When you're on a bike for several hours a day, you have a lot of time to think. For the first week of touring with Otesha, I mostly thought about how much I didn't want to be on a bike. It hurts a lot for the first week, but then it gets better, and for the following week, between singing John Denver songs, I started to think about why I wanted to go to Russia, and what I hoped to get out of it.
The first answer is that bike touring is, far and away, the best way to see a place. You know everything about the physical land - where and how steep the hills are, when the winds blow, in which direction, and what they smell like when they're not blended with car exhaust. You get close to the animals - vultures, deer, and even bears within yards of your wheels. It's an intimacy that's essential to understanding a place, and one I'll be sad to lose next time I'm on a car trip.
The second brilliant thing about cycling is the people you meet. Without a protective shell around you, and with your gear outing your desire to travel in a way most people wouldn't imagine, everyone wants to talk to you. Where are you from, how long have you biked today, where are you going. They're awed, as I would have been just months ago, that you've already traveled 50k today under your own power, carrying everything you need. It still blows me away, especially when I see trucks dragging 30 foot mobile home trailers that sum up someone else's conception of what they need to carry when they travel.
These were the things that led me to plan this grand adventure in Siberia, the opportunities that made it seem the perfect experiment in geographical exploration - the world's largest continent on a bike. it's romantic, and I was swept away by it.
There's one more thing that I love about bike touring, though, and for lack of a better word I'll call it, well, fucking around. My favorite moments of the trip were the spontaneous bouts of time-wasting. Spending two hours swimming in a pristine glacial (freezing) lake midway through the 80k ride to Woss, wolfing down two trays of freshly baked cinnamon rolls on a Mennonite woman's porch an a miserably windy and rainy day, and getting my eggs-and-coffee fix at nearly every diner along the route were the things that made it feel like real travel. It's the kind of travel that has no schedule, no need to rush - we still usually got to our destination in enough time to have a local beer before dinner.
I'd like to pretend that the Siberia trip might have that element of freedom and coasting and taking in unexpected experiences, but the reality of trying to cover 9,000km before winter hits will be pushing the whole thing forward at a pace of mean survival, and to me that doesn't sound like fun. There are people who want that, there are also people who run across the Sahara desert. If I've learned anything along this trip it's that I'm not one of them. I like to work hard, put in a long day, but getting there is only half of the fun, and I want to make room for the other half.
SO, I want to apologize to everyone that I may have misled. And more so, I want to thank everyone that helped, encouraged, or thought this crazy thing was as good an idea as I thought it was. All money that was given has been donated to the Otesha Project, who I can assure you is a deserving destination - when I overheard an audience member telling their friend all about us on the ferry I knew out message of sustainability had done something. For those of you who donated for either long hair or shaved head, I'm afraid I've let you down too. I chopped off my ponytail at a campsite in Port Hardy, had a fellow camper trim it, and I love the way it looks. Once you see it you will too.
To make it up to you, I'll be visiting everyone on a return trip across the country, and I owe y'all a beer. at least one. I'll tell you lots of stories of these adventures that I would never have time to write in this blog, and that are better told than written anyway. I'll also invite you on my next adventure - If anyone wants to head to my cabin in Matachewan, Ontario between Aug 5-19, I can promise amazing views, island life, nightly campfires, scrabble, good company, and a hike up to the fire tower or a canoe trip though a tunnel into a hidden lake if you're lucky. Seriously, I would love to see you there.
I'm coming through Michigan Aug 2-5 and 22ish-25ish, Toronto at least Aug 19-22ish, Burning Man, and then Seattle. All dates subject to change without notice, but I hope as I travel across the continent I can meet up with all the people I love. thanks, peace and bike grease.
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