Much ado about nothing: North America by bicycle
Morning after noon: Day 1: July 10 It’s not easy to begin a long-distance bicycle journey, something I’ve contemplated for at least a decade and first learned about in college. It’s not the insurmountable that frightens me; physical duress I can bear like a Stoic. But I’m also a Socratic, and questions weigh my mind: Why go on such a trek? What of lasting significance is to be accomplished? Isn’t it a self-centered waste of money and risk of life? I’m envisioning a grizzly encounter in the mountains of British Columbia. In the afternoon of July 10, 2025, I check my bicycle with a low-cost carrier at Narita Airport, and a bowlegged balding man with a gut comes to take it away, recalling with longing the days when he used to go touring and joking that he is too fat and old to do it anymore. And since the day begins in Japan (where I’ve lived for half of my life), I arrive in Vancouver on the morning of the 10th, and I’m picked up by a Sikh in an Uber XL and taken to a bicycle shop (alrea...