Chris’ USA Tour 2006/2007

Route: Link

Austin – Del Rio      233 miles
Del Rio – Marathon 174 miles

I think it is easy to conclude from my former update that until I got to Austin, I wished for a little more variation in the surrounding environment during my trip. It wasn’t even the unexpected relative monotony that eventually began to annoy me, especially the fact that the environment didn’t struck me as being very unique to me lead to the lack of enthousiasm when I arrived in Austin. Apart from the size of the cars and the amount of gas stations, I might as well have been cycling in the dutch province of Drenthe which by the way is a beautiful provence, but apparently not beautiful enough to entertain my eyes with for a few months.Several people assured me that the surrounding environment would definitely change after I’d leave Austin and head west. Unfortunately my faith had been a little busted because I was assured the same during my parts along the eastern coast. But already after a few hours after I’d left Austin it became apparent that Texas Hill Country was not a title thought up by the Union of Texan Travel Bureaus, with the implicit promise of excellent views the hilltops would provide the travelhungry tourists. Texas Hill Country was very, very true. I was provided with one after the other hill like a spoiled brat drowning in toys given by a far too rich aunt with a wart on her nose dying for a little affection from her dearest cousin. So I want hills? Here I have ‘m. But with these magnificient views , different coloured lights and growth on so many beautifully coloured hillsides, the beautiful weather and the endless silence when the wind dies away I am definitely not complaining.A few days later, with a five kilometer long final descent I reach the end of hill country I cycle into the next unique environment. The desert. The environment here is not for the average American, demanding facilities enhancing comfort in all imaginable situations in which an increased heart rate might be expected, with the result that almost no one lives here. Villages are thirty miles apart on avarage and are often so small that one starts to think how they received a name in the first place. Unfortunately, the modern economy together with its inflation also finds its way into these in-the-middle-of-nowhere-villes, forcing a part of the citizens to move away elsewhere. The result of this is that a lot of these villages lose their critical mass and at times seem abandoned while at other times they are abandoned. A strange new role for a lot of the broken down houses is that of being a billboard for God & Jesus. Frankly, to me the chance of searching soles finding faith and hope from texts written on the ruins of former places of protection against wind and chill seem rather slim, but apparently some people share a different conviction. While cycling through this beautiful environment, really enjoying myself and the fact that I decided to embark on this wild journey, I suddenly awakened out of my slumber by a sharp cracking sound, followed an hour or so later by an annoying squeeky sound. After some research it turned out my seat post was broken. Luckily I was within a few miles of civilization and I guess I was even luckier when I met a girl on a bicycle. Her name turned out to be Mary and she was on her way to her gallery from where she made and sold her paintings. Mary and her husband Neil happened to own about four bicycles. An hour later my bike was repaired and I had a place to sleep, one of Neil’s three houses, for the upcoming days.Until a few years ago Neil had been a businessman with a growing desire for living in a quiet community. Marathon, a pencil dot of a town with 455 inhabitants proved to be the perfect place, but it so turned out that Neil’s busy mind was a lot harder to put to rest. This, together with his keen nose for good deals has lead to ownership of several homes and pieces of land in Marathon. The richest man in town, Mr. Big isn’t extremely happy with this situation, especially now Neil owns a piece of land that Mr. Big was particularly keen on. But Mr. Big in his turn owns a piece of land that Neil would like to get his hands on. This game, known by insiders as Marathonopoly has been going on for a while and my guess is that it will be over long after I have set on dutch soil again. In retrospect I think that the fact that my seatpost broke was more of an advantage than a disadvantage. If it wouldn’t have broken I wouldn’t have met Mary and would have come to know nothing more about Marathon than the quality of cable television in Motel Marathon for something like 35 bucks a night, waiting for a snowstorm that eventually laid a plaid of snow about five inches thick over the town. In stead, I had an awesome time with Mary, Neil and several of their friends, including Kate, an artist living in Marfa, which turned out to be my next sleeping place. If only the wind is going to help my out tomorrow….that’s all I can wish for.

Route:
Atlanta-Pensacola 324 miles
Pensacola-Gulfport 133 miles
Gulfport-Bogalusa 68 miles
Bogalusa-Austin 528 miles

Three months ago I started this journey in the quiet hope that each day would bring new surprises. Surprises which I would take to me as indispensable vitamins to feed my initially boundless enthusiasm with new impulses each day. I also started this trip in the quiet hope that the only set backs which I would encounter would be physical ones. And finally, I started this trip with a more than quiet hope (the expectation) that the changes in the landscape were going to be more dramatic than a change in the colour of the canopy from dark green to a somewhat lighter dark green. The hope that naivete in my case would be synonymous to realism and the idea that my tour would become a continuous chain of highlights materialized into a fantasy about a month ago.

It was around that time that my bank cards and gps were stolen, and my trip from there to Austin didn’t exactly mark the high light of my trip. And though it would seem obvious to blame this on the fact that my cards were stolen, I had the irresistable urge to find a deeper reason for my mood swing from sunny to overcast. Not only as a means of killing time in this stubbornly unchanging environment (though the inserted picture, shot after a day filled with horrid weather is a beautiful representation of the opposite), but really because I did not want to believe that my mood could mostly be determined by the loss of two square flat pieces of plastic.

And before I knew it I was contemplating the real reason for my trip, the search to find my inner self and my place within the all covering biggest picture of things. The big questions, questions you would normally only ponder over when you’re drunk I began pondering while being completely sober. The great advantage of being drunk is the cover that slowly but surely is being laid over the night and your mental capacities. After a while questions don’t require answers anymore because as the hours go by you eventually forget to remember the questions. Sober on a bicycle on a quiet road without distractions the questions keep repeating themselves. And without trained psychologists or the Dalai Lama on the side of the road the chance of coming up with the final answers in my head, where I’m fully dependant on my own logic and wisdom are extremely slim.

The only remedy to this mental state is a good follow up question. Standing in front of the house of my next warmshowers host with my bicycle in my hand I was presented with a very good follow up question: “Who in heaven’s name is this BJ (Big Jeff) Johnston character I’d written via warmshowers?” In his kind anwer he had written me that I had a place to sleep for the following days, but he expected to be working around the time I’d show up at his house.

While I’m unloading my bike and he indeed turns out not to be home, I try to get an idea of the type of host I decided to envite myself to as a guest. I look around and I see myself standing on a patch of loose gravel, enclosed at the left side by the road and on the right side by abundantly growing weeds, a jacuzzi and a dirty, no, disgusting! previously white enormous pair of underpants. What a disgusting previously white enormous pair of underpants in front of the front door tells about the type of host is a question with a likely disturbing answer. Especially when I link the state and size of the underpants to the name Big Jeff, and gluttony and sloth, two of the seven deadly sins are starting to seriously mess with my already disturbed fantasy. Unfortunately, for now there weren’t any, more comforting clues. All six windows of the light green painted house only provided me with an inside look up until the closed blinds, about two inches behind the glass, so what the house looked like on the inside remained unanswered. However, blinded windows are sedomly promising. BJ is providing me with a place to sleep the next couple of days, great! I couldn’t decide whether to cheer or swallow. Because it was starting to get dark and cold quickly and because I had no money to stay in a hotel I decided to cheer, albeit quietly. So quietly in fact that it could easily have been mistaken for breathing out loudly.

Four hours later I’m standing in a bar with about ten people (of whom no one was called BJ) slamming shots like it’s water, what it actually is for the most part anyway. And a few hours after that I’m standing next to my bed trying to convince BJ and Ryan (his room mate) that I do really need to get some sleep at this point. Big Jeff (a nick name his parents gave him when he was little) and Ryan turn out to be two bad-ass dudes and the disgusting pair of underpants turns out to be a Halloween prop and current property of Homer, a six months old black lovely labmix. The coming days are highly unlikely to become resting days. The guy who stayed here before me (who also contacted BJ via warmshowers) described them on his weblog as a fucking riot, which basically means that at this point they are living life like it’s a big bottle of beer that ought to be drank through a straw, before dinner time and preferably with an unlimited amount of tequila shots…metaphorically spoken of course (of course!). The current guest (me) thinks they’re mentally unstable isotopes of crazy drunk Uranium, which basically means that they should thank the heavens that they have Johnna the house angel (and non-girlfriend) of Ryan) a little counter balance to otherwise unavoidable total crazyness.

When BJ answered my mail saying I had a place to stay for the next couple of days both of us didn’t know that I’d still be here waiting for my bank cards, four weeks later. The first set of cards got lost in the mail and the second set got delayed because of the holidays. And even though I couldn’t have picked a better place to stay while waiting, now that my cards have finally arrived it’s time to go. Yesterday we were sitting on the couch watching Rome and after a while BJ pushed the “pause-button”, turns to me and says: “You know, when someone asks you, you could actually say you lived in Austin for a while.” When, while being a tourist, you get into this kind of a situation, you indeed feel relieved when the situation finally changes and you can get back to being tourist again. I was anyway, but I’m sure my extended stay in Austin in time will prove to be one of the high lights of my tour. It has to be, I stayed here for a whole fucking month! ;- )

File Route: Wilmington-Atlanta

A week ago I subscribed to a site called ‘www.warmshowers.org’. This site aims to offer free places to stay for cyclists looking for a place to stay. People all over the world have subscribed to site resulting in a world wide network of places to stay. The only condition to subscription is that you have to make your house available to other cyclists looking for a place to stay. My first place was in Wilmington, the city at the end of The Outer Banks. Because of a lack of free beds in the house, my first sleeping place turned out to be the lawn behind the house. Because the people I was staying with were very nice I pitched my tent way beyond daylight time and go to bed. As expected I wake up about an hour or two after I slipped into my comfortable sleeping bag because I feel the need to pee. And as always I try my best to ignore my full bladder (at which I’ve never succeeded), eventually crawl out of my sleeping bag, swing my legs from the inner tent to the vestibule and put my slippers on, slippers which I’ve casually put into a fire ants nest before I went to bed.

When I overlook the damage the next morning I’m glad to be able to put shoes over my feet, not to enjoy the feel of it, but from an optical point of view. And also because they were new. New bicycle shoes, the ones with cleats. Cleats are good because they make it possible to pull up your pedals in stead of only putting them down. Cleats are bad because your feet are actually attached to the pedals resulting in a three fold testing of the resilience of natural grass, which I expect to be in between that of sand and concrete.

But the advantage of more strength outweighed the disadvantage of the embarrassment when I would see my professionally outfitted long distance cycling self fall over at a speed of 1.5 miles an hour. And so I arrived at Atlanta two weeks later. Since Atlanta doesn’t exactly lie on the coast, this was the first time that I deviated from my planned route. But because this was the only time I had the possibility of visiting a Dutch friend I permitted myself to do this.

The days in Atlanta proved to be chock full with full blown American entertainment, with the ice hockey game and a basketball game as the high points. Don’t think of an ice hockey game and a basketball game as just two teams of six athletes struggling to be the victors of the night. Because this isn’t just about winning or losing, this is about entertainment. Every second the puck or ball doesn’t move (approximately every three blinks of an eye) for whatever reason there’s something else happening to please the eyes of the audience. On big ass screens about twenty feet above the dead center of the field there’s a lot else to see, apart from the actual in game score. Amongst them are a live version of guess the price, the kiss-cam, a couple of low talented guys trying to make puts on just a freshly brought in green trying to win a BMW, basketball playing acrobats somersaulting from a trampoline, trying (and succeeding) to slam dunk basketballs every two seconds or so, sexy catsuited cheerleaders dancing their little dance, live mascottes shooting folded up t-shirts and towels with the team logo dozens of meters high into the public with a high powered gas pistol and… the public itself, like this man right in front providing us with his ultra personal comments during the game and its discontinuances (“Zaza Pachulia, that’s our man ” and then turning to me saying: “I want you to remember that name… ha ”) and answering a phone about half way through the game crooning Lionel Richie’s love song: “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?”, very romantic and very funny.

The next evening to went to Publix, the supermarket Sebastiaan regularly visits and apparently people even need to be entertained when they’re shopping for groceries. When we arrive at the fruit and vegetable isle for some fresh ingredients for the lasagna I was going to prepare for a couple of friends I notice the little spraying heads that turn on every thirty seconds or so to keep the produce looking fresh and of course I notice the accompanying sound of a rolling thunder… I almost made myself sit down with a bottle of wine from on of the ten thousand to choose from and some chips from the snack isle to enjoy this little bit of entertainment in a grocery shop Oh, how I love the soft cushion of entertainment.

Of course all positive has a negative side and in this case it is that all that’s good must come to an end some time. After I’ve given my cycle a thorough scrub and carried out some heavy needed maintenance it was time to get on the road again. For the first time during my travel I really didn’t want to leave. I had to almost pry myself from Sebastiaan’s house, because I simply had too much fun.

Message: From now on I will add the routes indicating the points between which the stories below ocurred. This way you’ll not only get an idea of what I’ve experienced during my travels, but also where I’ve experienced them.

Route: Lancaster – Waverly

This update is written from behind a computer in a hotel, but this time it hasn’t been the good samaritan drawing his wallet to prove once more what fine people the americans are (however it’s impossible for me to think otherwise). No, this time it has been the State itself reaching me a helping hand. Ironically, it’s only been a few days since I told an enforcer of the law that I hold the government responsible for my only negative experience so far. If I would have met this man after these wonderful nights in a hotel, I undoubtetly would have been milder in my judgement.

But before I unveil the reason for this sympathetic gesture that gives me the prospect of not just one but two days of luxury, I’d like to tell you about my little brush with the strong arm of the law.

And the day had started out so beautiful. It was warm, I had the wind in my back, the sun in my face and smoothly riding along the flat land of the Amish slowly transitioned into a land full of trees through which birds flew that I’d never seen before, fiery red and singing like Abba. And so the hours slowly passed until I arrived at my sleeping place for the night.

Unfortunately, this park turned out to be some sort of golf course and though the green lends itself perfectly as a camp ground, the park attended assured me it really wasn’t supposed to be used as such. Fortunately, Pocahontas State Park turned out to be really closeby, so I turned my bike and rode the three miles to the entrance of my new sleeping place.

Surely this is no problem when youi’re with a car (everyone but me) and probably wouledn’t even really notice the distance, for me it’s increasingly frustrating. The thing is that there wasn’t a cell in my brain anticipating a campsite more than a mile from the entrance and maybe you’ll nderstand my frustration when after dozens of turns I only encouter even more turns whic eventually makes me so mad that I’dd like to kill everything that moves within a twelve mile radius…until I almost run into a sign that says ‘Campground A’ and ‘Campground B’ and all I want to do is take a long hot shower (which turns out not to be there).

The words of the state policeman (called in after my demand to speak to someone about this before I was going topay) the next morning were full of empathy, his eyes and demeanor while sharing this empathy a lot less. And after about fifteen minutes, after I’d payed and he had left, the problem was again just my problem. But at least I made someone lift his fat ass out of his comfeat chair to listen to my problem and softly whistling an improvised tune I leave the forest at exactly ten o’clock.

A big yellow guide called “free campgrounds around the USA’ takes me a few days later to the small town of Waverly. It’s been raining all day and to add to the misery, the highway I should take from here (according to the guide) does not appear to excist I learn after I decide to visit the local police station for advice. Luckily they make me stay at the playground a few hundred yards from the police station. So I pitch my tent and decide to advance reading in Moby Dick. After an hour or so the rain has picked up so much that it sounds as if Moby Dick himself is emptying his spout against my tent. And when I go to sleep the sound ofthe rain wakes me up about every hour increasing in strength overnight. When I wake up the following morning and decide to go outside and check the situation I feel like Noah at the exact moment his arch is lift up from the ground by the water.

I’ve been unbelievibly lucky to pitch my tent at the highest spot (by utter coincidence) of the playground and instantly I feel a strong need for information, meteorological information. On my way to the police station I need to step off my bike because I can’t see the surface of the road (at times the water comes all the way up to my thighs) and when

I arrive at the station I’m immediately treated as a victim of the flood.

And being treated a victim can be very nice sometimes. In fact this time it was so nice because it resulted in my staying at this hotel from which I’m writing this update. I’m almost looking forward to the next flood

After my night at the Chelsea International Hostel it was time to step on my bike and head for my first trip. What I didn’t know at that moment was that on that same day I would meet with an unbelievable amount of hospitality that would, either make me one hell of a lucky dog or characterize a lot of Americans that I would be meeting during my journey. At that moment though I had no idea about this and I was already very happy to know how to get from my hostel to my beautiful motel in Jersey City. From there things got to be a bit tougher. The direction that I was heading for was cut through by quite a few rivers and the bridges that went over these rivers were mainly, and for as far as I could judge only, built for highways. And although I wasn’t planning for sharing myself on these bridges with millions of cars (I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t!), I guess I was sort of lured into it. After I had made several detours hoping to find a crossing that would not be too dangerous, I finally came at a bridge with only one lane curling upon it. So I decided to wait until there were no cars behind me and ride this lane up to the bridge for this bridge appeared quite safe to me. But at the moment I almost got up to the top I suddenly hear the roar of more cars, a lot more cars and when I get to the top of the bridge I see that this is no one-lane, but a four lane highway and cars and trucks fly by making noise like a heavy metal band. Though, in stead of stopping and deciding to ride back I feel my feet pedaling crazy and before I know I’ve already crossed a good third of the bridge and by the time I’m halfway I think, this isn’t so bad, the trucks aren’t making as much wind as expected . It’s only before I’m nearly at the end that I notice I’ve got this lane for myself. Everybody had already made it to the inward lane before the even got to me! When I’m finally at the end it appears that this is still not the end for me. It’s only after a good fifteen minutes more that I can exit the highway. Ten minutes later I’m recovering from my little shock at a gas station, sipping from a nice cold can of coke that I just bought.

Not long after that I’m riding into the next problem. The sunset. Because of the detours I had to make it will be dark long before I’ll arrive at my camp ground. When the batteries from my front light also started to show signs of exhaustion, I decided to shift my attention to the houses next to the road to see if there would be any garden in which I could set up my tent. Not a minute later I see someone working on his driveway and I decide to take a shot. At first the man doesn’t understand what my problem is. Why don’t I just drive a few more miles to the next campground? Until he notices that I’m on a bicycle. He assumed that with bike I meant motor bike, not that I was actually on a bicycle. ‘Are you serious?’, is all he manages to say at first as he stares in complete disbelief at my fully packed bicycle. ‘Are you serious?’ And I tell him with a small grin on my face, ‘Yeah, I’m serious’. After pausing a few second he says it’s no problem as far as he is concerned, but he wants to check with his wife to know how she feels about it. And if I would like to have something to drink in the meantime. Half a minute later he comes back from the garage with three bottles of water and a bottle of Gatorade. Then he steps inside his house to go check with his wife and comes back after a short while with a proposal. If I wouldn’t like to stay over in a hotel for the night, in stead of putting up my tent in the garden? Without having to pay for it of course. For about half a second I feel a heavy internal doubt if this is an offer I’m allowed to accept, but almost simultaneously I realize that such courtesy in this stadium would mean no solution and eternal regret, so I accept the offer, feeling extremely stupefied by such graciousness. When the hotel also turns out to be very beautiful with a very lovely bed & bath, I feel like I’m in seventh heaven. Unfortunately it was too late to participate in the hotel diner, but luckily I still had some bread and half a pot of peanut butter so I didn’t have to slide into the warm bath with an empty stomach.

The next day when I’m passing the house of William Monangai, that’s the name of this good man I thank him again and continue my trip to the camp ground. About five kilometers before I’m at the camp ground I got stopped by a fellow bicyclist who asks me where I’m going. After I told him, he offers me to sleep at his house. But there was a small catch; his house was on top of a hill I at that moment couldn’t see the top of. And boy-oh-boy, was that tough, but totally worth it! Before we even enter his house I’ve been introduced to good friends of Peter as well as the house that he’s been planning to exchange for the house he owns now. And that is what I call hospitality! Also, the fact that I could take out of the fridge whatever I would like to eat or drink wasn’t just an act of hospitality, it was showing me refrigerated heaven! Maggie Moo’s Chocolate ice cream, numerous types of fresh salads from King’s ‘Super!’ Supermarket, fresh fruit so fresh that I even liked it and on top of that gallons of Tropicana orange juice. And also very important, to please my readers, I could use his computer to write additions to my travel journal. When I got a little bit of the flu, he advised me to take some rest, which I did. But tomorrow I’m really going to leave. Even though this was a far more luxurious stay than I even dream of having again, the first real kilometers need to be made some time, otherwise I’ll never get around the United States!

At this moment I’m a guest for a few days in Peter Wester’s house. We passed each other on the bicycle about 5 kilometers from his house and he invited me to sleep over at his place. But more (a whole lot more!) on the subject of hospitality in the next update. Let me first start at the beginning and in this case that is on the morning I woke up in the Aroma Motel en noticed that outside it was raining heavily. But I wouldn’t just a little bit of rain keep me from my first real visit to New York City. Besides, even a blistering tornado couldn’t have kept me inside this motel. So I put on my shoes and rain suit and went looking for the bus with THE city as final destination. Twenty minutes later I was standing in the middle of a bus of commuters in their neatly pressed cotton suits and I guess I was messing up their suits a little with the water that was falling from my suit. How these people had managed to stay reasonably dry was a mystery to me, but not a very exciting one, so I decided to look over the shoulder of the chauffeur and look a bit about the traffic until we got to Manhatten. At every corner the bus took, it looked as if more buses were joining up with each other and by the time we entered the Lincoln tunnel we were only one in a long line of buses. So, the bus terminal at the end of the ride was not much of a surprise. The lack of directions on which bus to take for the return ride was, but I didn’t think about that when getting out of the bus.

When I arrived in Manhatten I had to walk through a tunnel, down a staircase, through a tunnel, up a staircase, through a tunnel, down a staircase to finally meet the outside world and immediately I got offered a free paper. I put it away in my rucksack to save it for later and finally lay my eyes on Manhattan for the first day in my life. ‘That’s something isn’t it?’ I hear an invisible person whispering in my ear. And yes, this is something, a whole lot of something! But the strange thing was, it didn’t feel like this was the first time I’ve laid my eyes on Manhattan. It felt like a some kind of déjà vu. After I’ve walked a few blocks and noticed smoke coming out of the manholes I finally knew. Of course this doesn’t just feel like a déjà vu, it really is one. All those films that have been shot here and that I’ve seen, all the series and al the news that has also been broadcasted back in the Netherlands. This isn’t the first time I see this. Maybe I’ve seen it a hundred times. I was actually walking on the stages of I don’t know how many film sets. And all the names of the streets I knew gave me the feeling that I had been living here for years. After about half an hour my way of walking got even influenced by this idea. Slowly it became the walk of a person who walks straight ahead because that is where he wants to go. It became the walk of a person who takes a right turn because he needs to, not just because he walks inside that excact street while he just as well could have turned left. It was the walk of someone who only notices in surprise that his mind has been wandering off and faces himself standing on Wall Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange, wherupon he (because he has no business to attend to at the New York Stock Exchange) self-confidently turns to the subway headed downtown, while he should have been taking the one uptown towards Central Park.

Because that is the place where I would find the Chelsea International Hostel that I was planning to change the Aroma Motel for. Luckily they hadn’t run out of beds so I only needed to get back to the motel to collect my bike that I kept there when I came to Manhattan this morning. The walk back to the bus terminal was easy. Because I got out of the subway at Central Park I passed it on my way to the hostal so I only needed to walk the same way back. Finding the right bus however, like I said, was not. I couldn’t find any enormous information boards full of huge amounts of directions I expected to find in this building. So I guessed there was nothing else to do than haphazerdly walking up random stairs and see what information I could find on the small boards next to each separate bus stop. When I came to the third bus stop I had a bit of luck. Here were three people with emblems on their uniforms indicating that they worked inside The Port Authority Bus Terminal. The first man made me think of Elmo. This wasn’t completely coincidental, since I read an article in the paper I’d gotten this morning about the Elmo TMX (Tickle Me Extreme), which is the special edition of the Elmo TMF (Tickle Me Fancy). This edition, as you might have read about in the news paper, was designed in black-ops secrecy in hopes of creating a sensation before it was even on the market. Now, this man made me think of Elmo, he was also red haired and did’t look like he was all too bright, so I figured they may have used him in focus groups during the development of this new bear. Expecting the same open friendly and somewhat foolish smile when I gently tapped him on the shoulder, I was unpleasantly surprised of his reaction…that of a heary body turning in slow motion looking at me with a pair of eyes that made me wish for all the kids in North America that this man has not been part of these focus groups. A bear that after you squeeze his shoulder angrily opens his eyes and says in the coldest of voices ‘Touch me again and you’re dead!’ would be one sick bear, even though it would definitely explain the X in extreme. Anyway, this man clearly wouldn’t HELP! me so I asked the same question to the man in uniform behind him and he tells me very warmly that I’m completely wrong here. Finally I find the bus and the motel, I pick up my bicycle and take the ferry back to Manhattan and not much later I’m cycling through the porch of the Chelsea International Hostel. I take my belongings to my room and proceed with my stroll through the city like a regular New Yorker without any sense of direction. Because it didn’t matter if I was walking in the right or wrong direction, the feeling of walking here like I needed to be here was wonderfull, even if that meant a lot of wasted steps along the pavement of Manhattan.

A few hours later when it was dark I suddenly found myself in front of the Empire State Building and I read in the Lonely Planet that you could visit the observatory at night as well. Visiting the ESB at night seemed to me even more beautiful than by day so I decided to get in and buy a ticket to the platform on the 86^th floor to enjoy the marvelous blinking lights of this city in the dark.

I guess the pictures speak for themselves when I say it was indeed very beautiful. After one more late night coffee at Starbucks and a few beers back at the hostel with a small group of fellow travellers I felt I was getting a bit weary. I decided it was time to go look for my bed and prepare for my first bike ride the next day.

My plan to write my first journal entry from a very special place, the observatory of the Empire State Building at three hundred meters above the ground, has been hindered by rainfall. In fact, it has been raining ever since I woke up after my first night in Jersey city on the opposite site of the Hudson river. Now, I can see that it would be very special to write this first entry on a place where rain is actually made, but that romantic idea wains a bit when you notice your little computer breaking down because of the water. So, now I’m in one of the gazillion Starbucks café’s in New York City drinking coffee from a big plastic cup in an enormous comfy chair (expecting no Spanish inquisition) with my back to the window and the zooming traffic on 3^rd Avenue behind me. Bob Marley is quietly raggea’ing a tune that I don’t know, but all tunes from Bob Marley are ‘relaxed mán’ so that is not a problem. Actually, the atmosphere of this place is just right to give you an idea of how I’ve experience the last two days.

Let me start with the morning of my departure. That night, I had only slept for two hours. All night I had been as tight as a spring. And the day before that was no different. Also at the airport I was feeling quite tense, which should not be confused with sharp or alert, because I wasn’t sharp or alert. Even after I had said goodbye to my girlfriend, family and friends and sat in the chair of the plain, I still didn’t really realise that my trip by know has really begun. That feeling grew a bit stronger when I landed at JFK airport. The first foot on American soil and in the year to come there will be no way back. I did not have much time to let this feeling sink into me though since I had to go and look for a campground that I had spotted on the internet. I had no idea how long it was going to take me to get to the campground on the opposite site of the Hudson, and I thought it would be nice to have found about it when it was still daylight. 

Chris Meets West, the name of my website is a reference to how the first Americans made their way west little by litte, but also to how Columbus set for the west when he was coming from Europe to find the new continent. My trip, albeit of a different order is also a sort of exploration. And my first experience with the habitants of the United States provided me with a reaction that I suppose was similar to that of the indians meeting Columbus for the first time….that of astonishment. I thought that the New Yorkers knew a thing or two about weirdness, but when they saw me entering the subway with my bike, the eyes of every passenger  in the carriage grew as big as saucers, just like those of the indians seeing the schooner of Columbus hitting land for the first time.

After I’d stepped out and started searching fo a way to cross the Hudson, I noticed it was already getting dark. Only then I realised that New York is as close to the equator as Madrid and that at that latitude the sun sets earlier this time of year. I guess I could forget about getting to the camping by daylight. Biking alongside the water I noticed a ferry that could take me to opposite side of the river. Instead of cycling on until I would get to a bridge I could cross by bike, a boat trip over the Hudson river seemed a nice first attraction so I decided to buy the ticket. This proved to be a very good choice, because the view on the skyline of  New York grew bigger and bigger the farther we got away from the shore and finally grew out to be just amazing. And I guess that from a bridge it would have been from an angle, so it wouldn’t have been quite the same. Some of my friends know that I think the skyline of Rotterdam is the most beautiful in the world, but of course that is just because of a lack of reference. The skyline of New York is like the skyline of Rotterdam atop of the skyline of Rotterdam atop of the skyline of Rotterdam atop of the skyline of Rotterdam.

 It was no surprise to notice that the houses on the other side of the Hudson were luxury appartments, at least judging from the lobby I could see from the ground. These appartments are built upon a huge bump I had to climb first, with an inclination of around 30%, maybe even more. At a certain point I even had to step of, because there was just no way to get the peddles around anymore. From here, my campground laid about 4 kilometers land inwards, at sea level. The first serieus break test followed during a decent of the same degree and the fact that I could make my bike break as much as I would like to made me consider this a succesful experiment. Searching for the campground however, could not be considered a success, since it I couldn’t find it at the supposed spot. The train station that had been built there instead, about two years ago, will probably make quite a few people happy, but not me. By now it’s really dark and during my search for the campground I had no eye for the surrounding area, but now the shells are falling from my eyes, I do notice. Everything around me looked like it hadn’t been in one piece for years and what wasn’t broken was barren. Not that I felt unsafe, I  saw no suspicious characters, I felt no guns aimed at my head, no it mostly felt empty around here. But I did not have a long time to taste the atmoshpere here, the longer I wouldn’t find a place to stay the night, the bigger the chance that this was going to be the place to stay the night, a thought I didn’t really want to enter my head right now. 

Luckily I found a motel a few blocks further up. After I paid and opened the door to my room with the keys the owner just gave to me,  a smell entered my nose that immeadiately made me do a step back. It was the smell of cleaner fluid, but I suspect that this room was cleaned with undiluted cleaner fluid. And why does this cleaner fluid smell like a chemical experiment with chlorine, menthol, pineapple and sweat socks that went horribly wrong? Could it be to maskerade the smell of the last tennant who had been found three weeks after he had smashed his head on the faucet after an unlucky fall on the floor with tiles more slippery than a Teflon pan coated with butter? Maybe so. In any case the smell of this cleaner fluid was so strong that the airco that was supposed to freshen the air inside with the outside air did not get the smell out, even after it was on for two hours. And because I felt the noise of the airco was even more annoying then the smell of that Tjernobyl aroma I decided to turn off the machine. At this moment I was exhausted anyway. I even only noticed the fly that landed upon or around my nose every ten seconds for about five times. A sound sleep followed.