110 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
trucks. Never bike at night, Call said, adding that she and her kids had
also discovered that small-town churches were happy to put them up. An
active Episcopalian, Slade began making calls. He also pinpointed post
offices. About every other day along the way the Attorney General’s Of-
fice would send him anything he had to sign or review, together with the
next set of maps. He’d sign the papers, stuff the old maps into a big en-
velope and they’d be back on the road again, bisecting every state border-
ing Canada except Maine.
It took them 11 days to pedal across Montana, from the cool mountains
to the sizzling flatlands. Slade routinely brought up the rear with 11–year-
old Becky, the youngest rider. When the wind gusted, the sun blazed and
rattlesnakes slithered across their path, he’d get her talking about the
horse she was going to have. The sights and smells of that trip are still
with them all—the trees, the flowers, the crops and critters, including
the jackrabbits, prairie dogs, sheep and cattle who observed their progress
with curiosity.
With a 25–mph tailwind, they covered 140 miles one memorable day,
from Carrington, North Dakota, to Moorhead, Minnesota, whizzing
along a road that was as smooth and flat as a pool table. The road seemed
to stretch forever, and the only traffic they encountered gave them a wide
berth and a friendly beep. At tiny road-stop cafes they feasted on pan-
cakes, fried chicken and homemade pies.^8
What Becky remembers most—other than the “horrifyingly huge”
mosquitoes at a Wisconsin campsite—is the kindness of strangers. “We’d
meet someone and they’d say ‘You need to stay at our house tonight!’ I
can still picture us pulling into a Midwestern town with wide, tree-lined
streets and Dad knocking on the door of a church to see if we could stay
there for the night. It was an amazing way to see America. That whole
trip personified my Dad’s enthusiasm and eagerness to do everything to
the fullest,” Slade’s youngest says. “There’s a great bit of child in him. I’m
not saying ‘childish’; it’s his love of life. The bitter liberals have never
been able to grasp that.”^9
Her sister’s strongest, not fondest, memory of the trip is that “every
darn time we couldn’t find a church or someplace else indoors to spend
the night, it just poured. We’d be sleeping on picnic tables and we’d try to
take cover underneath, only to emerge soaking wet the next morning.”^10
Everywhere they stopped they met people who were amazed at the feat
they were attempting. Soon the wire services began tracking their prog-
ress. Slade attempted to pull rank only once.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in Ohio. As they were leaving Michi-