Miles with Maggie

by Steven K. Roberts Easton, Pennsylvania 13,505 miles September 3, 1987 Somewhere in the Delaware River Valley of northern New Jersey, in the back yard of a hostel that’s supposed to be open, I drown in a sea of white noise. The tent around me roars with rain — the sound pouring into my head,…

first published as “The Other Woman” ©1987 Steven K. Roberts Ithaca, NY (13,231 miles) August 21, 1987 The road, once begun, never stops. Tonight in Ithaca, over a fine dinner of linguine and wine, coffee and sorbet, we spoke of travel. Hitchhiking marathons of 17 years ago were revived in candlelight; freight-hopping adventures came to…

by Steven K. Roberts Pymatuning Lake, Ohio side 12,819 miles August 1, 1987 The most effective way to make it rain is to pitch camp. For eight riding days, the sun has baked our hot flesh into sweat-glistened tan, streaked with the stark white of belly wrinkles and tinged daily with a hint of fresh…

by Steven K. Roberts June 29, 1987 Calf Creek (Garfield County), Utah This is hard-core wilderness.  The Escalante River area is a violent, convoluted land, a twisted marriage of desert and mountain with much infidelity on both sides.  Madness happens here; the land kills the unwary without remorse, yet delights the eye with so many…

by Steven K. Roberts Yosemite National Park  June 21, 1987 12,368 miles This is wild, wild country. I’m sitting naked with the computer sweaty on my lap, leaning in the sun against a massive boulder that somehow, millennia ago, rolled to a stop like a forgotten marble on this convex plain of glacier-polished slickrock. Now,…

by Steven K. Roberts Eureka, California May 25, 1987 12,257 miles Eureka? Again? Is this a time-warp? If you’ve been following these tales for any time at all, you know we spent five weeks here over the winter… and you also know that we couldn’t have possibly pedaled back up the coast as fast as the…

by Steven K. Roberts Pigeon Point, California May 15, 1987 12,140 miles F I N A L L Y ! ! ! I’m on the beach at Half Moon Bay, the evening calm almost disquieting after the unrelenting noise of the City. It feels good, damn good… Maggie and I grin at each other every few…

Photo by Maggie Victor: Sailing with Norm Goldblatt on San Francisco Bay.  Texting while Driving in 1987 This posting to my Computing Across America column on GEnie came near the end of the Silicon Valley layover between the Winnebiko II trek down the Pacific Coast and the jump to Ohio to resume through the Northeast and…

Photo: The Computing Across America crew at the GEnie booth, 1987 West Coast Computer Faire. From upper left: Tom Hoobyar, Steven K. Roberts, Ray Rolls, Maggie Victor, GEnie booth personality, Kelly Monroe.  by Steven K. Roberts Palo Alto, California April 5, 1987 11,870 miles Ah, Stanford in the Spring. LCD characters wafting through a beery haze,…