WESTMINSTER WEST — Jesse Peters is a changed man after trekking on his bike with attached trailer - named “Bob” - from New Hampshire to California.
He left May 17 and ended his journey Aug. 7, just a little short of the West Coast after having to stop due to a shoulder injury.
Having returned home, Peters, a lifelong Vermonter from Westminster West, said he is humbly “proud of what [he] did.”
Body tanned and honed, his eyes still seem to reflect long stretches of road and a journey from which he has not yet completely landed.
An eclectic guitarist, song writer and private instructor as well as teacher of music theory at the Journey School in Chester, he said he also helps his mason father, Jack Peters, “when he needs it.”
Peters said a deep concern for the environment was partly behind, but not the whole reason, for the adventure.
Peters had been aware of Middlebury College scholar-in-residence Bill McKibben's efforts through his 350.org website, but Peters has no official affiliation with the initiative.
He did go over to the college to “get Bill's blessing” before he left, pointing down at the environmental writer/activist's signature scrawled elegantly in white ink on the body of the “beater” Alvarez guitar.
Through his social networking and grassroots efforts, McKibben continues to generate a global awareness of the maximum 350 ppm of carbon monoxide level that is considered safe for humans before health risks are raised.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has measured carbon levels at 390.09 ppm, and scientific consensus has pointed to the global need to reduce carbon emissions to help prevent global warming.
The 350.org group has called for global organizers to set Oct. 10 as a day to urge local churches, schools, and government buildings to implement solar panels in an effort to reduce dependency on fossil fuels in a move toward using renewable resources and passive energy.
That 350 ppm goal provided the basis for the movement and Peters' baseline raison d'être for what he called his “350tour.'
“I wanted to do something significant, something dramatic” in this regard, Peters stated. “I'd been thinking about it for a year, then finally decided to go for it.”
Taking the trip
In spite of the natural fears of the unknown and fear of failure, Peters made the commitment.
“I was fired up about it … I really wanted to do it,” Peters said.
“It was a themed ride based on the 350.org initiative,” Peters said, adding that just riding from coast to coast was not enough for him. He wanted to do something more.
Peters originally wanted to do something like “'350 gigs in 350 days, or something like that,” he said.
“It was a lot grander when I first conceived the idea, but I narrowed it down to just a bike trip and gigs along the way, and sponsors to help with expenses,” he noted.
But he is cautious to say the trip was not based purely on a cause, though he believes it made a strong statement.
“I wanted to do something of the highest quality I could bring myself to do,” Peters explained. “I wanted to do something I enjoyed. I wanted music to be a part of it.”
Peters said it was “a relief” when he felt he'd “settled on something dramatic.”
“I wanted something so challenging I completely lost myself in it. I wanted to carry a guitar and make music across the country, not just ride coast to coast,” he added. “That's not me.”
During the conception and implementation process, Peters said, “I was my own worst enemy. I was filled with self-doubt. It was a real struggle,” he admitted, to motivate himself for it.
“I knew it would change me - I was scared of that too,” Peters explained. “But [with the musical gigs along the way] it had wholeness to it. I was scared of taking so much on. But once I commit to something, I tend to stay on it.”
Did he lose any sleep once the decision was made?
“Yes!” he laughed. “I have my own version of dealing with stress, and it's not pretty,” he said with a grin.
Scenes from the road
Wanting to simplify his life, Peters said, couldn't get much simpler than a man, a bike, camping equipment and a guitar.
Peters' bike tour across the country took 85 days pulling 100 pounds of gear, bike and trailer, including, of course, his McKibben-signed guitar. “That's a lot of weight,” Peters said.
“I wanted to bring my home with me. I wanted to be at home wherever I was,” he said.
Training himself to perceive his own whereabouts on the journey as home made it easy for him to drop the human tendency to judge people. “I wouldn't do that in my living room,” he said.
He did see his impact on people along the way.
“People think we can do nothing [about climate change] and we can stay in whatever degree of denial we like, but that's not the kind of person I am,” he said.
“If something needs changing, first we need to change ourselves,” he added. “The only effect I have on someone else is by setting an example.”
“Maybe someone along the way saw me and thought to themselves, 'There's a dude enjoying himself' and look what [he's] doing,” he said.
Yet Peters doesn't feel his choice of action is any better or worse than anyone else's choice, or lack thereof, to “do something.” He says the trip taught him to refrain from passing judgment on others.
In Ely, Nev., Peters played a gig at a tavern.
“I got into a conversation with a guy who was rather drunk but who got very involved with what I was doing,” he said. “This guy was potential trouble, I could tell. He was a brawler. He wasn't the kind of guy who avoids a dangerous situation.”
The man wanted to know everything about the trip from the beginning. Peters described him as “hard-worked, obviously troubled and possibly alcoholic,” but that didn't stop him from listening to him and engaging in a conversation.
“He insisted we walk to a bar a couple of miles down the rode where he thought he'd find a guy who owed him money just so he could give me 20 dollars,” Peters said with an amazed shake of the head.
“He was devastated he couldn't give me the money when we found the bar closed,” Peters continued. “It was like he had failed or something. He's a guy whose word is everything to him.”
What Peters saw was a man reaching out in the only way he could to support someone who was making changes he perhaps couldn't do himself.
Peters' awareness grew as he rode. “My perceptions of people changed. I started being able to detach myself and see the good in all people,” he said.
The road forced a non-judgmental attitude because when he was “in the middle of corn country with only one store and found only Wonder Bread and bologna to eat, I had to say, well, OK, take what I could get, get back on my bike and ride.”
“I couldn't be judgmental just because I was so desolate,” Peters laughed. “I didn't have that luxury because I still had 20 miles to go before dark.”
Each day a major push
“I dismantled everything each night,” he said, “and I either repacked it again that evening or early the next morning.”
Asked what the easiest thing on the trip was, he said, “Pack, hookup and ride.”
Asked what the hardest thing on the ride was, he grinned, “Pack, hookup and ride.”
“Each day was a major push to get as many miles [under the wheels] as I could get. It was that simple, and that complicated,” he said. “It was simple because after a certain point, it was just a matter of getting there,” he said.
Hours of pedaling 100 pounds of gear in a head wind or miles and miles of straightaway with no buildings in sight, strips a man of all but the essential parts of his nature and what it takes to accomplish a distance each day, according to Peters.
“To react out of desolation isn't right,” Peters said. “I don't have that right.”
“One thing that moves me most deeply is [seeing and watching] animals,” Peters explained. That love was tested over the course of the trip as he came across carcasses of every different species having suffered encounters with humanity, on the road.
“I saw a lot of roadkill,” he said, but states he learned to be nonjudgmental even about that.
“There was one stretch where there were two great horned owls within a mile of one another that had been hit by cars,” he said. “One was still alive and had to be put down. I went right to the authorities [Fish and Game]. They let me know later it hadn't made it.”
Digital photos on Peters' 350tour blog show the other brown and white owl alongside which lies a vole. “Both,” Peters wrote from the road, had “died within the last 24 hours.”
“He was hit just as he took flight after capturing the vole by the road,” Peters said, sadly shaking his head, the loss clear as he contemplates the picture.
His blog displays many of the photographs shot of the animals he encountered, from Swainson's hawks to pronghorn sheep browsing in fields beside the road, and ground squirrels in a campground.
“I started writing a song called Please Slow Down,” Peters said. “I just wanted people to slow down - just doing that could save a lot of these creatures [from being hit and killed]. You wouldn't believe how much roadkill is out there.”
Peters says an album will definitely come out of the trip.
“I'll have something put together by the end of the year,” he said with a smile, explaining that he has all the digital equipment and a computer needed to record a CD.
He didn't actually reach the coast on his bike because his shoulder injury, suffered in Kyburz, Calif., prevented him from riding farther. He shipped his bike and gear home from there.
“Yes, I dipped my feet in the Pacific,” he said with a grin.
Despite stopping just short of the original destination, “I have no regrets,” he said. “I accomplished what I set out to do.”
But, he added, “[passion] continues to play a huge role” in his life, and believes passion is a natural state for human beings.
“I'm glad to be home - back to the patterns of living and pursuing my hobbies,” he said, smiling. “The comfort of a simple Vermont life I don't take for granted.”
“And I'm glad to be sleeping in my own bed,” he said, grinning. Re-entry is “going OK.”