Encampment

"In most of the world, I am riding a heavily laden bicycle and therefore I am very rich. In the U.S.A., I am riding a heavily laden bicycle and therefore I am very poor."--Alistair Humphreys, www.roundtheworldbybike.com

And just off the beach, where the interstate and the Pacific Coast Highway tangle, I found the homeless encampment. I turned off the road and rolled along a well-worn footpath behind some welding shop. The smells of wet steel, car-exhaust and the salty ocean breeze all mixed in my nose as my fat tires hummed on the path. It led behind a grassy embankment, around a chain-link fence to a great, quiet space. The opening, like a cavernous urban cathedral, was framed by the steep side of the freeway overpass, scrub bushes, the underside of the vaulted bridge, giant concrete pillars and a broken-down fence.

Along the fence, shredded pieces of plastic flapped languidly in the breeze. It was eerily quiet, save the chunk-chunk of cars passing above, speeding north to wherever they needed to be. There was an old Fuji road bike with bent wheels folded impotently under its rusted frame. There was an old mattress, stained, lumpy and left for dead. There was trash strewn about, empty bottles, fast-food wrappers, heaped old rags and some old couch cushions. And there, 20 feet from where I stopped, a pair of dirty, brown, bare feet. With his face and upper body covered with a black blanket a man slept. Gathered around his head were some plastic shopping bags jammed with clothes. He lay on some folded scraps of cardboard. I was mesmerized by the serenity of the scene, a snapshot of this person's hardscrabble existence.

I suddenly felt a long way from my home in the Midwest. A long way from the snow banks and the stiff prairie winds. I felt alone, lost and scared. I quietly dismounted and turned my bike around. My load was heavy, I was living out of a BOB trailer, and everything I had was rolling and lashed behind me. As quickly as I could, I got out of there, and back out to the main road. I rode back the way I came. As I passed, a group of men that I passed before, I noticed something about them I hadn't noticed before. Their clothes were dirty, used and poor fitting. They squinted in the sun at me. They were gathered, waiting at the corner of a dusty lot. Waiting at their feet were small backpacks and gym bags bursting at the seems. They were day laborers, waiting for someone to pick them up and put them to work doing some manner of manual labor for cash. It was well into the day, and their future seemed bleak. I pedaled away, and tried to think about how nice the weather was, or how great the riding was. I rode and rode. I tried to ride the memory of those bare feet out of my mind. But I couldn't, and I had nowhere to go.

I'm here in Southern California to intern for Bike magazine. For the second time in my life, I've moved somewhere with just the belongings I could gather and carry quickly, and just gone without much of a plan. This time it was couple thousand miles away from my fiancee, my dogs and my family and friends. For the second time in my life, I was homeless, but that seems to be about all I had in common with that man at the encampment under the bridge. For me, this is an adventure, a bivouac. For him, it is his everyday life. The bridge, for all I know, is his home. There are no answers, no questions, nothing for me to wrap my head around but the image of bare feet jutting out from beneath an old blanket.

I rode around until it got dark. I cruised into the state park at the beach and got a campsite. I set up my own canvas home, laid out my bedroll and built a fire. I made myself some tea and wondered what the hell I was doing out here. The answer did not come easily. I guess, it is to see things like that man. To open my naive eyes to a world that is not my own. To tread places were I might not have otherwise tread. To seek that "real world" experience. To see these things, and to tell others about them.