Cycling allows you to get up close with a place. It doesn't matter that you are passing through, it matters that you going slowly enough to notice and take in things that would otherwise have passed by in an insignificant flash if you were in a car. Small towns with a single shop and one motel become real. Random people at a cafe become the person who invited you to sit at their campfire the night before. A cashier becomes the person who goes to make up your motel room. Isolated little convenience stores become an oasis to warm up and dry off after a torrential downpour. So far my favorite stops have been Lilliwaup and Coupeville, WA.
It also makes you approachable to be on a bike, we've met a few interesting folks over the past few days. Just this afternoon a random woman stopped us to ask if she could use our cellphone. She seemed pretty distraught and was walking on the road without her shoes. I handed her my new phone and unknowingly activated speakerphone before giving it to her. It made us unwilling eavesdroppers on her phone call. We heard her call for help from her friends, that she needed to be picked up right away and that she no longer had shoes. She hung up and handed back the phone, thanked us and started down the road in her socked feet. Somewhat uneasy, we continued on our way but not before we left her with a pair of flip flops from our panniers.
Finally, on a bike you not just see, but you get to digest the landscape and scenery around you. You get to be a part of it rather than be apart from it. Washington is aglow now with little yellow flowers that carpet both sides of the highway. Rhododendron bushes are in full bloom among the thick green forests. The Olympic mountains have been looming to our left, the Hood Canal with its ocean smells to our right. They quietly become travel companions rather than inert visual impressions.
Janius Tsang
