"I Don‘t Think So. Beagle"

So we reached the Pacific, by hire car instead of bike, after saying I was gonna ride across America but getting a lift with James for a few hundred miles across Wyoming. Disappointing huh?

No.

Not at all.

Not for me.

You gotta understand the mindset. It’s not about the end at all, it’s about the journey. I know that’s a bit of a cliché but it’s true.

The point of this trip, riding across america, was not to ride every inch of the way, I don’t care about that, I’m not trying to break a record and I got nothing to prove. The point was to have an interesting and fun journey, to have new experiences, to break out of a stale life orientated around a job.

Man has it succeeded in that.

It feels like it’s been going on forever, looking back to the first few days in Florida, or the Gulf Coast, or Brandon’s, or Oklahoma, or the plains, seeing a tornado, first snake, tumbleweed, reaching the rockies, each one feels a lifetime ago. Then there was a cool and much-needed holiday road-trip week with james and bertie in da truck. Then riding through walls of snow 8 feet high, past bison, wolves, geysers in the prehistoric landscape of Yellowstone. 60 miles of wilderness between a few houses and a gas station became the norm rather than something to be feared. So much has happened I need to sit down for a while and get my head round it, I haven’t really had time to absorb it. I know that sounds a bit mad but life on the bike is quite busy, especially when riding with a crazed fool that enjoys trying to sabotage your line and force you onto the shoulder when you‘re not paying attention.

If you’re still focused on the idea of riding every inch of ocean to ocean then I gotta say that reaching the rockies was that moment for me, crossing the plains was by far the hardest part of the trip, they’re quite hilly and man they are windy and isolated, oftentimes my only company whilst riding at 8mph would be a cloud of dust on the horizon showing where a pickup was speeding along a dirt road. I actually started planning in bigger roads just so that there would be a car along once in a while in case something went wrong. The isolation of the plains could be a little unsettling, you don’t need much imagination to start imagining things that could go wrong, empty wide open spaces are an easy place to disappear, or be disappeared, and a couple of times I got a little spooked by someone or something and snuck my big folding knife out of the bar bag and into my pocket, just in case.

After reaching the rockies the character of the trip, and my drive, changed, I no longer needed the ‘ocean to ocean’ motivation, I had achieved more than enough, learned enough about myself, dug deep enough for long enough, to not need it.

So reaching the pacific after nearly 4000 bike miles and a few hundred by car is just another step on the way through this journey, another incredible moment amongst many. The journey is a continuum now, not a point.

It was kinda strange to follow lewis and clark’s footsteps for most of a thousand miles to be greeted by a tacky tourist seaside town, just like a british one, or the costa del sol. The Pacific Coast looks almost exactly like the west coast of Scotland, if you didn’t know where you were I honestly don’t think you could tell the difference for a while.

The dry thin air of the high plains gave me some sinus problems, I had a gentle nosebleed for most of a month, leading to an extreme snoring outbreak that bert has been stoically putting up with. Now that we’re back down low in moist air that really does feel thicker this has cleared up and bert was treated to a silent night. To compensate, I started talking in my sleep, apparently having a conversation with someone, after turning down their offer with a “I don’t think so” I finished with a firm “Beagle.”

I have no idea either.

We’ve hightailed it back to Portland, which was the scene of the real end of the trip. It seems fitting that the trip ended spontaneously in a drunken night of wine, shots and rums wandering round a strange but bike friendly city barely able to talk going in straight bars and gay bars and getting in trouble for accidentally jumping the toilet queue and talking to random strangers and drinking with the rickshaw guy and swapping shirts ‘cos he liked my “we still hang bike thieves in Wyoming’ t-shirt and riding the rickshaw, too drunk to see straight, through an intersection, barely able to steer, the rickshaw guy shouting at me to steer right steer right and just managing to, then neatly parking it next to a police car, we don’t remember how we got back to the hotel but I slept on the bathroom floor in a nest of towels after puking and wondering why there were lots of people in the other room which was bert talking on the phone to his workmates in their office. We were both still puking at 4pm the next day, the hotel staff had to bring a delivery menu up to our room as we couldn’t make it out of the door.

That’s how a trip like this should end, not in a long gritty slog over major hills into the teeth of a wind so strong you can barely walk or talk, along a busy dual carriageway full of trucks and cars with no hard shoulder in the cold grey wet rain.