Circling the U.S. Chapter 60: Losing Rob, Again

Friday, December 13, 2019

After six months on the road, we appear to be falling apart. Monday Rob misjudged the distance as he passed alongside a parked truck, caught his pannier on it and fell down. Tuesday his heart went into tachycardia and we paid a visit to an ER. I left a long-sleeved tech shirt behind in a hotel in San Diego and lost a flip-flop.

But this morning began well. Rob was in good spirits and keeping up with me as we left Calexico on our final day in California. He was in the mood to talk, as usual about nothing much. I call it prattling. Suddenly I felt a push from behind, as though a semi had passed by too closely. But no truck had gone by. I struggled to stay upright, balanced myself, and kept pedaling. Rob, behind me, was silent.  I checked my mirror. I didn't see him. I stopped, got off my bike, and turned around. There was no sign of Rob. Nothing. The shoulder was completely empty. Rob was gone. Just like that, he'd disappeared. Where did he go?

Last summer when we were visiting Mac and Suzie in Michigan, Suzie told us about a current news story where a woman and her dog went missing. The woman and her husband had gone to a campground in California; after finding a campsite, she and their dog stayed at the site while he went to pay for it. When the husband returned the wife and dog were gone. They'd disappeared, leaving no trace. For several days search parties combed the woods around the campground. The husband became a person of suspicion. Then, finally, she turned up. A stranger had tried to kidnap her. She'd run into the woods with her dog and, while hiding and running had gotten lost.

It was that story of sudden disappearance that immediately jumped into my mind as I looked down the highway and saw not a single trace of my husband. Gone, just like that. Could a trucker have picked him up? Hoisted him into the semi as it drove by? No. That was impossible.

There was nothing to do but get on my bike and ride back down the road to where I'd been, riding carefully on the shoulder in the wrong direction. And, not a hundred yards back, I saw Rob, bike upright, among a grove of palm trees alongside the road.

Here's what happened from Rob's point of view. He'd gotten too close to me and "kissed" my tire. Losing his balance he steered away from traffic over to the side of the road and went down an embankment into the palm trees, crashing into one and sliding down it. He began ringing his bicycle bell - DING! DING! DING! - hoping I would hear it. I didn't. He got up and that's when I saw him.

Had he been a few hundred feet further ahead he would have run into a brick wall. 

After that bit of excitement we made quick work of 50 miles on flat roads through the desert, first on a two-lane highway for 20 miles, then 30 miles on Interstate 8, ignoring signs that said "Bicycles Must Exit" or "Bicycles Prohibited" as we waved to the California State Highway Patrol parked alongside the road.  I wondered what would happen if they decided to stop us. Would we get hit with a hefty fine or just told to get off the road? Rob, who is the one who doesn't like to break rules, said, "They have bigger worries than bicycles on the highway." 

We arrived in Yuma, on the Arizona border, around one o'clock, and changed our watches to two o'clock since we'd entered a new time zone.

First we rode 20 miles on a two-lane highway.

Then we rode on the interstate. Legally we were required to ride frontage roads sometimes, but my research said they were in bad shape so we opted to stay on the interstate, which we were legally allowed to do, sometimes. The shoulder was mostly in good shpe and it felt surprisingly safe.

After almost two months exploring California, we arrived in Arizona. Rob looks pretty happy now, but later that night he complained that one of his ribs hurt from his rendezvous with a palm tree that morning.