Every Dog in America Hates MeWatercolors, Pictures, and a Few Thoughts from my Bike Trip Across America

Max Needham

Tybee Island, GA Ocean Beach, CA

This book is dedicated to my father, Terry.

Special thanks to everyone who supported me, but specifically to my hosts: Jeb, Claire, Troy, Bobby, Floyd, Megan, Clarence, David, Janet, and Paulus.

This trip was indescribably more pleasant because of you.

Not Pictured: One tent, one jar peanut butter

On November 1st of 2015, I watched my little brother drive away in my car, stranding me on the East Coast of the United States with nothing but a bicycle and a lot of gear conveniently assembled for a long bike tour.

Almost two months later, I rode along the San Diego River, the same trail I navigated with training wheels as a kid, straight into the Pacific Ocean.

In between, I rode over 3000 miles, gained a ton of faith in America and more importantly Americans, got a helmet strap tan line (only on the south side), spent a lot of time by myself, learned to hate wind and hills in a way I never knew was possible, and ate about five jars of peanut butter. I passed through two Clarksvilles, over 900 miles of Texas, nine other states, Gator Country, Hill Country, Wildcat Coun-try, (Texas) Wine Country, and “The Bayou”. I set out with a lot of vague notions of “why I was going”, and a few that I could explain. I wanted to see the country, but more slowly that on a road trip. I wanted to be immersed in it. I wanted to challenge myself and my own mental fortitude. I wanted to a fail a lot, and to feel small and scared. I wanted to go to New Orleans.

Along the way, I raised money for the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund by painting what I saw and offering my work in exchange for a donation. This book is a compilation of those paintings, along with some photos I took and a few things I thought of along the way. The water colors are in chronological order; the photo-graphs are not. Enjoy!

Savannah, GA

Tybee Island

Clarksville, FL

Ebro, FL

Pine Log State Park

Grayton Beach, FL

Death

My greatest fear is that I will die doing something my mom told me not to do. Because then I will be dead, and my mom will also have been right.

Here are a few ways I almost died by ignoring my mom’s advice:

Trying to eat prickly pear cactus. I cut all the spines off the pads and boiled them one night in Texas, but apparently I did not cook them nearly long enough (The next day a Native American man I stayed with informed me that they take 1-2 hours of boiling.), because I spent the entire night up with a horrific headache, and then at four in the morning unceremoniously returned my dinner to the desert from whence it came. Yes mom, you were right, that was a dumb idea.

Camping in west Texas. One night while searching for sticks to put up my tent (My tent needs trekking poles to pitch, so I found new sticks each night.), I was all the way in a large bush with my headlamp, trying to break off a high branch. As I pulled down on the branch I heard a loud hissing and a rattle, and saw something begin to curl up about a foot in front of me in the bush. The sound I made as I jumped away was something on the order of a really high pitched “ohhhhwwwoooooww.” I wish you could have heard it. Even in the moment it was embarrassing. I had actually been clapping and making noise to try to ward off snakes while walking around that night, but from then on I checked every bush with a long stick before getting too close. Yes mom, you were right, I could have gotten a hotel (but this was more exciting).

Biking at night. I tried to avoid it, but I would say about a third to a half of my days I spent some time biking in the dark. Beginning my trip in late fall meant the days were incredibly short, and in order to make the miles I was going for, sometimes biking at night was unavoidable, especially if I was staying with someone that night or the weather turned bad. The first night I biked I had a truck pass me, stop a few hundred yards down the road from me, and then start backing up towards me. This was in the middle of the woods in very northern, rural Florida, and to be entirely honest I considered the possibility that I was about to be murdered. Turns out, he was stopping to warn me about

a copperhead sitting on the road in front of me. Needless to say, I spent the next fifteen miles imagining snakes everywhere I looked. In all seriousness though, even with good lights (which I had only some of the time), biking at night is questionable. I should have avoided it more often than I did, and I put myself in situations in which I could have gotten in trouble. So yes mom, you were right, that was dangerous.

Going on the trip at all. She really, really did not want me to go, and did her absolute best to persuade me without actually saying no outright. She was certain that I was going to get hit by a car and die, and that was certainly the most danger I was in on the entire trip. I spent a high percentage of my time on highways, and later on freeways, where the shoulders were wide compared to surface streets, but the speed of the cars was much higher. I had a few very close calls with semi-trucks passing oh-so-close to me, some to the point where I froze completely in terror. The sound and feeling of the air stream changing (which makes it challenging to maintain a straight course) when a big truck passes inches from your bike is indescribable. The closest I actually came to being hit was in Dallas, Texas, where a truck (not a semi) brushed my jacket as we passed through an intersection together. As far as I had gone to that point, which was almost half my trip, that event still shook me signifi-cantly. Overall, as cautious as I could be, there was always a solid element of risk involved in what I was doing. And while I was definitely aware of the danger beforehand, it was something quite different to experience firsthand. Again mom, you were right. Sometimes I felt like I was in over my head, and sometimes I was genuinely frightened. And even though I do not regret it, I am very glad I made it home safely to you.

Grayton Beach, FL

Pensacola, FL

Weather

The perfect quote to describe biking and the weather is a line from an old Oasis song: “Nobody ever mentions the weather can make or break your day.”

There is a lot that a positive attitude can do for you. There is a lot that men-tal toughness and a drive to succeed despite any odds can do for you. But neither of theses things are more powerful than the weather. No amount of positivity can keep you really, truly happy for eight to ten straight hours of biking in miserable weather. To illustrate what I mean, here is one of the worst days of my trip:

I am biking out of Van Horn, Texas towards San Elizario (near El Paso). This is the third longest day I have attempted so far, just over 100 miles, and I already doubt I am going to make it before dark. I begin the day with a decent uphill stretch, but with no wind and around 40 degrees. I coast down a lovely five-ten mile gradual downhill. I am finally in the type of des-ert I really enjoy, with big red rocks and mesas and mountains. I am super impressed with my progress. I spend a little time using snap chat to check my speed, something I only just realized I could do. Around ten o’ clock, the wind picks up. At first, I am not headed straight into it, but as the road turns it forces me more and more into what is quickly becoming a storm.

I can see a slew of ominous clouds in front of me but there is nothing I can do about it. I am on the Interstate 10 freeway and there is no way around. At this point (and I will ask you to trust me on this– I got to be a pretty shrewd judge of wind by reading the weather each day and then biking in it) the wind is somewhere in the range of 10-20 mph, enough to signifi-cantly slow me down but not completely debilitating. As I come under the

storm clouds it has picked up into the 20-30 mph range, at which point I have to put every effort into not being blown off the road or into traffic by the gusts. Then the rain starts. It is not light for very long, and quickly my socks, shoes, gloves, hair, and shorts are completely soaked through. It is cold enough that I decide to keep both my jackets on, including the one I usually use to cover my gear in rain. I stop and put a trash bag over my backpack, tent and sleeping bag as it looks like I have a ways to go through the storm. My hands are already numb enough that they barely function to maneuver the bag; I use them by looking at them rather than by sensation. The rain fluctuates in its in-tensity. When it is lightest, the wind blows it more. As I work my way further into the storm, the combination of the strong winds and the heavy rain feels like sand on my face. Each gust stings as if I am being pelted. Even though it is dark, I put on my sunglasses to protect my eyes. There is no cover. The one bridge I pass is wet underneath and creates a dry patch of road around twenty feet in front of it because the wind is effectively causing the rain to travel sideways.

I am going less than half my normal speed. At this rate I will not even make San Elizario today if I bike until midnight. I cannot check my phone to see my progress, or to check if there are any towns nearby. I cannot to stop riding because someone is hosting me in San Elizario that night. Even if I did stop, pitching a tent would be nearly impossi-ble in the storm and everything would be soaked by the time it was up. So I just keep going. I recede to some deep place in my mind where pain is an illusion and I view everything from deep, deep within my skull. I do this for two hours. At this point I begin to see what looks like a fair-sized town to the south of the freeway. I am overjoyed. In this type of situation overjoyed means I consider the possibility that I may someday again be not-miserable. It is two o’ clock or so by this

point and I am ravenous, and I fully believe that I must be near food. I believe this for another hour.

Finally I see a Shell gas station sign poking up a few miles away. It has not ceased raining or blowing for more than a few minutes at a time since I entered the storm. By the time I reach Angie’s Diner, my hands are so thoroughly incapacitated by cold that it takes me several minutes and many muttered expletives to press the latch to remove my helmet. Finally, I lean my bike against the window, go inside, and enjoy the “best salsa in West Texas.” I find myself relatively convinced of this claim. I end up eating lunch with a fellow traveler, playing his guitar and singing outside the restaurant. I am happy again. The weather has cleared up significantly. I make it to San Elizario, though not before nightfall, and I accompany my host to the city council’s holiday party. I meet the mayor and find out she used to bartend at the La Valencia Hotel near my high school. I go to sleep very happy.

Dauphin Island, AL

Ocatillo, CA

New Orleans, LA

Reserve, LA

Natchez, MS

Mammy’s Cupboard

Texas Canyon, AZ

Monticello, AK

Paris, TX

Every Dog in America Hates Me

Dogs love me. I am always willing to play and pet (I have no standards about rolling around on the floor), and more often than not I smell like some other dog. So it was a little hard not to take it personally that every dog I passed on my trip immediately made it their per-sonal mission to murder me. For some reason, animals react very differently to bikes than they do to cars or people walking around. Horses and cows would walk to their fences to squint at me as I passed. Gators and deer were both terrified of me. But the combination of a human being and a metal frame with wheels really gets under a dog’s skin.

By the time I ran into another biker on a cross-country tour, I had been chased by three separate dogs. This other cyclist had a pretty advanced rig, and when I commented on a spray can attached on the very top of his rack (I thought it had to be chain lubricant and was vaguely hoping he might offer me some) I learned that he was carrying bear spray as a defense against dogs, and that he had used it a few times already. This took me aback and made me feel woefully unprepared. Was I really taking that much of a chance with animals I had

loved since I was very young?

I can only speak from personal experience, but I have to say bear spray is overkill. Yes, dogs really, really, want to kill cyclists. But it is much in the same way that a lot of dogs want to murder the mail truck. They have no idea what to do with you once they have you. In almost every case, if I couldn’t outrun them or scare them off by yelling (I did this a lot and it was actually incredibly effective), dogs would run behind my back tire or beside me until they reached some invisible line where their territory end-ed and then fall off.

The scariest situation I found myself in was in rural Ar-kansas. I was on a dirt road, which slowed me down significantly, and in a farming community in which none of the dogs were fenced in. I slowly accumulated a pack of dogs loping along behind me. They did not seem fazed by the loudest, most expletive-laden shouting I could mus-ter. Several were large enough that I started to get pretty nervous. I stopped, put my bike between myself and the dogs as best I could (The internet suggests this.), and did my best to scare them off, but this just managed to get me surrounded. At that exact moment, I will admit I craved some bear spray. All there was to do was hop back on my

bike and keep pushing forward. Thankfully, it was only a few hundred yards before some began to turn back to-wards home, and a few hundred more to a paved stretch on which I could outrun the rest.

So maybe I took a bit of a chance. After I met the guy with the bear spray I decided that if it really came down to it, I could bring myself to spray a dog with my water bottle. I never did. I suppose that people, cyclists included, are bit-ten by dogs on occasion. I suppose that I could have been one of those people. I just put faith in dogs not to bite me in the same way that I put faith in drivers not to run me over, and if I occasionally get burned for having this sort of faith, I can accept that. I could never find in that a reason not to bike, not to love dogs, or not to trust.

Dallas, TX

Waco, TX

Austin, TX

Gulf Islands National Seashore, FL

Fredricksburg, TX

My great-great-gandfather’s ranch

Junction, TX

Roosevelt, TX

Sonora, TX

Minimalism

One of the most appealing reasons to take a long bike trip is that all of your things must fit on said bike. Near the end of college, my roommate and I got into a minimalist kick. We knew we were moving soon, not just between apartments but out of the city entirely, and after accumu-lating a good deal of just about everything for four years, it was time to decide what was important enough to drag all the way to California from Missouri. This process was difficult at first; a lot of items felt as if they held memories and stories and old friendships. But as we continued to lighten our physical load, nothing felt significantly dif-ferent. For myself, I decided the most I would take with me of what I considered “sentimental” items was what-ever I could fit in one mason jar. That meant smashing a few bottles with a hammer, cutting several notes from friends out of whatever they’d been scribbled on, and removing the rainbow “stay weird” bracelet I had worn for three years straight. It meant getting rid of 98% of my mardi gras beads, a magic eight-ball from second grade, a bunch of my old paintings from early in college, and worst of all my toy light saber.

Somehow this all ended up being okay. If I didn’t know

how much I will enjoy opening that mason jar over the years to come, I think I could toss it too. There is definite-ly a kernel of truth in the belief that possessions end up possessing you, and that the more we buy, the more we are bought. Maintaining a large stock of personal possessions is draining. Each adds its own weight to your mind, and this weight must be balanced against the utilitarian bene-fits and the joy the item provides.

When traveling on a bike, this balancing act depends quite a bit on the physical weight of an item over and above any metaphorical weight. The only type of rack my bike could accommodate was one which attached to the seat post, and therefore was only rated to hold twenty pounds. I definite-ly pushed that limit (by which I mean pushed way past it), but even so everything I took fit in my school backpack aside from my sleeping bag and tent. I did everything I could to cut weight and save space. I forewent a towel, a camp stove, and all but two sets of clothes. The only food I carried was a jar of peanut butter (I went through five in total) and a few cans of tuna fish. I carried just two items that were not absolutely essential to maintain my bike or myself, those being books (one at a time and given away when I was finished) and my watercolors.

Very quickly, somewhere around the two week mark, everything had settled very nicely into a specific location. Each item lived in one of the three pockets of my back-pack, and a few came out and lived in a specific location in my tent each night when I camped. Once this became systematic, it was almost as if my possessions were an ex-tension of myself. Each served a specific purpose, and their use became almost unconscious. This simplicity, along with the simplistic nature of my daily goals (an amount of miles, sometimes a destination), left me with a deeply uncluttered mind. Most of all, I found it fascinating how rarely I missed a possession that I had shipped home, or that was back in my car, with my brother in Atlanta. I lived with very, very little, and found myself just as happy as when I had much, much more.

Sheffield, TX

Hills above Fort Lancaster

Fort Stockton, TX

The Comanche Motel

Ghost town outside Balmorhea, TX

“No Nuclear Waste Aqui”

Yuma, AZ

Chipotle was kind enough to sponsor me with free burritos while I was on my trip (I paid for the mar-garita, though). This was after my longest day, 115 miles from Gila Bend to Yuma, AZ.

Sierra Blanca, TX

Texas Canyon, AZ

Texas Canyon, AZ

A Guy on a Bike

“I am not really a cyclist. I am just a guy on a bike.”

This was a phrase I ended up repeating often along my way. I have nothing against cyclists, in fact I have a lot of respect for them, but I do not like to pretend to be something I am not. And I made it all the way across the country without ever once considering the possibility that I might be a “cyclist.”

Prior to training for my trip, the farthest I had ever biked was right around 20 miles in one day. In order to train, I planned to do several long rides, culminating in one fifty-or-so mile ride before I left. In reality, I did one forty mile ride four days before I was supposed to leave and spent the next three days whining about how sore I was.

I did not buy clip-in shoes. I did not buy any skin-tight, aerodynamic biking clothes. I did not buy panniers, perhaps the single sure sign of a touring cyclist. I found an old helmet in my apartment, and borrowed my room-mate’s bike. These things do not necessarily define a cyclist, but they definitely make one look (or not look) the part.

I also do not feel, even now that I have completed my trip, that I possess any arcane knowledge of bikes. When I had a problem on the road, I just looked at it closely and tried to fix it. I had spare spokes, a spare tube or two, and some idea of how to fix a flat tire having done it a few times before, though never on a road bike. After about ten flats, I was quite good at stripping the tire off the bike, identify-ing the hole in the tube, and patching it. But I still walked into every bike shop generally clueless about the lingo and the tricks of the trade. I never did become someone who “knows his bike inside and out”, “knows his bike back-wards and forwards”, or “knows enough that he does not constantly live in fear of some weird problem cropping up and stranding him in the middle of the desert.”

Most of all, I am not a cyclist because I really just do not enjoy biking very much. I would not go so far as to say I hate it, but many, many of the days I spent “in the saddle” (yes, they really say that) were truly miserable. Winds, weather, and flat tires can turn a perfectly good day into a really, really bad one, and are mostly beyond your control. I enjoy the more romantic sides of biking; your quick jaunt to class or down to the beach. The grind of an entire day of biking never really grew on me, especially because I was

miraculously able to maintain a varying but ever-present soreness for two straight months.

I loved my trip because of the people I met, the sights I saw, and the time I had to myself. On the good days, which certainly outnumbered the bad, it was when I forgot about the biking itself that I was the happiest. I learned a lot, and I am undeniably proud that I bicycled across this great country. But in the end, there was nothing special about what I did. I was just a guy on a bike, albeit for quite a while.

Plaster City, CA

Natchez, MS

Magnolia Bluffs Casino

San Diego, CA

With a view of the Pacific Ocean

Ocean Beach, CA

Dog Beach

La Jolla, CA

Don Carlos Taco Shop

The Cure Alzheimer’s Fund is an incredible organization which funnels 100% of donations into targeted research to cure the disease. They funded the Alzheimer’s Genome Project, which was at the time the largest single disease scan of all time. To date they have distributed over 22 millon dollars. As a student of science and a future physician, I believe strongly that this is the era in which we will cure Alzheimer’s disease, and that this organization will be an incredible and integral part of that effort. Their information and opportunities to donate are available online.