Did I really think that a 15 year old daughter would enjoy, would like, would appreciate spending intensive time with her father? For an hour, for a day, what about two weeks? I thought it was so cool of me to have this grand vision of “special” time with each of my kids. I didn’t have an overall vision for a time with each child, so I started with the oldest and concocted a bike trip. I planned and mapped out a bicycle trip for the two of us going from northern Indiana to New Orleans.
Because Kirstin was 15 she is the first to have this great time with her Dad.
How did we decide on a long bike trip? Or did we talk about a trip to Honduras to visit Yoli, a friend of Kirstin, and her Mennonite missionary parents? The idea to bike to New Orleans and hop a freighter ship to cross the Caribbean seemed good but a bit out of our reach because of time and money. We settled on just peddling to New Orleans on the blue highways, the little two lane roads, and staying in cheap motels along the way.
I used a map to plot the route. We bought some saddle bags. I took one pair of white tennis shorts. Just bare necessities. Helmets and a rearview mirror were about it. No, we did not prepare for the reality of two weeks on bikes. This was the beginning of carpal tunnel syndrome for Kirstin with extended time and pressure on the handle bars. We had not been riding that much. We just took off.
Kirstin was impressed by how prepared I was. She says, on the other hand, she didn’t prepare at all. She hadn’t been on a bike in awhile prior to jumping on her Puch that day in May of ’85 and taking off for our 1000-mile trip together. I had a 5-speed Fuji designed for commuters. The Japanese thought that folks in the U.S were ready to bike to work! It was not a great bike for a long road trip with many hills.
Kirstin was out of school early in the spring. It seemed like a good time to ride into the deep South. For ten days it was over 90 degrees! She writes, “There was a heat wave that May. Hot as hell out. Heat rising from the pavement ahead, on the road we were getting ready to head down at 7:00 in the morning! We headed back into the motel to stay in the comfort of the air conditioning and be lazy for a day! Skipped biking. I was so happy!”
We had to ride about 70 miles a day to reach New Orleans in 14 days. A challenge. Skipping a day for air conditioned comfort upped the daily mileage.
We went down the west side of Indiana, passing through Lafayette, Terre Haute, and Evansville. We found inexpensive motels and ate mindlessly. For example, hitting an A&W root beer stand and eating a chili dog and drinking root beer before we headed off on our bikes again. Kirstin recalls, “I remember it sitting in my gut like a brick while we battled the heat.”
We crossed the Ohio River into Western Kentucky. Soon we entered the Land Between the Lakes, a large national recreation area. The film On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn, and Jane Fonda had been released just a few years before. No relation to our experience, as the film was made in New England. Of course, as Goldens, we thought it was cool to find Golden Pond.
Leaving the Land Between the Lakes put us into Tennessee. There we saw our first Walmart. Sam Walton started Walton’s Five & Dime in the 1950s, The first store as we know it today was opened on July 2, 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas! A humble beginning for the current 10,000 plus stores around the world.
As we crossed I-40 we were close to the Loretta Lynn Ranch. It was about that time we met a father and three daughters crossing the U.S. in a covered wagon! The dad was a Vietnam veteran and was returning to another era. What did his girls think of their dad? And how is it going with Kirstin and her dad? There was a time, maybe later in Mississippi, where Kirstin met a teenager. The girl was curious about how it was to be with your dad day in and day out? The girl thought it sounded like a drag.
Here is some what was going on with Kirstin: “I was embarrassed and self-conscious of everything…. including him! Of wearing a helmet into little towns, thinking I looked like a space alien. Feeling like I was fat at the time we were leaving on the trip and thinking how great it was going to be to get all of this exercise and get skinny! Lo and behold, for an average-sized teenage girl, this trip basically gave me huge, rock hard thighs. I was not happy about it.
What I remember from the trip, with me being 15 and all, the world revolved around me. I was thinking about myself and my intensely labile emotions and struggling mentally and emotionally all of the time. Whining and complaining on the trip about how sore and tired and hot I was. Feeling like I was gonna die. I’ve always been very vocal and have had a low tolerance for discomfort. Poor Dad having to hear this all the way down there. I don’t even know if he remembers that or not.
Dad was great about seeing the sites and telling me what he saw, since a joke and a reality had become that the entire trip, all the way, I was staring at the line on the side of the road so that I would see a pothole if one showed up and wouldn’t wipe out! Dad would be way far ahead of me waiting under a shade tree, while I pedaled laboriously up a huge-seeming hill. When I finally reached the shade tree and took a break, Dad updated me on the scenery I had missed, like a herd of buffalo, a farmer plowing his garden with a mule, and numerous native American burial mounds.”
The ride was punishing my 42-year-old body. My legs were swollen and my butt was ablaze. Prickly heat or sweat rash had set in at some point. But no matter what condition our bodies were in we had to press on.
South of I-40 we got on the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile recreational road and scenic drive through three states. It roughly follows the "Old Natchez Trace," originally a game trail used by the Choctaw, Natchez, and Chickasaw peoples. In the late 18th century, boatmen who floated down the Mississippi River with flatboats of goods would sell both the goods and the boats and use the trace as an overland route back to the Ohio River valley. It is basically a very long, narrow state park with no truck traffic. A great bike ride, we thought. However, the asphalt was very rough. It was a constant pounding from Tennessee, across a corner of Alabama, and into Mississippi.
We had planned to go to Natchez, Mississippi, and turn south towards New Orleans. The Trace was too rough. We stayed in a cabin at Tishomingo State Park for a comfortable night and took off for Tupelo, Mississippi, the hometown of Elvis. Mississippi was surprisingly hilly and the heat wave continued. We rode on.
Eventually, around day 13 we were approaching Slidell, Louisiana. The next challenge was to cross the 5 mile-long Lake Pontchartrain bridge on I-10 to enter New Orleans.
As we were standing by our bikes and looking to the rising bridge ahead, a man in a pickup stopped and offered to load us up and drive us over the bridge. We declined the kind offer. My feeling was that after so many days getting to our destination it would be a blow not to ride triumphantly into the city. So up we went with a strong wind blowing crosswise on the bridge. We did it! We now had a long ride through the city to meet our host.
Our only contact in New Orleans was Sr. Jean. We had gotten to know her while living in Evanston, Illinois, where she served as a spiritual director at a retreat house. As soon as we got to Sr. Jean’s place she took Kirstin into the cloister house and sent me off to a men’s retreat house. This was the first time Kirstin and I had been out of each other’s sight for two weeks. Frankly, it was a relief for both of us.
Sr. Jean was a great host as she had grown up in New Orleans. We walked the French Quarter and hung out on Jackson Square. The buskers were great. The beignets were habit forming. It was great to be in this historic, other worldly place. We rode the old street cars and got a feel for the city. Kirstin had her own take on walking with Dad and the woman dressed like a penguin. Sr. Jean was still in traditional habit.
After several days of relaxing and sightseeing we packed our bikes in train transport boxes and rode the “City of New Orleans” overnight to Chicago with a final link to Elkhart, Indiana and home to Goshen. Yeah, I know what I was thinking. Just an everyday fun time with one of my kids.
Your trip sounds gruelling. I'm glad the two of you survived it all right, and Kirstin has forgiven you!