Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures Read online

  Twenty Miles per Cookie

  9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures

  Nancy Sathre-Vogel

  www.familyonbikes.org

  Twenty Miles per Cookie

  9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures

  Published in the United States by:

  Old Stone Publishing

  Copyright © 2011 by Nancy Sathre-Vogel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without written permission of the author.

  ISBN 978-0-9837187-2-7

  To my boys – all three of you. You light up my life.

  NSV

  Table of Contents

  Pipe Dreams and Harebrained Schemes

  Rabbit Bushes and Shoe Trees

  Broadsided by Beauty

  Rerouted for Love

  Culinary Pursuits

  Jack Frost and Carrot Soup

  Thorny Fantasyland

  Pictures

  . . . . Pictures from Idaho to California

  . . . . Pictures from Mexico

  . . . . Pictures from Arizona to Connecticut

  Dangling Lighbulbs

  Country Doctors

  SWAT Teams and the Unbeatable Foe

  Mad Dash to Nowhere

  A New Beginning and an End

  The Fat Lady Sang

  Changed Lives

  Pipe Dreams and Harebrained Schemes

  “Daryl!” I shouted. “Daryl! Where are you?” I called into the darkness, panic rising with each passing moment. Completely, totally, and utterly exhausted, I wandered around the forest in pitch blackness searching for my little boy. “Daryl!” I sobbed. “Daryl! Where are you?”

  This family bike trip had seemed like such a good idea a few months back when we made the decision to take it. The trip seemed so right somehow. But now, it seemed wrong. All wrong. I was exhausted beyond belief and my precious son was gone – devoured by the darkness of a moonless night in the middle of the forest. My spirits were about as low as could get, my resolve had all but disappeared, and the joy had been sucked out of life. All I wanted was my son. I wondered just what kind of mother I was to yank her children out of school for a year, plop them on the back of a bicycle built for three, and drop out of society.

  “Daryl!” I called.

  Daryl’s twin brother, Davy, looked at me with tears in his eyes. “What if we can’t find him, Mom?”

  “We’ll find him, sweetie. We have to.” I turned back to the pine grove where my son was wandering aimlessly.

  “Daryl!” I sobbed into the all-encompassing darkness. “Answer me honey! Please answer me!”

  After what felt like hours, I heard the little voice I had been praying for: “I’m here Mommy!”

  Daryl emerged from the blackness and, as I fervently hugged my son, I thought back to the day this whole journey had begun and about all the days that were coming. In so many ways, the trip just wasn’t worth it. Losing your child is every parent’s worst nightmare, and my eyes had just been opened to the possibility. Somehow I hadn’t even considered that prospect. I had thought about our journey for so many hours, and yet had never considered the disastrous consequences of simple mistakes.

  It could so easily happen – Daryl had simply gotten lost on his way back to the campsite from the bathroom. What else could happen? We were so exposed, so vulnerable. We were out in the open, bared to every sort of element Mother Nature could throw at us. We would fight traffic and cross deserts. We would get sick. We would get lost. Maybe we should turn around and go home.

  And yet there was another side of the equation – the “living your dream” part of it all. The romantic idealism residing in some long-since-buried part of me that refused to give up the ghost and go away. I tried to send it away. Many times, in fact. When my husband, John, and I came back to the US after our year-long bike trip through the Indian subcontinent sixteen years ago, I tried to settle down. I tried to live life as other Americans do.

  But a couple years later, I accepted the fact (temporarily anyway) that we weren’t cut out for the American Dream and headed out to teach in international schools in other countries. We lived in Egypt, Ethiopia, Taiwan and Malaysia. We traveled – on bikes, boats, camels, elephants, buses and trains – in dozens of countries. Our twins were born five years after John and I moved overseas to live the expat life and they traveled with us for the first seven years of their lives.

  Twelve years after leaving our home country to work overseas, we came back to America to give it another shot. “This time it’ll be different,” I told myself. “This time I’ve got two boys who will tie me down. I’m older and wiser, and more tolerant of the rat race. This time it’ll be fine. It will be – honest!”

  That lasted a grand total of fifteen months until John came home from school one day. It had been a tough day in the classroom – one of those days when he looked at all the teenagers in his class and thought What kind of masochistic son-of-a-bitch am I? Why do I come to this classroom day after day only to be tortured and humiliated by these hormone factories on legs? (To be fair, there are other days when we teachers are convinced we’ve died and gone to heaven, and we look at those people earning six-figure salaries and feel nothing but pity. But that’s another day…)

  John slumped into our house after that particularly rough day and collapsed into his favorite chair by the window. His eyes glazed over and I knew he wasn’t looking at the lawn that desperately needed mowing or the barn that needed fixing. He was farther away. Much farther away.

  “Nancy,” he said. “I can’t do this. I need to get away. I want to buy a triple bike and take off. Just me and the kids – out exploring the world. We’ll be the three musketeers. We’ll be Mr. Incredible and his children saving the world from destruction and injustice! We’ll be Superman and Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk rolled into one! Oh yeah – and you can tag along too.”

  I started thinking about our life in Boise, Idaho; middle-aged parents with two boys comfortably nestled in a large house in a suburb with a couple of cars in the driveway. We got up early and headed off to work, dropping the kids at daycare on the way. We worked all day, and came home late. And then we collapsed into bed, utterly exhausted. Isn’t that the American Dream? Isn’t that the way it should be?

  But the real question was: was it the way I wanted it to be? Was the American Dream the be-all and end-all? Was it the path to enlightenment and roadway to happiness? Would I, could I, be content with a big house in the suburbs and some cars? Was that really what life was all about?

  My mind drifted back to those years when I was young and carefree. I had always lived life on the wild side, taken advantage of every moment, and never said no. I was a rainbow chaser and adventure seeker. I flew to Pakistan sixteen years ago with a man I barely knew, biked with him for twelve months through the toughest conditions known to mankind, and then married him. I had lived in five different countries and bicycled in many more. And yet now, one would barely recognize me as that girl. I wasn’t a more mature version of her; I was somebody completely different.

  Gone was my spirit of adventure. Gone was my spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment, jump-up-and-go attitude. In its place was a gentle, mousy kind of being with both feet planted firmly on the ground. My kids knew me as the quiet strength of the household. I wasn’t exactly the life of the party, although I told stories of days when I was. They always looked at me in disbelief when I talked about those days.

  Maybe we should take off and go. Maybe it wasn’t such a ludicrous thing to do after all. Perhaps we didn’t have to
lie down and take middle age quietly. We weren’t too old to go chasing rainbows and living life in the saddle! Maybe this wasn’t all some pipe dream after all!

  “Let’s do it, John!” I said excitedly. My eyes had taken on a gleam, my shoulders had been thrown back, and my back was a little straighter. “Let’s go! Let’s quit our jobs and take off. After all, our kids will never be eight years old again. We’ve only got one chance at life – let’s make it a good one! Let’s throw caution to the wind and take off! Come on kids – hang on tight! We’re in for the ride of a lifetime!”

  Three months later John and I stood in the garage surveying our gear.

  “Holy mother of pearl, Nancy! How do you expect us to get all this crap on the bikes?” John bellowed as he stood there gawking at the massive pile of stuff that somehow had to be stuffed, crammed, or cajoled into fitting on our bikes. “We’ve got to get rid of some of this junk!”

  “What are we gonna get rid of?” I asked. “We can’t ditch the tent or the sleeping bags. We’ll need the sleeping pads to insulate us from the ground. There’s the stove, but we need that unless you want to eat sandwiches every night for a year. A pot big enough for the four of us… spare bike parts… rain gear… What are we going to ditch? We’re already down to only one change of clothing for each of us – we can’t go any lower than that.”

  One way or another that ungodly mountain of all our earthly belongings ended up condensed into the proverbial mole hill. The towering heap ended up, by hook or by crook, balanced on our cro-moly frames or piled into the trailers behind them.

  John and the boys would be riding a bicycle built for three. John, as the captain of the triple, would steer and shift the bike. Davy sat directly behind his father and Daryl was the caboose way in the back. I would cycle behind them on a single bike.

  In time everything made sense. Within weeks, it all fell into place and every item we carried had its own special resting place in the saddle bags called panniers that were mounted on our bikes. Those first few days of the journey, however, were chaos. Absolute, complete chaos. We didn’t know who had what or what was where, or which pannier or trailer anything happened to have been stashed in.

  We had no idea which pocket the granola bars were in nor where the nail clippers might be hiding. All we knew was that we had a lot of stuff. A mountain of it to be exact. Our mornings were spent cramming, lashing, and buckling as we laboriously piled all that gear on our bikes. By the time we took off, you could hardly call our vehicles “bikes.” Sure they each had two wheels, but beyond that… well, they bore little resemblance to what most of us picture when we think of bikes.

  But we were ready. We had quit our teaching jobs, purchased a triple bike for John and the boys, and rebuilt my old bicycle. Our bags were packed and goodbyes said. There was no turning back; there was only a year of adventure ahead. A year to pedal at will, turn on a whim, and explore sunsets without end. Ah yes, we were ready – ready to tackle this great continent of ours with our children, ready to live and experience and grow beyond our wildest imagination. Ready to be pushed further than we had ever been pushed – and ready for magic.

  Rabbit Bushes and Shoe Trees

  “Mom!” Daryl shouted. “Hey, Mom! There’s a historical marker!”

  I pulled my eyes away from the road for a minute, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and realized he was right before refocusing my attention back on the hill I was attempting to climb. My legs pumped, my heart pounded, my lungs cried out for more air.

  “Can we stop here and take notes, Mom?”

  It took a second to wrap my mind around this one. An eight-year-old kid was asking to take notes? After twenty years in the classroom, that was a first. Third graders simply don’t ask to take notes.

  “Not right now, sweetie,” I huffed. “We’re running behind schedule and have to get to Letha tonight,” I gasped, attempting to get another lungful of air. “There will be plenty more opportunities for note-taking later this year.”

  “But Mom!” Daryl protested. “You promised! You said you would teach us. You said you would be our teacher. You said we could take notes on historical markers. Please!”

  “Yeah, Mom,” added his twin brother, Davy. “You said we’d learn to take notes on the trip.”

  Two against one. It was clear there was no way I would win this battle. I surrendered and my eighty-pound two-wheeled rig ground to a halt. John and the kids rolled up on his utterly ridiculous fourteen-foot-long contraption and stopped beside me.

  “You know, Nancy,” John said as he wiped his sweat-soaked forehead. “We’ll never make it around America if we keep stopping like this. Heck – we’ll never even make it to Letha if we keep stopping like this. Do you know how far we’ve gone so far? We left home almost six hours ago and we’ve pedaled a grand total of twenty five miles! We’ve got to pick up the pace a little bit.” He turned to his sons. “Kids, did you hear that? We just can’t do this – stopping for a break every three miles. We need to keep pedaling! We’ll stop here for school, but then we’re cranking it to Letha. Understand?”

  Davy and Daryl nodded their heads as they scrambled off their bike and scurried to my trailer to retrieve their school bags. As they ran toward the informational sign they called, “What do we do now, Mom?” while pulling out notebooks and pencils.

  Taking a deep breath, I staggered toward the kids in the middle of the parking lot and started wondering if this journey was such a good idea after all. What was it that John had said just a few hours ago – before we left home, before it was too late?

  “Do you really want to do this, Nance?” he had asked. “It’s not too late to back out you know. All we need to do is take everything out of the panniers and put the bikes back in the garage. Nobody would even know we had planned it to begin with. After all, ya’ gotta admit this is a pretty harebrained scheme.”

  He was right. We were two middle-aged parents safely ensconced into the typical American life. And we were about to throw it all away for what? To ride bicycles around North America with eight-year-olds? Were we nuts?

  And now, just a few hours later, as I stood there on the side of the road in the blazing sun with two kids and their insatiable curiosity and I felt on the verge of collapsing and exhausted beyond belief after pedaling my bike up a minor (in comparison to what was coming) hill, I wondered if I had made the right choice. What was I thinking?

  Did I think I was SuperMom? Could I really pedal my eighty-pound bicycle around North America while still having enough energy to be Mom? Could I manage all the shopping and cooking and washing dishes and setting up the tent and taking down the tent every day? Could I be the kids’ teacher and mother on top of it all, or was I foolish to even think about it? Was I beyond the point of ludicrousness to even consider the possibility?

  Yet somehow, deep down within, I knew the answer. Yes, there would be times when we would struggle. There would be times when we would think we couldn’t go on. There would be times when life was more difficult than we could imagine. But it would be worth it. I just knew it would be. I wobbled over to my kids to sit down beside them.

  * * *

  Dear Grandma,

  This is the first day of our trip. We started at our house. I packed my aliens, alien food, and a puzzle snake. We stopped at a winery and listened to music for a while. There were tons of mosquitoes. We stopped at a historical marker and took notes. We went 40.12 miles. We went through Emmett and climbed on a tank there. We had tortillas and cheese for dinner. I am excited to be on the road finally.

  Love, Daryl

  * * *

  Crossing into a new state! Granted, it was only 60 miles from where we started, but exciting nonetheless.

  The following morning we packed up our sleeping bags and took down the tent. John and I piled everything on our bikes and we rolled out onto the road once more. The kids were excited about seeing more of their country and John and I listened to their babbles as we cycled toward Oregon.

&nbs
p; Oregon! A new state, albeit one only sixty miles from our home. The boys grinned from ear to ear as they posed for a picture at the sign welcoming us to our second state, then we pedaled until we found a park that allowed camping. Our plan had been to get a few more miles in but, truth be told, John and I were tuckered out. Our bodies weren’t used to pedaling fully-loaded bikes.

  We tumbled off the bikes and set up camp in the city park. Using a hose, we showered away all the sweat and sunscreen that had built up on our skin, then the boys charged off to the playground to scramble around on the monkey bars.

  As much as I wanted the day to be over, it wouldn’t be for ages still. I grabbed my small daypack from a pannier and headed off to find a grocery store. It was only our second day on the road and I knew it would take a while to get my body used to the demands of this bike touring stuff.

  Still, my bum hurt and my leg muscles screamed when I tried to bend over to get canned milk off the bottom shelf in the supermarket – and this was only day two of the journey. I could only hope my body, at 46, wasn’t too old to break in eventually.

  “Sorry guys,” I apologized as I handed my sons a bag of potato chips and a can of ranch dip a couple of days later. “This is all I have for breakfast.” Their eyes lit up, not quite believing that their mother, the one who venerates all things good and natural and organic, would hand them a bag of chips for their morning meal. They hungrily dove in before I could change my mind. Changing my mind, however, was not an option. I had no other food to give them.

  Our food stash was down to nothing and we had a long way to the next town. We had somehow managed to make a big miscalculation and there we were, in the middle of the eastern Oregon desert with nothing except a bag of chips from the local bar. There was no store within miles, no nothing within miles – except a bar that sold chips.