The White Line to Denver

By Doug Bahniuk

When Doug Bahniuk is riding on the road and a fancy car passes him, he thinks, “Poor guy can’t afford a nice bicycle.” That’s how much he loves riding his bicycle on the road—something he’s done across Alaska twice, across South Korea, and across Oregon three times. In this memoir, he celebrates his love for riding and bicycles, which gave him the freedom to ride to the park and hang out with his friends as a child and the ability to dream as an adult. He focuses on a ride he began planning in spring 2007 from Boise, Idaho, to Denver, Colorado—one that his doctor did not want him to take alone. That’s because Bahniuk suffers from Parkinson’s disease, which makes it difficult to talk, walk, eat, and control his fine motor skills. But his philosophy about Parkinson’s has always been simple: Screw it, because he can ride a bicycle! Join the author as he conquers his fears, travels vast distances, and sees the impossible on The White Line to Denver.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Dec 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483477190

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BAHNIUK

Copyright © 2017 Doug Bahniuk.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Interior graphic by Michelle Petrus.

This book describes the author’s experience on long distance bicycle rides, and reflects his opinions relating to those experiences. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved in making these trips possible.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7501-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7719-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017914168

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 11/14/2017

Prologue

Endless Road

B ICYCLES ARE MY LIFE. They are. From the time I was young, riding has always given me a sense of freedom that nothing else ever has. There are so many places to go, and going to those places on a bicycle, for me, is the best way to travel. I always felt sorry for the guy in a car, even if it was a nice car. When I’m riding and some fancy car passes me, I think smugly, Poor guy, can’t afford a nice bicycle. To me a bike was always superior to a car because of their efficiency and the inherent joy they possess.

My oldest memories revolve around bicycles. In fact, my first bike was a birthday present. My dad took me to the second floor of a department store in town to pick it up. It had handbrakes, three speeds, twenty-six-inch wheels, and an open frame like a girl’s bike. Dad thought the open frame would be easier for me to ride, since I was still pretty young. The frame was light blue with a chrome finial decorating the nose of the front fender. A silver pinstripe rippled down the front fork. I thought it was beautiful. The most beautiful bike I had ever seen. I was so excited to learn how to ride it that I never even used training wheels. Dad played a role in that too. He said, Sooner or later you’ll have to ride this bike without the training wheels. You don’t really need them. Let’s see how you do. My Dad’s confidence that I could do it made me never want training wheels. I felt like a big kid and this was my first bike. I couldn’t wait to start riding.

Probably my first bike adventure happened before we even had the bike out of the store. As we were leaving the store, bike between us, riding the elevator down to the first floor, the elevator jammed between floors. It came to an abrupt stop. My dad and I both struggled to maintain our balance. I was pretty concerned. After all, I wondered out loud, Does anybody know we’re here? Should we start to yell? Indeed, I was ready to start screaming for help. But my Dad said not to worry, someone would come and rescue us. Sure enough, in just a few minutes a calm voice spoke to us from the speaker at the top of the elevator. The voice told us exactly what my Dad had just told me, that someone was on their way to fix the elevator. The voice apologized for any inconvenience. I smile about that adventure now, considering all the adventures bikes have always provided throughout my life.

My birthday is in October, and the snow started to fly before I managed a solo ride on that first bike. But the following summer was a different story. One day, with my sister running alongside me, I learned to balance the contraption. All of a sudden, I was riding down the sidewalk all on my own! But I had forgotten how to perform a key piece of riding: stopping. Joy ran into the house to ask mom what I should do to stop it, but by the time she came back yelling Mom says to use the brakes, I’d already fallen. I probably rode all of ten feet, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.

My riding lessons consisted of Dad sitting on the seat and me standing on the pedals. Dad would propel us forward with his feet, pushing us along and I would pedal, all the while dad was keeping the bike balanced. Sometimes we’d trade off: My dad would put me on the seat, and then he would stand and pedal with me holding on tightly. Other times he ran beside me, keeping me upright with one hand holding the seat. Later, after I had mastered the fine art of balancing and pedaling solo, stopping was accomplished by dragging my feet and then hopping off the bike. But Dad showed me the finer points of braking. He told me a better way to bring my bike rides to an end was to squeeze the hand brakes. My hands were just too small. But eventually, I got the hang of it. Without training wheels as he had promised.

That was it. Once I learned to ride my bike and use the brakes, bicycles became my preferred mode of transportation. By the time I was thirteen I was taking thirty-mile trips across town.

One of the best things bicycles have given me is freedom, as well as the ability to go just about anywhere I could point to on the map. I could just pick two cities on a map, follow the white line on the road’s right edge between the two, and I’d reach the second city. Certainly, it would be faster in a car, but for me cars lack the magic of reaching a destination on a bicycle. You expect a car to be able to travel a long distance. Bicycles, not so much. I believed and still do believe that the simplicity, durability and versatility of bicycles endow them with a power unmatched by automobiles. Whenever I look at a bicycle I think I could ride that thing across the United States.

I know, because I’ve done it. This is the true story of one of my adventures.

A similar thought never enters my mind when looking at a car. Cars need gas, oil and money. Bicycles just need less. Their beauty is in their simplicity. When I was young, say from six to seventeen years old, my bike gave me the freedom to ride to the park and hang out with my friends. Now, as a mature adult, (well, an adult anyway) they give me the ability to dream of new adventures. This is their magic.

My longer sojourns began in middle school. My first ride of any significance was when I rode to my grandpa’s house, a one-way ride of about 30 miles. One summer morning my mother told me she was going to visit my grandpa, and she asked me if I would like to go. I declined. I could tell she was surprised, but I had another plan. I watched her pull out of the driveway and drive down the road. As soon as she was out of sight, I hopped on my bike and went after her. It took me four hours or so to reach my grandpa’s house. I pulled into his driveway just as my mom was getting ready to leave. I had never considered what I would have done if she had already left by the time I got there.

Another of these rides began one morning in July, 1969. I woke up and decided it might be fun to make the 100-mile round trip from our house to the Pennsylvania border. In my infinite teenage wisdom (I was seventeen) I decided not to tell anyone and not to ask permission. I just did it. My parents were separated and occasionally my mother drove to Pennsylvania to blow off steam, so I knew the way. With only my bike, a few dollars in my pocket, and a transistor radio for entertainment, I took State Route 322 to Pennsylvania. One of the first mileage signs I saw on Route 322 gave the miles to the town of Orwell: ORWELL 30 MILES. Because I never paid attention to my surroundings during my mother’s drives, I thought Orwell must be a pretty fair size town. During the next 30 miles, I passed two more signs ticking off the miles to what was surely a buzzing metropolis. Or so I thought; convinced this place must be huge. And it is huge- If you’re an Amish farmer. There were so many horse drawn buggies. They were everywhere. There is a thriving Amish community not far from Orwell, and in those days, hitching up the horses and going to Orwell must have been the big excitement.

Orwell is a small town. Much smaller than I thought it would be. I don’t remember for sure, but if it had more than one stop light, I’d be surprised. Thankfully there was a gas station where I bought a can of pop. Back then, as far as bicycles were concerned, I was still in my infancy and I didn’t know about water bottles you could carry on a bike.

It was July and it was Ohio, so I was pretty warm. I asked someone walking by the gas station how far it was to Pennsylvania. He told me it was about twenty-five more miles.

Inwardly I groaned. Twenty-five miles! I was already sore. There are a lot of hills between Cleveland and the Pennsylvania border, and I thought about all of the hills I had already climbed. I was riding a three-speed bicycle, and that made those hills all the more challenging. I knew the ones on the way back were going to be steeper than they were going to Pennsylvania. And it wasn’t just because I was tired. They really are steeper going back into Ohio. I did make it all the way to the Pennsylvania border, and decided to celebrate with a banana split before heading home. One of the things I always remember the most about that day wasn’t the heat or even how tired I was. I remember that on the ride home I heard that Ted Kennedy had accidentally driven off a bridge. The report said that his companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, had died in the accident. Well that’s one way to make a bike ride memorable, I suppose.

Bikes continued to be a big part of my life when I entered college in the summer of 1970 at Bowling Green State University. BGSU is located in Northwest Ohio, and it’s a cyclist’s dream with its miles and miles of flat roads. The flatness of the area isn’t the only thing that defines it as a dream spot for cyclists though. There is also the wind. Lots of wind. The wind almost defines Bowling Green more than its flatness. Either way, this wind and the flatness make riding in Bowling Green lots of fun.

While attending Bowling Green State University I majored in physics, and my favorite topic was astrophysics. The enormity of the Universe is a concept that is difficult for almost anyone to grasp. Realizing that a million earths can fit inside the sun makes one begin to grasp the smallness of the planet we live on. Furthermore, to think on the billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone is even more staggering, not to mention what might be beyond our galaxy, and the vast empty regions between galaxies. And there are billions of galaxies. When I think about these things, I am even clearer in my understanding of how tiny we as humans are in the scheme of all of these planets, stars, and galaxies. No more significant than a grain of sand on a beach. And I’m talking about a big beach. A huge beach.

But wait, back to bicycles.

I mention my thoughts about the universe because they help make me understand how truly lucky I am to be alive, lucky to have been born in the United States, and lucky to have a job that allows me to ride when and wherever I want to go. Ride bicycles that is.

It didn’t take me long to scout out the best places to ride in BG (this is what the locals call Bowling Green). One of my favorite places to ride was on the back roads that crossed Route 6. Route 6 is a west to east-bound road that is a corridor from the west coast in Bishop, California to Provincetown, Massachusetts on the east coast. The stretch of Route 6 in Bowling Green is mostly a trucking route. One of my favorite games, albeit dangerous, was racing trucks coming down Route 6. I’d ride from my apartment on West Wooster Street to Liberty Hi Road. Liberty Hi crossed Route 6. I could see this intersection from quite far back on Liberty Hi, maybe from 1,500 feet or more because of how flat the land is. The traffic on Liberty Hi had a stop sign; traffic on Route 6 did not. Yeah, I’d stop. In your dreams.

What I took great delight in was racing trucks to the intersection. You’re right if you are thinking this was dangerous. But there it is. This is the kind of thing that got my blood racing when I was in college. I’d cruise down Liberty Hi and scan ahead for trucks coming down Route 6. When I saw one that looked like it might reach the intersection at the same time as me, the race was on! I would stand up and start cranking, throwing the bike back and forth. I’d tightly hold the handlebars, pulling on them as I cranked down. Even my chest muscles came into play, tightening as I gave the bike my all. At the same time, I’d closely monitor the intersection because even though most of the trucks were east bound, occasionally there