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.