At the hotel I casually mention to my host Islem that I will likely ride about 160k tomorrow and camp in the desert. The next morning, his father and the owner of the place says over coffee that he’s phoned the police to tell them that a bicycling American is going to go 160k toward Farafra and sleep in the desert. Alarmed, I ask if that’s okay. He says, “of course, why not!”. I gurgle back my thenwhythefuckwouldyoutellthecops?, all respect to the many people I care about deeply, including family, in law enforcement. My relationship to the police doesn’t involve pestering them unless I have reason to believe the circumstances call for their diplomacy.
Cycling adventurist, bikepacker, travel writer, photographer, speaker, professor of philosophy. Route designer of the VTXL, the Green Mountain Gravel Growler beer tour, the Silk Road Mountain Race course 1st edition, and many more.
Category: Journal
India journal entry
[From December 2007.]
Holy shit, went to a wedding last night, and it was insane and wonderful.
Three of us — Sunil, his cousin, and I (Raju had to work) — took a cycle rickshaw uptown, stopping on the way due to the incredibly dense traffic and to get beetlenut. Of course, my mouth immediately filled with blood red saliva, and I’m sitting there with it spilling out on to my chin and running down my throat, and I ask, “do I swallow the first part?” because it starts with chewing the leafy outside, which causes the spit, and they have no idea what I’m saying because my mouth is full. Until I get it across what I’m asking, it’s not as if Sunil’s english is that great anyway, and they’re shaking their heads vigorously, no, “no drink!” and I’m thinking, uh oh. But it only made my stomach achy later, though that was somewhat overdetermined.
Sunil and his cousin keep looking at me funny until I blurt, “what?”
Journal entry from India
[From September 2007.]
You’re going to be distracted and want me to pause and say something of how Hilary Duff got to be on my iPhone at all, but that’s not the story I’m trying to tell, nor is the genealogy, involving as it does Youtube and a television show I’ve never seen, particularly engaging beyond what I’ve just said. At any rate, Hilary Duff is received with some considerable enthusiasm, as is Cake, bobbing their heads to the rhythm and sort of nodding as if they could discern some affinity, however distant, with the punjabi tunes they had just shared over the static crackle treble of their mobiles. Seeing no resemblance myself, I chalk it up to the local minima of innate or at least cross contextually stable agreeableness found by the gradient descent algorithm of the pop music machine.
Journal entry from India
[From September 2007.]
There’s something out of place, something like an out of tune instrument in the orchestra where I can’t discern which one. And I’m staggered, blinking through the spell of half day heat, parting hand clasp with the border guard in a crisply tailored uniform who grins in puzzlement or encouragement at the bicycle and the trailer, not knowing what to do so I’m pushing it through the gates and then across meters of a buffer between nations separated back then by violence but also hope and the realization is almost a cool breeze: silence.
Journal entry from 24 hours of Dalton
[From 2003.]
This wide and steep singletrack is the last notable climb of my fourth lap, and I’m guessing that it’s a little before 3am. Ahead I can see the wiggling cones of light and tail-flashers of a half dozen racers walking. I find the prone figure next to the trail mildly unnerving until a guy with a camera sitting next to him confirms that it’s no worse than a solo competitor napping. Right around then the stabbing pain of a cramp on the inside of my left leg suggests that I should join him. Instead, I try to stretch it out while turning the gears, and this causes a different cramp to shoot through my right hamstring. Standing up on the pedals to relieve that pain sets the left leg alight again.