1. The Idea
ÔÉ A kid was
swimming at the beach ahead to the right. He seemed to be alone
there. He got out, ran up in the sand and got a towel. His
motions
with the towel looked familiar and distinctive. ÒThat
could be John,Ó I
thought, scanning for Viann. Yes, there was someone reading in a
chair up
the beach. It nearly had to be them.
ÔÒKaty, is
that John there?Ó I said, pointing.
ÔÒNo, I
donÕt
think soÉ. Wait, thatÕs a red and white striped
towel just like
ours. Maybe it is John. WhereÕs momma?Ó
ÔI
pointed. We started waving; John saw us and started waving
back. He
ran up excitedly to his mother and she got up and started waving
too. We
were nearly home.
ÔÒWhereÕs
Viannah?Ó Katy asked.
ÔÒAt band
camp.Ó
ÓOh, thatÕs right.ÓÕ
(A Beginning With Katherine,
Chapter 12.)
It was August
2000, Katy and I were aboard the Jeffrey Arvid, running on a single engine,
the last
episode from the portion of our adventure which was camping out on
Santa Rosa
Island of the Channel Islands National Park. Katy
was thirteen.
I was exhausted. Viann was
waiting on shore to pick us up after we docked. Viannah
was in high school. My dad was still alive. The kid on the beach was John who was barely
ten. His turn was next.
The precedent
was established. JohnÕs older
sisters had been on major adventures with their dad who kept notes and
records
and took pictures and wrote a book after it was over, posting it to his
website
The
expectation was established. There
was a certain scope, a certain level of effort, a certain amount of
planning,
preparing, execution, and chronicling.
The whole project had that certain level of fame within family
and
community that leads to something that must now be fulfilled. And there was John, swimming in the
surf. What could I do with him in
the next two or three years that would be different and yet the same,
fair and
yet special, possible and memorable?
I had learned
with the girls not to try to involve them in too much strategic
planning. Viann had suggested that they
would go
along with anything that I said do.
I had wanted to hike across the Grand Canyon.
I had wanted to actually go to one of the Channel Islands
non-trivially. What else had I
wanted to do with the kids? What
had been special to me to that I might somehow capture for one of them?
Well, there
was bicycling. Long ago I had done
some modest bike touring with my friend Rob and later with my new wife,
Viann. There had been a plan to
build up and ultimately do something really big.
For years the goal had been to ride bikes up the Alaska Highway
to
Fairbanks and from there do something really bigger.
Reality intervenes; it had never happened. Indeed,
larger bikepacking trips than I had ever done but
which were tiny compared to the Alaska Highway had been planned and
those plans
dashed by various realities:
competing interests, limited resources, other obligations, the
weatherÉ.
Well, maybe
John and I could do some kind of bicycling trip. It
wouldnÕt be to Alaska, unless it started somewhere in the
Yukon, but there were many places locally or within a few dayÕs
drive that
would be nice for rides of the scope of the famous Taylor to Enchanted
Rock
trip with Rob in 1976. Off and on
I mulled over ideas.