A cyclist finds her way

Review of “Heidi Across America - One Woman’s Journey on a Bicycle Through the Heartland” by Heidi Beierle

By Jerry McGovern

The Adirondacks are a playground for cyclists. Riding intermittently for fun, training for a competition, joining a weekly tour for exercise and friendship, taking part in local cycling club events of the Adirondack Cycling Club and Bike Adirondacks — our region is full of opportunities and beauty.

So there’s an Adirondack audience for Heidi Bierle’s journal of her 2010 solo cross-country trip that started in Oregon and ended in Virginia. The 34-year-old graduate student’s destination was a Washington, DC, conference on “Preserving the Historic Road.” The trip was part of the research for her paper on the “Economic Effects of Bicycling.”

Bierle followed Adventure Cycling Association’s Trans-America Trail, which took her from Oregon to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, and Kentucky to Virginia. She writes clearly of the landscape she covers, the people she meets, the calamities she encounters. After the western mountains, there is the flatness and hay of Kansas, the heat of Missouri that exhausts her: “My body felt boneless.” Strangers are kind to her, but some seem mindlessly angry, screaming “Buy a car” as they pass. And dogs — every cyclists’ worry — attack the panniers on her bicycle and knock her down.

But Bierle’s journey is not just across America, it is also an interior journey: “The ride was supposed to be the remedy for the slow-moving train wreck that was my life.” Besides the economic/tourism research, Bierle sought personal answers, especially after her own reckless self-destructive behavior. The map she uses to get across the country is also what she uses to find her own “direction and purpose.”

Bierle’s memoir joins others who have discovered themselves while exploring America. It isn’t always easy, sometimes “Like I was riding through molasses. One hill. Another. Pure. Torture.”

But pedaling through small towns she also learned “Rural America held authentic experiences people craved. The experiences were difficult to reach, but that made them more desirable.” She might also be speaking about finding her own authenticity.

“Heidi Across America” is a good read about a person finding her way.