Teacher on Two Wheels

10/24/07

I spent the night camped out next to the Lexington Main Library. Having ridden for the past eight days with no rest days, sleep came on fast and hard at 8:30 p.m. like a punch to the temple.

At 4:30 in the morning, when the sun’s rays were still far away and lighting up some other place, construction crews a hundred yards from my site started jack hammering, nailing, whacking boards, and clanging any tinny things they could get their hands on.

I woke up eager to get on the bike and ride though because I knew a soft bed and hot shower would be easing my muscles at the day’s end. I had contacted a man named Ray via Warmshowers.com, a website for touring cyclists who are looking to find a place to stay for the night. The site has a Google Map that cyclists can use to find hosts in their area. Ray was right along my route and about a day’s ride away from Lexington, South Carolina, so I made arrangements to meet up with him. I thought the ride to his house would be a short, easy one.

Two hours into the ride, with only about 20 miles behind me, the ominous clouds that had been looming overhead starting leaking. The winds picked up. What were gentle tailwinds only moments before turned into steady, energy-sapping headwinds. The grasses on the side of the road bent over in protest with not a perpendicular blade among them. Clouds up ahead pulsed with hues of threatening grays and purples and the sky came alive.

I gave it my all until I encountered a steep hill that put me in my place. I dismounted, took off my goofy hat, and put out my thumb.

After twenty minutes, a heavyset man in a shiny new pick-up truck pulled over. When I told him I was trying to get to at least the next big town down the road, about 10 miles away, he frowned a bit.

“Hmm, I don’t think I’m going that far, but I’ll take you almost there.” He paused. “But who knows, maybe I’ll end up going all the way there.”

I have noticed that lots of drivers assume this position when they pick up hitchhikers, a type of lets-see-how-it-goes-before-I-commit-to-a-certain-distance mentality.

Even though it was merely 10:00 a.m., the man’s countenance was relaxed to the point of being tired-looking, like he’d just finished a long day of work. He had salt-and-peppered hair and thick, freckled, weathered hands. He told me about how, after 30 years in the cabinetry business, after building a few houses for himself and his kids in the process, he got into the wedding hosting business.

He and his wife purchased a 100-year-old plantation house on the outskirts of town, fixed it up, and started inching their way into the wedding industry. At first, they simply rented the property out to couples looking to have an outdoor wedding with a historical feel. They hired caterers. They worked with florists. Everything beyond their expertise was contracted out to other businesses.

It didn’t take long before the man and his wife realized there were suspiciously large amounts of money to be made in the food area of the wedding industry. The man remodeled the downstairs of the house and added a banquet room. He and his wife started searching for recipes on-line. They figured out which dishes could be stretched to feed 300 people. They practiced cooking, found a food distributor, and even brought the couple’s daughter on board to help cook.

In the last three years, he’s created a business that is now booked solid for the next two years. When the weather is nice, they do two weddings a day on the weekends. He works 18 hour days back to back, but then has the rest of the week off. I could tell by the way he talked about his business that he was proud of the success he had stumbled upon and cultivated.

“My only regret is not starting this sooner. Cabinetry and construction take a lot out of you, a lot you can’t get back.”

He advised me to change careers “a few times” in my life to keep things fresh. I thanked him for the good advice.

When I told him I was from New Jersey, he told me about his son who has lived in Manhattan for the last ten years. An aspiring actor with a dwindling reserve of motivation, his son now bartends full-time, sometimes earning $400 a night, and goes on very few auditions. When the man saw the “closet” that his son rents for $1,200 a month, his disappointment was only overshadowed by his surprise.

“You pay twelve hunnit dollas for this?” the man asked.

New York City is a place the man doesn’t understand. The fact that his son moved away from home, from family, to live in cramped conditions in a noisy city both perplexes and pains him.

The miles came and went far too fast and the ride ended mid-conversation. I got out and thanked him. The short ride put me past the heart of the storm and I was able to get back on the bike and start moving.

Not but five miles down the road, I again felt drained of energy in the face of a strong headwind. I was riding through open farmland with nothing to block the fury of the gusts. The ease at which I caught the last ride had poisoned my endurance for the day and left me thinking of hitching with each strong blast of wind.

When I came to a lonely intersection in the middle of nowhere and spotted a flat-bed truck idling and facing toward my destination, I stopped to talk to its owner. A short, portly man with dark skin, jet black hair, and a crisp white T-shirt greeted me.

“Hello,” I panted. “You wouldn’t be heading to Aiken by chance, wouldya?”

“Aiken? Yes, I go to Aiken today. It’s jus stray down here,” the man said with an accent as he pointed down the road.

“Yes, I know, I’m heading there as well. I just can’t go on anymore—this wind is killing me. Do you think I could put my bike on the back a’ your truck and ride to Aiken with you?” I spoke slowly as it seemed like the man was focusing on my lips when I spoke to understand my words.

“Oh, the bike on ma truck? Oh, iss OK. Yes, OK. We can go to Aiken together.”

I strapped the bike and trailer to the flat bed of his truck and we set off down the road.

“My name iss Jose.”

“My name is Andrew.” We shook. His shake was stronger than mine even though his hand was smaller.

Jose told me about how he came to America from Mexico 19 years ago. He’s been driving trucks ever since and has started his own trucking business with the single truck he owns (the one we were in). Within minutes of chatting, he pulled out a huge cooler from behind my seat and opened it up. Inside were 10 or 12 cans of Coke and a bunch of waters, all ice-cold.

“You want?”

I wanted to drink everything in the cooler, icy water and all, but just said, “Yeah, sure, I’d love one.” I took a can and thanked him.

Yesterday, Jose drove to Birmingham, Alabama and back, a distance of over 600 miles. The same distance would take me two weeks to ride on my bicycle.

We made small talk on and off for about 20 minutes, but because of the fact that Jose needs to read lips as he converses to help him understand what’s being said, and because driving safely makes reading lips at the same time a dangerous proposition, we didn’t chat about much.

Despite this, Jose was fluent in the universal language communicated between host and guest, local and traveler: The language of hospitality and kindness. It has no dialect and can be spoken by those who are mute, blind, and deaf. No words populate its vocabulary landscape and its hand gestures are capable of communicating the most delicate of intentions, the most hospitable of offers of support.

In this language we spoke, with our smiles stretched long and thin over non-threatening silences that started and stopped as they pleased. I noticed the passing of the seconds, the squeaks in the springs of my seat, the sound of the wind rushing like spring river water over the large side mirrors of the truck.

We enjoyed each other’s company as we crossed vast stretches of farmland where no other company could be found. We wallowed in the contentment that is ever-buried in the special type of spontaneity sometimes spun between friendly strangers. Again, the ride ended too soon and we bid each other farewell.

A short ride through quaint downtown Aiken led me to the beautiful home of Ray, my host for the night.