The Final Stretch…

Photo by William Touhey

We’re leaving Tucson today. Our old friends Will and Leah have given us a place to stay here for a few weeks, and after healing from the violent desert sun, we’re finally climbing onto our bikes again. This is the last time we’ll be able to say that.

San Francisco is under 1,000 miles away, and in about three weeks, a journey that has taken over two years and just under five thousand miles will be finished. Hard drives have been piling up, full of video, photography, audio, and words. The pace of the blogosphere has proven too fast for this journey, and while we try to give you a peek into what we’re doing once in awhile, the vast majority of our trip is still unpublished.

We still have a long ride through a rapidly changing desert, and while we’re finally giving our bodies and our bicycles a rest in less than a month, our work is far from over. Over the next year we’ll be carefully scouring over the journey and working with our friends at Studio Syndicate to develop this website into something worthy of the story. We want to do something special with America reCycled, something that hasn’t yet been done, that has only recently become possible with the technologies that are now available.

Hopefully once the content really starts rolling out, it will all be worth it and you’ll see what we’ve been so busy doing, however silently.

See you on the other side

Noah and Tim

Austin Enchanted Forest

Austin revived us more than we could have imagined-we rode into the city still burdened by the gravity of New Orleans. It’s a harsh town, a microcosm of grief and tragedy that radiates the most stunning bursts of light you’re likely to see anywhere. Outsiders can only awkwardly angle for a glimpse of a culture that will never belong to us, admiring from afar while New Orleanians project tortured and beautiful souls onto the city’s facade.

But rolling into Austin, our load lightened before we even unpacked. Throughout the trip, we’ve heard about The Enchanted Forest, a community here that recently shut its doors to the public following attacks from the city. People said we would fit right in, and we rode toward it in hopes of an invitation to set up camp.

Hills tossing us through the city, a car stopped in the median and a glowing face poked out the window. “Hey bicycle guys! You need any water?”

Her smile projected the levity and innocence that seemed to permeate the whole city as it embraced us. She sent us toward her friends at The Forest and invited us into her own world as well, taking us out night after night to the steady buzz of Austin’s live music.

The folks at The Enchanted Forest welcomed us warmly, offering a tranquil haven away from the city’s bustling concrete. Over the next month, our wounds healed and our spirits lightened as our new friends shared their lives, inspiring us with the conflicted past and confused future of their home. A newly welded BBQ bicycle box and care package in tow, we finally left after family photos and hugs, heading west toward the blank desert canvas where we would slowly paint our next story.

The voice of The Enchanted Forest is long, loud, and nuanced, one that we can’t do justice to in a blog post. We’ve begun documenting it, and this short edit will have to do while the rest stays neatly stored on hard drives, waiting for the time when we can give it the attention it deserves.

Across the River

Leaving New Orleans felt like treading swamp water. Across the Mississippi, a hundred miles of highway hovered over a bubbling expanse of muck—a soggy blanket stuffed deep into our heaving lungs. It was the kind of sizzling road that burns the sanctity out of life. Every climate-controlled truck slamming past was an excuse for profanity and each mile an obligation. Fresh roadkill began to resemble putrid rotting carcasses. And when we did find sanctuary for the night, blood-sucking swarms conquered our camp.

They sucked us dry, but suffering gives way to the sublime. Finally enveloped by the slow fizz of the Louisiana Gulf, our naked toes massaged its nurturing expanse. Salty air and sloppy spoonfuls of oatmeal circulated our sunburned bodies, waves washing and whispering toward a hazy horizon. Living in the city had torn us away from our source, but it still owns us. It is us, and diving face first into the windswept tide is a sure way to reconnect.

But it was short-lived—Texas greeted us with the punch in the gut that’s made it famous. As we crossed the border, a Texas-sized shoulderless bridge scooped us up and slammed us into 40 miles of human noise, sprawling out into the demonic whirr of an oil industry gone mad. Highways stretched on for an eternity, twisting us to the side of the road over and over again.

Tim was fuming, slamming profanities against his bike in a thin green strip separating highway from strip mall. “Why aren’t you helping me?!” His words shot out like jagged metal.

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Flashback: Alchemy, The Georgia Burn, 2010

While editing in New Orleans, we unearthed these photos from Alchemy last fall. For a few days each year, an old farm in Georgia gets flooded by freaks who build a temporary village where the exchange of money is prohibited. Everybody contributes what they wish. Behind the entrance fee lies food, drink, music and generally twisted debauchery, all culminating with the burning of a giant effigy. We drove down in an RV with the crew from The Montana House, bringing some roadkill black bear meat and building a jungle gym out of bamboo and old bicycle tubes.

Welcome to New Orleans

Our blisters, saddle sores, and cramps are finally healed up, and quiet nights in the wilderness have been replaced by the drunken swelter of New Orleans. The last thousand miles have been as rough as they have been enlightening. Rednecks and hippies, fishing and wild gathering, country food and city dumpsters. This leg has rooted the journey firmly into the soil of rural America, and we’re finding that the ideals and grievances of communes and collectives aren’t so different from those found in small towns and farming communities.

We’re hard at work editing it all together to give you all a glimpse of how we’ve moved and what we’ve learned, all while exploring the endless vibrations of New Orleans. The city is exhausting. Bouncing between the hustler’s paradise of The French Quarter and the crusty gentrification wave washing over the Bywater, listening to old black jazz musicians and young white train-hopping buskers. Art and smut, killers and lovers, thievery and philanthropy, the weight of the city is already pressing down hard on us. But we’re keeping our heads high and sorting through it all for the next story… it looks like it’s gonna be a wild one.

In the mean time, check out the route we took by clicking on these words…