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: Touring on a Pugsley
Location
Jacques explains. “Location” indicates the black townships, we’ve been directed here by that very word on the lips of a nodding woman on the dirt avenue, I’m looking to buy a local SIM card. One story high, corrugated steel, off-rectilinear lots that expand or contract to the hilly contour but somehow still seem tidy, colors sing cheer and that they’re brightly painted itself enough to distinguish the boundaries.
Return of the Pugsley
My Pugsley had been in pieces since I returned from touring South America over a year ago. I left most of the drivetrain, the threadbare tires, and anything else that had reached its end behind […]
REI Soho Presentation
Next month I’ll be giving a talk and sharing photos at the REI Soho store in New York City. Join me to chat about Fat Bike touring in South America on 18 October at 7pm. Space […]
Pugsley Mods
(All photos courtesy of Rob English from his news blog.)
The Surly Pugsley proved to be an exemplary expedition bike in South America. Though I remain tempted by Moonlanders*, I expect the Pugs to be the go-to machine for anything properly silly. There were a few things, however, that I wanted done for future missions to make it more suitable for carrying water and gear (cf., Cass’s Troll), and I finally got around to sending it to English cycles. These mods were surely embarrassingly brainless for Rob, who builds exceedingly clever and innovative machines, including my folding 2-9 and my road race bike.
White Mountains 100 Race Report
Tremble frigid, but thinking it in unfluid blocks stumbles far short of the cutting, the blades in your lungs, the warning away pain and strain in moving such that a warm pocket in your clothes might bellows inhale the cold. Exit the car when there is enough activity to confirm ten minutes to go, the way it always is before a race, even one that you didn’t conceptualize as it but instead as something perpendicular with a built in urgency…
Carretera Austral Afterimages
Freeze thaw hissing breathe head down shielding body mood against hypothermic rain hours. Or searing piercing spike sunpunish heat sweat burn. Reflectance surface spectral anger froth ocean retreating to grey infinities. Men on horseback wearing […]
Carretera Cast of Characters
Just some of the great folks I met while cycling the Carretera.
Ken from Japan. Rode Alaska to Ushuaia, now on his way back to Bolivia for more exploration.
Super fun quartet from Italy riding the Carretera.
Villa O’Higgins to Chalten
Villa O’Higgins, a proudly end of the road town, angled cooked dirt streets desert thorny plants growing along paths linking the tiendas, the horsetack shop, a panaderia, a smart looking new community activity center. Curious, on surface empty but folks hiding from heat or the appearance of bustle, the border beyond and across no mans lakes and glaciated cragtops witness to the imaginary boundary between Chile and Argentina. I book passage on the two ferries for the next day, return to the hostal with cyclistas and mountaineers loitering against the boat schedule, each eyeing the other friendly cautiously suspiciously across the sport divide, climbers not nearly as cool as they hope and cyclists far dorkier than they realize. Swiss friends roll up in the afternoon, we drink tea and beer alternately, talk about nexts or who we are returning to and when.
Chile Postcard
Arrive Tranquillo, a place, not the disposition though that, too. Hot, bright, rundown lakeside. Encounter Francis with a curious trailer setup and an even more curious bicycle.