Friday, December 10, 2010

The Final Summation and some thought for food

So what does it all mean? Nicole and I have been back for over a month now and people still ask us questions.

And we love answering them.

It's funny how when we first tell people about riding our bikes from Maine to North Carolina, the response divides almost evenly into two camps. About half will open their eyes wide with excitement and say, "wow, that's great, wish I could do that!" Another half will open their eyes wide with fear.

"Be careful!" They caution. "There's a lot of crazy people out there!"

We pretty much got this response everywhere. No matter what part of the country. From Bar Harbor to Kitty Hawk and all points in between.  Kinda funny.

This trip was in and of itself so many things. What started out in the fall off 2004 as escapist adventurism gradually morphed into five weeks of (mostly) good times.

So what was the big take away? More than a month later and my mind is still teaming with thoughts, scattering in many different directions.

A large focus on the trip was on healthy eating, and touring the many cites of such historical importance often brought to mind John Locke, and his famous social contract.


I could write a whole essay on how I think the social contract should apply to food: I pay for food, I expect the benefits of food in return. That it will eliminate my hunger, that it will satisfy my sense of taste, and that it won't endanger my health and cause me to die prematurely.

But that was just one thing that I took away from this trip. Nicole and I were so fortunate (and in some cases, unfortunate) to see so much.

On the one hand we saw resurgent classic New England farms, integrated systems of sustainable agriculture

On the other hand, we also saw the monocultures of large-scale farming, farms that didn't even grow food.

 On the one hand, it was fun and exciting to hear Jon Stewart's impassioned plea for reasableness, as evidenced by the "zipper" merge on the Lincoln Tunnel.

On other hand, that very night Nicole and I spent two and half hours on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. If we hadn't cut across four lanes of traffic to seek a different route, we might still be in New Jersey!

After being back, and compiling my thoughts, with so many odds and ends in this topsy-turvy, I couldn't help but cogitate a grand vision: Everyone should ride a bike across America.

Seriously. In Lieu of summer reading, America's high school students should take a good look around. Too much of our national discoursed is poisoned by a complete and utter lack of understanding of our own countrymen. What better to see into America's past and its present than by pedaling along. If absolutely nothing else, we'll learn climate and topography (no small feat given that 76 percent of our high school seniors can't locate Iraq on a map)!

If our high schools are unable to take the challenge, perhaps America's colleges and universities could fill the void. College students in every discipline need real world experience, and a cross country bike trip could fall under so many studies: History, Geography, Political Science, Abnormal Psychology, etc.

The big one is personal health. Diabetes, once an incredibly rare disease, currently afflicts nearly 10 percent of the population. Approximately 1 in 3 Americans is at risk for diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control predicts that half of all Americans may suffer from Type II Diabetes, which is completely preventable. Eating real food that your body recognizes as food along with a reasonable amount of exercise can keep you safe from this monster disease.

Ironically, eating is a reasonably healthy diet could reasonably be done without various food substances: Margarine is a substitute for butter; High fructose corn syrup, substitute for sugar. Partially hydrogenated soybean oil is a substitute for olive oil.

And of course, blogs are poor substitutes for good reading material. Don't call me out on the irony--I'm already well aware--but blogging does have its limitations. If your interested in learning more about my food-ideology, I highly recommend In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan for an interesting narrative about the confusion between food and nutrients. Even more instructive and more interesting to read is Animal Vegetable Miracle, primarily written by Barbara Kingsolver. She writes a fascniting account in which she and her family eat nothing but local agriculture, the bulk of which is farmed on their Virginia property.

In the meantime, I'll be collecting compiling my thoughts so that the brief synopsis on this blog will flower into a fuller account of our adventure. I've already got a great title: Riding uphill and into the wind!

Until Next Time

~Kevin

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