The approach the usual bedlam through light industrial auto repair welding screaming clanking, every truck and bus and moto spewing graphite smoke to collect like a fog on the pavement that ends at the edges […]
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: Just Words
Bolivia Postcard
Leaving Peru to Bolivia, this north lake borderless border crossing. Passport stamped in Puno a hundred k ago, here none of the usual cues or trappings, no soldiers or police, no gates or furtive looks […]
3am Tracks
I have two hand-drawn maps, one on paper towel, one on a child’s ruled notebook paper, reassuringly they agree in spite of their wildly divergent styles, I memorized them over dinner last night…
Peru postcard
Riding along a rural quiet mountain road, haven’t seen traffic for a couple of hours, tiled angles roofs down in the valley below. Kid shuffling center ahead, dirty khakis abused Chuck Taylors nylon jacket, I […]
Peru postcard
Chest tightens and a blue chill adrenalin wash plunges to my toes, jaw, grip harden. The chalky dust hazed imperfect orb is far away, this tunnel that is otherwise close your eyes black, this one’s […]
Peru postcard
Narrow crooked dirtscrabble ladder into the hilltops, each switchback a modest increment upward. Chasing coy blue holes in clouds, through small collections of homes, farmland, three cows here a half acre of yucca there. I […]
Eating
You walk in, there are four or five tables. You don’t necessarily get your own, you just find an open spot, perhaps people rotate around and bring in a chair to make room for you…
Ecuador Postcard
Past days in a row in the tent, next town seems big enough for lodging of some modest sort, roll in, ask around. Get directed about like a pingpong ball, finally triangulate to a tiny […]
Ecuador Postcard
Cuenca, urbane and genteel, stretching weary legs walking along day warmed cobbled streets. Buildings graced with street art, crafted ornamented eaves, young and old in the plazas, mohawks and leather jackets commingling with the slow […]
Ecuador Journal
Riding along the fringe of a jungle, forty hours ago as trembling cold as I’ve been, now sweating motionless, listening to whirs, hoots and clicks of outlandishly plummed birds. And a plume of a different sort, the volcano Sangay above the treetops, puffing from its apex, I can’t stop looking at it. Gravity and desire to be near the Amazon dropped me from the soaring Andean ridge, and I can’t stop looking back up. Small village roads parallel to the new highway, I receive waves and good wishes, sometimes teens ride alongside on their bicycles, we’re all of us defined, defied by the need to achieve only the most efficient motions in thick clouding heat, though these may be in the spirit of sociality, of effortful connection. Eighty five miles, finally headlamp against the gnats and ink.
Ecuador Postcard
Wonted fuckedtacular inaugural pedaling day, I just get exuberant and silly. Exiting Quito embarrassingly easy, what with detailed MotionX iPhone maps and GPS, should have suspected karmic treachery. Aimed for the volcano via the little […]
Gathering Gear
Picturing the destination, half remembered images seen or interpolated from descriptions in books read while comfortable on a couch long before ever imagining I’d visit there. Reading a few other people’s packing lists and past […]