Darn raccoons, Doug Craw thought.
As if dealing with his cross-country bicycle trip wasn’t challenging enough, with the hunger and the dehydration and the vomiting and the sore muscles and the cold and the rain and the loneliness.
Raccoons? They look like bandits, and one night in an Ohio state park, between Akron and Cleveland, the little critters acted like bandits, too.
“Oh my lord, it was like this minion of raccoons coming out of the woods,” Craw said Wednesday during a break from his bike trip, which will benefit the Granite State Independent Living program. “I’d chase one and get to sleep and then another one would be pawing at my tent and the bags on my bike. It was like I was being attacked by wolves.”
That’s just one story the Epsom resident will tell for the rest of his life. He told me that one during a break in his trip, after speeding down a steep grade outside Wilmington, Vt., just 100 miles from Concord.
If all went according to plan, Craw was picked up on Wednesday near Hillsboro by his wife, Tamara Krenn, whom he met while each hitchhiked around Australia. He slept at home for the first time since leaving San Diego on April 9, got a ride back to the Hillsboro area, then pedaled into downtown, where he’d be greeted on Friday by co-workers at GSIL headquarters on Commercial Street.
Even at 60, this Grateful Dead-like spirit would be gone again soon, if not for the fact that he has a job, not to mention a wife.
“Even with all the challenges,” Craw said, “if I could do it and not go back to work, I would go home, take a couple of days off and start another tour.”
This is who he is, a guy who works for a nonprofit that, among other functions, helps troubled teens graduate high school, develop job interview skills and self worth, take stock in themselves and tap into their potential.
He’s also a man who travels, sometimes pushing himself like feet against bike pedals. In 2000 he walked the Appalachian Trial, from Georgia to Maine, a solo trip that took 5 ½ months.
As Krenn, a local massage therapist, said by phone, “He was born for this kind of adventure. It feeds his soul to do something hard and physical, and this time it’s dedicated to the kids he works with.”
Born in Illinois, Craw once worked a summer in Alaska, in the fishing industry, unloading boats and chopping heads off salmon with an air-powered guillotine.
He taught English in Bangkok, learned welding and diesel mechanics in Idaho, worked with heavy equipment in Florida, worked construction in Colorado, worked on an apple orchard in New Zealand and hitchhiked through Australia.
There, while working as a landscaper and bumming rides around the country, Craw met a woman from Epsom, a fellow hitchhiker, and married her after someone in a truck picked them up at different times.
He married the right woman, too. “She is very supportive,” Craw said.
Added Krenn, “I’m really proud of him. Every day he’s had to find someplace to sleep, beside a sand dune, or inquire at a police station or fire station, and it’s a lot of work to not know where your next meal or next night’s sleep will come from.”
Craw, who has no sponsorship for expenses, has raised about $13,000 for GSIL. Krenn, the record keeper for the adventure, said he’s spent about $5,000, including his bike and gear. She says her husband is thrifty, a trait he got from his Scottish mother.
He travels with two saddle bags, placed in the front and rear of his bicycle for balance, stuffed with clothing, a sleeping bag, a tent and snacks. He’s got tools and lots of determination, each needed for different types of repair work, one for equipment maintenance, the other mental toughness.
He slept in cheap hotels and met lots of nice people, some of whom have tossed him a few bucks and given him shelter. In fact, while camping Tuesday night in Woodford, Vt., folks nearby invited Craw over for dinner, feeding him ham, tomatoes, scalloped potatoes.
“Ninety-nine percent were good people,” Craw said.
He loved the deserts and dry heat in Arizona, the vibe in Sante Fe and the historic feeling of hitchhiking on Route 66.
He didn’t like the food poisoning, which forced him to lean against a sign post and puke his brains out, or the 40-degree nights, or the rain, or the raccoons.
“They were coming from everywhere, little ones, big ones,” Craw said. “A sleepless night, and they did get some of my snacks.”
By Friday, after he’s reconnected with Krenn and his dog, Joe, Craw will return to work and, of course, get back truckin’ on.
Next up, in a year, he wants to bike around Cuba.
“He very well better take me,” Krenn said. “We have traveling in our bones.”