America on Two Wheels: Biking Coast to Coast in Search of Human Stories

By David King

In 2015, 36-year-old Chicago resident David King finds himself at a personal and professional crossroads. Feeling bored and restless, he longs to strike out on a crazy journey in a quest for beauty, kindness, and inspiration as to where his life should go from here. Having taken up biking as a hobby, he cons

• Language: English
• Publisher: David King
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578374505

David King

Sir David King is the UK Government's Chief Science Adviser.  In this position, he has instigated the Energy Research Partnership, run the Government Foresight program on Flood and Coastal Defenses, and set up the Climate Change Conference at Exeter in 2005, as well as lectured on climate change to numerous parliaments and governments. 

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Prologue

I pull my bicycle up to a stretch of dirt beside a two-lane road. To the left of me, palm trees dot the rugged green hills of Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. To the right, the hazy slopes of La Jolla lie low in the distance. Before me, a vast, undulating blanket of blue unfolds as far as the eye can see.

It’s just past 11 on a Wednesday morning in March. The air is warm, around 70 degrees, though the wind brings a bit of a chill. Not many people are around on this rugged patch of the San Diego coast. Which makes sense, because any normal person would be at work or school now.

Looking out at the greenish-blue-and-white of the Pacific, its fledgling waves making for the coast over and over again, I stand next to just about everything I’ll call mine for the next several months: a silver Trek 7.2FX hybrid bike with a rear rack holding two bags on the sides, another up top; a digital speedometer/odometer; a water bottle; a U-lock. In my bags I’ve packed enough clothes for four days, the plan being to look for washing machines in hotels and laundromats. Since I’ve never liked the look of tight-fitting bike clothes, I’ve got on a T-shirt and padded, flowing shorts. The visor of a Chicago Marathon cap pokes out from beneath my helmet, just above dark sunglasses.

The bike with all its baggage is so heavy that I can’t use the kickstand. I lay it down gently in the dirt and walk toward the edge of a short cliff.

I don’t have any friends in San Diego. I know one person who’s passing through from Chicago, but she was busy this morning. So, here I am, on my own, trying to figure out a way to symbolically start this journey.

I want to do like my friend Rocco did and put my tire in the ocean. To my left, a winding, narrow staircase leads about 50 feet down to a patch of rock. The bike’s too heavy to carry down and back, and I don’t feel like taking all the bags off and putting them back on. Even if I made it to the bottom, it would probably be too dangerous to maneuver the bike on the slippery surface. I leave it instead and descend the stairs on my own.

At the bottom, I skirt a curved wall at the base of the cliff and step carefully along a narrow ledge, the metal clips at the bottom of my shoes making a clack-clack sound. I arrive at a small promontory with a chalk-like consistency. Pools of water and algae from the blowing surf collect in its divots, and a couple of pelicans walk around as the water crashes behind them.

I’m already disappointed that I can’t put my tire in the water, but now there’s another challenge: The ocean sits a few feet down from the edge of the promontory. Between the pockmarked surface of the rock and the water acting as a lubricant, it would be precarious to even try to reach my hand down to sea level. So, I do the next best thing.

When the water arcs up into the air and crashes down, I place my outstretched palm into one of the shallow pools of frothy saltwater left behind. I leave it in for as long as I can, trying to take in this surreal moment. I feel a mix of excitement, pressure, loneliness, and, among it all, a kind of numbness.

Am I really here? Is this really happening?

I know I have to live this moment to the fullest. Yet I know, too, that it will soon be gone. Do I just experience it, or do I try to document it — whether in my mind or with photographs — so that I can remember it later, and also recount it to others? Doing that would take me away from the present moment.

This is a question I’ll grapple with again and again over the next four months.

Another wave crashes down and spits its spray at me. WOOOOOO! I scream out.

Back at the top of the cliff, I ask a passing couple to take my picture. Standing with the ocean to my back, I hold the bike with both hands. It’s not lost on me that this is the before shot — and I honestly don’t know whether there will be an after one.

After thanking the couple, I take one last look out onto the vast expanse of the Pacific, knowing this will be the last time I see it. Then, with the smell of saltwater in the air, I hop on my bike and start pedaling east.

Toward Miami.

•

It’s a cold, wintery day in 2015, and I’m sitting at my desk at work in the Chicago suburbs. Browsing the web mindlessly, I land on a story in Wired titled How I Survived Biking Through the Mojave Desert for Three Days. It’s written by a woman who’s driven her pickup truck with her bicycle out into the desert, and then, on two wheels, set out to roam around.

As I read through the story, learning about her braving the elements all alone as she rides during the day and sleeps in a tent at night, an idea gets to percolating. I’m not quite sure what prompts it, but somehow, gears in my mind turn. Slowly, a wave of inspiration washes over me.

Hey, Rick, I say, turning to my co-worker. Wouldn’t it be cool if I rode my bike across the country?

Yeah, man! he says. That would be so cool.

I bring up a Google map of the United States. As I stare at it, trying to calculate just how wide the country is, another co-worker walks by.

Hey, Cameron? I ask. Wouldn’t it be awesome to ride your bike across the whole country?

Yeah, dude! he replies. That would be dope.

I gaze at the map, my thoughts wandering.

Hah!, I think incredulously. Bike across America — what a crazy idea.

•

Like many kids, I started riding a bicycle at a young age without thinking much about it. Growing up in New York City, I practiced riding with training wheels around our housing complex. One day, my parents pushed me across our local playground without the training wheels, and when they let go, amazingly, I continued to roll forward without falling! It felt exhilarating, even if it boggled my mind as to how I could stay up.

As I got older, I rode around the neighborhood for fun with my brother and our neighbors. This advanced to looping around Central Park, then going even farther out in the city. Still, I never took bike riding too seriously.

After moving to Chicago at the age of 25, I continued riding for fun every now and then, maybe a few miles at most. Then, one spring day a few years later, I needed to get from my apartment on the north side of the city up to a suburb where my young cousins were performing in a dance recital. Since I didn’t own a car, I hopped on my bike, planning to ride as far as an el train station and then take public transit the rest of the way. When I reached the station, I felt good and kept riding. I made it to a commuter train station in the first suburb outside the city but didn’t know the departure times for the train or the suburban bus. Figuring it would be faster to continue all the way to the recital hall, I kept on pedaling.

Incredibly, I made it — 12 miles without stopping once! Walking into the auditorium with my T-shirt drenched in sweat, I felt terrific.

I wanted to go further. Knowing that the closest big city to Chicago was Milwaukee, I looked up the distance. Some 90 miles — forget that! But I found that if I took a commuter train to the end of the line, Kenosha, WI, it would be only 30 or 35 miles from there to downtown Milwaukee. So, one Saturday in the summer of 2007, I put my bike on the train, rode to the last stop, and started pedaling north. I felt scared taking on such a challenge, but I loved the excitement of exploring new terrain. The excitement won out: I made it to Milwaukee in a little under seven hours of riding — covering not 35 miles, but, unexpectedly, over 50! The longer distance felt all the more satisfying.

Over the next few years, I set myself increased challenges: Chicago to South Haven, MI, in two days. South Bend, IN, to Homewood, IL, in two days. Then, in 2010, I set out to do the very thing I had considered crazy a few years before: bike all the way from Milwaukee to Chicago. I rode Amtrak up on a Saturday and, the next day, pedaled back down, covering 100 miles in one day.

A hundred miles in a single day!

In early 2011, a friend recommended a book called Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, by Dean Karnazes. In it, Karnazes recounts how, after giving up running in high school, he started again years later and eventually went on to run extremely long distances. He did not just marathons, but 200 miles at a stretch. Sometimes he ran races, and sometimes he ran just for himself. He faced ups and downs both physical and mental, but what excited me as much as his biggest achievements was the fact that he didn’t know when he set out if he’d even make it in the end. But he did, almost every time.

By the time I reached the end of the book, after Karnazes had run 200 miles to raise money for a sick young girl in the hospital, I felt deeply moved. His stories gave me a sense of heartfelt longing. How, I wondered, could I have my own incredible journey?

I decided to try to beat my own distance record. I’d ride 105 miles in a single day, from the Chicago suburb of Joliet down to Urbana-Champaign, IL. Not only did I make it, but between getting lost and detouring to find water, I covered 123 miles! I crashed at a hotel at 1:45 a.m. and had trouble walking the next day. But I was hooked.

Over the next few years, I continued doing city pairs. This made for a sense of closure to the journeys, but also would allow people to grasp the scale of the distances when I told them about the trips. When a three-day weekend came around, I’d hop on Amtrak, Greyhound, or Megabus to the starting city, and then, after biking to my destination, take the train or bus back to Chicago.

After Joliet to Urbana-Champaign came Urbana-Champaign to Springfield, IL (100 miles), then Springfield to St. Louis (119 miles), then St. Louis to Carbondale, IL (110 miles). By the time I finished Carbondale to Charleston, MO, I had covered the entire length of Illinois from top to bottom!

But hey, at just 150 more miles, Memphis, TN, wouldn’t be that much farther, would it? The next time, I started in Charleston, MO, and made it down to Memphis in two days (164 miles). Followed by Memphis to Jackson, MS (260 miles). Then Jackson to New Orleans (207 miles).

I’d ridden all the way from Milwaukee to New Orleans! This was crazy!

And yet I loved it. It wasn’t just a left-brain pursuit of accomplishment. It was also a right-brain delight in exploring new places, in philosophizing, in feeling, in learning, all while, yes, getting the exhilarating endorphin high of a cardio workout.

I biked not just to find beauty, but for the ability to see it. I biked not just to escape, but to come back to myself. I biked to see with my heart what my eyes couldn’t. Riding down local streets in far-away small towns, or even a country highway in the middle of nowhere, gave me a taste for an America that was very different from my urban childhood in New York and my young-adult life in Chicago. I biked through small towns and countryside, along farmland and bayous, over bridges and along shoulders, not just for the verdant greenery and the cute mailboxes made to look like a barn or a cow, but to find myself out there among it all.

I thought New Orleans would be the last stop; there were no big cities south of it. But no, I realized, the Gulf of Mexico would not be the end of the line. I would simply change direction.

Making a return to my roots, I rode from Philadelphia to New York in one day, covering 112 miles. As I descended Broadway in Manhattan, I soaked in the hustle-and-bustle of the Upper West Side and the lights of Times Square with a new appreciation for the hometown to which I still felt deeply connected. My brother, who was visiting our parents from California, met me after 1 a.m. in front of their building. After all these crazy rides, I had returned on a bicycle to the place I had grown up — the place where my parents had taught me how to ride.

But no, New York wouldn’t be the end, either. A month later, I did my longest distance ever: 422 miles from Montreal to Boston, a journey of 12 days.

•

Sitting in my office that wintery day in 2015, having just read the article about the woman who biked in the desert for three days, I stare at the map of America. It mesmerizes me. I’ve already got a three-day ride from Los Angeles to San Diego coming up. But somehow, the woman’s story of touring on her own out in the desert causes something in my mind to shift. For a reason I can’t quite explain, it blows wide open for me the concept of what’s possible.

It helps that I’m at a place in my life where I feel stuck. At age 36, I’ve tried to make it for years as a writer. My only successes have been a handful of internships and some scattered freelance pieces in newspapers and magazines. I’m now at my first full-time writing(-ish) position, helping to craft corporate training materials for a company with great co-workers but a management style that drives me crazy. The money’s decent, but I’m feeling bored and restless.

At this point, I’m still single and not tied down by family obligations. I’ve got a strong impulse for exploration, for adventure, for getting off the beaten path. As long as I still have that independence, why not make the most of it?

I look at the computer screen and seriously wonder: What would be the shortest route coast-to-coast?

Zooming in and out of the map, I begin to estimate distances between major cities. I concentrate on parts of the country I’ve never been to before, looking for as flat a route as possible. I try to find a hotel, motel, or youth hostel every 90 miles or so at most. (I’m too much of a city slicker to camp.)

Lodging every 90 miles? Is this even possible? Aren’t there parts of America where you can drive for hundreds of miles without seeing a sign of life? To my amazement, the country is so built up that it is possible to find a place to sleep every 90 miles between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Slowly, this crazy idea seems less crazy. If I were to actually try this, it would be a real chance to open up my riding and see what I’m truly capable of. To see how far I can push beyond my mental limitations, like Dean Karnazes did. At a time when I feel like I’m not moving forward in life and am in need of inspiration, this would be a terrific way to get perspective. Hopefully, by the end of it, the next step in my life will have presented itself organically.

Doing this would also be an extension of my ongoing spiritual journey, one that stems from the Judaism in which I grew up to the more Buddhist-like path of introspection I find myself on now. It would offer an opportunity to seek out God in the beauty, in the kindness, in the humanity of regular people I’d meet along the way. While I’m more of a private person, I do love writing stories of people outside the public spotlight who will make readers think, feel, or consider something in a new way… hopefully inspiring them, too.

Because I’ve been inspired by others before me: Paul Theroux, whose slow-burn literary travelogues recounting train trips from London to Japan, or an overland journey from Cairo to Cape Town, captivate you with engaging descriptions, thought-provoking dialogue, and intelligent-but-unpretentious musings. Christopher McCandless, who left his comfortable upper-middle-class life to set out across America with a hunger for something deeper, something more real (a story chronicled in the book and movie Into the Wild). Adam Gopnik, whose masterful writing on living in France for five years transports and delights you. A man named Ludovic Hubler, a Frenchman I met who was in the midst of hitchhiking around the world — yes, literally around the world. And a friend of mine named Felicia Schneiderhan, who fell in love with a man who lived aboard a 38-foot-trawler docked on the Chicago River. She threw caution to the wind and moved in with him, and today, they’re happily married with three kids (though now on land).

If Felicia could pare down her belongings from apartment-sized to a few cubic feet and live the writerly life aboard a boat for two years, maybe I could do the same on a bike for a few months?

I study the Google map. The gears in my mind continue to turn.

It comes to me: I’ll ride from San Diego to Miami.

A distance of 3,300 miles.

To do in, oh, four months?

•

I just want to let you know that after I visit Daniel, I’m going on another bike trip, I tell my mom.

It’s a February afternoon a year later when I’m holed up in a conference room at work during a break. My mom is on the line from New York, and my brother from California.

Oh? she asks. Where are you going?

Well, I’m going to head down to San Diego, I say, and from there, I’m going to start out heading east… I pause for dramatic effect.

And keep going until I reach Miami.

Silence.

Hoooooly ssssugar!

My mom never says holy sugar.

Miami, Florida? she asks deliberately.

Yeah.

How many days? How many miles?

3,300.

All in one trip?

Yes.

How long will all this take you?

Four months.

Four months?

Yup.

There’s a pause.

Her voice lowers: Have you lost your job?

I laugh. No. They’re giving me a leave of absence for four-and-a-half months. They’re going to hire me back when I get back in July.

After poring over the Google map last January, I quietly started to save up money. I charted out how many miles I thought I could do each day. I tried to figure out exactly how much I could pack into about three bags. In the fall, I asked my boss if she’d be willing to let me go for four months starting in March. She checked with the HR person, who said I’d technically have to submit my letter of resignation but that they’d hire me when I got back, assuming there wasn’t a hiring freeze. It was absolutely worth the risk.

For the rest of that year, I kept mostly quiet about my plans. When my brother visited Chicago in October to watch me run my first (and only) marathon, I shared the news with him. When January came around, I started telling co-workers. But there was one person I hesitated to tell, because I knew she’d freak out.

Is someone sponsoring you? my mom asks.

No. I’ve saved up some money, and I’m going to take a laptop along and do some TOEFL-scoring along the way.

In addition to my day job writing corporate training courses, I hold down a side gig scoring the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, an English competency exam for foreigners. My plan is to continue doing this during the trip to earn money.

I mean, I know some people do this kind of ride and try to hit up every pizza place along the way, my mom offers.

No, I’m just going to have the experience, I say. I just want to explore, and meet new people, and write about it afterwards.

I didn’t want to tell you earlier, I explain, because I knew you’d freak out, and I wanted you to freak out for only a minimal amount of time.

Well, hold on, she says. If this is me freaking out, it’s not that I’m freaking out unhappily. You just have to give me some time to let this sink in.

There are some good barbecue places in Texas I can point him to, my brother chimes in.

Is this the first Daniel’s hearing of this? my mom asks.

No, I told him after the Marathon back in October.

Oh, so you knew! she says, a bit of bemusement in her voice.

Yeah, he admits.

Yeah.

And now the cat’s really out of the bag.

•

I heard you are going on a long bike trip, a coworker instant-messages me before my last day at my job. Where are you heading?

I tell him I’m starting in San Diego and heading toward Miami. I’m leaving myself 4 1/2 months, I write. About 3,300 miles. I’ll be back in July.

that’s awesome! he replies. I had a buddy who went from San Diego to the Carolinas somewhere, he continues. "My buddy blogged about his trip while he did - http://noeasywriter.blogspot.com/."

I bring up his friend’s blog. At the top of the page there’s an enormous photo of a long road leading into the distance, beside a field with a mountain creeping up off to the right — Monument Valley. The image provokes in me a mix of excitement and fear. I’m enthralled by the idea of riding long distances through nature in the middle of nowhere, but I’m frightened at the idea of getting stuck during long distances through nature in the middle of nowhere. Just the same, I’m enchanted at seeing the open road.

The bio for this man, Rocco, says he’s an English professor with an academic interest in comics who’s twice survived cancer.

Rocco looks really cool, I type to my coworker.

Yeah. Rocco is someone I want to meet.

•

A week later, on an overcast morning in early March, 2016, I navigate my rental car up Interstate 5 from San Diego. The road skirts the Pacific Ocean, and the open water off to my left is a sight for sore eyes after a winter in Chicago. The air is surprisingly cool today. Of course, I’m wearing shorts, because who would have thought you’d need to pack pants for the southern edge of the United States, whatever the season? Obviously not this Northerner.

Having flown in last night, I’ve camped out at a Comfort Inn by the airport for a few days. My bike’s waiting for me at the San Diego Amtrak station, after I shipped it on the train from Chicago. (Doing that is cheaper than FedEx or UPS.) In the meantime, I’m heading up to San Marcos, a city 40 miles north of San Diego. There, Rocco Versaci, chair of the English department at Palomar College, has offered to meet me for lunch.

I pull into this gas station in Arizona, Rocco tells me over fish tacos with rice and beans at Rubio’s, a Mexican grill near campus. "And there’s this super-scary-looking guy on the phone. You know, he’s got long hair. He’s got this cut-out jean jacket with some devil’s symbol on the back. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my God’. So, I pull far away from him. I go in the bathroom, and I come back out, and I realized I had parked my bike right in front of his motorcycle. So, he’s looking at my bike and taking pictures and stuff — and he’s the nicest guy!"

Rocco wears an olive-green V-neck sweater with a gray shirt underneath. The frames of his glasses are black, rounded rectangles, and his dark sideburns and goatee have started to gray a little. You wouldn’t guess he’s the chair of a college English department; he could pass for some cool dude who’s starting to get on in years. You wouldn’t necessarily guess he’s bicycled across the country, either. Both are true.

So, we talk for about an hour, Rocco continues, and at one point, he asked me where I was going. And at that point, I was going to double back at the top of the Grand Canyon, up into Utah. And he’s like, ‘Why are you doing that?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. That’s the way the bikers go.’ And he’s like, ‘That’s a really tough run.’ So, he got his atlas out, and started showing me all these other roads.

Rocco speaks excitedly, meandering from one detail of a story to the next. He occasionally asks me a question or weaves in a technical point before thinking of yet another story to share. Listening to his stories, I feel both inspired and overwhelmed. I know he’s done the very thing that I’m about to embark on, and his stories remind me that I’m not even sure I’ll make it.

Kansas was absolutely brutal, ’cause it was really hot, he says. Because of head winds, I would just stop and scream every once in a while, he adds, breaking out into a laugh.

Rocco Versaci grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1985, he worked for two years in the corporate world, but really wanted to teach college-level English. In 1997, he landed a job at Palomar College, where he’s been ever since.

In 2003, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He got through it, and by the summer of 2010, at age 42, divorced, and with two sons, he wanted to ride his bike from San Diego to North Carolina, where he had a cousin. He took his steel Trek 520 touring bike and dipped the rear tire into the Pacific Ocean. From there, over the next two months he navigated through Monument Valley in northeastern Arizona, into Colorado, onto the Ozarks, across southern Illinois, and all the way over to North Carolina. There, his cousin met up with him to ride the last hundred-some-odd miles. When he reached the Atlantic Ocean, Rocco dipped his front tire in the water. (A book he’s written about the experience, That Hidden Road, is now out.)

He faced challenges along the way. At one point, he had come down from the Colorado Rockies when he felt a knifing sensation under his knee. He went to the ER, where the doctor diagnosed him with acute patellar tendonitis, an injury in the tendon that connects the kneecap to the shinbone. He was prescribed anti-inflammatories, and