This Road I Ride

by Juliana Buhring

  When I first mentioned the idea to friends, I was met with either blank silence or incredulous laughter. The more they scoffed, the more determined I became. When an idea gets stuck in my head, it simmers for a while until I get either bored or motivated. But tell me it’s impossible, and that four-syllable word sets me off like a trigger. Whenever I’m told I can’t do something, a little voice in my head starts counting down, like in a missile launch: “In five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . ignition . . .”

  Antonio was one of the first people I told about this next big idea. We had hit it off instantly the moment I’d walked into his pub, the Hickory, shortly after arriving in Naples, and he had soon become my best friend and companion in most of my mad schemes. The general lawlessness of southern Italy had attracted the rebel in me, its weather closely mirrored its people with their fiery warmth, and the organized chaos seemed familiar, comfortable, almost like home. Not that I knew where or what “home” was. I had lived a nomadic life until that point. Settling in one place had always been difficult. It still is. Whenever I start to get comfortable anywhere, I also start to get itchy feet.

  Meeting Antonio was a bit like finding family, which made me feel even more at home in Naples. Family do not have to be blood relatives. They are the people who support you through good times and bad, the people who know all your secrets, celebrate your highs, and stick around through the lows. You cannot choose your blood relatives, but you can choose your family. There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, says a verse of Proverbs. For me, his name is Antonio.

  He listened politely but did not take me too seriously at first. Why would he? I want to walk the road to Santiago . . . I want to drive a campervan across Alaska. . . . He had heard plenty of grandiose talk before. This was just another wacky notion that would soon vanish as soon as a shinier, more fanciful dream took hold.

  “Listen, we’ll go on a cycling holiday this summer,” Antonio suggested, believing this would be the cure for my latest itch.

  We got a couple of inexpensive touring bikes and pedaled from Berlin to Copenhagen that August. It was a relaxed cycling holiday, covering no more than 35 or 40 miles a day. But I didn’t want it to end and returned to Naples more determined than ever.

  As temperatures cooled in autumn after a scorching summer, I began to push my cheap touring bike out the door every morning to “train myself.” Antonio realized that this was more serious than he had thought, and he immediately set about talking me out of it.

  “It’s a nice idea, Ju,” he said in one of our more serious conversations, “but let’s be realistic. It would take a cyclist years to do something like that. And you are not even a cyclist.”

  “I’ll become one,” I argued.

  “You don’t even have a good bicycle. Where are you going to get the money from? It’s expensive, even if you do it in the cheapest possible way.”

  “I’ll find a sponsor.”

  The conversation continued over the next few weeks. After all the remonstrations, appeals to logic, and predicted unhappy endings failed to dampen my determination, Antonio realized there was only one thing he could do: jump in the deep end with me and hope we didn’t both drown. For this demonstration of supreme loyalty, he was awarded the uncoveted role of “logistics manager.”

  Researching around-the-world cycle journeys—from Nick Sanders, who set the original record in 1984, riding 13,000 miles in 78 days, to Vin Cox’s 2010 record of over 18,000 miles in 165 days—I could find no mention of any woman ever attempting it. Out of curiosity, I sent an application to the Guinness World Records, stating my intention to circumnavigate the world by bike. Their response confirmed what I had already guessed: there was no women’s record for circumnavigating the world by bike. That fact alone seemed odd to me. Was the world really so dangerous for women? Or were women physically unable to cycle the same distances at the same speeds as men? There was only one way to find out. I decided if I was going to be the first woman to cycle around the world, I might as well have a crack at the men’s record while I was at it. Go big or go home, right?

  The Guinness people sent me a long document containing a list of rules. I was required to cover a minimum of 18,000 miles solely by bike, in either an east-to-west or a west-to-east direction, while the total journey distance—including all transit by air or sea—had to be a minimum of 24,900 miles. The ride had to start and finish in the same place and pass at least two antipodal points (two places that line up through the earth’s center). The clock would stop the moment I reached an airport or port to cross an ocean or some other impassable barrier, such as a war zone, and would start again upon landing at the next destination. The same bicycle had to be used throughout the attempt, but repairs could be made and replacement parts fitted in the event of mechanical failure. Satellite tracking was required, and a daily logbook with signatures of dignitaries and people I met on the road, photographs taken at strategic points, and receipts would all be collated as evidence.

  Since there had never been a women’s record, I decided to try to beat the current men’s best time of 165 days. This would mean pedaling an average of 110 miles every day for more than five months. For someone who had never cycled seriously before, or even done much sport of any description over the previous decade, the physical challenge alone was monumental. Puttering around the school playground on training wheels as a six-year-old in the Philippines and my weeklong Germany–Denmark holiday with Antonio were the sum total of my pedaling experience. And I knew next to nothing about bike technology or the science of cycling.

  No matter. How hard could it be? I jumped into the ­challenge—or rather mounted it—with great enthusiasm, cycling whenever I had any spare time, riding around the streets of Naples and beyond on my heavy touring bike, wearing ordinary gym shoes. Each day I upped the mileage a little more. My optimism took me a long way, like the bumblebee who, ignorant of the fact that physicists say she should not be able to fly, flies anyway. Within two months, I was pedaling seventy-five miles on a ride without much difficulty.

  The second—and far greater—obstacle was financial. I sent out sponsorship requests to every major sports company, both in Italy and abroad. Most never bothered replying. Those who did gave the standard “not interested, but good luck” response. No doubt my endeavor seemed so out there that it wasn’t even worth considering. I had no background in endurance sport. There was nothing to qualify me for such a huge undertaking.

  After many discouraging responses from the big brands, Antonio started sending out emails to smaller, local companies. The first—and only—positive reply came from Mario Schiano. His family had been building bicycles in Naples for over three generations. Mario proposed a meeting to hear more about what I was planning and to discuss how they might help, so Antonio and I drove to the sprawling Schiano warehouse in Frattamagiore, on the periphery of Naples.

  Mario was waiting for us when we arrived, and we followed him down a long, gray-tiled corridor to his office on the second floor. He lowered his tall, lanky frame into the chair at the head of the conference table and motioned for us to join him.

  “So, tell me everything, from the beginning,” he said.

  I let Antonio, as the logistics manager, do most of the talking. Italian was not a language that came easily to me, and I lacked confidence in my ability to convey what I wanted to say. More to the point, in addition to owning the Hickory, Antonio worked as a portfolio manager for a bank, so negotiating business matters was his forte. Not for the first or the last time, I was glad I had him at my side.

  Mario listened carefully as Antonio outlined the plan. “So what exactly do you need from me?” he asked.

  “I need a bike,” I said before Antonio could answer.

  “That’s no problem. We can give you one.”

  And just like that, I had a bike.

  “Do you have a trainer preparing you for the ride?” Mario asked.

  “No. I’ve been training myself,
alone, up to now.”

  “One moment.” Mario dialed a number and spoke into the phone for several minutes. “Okay,” he said, hanging up. “There’s a sports trainer who specializes in training cyclists for races. His name is Professor Perna, and he says he can help with your preparation. Here’s his number. You can even go there today if you like.”

  My new trainer’s full name was Umberto Perna, but “Professor” had a 007 ring to it, so I called him that. An ex-cyclist now in his fifties, he agreed to see me, I suspect, more out of curiosity than anything else. He was on the lookout for me from the window of his gym when I drove up for our appointment the next day and motioned for me to come through the side gate.

  “Ciao, Juliana!” He met me at the entrance and kissed both my cheeks in the usual Mediterranean greeting. His bright blue eyes, thin lips, and long Roman nose all seemed remarkably familiar.

  “You look like someone I know,” I said, then spent the next few minutes trying to work out who it was. Finally I had it. “Sean Penn! You could easily be his brother. You know—the actor?”

  “Ah, sì. You think so?” He seemed pleased. The ice was broken, and we sat down to the serious business of plotting world domination by bicycle.

  “Mario told me a little bit about your plan. You want to cycle around the world, yes? When are you planning to leave?”

  “In around four months, I hope.”

  “Ah!” He threw up his hands. “Then we’ve got time.”

  While I hardly shared his optimism, his confidence in my athletic potential was reassuring. Or perhaps he was being ironic and I failed to notice. Either way, at that point the interrogation really got rolling.

  “How long have you been cycling?”

  “Well . . . give or take . . . a couple of months.”

  “How many miles are you currently able to cycle?”

  “At the moment, around a hundred twenty a day.”

  The Professor grunted and raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Which shoes are you using?”

  “Uh, these.” I pointed to the trainers I was wearing.

  “You’ve been cycling in those?”

  I could see by the look on his face that that was not the right answer.

  The rest of the interview didn’t last long. The Professor’s parting instructions were simple: “Get your pedals changed to clips. Get shoes with cleats. Then come back here when you’ve got both.”

  I bought a pair of mountain bike shoes, changed the pedals, and cycled with them the very next day, wondering what all the fuss was about. Cleats were supposed to improve performance significantly, but the only immediate difference I felt was the panic of being stuck to the bike, unable to eject my foot in an emergency. And there are always plenty of emergencies when cycling around Naples, a city infamous for its careless, lawless drivers and chaos on the roads.

  Just a few weeks into my training, an eight-wheel freight truck clipped me as I negotiated a bend on a narrow road. I did a tumbleweed flip-roll-roll, landing unceremoniously on my bum. The truck sped on. There were a few moments of shock, followed by fury that the truck driver hadn’t stopped. When the adrenaline spike wore off, the pain kicked in. I went to the hospital for scans to make sure no damage had been done to my head. It turned out that I had gotten off lightly with just a few scrapes and bruises, a twisted wrist, and a very sore neck.

  Later came the inevitable moment of reflection and re-evaluation as I assessed the potential dangers of cycling the world alone. The next time I was the victim of a hit-and-run driver, I could be in Turkey or India, far from help and home.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” a friend had asked just a week before the accident.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “That something will happen to you out there, when you’re all alone.”

  There is always something to be afraid of in this world, but fearing the unknown seems a futile waste of energy. One can plan for every potential risk, possibility, and eventuality, but if a truck is going to hit you, all the planning in the world won’t make any difference. Of course, the alternative would be to stay at home, in the safety and predictability of a familiar environment, and never venture far for fear of myriad dangers. But then none of us would do anything at all, and what would be the point of being alive?

  Hendri had written a lot about fear whenever he confronted it before embarking on a mission. Now his words assumed new significance for me:

  So much of life is spent doing arbitrary tasks and fearing things that will never happen. During expeditions you get to live the extraordinary. Dealing with fear is the price you pay to be able to achieve peak experiences and learning. Nothing great can be achieved without jumping the fear barrier.

  I was well beyond jumping that barrier. This whole endeavor felt close to free-falling over a cliff without a parachute. Yet I didn’t feel afraid. So many people asked why I wanted to cycle around the world. I never really had a satisfactory answer. Maybe on some deep, subconscious level, it was a journey from which I did not intend to return. After Hendri, I had nothing left to lose.

  I went back to the Professor a week later, ready for my transformation into a lean, mean cycling machine. There were newspaper cuttings on the wall of his office among photos of his family and friends. One showed a much younger, more muscular version of the Professor on a sleek racing bike. He had been the champion of Campania in his younger years.

  I pointed at the picture and asked, “How many miles was this race?”

  “Seventy-five.” He seemed pleased I had noticed that he was the cyclist. “Cycling was different in the old days. Those of us who trained wanted only one thing in life: to cycle. My trainer was a legend. He knew how to make a cyclist out of anyone. The youth these days . . .” He shook his head.

  “What’s changed?”

  “They don’t want to make the necessary sacrifices. Their parents have money, they can have whatever they want, so they have no need for challenges. Why struggle for a dream when you can live the good life without the work?”

  I couldn’t help thinking, But where is the satisfaction in achievement without struggle?

  “The best cyclists, those who become champions, are the ones who come to me with nothing, from poor families, without a future. Then cycling becomes everything to them, a lifestyle. They’ll sacrifice anything for it. That’s the only way to achieve anything important.”

  The Professor’s first order of the day was to adjust my seat and handlebars to ensure maximum comfort, as I had been experiencing tension in my middle back and knees during long hours on the bike. Then he measured, weighed, pulled, and stretched me before finally drawing up my new training regime. I needed to bulk up a few more pounds before setting off, he said, because I’d lose both weight and muscle during five months of cycling.

  “Building physical endurance means more than just being able to cycle for many hours,” he explained. “You need to build some muscular strength and speed.”

  His plan for the next couple of months involved three days’ cycling, two jogging, and two in the gym training and building muscle each week. Then I would gradually add more cycling while reducing everything else over the next two months, until I was doing at least eight hours nonstop on the bike most days.

  “Call me anytime you feel the program is getting too easy, and I’ll add more. But listen to your body. Only you know what you’re capable of.”

  I liked the Professor. He dropped morsels of wisdom every time he spoke.

  “In bocca al lupo! [Into the mouth of the wolf!],” he called to me on my way out the office. It’s an old Neapolitan adage for good luck.

  I followed the Professor’s advice to the letter: I cycled, I ran, I lifted weights. I would get up at the crack of dawn—a challenge in itself, since I’m usually a night owl and have difficulty waking up early. Cold December mornings made it even harder to drag myself from under the cozy warmth of the duvet at six a.m.

  Because cycling anywhere within Naples is an ordeal in it
self, what with the crazy drivers and poorly maintained roads, I would put the bike on the rack on the back of my car and drive an hour into the countryside. During the week, I taught English at a private school in the afternoons and evenings, so I would cycle between four and five hours every morning. On weekends, the rides would be much longer.

  I still secretly wondered whether the Professor truly believed I could make it around the world, or whether he had taken me on as a charity case. Either way, if I was willing to put in the hard graft, I knew he would do his bit to give my training structure and focus. Maybe he was curious to see how far I would get. It was rare to find a woman interested in cycling in southern Italy, and the Professor had certainly never trained one before, much less for an endeavor of this magnitude.

  “Remember, even if you don’t make it all the way around, at least you will have tried something nobody else has done,” he told me.

  Even if you don’t make it all the way around. I was hearing this ever more often. Apparently the prevailing opinion was that I would give it my best shot, fail, then come home to a supportive “It’s better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all”—a saying that tends to be most used by those who have never actually tested it.

  A well-known bike shop, Cicli Caputo, became a favorite haunt. The owner, Mauro Caputo, was another friend of Mario Schiano. He let me hang around in the workshop and taught me basic repairs, like how to change tubes, chains, and brake pads. Meanwhile Mario built me a sophisticated touring bike, complete with suspension, disc brakes, and ample space for a rack over the rear wheel. Mauro assembled it and made the necessary size adjustments.

  The Professor kept adding miles to the training plan and tweaking it in other ways. After five months I was pedaling his target of 110 miles five days a week.