title: Under a Triumphant Sky: A Bike Across America Story
author:  Steve Garufi 
description: "Is there any of us who hasn't dreamed of running away, of heading on out to the highway, never looking back, getting away from it all? Steve Garufi had those dreams. Unlike most of us, he acted on them.<br /><br />On the first day of February 2008, Garufi straddled his bike and pedaled away from a San Diego beach, heading east. A month and a half later, he arrived at another beach and another ocean, at Jekyll Island, Georgia. Between those two beaches, he experienced 11 flat tires, two mechanical breakdowns and one stolen bicycle. But not only did Garufi live to tell the tale - he even wrote about it.<br /><br />Garufi is a licensed professional counselor, so it's perhaps little surprise he concentrates moreso on the people he encounters rather than the nitty-gritty physical details of his journey. Other biking-across-America sagas provide vivid details of the grueling nature of the cycling: the cold and heat, the never-ending slogging, the sleep deprivation and the struggling against wanting to quit. People encountered along the way don't usually land on the writer's (and, hence, the reader's) radar unless there's a real reason. Garufi's reason is the people themselves. He revels in the personal contacts and is more interested in their stories than in going on to them about his.<br /><br />It's not a scary, xenophobic world Garufi writes about. Rather, it's about the greatness of our people - how inviting and inclusive we are, given the merest chance. To be sure, there are struggles: Garufi suffers heckling truckers; barking and snapping dogs off their leashes; and the opportunistic a-hole, in Phoenix, who steals his locked bike. But there are also the drivers who stop and insist upon helping, even with such simple matters as flat tires; bike mechanics who refuse to charge for their services; and those who give Garufi tours of their towns.<br /><br />This is the story of an adult finally making manifest a long-held dream - of persistently continuing onward when every other cell in the body is demanding, "Stop. Enough is enough."<br /><br />The charting of daily events as the writer travels at a two-wheeled pace across the southern part of the U.S. could result in a correspondingly tedious read. However, this doesn't occur here. I never lost interest. I was carried consistently and continually along." <b>-Eduardo Rey Brummel,<i>Colorado Central Magazine</i></b><br /><br />"<span>After I finish a good book, I'm usually a jumble of emotions and it's a feeling that makes me not want to read anything else so I don't lose that feeling. <i>Under a Triumphant Sky</i> could be a great motivator for people not only with biking, but with anything else in life that we hesitate to do, or don't have the courage or faith to persevere." <b>-Lisa Wilson</b></span>
zlib_text: This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
  Copyright © 2016 B. B. Hamel.
  
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  Keep reading for the full text of Kinged included at the end.
  
  Chapter One: Caralee
   
  The bike tore down the highway, heading toward the border.
  It was a cool, comfortable night in the desert as we tore down the highway. I held on to Rod’s
  back as his bike tore up the pavement, flying fast through the wind. I loved the sound of it whipping
  past my ears, even through my helmet. He glanced over his shoulder and grinned at me, revving the
  engine higher, pushing us faster.
  I’d known Rod for a while now, ever since I’d left the small Texas town of Wimberly for college.
  We met in my very first week; I went to a bar with some friends and there he was, chatting them up
  confidently. He ended up taking my roommate home that night, but we became close