Oct. 9

The next morning, we saw Mike again, as he was rushing off to work. Luckily, he paused long enough to tell us his stories from his tour seven years ago. We didn't get the whole story but we got a lot of it.

Mike said in his youth he never or rarely had jobs, but he had bikes, so he would take off on rides for several weeks at a time. Part of that youth was spent as a ski bum in Colorado. Sometime around 1990, he decided to do a tour of New Zealand and Australia and SE Asia.

He had a totally expensive bike. We forget the brand, but he said it was custom-made and it cost $2200. He spray-painted it black so it would look ugly and no one would steal it. Then he took off for NZ. He rode a bit and hung out with friends. Then he went to Australia, and rode around there.

He was near Darwin when his visa was getting ready to expire. To renew it, he decided to fly to Indonesia. He spent sometime in Bali and when he was ready to go back to Australia, he was in Timor. So he flew from Timor to Australia.

But he hardly had any money. Australia is a very tough country to get into. They gave him a hard time. He said that he had left his bike with his friend in Darwin (he had) and that he had traveler's checks there. They seemed willing to believe him, but just to make sure, they read his journal, which he was carrying. Unfortunately for Mike, his journal showed that he was broke. So the Aussies kicked him out. But instead of sending him back to the U.S., they sent him back to where he came from, Timor.

When he arrived in Timor, officials there read in his passport about how the Australians had kicked him out. Mike says that based on this, the Timorese threw him in jail. He didn't have a chance to call anyone, and didn't have much money either. So he lay in jail for three months.

He says he was finally released after he became really ill, and his jailers thought he would die. They sent him to a hospital, where he got better, and befriended some of the staff. One guy took him home to live with his family. Mike got better and called his parents, who wired him $1500.

You would think at that point Mike would leave Indonesia. But he said by then, his system was used to Indonesian food and he could eat anything the natives could. He was enjoying himself. But he wanted his bike back.

So at the airport, he met two bike tourists who said they were headed for Darwin. He gave them $300 and asked them to look up his friend and ask him to send the bike along. Flights from Darwin to Timor happened only every four days; so every four days Mike went to the airport to look for his bike. For weeks, there was no sign of it. He thought he had been snookered by his fellow bike tourists. Eventually, however, the bike showed up.

From Indonesia, Mike got a boat to Singapore, and then rode into Thailand. Eventually, as his visa was set to expire, he found he was running out of money again. So he decided to fly to the U.S. long enough to make some money and then head to Japan, where he planned to work as a bartender and ski instructor. The only flight he could get out that day was to Honolulu.

He arrived with $6 in his pocket. He left the airport, made his say to Honolulu, and saw a Hark Rock Cafe. He applied for a job and was hired on the spot. His first shift was the same night. By this time he looked pretty grungy so his new boss gave him a razor blade and told him to clean up. Mike started working at the dessert bar; but his stomach wasn't used to U.S. food anymore, and all the greasy hamburgers and desserts made him sick.

We don't know for how long, but Mike worked at the Hard Rock Cafe for awhile. He says he couldn't get enough money together to rent a place so he slept and showered at the beach. He says he was so used to sleeping outside that he preferred it to staying in friends' apartments. Eventually he headed to Maui, and worked a few jobs before settling into construction. He was living near the beach when he fell in love with his next-door neighbor, Joan. Now, as we mentioned before, he has a house and a cute kid and a dog. He says of Joan, "she totally changed my life." He did say, as we were about to take off that morning, that he wished he could take off with us.

I was greatly encouraged by Mike's story, since he hit bottom and still managed to emerge from homelessness in the end.

Next: the road to Hana-on bikes

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