This Road I Ride

by Juliana Buhring

  “Feed the cyclist” is evidently tonight’s theme. Giant portions of pasta and vegetables magically appear on my plate. I eat mechanically, more tired than hungry and mildly queasy from too much sun. Mediterranean summers are sweltering, and cycling through the midday heat is a torrid affair. Even after smothering factor-fifty sunscreen over my face and arms repeatedly, I was a fresh shade of crimson when I pulled up at the refuge earlier this evening.

  The swarthy, bearded host ambles over as I’m polishing off the last strip of lasagne from my plate. “I hear you are cycling the world! Wonderful! I’m also something of an adventure enthusiast. I love if you tell me all about it over a bottle of fresh wine. Please, if you will join me at the other end of the table?”

  As it turns out, he does most of the telling, which suits me fine. I’m too tired to talk. All I can think about is bed and how I might get into it. Pulling out a stack of yellowed magazines, he enthusiastically flips through the dog-eared pages bearing images of his youthful self, as he regales me with tales of his adventures traveling across Europe by donkey, horse, and Vespa.

  “The donkey was my favorite of the three,” he confides in a conspiratorial whisper that I half expect to end with but don’t tell the horse. “A most reliable and hardy beast when it comes to crossing mountains.”

  The more wine he ingests, the more animated and verbose he becomes. At one point he whips out a guitar, and songs accompany his lively tales. The famous trans-­European burro is summoned, and the poor beast is dragged from his repose in a nearby pen and led over to the dining table to receive a lyrical tribute from his master. The lengthy ballad describes his shiny black pelt, long ears, and white-rimmed eyes—accolades of less interest to the dumb beast than a nearby patch of juicy shrubs, which he is constrained from reaching till the end of the song.

  I feel a bit like the donkey myself, wishing only for sleep but constrained by politeness to listen to the ramblings of my host. Fortunately the donkey, ignorant of social etiquette, does what I cannot and kicks up a fuss. It is with great relief that he at last reaches the weeds, and I my pillow.

  JULY 28–29, 2012

  After the first days of flat roads following the coast north toward Genoa, I hit my first major climb crossing the periphery of the Alps. It’s not a high pass but still a long uphill slog of over twelve miles in punishing temperatures. Sweat stings my eyes, and my head feels like a pressure cooker ready to explode. I consume an entire water bottle hosing down my head and neck on the way up.

  Pegasus starts to make clicking noises during the climb, and the clicking worsens after crossing the border into France at Ventimiglia. Worse, too, is the French coffee. I must stop expecting to find good espresso and be grateful for the important things, like law-abiding motorists. Unlike Italians, the French drive slowly and carefully, which may explain why I haven’t seen much roadkill. I decide the amount of roadkill spotted per day is a good indicator of what to expect from a country’s drivers. The Italian roads were riddled with dead cats and the occasional dog. France, apart from the odd hedgehog, has been relatively corpse free by comparison.

  Cycling through the south of France is an unmitigated pleasure. I’ve settled into a comfortable rhythm, breaking every thirty miles for food and drink. The countryside is similar to that of northern Italy, only cleaner and more organized. Neat rows of vineyards pregnant with summer grapes, presided over by large farmhouses, dot the countryside, interrupted every now and again by quaint stone villages. The southern French are wonderfully friendly and accommodating. Although few speak English, they forgive my language deficiencies and rattle on helpfully in French, even when it’s clear I can hardly understand a word.

  Today the left-hand gear lever has stopped shifting altogether, so I’m forced to pedal on a single chainwheel until I reach a town with a bike shop. The balding mechanic in a black T-shirt with a print of bike parts arranged in the form of a skull shakes his head and clicks his tongue to imply it’s serious. He removes my front derailleur to show me the damage: there’s a hole right through the metal. I’ve no idea how I’ve managed to do that in just five days and a little over six hundred miles, but maybe I’m not using the gears correctly when climbing. As the bike was brand new when I set off, the gears and derailleur probably needed readjusting after a couple of hundred miles. But what do I know about bike mechanics? I’m just learning how to ride a bike properly! I had better figure it out soon, though. My cycling technique, or lack of it, will cost me in the long run. The mechanic removes the worn-out derailleur and replaces it with a secondhand part at the discounted cost of twenty euros. He works quickly, and I’m back on the road within half an hour. Still well within my projected time frame for reaching Avignon by sundown.

  My sisters Mariana and Lily both live in the south of France, and they have offered beds en route, invitations I am grateful for in view of my limited finances. Free room and board are major perks of having seventeen siblings scattered across the globe. Our father believed in spreading love and truly practiced what he preached. By evolutionary standards, he was an outstanding success; when it came to caring for the offspring of his multiple partners, a resplendent failure. We siblings try to redress the imbalance by looking out for one another. Last night Mariana, who is older by a year, washed my smelly laundry, fed me steak, and let me crash on her bed in Antibes. Tonight I’m meeting Lily at the Gambrinus pub, her favorite watering hole in Avignon.

  She is standing outside, waiting for me, as I ride up. “Juju!”

  “Snork!”

  Amid the long roster of half-siblings, Lily is my only full sister, though with our mutt mix of a gene pool, it’s difficult to tell. I got the olive tones of a southern Mediterranean and the cheekbones of our paternal Polish grandmother, while Lily has the pale Welsh complexion of our grandfather and the long, slender physique of an aristocrat. Her smattering of freckles and button nose enhanced her cheeky, playful character as a child. But it was probably her snore, something akin to the battle cry of an angry hippo, that inspired our brother Victor to call her Snorky. Over time she lost the cheek and the snore but the nickname stuck.

  “I called up a local newspaper this morning when I knew you’d be passing through. The reporter’s already here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  While I stuff my face with a hamburger and chips, the journalist interviews me about the cycle. Too hungry to be polite, I answer between mouthfuls. What is my route? Heading for northern Spain. Where did I set off from? Naples. How do I like Avignon? It has a great art scene, and I loved coming for the Festival d’Avignon last year.

  Once she leaves, I kick back with a beer and catch up with my sister. Similar in taste and thinking, yet polar opposites in character, we define that thin line between genius and crazy, she being the former. Although we take very different paths, we tend to arrive at the same conclusions, which could explain why we never disagree. Most of our lives have been spent apart. The cult leaders separated our parents when I was just four and Lily was still in utero, six months along. Mum was sent back to Germany with Mariana and our two-year-old brother, Victor, while I remained in the Philippines with foster carers. We met for the first time ten years later, I a gawky teenager and she a lanky nine-year-old with irregular teeth. Since then, whenever and wherever we happen to meet, it’s always with the comfortable chemistry of two fish swimming in the affable current of instinctive camaraderie.

  “You must be exhausted.”

  “I could sleep.”

  “I don’t know how you’re managing that much mileage every day.”

  “Neither do I. Hopefully I can sustain it.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “That is the general opinion.”

  When I ask for the bill, the pub owner’s wife shakes her head vigorously, beaming smiles, and says something quickly in French.

  “Your bill has already been paid for,” Lily translates.

  “By whom?”

  Lily shrugs. “Don’t worry. It’s been take
n care of.”

  I suspect my sister, of course.

  “Merci,” I tell the woman. “Merci beaucoup.”

  She kisses me three times, then presses seventy euros into my hand.

  JULY 30, 2012

  The unexpected donation from the proprietor of the Gambrinus pub is soon compounded by a second. Rising early the next morning, I discover an envelope slipped under the door from Lily’s landlady, with another two hundred euros inside. These first acts of generosity, encountered less than a week into the cycle, are encouraging. Maybe I will manage to get around the world without a sponsor after all.

  A few days ago I caught news of a forest fire raging through the Pyrenees on the French–Spanish border. Four dead and twenty-three injured. Unsure what to expect or whether it will be extinguished by the time I get there, I’m worried that I may have to change routes and make a detour.

  The traffic appears to be running smoothly as I near the border at La Jonquera and nothing seems amiss. Only after crossing over do I get a vivid picture of the destruction that has swept through the Catalonian countryside. The landscape is a blackened carcass, the ground covered in powdery gray ash, mere charcoal stumps where thick forests stood just a week ago. The hollowed shells of ravaged homes dot the surrounding hills.

  The devastation stretches on for at least ten miles before the terrain begins to normalize. It’s clear how the fire spread so quickly. The north of Spain is dry, arid, and rocky, a semi-desert. The same monotonous Aleppo pine trees and thorny shrubs sprout from salmon shades of earth, interrupted every now and again by industrial-scale farmlands harvesting golden wheat. Temperatures rise to over a hundred degrees in the summer, and in areas with no wind, the heat can be suffocating. When the wind does blow, the strong, hot gusts carry the putrefying smell of fertilizer baking under the sun.

  AUGUST 2, 2012

  The road flattens out across the long, empty expanse of middle Spain. This leg of the trip is boring and uneventful, but at least I can pedal hard and fast. The audiobook of Tolstoy’s ponderously long War and Peace has kept me company during the long hours in the saddle. With the winds mostly behind me, I’ve managed 175 miles on a couple of occasions, the most I’ve ever pedaled in a single day.

  My goal is to reach Porto by 4 August. Just a day later tickets to the United States will almost double in price. In search of the fastest, most direct route, I cycle along the bigger highways and make good progress until two policemen in a Guardia Civil car pull me over. Neither speaks English, so I play the dumb foreigner. Their faces are stern as they give me what sounds like a stiff reprimand and motion for me to follow them off the highway. So now I have to stick to secondary roads, full of confusing detours and dusty roadworks.

  As I near the Portuguese border, the local flora give the first clue of the strong headwinds I can expect: all the trees are bending distinctly eastward. And as the wind grows stronger, the terrain becomes hillier. Northern Portugal, I learn, is almost exclusively mountainous.

  AUGUST 3, 2012

  My last day in Europe, and I get off to a bad start. Cycling down a cobblestone street through the town of Bragança, the jolting dislodges my iPhone from its holder on the handlebars. The phone goes flying onto the cobbles, and I hear the crunch of glass as my wheels roll over it. The screen is cracked from top to bottom, but the phone still works, which is fortunate, since I can’t afford a new one.

  The Portuguese people have been delightful, far more relaxed than many of their Mediterranean counterparts. The food is hearty and plentiful—lots of meat, rice, and potatoes. I’ve been earning the extra calories. The final push toward Porto has been the toughest so far. The endless mountains and moments of exhaustion have had me close to tears, but the fatigue has been worth it. The higher I climb, the more incredible the views become. The setting sun casts deep shadows through the trees, offsetting radiant shades of pink and orange.

  Despite the physical weariness of the climbs, I’m enthralled. This intense contrast of beauty and pain seem to make up the most poignant human experiences. Pain brings you to the basics of existence. It reminds you of your frailty, your mortality, your finiteness.

  “If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself,” says the British actor reading War and Peace in my earphones, as the fat, rich protagonist’s view of life is slowly transformed on the battlefield. His observations come at oddly appropriate times. I have decided to cycle the world to push my existence to its limit, to see what I am capable of, both physically and mentally. Pain puts you on a fast track to that realization. Pushing my legs up yet another mountain with the lactic acid building, my muscles cramping, and my lungs burning, it becomes a game of mind over matter. When I finally reach the top and look down at how far I’ve climbed, with the rolling mountains covered with pine trees and forest flora fading into the horizon, I want to laugh and cry and shout, I am queen of the mountain! It is a high that no drug can give you. I feel insurmountable and as powerful as a god.

  “What more can one ask for in an adventure than to be moved by it?” Hendri once wrote, returning home from one of his many missions.

  Yes! I think, smiling the whole way downhill, as the sun dips beneath the line of distant hills and disappears.

  Spooning glutamine powder into my water bottle helps my muscles recover enough to take me the final thirty miles into Porto. It is ten p.m. and dark by the time I reach the city center in something of a daze, all energy reserves completely spent. I have just enough time to dismantle and box up Pegasus, eat two dinners, and catch the early morning flight to Boston.

  I have covered 1,698 miles across western Europe in twelve days, pedaling an average of 142 miles a day. I know I cannot continue this pace indefinitely, but at least I have some extra miles in the bank for the down days that must inevitably come. Traveling across the United States has been high on my bucket list ever since reading Kerouac’s On the Road, but never would I have imagined doing it on a bicycle. To say I’m excited is an understatement.

  THE WRONG WAY

  AUGUST 5–8, 2012

  Tom reminds me of a more intelligent, real-life Homer Simpson. He is unaffected, big-hearted, loves Dunkin’ Donuts and beer, and even works at a nuclear plant. His friends and family call him Uncle Shine, and the nickname could not be more fitting. Tom is a five-star guy. He befriended me on Facebook after reading my first book and has made a number of generous donations to the Safe Passage Foundation. On hearing I would be flying into his hometown of Boston, he decided to take some days off work to accompany me on the road by car. But that was the least of his contributions. He also sponsored my airline ticket and my first week’s expenses in the States.

  I found him in conversation with a couple of Irish lads at a bar in the Boston airport when I flew in a couple days ago and wheeled my boxed bike out of arrivals. The three of them greeted me with a beer. Tom had clearly wasted no time filling them in on the details of the record attempt.

  “Hasn’t anyone told you you’re going the wrong way?” one of them said, on hearing that I was heading west to Seattle.

  These words have already turned into a theme. Headwinds, and how to avoid cycling directly into them, have become my primary preoccupation. There is nothing more physically and mentally debilitating than pedaling against a headwind. It drains your morale, saps your energy, and makes you want to scream, weep, and beat the handlebars in frustration. I would choose a 20 percent gradient any day over a headwind. There is no arguing with the general opinion: where winds are concerned, I am definitely going the wrong way round.

  My first day in America was a bleak mix of wind, hills, and rain. Pedaling through a downpour somewhere outside Boston, I got my first puncture. In the time it took to change the tube in the rain, two separate cop cars stopped to ask if I was okay within five minutes of each other. Passing motorists must have called 911, meaning I must have looked in distress. “You all right, ma’am?” asked the second cop. Wet, cold, and annoyed, defi
nitely. But all right? Well, sure. He hovered, watching me work, helpless to help.

  Tom drove up next and ambled out of the warmth of his car in a large blue tank top and shorts. He had noticed my tracker had stopped and backtracked to find me. Like the police, there was little he could do in the way of direct assistance, but in times of misery, a friendly face can be a game changer.

  “Boy, you’re gonna hate America by the time you leave,” he said as I pumped the tire and slid the wheel back onto the bike. He was worried the brutal elements, the hills, and the punctures were giving me a negative impression of the country he loves.

  “Hills, punctures, wind, and rain are standard fare the world over,” I assured him.

  Actually there is nothing standard about the amount of punctures I have already experienced in America. US highways are littered with metal shards from exploded truck tires. After battling headwinds, changing tubes has been the greatest time consumer. I need new tires, and that is not the least of my bike troubles. Since arriving, my right-hand gear shifter has been problematic, jumping between two extremes and forcing me to pedal in either the highest or the lowest gear.

  In a bike shop the aging mechanic does not seem to know what he’s doing. “Ah, this is the SRAM RED system. I’m not too familiar with these,” he says, scratching his head. He gives it a look over and tries adjusting the cables, but the gears still jump. “Looks to me like you’re gonna need to change the shifter,” he tells me finally.

  It’s an expensive part—a minimum of six hundred dollars, which may as well be six thousand at this point. Unconvinced the problem merits such a drastic solution, I decide to keep pedaling till I find another bike shop and another mechanic’s opinion.