America is a Strange Place
notes from a 375-mile bicycle tour of New England
I spent the last two weeks cycling through my home country.
After being away for a couple of years—mostly in Western Europe—I feel like I’m seeing it again with fresh eyes.
America is a strange place.
Along the narrow country roads, bustling state highways, quiet backstreets, and occasional protected cycleway, I see road bikers, e-bikers, a few kids, and a good number of down-and-out types. Not a single other bicycle traveler like me.
Almost everyone is driving: a truck, an SUV, or a sports car. They are accelerating wildly, as if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t a thing.
Yet they always pass with care. I feel safe and respected as a cyclist.
I spend my nights with family, friends, and the occasional stranger.
Through Warmshowers, I stay with a retired couple in Connecticut who feeds me a massive pasta dinner, gives me an entire wing of their home, and sends me off in the morning with a bag of fresh-baked oatmeal cookies.
Some of my European friends believe that America is some dog-eat-dog capitalist hellscape where the poor are left to die on the street.
But extraordinary generosity does exist in America; it’s just privatized.
I visit three alternative schools in Massachusetts, all places where I’ve spoken before.
At one, I run high-energy camp games for all ages. At another, I run some of my freedom workshop, which is well-received. (One teenager says: “I know we can’t force anyone to do stuff here, but can we force everyone to take this workshop?”)
At the third, none of the teens are interested in what I have to offer, so I just hang out.
Coincidentally, half of the teens at that final school are still wearing masks.
Upon reaching Boston, I discover that the monthly fusion social dance is fortuitously happening that same night, but masks are mandatory: a blanket requirement I’ve never encountered in the European fusion dance community, with its equally caring and inclusive values. For reasons of personal comfort and interpersonal connection, I do not attend.
Within certain circles in America, it seems, the pandemic rages on.
In Boston, more Warmshowers hosts—a group of kind young professionals who live in a cooperative house near Harvard—bring me to an acroyoga jam in a park. There I encounter a friendly couple who tell me about the “Interfusion Festival” near Washington DC, where they first met. “If you like fusion dance and acroyoga, you’ll love it!” they proclaim.
Browsing the event schedule, I do, in fact, see many activities I love: fusion dance, contact improv, authentic relating, acroyoga, urban kiz, and something called “hug medicine.”
There are also keywords that make me squirm: soundbaths, chanting, shibari, “Sensual Chair Dance,” and something called “Nondual Shaiva Tantra.”
But this is what America does best: shamelessly pillaging other people’s traditions, remixing them into something novel, and packaging it into one damn good party.
We squirm like Puritans, and then we transcend our squirming.
I hop an Amtrak train to New Hampshire to visit a friend who runs a summer camp where families pay $17,000 to send a child away for six weeks.
I’m driven to the camp by an incredibly smart and friendly guy my age who made a small fortune as a professional poker player, ran a Christian summer camp, unschooled his young children (who later decided to return to school), and is now a proud stay-at-home dad and soccer team organizer.
On the Amtrak north of Boston, I am required to take the front wheel off my bicycle. On the Amtrak south of Boston—the exact same train—I am not.
This is a land of inconsistencies, possibilities, and beautiful extremes.
I cycle past a well-groomed RV park in Connecticut on a sunny day. The cars are there, people are home, and no one is outside.
I witness so little public life in America. Everyone seems to be indoors, in a vehicle, or walking quickly to their next destination (earbuds in). The only ones who seem to register the existence of a colorful bicycle traveler are the rare children whose necks aren’t craned over phones.
My last stop before returning stateside was Barcelona, where public life absolutely pulses. The contrast is glaring.
As my friend Russell Max Simon (an American expat living in Barcelona) observes:
My elders in the U.S. spend much of their time alone or otherwise connected through screens. Elders in Spain are to be found at all hours of day and night sharing a beer or a coffee with friends outside, on a patio, and parents as well, sometimes with the children playing in the plazas nearby. This is true in the city and in the country alike.
I pass so many American flags.
But unlike many European countries, flying the national flag doesn’t automatically designate you as a conservative in this country.
These days, I witness roughly equal numbers of flags and ALL-CAP SLOGANS supporting and denouncing the current political administration.
For the entire trip, I do not possess health insurance.
Silly me—I assumed that upon returning to America (and cancelling my Dutch health coverage), I could simply buy a new policy that would start immediately. Not so.
As a friendly insurance broker from Colorado (where I technically “live”) explained, all new policies begin on the first of the month (i.e., May 1st), and short-term policies are either outlawed (as in Colorado) or wildly expensive. (Even with deep research, I failed to find any short-term policy I could purchase.)
“What if I have a major accident in the next few weeks?”, I asked him.
“You could call Medicaid, explain your situation, tell them how much you earn, and they’d probably cover you,” he responded. Very comforting.
Fortunately, here I am: accident-free after two weeks of cycling the American wilderness, and soon to be enrolled in a high-deductible, bare-bones policy that costs me just $1/month, thanks to the generosity of Colorado and the federal government (i.e., thanks to my high-earning neighbors, progressive subsidies, and a projected dirtbag rich income of $30,000 in 2026.)
Everyone knows you can get rich in this country—rich enough to spend $17,000 on a summer camp. But sometimes, you can also live richly by staying poor.
Such is the strangeness of America.
Thank you to Julie for reading a draft of this.
Next up on the bike trip: western Colorado, southern Utah, and northern California.
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