West of Wheeling: How I Quit My Job, Broke the Law & Biked to a Better Life by Jeffrey Tanenhaus

Author:Jeffrey Tanenhaus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2021-06-29T21:54:27+00:00

Part Three

Part Three: Winning the West

“Every calamity is to be overcome by endurance.”

—Virgil

Chapter 17

17. Route 66, Add Another 6

I hit the Mother Road with high expectations. Route 66 will show me the America I never knew. Growing up in New York, I had no idea where Route 66 started or ended. It was a cultural thing before my time, somewhere out there and not close to me by distance or decade. Now I get to see what the hype is about from whatever remains.

Bicycle Route 66 gives me confidence. It overlaps much of the real Route 66 for cars. An organization called Adventure Cycling makes these long-distance bike routes. I wake up in Joplin, southwest Missouri, halfway across America and feel like I’ve been through the harder half. I hope Bike Route 66 makes riding easier. No more wasted mornings previewing streets on Google Maps. I’ll simply follow this legendary road to LA—bike lanes and sunshine straight to the Golden State.

Not so fast, sneers old Mother Road. Her skin is cracked. Her shoulders are missing. Her vitality is gone. Only learning about this road’s history keeps me from lashing out at the people who thought it was safe for biking. Stopping at two Route 66 museums in Oklahoma, I learn to appreciate the development of something we take for granted—roads!—and how small towns thrived on traffic during the golden age of automobiles.

Long-distance roads have been a priority since the Jefferson administration when the National Road was chartered to link the Ohio River with the East Coast. I spent a difficult day on part of this road wheeling from West Virginia into Ohio over Appalachian hills. The National Road reached central Illinois before it made more sense to forge west with railroads, which were making better progress.

America’s desire for roads didn’t abate. In the 1870s, bicyclists started the Good Roads Movement to improve dirt roads. Automobilists and politicians then took up that campaign to move people and commerce faster. A federal act to build highways in 1921 matched state spending with federal dollars. This led to more roads, but they weren’t organized across state lines.

Enter US 66. Commissioned in 1926, it fused eighteen older highways into one long stretch. After some confusion, I realize that Route 66 is not just one fixed route. Like a winding river changing course, the alignment shifted a block north or south. Businesses boomed or busted accordingly. What never changed was the start in Chicago’s Grant Park and the finish at Santa Monica Pier. In between stretches some 2,448 miles that symbolize the gasoline-fueled dream of the Great American Road Trip. The same road trip I’m taking without the car or gas.

A bike gives me the same freedom and more satisfaction. Don’t take my word for it. Susan B. Anthony said that bikes did more to emancipate women than anything else, and that’s coming from the mother of the women’s rights movement. Anthony, a suffragist, didn’t live long enough to cast a ballot or see the Mother Road built.

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