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The Road Less Traveled

The Sweet Taste of Adventure
by Alastair Bland

So you are an adventurer. You challenge the strength of your mind and body each summer with long, strenuous journeys. You find an almost masochistic pleasure in the strains you place upon yourself, and the tougher the adventure, the more you long for it. You find yourself saying you could do this all year long, leave everything behind except for the adventure. But in the middle of each excursion, your cash runs low, and you are left with no choice but to return home, settle down and rejoin the workforce.

Well, consider this: I recently went on a solo bicycle tour of California. I started from San Francisco and rode for seven weeks and over 2500 miles, and in the course of it all I spent just 100 dollars. My greatest expense was camping fees, and as for food, I lived off of free roadside fruit. Adventure, I must say, has never tasted so sweet.

When next summer comes – and even if your paycheck has not – quit your job. Or do like I did, if need be, and defer your enrollment in graduate school without even discussing it with your parents. As for your bicycle, just wipe the dust off and fill the tires. You are ready to go.

Shortly after leaving home and entering the farmlands, you will begin to find food. You will scarcely ride a mile, in fact, without seeing an old fig tree growing up against a fence, some almonds spilled across the asphalt, or a grape vine snaking through the grass. These crops will be your sustenance until winter; enjoy them. With surprisingly little trouble, you can have wine, too. Just gather grapes and crush them by hand. Pool the juice into your plastic bottle, loosely seal the cap and keep it in the sun. The project is now out of your hands, and the juice will become wine in as little as four days. It may seem like a miracle, but this is just nature at work.

The constant heat aside, the only unpleasant occasion in the first ten days of my trip occurred one evening in a state park on the Sacramento River. I was just sliding into my sleeping bag when a husky, tattooed wino entered the campground. He sat down at my table, opened a beer and began to tell me about his trials and tribulations: divorce, alcohol, jail. A week before, though, he’d been released after ten years.

I didn’t know exactly what to say to this ex-con, so I tried a joke: “We’re glad to have you back.” I smiled, but my new companion suspected sarcasm and promptly threatened to cave in my skull and bury me in the riverbank. There was no one else around, and I thought surely this would be the end of me. To my great fortune, though, the man was so drunk that he immediately forgot what he’d said – and in moments more we were friends again, and he talked and talked and talked. His voice actually lulled me into a light sleep, and when I awoke a little later, the man was gone.

The sun will rise behind you and breathe flames down your neck all day, but greener pastures lie ahead.

Traveling south from the delta region, the garden-lands of fig, grape and pomegranate unfortunately wither and dry. Just a few days’ ride beyond Fresno, the land is a veritable desert. You will find just barely enough fruit to get you through this region, and you will surely wonder what possessed you to come here at all. It is like hell; 100 degrees by noon and not a square inch of shade. Thousands of oil wells grind away in the sun while tornadoes of dust swagger through their midst like howling ghosts, and one morning as you rise from the ditch where you slept – when the air is still cool and the eastern sky just beginning to glow red – you will likely decide that you’ve seen enough of the San Joaquin Valley.

There are hills to the west. Go to them. The sun will rise behind you and breathe flames down your neck all day, but greener pastures lie ahead. In my own experience, I arrived in Pismo Beach after more than 100 exhausting miles, and there, from a sand dune on the beach I watched that terrible ball of fire sink into the Pacific Ocean.

Compared to the desolation of the San Joaquin Valley, you will be pleased to discover that the southern California coast is much like paradise. The climate is lovely and mild, and the scenery of mountain, sea and sky is spectacular. On the beach you will see bodybuilders, surfers and models, and these stunning specimens tend to walk around with the majority of their bodies exposed. There is some excellent dining to be had here, as well. Falling to the roadside grass are avocados, custard apples, peaches, huge Turkish figs and even bananas.

Amid so much loveliness, however, you will stand out like a stray dog in a shopping mall. Adventurers like you and me know how difficult it can be to maintain a respectable level of hygiene in the course of an arduous journey. There was no explaining this, however, to the police officer who invaded the scenery one day to expel me from this posh society. He pulled me over at a busy Los Angeles intersection, placed his hand on his holster as he spoke and demanded to know if I had any guns or knives. He then conducted a search through my gear, and though no weapons were found, he ordered me to leave town.

Such an incident may dishearten you as much as it did me, and as you return north you may give particular notice to the sad shades of autumn, the sinking of the October sun, and the sorrowful demeanor of the aging, sagging cactus pears. Near the vineyards, too, you will sometimes smell the sweet reek of fermentation on the breeze, and, sure enough, when you look closely you will see that the grapes have all been picked.

But you won’t go hungry just yet. Walnut season is on, and there should be plenty of figs until winter. Persimmon season is only about to begin, and with wild grapes for your wine, you realize you could carry on like this for months.

Even the hardiest adventurers, however, can't ignore their thoughts of home.

I fell prey to homesickness around mile 2000, and memories of all things warm and familiar suddenly began to tug at my heart. I take pride in claiming that I have no use for such luxuries as a soft bed, hot meals and a roof overhead, yet I found myself veering westward from the Sacramento Valley. It had been my plan to ride to Oregon, but alas, I was rolling unstoppably homeward now. I braked and skidded and bucked from side to side, but I could not resist that tireless force dragging me home like gravity, and one day in mid-October I arrived at the shore of San Francisco Bay. In plain view to the south, across the water, was the stately skyline of the city where I was born – and I knew then that the adventurer inside me had been defeated. Home was waiting just across the way.

Not everyone has a house and family to return to, not to mention a rent-free room in the most expensive town on the West Coast, and so I won’t take it for granted; it is indeed a blessing to have a home in this world.

But there will be times as you lie at night in your bed of soft pillows and remember the long lonely roads, the ancient fig trees, the sunsets from the hills, and the the views of the sea; and it is times like these when you will feel as I do - that your true home is somewhere else, on the road, in a land far away.