Are We There Yet? — Conversations Across America

If you draw a straight line from Heceta Beach in Oregon, where the ride started, to Nantasket Beach in Massachusetts, where the ride ends, the line is 2,691.3 miles long. As of the end of the day on Sunday, I had ridden 2,678.5 miles. I am only 12 miles away from having ridden across the country, right?

And we are also in Pennsylvania, which sort of borders the Atlantic and in any event is definitely an east coast state.

Certainly, some of the small towns that we rode through Sunday had a northeastern flavor, with shaded town squares and wood frame houses.

I also began to see some vineyards. There have been vineyards here and there all along the route, but I am told they will become more and more frequent as we move into New York — mostly Concord grapes. They are certainly not the well pruned vineyards of Sonoma and Napa.

Amid these signs that we are in (or near) the east coast, there were still reminders of where we have come from and the connections between the two. Remember the picture of US 20 I posted as I headed over Santiam Pass in the Cascade Mountains on the third day of the trip? I spent about half an hour on US 20 again today, and will be on it occasionally over the coming week.

And just as we rode into Erie, I saw this store, right near Oregon Avenue.

At the end of the day, Susan and Don Baxter, old friends from DC who now live in Erie and are hosting us through our rest day on Monday, insisted that Erie, which is only 90 miles from Cleveland, really thinks of itself as the midwest, even though it is in the east coast state of Pennsylvania.

The landscape, too, still had some of the forests and fields characteristic of the midwest.

And I reminded my self that we still have nine riding days before we reach the beach in Massachusetts. So we aren’t there yet, but it’s getting so close I can taste it.

Here are Sunday’s barns (and an unattached silo I couldn’t pass up because I’d never seen a 100% brick silo).