Trail Magic

The Ice Cream Boat
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

The summer of '92 saw me riding my bike across the United States. That's 'bike' with a cycle at the end, not 'bike' with a motor at the beginning. We carried all our gear without a supporting van or car, and it took months. I learned a great deal on that trip. To date, I think it is the single best thing I have ever done for myself that was not specifically geared toward making me financially success. I learned many things on that trip about myself, our country, our limits as a people and as individuals. I also learned about trail magic.

Trail magic is the confluence of human kindness and opportunity which repeats itself with stunning regularity when you dedicate yourself to any type of oddessy. It happens when you stop living in the ”burbs,” ignorant of your neighbors and scared to walk the streets of your incredibly safe city and instead throw yourself on the mercy of complete strangers. It arrives when you knock on doors, show up in small towns with no place to stay, and start believing that the world is not really out to get you.

Trail magic is coming into a small town in the middle of nowhere on July 4th and being invited to pitch your tent in the mayor's backyard. Encouraged to spend the afternoon at the community center/library gorging at the town potluck on BBQ, homemade potato salad, and thickly frosted chocolate cake. Obligated to spend the evening sipping cold ones while the police and fire chiefs argue at your back on the order to set off the fireworks.

Trail magic is homemade lemonade on the front lawn in Virginia when the temperature is nearing a 100 and the humidity is close to the same.

Trail magic is Pepsi and fresh baked cookies on a porch in Illinois one afternoon while you wait out a nasty summer thunderstorm.

You see trail magic when you spend the day toiling down a hot, dusty blue highway watching vintage cars drive by, then arrive at your destination to find it the rally point for cars from all over the state . As you walk down the streets full of Mustangs and Fords, hot rods and Model Ts, you listen to the music, munch on elephant ears and roasted corn, and thank the trail magic gods.

The magic radiates from the 78–year-old man and his daughter traveling east bound in three-week increments, not allowed to do the entire trip in one summer because the man's wife just couldn't spare her husband for any longer. It glows in the eyes of a couple who run a cafe in eastern Colorado and beats quickly in the tempo of the stunningly gorgeous young man with hard thighs and a ready smile who is doing the trip in 4 weeks at 200 miles a day.

Musical Magic
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

It happens when you connect up with another rider, an older black gentleman with a trumpet strapped to his bags and a gentle, generous soul that sets the bar for all future relationships. It continues when he and the strapping young Floridian captain of fishing boats let you draft the ten miles to the Yellowstone clinic where you are hospitalized for dehydration, persists through Montana and the rugged canyons of northern Idaho, and rejoices in stripping blackberry bushes on the Oregon coast.

The trail is the journey. The journey is the destination. The magic is opening yourself to the possibilities.