My First Trip to Israel

Will Motorcycle for Phage (Sept.-Oct, 2004)

The following is as to be presented in the online newsletter, Bacteriophage Ecology Group News: “Larry in Laramie,” a “Fellow Phagologist” (or so the running gag has gone) insisted that I do my duty and post this travel log (blog?) in BEG News. Larry is Larry Goodridge, now of University of Wyoming (Department of Animal Sciences), and my concocted justification for listening to him is the following:

A primary mission of the Bacteriophage Ecology Group (BEG) is to spread the word that phages, phage ecology, and microbiology/biology/science are just plain interesting and well worth a life’s devotion. To support that mission I try (hard) to keep BEG and BEG News from getting too dry. Instead, science is (or should be) all about having fun. That is, science does require much training, rigor, creativity, and at least a touch of intelligence, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun (or, at least, brief bouts of fun in between hours/days/weeks of what sometimes can be a mind-numbing frustration, repetition, and boredom that often accompanies doing the actual mechanics of science).

Science also means traveling and collaboration. In this modern world one can travel by plane, by train, by bus, by car, or, as is my case for this particular trip, by motorcycle. Thus is born this day-to-day account of how I spent two and one-half weeks traveling halfway across the country (the U.S.), from Mansfield, Ohio, to Laramie, Wyoming, to pull together collaborations, otherwise draft grant proposals, see the country (yet again) and, whenever possible, just plain have fun. For more accounts of my doing science on the road see www.phage.org/tripdiary. If you enjoy writing, whether it be prose, poetry, or something in between, please consider pulling together interesting (and tasteful and well written) stories about how you do your version of phage-ecology science. BEG News is here to publish anything that might create excitement in the collective public mind about science in general and phage ecology in particular. Corroboration that doing science can be fun certainly fits that mission. This then is my (well, our) story…

Tuesday through departure: The ride didn’t begin Tuesday afternoon, though it was supposed to. I knew by Monday afternoon that too much still needed to be done, that Tuesday morning would be spent not putting the final touches on readiness but instead in front of the computer putting the final touches on anything but. This was a strange result indeed given that the past three or so weeks had been spent putting the final touches on this trip, getting me ready, once all my meeting obligations were past, to get on the bike and ride out to Wyoming. First was important “discovery” of my “local” BMW dealership, a mere hour or so from home. For September I spent at least every weekend there, buying parts, riding them home, and then installing them. What reconditioning I could do of existing parts also occupied my time. This was a month of discovery, discovery that old airheads—BMWs with two horizontally opposed cylinders and air rather than air plus oil cooling those cylinders—only look too complicated too work on and, just as important, have almost all parts available from the dealer. These parts are at a price, but not as great a price as one might imagine. So September was spent taking apart the bike and then putting the bike back together again. Test riding and trying to figure out what could be done better. And then taking it apart and putting it back together. Ultimately I wasn’t positive that everything was perfect, but I was pretty sure that things were good enough.

Rather than break up the first leg of the trip into two parts, three or so hundred miles on Tuesday followed by five hundred miles on Wednesday (followed by another 500 miles on Friday), I decided that I would do all 800 miles on Wednesday. This would entail getting up at 5:00 am and rushing out of the house. That would be followed by an estimated 16 hour trip. This is using my 50 mph rule. That is, I would average 50 mph once all the stops (mostly for gas) and unexpected problems were factored in. This rule of thumb I “invented” back when speed limits were 55 mph and speeding meant 65 mph. For a car in the States it no longer applies since it is fairly easy to drive 300 miles without a break at 70-75 (or more) all the way. On a motorcycle, with an approximately 160 mile range, however, 50 mph more or less works.

Tuesday night at 10:00 pm, still not quite ready to leave, I started to lose confidence in a 5:00 am departure. Worse, Sunday and Monday I had started to notice something funny going on in my lungs which finally confirmed itself as bronchitis. This no doubt had been brought home from pre-school by my son, exacerbated by lungs that had still not healed from the previous December/January’s bout that had actually put me in the hospital (see www.phage.org/tripdiary/index.html#christmas_vacation for that story). Then for Tuesday I was very tired, basically for the entire day. As a consequence, at 10:00 pm I was both not finished packing and much more tired than usual. I ate a late dinner, not quite my normal fare and then, big mistake, drank a beer. The beer returned the favor at about 3:00 am and suddenly I was awake, but not happy about being so. Nearly two hours later I finally was asleep again, and about five-minutes later Cam’s (my wife’s) alarm went off. I (we, actually) tried to get more shut eye, but it just wasn’t happening. By six we were up and I was frantically trying to finish getting ready. Nothing seemed to be going right, but I was determined. Finally everything was on the bike and I was ready to go. I pulled out the container holding my prized custom-made ear plugs, and there was nothing inside. Again frantic, I searched the house everywhere. I even rode in to school on the assumption that I must have left them in the office (following a previous ride in), but there was nothing there. I made a mental note to check the parking lot where I had last parked the bike, but in the mental fog of that morning I simply forgot to look.

I almost just left anyway, but decided to head home for a second look (fortunately we live only about 3.5 miles from work). Somewhere along the way I decided that this was simply no way to start out an 800-mile motorcycle ride. Getting home I looked some more, still with an intention to leave, if only to again try to break up the first leg into two days. That’s when it suddenly occurred to me that more was going on that I was taking into account. That, in fact, I was actually physically ill. That my mild bronchitis, and tiredness, and perhaps even the subsequently (but probably unrelated) gastrointestinal distress probably meant that I was sick. So I postponed the trip for a day and again spent the day in front of the computer. By the afternoon I was past whatever was making me ill, and I watched a DVD with my kids before getting to bed by 9:00 pm. At 5:30 am I was awake and ready to get up. By 6:45, after a morning that was much more relaxing than the previous, one this time that actually included a small breakfast, I was on the road.

Thursday morning to just past Chicago: Despite the relatively cool air of pre-dawn, I was wearing my mesh body armor (uppers) over a t-shirt, jeans and leather chaps on the bottom. The t-shirt was a gift from a friend, one who had loved life and, sadly, had died in an automobile accident after (not immediately after, mind you) she had purchased the shirt but before she could give it to me (I later received it from her then widower). I hesitated before putting it on since, hey, what kind of a message was I giving myself wearing a t-shirt for a very long motorcycle ride from somebody who had died in a car crash. But, then again, perhaps this ride should be for the memory of her life, not of her death. The other accessory, in addition to the helmet and my handy custom ear plugs (which naturally had eventually been found in the faculty parking lot, right next to where I had parked the bike the previous Monday), were my gloves, which were just barely up for the relative cold, particularly since the one thing that I eventually had failed to successfully repair were the bike’s heated hand grips. The date was September 22 (2004). The place, at least from where I had started, was Mansfield, OH.

My first plan had been to ride on route 30 west to route 24 (in Indiana) to route 34 (in Illinois?). Somehow that changed to just route 30, eventually meeting up with I-80, somewhere past Chicago. That was a big mistake since even skirting beneath Chicago I was sill exposed to Chicago’s influence, with traffic light after traffic light after traffic light after traffic light slowing me down as I slipped beneath that city. I recall nothing but bad memories from previous trips on the interstate heading through Chicago. This wasn’t as bad, but next time (perhaps on the way home?) I’m sticking to the original plan. I was past Chicago by 1:00 pm or so. The six and a quarter previous hours were not terribly eventful. I missed a turn heading around Fort Wayne, Indiana. Ironically this, by the time I noticed my mistake, had put me on rt. 24. Heading on back roads for the few miles back to 30 I passed for one-half mile through a beautifully wooded section of road, with curves and hills, and enveloping canopy. This was actually almost the best part of the entire ride. But as soon as it started I was back in Indiana proper, which by no means wasn’t ugly, but was hardly blissfully beautiful. (In the map to the right rt. 30 is the road coming in from the lower left and leaving to the right.)

Other memories of the trip, pre-Chicago, was the morning mist and (slight) cold slowly getting to me. I stopped for my first gas fill up east of Fort Wayne and had been averaging about 40 miles per gallon, which wasn’t great, but perhaps could be explained by some stops at lights and relatively fast driving, e.g., around 70 mph. In Indiana the speed limit dropped to 55, for the duration, but the average speed of the cars increased dramatically, heading towards 80. That further eroded my gas mileage, as did the many traffic lights as we neared Chicago. The sun also came up and, while not exactly hot, I wasn’t exactly comfortable either. So it was with some relief that I finally reached I-80, west of Chicago. This road was crowded (particularly with trucks), the wind had picked up, the surface was not quite as even as I would have liked, and, well, I was not a happy camper. I also had stopped for gas in Chicago Heights, Illinois, and the station was sufficiently in the city that it had no rest room. All of the above conspired to having me pull off at the first rest area I could find, stripping off my upper-body clothing, all but that t-shirt, and sitting down in the grass for a much-needed break from the road. This was about 1:00 pm.

In the parking lot I broke open one of my two quarts of ice tea (green with ginseng). This had been made the previous morning and poured over ice but then, as it became clear that I wasn’t going to leave on Tuesday, placed in the freezer. Tuesday evening I put them into the refrigerator, and by 1:00 there was still ice left. It was wonderful. I drank, ate from my stash of prune plumbs (not prunes, mind you, i.e., dried plumbs, but plumbs that could have been prunes only never would be). I pulled out my map of Illinois and carefully placed it in the map holder of my extra-deluxe tank bag. Surrounded by seemingly half of my belongings, all pulled from the tank bag, I started making cell phone calls. As most of you know only too well, the cell phone is a wonderful thing. You can be seemingly anywhere and still in immediate touch with friends and family. I made my second call home of the day, then made my second call ahead, to Lincoln, Nebraska, my destination for the evening. By my reckoning, that destination was still well over 400 miles distant. I was, without question, not yet halfway through the first leg of the trip.

Chicago to Lincoln: Newly applied sun block covering my only mesh-covered inner arms, I was back on the road. The traffic was not nearly as bad as I headed west (though hardly minimal) but the wind was still there. I spent much of my time being buffeted, by both random breezes and by breezes coming off of cars and trucks. The speed limit was now 65 mph, but most people were driving in the 75-80 mph range, so so was I. This, of course, went on for hours. I would drive. I would stop for gas. I would be amazed at how crappy my mileage could be (at 80+ and into a headwind, fully loaded, on a relatively old but relatively large bike I suppose that 33 mpgisn’t completely awful). At some point I crossed the Mississippi. Wow! I recall seeing a crane in much smaller creek. Indiana was flat, boring, and with seemingly no overt Democrats (I saw nothing but Bush-Cheney signs and bumper stickers). Illinois was flat, boring, not quite as Republican, but certainly not a place that did much for me. Next was Iowa. Iowa was the longest state I would cross that day, and absolutely gorgeous. The hills are rolling, farmed but pretty much lacking in artifacts. There is a real sense of timelessness, and some degree of cohabitation with nature. Of the states I had so-far passed through—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and now Iowa—Iowa was by far the prettiest.

And then, if only to add to the grandeur, about 80 miles outside of Iowa City it began to rain. To compensate I exited the interstate and, at a gas station, changed into my rain suit. This is a great rain suit, something I picked up on ebay for less than $100 that, so the seller claimed, cost him about $350. By every indication, he was being 100% truthful in both his assessment of the suit and his memory of its original price. I put on my gortex® overmits, stashed my leather jacket (which otherwise had been riding on the back of the bike rather than on my back), and then went to pull out the rain cover of my super-deluxe tank bag (which I had just purchased). Nothing. Nowhere. Not to be found. Damn, I thought. It must have been that stop in the rest area, where I had pulled so much out of the bag. Something probably had not been put back in. And I had never even gotten to use it!

Into the rain I sped. My front tire is not the newest, so I slowed down to 70 mph or so (presumably I would have slowed down even had it been new). At 70, with the rain, encased in my rain suit, with the rain-Xed visor down, hunkered behind a rain-Xed wind shield, hands protected by goretex® overmits, I had a blast. Even my tank bag wasn’t getting too wet, nestled as it was behind the wind screen. Naturally, at that point I recalled that, wait, I had moved the bag’s cover to a different compartment, placed safely away in a place I would not recall until after it was too late. Oh well. At least I still had it.

I rode on in the rain for only about 20 minutes, enjoying every one of those minutes. And then the sun came out. Suddenly I was very thankful that I had not taken off my sunglasses as part of my transformation to “rain man.” Boy did I miss the rain, and the clouds. I knew that if things didn’t change soon, I would end up riding into the sunset, and that I would be miserable. The sun was so intense. At one point I could barely read an overhead sign, almost heading off I-80 on a left-hand exit (memories of a trip across Kansas came back, when I ended up driving half the state off the interstate to avoid backtracking for hours). Eventually, when I almost couldn’t take it any longer I found myself in the far right of a two-lane exit-only. Going with the flow I pulled off into a (shaded) parking lot to wait out the last of the day. There I made a few calls. I was, at this point, in Des Moines. It must have been about 7:00 pm Central time (8:00 pm EST). I figured that I had two-three hours to go, and I was right, though just barely.

On my second to last stop for gas, I have no recollection of where this was, I had a fun encounter. A guy came up to me and asked, “Now tell me, what can that thing do that a Harley Davidson can’t?” I replied, “I’ve already ridden 500 miles today.” He just kind of smiled, nodded in understanding, and returned to his car.

Getting back on the road just prior to sunset, heading west at 80-plus mph, I sustained twilight for an hour. It was beautiful. No glare. Enough light to see. Not much traffic. Iowa continued to be a visual treat. I stopped for gas, for the last time, about 60 miles east of Omaha. And, yes, the song with that line, by Bob Segar, did keep going through my head. Very appropriate lyrics, some of them, at least:

On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha.
You can listen to the engine moaning out it’s one lone song
You can think about woman, or the girl you knew the night before,

But your thoughts will soon be wandering, the way they always do.
When your riding sixteen hours and there’s nothing much to do
And you don’t feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through.

Well you walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road,
You can feel the eyes upon you as your shaking off the cold
You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to explode.

The nice lady at the gas station (who put up with me despite this being Iowa and despite my crazy appearance with unkempt beard, long, scraggly hair, and ridiculous outfit) suggested that I had well over two hours to go. No, I declared. No more than two. She allowed then that, yes, it was about an hour to Omaha and then she admitted that she had never been to Lincoln. Being my third or fourth time quasi-crossing the country down I-80, this I found very odd.

I called ahead and declared that they shouldn’t start worrying until 10:00 pm (which, since this was now Central time, would mean a total, as the song says, of over 16 hours on the road). The final two hours was made in the dark. The bike was running very well in the coolness of the evening. The rain suit, which I had never taken off, kept me at just the right temperature. Passing through Omaha, in the cool of the evening, with well-lit, wide, and well-paved highways was the second best stretch of the leg, though I really don’t have any firm idea as to why. Past Omaha, for the last 45 or so miles, I started to get a little tired, though not much.

I made my exit, almost got killed in my indecision over whether I should turn left or turn right. Naturally, I turned right, the more dangerous move (fortunately nobody was there to hit me), only to realize that I was supposed to turn left. Desperately trying to read my MapQuest directions in the occasional street light as I whizzed down the road at 50 mph (how did we ever live BMQ, that is, Before the MapQuest era?). Finally, five minutes after 10:00, I pulled into the dead-ending street of my host. Rather than making the effort to figure out house numbers and the final directions, I whipped out my cell phone and just called. Well after midnight, a vegan pizza and half a bottle of red wine in my tummy, over 20 hours since I had awoken Wednesday morning, I called it a night.

Saturday to Wyoming: After a day spent in Lincoln talking science (with a good start on that collaboration, I think), I managed to get in something like seven hours of sleep. Naturally that was starting well after midnight, but at least I made to about 8:30 am. That’s the beauty of sleeping in a room that lacks windows. It could be any time outside, but inside it’s always midnight.

A lazy morning had me leaving around noon. The upcoming ride was an estimated ten hours, i.e., about 500 miles divided by 50 mph. This was my first riding in Nebraska, for this trip, with the sun up. The state is just the way I recalled it. My first drive through was west to east, part of a 48 hour marathon (two drivers) from Davis, California, to Danbury, Connecticut, that included one snow storm (it was January, i.e., Christmas break from college), being blown off the road (at 70 mph) in Wyoming, running out of money in Indiana, and finally getting caught speeding in Pennsylvania (fortunately, for me, I wasn’t driving at the time). These were the days of 55 mph speed limits, too, and to really make things interesting, we were driving a standard-transmission Volvo (1970 164E with about 160,000 miles on it) and my left knee, due to a skiing accident, was fully immobilized (that was another trip “doing” science, at least in the sense that we spent the trip checking out grad schools). Fortunately I encountered none of these problems with the motorcycle.

Nebraska is not as beautiful (from the interstate) as Iowa, but the state definitely has its charm. My favorite part is the Platte river which I-80 crosses again and again. Starting from the east, this time of year (the Fall), the channels at first are dry, but as you head west there is more and more water. Most of the water, of course, is not above ground, even when you can see any water at all. Taking advantage of this there are numerous ponds along the way, many of which seem to have been manmade, a consequence, I think, of a need for fill dirt that eventually was replaced with water. Seemingly every time there is an overpass there is a mound of earth built up to support the road on either side of the bridge. That earth had to come from somewhere and sure enough there inevitably is a pond more or less adjacent to the overpass.

There are more trees in Nebraska than you might expect, especially in the more eastern part of the state. Still, things are pretty flat. The sky, as a consequence, is absolutely enormous, today bright blue and nearly cloudless in every direction. As one continues to proceed west, however, the essence of the landscape changes subtlety from Great Plains to more western. The vegetation becomes both sparser and browner, and in general there is a sense that less water falls in these parts than in the eastern part of the state.

Wyoming: Nebraska transitions into Wyoming during some hairy twists and turns around some very pretty bluffs. I missed the sign welcoming me but could tell right away that I was in a different jurisdiction by how the texture of the pavement changed. The transition to The West is gradual as one crosses Nebraska, but by the time you reach Wyoming you are definitely there. The other indication is just how small the towns become. Omaha, Nebraska, is a real city and, though smaller, Lincoln is not insignificant. The towns further west, however, are miniscule. Literally a poorly timed blink and you could pass by them on the interstate without noticing that there had been any town at all. Even Cheyenne is small and relatively easy, if not to necessarily miss, then at least to fail to appreciate.

Following Cheyenne is a climb. The motorcycle did not appreciate the climb as the carburetors’ air mixture became richer and richer with the thinning air. The increasing cold also was not appreciated by the rider. Fortunately I had popped on my leather jacket at a fuel stop just prior to Cheyenne. The increasing darkness, while still riding in sunglasses, also was not appreciated. Before the sun actually set I had been riding with eighteen-wheeler trucks between me and the otherwise blinding setting sun. I was hopeful for an extended twilight like I had in Iowa. Instead, there was a mountain between me and the last of the evening’s light. Still, I rode on up and over the pass and even down into Laramie before changing glasses, still with the last of the day’s light in the sky.

Changing glasses was traumatic, much like my unsuccessful hunt for my tank bag cover two days before. This time the sunglasses case, and the case containing my other (not motorcycling) glasses were missing from the tank bag. Fortunately my riding glasses were not and I was able to ditch the sunglasses. It was a few miles down the road before I realized, like before with the tank bag cover, that I had swapped my various glasses cases into my fanny pack. Way too many compartments to keep track of on a bike. It’s an intellectual challenge (and who needs more of those?).

The last of the ride was harrowing. Since the twilight had all but faded, there were no lines on the road out of town, and the road otherwise was not the smoothest. I almost rode off the road at one point until I figured out that there was a turn coming up. I couldn’t recognize, without light, the town dump I was supposed to pass, and my headlight apparently is not the strongest. Still, the directions were good. There was indeed a horse barn. There in the distance, a mile or so away, was indeed the lights of a house, unmistakenably bright. There, too, was a tree (yes, a unique landmark on this road) indicating the driveway. On the drive I did wish I was riding an enduro rather than a touring bike, but it was smooth enough, well graded, and I made it up to the garage to park it for the night.

We scrounged for food. Fortunately I am a competent in the kitchen even when scrounging. We ended up watching movies on TNT until well past midnight. The next day (Sunday) was spent writing and hiking. I’ll tell you about Laramie in the next installment. Meanwhile, check out how my mother in law (Anne Thomas) sums up this adventure:

Oh Larry-ee,

you are in Laramie

and I am here

in Oh'-hi- oh'!

Wish you were not so far,

but that is where you are,

and so I'll have to go

on my mo-Mo'!

Oh Larry-ee,

I need some help, you see,

to get this grant

(myself, I can't).

So Larry-ee,

since you're in Laramie,

I've gotta go to thee

on my mo-Mo'!

Sunday through Wednesday: My first impression of Laramie, at least once I had switched glasses and could actually see, was amazement at both the number and size of the trees. Clearly there must have been a lot of people in Laramie who have cared about trees for a very long time. That, I believe, is why big trees are such a good indicator for the quality of a location. It takes such little effort to cut them all down (one jerk with a chain saw, and by “jerk” I don’t mean a rapid, random motion) or, of course, to never plant them in the first place. In too much of Ohio, where trees can and have grown huge, there are just so few. Much of Ohio thus partakes of a totally different mentality, one, I should note, that I don’t particularly like. So score one for Laramie—particularly a city built in the otherwise almost treeless high plains: There are big trees.

Unfortunately, as I write this, I haven’t had a chance to have much more of an impression of Laramie since much of my time here has been spent tapping away on a laptop, and otherwise getting to know the animal/food sciences department of the University of Wyoming. So, here’s a very short list of what I’ve discovered: Yes, there is a natural food store in Laramie, though I haven’t been there yet. Yes, there is a fairly good Chinese-food buffet. Gotta have a good Chinese buffet if a place is to be worth living in. There also is a good Korean fast-food joint featuring both a vegetarian dish and lots of hot sauce (the Chinese-food place, too, has ample hot sauce). There is a fairly constant breeze on campus where we are, just North of the athletics buildings and stadiums. At night it’s gotten a little bit cold, to the point where I was much more comfortable in a jacket than without, but not too cold (high 30s at best). The sun shines, and then it doesn’t. It starts raining and then it stops. Almost reminds me of Ohio weather. However, when the sun is out the sky, the moon, and the clouds are so crisp that they look three dimensional. That I attribute to the low humidity, which is low but not too low.

Most of my time has been taken up pulling together grants. Two grants quasi drafted in three days. That’s not so bad. Reminds me of my Ph.D. dissertation which I drafted in a week, but then spent the next four months refining. Oh well, better to have the drafts than to not.

Up early, avoiding the computer, I’ve taken off on walks. We’re seven miles from campus and there is only one way to get there, particularly between the house and town. Therefore I’ve walked toward school with an assumption that eventually my ride, Larry, would catch up with me. On Tuesday I made it perhaps a little less than two miles. On Wednesday I made it three and half. In fact, in the latter, I walked for a half hour (starting about 8:00 am) before any car had passed me. This was a typical western, high-desert experience: dry landscape, brown hills, a consistent breeze (just strong enough to make talking on the cell phone using the hands free difficult). The sun was intense, but the air temperature was low enough that it was much more comfortable on my shoulders than uncomfortable. At times there is the smell of horses wafting off of ubiquitous horse property. On the highway from time to time one passes what I assume is coyote scat. Not much in the way of wildlife that is visible, though earlier in the morning, before starting, two what I assume were mule deer bucks spent an hour or so feeding in the front “yard.” I kind of like this place.

Sunday I hope to spend exploring Laramie and the surrounding area on the motorcycle, with my primary aim to locate the parts necessary to fix the heated grips on the bike. Here’s hoping that the weather is conducive. On Thursday, in the afternoon/evening, we drive to Denver (about 1.5 hours away) to attend a concert by a band called “Pixies.” Apparently I really did miss out on pop culture during the late ‘80s, while I finished my Ph.D., because I’ve never heard of the Pixies. We shall see. On Saturday we hope to drive up into the mountains to hike and otherwise explore. That evening the plan is to have a barbeque. What fun!

OK, on to the next thing…

Thursday morning, random notes: Tonight we’re going to the concert, leaving around 2:00 this afternoon. I’ve drafted the two grant proposals and have sent them back to Ohio for input. Larry is hoping to submit yet another grant today so I figured that it would be altruistic of me to just stay back, sleep in, and start reading a novel. Meanwhile, while making up breakfast, I was treated to the site, off in the distance, of a coyote. So perhaps that was coyote scat on the road. I also start to wonder about the two bucks I saw yesterday (or was that the day before). We saw them again last night on the way back. Apparently it has been a while since they’ve hung around here. Larry figures that they left when he acquired his two dogs. I wonder whether instead they’ve come down from higher elevations as seasons change. I’ll have to ask Larry about the timing of their leaving. Was it last Spring?

It rained last night, and also much of the morning. The sky is gray and the air moist and cool. Just the way I like it. It’s totally quiet outside, save for water dripping off of the roof. I am totally unmotivated to do anything, except to write this I suppose. There are things that I need to do, but it sure would be nice also to just take a hike. Perhaps I should stretch out and walk up the road, into the canyon, while making my morning phone calls. Cell phones, aren’t they wonderful?

One more thought before I’m off to stretch and then to walk. Yesterday a second person said to me, The Ohio State, that’s in Columbia, right? Well, I guess I’m not in Ohio anymore. Apparently everybody knows that we’re The Ohio State University. Incredibly arrogant of us, they all volunteer. And they also seem to know that OSU is located in Columb-something, but they just aren’t quite sure what. Apparently Columbia, whether it’s the university, the country, or the district of, is a lot more familiar to them than the capital of Ohio (or the common namesake, for that matter). It certainly does give one a different perspective on Ohio. Meanwhile, for me, the irony is that in Lincoln my collaborator actually is Columbian. I wonder how she might feel about the confusion. (To the right is Roger Canyon Road, after it turns to dirt a mile or so up road of Larry’s place.)

The Pixies: Almost as soon as I started off the rain started coming down harder, cutting the walk short. I somehow managed to command Larry’s two dogs to get their doggy butts back in the kennel. No mean feat considering that I had to sprint into the garage to get the male’s head out of the dog food Larry keeps in there. I caught him, chastised him, and then demanded that he return to his kennel. He was clearly torn, looking into the garage for the food he obviously wanted but unwilling to violate my insisting command. Timely, intense negative reinforcement of unacceptable behaviors. Works every time.

Back from my walk, quite wet, I set to work on organizing data my student sent me covering the host range of a number of phages. This stuff presumably will find its way into one of the grant proposals I had drafted this week, plus I need Larry to help interpret the data since the bacterial strains are his and I have no idea what the different strain designations really mean. Fortunately Larry was much later getting back to the house than he had anticipated so I had plenty of time to put together the matrix of about 50 phage against about 25 bacterial strains. Now at least we have some clue as to what needs to come next in terms of repeating individual combinations.

When Larry did show up and we were finally on the road we were about 1.5 hours late in leaving. Larry drove fast, making up about one-half hour of the drive, but that made it only that we got to the restaurant in Denver an hour late rather than an hour and a half. Naturally we had called ahead to the restaurant so our company were finishing desert as we arrived. I figured that maybe we could get in a little dinner, but one look at the prices and I said forget it. Instead we treated ourselves to a pair of on-tap German beers and Larry a desert (I paid as reward to Larry for pulling off a tight parallel park in essentially one try—said Steve, “Bet you can’t park that in one try.” Said Larry, “What will you give me if I do?” Said Steve, “How ‘bout if I buy you a beer?” Works every time). (Above, left is a map from Laramie to Livermore which I chose to force the MapQuest[link] trace line along the route we actually took. From Livermore we went to Fort Collins and then down I-25 to Denver, all at about 80-90 mph.)

Leaving with about one-half hour to go before show time, we arrive after the show officially was to start. It took nearly a half hour before we got inside. We had general admission tickets which meant that we were standing. That turned out to be great. We were in the center, right in front of the sound board, and had plenty of room (sort of) to dance. The band, the Pixies, were just great (though, as usual, the acoustics of the arena weren’t). I danced for nearly two hours, and then kept right on dancing after the show had ended. How people could go to a rock concert and not dance, but instead just stand there for two hours is beyond me. The band was at their best when they were most punk, which was often.

After the show we were ready to do more but then rapidly ran out of steam, and found a cheap (sort of) place to spend the night. Sleeping in (sort of) the next morning, we finally headed off for Golden at 10:00 AM, about the time we were supposed to meet some phage people at the Colorado School of Mines. We talked there for hours and then headed off for a delightful pizza and salad (and soup and ice tea) lunch. One of the people entertaining us was a hot sauce junky, just like me. She hoarded a bottle of hot sauce (not so hot, really) and a jar of red pepper flakes (for the pizza), both of which I stole from her. Our hosts were amazed when I poured the hot sauce on the salad without first testing it (come on, it’s the rare hot sauce in a restaurant that really is hot). They then convinced me that a real chili nut wouldn’t shake the hot pepper flakes onto the pizza but instead would unscrew the top and pour. I concurred. A group of people that really understand what it is to be me. Great! (The map to the left starts in Golden, Colorado, and ends at Estes Park, Colorado.)

We took back roads back to Laramie. This would be route 93 to route 36 to route 34 to route 287. Route 36 was great alpine driving, all up hill. At the junction of 36 and 34 was a place called Estes Park which was on Estes Lake, a place dominated by a historic, elegant hotel (The Stanley) on a hill overlooking the lake and one elk after another.

Our first stop, just before route 34, was a small park on the lake that had at least a dozen elk, one of which was a male with giant antlers. They just stood their and ate, unfazed by cars, SUVs, and photographers. It turned out that these elk were not a fluke as we passed dozens more as we passed through town, a distance of only about 1.5 miles. These people must really like their elk! It was just awesome.

Hard to believe but even better was the drive back out of the mountains on route 34. This was down a canyon with tall rock formations on either side and a fast running stream down below. This is the kind of scenery that the Rocky Mountains are justifiably famous for. We didn’t make it back to Laramie until about 8:00 PM. On the way we talked science, by cell phone (cell speaker phone at that) with a second collaborator, Paul Hyman, who also was in a car (fortunately not driving). The modern world, with all of these gadgets, really is just amazing.

Saturday “morning”: I was up at 5:30, writing the intro to this travel log (blog?) and finding images on the web. What, I keep asking, did we do before the WWW? It is completely beyond me. Between that and cell phones, how did we communicate? Fortunately I was back to sleep by 6:30 or so and then not up until 9:30. I guess the two previous days in Denver and then Golden had worn me out. Larry, too. It’s almost 2:00 PM. We should be off for the mountains. A little late for what I had assumed would be a trip that started around 10:00 AM. Oh well. I don’t care. I’ve spent the morning tidying up my things and doing a touch of landscaping (some rock removal next to a very long drive), this while Larry tidied/cleaned the house. During my time on the driveway I had the two dogs with me and once again the male escaped. This time he returned to his seemingly beloved house/barn just down the road. There must be a dog in heat that lives in there. I ran down there, probably about a third of mile, with my lungs burning towards the end. Oh ya, dry air, 7,000 feet, more or less out of shape. This makes sense. I refused to accept anything less than obedience from the dog and he reluctantly agreed to follow me back to the house. A little more reading of my novel and a touch of lying around looking out at the sky through the windows from my vantage on the floor. White, crisp, billowy clouds against a backdrop of deep-blue sky. Sigh…

The Snowies: Off we were to the Snowy Range, the center of Medicine Bow National Forest, and their 12,000 foot splendor. On the way we argued about the strengths and weaknesses of molecular techniques, with me taking the position that not all biology, even when molecular biology might be useful, should be burdened by a need to employ molecular techniques. To say otherwise is a molecular conceit. Perfectly good science can be (and is) done without touching upon the molecular, even if such science points directly to doing the molecular. To do otherwise forces everyone to be rooted in the most reductionist of disciplines. It is anti diversity, and only with diversity of thought and approaches can we all prosper. Synergy is preferable to mere tolerance is preferable to intolerance.

Fortunately the smell of what must have been lodgepole pines—the only tree species named by a sign celebrating the local flora and fauna—took our thoughts immediately away from our often-heated discussions. The rocky cliffs soared 1,000 feet over our heads and 5-6 inches of now slushy snow covered what the plows could not or would not reach. Like Laramie, over 3,000 feet below, there is an unusual silence to this place that I can only attribute to a lack of birds. Where are they? Are they never around in the high desert? Have they been chased off by man (and cow and horse)? Have they flown south for the winter? Regardless, all one hears is the breeze through the flora and an occasional chirping of squirrels. No insects, either, in the near-freezing cold.

What had been a deep blue sky earlier in the day is now clouds, some spectacular, others threatening rain. Into those clouds, up on the cliffs, a plane apparently once flew, with 66 souls lost. A placard memorializing the incident is on the side of a scenic overlook but apparently a sign describing it is now missing. We stop at a second spot and climb up an overlook to view the Libby Flats, which are an alpine meadow, partially covered with snow, interspersed trees, and oligotrophic lakes, or are they ponds? On the way back to town we continued to listen to a U2 album, with some emphasis on the following lyrics:

In the howling wind comes a stinging rain
See it driving nails
Into the souls on the tree of pain
From the firefly, a red orange glow
See the face of fear
Running scared in the valley below

In the locust wind comes a rattle and hum
Jacob wrestled the angel
And the angel was overcome
You plant a demon seed
You raise a flower of fire
See them burning crosses
See the flames higher and higher

Across the field you see the sky ripped open
See the rain through a gaping wound
Pounding on the women and children
Who run
Into the arms
Of America

What do they mean? No matter, we’re late for a party we are supposed to be giving. We stop by the supermarket to pick up supplies. Twenty-five minutes late we realize we’ve forgotten a whole list of supplies. I return on the motorcycle, riding a little in the rain and a bit more in the dark. It’s my first time on the bike in almost exactly a week. A quick call to Larry while in the market and I’m instructed to buy more beer. Thinking quickly I pack my ripe, delicate tomatoes in side bag and the beer in the other. When I get back to Larry’s, this time zooming up the driveway (if zooming is I word I can use even if I never shifted out of first gear), I’m the last to arrive at the party. Immediately I set out to prepare a salad and the various fixings for the burgers. I find myself in an odd place, between three women to my left talking lady stuff and three guys on my right (down the stairs and outside at the grill, to be exact) talking guy stuff. I’m in the middle, slicing away at the veggies, avoiding beer for fear of chopping off my fingers. When finally I’m done I partake of this wonderful microbrewery beer called Altitude. Dark, smooth, barely carbonated. Almost as good as good dark chocolate, though without being sweet.

It was only halfway through the evening that I realized that I was old enough to have easily fathered half the people there. Either I’m getting older or everybody else is getting younger. I did, however, have an opportunity to give my canned speech on trans fatty acids: “If it says ‘partially hydrogenated’ then it’s junk food, no matter how wholesome it looks. If you really want to have some saturated fats, partially hydrogenated or otherwise, then have some butter or have some cheese; they’re far better for you than margarine. Better yet, have a beer. But if you drink to excess and get in trouble don’t go telling the police that Dr. Abedon told you to do so.” Even with just one person saying, “Ya, ya, so true,” it still felt immensely satisfying to at least try to bestow a little wisdom on this still slightly formative crowd.

Sunday morning: Today I hope to go back to the Snowy Range, this time on the bike and this time with enough time to get a good look at the local ski area (Snowy Range), which is about the same driving time from Laramie as my local ski are in Ohio is from home (Snow Trails). The contrasts are interesting. The Snowy Range is a small area with a base elevation of 9,000 feet, a summit elevation of 9,990 feet, 250 acres of skiing, and 250 annual inches of snow. I can only speculate as to the stats on Snow Trails, but not too far off from the truth is a base elevation of 50 feet, a summit elevation of 250 feet, presumably a lot less than 250 acres of skiing, and 25 inches of snow, in a good year. An unfair comparison? Of course. But who cares, right?

Sunday afternoon until leaving Laramie: Unfortunately, I never made it to the Snowy Range. Sunday turned into a very lazy day with me spending quite a bit of time (gasp!) reading a novel (The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre—I’m afraid that I don’t recommend it) and talking on the phone. This didn’t stop from taking two hikes, both from Larry’s house and then upward into the foothills that surround him. That was fun. The first hike, however, was cut short by the fear, “Did I really turn off the stove and/or take the tea pot off of it before leaving the house?” Answer: of course I did, but thus truncated my hike. For the second hike I took “Larry’s” dogs (they actually belong to his grad student, Jen Chase, no relation to Martha) and headed off towards some limestone quarries not far from his house. I then climbed up a road that someday may be part of a housing development, also not far from his place. That road dead ends abruptly but a two-track continues upward, crossing one fence then another then another then another. The dogs and I climbed and climbed and climbed until the proximity of thunder and lightning (especially the latter) forced us back down again. Bummer. We were having fun.

Monday was spent exploring the University of Wyoming main campus, which is a half-mile plus away from the East campus where Larry is stationed. The U. Wyo. campus is pretty and fairly self contained. Upon lunch time, when I considered walking off campus to find food, I initially asked a student for directions to food off campus, which she provided. Five minutes later, huffing and puffing, she caught up with me again and said that I really should try to find food instead in the student union. I made her assure me that she hadn’t run after me just to tell me that and she indicated that she in reality was heading towards a specific building when she spotted me and decided to update her previous response. Thank you! It turns out that this student was absolutely correct and I had the pleasure of dining for lunch on a vegetarian Subway, my (American) food of choice while on the road, though interestingly the first time I had partaken on this trip.

That morning and afternoon I met with a number of professors on campus, barging into their offices cold and introducing myself. To a large degree this was a rather effective way of getting to know the flavor of the University. I even attended a class after one of the profs indicated when I barged in that she didn’t have time to chat but that I could attend a class first and then we could chat afterward. The joke, of course, is that I never had a chance to introduce myself so it wasn’t until after the class was over that I was able to set the record straight that, in fact, I wasn’t a prospective grad student. All worked out for the best, however, since I had an opportunity to help remedy a balky A.V. system (lap top and projector) prior to her giving the lecture. All and all I had a great time and managed to blow the entire day doing these little explorations. The best moment, of course, was when I told one professor what I do research wise and her first thought was to send me to this really cool web site she had come across last spring (which, of course, turned out to be my web site). The second really great moment was a suggestion that I organize a phage ecology/evolutionary biology/application (the latter my idea) Gordon conference. Hey, great idea! Why didn’t I think of that! (Though I should note that with perhaps one phage conference per year currently planned—the successor of the Florida meeting and the already established Evergreen meeting—it probably is premature to attempt to implement such a Gordon conference. Let me know if anybody has any thoughts on the subject.)

Laramie to Lincoln: Tuesday morning at 8:00 AM (well, OK, a little after 8:00 AM) I was back on the road. My first stop was Larry’s lab to say bye to Jen the grad student, but sadly Jen was not yet in. Then I managed to get lost, not realizing that Larry’s lab was so isolated from the rest of Laramie. My next stop was for gas, after deciding that it was perhaps prudent to not try to pass between Laramie and Cheyenne with 100 miles already knocked off of my current tank. There a passerby told me how he had once been an avid rider, had stopped riding for 20-odd years, only to take a spin a friend’s dirt bike. Somehow the throttle became stuck on that bike and he ended up tearing up the ligaments in one knee. Yes, it is important to try to be careful out there.

The pass was fun, though as with the first time from the other direction, the bike struggled getting up it (i.e., there was no way I was going to get much past 75 mph). The pass was cold (in the 30s, Fahrenheit that is) but since the sun was blazing over all of it by this point not too cold. Then there was the long trip down the other side towards Cheyenne and then Nebraska. The highlight was east of Cheyenne, west of Pine Bluff, Wyoming. Up ahead on the road, as I slowly descended, it looked like there was a bank of clouds, only instead of clouds up in the sky, this was a bank that was sitting right on the road. Though fog like, it was clear, as I entered these clouds, that this was not fog but instead patchy (and then increasingly dense) clouds swirling and wisping about. Now driving (or hiking) into clouds I’ve done often enough, but usually that is in the mountains where one climbs high enough and then suddenly one is literally in the clouds. But I’ve never experienced this in flat lands. Only upon arriving in Pine Bluff and then beyond did I figure out what was going on. Apparently the “low” plains and the high plains were both sunny and clear, but a bank of clouds was sitting at their interface. I-80 happens to gradually descend from high to low during this, and the clouds were low enough that they were literally touching the road to the west while overhead to the east. Fascinating!

The rest of the trip across most of Nebraska was mostly uneventful. The big pain was the constant crosswind which kept me on my toes. The most terrifying part (in addition to passing trucks) was crossing one overpass where the wind shifted direction halfway through a turn. I started the pass with the bike perceptibly leaning to the right (as I “turned” into the wind). The bridge actually turned to the left and halfway through the wind suddenly was coming from my left, requiring that I stop “turning” to the right while actually turning to the left but instead lean to the left both to fight the wind and complete the turn. Fortunately I had the good mind to slow down to 50 as all this was (or was about to) happen. It was terrifying! Otherwise I rode for a half-hour or so with two other motorcyclists outside of Lincoln and then made it to Lincoln after 9½ hours of riding (loosing my bearings once, forcing a look at the map). Just like last Thursday, we ate and drank wine and otherwise hung out until well past midnight. It will be interesting indeed to see how early I manage to get up for the second leg of my return on Friday.

Lincoln to Mansfield: For the last leg of trip, as promised, I avoided I-80 completely. The leg began in Lincoln around 1:00 PM central time on rt. 34 which passed right by University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Heading out of Lincoln this is a perfectly respectable two-lane highway that passes through rolling hills and endless farmland. Speeds were mostly and easily maintained in the 60-70 mph range and there are only minimal serious turns. The end of the road as far as Nebraska is concerned occurs in a town called Plattsmouth, Nebraska. In my head, in recollection, I recall three different Plattsmouths. I recall a town where 34 was under construction and I fueled up after riding along a detour. I then recall turning onto and then turning off of a main street. The leads to a twisty-turning climb up and then down a hill that terminates at a toll house for crossing the Missouri River. The bridge across is a narrow, steel, two-laner. On the other side I’m in iowa, where I will be for at least the next six hours (it’s currently a little after 4:00). In Iowa I’m blown off the road, though fortunately this is at a very low speed as I U-turn back to where I-29 and rt. 34 are briefly the same. Iowa again is hilly and rather beautiful marred only by an unfortunately tendency of their department of transportation to repave only that portion of the roads on which the tires of cars make contact. This results in terrifying traverses during which I can’t be sure that if I slip across the transitions onto or off of these “two-tracks” I won’t hit an abrupt transition that takes the bike down. Yuck!

Sometime much later, as the sun begins to go down, finally it starts to rain. I say finally because much of the trip across Iowa was done on wet roads but with only minimal rain. Naïvely I figured that I was simply encountering the remains of random thunderstorms. Near the Mississippi, however, this randomness turned into something far more certain. In this rain my windshield, helmet visor, and finally my glasses became hopelessly wet and fogged. I kept slowing down and slowing down as I could see less and less. Not encountering any gas stations I pulled over for a quick bathroom break, taking advantage of a port-a-potty on a road-construction site. Perfect, except that the potty was surrounded by mud. So there I was, nearly blind with boots so muddy that I could barely keep my feet on the pegs. And still the rain came down harder and harder, further reducing visibility yet only barely helping with the mud on my feet.

Finally a gas station where, in the now-pouring rain, I clean my boots, clean and dry my windshield (and helmet visor), and manage to purchase rain-X®. I also switch from glasses to contacts. Something like a half-hour later, I’m back on the road. My hope is simply to ride the two or so hours to where the gas station attendant suggested that it wasn’t raining. Apparently they were calling for rain for all night where I was, rain all the next day, and perhaps rain the day after that. I figured that if I could get through this storm, which was centered more or less on the Mississippi, and then stay ahead of it, I would be far better off than were I simply to call it a night. So on I rode, through the pouring rain, until I couldn’t take it anymore. At some point I even took a wrong turn, though I was able to find my way back to the highway without backtracking. In Galesburg, Illinois, I stopped for dinner at a local Subway. It was then only about 9:00 PM and I stuck around until around 10:00. There I slipped on some polypropylene uppers and a synthetic vest to stay warm even as I was becoming increasingly wet. I didn’t change out of my jeans, however, which was a mistake given that as a consequence I would spend the next 10 hours with a wet bottom. Perhaps that would have happened anyway since by now the seat on the bike was very wet.

Getting back on the road I immediately missed a turn, ending up in Galva, Illinois. Between driving up there and then heading south I probably lost close to an hour. Oh well. Finally making my way to rt. 24, someplace East of E. Peoria, I stopped for a second bottle of diet Coke (my first obtained in Galva). By now I was sufficiently wet and cold that my ice tea no longer seemed too appetizing, and with time in the vicinity of mid-night I still was very much in need of caffeine. Fortunately for me, the rain was pretty much behind me at this point and so I headed down rt. 24 towards Ft. Wayne, Indiana. It was now late at night and I don’t remember all that much. I recall stopping under some sort of roof at some sort of factory to nap for an half-hour or so, lying back on the duffle bags I’d bungied onto the bike as a make-shift bed. I recall that it wasn’t all that warm out, and that I awoke wet and cold as the heay from the engine finally dissipated. Another memory was outside of Ft. Wayne, passing through a “canyon” of overhanging trees. I have this recollection that I’d been down this road before, though I don’t know when I might have. Perhaps it was just tricks of the mind that come from early riding on a brisk fall morning. Still well before dawn I find a gas station on the outskirts of Ft. Wayne. I then make my way around the city and onto rt. 30. Dawn finally hit in Ohio. Amazingly I was still warm and still alert, but I can’t say that I remember all that much of my return to Ohio. Perhaps this is because it seemed a lot like my trip out but only in reverse. Taking a shortcut from 30 to home, one that I had only learned the weekend prior to leaving on the trip, I finally made it, 9:00 AM and 19 hours after leaving Lincoln.

It was warm and sunny and I stripped myself and the bike so that everything might dry during the day. I eat. I head to bed where I remained until 7:00 PM that evening. Awesome. Can’t wait until next time.