So, I’m back on the road, headed to Washington, DC, to restart my tour properly. It is taking me a bit to get back into the spirit of the trip. Trying to achieve the sense of freedom and excitement at exploration had been properly tamped down during the first half of the trip with my brother and having to drive back home.
But, with the judicious use of pleasant music and singing along like a madman, I’m able to get closer to the mental state I want. At least from Florida through Georgia, and halfway through South Carolina. Things changed when I passed around Florence. The highway resembled the highways of the Midwest with steep embankments on either side, and bridges. The sweat inducing unease of the earlier portion of the trip came roaring back. If I went off the road on either side, I would be well and truly screwed. This caused me to slow down, much to the annoyance of the drivers behind me in either lane. As darkness descended, my unease grew. I’m sure that it is nothing to the residents of the area that are used to zipping along this portion of I-95, but for flatlander Kiara it was annoying. I finally stopped for the night and got a hotel.
The early morning sun and a couple of cans of Redbull made the morning drive better… until I hit the area of Richmond, Virginia. The makeup of the drivers and traffic changed so suddenly it was as if some capricious God transported me from one area to another in-between blinks of an eye. Traffic became HORRENDOUS and the driver's worst. After a few miles, I saw accident after accident. I went from driving eighty miles an hour to fifty or fifty-five.
Entering the Swamp of DC made things even worst. I for the life of me cannot understand why the hell anyone lives in that place. The highways are wide as hell and have too many connecting highways. Which you would think should mitigate traffic, but it's a false hope. Looking down at the bisecting highways of 95, 495, 395, Hwy 1, or Hwy 611 from the air would look the same as a line of ants transporting food to their nest—with about as much space between the cars as each ant.
I needed to reach the general area of Gaithersburg. My friend Kortney had convinced her parents to allow me to park my car at their house while they were out of town. I was looking forward to seeing Kor-as I refer to her in my phone—her husband Matt, and their rug rat of a son Nigel. The last time I had seen them was during the Presidential Inauguration in 2016. I was covering the event for a few sites and at the time Nigel had still been sitting in car seats.
Following the convoluted directions out of my phone, I think I drove a section of each highway in the area before I finally reached my destination. It was still early in the day and Matt asked me if I wanted to head to my starting point. However, the combination of traffic, not being sure where in the hell the lady's voice from the phone was directing me, and the nature of the roads, I was annoyed and stressed out. All I wanted to do was get a hotel, drink a beer or a dozen, and chill out.
Seriously, if you live in the DC area, why in the hell do you? Like, please post below whyyyyy? Unless you’re working for some high flouting lobbying firm, bilking Uncle Sam out of millions of dollars, it doesn’t seem worth it.
The next morning, I learned my first lesson of the trip. I woke with a clear mind and excitement. I was finally ready. Like for real, for real. I headed back to Kor’s parents' house and on the way got a terrible surprise. A full twelve inches of lead pipe popped into the air and impale my brand new, $300 dollars a piece tires. I was on a tire slowing losing air with my spare under a shit ton of equipment in back. The tire went fully flat two miles away from the house.
A part of me took it as a sign. God’s message to me saying, “Yo, bruh! You really shouldn’t do this. This ain’t what I want you to do, and I’m giving you a tap on the shoulder to alert you.”
Another part of me was too invested. I had thought, saved, planned, and plotted for a full year. I could not not take the trip. I did not care about anything else.
Here is the lesson. We all have goals, events, or destinations we wish to reach. We invest our emotions, time, money, and sometimes our heart into achieving them, a business, a relationship, marriage, education, etc. No matter what it is we cannot allow any bump in the road to trip us into descending into negative thinking. That feeling of “this is a sign” is nothing more than the boogeyman of doubt. A thought that if we allow will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If your goal is worth pursing, there is the possibility of failure. Assigning meaning to obstacles allows an emotional exit strategy for you if you fail or something goes wrong. Do not allow that.
On the other hand, do not become obsessed. In that moment, I was more closely aligned with the, this is a sign point of view. BUT I was also obsessed, if I am honest. I wanted to do this, needed to do it.
But did I really? If I had turned around and said, “oops, this is a mistake. I’m going home,” would the world have ended? No. Perspective is everything. Do not lose it.
In my case, I drove the last couple of miles to the house and said to myself, “Kiara, you planned for this. You bought a real spare tire for your car—not a donut tire—specifically for this possibility, so it’s not that big of a deal. Stop being emotionally overwrought. Change the tire and get on the goddamn bike.”
Self-flagellation over, Matt showed up with some power tools, we switched out the tires, parked the car and headed toward my starting point, Carderock Lock. Matt keeps looking at me with bewilderment. When his wife told him I was coming to town to drop my car off and bicycle across the country, he starred at her for three minutes in disbelief. He did not think she was serious.
Faced with me outfitted to the nines and a bike hanging off the rack of my SUV, I can tell he is trying to accept the reality. He admires what I’m trying to do. He also leans into me and say, “Dude, I think what you’re doing is kinda cool and brave… but you know this is some white boy shit right here, right?”
I can’t do anything but laugh. Matt is white. Kor is black. Clearly neither of them gets hung up on racial nonsense. But one thing I love about them, and our friendship is that we both still know there are differences between people of all races and those differences are quite funny sometimes. Black people are not into cycling as much as white people. And certainly riding 4,000 miles ain’t something most brothers are in the barbershop planning. So, I get what he means.
The Great American Rail Trail starts in Washington, DC. Because of Nancy Pelosi’s over the top, political reaction to January 6th and some of the equipment I have with me, I decide to start further down on the trail. Carderock is on mile marker 10.5 of the C and O trail. The trail goes from DC to Cumberland, Maryland. A total of 185 miles.
Matt drops me off, wishes me luck, and smiles as he tells me to watch out for any banjos. I’m here. The adventure truly begins now.
