Local cyclist saddles up for hard-core bike trip

Editor's note: Matt Wittmer is a Cape Girardeau native and an avid cyclist. He is helping to plot a bike route from Canada to Key West, Fla., as part of the East Coast Greenway. Wittmer's portion of the ride started in September in Washington, D.C., and will end in Key West in November.

So here I am in D.C., borderline homeless. Ah, how refreshing. Except for my Bianchi, two small panniers with the essentials and a lovely, new tent, I'll be reliant on wit and the whims of the big world for the next seven weeks and 1,800 miles. To borrow some words from Steinbeck, "We do not take a trip; a trip takes us," and that's just the way I like it.

Fellow travelers know the most well devised itinerary can blow out the window by the first rest area. When willing, though, to take an exit we hadn't planned on, we can open ourselves up to the transportive freedom of chance.

Which reminds me, I do have a job to do. Mapping aside, the etymology of travel is travail, as in hard, laborious work.

I should mention, while I may be embedded in the unknown, I lied a little about those "essentials." I'm carrying enough gadgets to titillate any die-hard technophile. I'm miles from a monk with an alms bowl.

I've got a digital still camera and a digital video camera, a digital voice recorder, a Mac iBook G4, a micro wireless cyclocomputer and a cell phone. I'm carrying 15 or so watts of light. I'll skip the battery count as I chose to forego the GPS. I've decided to wait a few years for the implant, but you know it's on the way.

Saddled up on my bicycle in front of the Lincoln Memorial, I find myself at this most interesting of intersections -- an invisible place where uber-tech meets the primitive. I'm simultaneously disconnected from the everyday, prowling the back roads like a stray dog, yet capable of communicating with a good portion of the planet. The thought is intoxicating.

Chris McCandless, the idealistic, young hero of John Krakauer's Into the Wild, and Sean Penn's new movie of the same name, was a scion of the upper middle class turned modern day hobo. In an attempt to live off the land, he abandoned his car, burned all the money in his wallet, rambled to Alaska, and ended up a rotting corpse in the wilderness. So much for hubris.

I'm seeking authenticity of a different kind. I understand McCandless' impulse, yet would like to avoid the dying part. That, and there's simply too much to document, too much to tell, too much to see, too many things to consider, too many people to absorb.

A hard-core bike trip is just the middling answer. By hard-core I mean long, and minimal to an extreme. No frills, no fat. I plan on staying outside as much as the weather and circumstances allow. Hotels are a scourge. There's beauty living close to the bone.

The bike invokes a kind of rolling meditation. A ride for me has always served to wipe the detritus of the day from my mind. It's the perfect pace. Something happens between 12 and 20 miles an hour. Just fast enough to get somewhere. Just slow enough to really see what's in between, where you were and where you want to be.

Travel engenders stories, if nothing else. How we missed that Amtrak in Chicago and, forced to stay one more night, heard the best blues of our lives. That time you and the children hastily packed the Westphalia at the first inkling of spring and headed west, motorized pioneers, destination unknown. Whatever. So if I'm lucky enough, aware enough, bold enough, I should have some tales for you over the course of this trip. But most likely, they'll come to me like exits turn to entrances.