The following is an excerpt from Alastair Humphreys’ second book about his incredible 4-year bike ride around the world. As I read these words about his first impression of America, I thought it rang very true. He only saw a brief glimpse of what America is, but noticed and observed a whole deal more. As Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Why are we afraid to travel? What makes us stay comfortable? Make up your mind about America if you will. It is diverse as the jelly beans in the Jelly Belly Factory, probably more so.
“I find it difficult to summarize America neatly. I saw only a sliver of the country. My experience of the west coast tells me almost nothing about life in Texas or New York or Kentucky. However with the language being, for the most part, more understandable to me than Swahili or Arabic, I learned more than in many other countries. The United States is so diverse, so confused and so confusing that no two conversations or people are the same. I encountered creationists and evolutionists, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, racists and mixed-raced families, idealists and defeatists, atheists and Christians, gay-marriage supporters and spittle-flying homophobes, Bush voters and Bush haters, anti-abortion and pro-electric chair, pro-choice and anti-electric chair, enormous wind-farms and enormous RV’s, triathletes and couch-potatoes, pristine National Parks and massive cities, drive-thru cash machines and epic trans-continental bike routes, anything-goes liberalism and old-fashioned bigotism, intrepid world travelers and folks who had barely left their state. I met millionaires and passed an Indian reservation as poor as the developing world. I rarely felt comfortable enough to knock on strangers’ doors to ask for a place to camp, but one family let me stay in their house alone for a week while they were out of town. America was the most overtly religious country I had been in since the Islamic world, yet arguments raged about the appropriateness of the word “God” being on the dollar bills. It was the most patriotic country I had been to, with the ‘stars’n’bars’ flying everywhere, yet many people were despondent about the state of the Union. Bumper stickers told many tales, from American flags and slogans like ‘United we Stand: the Power of Pride’ and ‘These Colors Don’t Run’ to ‘No War for Oil,’ ‘If you can read this, you’re not the President’ and ‘I’m pink therefore I’m Spam.’ I rode through a tree and the enormity of LA. I watched a lot of television, especially the shopping channels. I spoke English and Spanish. I consumed enormous amounts of food and drank bucketfuls of coffee, but even I could not manage the extraordinary two litre cups of fizzy drinks that petrol stations sold. It was little wonder that I needed the first dental filling of my life. I ate Indian, Mexican, Korean, Ethiopian, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Japanese and Israeli food.
America is wealthy, hard-working, beautiful and welcoming. It also displays the things that anger people around the globe: consumerism gone crazy – the size of the supermarkets has to be seen to be believed – a disregard for the environment, most noticeable in the massive vehicles everybody drives, and a lack of interest in the affairs of the rest of the world. America has certainly made mistakes recently, but then the man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
I had entered America unhappy at the direction their President was leading our world and at what I perceived to be his government’s arrogant, ignorant, ill-judged behaviour with the British government trotting embarrassingly along behind. After a brief few months in America my feelings changed. They did not change towards the government and its foreign policy, but they certainly changed towards the American people. As a reflection of this, I pedaled on to Canada, I hoped to return to America one day. Not only for a holiday, but to live there for a couple of years.” (Alastair Humphreys, Thunder & Sunshine, 128-129)
It is true that America is as diverse as the prices of petrol stations. I hear ongoing talk of people wanting to escape this country to 'travel the world' as it were. If someone is to be considered "well-traveled" it seems to me that they have have traveled through many countries abroad. I am the least traveled person in my nuclear family and yet, I do consider myself pretty well-traveled, maybe not so much abroad, but in my own country. Yet, in comparison to some, I have not even left my home town. I do crave movement and travel and the expanse that is out there. Up until a few years ago, I traveled to, worked and lived in some random state in our Union. I enjoyed life on the road even though it got to be long. I enjoyed meeting new folks and reuniting with old ones. I enjoyed viewing new sites and experiencing new weather phenomena. I crave the joys of sitting around a campfire late at night swapping stories with a comrade or two. Sleeping under the stars is always a delight. Climbing a mountain and looking out at views of the ocean are always on my priority list when out and about. Stopping at a hole-in-the-wall ice cream shop is always a plus in my book. To experience the challenge and cruelty of cycling cross country is to experience life to its fullest. There is only so much we can experience in our big air-conditioned vehicles. There's nothing like a bicycle to put things into perspective, no? The accents of the locals puts a smile on my face. Reading by the light of a campfire, stopping on the top of a hill for lunch, feeling the breeze in my face, the sun on my skin, the tough of the cold ice cream on my lips, relaxing after a 100-mile day, stopping to splurge on a buffet when feeling famished, eating the local delicacies, riding away from angry canines, journaling along the route, all knowing that the farther we go, the longer we travel from home and the closer we get to home...all these experiences and all these memories can happen in our own backyard, meaning our own country. America is divided into 50 vastly different mini-countries with their own languages, weather, cultures and customs. Next summer I plan to experience but a brief sliver of this vast nation. There is a world map and a map of the United States on my wall of my apartment that I look at every day I walk by. It reminds me of the joys that are to come and I find myself doing a spontaneous trip-planning session with additional maps laid out and a cup of Joe as company. I get chills at the prospect of accomplishing such a task. Will you join me in this endeavor? I get excited at the very mention of what life will bring me each day and what new challenge I will face as I embark out my front door on two wheels.
It is true that America is as diverse as the prices of petrol stations. I hear ongoing talk of people wanting to escape this country to 'travel the world' as it were. If someone is to be considered "well-traveled" it seems to me that they have have traveled through many countries abroad. I am the least traveled person in my nuclear family and yet, I do consider myself pretty well-traveled, maybe not so much abroad, but in my own country. Yet, in comparison to some, I have not even left my home town. I do crave movement and travel and the expanse that is out there. Up until a few years ago, I traveled to, worked and lived in some random state in our Union. I enjoyed life on the road even though it got to be long. I enjoyed meeting new folks and reuniting with old ones. I enjoyed viewing new sites and experiencing new weather phenomena. I crave the joys of sitting around a campfire late at night swapping stories with a comrade or two. Sleeping under the stars is always a delight. Climbing a mountain and looking out at views of the ocean are always on my priority list when out and about. Stopping at a hole-in-the-wall ice cream shop is always a plus in my book. To experience the challenge and cruelty of cycling cross country is to experience life to its fullest. There is only so much we can experience in our big air-conditioned vehicles. There's nothing like a bicycle to put things into perspective, no? The accents of the locals puts a smile on my face. Reading by the light of a campfire, stopping on the top of a hill for lunch, feeling the breeze in my face, the sun on my skin, the tough of the cold ice cream on my lips, relaxing after a 100-mile day, stopping to splurge on a buffet when feeling famished, eating the local delicacies, riding away from angry canines, journaling along the route, all knowing that the farther we go, the longer we travel from home and the closer we get to home...all these experiences and all these memories can happen in our own backyard, meaning our own country. America is divided into 50 vastly different mini-countries with their own languages, weather, cultures and customs. Next summer I plan to experience but a brief sliver of this vast nation. There is a world map and a map of the United States on my wall of my apartment that I look at every day I walk by. It reminds me of the joys that are to come and I find myself doing a spontaneous trip-planning session with additional maps laid out and a cup of Joe as company. I get chills at the prospect of accomplishing such a task. Will you join me in this endeavor? I get excited at the very mention of what life will bring me each day and what new challenge I will face as I embark out my front door on two wheels.
Excellent, is it 6/15/2014 Yet ???
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