Instead of cycling-specific shoes with stiff soles and ski-binding-like clipped-in pedals favored by seasoned touring cyclists to allow for more power transfer to the cranks, Jacob’s bike is outfitted with stock flat BMX-style rattrap pedals that accommodate his running shoes and hiking boots. Jacob-like his house-builder father, handy with a Skilsaw-fashioned a plywood rack behind the seat and bolted two milk crates to it side-by-side. The red Specialized Hardrock says Milwaukee Tools on it because his dad, Randy Gray, age sixty-three, won it in a raffle. The important thing is the wave, the ride. After all, he figures, bikes are like surfboards-you don’t always have the perfect one for every condition. Ideally for a journey of this scale he’d ride a large, but the medium is what he has to roll with. The bike is heavy and too small for Jacob’s athletic five-foot, eleven-inch frame. Those years have been few and difficult, unlike the long years of my ancestors in their wanderings.” Jacob answered, “My life of wandering has lasted a hundred and thirty years.
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