Riding With The Swallows: A Story of Recovery and Discovery on the Transamerica Bike Trail

By Richard A Freeman

Alcohol was a few shots, then a bottle, then a prison. When Rick was at his physical, emotional, and spiritual bottom, his brother called. "Don't leave your children a legacy of alcoholism and self-destruction. You know what that did to us.  Leave them a legacy of recovery and hope."  After connecting with AA and a couple of hard-

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Dec 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649907899

Book preview

Introduction

ALL THAT IS REQUIRED IS A WILLINGNESS TO BE SOBER

J

ust call me Rick. For twenty years I could have answered to Drunk. In AA the common wisdom is that before a drunk can get sober they have to hit bottom. Some people have high bottoms, they catch a whiff of losing everything and quit drinking. I was a Low bottom drunk, had to run through my life with a wrecking ball. Just about died a couple of times before I could accept that I needed help.

They say, Denial is the devil of addiction. That devil had me by the throat for a couple of decades. I refused to believe I had a problem. I worked, loved my wife and my children, went to church, professed my belief in God. But I was lying, lying, lying, mostly to myself. My wife worried me about it. My mother badgered me about it. My brother told me I needed help.

I didn’t believe them.

I believed in drinking. Bad day at the office, drink; good day at the office, drink; fight with my wife, drink; had a good time with the family, drink; sunny day, cloudy day, hurricane, drink. I believed in the almighty bottle to relax, celebrate, ease my stress, and just because. My wife, my mother, my work, my friends, they all let me down. Drinking never seemed to let me down.

I went to church, but God was a mystery to me. I liked His houses but couldn’t understand His workings.

I didn’t worship God. I worshipped alcohol.

From there I had nowhere to go but down, down in a drunken, broken heap.

My marriage fell apart. At work, Capital Dodge in Baton Rouge, I was the fleet salesman and I was good at selling cars. But my production was falling. The manager questioned me. I got defensive. You can’t fire me. I sell more vehicles than all of the rest of your guys put together! He fired me.

I drank more. I got jobs, but couldn’t keep them. My wife left. I moved into a rental home that my mother owned. I helped with her properties. I had the notion I could go to Law School. But it was just another way of fooling myself. I was drinking and flunked out.

I had a bout of alcohol poisoning. After being revived in the emergency room I went to the local detox center. I started attending AA meetings. My drinking slowed, I stopped on the weekdays and drank on weekends…would tell myself I earned it.

I started to warm to AA. I liked the brotherhood, liked the structure of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, enjoyed listening to people's stories, even got a sponsor, great guy with thirty-plus years sobriety. But I was just going through the motions. I was on a rant about how everyone did me wrong. I spit bile at every meeting. Everyone listened, they had all been there. But they didn’t move a muscle, didn’t make a sound. When another guy would say, It was my drinking…that ruined my marriage, that lost me my job, everyone would nod knowingly and in unison, and almost like a choral arrangement, murmur Mmmhmmnn, Mmmhmmnn.

I wasn’t getting those head nods and mmhmmns. I couldn’t figure out why. I was bitter and caught up in my own story. My sponsor directed me toward the Steps, to the Big Book. I got the words, but the message didn’t land. I was in a fight with everyone, and alcohol was my only friend.

My ex-wife took my kids to North Carolina.

I fell into the bottle hard, moved on to cheap vodka, quit going to meetings, got stupid drunk every day. I was drowning in despair. My wife let me down. My job let me down. I felt my mother let me down by not helping me fight for my kids. But booze didn’t let me down. Booze negated my feelings, numbed everything out. At some point all the pain and worry and head chatter disappeared. Booze was dependable. It would do exactly what I wanted it to do every time.

I had a couple of medical incidents. Got severely dehydrated working on a construction site, passed out, had to be hospitalized. They called it a heat stroke. The hospital gave me fluids and detoxed me. I celebrated having survived with a fifth of vodka.

Another time I was working house painting and the right side of my back started hurting like someone was squeezing one of my organs, wringing it out like a wet sponge. I fell to my knees and was throwing up repeatedly. Took an ambulance to the hospital. Part of my kidney had died, one of the blood vessels had closed off. The day I got back to the house, I bought a fifth of vodka and started drinking again.

I went back to painting houses for $400 a week. I drank most of a fifth every night after work, left a little to take the edge off in the morning, then downed a pint at lunch. On Friday afternoon, got off work, bought a half-gallon of vodka, and would drink most of it. Saturday morning, I’d finish off what was left, then go back to get two half gallons, because they were closed Sunday. It was always the same guy, dark-haired, dark eyes. I wouldn’t look at him. He wouldn’t look at me. I would just put the two half gallons on the counter and enough money to cover the cost. He would put them in a bag, take the cash and keep the small bit of change that was left over. I was already walking out.

My bottom finally came when I was near comatose, lying on the filthy living room floor of my mother's dilapidated rental house. The phone was ringing and ringing and ringing. Somewhere deep in my inebriation, I reached for it. My brother from California was calling. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. He kept talking. I stayed on the phone. A loud rap on the door interrupted and an announcement of Police! The room was suddenly filled with blue uniforms looming over me. I cried out, I didn’t do nothing, Officer, I didn’t do nothing. The officer tried to reassure me it was okay, just a welfare check, but I couldn’t hear it. I knew I had done something and I was going to have to go away for awhile.

The police took me to the Baton Rouge Detox Center, where they gave me water, three meals a day, and barely enough medicine to stave off the worst of withdrawal symptoms. My body trembled and was soaked in sweat. Reeling with nausea and vomiting, dry heaving over and over, unable to sleep, mind racing…was I awake or dreaming? An apparition of death, stillness, peace bloomed out of my fragmented mind and hovered over me. I spoke to it, Help, help me.

Still in my semi-delirium, the staff at Detox called me to the phone. It was my brother.

He said, You need to get the hell out of Baton Rouge. You are going to die if you don’t get out of there.

Mmh, was all I could manage in reply.

He went on, Don’t leave a legacy of addiction and self-destruction for your children. He paused, Dad did that to us. Don’t do that to your kids. After another long moment he said, Come out to Sacramento. I can put you in a halfway house, give you some time to get sober, get your head straight.

I was beaten, utterly ravaged. I just said, Okay.

I had hardly talked to my kids since they moved to North Carolina four years earlier. I was too drunk most of the time to make a phone call.

When my brother called me in rehab he said, When you’re a drunk everybody is mad at you, ashamed of you. When you recover, you’re everybody's hero.

Come out here and get sober, he said. Leave your kids a legacy of recovery and hope.

I couldn’t see it, but I had nowhere else to go.

My mother bought me a bus ticket to Sacramento. She and my stepdad brought me to the station. My son came into town on a bus, right as I was leaving. Saw him briefly. He was a young man, tall, rangy, good-looking kid. He had been through some struggles that left a mark, just a look in his eyes, a tense smile, an obligatory hug. Then my bus was leaving. Sitting in the bus, I was thinking how long it had been since I had seen my son. In my condition, I wondered if I would see him again.

For the trip to Sacramento, I had forty dollars, a tweed jacket, a button-down white shirt, and a backpack. I had a duffel bag full of clothes, and a book – the Norton Anthology of English literature, 1000 pages thick. And I was wearing a beat-up old fedora. I left a few things at my mother's, but that was the sum total of my material possessions. The bus trip from Baton Rouge to Sacramento was mostly through west Texas, just endless miles of dirt and tumbleweeds.

At the Texas border, close to New Mexico, the bus stopped for a break at a truck stop. I was sitting at a table alone, having a cup of coffee and reading my book. After ten minutes or so, I went outside, and the bus was gone. My phone and my wallet were in my jacket, and the jacket was on the bus. My backpack, my ticket, my duffle bag, everything was on the bus. I felt a surge of panic.

I approached a group of Harley-Davidson type bikers. Hey, guys, did the bus leave?

A burly guy with a bandana on his head, a red goatee, and tattoos all over both forearms nodded and said, Yep, just pulled out a couple of minutes ago.

I looked out at the empty road stretching through miles of tumbleweeds. Motherfucker! I scuffed at the dirt. An urge to chug a pint came to mind. I walked around in circles talking to myself and kicking at the dirt.

A couple of truckers were sitting in the sun on the bumper of a truck. Hey guys, I was riding the bus to Albuquerque, and it left, could you give me a ride to the next stop?

One guy turned away. The other looked me over for awhile. I don’t know what I looked like. I had lost weight. My jeans were baggy and I didn’t fill out my coat. My faded old fedora covered long, scraggly gray hair. I don’t know what he saw, but he shrugged and said, Sure, I’m going that way. He had one of those big sleeper cabs and I sat in the back. He let me off at a truck stop about ten miles outside of Albuquerque.

I still had ten miles to go to catch my bus.

I was fighting the urge to get roaring drunk. I asked an older couple if they were headed to Albuquerque. Neither replied. They just looked right through me, kind of brain dead, the way people get from looking at nothing but road and tumbleweeds for too long.

I found a young guy with a sporty red Dodge Charger RT at the pump. I rallied my old car-salesman charm. Beautiful car, 340 horsepower? Leather seats?

He looked up and smiled. Yeah, I enjoy it.

I used to sell Dodges, mostly trucks though. I always admired this car.

He smiled.

I told him I missed my bus and needed a ten mile ride to catch it. I could pay for some of your gas, I offered.

Don’t worry about it, I’ll take ya.

A backpack was lifted off my shoulders, Whew!

It was a quick ride. He showed me a little of what the car could do once we got on the highway. He spun the wheels going forty miles per hour. I whooped. Wow, that's some power! He dropped me off at the bus station, right when the next bus was loading up to go to Los Angeles.

Miraculously all my stuff was there, piled on the curb. I put it on the bus going to LA, then to Sacramento.

When I sat down in my seat, this Hispanic guy said, Hey, it's the professor! Hey man, I told that bus driver he left you, but he wouldn’t listen.

I nodded. Thanks, man. Thanks for sticking up for me. The bus eased away from the station. It all worked out.

When I reached Sacramento, my brother picked me up at the station. I had a backpack and my duffle bag.

He said, This it? Got all your stuff?

This is all I got.

He flinched a little, then grabbed my duffle bag. It's good you made it, let's go.

My brother's home is a classic two story, what they call Old Moderne, built in the late 30's in a beautiful tree-lined urban neighborhood. His wife and two teenage daughters were there to greet us at the door, but it was late, so it was brief, and they went upstairs to bed. A plate of dinner was left warming in the oven, and my brother sat with me while I ate. I told him a little bit about the trip but was too tired and in shock to give the details.

The next day he took me out to Mad House, a whole block of sober support homes that sat on the corner of Madison Street and Hazel Avenue. This guy bought one house, and then steadily bought the houses around it. The Big House, where everyone started, was three people to a room, a large kitchen and dining area, and a big group room that hosted three AA meetings per day.

It was a recovery mecca. The AA meetings were like water to the thirsty traveler. Everyone was serious about recovery and lots of mmmhhmmnns and nodding for people working their stuff.

By the time I got to Mad House, I had nothing, nowhere to go, no one to blame. I was ready to see that I was the problem. I stopped ranting and started taking responsibility. I got lots of mmmhhmnns and nods.

I made a friend, Dennis. He had been a successful businessman, who had screwed up like the rest of us and lost most of what he had. It helped to be around people. I had been alone and ashamed for so long.

Mad House had a big industrial kitchen that fed everyone in the village, and the cook quit. I asked if I could cook. I always enjoyed cooking and am reasonably skilled. They traded me the cost of being there for cooking. Monday through Friday dinner were the only prepared meals, but it was a full day's work to feed the eighty people in the community.

I was promoted to the next level in the program, to a room in the house next door. I enjoyed working in the kitchen and feeling productive. People liked my cooking. But I got into a couple of conflicts with management, my same old pattern of fighting authority. They fired me.

I’m not good with disappointment, so I drank a pint of vodka, took a sip, then drank it all down in one big gulp. In AA they say that drinking is like feeding a hungry tiger. The tiger is always there. Once I took a sip, the tiger woke up and I just downed the thing in less than a minute.

Mad House is a community of drunks and addicts. Everyone knew I fell off the wagon, almost before I admitted it to myself. So they suspended me for three days. I could come back if I stayed sober.

My brother put me up in a motel and gave me some meds to ease the cravings and I white-knuckled it for three days. I went back to Mad House for a few more months, then moved to a sober home in midtown Sacramento, closer to where my brother lived. I loved midtown Sacramento, a relic of the gold-rush era and the early twentieth-century industrial boom, tree-lined streets and beautiful one-hundred-year-old Victorian homes.

I enjoyed wandering and looking at the old homes. Everything was biking distance, the store, my meetings, my brother's house. I asked my brother to buy me a bike.

I shopped all over town for the right bike and ended up with a steel, single-speed cruiser with baskets and a bell. After we bought it, I rode through the tree-lined streets, past the beautiful homes, the wind in my hair, breathing in the smell of boyish freedom. When I arrived at the house where I was staying, my brother was waiting. I wore a dimple-to-dimple smile.

He said, You’re happy, huh?

I said, You can’t be as happy as I am right now.

He grinned thinly and knitted his brow. He was the guy with his life intact, mine was in pieces.

You got too much baggage, I said. I got no baggage. All I’ve got is this bike.

He chuckled.

I said, I feel like a ten-year-old kid who just got his first bike.

I’m glad you’re happy. His confused look gave way to a toothy smile.

Then I said, Someday I’m going to ride a bike across America. The camelias were blooming in the spring warmth. I was straddling my new bike. My brother was standing on the curb, hands on his hips. His smile changed to a bemused one.

He must have been thinking, yeah right, twenty years of drinking, forty pounds overweight, still smoking two packs of cigarettes a day… But he just said, Just one day at a time, remember. Let's get you sober and healthy first. It takes a couple of years.

The eight months at Mad House was the longest I had been sober in twenty years. My head was clearer and I had learned what a critical support AA was to my sobriety. I learned to make use of AA, to tell the truth, to receive support, and to give back support.

And I met Dennis, a bald, roly-poly, no bullshit Italian guy. When I moved to the halfway house in midtown, Dennis took me to his regular AA meeting. The group met at noon, seven days a week. It was exactly what I needed. AA comes in many different flavors, and every meeting is different. In open groups, everyone is welcome. Closed groups are for specific populations. A couple of guys, both with decades of sobriety, decided to create a closed group more consistent with their values. They formed a group for men only.

People need the safety of their peers in recovery. Most open AA groups, especially if they’re large, are softer, and kinder, ‘you screwed up and drank last weekend, oh well, that's okay, we’re glad you’re back, relapse is part of recovery.’ The motto in AA, is All that is required is a willingness to get sober. Most AA groups are open, thank God, or a drunk wouldn’t have anywhere to go.

But I needed more.

My friend Dennis’ group was called the T-Group, T stood for testosterone. Men only, and they were picky about the men they let join. A lot of guys were California Republicans, and the group was all about hardline values.

They were not forgiving in the least: You dumb ass! Why didn’t you call? You’ve got a phone list! Pick up the phone and call! What’re you doing here if you don’t want to stay sober?

That was the kind of support I needed. I didn’t need mollycoddling. I needed accountability. Another important credo in AA is, if you want what we have… Yeah, I wanted what they had achieved. I wanted the sobriety, the level-headedness. I wanted the ability to handle issues in a rational, considerate way. And I wanted those things to lead to some kind of functional success, in employment, relationships.

Of course, T- Group is not exactly politically correct. But I grew up a middle-class white kid in Louisiana suburbia. Besides a stint in the Navy, I lived my whole life in Louisiana until I moved to California. So the roots of my politics were Deep South politics. And the South is still fighting the Civil War. It's a very us versus them kind of attitude. The South is not about political correctness. This ran me into trouble with people in California, mostly my brother and sister-in-law, who are Democrats.

I identified as Republican, the party of values. I thought we had to maintain a society of values and for the government to leave us alone, not overregulate us, not tax us, and not waste our hard-earned money on folks who weren’t doing their fair share. My brother and I had some conflicts over politics. He had me apply for Social Security Disability. I was reluctant. He kept saying, It's your money. You paid into the system when you were working so that if you get sick and can’t work, you can have some money to live on while you’re recovering. But I couldn’t see it. It was a government handout to me. It made me one of them in my mind, instead of one of us.

The bike seemed to be all I needed. I rode to AA meetings. I rode to my brother's house and spent more time with his family. He had two wonderful dogs, a Wheaten Terrier, and a little Maltese mutt rescued from the pound. The two of them were a delightful mix. I’d walk the dogs to the City Cemetery. The dogs were part of my sober support team.

My brother brought me to yoga, a very gentle form called Yin Yoga. It was perfect for me because I was beat up and stiff from years of abusing myself. The instructor, a beautiful soul of a person, would come by and she had a magical way of adjusting me with just a small, gentle, but firm touch. My brother and I also participated in an eight-week Mindfulness course. I couldn’t sit with my legs crossed and was struggling to concentrate, but the class taught me to slow down, be quiet and still, and try to be present. Plus, I got to spend more time with my brother.

I was feeling better. My brother had a warped ping pong table. The ball would go on crazy hops. For a while the ball just zipped past and I spent a lot of time retrieving it. But as I felt better, I started picking up those hops and even beat my brother a few games.

I was interested in a few women I had met. But AA discourages relationships during recovery. They have a saying that became my mantra: Behind every skirt there's a slip. I had a few offers, but I stayed true to my mantra.

My brother bought me a cellphone. I started talking to my kids again, especially my son and my older daughter. My kids were having their own struggles with drugs and alcohol while I was out of commission. That was hard to learn about. Just keep working it, my friend Dennis would say. Just keeping working it. My brother kept saying, Your recovery is helping your kids. It's the most important thing you can give them.

I left the halfway house, had a couple of shared living situations that didn’t work out. It seemed my brother had to move me to a new place every couple of months. In AA they have a saying, However far you walked into the wilderness, that's how far you have to walk back out.

But I had my bike. I had the dogs. I had my brother. And I had my group. The group kept me working. Those guys talked a lot about finding humility and gratitude, chipping away at the outer roughness, all that edgy defensiveness, to get to the accepting, humble, grateful core.

My bike was stolen, which bummed me out. I loved that bike. My brother bought me another one, which was just as nice. I found a great little house, that wasn’t too far from my meeting. The house was in a friendly neighborhood in South Sac, mostly Hispanic. I loved it. I went to the Mexican supermarket nearby. I tried all kinds of new things, chilaquiles, sopes, menudo, and these great treats, dulce de leche, chamoy, spicy lollipops. I was having fun. I hadn’t had fun in a very long time.

I came into a little money, bought a laptop so I could look for jobs. I applied for a few, but nothing worked out. I spent time on Facebook, reconnected with an old girlfriend, Allison, who lived in Virginia. We talked daily.

I met a friend in AA who lived just a couple doors down. He was a bicycle mechanic. I talked to him about my dream of riding across the country. We scoured magazines looking at the kind of equipment I would need and the route I could take.

I had gained and lost forty pounds during my recovery. I was cycling thirty to forty miles a day just to get around town. Maybe I could do it?

My second bike got stolen and my brother got the redass and wouldn’t buy me another one. I was wearing out my welcome.

Allison had gotten divorced and was looking to change her life. She said, Move to Virginia and stay with me. She was pretty and smart, and I always seemed to make women happy, for a little while. I had two years of sobriety. I had no inclination to drink. I was feeling good and a little restless. So, I moved out to Virginia. I would be closer to my kids in North Carolina and back in the South.

And in the back of my mind, I was still thinking of riding a bicycle across the country. The Transamerica Bike trail begins in Virginia, not too far from where Allison lived.

Allison and I got along for about seven months. But I was having the same old conflicts, feeling nagged and devalued, getting defensive and mad.

I kept up my sobriety, was just a few months short of my three-year chip. In AA they give us a chip for big anniversaries like the first year, second year, etc. I was feeling good about my sobriety, but I knew it is always one day at a time. If I didn’t stay vigilant, I would fall back in the bottle and be drowning again. I didn’t want that. I wanted to ride a bike across the country. I don’t know why the idea had such a grip on me, but it was the only thing I could think of. So as things fell apart with Allison, I thought, I’m not on the hook to anybody or anything. I can just go.

I had been talking with another old girlfriend from Baton Rouge, Renee’. She was a crazy redhead with whom I fought and loved and fought and loved for a few years while we were in college. Married and living in Portland, she was the editor of a small local journal. We were in touch through Facebook and she said, Come out to Portland and you can write for the journal. That appealed to me. I used to write for a couple of local magazines in Baton Rouge and had a little success.

I found an old touring bike, a 1981 Fuji World Tour. The guy had won it in a raffle, then put it in the attic. The tires were rotten, and the frame had a few spots of rust. But it was the right bike. The bike was advanced for its time: steel frame, which I needed because the bike had to carry weight over long distances, a triple crank, more gears for climbing, single-piece forged crank arms, solid, reliable for pushing over many hills and many miles. It already had racks, front and rear, so all it needed was a little polish, a tune up, and panniers.

I called my brother. He helped with money to purchase the bike and the equipment I needed. He bought me a new iPhone so I could keep in touch. I called my mother to get some financial help. She wouldn’t have it. She's not one for crazy schemes. Allison gave me a little traveling money, or rather good riddance money. I also had a little support from Uncle Sam, I got on food stamps while I was in Sacramento. About $160 per month went straight into a card that I could use in any state. My brother was pissed I didn’t cooperate with getting disability, so he pushed me to apply for food stamps.

I had been stalking the TransAmerica Bike Trail on the internet for awhile. I really wanted their maps so I could chart my course. Four thousand people per year ride the TransAm. People along the way are used to seeing cyclists. A consciousness is raised, a sense of community exists among the cyclists and locals along the way. If I stayed on a common route I wouldn’t be out there alone.

And I could count on AA for support. It's a brotherhood, folks in a meeting are going through the same thing, struggling to get their lives back on track. I could see on the map all these little towns I would be visiting and knew an AA meeting would welcome and support me in each town. That was a big comfort. That is what really helped me imagine I could do it…knowing that the brotherhood was in the next town.

I brought the bike to a neat bike shop to get the gear needed and the bike tuned up. A big swirling sign out front announced, Classic Cycles, and a beautiful original old 1956 Schwinn Roadster was displayed in the front window.

The owner was a middle-aged guy with round glasses, short, but thick gray hair underneath a tight-fitting cap.

Hi, I said. I need to get my bike tuned up for a cross-country trip.

His head cocked a little as he looked me over. I had gained a lot of weight. Then his eyes really widened when he looked at the bike. He looked it over from every angle. Hefted it, bounced it, spun the wheels, turned the crank, changed the gears. It's an old bike, he said. The way he was looking at me, I could’ve sworn he was thinking, And you’re an old fat guy. But he didn’t say it. He just turned back to the bike and said, It's in pretty good shape, considering. I can get it ready. It will take me a few days.

While the bike was getting readied, I plotted my course. I was starting at Yorktown and headed through Virginia to climb the Appalachians, then across Kentucky, and over the mighty Mississippi into Missouri and Kansas to traverse the Great Plains, then Colorado to scale the Rocky Mountains. After the Rockies, the US 76 routes north toward Portland, basically following the Oregon Trail. I wanted to go to Sacramento, so I planned to trek through the desert in Utah and Nevada and over the Sierras to Sacramento, on the path called the Western Express, which is loosely based on the old Pony Express route. Then to San Francisco, and after touching a wheel in the Pacific, I was going to bike up the West Coast to Portland, to see Renee’.

Chapter 1

WE ADMITTED WE WERE POWERLESS OVER ALCOHOL AND OUR LIVES HAVE BECOME UNMANAGEABLE

I

stood surveying the slight uphill climb to the Yorktown monument. A wispy mist fell, and fat droplets gathered and dripped from the bill of my old fedora. Dense clouds, bruised and puckered with moisture, threatened