"SOA"

SOA = Slice of Americana.  One of the unexpected bonuses I get from biking around different parts of the country is meeting people of all varieties.  When I'm on the bike, somehow others seem more willing to have real conversations.  Often it starts with a question like "where are you riding to today?", but you never really know what you're going to hear, which is the fun part. For example, on Memorial Day a few weeks ago I had two encounters that, while unrelated to each other, had an uncanny feeling of connectedness.  That Monday holiday while riding home from Madison, a fast cyclist passed me in a very rural area.  Nobody else around for miles it seemed.  Then I surprisingly caught up with him, and asked about his jersey, which indicated he was a State Champion in cycIing.  I asked what it took to earn his jersey and he replied "well, they give these to people who win State Championships".  What kind of an answer is that, I thought to myself.  So I pressed him for more details.  He would not tell me what he did to earn his jersey.  Not any specific detail. Nada.  Nil.  At the end of our short chat he said, "but wearing it gives you more credibility on the road" and sped off (like the champion he seems to think he is).  OK, so I kept going on my own.  A few miles down the road I stopped at a Dairy Queen near Bristol, Wisconsin for an ice cream break. A woman looking to be in her 80's struck up a conversation, asking about my jersey with the Chicago skyline printed on it.  She said, "I used to live in Chicago before we retired and moved up here.  In fact, I raced track bikes and won the State Championship for 6 years in a row."  She went on to describe some of the details of her racing career, what components she preferred, how she would inevitably crash in some races but get up and keep riding, all done with a racing club called Lake Shore Cycling.  She had two bikes, one of them a Schwinn Paramount, a classic bike of years past. Quick quiz:  who's the real champion in this tale?  And how is it that I met both of these cyclists on the same day while on my own bike?  

So, my transcontinental journal is going to have a theme: "SOA of the Day".  You'll find an entry whenever something occurs that makes me think "only on my bike could I have this experience".
Because otherwise I'll just be writing about me.  And while I'd find that endlessly fascinating, not everyone else may feel the same.  There are certain to be days that go something like:
     
     My butt hurts
     We had the worst headwind since Dorothy got spirited away in The Wizard of Oz
     The sun is in my eyes
     And on and on, essentially my own version of:

     Nobody likes me, 
     Everybody hates me,
     I'm gonna to go eat worms

Nobody wants that.