Welcome to the West

It's clearly been a very long time since I've had the chance -- or the energy -- to make an update. In my last post, things were all still going reasonably well, with the only concern being an occasional day riding on too little sleep, or a nagging pain in the knees. Since then, however, a lot has happened and a lot has changed. I can't -- and I wont' attempt to -- retrace the events of each and every day between Pontiac and where I am now (Superior, Montana) but I will try to give some idea of what's been going on on a much grander scale and some insight into the way I've been handling such events.

So as not to mince words, it's best just to explain right away what has happened, though it's been well publicized and I'm sure a number of you know already. On July 20th, while riding from Winner to Martin, SD, one of our leaders, Paige Hicks, was hit and killed by a truck carrying oversized farm equipment. You can find the official press release on the Bike & Build website at www.bikeandbuild.org for all the details. The news came to me and the riders I was with at the very tail end of a 100+ mile day. We were about three miles outside of Martin when we received a phone call from another rider farther back, asking us of we could get in contact with Gabe. We heard that there had been an accident on the road, and phone calls were flying around in a desperate attempt to put leaders in contact with one another. As it happened, Gabe was just behind us a little ways, but his phone wasn't charged at the time, so it wasn't apparent what he knew at the time, differently from us.

Our primary goal at the moment was to ride into the host and wait for more information. We weren't clear exactly on where the host was, and we ended up riding past it in our disorganized nervousness, before discovering it behind a wall of trees and riding in. I stopped to chalk an arrow to the somewhat difficult-to-see church to alert incoming riders to its location. The rest of the riders in our pack -- about ten of us in all -- rode into the church to begin making calls and gathering information. I'll never forget the way my heart sank and my stomach turned over when, about one hundred yards away, I heard a loud bellow of grief, and looked up at the church to see everyone suddenly moving about aimlessly, as though they had all just lost something very important. As it turns out, we all had lost something very, very precious to us, but no amount of searching around would bring it back. I wasn't sure what to do with myself, either. Walking up the gravel path slowly, I knew it had to be something terrible, unthinkable. Chaz actually broke the news to me, but the words fell dumb on my ears; the pain and loss was written in his face, and in the faces of each rider standing there on the church lawn.

It was decided that we would be putting the ride on hiatus in order to attend the funeral. WE shuttled the next day, somber, quiet, contemplative, to Chadron, NE where we would be staying until we could work out the logistics of our travel to St. Louis for the funeral. We all were shaken by the tragic event, but we were all very glad and grateful to see Kristian Sekse, one of our intrepid program directors, who traveled out to Nebraska to see us through this difficult time. We did eventually work out our travel plans: we would go to St. Louis by way of Lincoln, NE, where Hailey's parents live, and then come back the same way after the funeral service, to rejoin and begin riding once again in DuBois, Wyoming. Through it all we were fortunate enough to have a stalwart and easygoing bus driver, and an ample amount of condolence cookies to keep our spirits and blood sugar levels up.

Losing Paige has been an incredibly difficult experience for all of us. She brought so much to the group with her smiling face, her always upbeat attitude, and her unbelievable joy for life. It would be ignorant to think that the trip could ever be the same without her, just as it would be to say that any of us will ever be completely the same as we were before. The loss of someone very close to you inescapably alters who you are to an extent, the way you view the world. Though I have lost people in my life before -- my uncle Doug in a tragic car accident, my paternal grandparents to poor health and age -- this does feel more immediate, shocking and unnecessary. Paige was younger than I am, a fact that haunts me. I have had one more full year of experiences; I have seen one more year of life; I have loved one more year of people than she ever will. Though she lived for a shorter amount of time than I have, she squeezed more life into her 21 years than anyone else I've ever known.

I always try to be pragmatic and think logically. It was, after all, an accident that was simply pure dumb luck. Everyone on the road was doing exactly what they should have been doing, and yet the pieces fell together in the shape of a tragedy. What is to be gained from wishing, wondering, asking what if and being afraid to go on? Nothing to be done can change what has happened... and yet an approach like that does seem to do very little to settle the tumult of the mind at a time like this. Even so, I maintain that the best way for me to remember Paige is how she always appeared to me in life, smiling, laughing, and working towards making the world a better place. To that end, I feel as though I am paying tribute to her every time I get on my bike, every time I fasten a sheet of drywall to a new home.

And once we did begin riding again, we were rewarded by some of the most incredible and breathtaking scenery we've seen on the trip thus far. It's not hard to see what has drawn people towards the west for centuries -- the mountains rise up out of nothing, pushing through the clouds and the ether to loom over us in our fragile impermanence. We rode towards them for what seemed like ages until, suddenly, we were upon them and climbing over them like the first awestruck settlers, passing through with heads bowed, aware that being so close to heaven means god can see so much more clearly. Just prior to entering the mountains, I began reading Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, which put me in a ripe mood for introspection and contemplation of the Dharma. Moreover, however, it made me very badly want to spend some time up in those mountains; in the arms of ancient behemoths; amidst stones wiser and more sage than any human master.