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Teacher returns to nomadic ways
By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE HOMOSASSA -- Keith Gum admits to being a bit of a wanderer and that may have contributed to his most recent strenuous bicycle trek from Florida to West Virginia this summer and landed him in jail, sort of. Most of the time, Gum, 55 is an art teacher at Pleasant Grove Elementary School. He often rides his bike to school from his home is Homosassa. His trip this summer was a lot longer and very hot. Gum left on June 4 and said in the hotter states he did most of his riding at night. He said he was on the road each day by 3:30 a.m. By noon he said he had to be in some kind of shelter. It's flat in Florida, but Gum said he would rather ride in the mountains and avoid the heat. He drink a quart of Gatorade every half hour and battled a head wind every day. But the ride, though difficult, forced him to be aware of his muscles, made him conscious of his physical being and helped him be more aware of his external environment. "On a bike," he said, "you can see, hear and smell the physical world." And there is a social aspect to it, as well. He said he talked to people with whom he would never otherwise had a chance to talk. "You can express yourself differently with strangers," he said, "They come to you because they're curious about what you're doing." Locals, he said, steered him off his planned route to roads he never would have taken or even known about. "People were more than anxious to take out the map and tell me a different way to go," he said. Gum avoided most cities and instead went through small towns. He found the police in most places were very helpful finding him places to stay. In Harlem, Ga., he entered the police station and told them he had no place to stay that night. They discussed it quietly, and finally offered him a jail cell. In Newton , N.C., the police found him food, a place to shower and offered him a grassy spot next to the police station to camp. Churches and chambers of commerce were helpful, too. One night, after getting the proper permission, he found a nice spot under a tree in a church cemetery. Local people, as well, were kind to him. In Clinton, S.C., Gum found a man outside working on his lawn. The man became interested in Gum's bicycle and eventually told him he could camp out behind the house. It turned out that the man had a Japanese wife and Gum has a bachelor's degree in Asian studies from Sophia University in Tokyo. Gum was able to converse with the man and his wife in Japanese. Gum ended up taking them out to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. In North Carolina farm country, he met a farmer and asked if he could camp on his property. The farmer agreed and Gum ended up having mashed potatoes and ham with the family for dinner. Part of the adventure of long bicycle trips, Gum said, is the uncertainty. Meals, water, places to stay are generally unknown. He had food stolen by creatures (he thinks the thieves were raccoons or crows) but he had food given to him by kind strangers (human). In one campground, a fellow camper gave him a stack of venison steaks and the ranger came by with a can of peaches. On June 25, Gum arrived in Cass, W.Va., where his wife met him, to visit aunts, uncles and his grandmother. While he was there, he looked through some old books and found one by H.G. Wells that seemed to sum up why he does these bike trips. "For centuries our distant ancestors were nomadic," he said. "This life is extremely given. There's nothing bad about that, but there's something about touring with a bicycle that is out of the box."
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