to graduate, for faculty and staff who have the kids and dogs and mortgages and the need for a constant experience and steady paycheck? That was disappearing, and not just in Alaska, it was like both Europe and the US were experiencing all the trusted public institutions being torn down, and not being replaced by anything other than gig jobs with Uber or the promise of a new Netflix series. Tracy and I were trained to deal with disasters-- everyone else was facing them, too, but often had nowhere to maneuver.

So while Thomas Wolfe had coined that phrase about not going home again in reference to being nostalgic, that's how I felt at times. That's why I had needed to see Wisconsin again. So before discussing Fargo, let me jump back a week...

Between Kosovo and Alaska- part five (Maryland)

In the movie Up in the Air, the character played by George Clooney had to teach his younger colleague how to pack effectively-- I was increasingly worried about this as I neared DC. But there was a detail from the book the movie didn't describe, which had always stuck with me: the main character described why he always stayed at the same hotel chain, and it was because in every hotel in every town, the room layout was exactly the same. He could get up at night and know his way around in the dark, because it was, essentially, his room. During the years when I was traveling non-stop (around 2008-2012), I kept thinking about this, and during my Air Force time we always stayed at Holiday Inns.

Officially, the explanation was that the hotel chain could offer official US government rates anywhere in the world, which were sometimes hard to find. They found me rooms when all others had been sold out (they kept a few in reserve for elite members) during emergencies, and like a poor man's James Bond, the hotel in Honolulu always knew me when I walked up to the desk to check in. But the biggest reason was because of the pillows. Everywhere I went in the world, from Appleton, Wisconsin to Vienna, Austria, the pillows were the same. It was a common comfort that I grew to rely on-- except I didn't have ones nearly as nice at home.

After driving from Blacksburg and riding 80 miles in the heat over Skyline Drive, I was back 'home' in a Holiday Inn in Greenbelt, Maryland.  (For the record, the book Up in the Air wasn't nearly as good as the movie version.)

But now I had to sort out stuff and packing.

We had a storage unit outside of Washington, DC since we moved to the District from Ottawa in 2013. Our apartment downtown couldn't hold everything, so this was a temporary measure. By the summer of 2014 I was expecting to take a job as an associate dean at a college in Albany, New York, but that fell through at the very last minute. Instead of moving all our stuff, we had to store most of it and then...figure out what came next, which at the end of our lease meant perching with my parents until we headed to Europe. And most of our things were still there. Tracy and I lived out of suitcases, more or less, from 2014 to 2019, when finally we would set up something more permanent again in Alaska, when we wouldn't be running, when there would be some permanency.

Well, except that wasn't happening.

The news from Alaska had grown worse, with the Board of Regents due to vote on financial exigency (major emergency), and the news rumors mentioning the system shutting down the Anchorage campus completely. It was uncharted territory for any state. The vote on financial exigency would take place on Monday, when I was due to drive to Indiana. For the weekend, though, I was stuck in Maryland.

I drove over to the storage unit, which I'd visited briefly in May after not seeing it for four years. Yes, there are questions about what we really need if we haven't lived with any of this stuff for years, and it's a valid question. We'd pared down over the years, left with essential books, photos, art, a few pieces of furniture, etc. But I stood looking at the boxes in bewilderment, because it represented so much. I wanted those books back, I wanted some sense of comfort again, but it wasn't going to happen. I could just stare at things still out of reach. I grabbed a few things I'd brought from Kosovo in May, but even then I couldn't decide. I left many of our winter clothes, since I still didn't even think I'd see Tracy again before I headed back to Europe in early 2020. I had an old mountain bike I wanted to take with me, some dress clothes, other small things that could fit in the car, but it was frustrating. And I had plenty of time to stew about it.

Since I'd wasted myself on the Shenandoah Mountains the day before, that Saturday I just rested in the air conditioning, watching depressing shows on HBO like The Hate that You Give and Years and Years. I'd biked through the Greenbelt area before in years past, but never comfortably. I'd brought the Trek to the hotel room and we just enjoyed the cool air together.

I got up before dawn the next morning, and loaded up the bike on the car, turning toward the Eastern Shore. I'd biked there once before, in 2014, on a century where I'd only done 80 miles due to a knee injury. I knew it was quiet, flat, and the roads easy to navigate. I drove to a town called Cambridge about two hours outside of DC, and started riding from the same park where the Six Pillars Century left from. I would follow the 100 mile (160km) route, since it led through the scarce number of towns where I could find water and food.

Sunrise over eastern Maryland

Even with a 6:55am start, it was brutally humid. The first hour was relatively cool, but already water was pouring down my back, and with the pancake flat roads I wasn't even working that hard. I had a slight tailwind from the start, along wooded lanes and quiet roads where I would see the occasional deer and maybe the occasional car. My GPS map had the aid stations marked, though on this early Sunday morning those were just empty lots or grassy parks. I would have to keep my own eyes open for water and food. I did miss Kosovo, where any small village had water and croissants, and natural springs could also be found in the mountains. I kept about a 20mph (32kph) pace, trying to keep up enough speed to be respectful. Flat courses, and this couldn't be any flatter (the highest point was on a bridge), can end up being much longer in time if one isn't careful, and I wanted to finish by early afternoon.

The US was experiencing a heat wave, just starting and would persist through much of the summer. 

It was important to start a ride early, and spend as little time as possible in the worst of the heat. When shooting for specific distances (and remember, I had to ride 1000 miles in July to get that t-shirt!), that meant riding faster, though the trade-off was that more speed = more power = more heat generated. 

I rode south from Cambridge through Smithville, across the Blackwater River and saltwater marshes. The other shore of Maryland and DC was visible to the west at points, and I crossed over bridges to the narrow peninsula of Fishing Creek. There was a small shop there, and I knew to stop for whatever water and Powerade they had, I was already losing so much fluid and it was only 9am. The towns were slowly waking up, but I was still the odd one out, a cyclist flashing by in emerald green.

This house is not prepared for sea level rise

The route backtracked over the bridges to the north, then headed east into a stiff headwind. The road snaked east through the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge toward Cedar Landing, and the wind and heat were really picking up. Seward had little more than a boat chandler shop, closed on Sunday morning, but I stopped and found a vending machine with Powerade. I drank one bottle and used the other to fill up my own water bottle, but was disappointed their water fountain (what some in Wisconsinese still call a bubbler) wasn't working. The road headed north a bit and I remembered this was close to where I cut the ride short five years earlier. Instead I turned east again into a remote part of the county, and I admit those extra miles were about to hurt.

There was nothing for the next 30 miles (50km) between Seward and when I finally found the south side of Cambridge again. It was remote farmland, winding roads but more exposed to the sun and wind than the course earlier in the morning. Two women on Harleys passed me, and then saw me again as they stood near a wooden bridge- they were about the only sign of life anywhere, save for the occasional osprey. I finally stopped at a church to look for water, a trick Betty Jean had taught me in Georgia, though I had doubts about how well my stomach (still sensitive) would handle rusty garden spigot quality. Still, it was better than going bone dry. The gas station I finally found at mile 90 was just south of Cambridge, but I didn't realize that as I hadn't panned my electronic map back out far enough to see. The water and Powerade I bought there were already gone ten miles later, or about 30 minutes it took me to loop back to the west and then east through town to the car. I finished just over 100 miles, with a total elevation gain of 300 feet! (100m)  A typical ride in Kosovo over that distance would require around 10,000ft of climbing. But hot and windy was tough in its own way.

Osprey at the Blackwater refuge (Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/l0537)

I still relied on McDonald's for mostly reliable restrooms, and for large $1 unsweetened ice tea. I think I (who must have smelled like a cattle pen) drank two liters of tea and downed a large ice cream, before I could even think of solid food. Often it's hard for me to eat much after a long ride, especially in extreme heat, so I turned up the AC in the car and headed back toward DC. Eating during this roadtrip and associated cycling was not easy. I've written before about what it takes to eat enough on long endurance rides, and when also traveling and driving the challenge was heightened. I was relying too much on reserves during rides like this one in Maryland- I would have Clif bars and bananas and such with me, but those only provided a fraction of what gets burned in one day while cycling 100 miles (I would use over 3000 calories just during the ride that day, so closer to 5000 for the whole day). And I was avoiding caffeine, which would just worsen my insomnia and stomach problems.

Restaurant food was always a poor substitute for preparing on one's own, and there really wasn't much difference between McDonald's and Olive Garden, except that portions were easier to control at McD's. I had eaten at 5Guys the day before the ride, which was likely a whopping 2000 calorie meal (how on earth do people eat there who don't then burn it off at one go?!), but I tended to rely on grocery stores more than anything. In Greenbelt I'd gone to the Safeway and bought a number of prepared meals, extra boxes of Clif bars, fruit, etc. Having a microwave and fridge in each room when I stayed at hotels was essential, and I'd always look up grocery stores when arriving in a town.

I think I was trying to get my body's metabolism at such a level that I wouldn't notice the nervousness so much, but it required me to keep biking regularly and for long periods, and I had to keep eating an obscene amount of food. Anyone looking into my car and seeing the discarded wrappers would have thought I weighed 300lbs. I also relied on energy gels, fig bars, and even had a cache of Kosovo stroop waffles to use on long rides. I did stop at McD's at times, but stuck to breakfasts or McChickens when not just relying on iced tea and ice cream. Food when endurance cycling can be both a blessing and a curse. One can eat anything he/she wants, and I mean really get away with anything-- but the flip side is that one has to eat anything available (remember the Hawaiian tuna pizza?) and it becomes a grind at times finding enough calories to keep going.

And once one stops, as I did in August, it's like hitting a brick wall. But that's another story.

Not quite a photo of me (I don't wear glasses)

Typical Huddle House cycling breakfast, north Georgia, July 2019

The drive back toward DC was far busier than it was at 4am (obviously) and slowed by an accident. I finally made it back to the hotel in Greenbelt, where I sorted through emails, Viber texts from Tracy, and the dark news from Alaska.

Early Monday morning I would have to leave for Indiana. While feeling trapped in Maryland, I also didn't want to leave. Although I wanted to get to Indiana and see my friend Terri. I didn't know what I wanted. As a strategic planner, not knowing my own future, especially on the short time scale of the next few weeks, was absolutely maddening. The news looked worse and worse, I fully expected the Board of Regents to vote for financial exigency and allow firing of tenured professors, and had a hard time even planning as far ahead as Wisconsin. But I had to keep moving. Maybe Indiana was an appropriate destination- it was the location for the movie Breaking Away, as iconic a film as any for mixing cycling with uncertainty over one's future.

I would leave early the next morning.