Thanksgiving in the desert with Clemente
November 28, 2007
Learning the desert...
We glided into Peru on the wings of high spirits. The sound of waves crashing on the desert filled our ears, the tastes of ceviche and pisco sours and Inca kola filled our mouths. Farmland changed to desert, clouds changed to sun. Our old friend, the Pacific, was there to greet us, stretching its blue to the horizon as the sun drooped into it. It was nice to meet up again, after spending weeks high in the mountains in Colombia and Ecuador, and then dashing across lowlands to the coast. As we bobbed up and over little hills through the quiet, barren land, we could spot the sea at times, and it was comforting to know it was there. We had returned.
We found refuge in a little beach town called Mancora. Some food and drinks carried us into the night. People juggled fire in the streets, and the echoes of hands on drums could be heard all through the town. Music sounded from all the little spots on the small strip. People danced, talked, laughed, ate and drank. Spoon and I walked the beach late in the night, staring up at the southern sky, pointing up to the stars and all the constellations we had never seen, reveling in our hemispheric journey from the Arctic Circle to the equator, thinking how great it was that we’d biked there to find a new sky. I slept well that night, but the morning came too soon. We decided to take a day off to prepare for a long stretch down the Peruvian coast. Our legs deserved it, so did our minds. The maps layed out on the bed, we stared at the continent. It was time to push on. We set out for Piura.
On the map there is a speckled section between Piura and Chiclayo. It's called the Sechura desert. It was there that we were introduced to the wind. It blows from the southwest to the northeast all the time. The land is flat and windswept. The few trees and bushes speckling the land are bent over from the wind. Sand dunes spill out into the road. There are mountains of sand built by the wind in the distance, and rocky crags are filled in with it. The wind owns the land. It is a powerful force of nature, one you get to know very well with a bicycle.
We arrived in Chiclayo after eighty-three miles. It had taken 8 1/2 hours of spinning to get the miles. We finished with the lowest average speed of the entire trip, under 10 mph, and with a top speed of 16 mph for the entire day. There was never a moment when we could stop pedaling into the gusts. Our minds were worked. Our legs felt like they had been climbing all day. I felt a deep burn as we climbed the stairs in the hotel to our hiding spot for the night, where we would try to use 12 hours to recover for the next day’s ride. Lying in the beds we nearly fell asleep without dinner, but mustered up enough energy to eat and talk about how bad we got our asses kicked in the Sechura. It was a surprise, another unexpected challenge. We had answered the mountain wake-up call in Colombia, but never expected another slap in the face in Northern Peru. We prayed the desert stretch was coming to an end. Maybe we had ridden the worst of it.
But the desert continued. We discovered that the entire Peru coastline is desert. The coast lies in the rain shadow of the Andes and is some of the driest land in the world. It stretches north from the Atacama desert in Chile, thousands of miles to the Sechura, where we began. There is very little life in this land, and a feeling of vast desolation hanging around all the time. The exposure to the sun and wind is brutal. Temperatures are not high during this season, but the wind never falters. We had to learn how to accept the slow speeds, to accept the wind and the roads. .
The desert taught me patience. Riding for so many hours, days and months, across so many different climates and landscapes, we have learned about ourselves as riders. Our introduction to the mountains in Colombia was welcomed by me. I love the mountains. It is difficult and tiring, but on a hill, you expect to go slow, and there’s something about the challenge of reaching the top. No matter how long it is, you know there is a top. What goes up must come down, sometimes on the same day, other times days later, but you get paid back for your efforts. And it’s interesting, lots of curves and turns and surprises. The mountains work for me mentally. I feel strong. I feel good. It feels right.
But in the Sechura, I met my match. On that first long, difficult day, I would try to find a rhythm, and would see myself falling off of Spoon and Duncan. The gap between us would grow. I’d get out of the saddle and sprint to get back, working hard to catch them, and then fall back into a slow rhythm and fall off. I was frustrated. How could I feel so strong climbing passes in the Andes for hours on end, but not be able to keep a pace line with my friends in the flat desert against the wind? It wasn’t making sense to me. Duncan and Spoon handled it well. They understood how to accept the slow pace the wind creates and not fight it. You have to check out, we say, put your mind in another place and just fall into a meditative state where the legs pedal automatically like cruise control. I had to learn it. And I realized I needed to be alone to do it. So, in Pacasmayo, a small, mellow, beach town that has the feeling of being stopped in time, I opted to push ahead on a day off, to learn the desert and the wind and the roads on my own and give my mind some time to itself.
It never gets easier. The wind never goes away. Sand blows across the road, stinging my face, and I cannot hear the trucks coming behind me because of the roar in my ears. I struggle to hold my bike straight as I am blown around. I hold my head down as far I can to be aerodynamic and pedal long, slow revolutions like I’m going up a hill. The road is as flat as can be but I cannot average much more than ten miles per hour. I watch the numbers all day, weighing my average speed against the distances to towns, and then against the amount of daylight I have left. I think about numbers and analyze. “Okay, if I keep my average at 11, I will arrive at my destination in four hours with one fifteen minute break.” Then, the average changes and I reevaluate the situation with new numbers and times, constantly doing conversion math from kilometers to miles, waiting for signs, watching kilo markers tick by through the lonely desert.
It is a mental battle. You have to figure out what to do to get your mind through it. Sometimes I have two little mascots on my shoulders---an evil, negative one, and a reassuring optimistic one. They talk into my ears. The one on the left says, “You are so slow! You’ll never make your goal today. It’s too many miles. Look at your numbers. Why don’t you just stop and throw in the towel. You suck. You can’t ride in this wind. It hurts. Quit!” I swat him off for a while. The other counters: “You’re doing good, Jake! Keep going. Your average speed is increasing. Forget the numbers. It is what it is. You’re in a good rhythm. Slow and steady. Just put in the hours. You got it!” These two fight each other all day long. Sometimes I think I am going crazy, but I just keep pedaling.
For five days straight, From 6 am to 6 pm, I watched the sun make its arc over me and across the sky, moving slowly from my left to my right as the day passed by. I enjoyed my alone time, but I thought about Duncan and Spoon for a lot of the day, scouting the road to report back to them what it would be like with an email. I watched my shadow change with the sun---on my right in the morning, moving underneath me midday, and stretching out to my left in the evening. When the roads were quiet, there was plenty of time to think. Sometimes a big rig cruised by unexpectedly and woke me up. Maybe I hadn’t looked back in a while to see what was coming. Sometimes I could see the trucks moving along in the distance, like giant slugs across the desert. The trucks showed me where the road would go for the next few miles if I watched them carefully. The road stretched on for miles and miles right in front of me.
Towns are usually around 80 to 100 kilometers apart, and there are few places to get supplies. I would see a place that had water and soda and snacks, the only building for 50 miles, and be so happy to take a break. Between Casma and Huarmey, there was a building just like this. I met a guy named Clemente who ran the little place. He insisted I have lunch there. He made me two huge plates of fried fish, rice and french fries, and then showed me a book and told me to open it. Inside were stories written by cyclists from all over the world from 1996 to now who had stopped in that spot. There were dozens of different languages in the book---people from Japan, Australia, Europe, Canada, and Latin America had signed it. Many of them were thanking Clemente for his generosity, others offered words of encouragement to bikers who would arrive there. There were many different tours, different routes and journeys. Some of the trips were from Alaska to Argentina. My mind was blown by this book---so amazing to imagine the people in that same spot, fighting the winds and the desert, and finding food and shelter. I signed my own little note, got a picture with Clemente, and told him my two friends would be by the next day around the same time. I would tell them to stop at kilo marker 347 to say hi to Clemente and see the book. I rode away with newfound confidence and strength. I only needed fifty more kilometers for Huarmey, where I would find a place to sleep. My belly felt full, and as I rode into the evening I realized it was Thanksgiving. I said a prayer for my family and thanked God for my life. The half-empty guy on my shoulder was gone for a while and I reached Huarmey that night through the wind with ease and at peace.
In the end, we did 758 miles in nine days from Mancora to Lima. It was an amazing experience and a great challenge. Having reached Casa Ibanez here in Lima, with our great hosts taking care of us for a few days as we prepare for our next leg south, we are feeling rested and ready for a push. But the desert made the three of us begin to think and reanalyze a lot, and we are forced to make a difficult decision. Either we push on through the desert into Chile and continue with it for almost 2 thousand more miles. Or we cross the Andes early into Bolivia, through La Paz and into northern Argentina on a stretch towards the Atlantic coast, cutting Chile out of the equation until very far south near Ushuaia. We have been looking at maps and talking a lot, exchanging some stories from those few days apart in the desert, sharing ideas about what we should do. We have many more miles of desert to face through southern Peru, and then we will find our junction and figure it out. There will be more stories. And, as always, we’ll have no idea what we’re getting into.
We found refuge in a little beach town called Mancora. Some food and drinks carried us into the night. People juggled fire in the streets, and the echoes of hands on drums could be heard all through the town. Music sounded from all the little spots on the small strip. People danced, talked, laughed, ate and drank. Spoon and I walked the beach late in the night, staring up at the southern sky, pointing up to the stars and all the constellations we had never seen, reveling in our hemispheric journey from the Arctic Circle to the equator, thinking how great it was that we’d biked there to find a new sky. I slept well that night, but the morning came too soon. We decided to take a day off to prepare for a long stretch down the Peruvian coast. Our legs deserved it, so did our minds. The maps layed out on the bed, we stared at the continent. It was time to push on. We set out for Piura.
On the map there is a speckled section between Piura and Chiclayo. It's called the Sechura desert. It was there that we were introduced to the wind. It blows from the southwest to the northeast all the time. The land is flat and windswept. The few trees and bushes speckling the land are bent over from the wind. Sand dunes spill out into the road. There are mountains of sand built by the wind in the distance, and rocky crags are filled in with it. The wind owns the land. It is a powerful force of nature, one you get to know very well with a bicycle.
We arrived in Chiclayo after eighty-three miles. It had taken 8 1/2 hours of spinning to get the miles. We finished with the lowest average speed of the entire trip, under 10 mph, and with a top speed of 16 mph for the entire day. There was never a moment when we could stop pedaling into the gusts. Our minds were worked. Our legs felt like they had been climbing all day. I felt a deep burn as we climbed the stairs in the hotel to our hiding spot for the night, where we would try to use 12 hours to recover for the next day’s ride. Lying in the beds we nearly fell asleep without dinner, but mustered up enough energy to eat and talk about how bad we got our asses kicked in the Sechura. It was a surprise, another unexpected challenge. We had answered the mountain wake-up call in Colombia, but never expected another slap in the face in Northern Peru. We prayed the desert stretch was coming to an end. Maybe we had ridden the worst of it.
But the desert continued. We discovered that the entire Peru coastline is desert. The coast lies in the rain shadow of the Andes and is some of the driest land in the world. It stretches north from the Atacama desert in Chile, thousands of miles to the Sechura, where we began. There is very little life in this land, and a feeling of vast desolation hanging around all the time. The exposure to the sun and wind is brutal. Temperatures are not high during this season, but the wind never falters. We had to learn how to accept the slow speeds, to accept the wind and the roads. .
The desert taught me patience. Riding for so many hours, days and months, across so many different climates and landscapes, we have learned about ourselves as riders. Our introduction to the mountains in Colombia was welcomed by me. I love the mountains. It is difficult and tiring, but on a hill, you expect to go slow, and there’s something about the challenge of reaching the top. No matter how long it is, you know there is a top. What goes up must come down, sometimes on the same day, other times days later, but you get paid back for your efforts. And it’s interesting, lots of curves and turns and surprises. The mountains work for me mentally. I feel strong. I feel good. It feels right.
But in the Sechura, I met my match. On that first long, difficult day, I would try to find a rhythm, and would see myself falling off of Spoon and Duncan. The gap between us would grow. I’d get out of the saddle and sprint to get back, working hard to catch them, and then fall back into a slow rhythm and fall off. I was frustrated. How could I feel so strong climbing passes in the Andes for hours on end, but not be able to keep a pace line with my friends in the flat desert against the wind? It wasn’t making sense to me. Duncan and Spoon handled it well. They understood how to accept the slow pace the wind creates and not fight it. You have to check out, we say, put your mind in another place and just fall into a meditative state where the legs pedal automatically like cruise control. I had to learn it. And I realized I needed to be alone to do it. So, in Pacasmayo, a small, mellow, beach town that has the feeling of being stopped in time, I opted to push ahead on a day off, to learn the desert and the wind and the roads on my own and give my mind some time to itself.
It never gets easier. The wind never goes away. Sand blows across the road, stinging my face, and I cannot hear the trucks coming behind me because of the roar in my ears. I struggle to hold my bike straight as I am blown around. I hold my head down as far I can to be aerodynamic and pedal long, slow revolutions like I’m going up a hill. The road is as flat as can be but I cannot average much more than ten miles per hour. I watch the numbers all day, weighing my average speed against the distances to towns, and then against the amount of daylight I have left. I think about numbers and analyze. “Okay, if I keep my average at 11, I will arrive at my destination in four hours with one fifteen minute break.” Then, the average changes and I reevaluate the situation with new numbers and times, constantly doing conversion math from kilometers to miles, waiting for signs, watching kilo markers tick by through the lonely desert.
It is a mental battle. You have to figure out what to do to get your mind through it. Sometimes I have two little mascots on my shoulders---an evil, negative one, and a reassuring optimistic one. They talk into my ears. The one on the left says, “You are so slow! You’ll never make your goal today. It’s too many miles. Look at your numbers. Why don’t you just stop and throw in the towel. You suck. You can’t ride in this wind. It hurts. Quit!” I swat him off for a while. The other counters: “You’re doing good, Jake! Keep going. Your average speed is increasing. Forget the numbers. It is what it is. You’re in a good rhythm. Slow and steady. Just put in the hours. You got it!” These two fight each other all day long. Sometimes I think I am going crazy, but I just keep pedaling.
For five days straight, From 6 am to 6 pm, I watched the sun make its arc over me and across the sky, moving slowly from my left to my right as the day passed by. I enjoyed my alone time, but I thought about Duncan and Spoon for a lot of the day, scouting the road to report back to them what it would be like with an email. I watched my shadow change with the sun---on my right in the morning, moving underneath me midday, and stretching out to my left in the evening. When the roads were quiet, there was plenty of time to think. Sometimes a big rig cruised by unexpectedly and woke me up. Maybe I hadn’t looked back in a while to see what was coming. Sometimes I could see the trucks moving along in the distance, like giant slugs across the desert. The trucks showed me where the road would go for the next few miles if I watched them carefully. The road stretched on for miles and miles right in front of me.
Towns are usually around 80 to 100 kilometers apart, and there are few places to get supplies. I would see a place that had water and soda and snacks, the only building for 50 miles, and be so happy to take a break. Between Casma and Huarmey, there was a building just like this. I met a guy named Clemente who ran the little place. He insisted I have lunch there. He made me two huge plates of fried fish, rice and french fries, and then showed me a book and told me to open it. Inside were stories written by cyclists from all over the world from 1996 to now who had stopped in that spot. There were dozens of different languages in the book---people from Japan, Australia, Europe, Canada, and Latin America had signed it. Many of them were thanking Clemente for his generosity, others offered words of encouragement to bikers who would arrive there. There were many different tours, different routes and journeys. Some of the trips were from Alaska to Argentina. My mind was blown by this book---so amazing to imagine the people in that same spot, fighting the winds and the desert, and finding food and shelter. I signed my own little note, got a picture with Clemente, and told him my two friends would be by the next day around the same time. I would tell them to stop at kilo marker 347 to say hi to Clemente and see the book. I rode away with newfound confidence and strength. I only needed fifty more kilometers for Huarmey, where I would find a place to sleep. My belly felt full, and as I rode into the evening I realized it was Thanksgiving. I said a prayer for my family and thanked God for my life. The half-empty guy on my shoulder was gone for a while and I reached Huarmey that night through the wind with ease and at peace.
In the end, we did 758 miles in nine days from Mancora to Lima. It was an amazing experience and a great challenge. Having reached Casa Ibanez here in Lima, with our great hosts taking care of us for a few days as we prepare for our next leg south, we are feeling rested and ready for a push. But the desert made the three of us begin to think and reanalyze a lot, and we are forced to make a difficult decision. Either we push on through the desert into Chile and continue with it for almost 2 thousand more miles. Or we cross the Andes early into Bolivia, through La Paz and into northern Argentina on a stretch towards the Atlantic coast, cutting Chile out of the equation until very far south near Ushuaia. We have been looking at maps and talking a lot, exchanging some stories from those few days apart in the desert, sharing ideas about what we should do. We have many more miles of desert to face through southern Peru, and then we will find our junction and figure it out. There will be more stories. And, as always, we’ll have no idea what we’re getting into.
November 17, 2007
November 11, 2007
On the wrong road for the right reasons...
Each morning when we wake up, we gamble. We don´t know what we will see, who we will meet, what the roads will be like, or even how we will feel. It´s all unknown to us---a beautiful mystery we have to solve. We´re always learning lessons about how to get the job done right. It´s easy to look back on a day or an incident and think, "If we just would have done that, maybe this wouldn´t have happened." We just have to jump out into it, see what happens, and accept it for what it is.
A couple days ago, we woke up in a hospedaje in Quevedo, Ecuador, looking to head south on the flat roads west of the mountains. We had ridden 100 miles to get there the day before and had made it most of the way through the city in the hopes of avoiding urban navigation problems in the morning. We assumed we were on our route headed south, even though there were no signs anywhere to confirm it. We hadn´t deviated from a straight path through the city and never even considered that the road we were on might be the wrong one. But after 25 kilometers of flats and small rolling hills through farmland, we came to a small town. It was about 8 am. The town was busy. The Saturday market was in full swing---people selling fruit and vegetables---buses, pedestrians, trucks, taxis, and motorcycles everywhere. We made our way through it all over speed bumps and potholes, cobblestone and litter. At the end of town, an old, green, sun-faded sign hung crooked on its brackets, nearly fallen off. There were three towns listed with distances. None of them sounded familiar. We stopped to check the map and with the help of a guy standing outside his house, we confirmed we had taken the wrong road out of Quevedo. We had ridden west instead of south. We were frustrated, disappointed in ourselves for letting it happen. We had let our guard down. Spoon had packed his compass away before we left because it looked like rain. "I would have caught it if I had the compass out," he grumbled, as we turned around headed back into town in search of another road that ran south, nearly parallel to the one we should have been on. But it looked like our blunder had added some extra miles to our day.
We pushed on. My mind was not clear as we pedaled. I couldn´t stop thinking about the miles and time we´d lost. I was fighting the road. I led for ten miles but couldn´t find a rhythm. I was speeding up, feeling a burn, slowing down, but then feeling like I was going to slow. I was fighting the headwind, fighting the terrain, just fighting everything. It wasn´t smooth. I´d look back, Spoon and Duncan would be right on me, so I´d speed up and a gap would form. I just couldn´t get it right. Pure frustration.
We stopped for a break about 40 miles into the day. I started thinking about the road mistake, started looking at the positives. 1) We were on flat, easy terrain. If we made a mistake like that in the mountains, it would have been much worse. 2)We had discovered our mistake after only 15 miles. If the sign at the end of that had been fallen all the way down, we may have gone much further before realizing it. 3)There was a pretty easy fix with the other road south in that town. We didn´t have to retrace our route to Quevedo. 4) I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. So something was going to happen on the new road.
There was a woman and two teenage kids painting a fence near where we had stopped. We talked to them for a while, explained what we were doing, and the owner of the farm they were working on came out with his shirt full of mangos. He gave us six of the sweetest, juiciest mangos I´d ever tasted, and said, "Desayuno". Spoon helped them paint for a few minutes and we took some pictures with them. We gave the kids some stickers and pushed on. Spoon led for a while, and I rode in the back of the train, just keeping it mellow. I turned my odometer off. We were surrounded by stretches of banana trees, mango groves, fields full of rice, corn, and so many other crops. Some fields were burnt off after being harvested. Others were as alive as can be, stretches of rich, lush green. Hawks soared high above the fields, and there was a thin cloud cover to protect us from the sun. The temperature was perfect---not too hot not too cool. Some of the trees near the road had dropped their leaves, and the look of the bare branches and the big, dried-up leaves on the ground reminded me of the fall back east. I realized it was the first year in my life that I would miss the autumn. People outside their houses waved to us and we waved back and smiled. The road was quiet, hardly any traffic, and we rode in silence. All I could hear was the sound of our chains spinning, and the hum of our tires on the road. I dropped my preoccupation with miles and speed and averages. I let it go. I concentrated on taking in what was around us. All of a sudden everything seemed perfect. Everything made sense. It all lined up. The last five months of my life had brought me more than 9,000 miles down the road from Alaska. Tears started welling up in my eyes. I tried to stop it, but the emotions multiplied, and I realized that something very powerful was flowing through me.
I started thinking about the last couple weeks in South America. I could see the mystical mountains in Colombia, the endless climbs and descents we had conquered. Right there in my mind were the views of the valleys from high above, the river gorges thousands of feet below us. I saw the face of Jesus, the twelve year old boy who had chased us up the street in San Gabriel, Ecuador with a blank sheet of paper for us to write down our names. We had helped him with his English homework while his mom, Cecilia, did our laundry and invited us into her home for a delicious dinner of bread, cheese, rice, chicken and tea. I could see the faces of all five of the children there, laughing as Spoon made funny faces and sounds. And the warm smile of Manuel the father, who motioned with his hand to give us a piece of his heart for the road as we said goodbye. I had visions of the fifty mile descent out of the Andes through the fog, rain and mist, ripping around switchbacks and past trucks which couldn´t even go as fast as us because of the traffic and bad visibility. I could see Duncan at the equator, standing with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern, talking to the videocamera and making us laugh as he commentated the situation. I saw our campsite just south of the equator and the snow-capped peakes standing high above the valleys. All the places and all the faces and all the experiences we´d been stacking up were there at once. I saw it all so clearly, and it all made perfect sense for those few moments as we rode across the beautiful lands of Ecuador.
I couldn´t control my happiness. I was overwhelmed. It was something like a religious experience, I guess. Spoon and Duncan rode ahead, no idea what was happening to me behind them, and I eventually told them I needed to stop to pee. They saw I was crying and were worried, but I just gave them each a big hug and thanked them for riding with me. I told them I was so happy, I didn´t know what to do. And then there was silence as we sat there for a few minutes and talked about how beautiful the day and the road and everything around us was. A few miles later, we stopped for lunch on the roadside, tipico Ecuadorian almuerzo---sopa, frijoles, arroz, carne, jugo de naranjilla. I layed in a hammock while we digested and traded sunglasses with a three year old boy there. I put his little ones on and he giggled.
I wore a big smile I just couldn´t wipe away. And then we pedaled south, just like we always do, leaving a world we love behind, just to go find a new one just the same.
A couple days ago, we woke up in a hospedaje in Quevedo, Ecuador, looking to head south on the flat roads west of the mountains. We had ridden 100 miles to get there the day before and had made it most of the way through the city in the hopes of avoiding urban navigation problems in the morning. We assumed we were on our route headed south, even though there were no signs anywhere to confirm it. We hadn´t deviated from a straight path through the city and never even considered that the road we were on might be the wrong one. But after 25 kilometers of flats and small rolling hills through farmland, we came to a small town. It was about 8 am. The town was busy. The Saturday market was in full swing---people selling fruit and vegetables---buses, pedestrians, trucks, taxis, and motorcycles everywhere. We made our way through it all over speed bumps and potholes, cobblestone and litter. At the end of town, an old, green, sun-faded sign hung crooked on its brackets, nearly fallen off. There were three towns listed with distances. None of them sounded familiar. We stopped to check the map and with the help of a guy standing outside his house, we confirmed we had taken the wrong road out of Quevedo. We had ridden west instead of south. We were frustrated, disappointed in ourselves for letting it happen. We had let our guard down. Spoon had packed his compass away before we left because it looked like rain. "I would have caught it if I had the compass out," he grumbled, as we turned around headed back into town in search of another road that ran south, nearly parallel to the one we should have been on. But it looked like our blunder had added some extra miles to our day.
We pushed on. My mind was not clear as we pedaled. I couldn´t stop thinking about the miles and time we´d lost. I was fighting the road. I led for ten miles but couldn´t find a rhythm. I was speeding up, feeling a burn, slowing down, but then feeling like I was going to slow. I was fighting the headwind, fighting the terrain, just fighting everything. It wasn´t smooth. I´d look back, Spoon and Duncan would be right on me, so I´d speed up and a gap would form. I just couldn´t get it right. Pure frustration.
We stopped for a break about 40 miles into the day. I started thinking about the road mistake, started looking at the positives. 1) We were on flat, easy terrain. If we made a mistake like that in the mountains, it would have been much worse. 2)We had discovered our mistake after only 15 miles. If the sign at the end of that had been fallen all the way down, we may have gone much further before realizing it. 3)There was a pretty easy fix with the other road south in that town. We didn´t have to retrace our route to Quevedo. 4) I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. So something was going to happen on the new road.
There was a woman and two teenage kids painting a fence near where we had stopped. We talked to them for a while, explained what we were doing, and the owner of the farm they were working on came out with his shirt full of mangos. He gave us six of the sweetest, juiciest mangos I´d ever tasted, and said, "Desayuno". Spoon helped them paint for a few minutes and we took some pictures with them. We gave the kids some stickers and pushed on. Spoon led for a while, and I rode in the back of the train, just keeping it mellow. I turned my odometer off. We were surrounded by stretches of banana trees, mango groves, fields full of rice, corn, and so many other crops. Some fields were burnt off after being harvested. Others were as alive as can be, stretches of rich, lush green. Hawks soared high above the fields, and there was a thin cloud cover to protect us from the sun. The temperature was perfect---not too hot not too cool. Some of the trees near the road had dropped their leaves, and the look of the bare branches and the big, dried-up leaves on the ground reminded me of the fall back east. I realized it was the first year in my life that I would miss the autumn. People outside their houses waved to us and we waved back and smiled. The road was quiet, hardly any traffic, and we rode in silence. All I could hear was the sound of our chains spinning, and the hum of our tires on the road. I dropped my preoccupation with miles and speed and averages. I let it go. I concentrated on taking in what was around us. All of a sudden everything seemed perfect. Everything made sense. It all lined up. The last five months of my life had brought me more than 9,000 miles down the road from Alaska. Tears started welling up in my eyes. I tried to stop it, but the emotions multiplied, and I realized that something very powerful was flowing through me.
I started thinking about the last couple weeks in South America. I could see the mystical mountains in Colombia, the endless climbs and descents we had conquered. Right there in my mind were the views of the valleys from high above, the river gorges thousands of feet below us. I saw the face of Jesus, the twelve year old boy who had chased us up the street in San Gabriel, Ecuador with a blank sheet of paper for us to write down our names. We had helped him with his English homework while his mom, Cecilia, did our laundry and invited us into her home for a delicious dinner of bread, cheese, rice, chicken and tea. I could see the faces of all five of the children there, laughing as Spoon made funny faces and sounds. And the warm smile of Manuel the father, who motioned with his hand to give us a piece of his heart for the road as we said goodbye. I had visions of the fifty mile descent out of the Andes through the fog, rain and mist, ripping around switchbacks and past trucks which couldn´t even go as fast as us because of the traffic and bad visibility. I could see Duncan at the equator, standing with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern, talking to the videocamera and making us laugh as he commentated the situation. I saw our campsite just south of the equator and the snow-capped peakes standing high above the valleys. All the places and all the faces and all the experiences we´d been stacking up were there at once. I saw it all so clearly, and it all made perfect sense for those few moments as we rode across the beautiful lands of Ecuador.
I couldn´t control my happiness. I was overwhelmed. It was something like a religious experience, I guess. Spoon and Duncan rode ahead, no idea what was happening to me behind them, and I eventually told them I needed to stop to pee. They saw I was crying and were worried, but I just gave them each a big hug and thanked them for riding with me. I told them I was so happy, I didn´t know what to do. And then there was silence as we sat there for a few minutes and talked about how beautiful the day and the road and everything around us was. A few miles later, we stopped for lunch on the roadside, tipico Ecuadorian almuerzo---sopa, frijoles, arroz, carne, jugo de naranjilla. I layed in a hammock while we digested and traded sunglasses with a three year old boy there. I put his little ones on and he giggled.
I wore a big smile I just couldn´t wipe away. And then we pedaled south, just like we always do, leaving a world we love behind, just to go find a new one just the same.
November 6, 2007
I love this place!! And all I had to do was ride 10,000 miles to find it!
Columbia has got to be my favorite country yet. Here is a list of reasons why.
But first an appology.
Every day except for one I have had a Columbian cyclist ride with me, sometimes for hours at a time. Some have spoken English although most have not. One young kid in particular, Jesus, rode up along side of me about ten miles north of Popayan his home town. He spoke no English but my Spanish has been improving so we were able to make small talk. I expected him to head home as I passed the turn off for Popayan but he kept on beside me. He was not afraid of traffic and never yielded to a car, they went around him. I rode for twenty more miles and came to a field off the road that looked like it would be perfect for camping. I stopped and we talked for a bit then as I started t set up camp he told me he had some Friends in the next town down the road and we should go there for the night. It sounded nice as the thunderheads that had been growing all evening started to flash in the dusk light. The next town turned out to be another nine miles away and it was dark before we arrived. His friends lived on top of a large hill that over looked the surrounding area, I would not be able to fully appreciate it until the next morning. He introduced me to his friend and his family and explained my situation for me. Every one was very happy to have me stay and I was overwhelmed by the hospitality. Only after a few minutes though Jesus was saying good-bye, I guess I just assumed that he was going to stay also and didn´t think I was going to have to say good-bye so soon. I couldn´t communicate well enough to properly thank him enough. I couldn´t believe that he was going to have to ride the 30 miles back to Popayan from Timbio in the dark and soon to be rain. The next morning I woke up and walked to the very top of the hill with the father, Edward, he showed me around his crops and pointed out nearby villages. Too soon it was time to leave I started riding south up and down some hills. Just as I was coming to a huge descent into an enormous river valley I got a feeling that made me turn to look behind me. I looked back and saw the recognizable baseball cap that Jesus had been wearing the day before. I couln´t believe it. He had rode all the way back to find that I had already left and then caught up with me. We rode to the bottom of the river valley together and stopped again to talk for a while. I had to keep moving and struggled to tell him so. We said good-bye again and took some pictures before each of us rode up the steep hillsides in opposite directions.
I also received a police escort for a few miles after stopping in La Viginia. I was having trouble with my bank card, my camera had gotten wet in the storms that I wrote about earlier and I had to buy a new one in Medellin. Anyway when I did it put up a red flag and my bank blocked my card. Before I knew this I was stopping in towns that were close to the road to keep trying different banks. I was just leaving the ATM booth when I was approached by an older woman who started talking to me very quickly. I couldn´t understand a word she was saying but it sounded important. At first I thought she was trying to help me with my bank issues but that didn´t seam to make too much sense so I was trying to get her to talk slower. She told me to stay put and wait and she walked away. Less than a minute later she was back with the police. He was very curious about why I was in La Viginia. I explained my story and told him that I was just leaving or so I thought. He wouldn´t let me leave and would give me no explanation why. By this time I was creating a bit of a scene and had a large group of people gathered around me. Two men explained what was going on, I wasn´t safe they told me. There were people that were watching me that were dangerous and that I was waiting for more police to arrive. It didn´t take too long before they did. They arrived on motorbikes and motioned for me to follow them. I honestly didn´t feel like I was in any danger but I wasn´t about to argue. I pedaled behind them until we were a fair distance out of town before they pulled over and wished me luck on the rest of my journey.
I love this place because of its beauty. Columbia has a lot to offer as far as scenery. Everything to the city's to the landscape and sometimes both at once. I sailed into Cartegenna was instantly thrown back into time as I started to remember why the name of thus city rings a bell. I have read about this place before stories of the Spanish fleet carrying gold back to Spain, attacks from pirates who roamed the Caribbean, and if I remember right it was the first colonized South American town or at least the first to survive. I rode through "old town" and marveled at the historic buildings and old forts. The history that surrounded this place was everywhere. Later I would find myself in Medellin. Built in to the sides of a broad valley this towm looked like it had out grown its natural boundaries. The tall building climbed up the steep walls to absurd heights. There is even a tram that ascends above main street to take people from one side to the other. Further on south, Cali, I didn´t get to see much of Cali but even the brief encounter makes me want to return to see more. I arrived in Cali after two days without money and was hungry and tired. I needed to get a hold of my bank to find out what was going on and all my previous attempts had failed. Cali was my last and really only chance. I found a hostel I had seen an ad for in Medellin and rang the bell. A lady, Marian, opened the door and just stared at what she saw. I was a mess. I had been camping for the last few days so on top of being tired and hungry, enough of both that you could see it, I was also filthy. She explained to me that she wasn´t open for business at the time and recommended a hotel down the street. I was thinking at the time that I must be that repulsive and started to turn towards my bike when she asked where I had come from. I went into the routine explanation but before I had a chance to finish she said " I have a room for you" and unlocked the gate she was standing behind. Once inside I realized that she was in fact telling the truth and the only visitor she had at this time where her husbands family who were visiting from out of town. I also remembered at that moment that I had no money. In a moment of brilliance I spoke better Spanish than I thought I could and told her about my problem I still hadn´t spoken with the bank yet and had to tell her that not only did I have no money that there was a possibility that I wasn´t going to be able to get any. She told me that it didn´t matter and I was her guest. I was blow away again at the hospitality I was receiving in this country. In the end I was able eo pay her. Now I am in Pasto the elevation here is somewhere near 10,000 feet and has a mountain town atmosphere. I love this place.
I left the coast and started the gradual climb toward the mountains. On my second day I ran into the river Cacua, it flows north for almost the entire length of Columbia. At this point it was at its greatest as it snaked its way down an enormous river valley. I would follow this great river off and on for days at a time. I grew familiar with it and missed it when I wasn´t beside it.
As I got higher into the mountains I would pass villages built onto the tops on narrow ridge lines that made it look like the whole village could fall off one side or the other at any moment. Every where were deep gorges and green valleys speckled with tiny farm houses.
I left the river and ascended higher into the mountains before a ten mile decent back to the river into a much wider valley and the coffee plantations of Columbia. My friend Juan Carlos from Tahoe used to live here and would tell me stories of the beauty that surrounded this place. His words failed to prepare me for the reality of it all. Then the smaller mountains in the southern part of the country. Here the foliage was considerably less dense and the spectacular views went on forever rising up to the volcano's that rose up along the boarder of Ecuador.
This is getting long so I´m going to try to speed things up a bit.
I love this place because It has brought back the burn I have been missing. Every day there has been hills to climb. They are nothing like the hills I have climbed previously on this trip but are huge. The first was the best a 45 mile 10% grade that took me seven hours to climb. It had only one significant down hill and about forty minutes of rolling relieve before shooting straight up again. I would climb the tallest mountain pass along the Panamerican highway at over 10,000 feet. For the next five or six days I would climb again to heights nearing this and then in the south I would get another larger group of climbs before leaving. My legs haven´t felt like this since the beginning of the trip and I welcome the feeling.
I love this place because I did it. In all our research about previous bike tours along the Panamerican highway almost all skipped Columbia or parts of it. Why this is so important to me I´m not sure. Either I am a masochist or a purist or maybe they are really just same thing but to finish in the best form possible means a lot to me. Usually I have little to prove to anybody but myself but in this case there is one other person that my ethics would mean a great deal to, Goran Kropp. I can only hope that my actions meet the standards for which he has set and we have chosen as a guideline for this trip.
I love this place and that is why I am feeling sad today. This will be my last day riding in Columbia. They are other things to look forward to though. Today two great thing will happen; First I will pass the 10,000 mile mark! 10,000 miles on my bike it has been a wild ride. Second I will pass the Equator! A place I dreamt about while I was a child. I heard you can balance an egg on its end there and can´t wait to find out if this is true. So I am really anxious to get going this morning and will post again soon.
Hope everyone had a great Halloween and if you have pictures e-mail them to me I would love to see them. Adios.
But first an appology.
Every day except for one I have had a Columbian cyclist ride with me, sometimes for hours at a time. Some have spoken English although most have not. One young kid in particular, Jesus, rode up along side of me about ten miles north of Popayan his home town. He spoke no English but my Spanish has been improving so we were able to make small talk. I expected him to head home as I passed the turn off for Popayan but he kept on beside me. He was not afraid of traffic and never yielded to a car, they went around him. I rode for twenty more miles and came to a field off the road that looked like it would be perfect for camping. I stopped and we talked for a bit then as I started t set up camp he told me he had some Friends in the next town down the road and we should go there for the night. It sounded nice as the thunderheads that had been growing all evening started to flash in the dusk light. The next town turned out to be another nine miles away and it was dark before we arrived. His friends lived on top of a large hill that over looked the surrounding area, I would not be able to fully appreciate it until the next morning. He introduced me to his friend and his family and explained my situation for me. Every one was very happy to have me stay and I was overwhelmed by the hospitality. Only after a few minutes though Jesus was saying good-bye, I guess I just assumed that he was going to stay also and didn´t think I was going to have to say good-bye so soon. I couldn´t communicate well enough to properly thank him enough. I couldn´t believe that he was going to have to ride the 30 miles back to Popayan from Timbio in the dark and soon to be rain. The next morning I woke up and walked to the very top of the hill with the father, Edward, he showed me around his crops and pointed out nearby villages. Too soon it was time to leave I started riding south up and down some hills. Just as I was coming to a huge descent into an enormous river valley I got a feeling that made me turn to look behind me. I looked back and saw the recognizable baseball cap that Jesus had been wearing the day before. I couln´t believe it. He had rode all the way back to find that I had already left and then caught up with me. We rode to the bottom of the river valley together and stopped again to talk for a while. I had to keep moving and struggled to tell him so. We said good-bye again and took some pictures before each of us rode up the steep hillsides in opposite directions.
I also received a police escort for a few miles after stopping in La Viginia. I was having trouble with my bank card, my camera had gotten wet in the storms that I wrote about earlier and I had to buy a new one in Medellin. Anyway when I did it put up a red flag and my bank blocked my card. Before I knew this I was stopping in towns that were close to the road to keep trying different banks. I was just leaving the ATM booth when I was approached by an older woman who started talking to me very quickly. I couldn´t understand a word she was saying but it sounded important. At first I thought she was trying to help me with my bank issues but that didn´t seam to make too much sense so I was trying to get her to talk slower. She told me to stay put and wait and she walked away. Less than a minute later she was back with the police. He was very curious about why I was in La Viginia. I explained my story and told him that I was just leaving or so I thought. He wouldn´t let me leave and would give me no explanation why. By this time I was creating a bit of a scene and had a large group of people gathered around me. Two men explained what was going on, I wasn´t safe they told me. There were people that were watching me that were dangerous and that I was waiting for more police to arrive. It didn´t take too long before they did. They arrived on motorbikes and motioned for me to follow them. I honestly didn´t feel like I was in any danger but I wasn´t about to argue. I pedaled behind them until we were a fair distance out of town before they pulled over and wished me luck on the rest of my journey.
I love this place because of its beauty. Columbia has a lot to offer as far as scenery. Everything to the city's to the landscape and sometimes both at once. I sailed into Cartegenna was instantly thrown back into time as I started to remember why the name of thus city rings a bell. I have read about this place before stories of the Spanish fleet carrying gold back to Spain, attacks from pirates who roamed the Caribbean, and if I remember right it was the first colonized South American town or at least the first to survive. I rode through "old town" and marveled at the historic buildings and old forts. The history that surrounded this place was everywhere. Later I would find myself in Medellin. Built in to the sides of a broad valley this towm looked like it had out grown its natural boundaries. The tall building climbed up the steep walls to absurd heights. There is even a tram that ascends above main street to take people from one side to the other. Further on south, Cali, I didn´t get to see much of Cali but even the brief encounter makes me want to return to see more. I arrived in Cali after two days without money and was hungry and tired. I needed to get a hold of my bank to find out what was going on and all my previous attempts had failed. Cali was my last and really only chance. I found a hostel I had seen an ad for in Medellin and rang the bell. A lady, Marian, opened the door and just stared at what she saw. I was a mess. I had been camping for the last few days so on top of being tired and hungry, enough of both that you could see it, I was also filthy. She explained to me that she wasn´t open for business at the time and recommended a hotel down the street. I was thinking at the time that I must be that repulsive and started to turn towards my bike when she asked where I had come from. I went into the routine explanation but before I had a chance to finish she said " I have a room for you" and unlocked the gate she was standing behind. Once inside I realized that she was in fact telling the truth and the only visitor she had at this time where her husbands family who were visiting from out of town. I also remembered at that moment that I had no money. In a moment of brilliance I spoke better Spanish than I thought I could and told her about my problem I still hadn´t spoken with the bank yet and had to tell her that not only did I have no money that there was a possibility that I wasn´t going to be able to get any. She told me that it didn´t matter and I was her guest. I was blow away again at the hospitality I was receiving in this country. In the end I was able eo pay her. Now I am in Pasto the elevation here is somewhere near 10,000 feet and has a mountain town atmosphere. I love this place.
I left the coast and started the gradual climb toward the mountains. On my second day I ran into the river Cacua, it flows north for almost the entire length of Columbia. At this point it was at its greatest as it snaked its way down an enormous river valley. I would follow this great river off and on for days at a time. I grew familiar with it and missed it when I wasn´t beside it.
As I got higher into the mountains I would pass villages built onto the tops on narrow ridge lines that made it look like the whole village could fall off one side or the other at any moment. Every where were deep gorges and green valleys speckled with tiny farm houses.
I left the river and ascended higher into the mountains before a ten mile decent back to the river into a much wider valley and the coffee plantations of Columbia. My friend Juan Carlos from Tahoe used to live here and would tell me stories of the beauty that surrounded this place. His words failed to prepare me for the reality of it all. Then the smaller mountains in the southern part of the country. Here the foliage was considerably less dense and the spectacular views went on forever rising up to the volcano's that rose up along the boarder of Ecuador.
This is getting long so I´m going to try to speed things up a bit.
I love this place because It has brought back the burn I have been missing. Every day there has been hills to climb. They are nothing like the hills I have climbed previously on this trip but are huge. The first was the best a 45 mile 10% grade that took me seven hours to climb. It had only one significant down hill and about forty minutes of rolling relieve before shooting straight up again. I would climb the tallest mountain pass along the Panamerican highway at over 10,000 feet. For the next five or six days I would climb again to heights nearing this and then in the south I would get another larger group of climbs before leaving. My legs haven´t felt like this since the beginning of the trip and I welcome the feeling.
I love this place because I did it. In all our research about previous bike tours along the Panamerican highway almost all skipped Columbia or parts of it. Why this is so important to me I´m not sure. Either I am a masochist or a purist or maybe they are really just same thing but to finish in the best form possible means a lot to me. Usually I have little to prove to anybody but myself but in this case there is one other person that my ethics would mean a great deal to, Goran Kropp. I can only hope that my actions meet the standards for which he has set and we have chosen as a guideline for this trip.
I love this place and that is why I am feeling sad today. This will be my last day riding in Columbia. They are other things to look forward to though. Today two great thing will happen; First I will pass the 10,000 mile mark! 10,000 miles on my bike it has been a wild ride. Second I will pass the Equator! A place I dreamt about while I was a child. I heard you can balance an egg on its end there and can´t wait to find out if this is true. So I am really anxious to get going this morning and will post again soon.
Hope everyone had a great Halloween and if you have pictures e-mail them to me I would love to see them. Adios.
