海角大神

鈥淰isit, but don鈥檛 stay,鈥� the governor of Oregon famously said in the 鈥�70s, and when I arrived from Boston, I figured I鈥檇 made it in just under the wire. I didn鈥檛 know if I鈥檇 be accepted. But people were friendly.

鈥淲hat brought you here?鈥� they鈥檇 ask. Oh. I broke up with my boyfriend, nothing was tying me down, I wanted to shake up my life. All of this was true. That鈥檚 not what I said, though.

鈥淎 bicycle,鈥� I said. Also true.

People tend to be impressed if you鈥檝e biked across the country. It did take effort, but I had some things going for me. Mainly, I already knew at least a dozen friends who had done it, although most had had the good sense to travel west to east, with the prevailing winds. I was not breaking new ground.

I had no expectation that I鈥檇 be backstopped or supported, or that it was even possible. Cash machines and cellphones did not exist, so we were accustomed to running out of money, and our loved ones were accustomed to not being in constant touch with us. We have so much to fall back on now that we鈥檝e grown skittish of failure. We can鈥檛 even leave our houses without our phones, and we鈥檝e lost sight of what is truly essential for survival.

OK, that鈥檚 just me being a curmudgeon.聽

In truth, I can鈥檛 say I was familiar with the essentials in 1976, either. But I set out with two men anyway, and with my entire savings: $200 cash. I also had a shiny new Mastercard 鈥� it had been only two years since women were allowed to have a credit card in their own name. None of us had trained for this trip in any way. We figured we鈥檇 get stronger every day, and we did.聽

We chafed in cotton shorts. We didn鈥檛 wear sunglasses or sunscreen. Or helmets. Our common sense didn鈥檛 take up much room. We had a small tent and a few changes of underwear, and we started pedaling on June 1, 1976. I assumed that if you just kept pedaling, the map would unfurl beneath your wheels until you eventually hit the next ocean over.聽

I didn鈥檛 worry about anything. That was my mom鈥檚 job. I called her collect from a phone booth with an update on where we were about four times over the course of the six-week trip. She was always glad to hear from me. I left out the more worrisome details, but none of them would stop us.

There were the unheeding coal trucks in Pennsylvania, the tornado warning in Iowa, the 115-degrees-Fahrenheit temperatures in Utah鈥檚 Bonneville Salt Flats, which we tried to traverse with a single water bottle each. We finally hitched a ride in a pickup truck. There were also the head winds that forced us to travel at night; we鈥檇 veer into the ditch whenever a car came up behind us.

By the time we reached the Pacific Ocean in mid-July, I was brown as a nut and had flossable quadriceps, but of course I was still bringing up the rear. The men had gotten stronger, too. We looked like Greek gods and, despite the myth we may have told our friends, we did not ditch our bikes in the drink at the trip鈥檚 end. I sold my orange Gitane for five bucks at a garage sale a few years later. I鈥檓 sure my friends鈥� bikes disappeared a lot earlier than that.聽

There were still donuts for sale, and I reassembled my former shape in record time.

Years back, people had the courage to step into a veritable bathtub of a boat and sail to an unknown land. They had the pluck to pile their belongings into a prairie schooner and keep going in case they stumbled onto a better deal. They had no way of knowing if they would see or hear from their loved ones again, and nothing was driving them but hope.

At least I had a Mastercard.

In my case, what looked like courage was probably just a mix of youthful ignorance and groundless optimism. I did learn something about perseverance, however. Most of it is about beginning. If you鈥檙e learning an instrument or a language, or if you鈥檙e starting your life over somewhere new, or taking on any kind of challenge, you won鈥檛 persevere if you talk yourself out of starting.

Once you get yourself in the saddle, you鈥檙e already more than halfway there. Then you just keep pedaling.