The answer was easy. "Demographics." Then I tried to pry this naif from his pre-planned route in order to experience something special, away from a shoulderless highway with trucks.
As he pedalled away I wondered if he would actually do it. My advice would have cost him an entire day--1/14th of the standard American's annual frolic with freedom and humanity. His vacation. Vacationers haven't the foggiest notion how to really travel.
I have a penchant for latching onto these lonely losers, these hard-pedaling, soul-searching romantics of the open road.
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In Baja once, I met a young man who bicycled all the way down to the tip with his girlfriend, put her on a plane, and was retorno to Estados Unidos. His rear wheel was falling apart. There were no bicycle shops within 200 miles of Baja beach and desert.
I had an extra wheel in my van that was unnecessary and taking up valuable space. I offered it to him for $10 or for a good letter explaining the art of bicycling in Baja, as he preferred.
He seemed taken aback by my offer, the way a wise child should refuse free candy from an older stranger. Peter was poor, idealistic, young and proud. He was a struggling artist and a bit of a hippie, at least on the surface. He graciously declined and went back to his tent.
The next morning he relented and accepted the rear wheel on the terms offered. He brought over some bread baked in a wood oven at a locally famous baker, that had pulled him over to this spot in the first place. It was fine.
And off he rode. I never really expected to hear from him again. I watched him ride off like the carnie watched Dorothy of Oz walk off with little Toto just before the twister hit and thought, "Poor kid--I hope he makes it."
A month later I was in this cute little town named Patagonia, AZ, for this first time. I had just gotten a letter from Peter in Bishop, CA, explaining the art of bicycling in Baja. It was literally the first day of spring and it had snowed here, 19 miles from the Mexican border.
What has happened to that young man? Has he married the girlfriend? Is he up to his eyeballs in debt and domestic trivia? Recall Tolstoi in War and Peace: domestic trivia destroys all that is noble in a man's life.
Did he give up his painting? Oh probably so. He is a grown-up by now, you know. I never saw one of his paintings. If I had, I probably wouldn't have cared for it, philistine that I am. But how I admired his art of living.
