Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Chapter XIX.

Out on the Pacific.

So pleasant was my visit in the city of the Golden Gate that it was with some regret that I left San Francisco and took the electric-lighted steamship Columbia for Portland. It was certainly very fortunate for me while there to make those side excursions to Monterey, to the Geysers, and to other places, and yet have the pleasure each time of returning to a good home, while so many Eastern people were cast upon the friendless hotels. This pleasant refuge was at the residence of Mr. A. B. Crosby, formerly of Rockville, Conn., into whose family I was most cordially received, and will always be remembered as a bright spot in my wanderings.

The excitement of encampment week and the excursions taken prevented my making the acquaintance of many wheelmen, but I found Mr. Cook, who took such an unfortunate fall at the Hartford races last year, Chief Consul Welch, Mr. George H. Adams, and several others, all gentlemen, as, it is almost needless to say, is the status of the great majority of wheelmen everywhere. There were a great many New England people among the five hundred or more passengers aboard the steamer, but the only Connecticut people I found were from New Haven and Birmingham. Still we were quite a distinguished company. The large frame, the bald head, and smiling face of ex-Commander-in-chief Burdette, the empty sleeve and gray head of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief Fairchild, Governor Robie of Maine, Professor Williams of Brown University, my tutor, in the sense that his delightful account of his European trip first set me wild to be a bicycle traveler there, and many other intelligent ladies and gentlemen helped to form a party that cheered and happily waved their handkerchiefs as the iron steamer left the wharf, turned about, and passing through a fleet of ferry-boats in the harbor, glided out through the Golden Gate, and into a bank of fog and a gale of cold raw wind.

How different from what I anticipated. When climbing up to the Big Trees and into the Yosemite, through the hot sand, the suffocating dust, and under a blazing sun, how I looked forward to this ride on the Pacific. In place of the dry and barren country covered with dust, I pictured the broad ocean of bright blue. Instead of hours of raging thirst I looked forward to the time when it would be “water, water everywhere,” and plenty of ice water to drink. When I was so tired I sat right down in the road in the dirt, with the sun pouring its rays down, and the air so stiflingly still that the sweat ran down my whole body clear to my ankles, then I thought how nice it would be sitting on deck in an easy chair, with the cool breezes making the bright sun feel just comfortable. How cosy it would seem, and how I would rest, take the physical rest I had so well earned, and the mental rest that would result, with nothing in the blue sky or the smooth waters to cause the slightest mental action. I would just be lazy and do nothing but eat, lay around on deck and dream and sleep. After so many months of constant sight-seeing and hurried thinking, the prospect of a chance to remain inactive, mentally and physically, for a while, seemed like paradise to me. It was the prospect of this delightful sail on a smooth ocean, under a perfectly clear sky and bright sun, that induced me to buy the excursion ticket at Salt Lake City, and it was in anticipation of this voyage that my spirits kept up climbing into the Sierras. The thought of seasickness never entered my mind, and if it had I should have scoffed at the idea of my being sick if others were. All this and more I anticipated.

What I realized is this and a great deal more. As I said, we went out through the Golden Gate into a bank of fog and a gale of cold, raw wind. The sound of the fog horn at the entrance of the harbor, which I had heard so many days and nights during the past three weeks, was the only thing to indicate that we were not a thousand miles at sea. But that mournful sound soon died away, and when the fog occasionally lifted afterwards, it showed us that we were indeed out of sight of land, upon an ocean I had so innocently supposed was pacific. How much misery I saw there, and how many times I wished I had kept on from the Geysers and ridden up to Portland on the wheel! I could have done it and reached there as soon as by boat, but I did not want to miss the delightful sea voyage. No, I would not then have missed it for all the world. But I would now.

The fog and cold wind made the ladies’ cabin the most comfortable place, and for a while the piano and the strong voices of the many veterans on board singing their familiar songs made the time pass pleasantly, but before dark the trouble began. About ten o’clock I went below, thinking I was fortunate to even secure a clean bunk in the bow of a boat where the state-rooms were all taken for two weeks ahead. My bunk-mate, a fine old gentleman from Kansas, had already turned in, but he came crawling out from his bunk, saying, “I can’t stand this any longer.” I did notice the boat lifted things up higher and let them fall lower than it did during the day, but I felt all right. “O, I stayed here too long, I guess,” said my friend, as he started for the round box of sawdust near the bunk. A gentleman in the upper bunk had been leaning out of his bed, intently but quietly looking down in this same box for some time, but this doleful remark of my bunk-mate seemed to suddenly touch his sympathetic nerve, and they mutually, and at the same time, cast away all bitterness in the same small box of sawdust. My friend’s head, which was the lower of the two suspended over the box, and which was scantily clothed with gray hair, received a shampoo of a variety of ingredients, but he scarcely minded this in his haste to get away, and I undressed and went to sleep after a while, notwithstanding the place was full of men apparently tearing themselves all to pieces during most of the night.