This Road I Ride

by Juliana Buhring

  Today I have found that place.

  NOVEMBER 27, 2012

  I ride across the Albanian border just before it shuts at eight p.m. The countryside is majestic, with the terrain largely uninhabited and very mountainous. There is nothing but wilderness save for a few small towns and one or two cities sparsely scattered across the country.

  Winter is setting in, the days are short now, and night closes over me before I can reach Sarandë, even though it’s only twelve miles from the border. Somewhere along the road I pull up short. Hundreds of glowing eyes are staring out from the darkness, illuminated by my headlight. It’s creepy. The New Zealand horror film Black Sheep comes to mind. I slowly roll through the herd of sheep as their eyes silently follow my back.

  Even with my bright headlight, the blackness is nearly impenetrable. But there are stars—a glorious, infinite firmament of stars. The giant globes of fiery gas that could consume our planet look like tiny glittering specks, so small and distant. I can’t help thinking that we, with our inflated sense of our own importance, are just infinitesimal particles in a giant cosmos, and that the things that occupy our daily lives are meaningless when seen through the lens of eternity. We’re nothing but minute, insignificant organisms who believe we’re the center of the universe. How ridiculous is the human race? How ridiculous am I? We’re insignificant. Cycling around the world, I’m insignificant. The universe was here before, and it will continue long after my brief spell of consciousness.

  And yet perhaps, on a subconscious level, this was one of the many reasons I set off to cycle around the world. To celebrate the unlikelihood of this existence. To leave my footprint in the cement, like a caveman leaving his inscription on the wall of a cave. Maybe creating a legacy is all any of us are really after; why people have children, write books, compose music, paint pictures: so they can leave behind something that says, Against all the odds, I was here. For one brief moment in time, I existed.

  NOVEMBER 28, 2012

  Nothing comes easy today, starting with the toughest, longest, and steepest mountain I’ve encountered so far, heading out of the small coastal town of Kondraq. It’s such hard going and the bike feels so heavy that I have to dismount and walk part of the way up. Nearing the summit, in the middle of a series of switchbacks, I am buffeted by strong winds, rain, and fog. I stop in the restaurant at the top to get dry and warm. I can hear the wind howling outside and can see the clouds swirling thickly by. It takes a couple of hours and several plates of food to work up the courage to head back out into the elements.

  The descent is even more harrowing than the ascent. I can see no more than a few yards in front of me, and mighty gusts of wind shake Pegasus from side to side. There are no guard rails, and my imagination starts working overtime as I picture flying over the edge. The rain stings, whipped up by a wind that pummels me so hard, even pedaling is out of the question for several long stretches. As a result, coming down the mountain takes almost as long as going up.

  Finally back on flat roads, getting to the city of Vlorë is still a mission. I struggle for every mile into a headwind, as the rain continues to come down relentlessly. I reach the city limits and decide I am just too wet and drained of willpower to carry on. I’ve cycled only seventy-five miles today—just over half my normal distance.

  One nice surprise awaits me, though. Nicola, who spent a week with me in India, has caught the ferry over from Italy with another friend, Angela. Seeing a couple of friendly faces is a rare pleasure. We share a twenty-five-dollar room for three in a cheap hotel, eat a giant dinner of steak and fries, and drink beer. While I generally enjoy being alone on the road, I have to admit I’ve also missed the human company. Too much of anything is too much, even solitude.

  NOVEMBER 29, 2012

  “You’re almost there!” says Nicola as he and Angela hug me goodbye after a last lunch together not far from the Albania/Montenegro border. “People are starting to get excited now you’re almost back in Italy. We’re gonna have a huge party to welcome you back. Just sixteen hundred to go. Piece of cake!”

  He’s right. After sixteen thousand miles, sixteen hundred doesn’t sound too bad. If I can keep up my average of 125 a day, I should be home in time for Christmas. My sister Lily is coming to spend the holidays with me and Antonio. I know I’ll eat and eat as if every piece of food has a short expiration date.

  NOVEMBER 30, 2012

  I am held up at the border for two hours in a hailstorm. The bad weather then follows me into Montenegro, where I stop early for the second time in three days to get clean and dry. Checking into a cheap hotel in Podgorica, I log on to the Internet and receive some terrible news. My friend Jesse, who put me up in Brisbane, was hit by a truck on the Gold Coast, on the very same road that we had pedaled together a couple of months back. I message his wife, Maria, and she replies that Jesse is still in hospital, and has just come out of a coma.

  “It’s such an irony,” Maria writes. “Here you cycle around the world through crazy countries like India and nothing happens to you, while he cycles the same road to work every day, and this happens.”

  I agree to such an extent that I almost feel guilty for having made it nearly the whole way around the globe unscathed. I sit on the hotel bed, munching a packet of peanuts, rain still pelting against the window, and think about how the world is full of irony. There are the basic, constant laws of the universe, on which everything depends, and which our lives follow with comfortable predictability. We like to think we have some semblance of control over our lives or that some greater power has control over them. That we can make sense of whatever happens to us. That there is some greater purpose to it all, a reason for all the suffering and pain, something to justify the imbalances we see every day in the world around us. We want to feel safe, secure against every eventuality, so we construct worlds of illusion into which we bury our heads like the proverbial ostrich.

  But then something completely random, something for which we are totally unprepared, is thrown into the mix, and we suddenly realize that, for all its laws, for all its order, the universe is full of chaos, and all our carefully laid plans are useless. This never hit home harder for me than the day Hendri died. It was a painful reminder that the only sure thing in life is that nothing lasts, including life itself. Among all our many uncertainties, that is the one irrevocable certainty.

  You know that film The Bucket List, about two guys who are diagnosed with terminal cancer and decide to tick off a list of all their greatest wishes and desires? They end up doing everything they previously feared because they know they are dying, so what’s the worst that could happen? The truth is, from the day we are born, time starts counting down toward that one inevitability. All we ever have is time. Yet even time is an illusion. All that really exists is the eternal present. We can only ever live right now, in this day, this hour, this minute.

  Hendri called it “living the best day ever.” It was the guiding philosophy by which he lived his life. Yesterday is always in the past; it no longer exists. Tomorrow has not yet happened, so it does not exist either. Today is the only day we will ever live, and that makes it the best day ever. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can stop holding on so tightly to what we think we have, stop hoarding in preparation for an elusive future, and start going about the business of living in the present. Because all that exists is now. This moment. This day.

  DECEMBER 5, 2012

  I am physically and mentally exhausted. I have crossed many mountains, but the last few have seemed endless. On the final steep climb in Slovenia, just a few miles from the Italian border, I have a mental breakdown. Unable to pedal any farther, I burst into tears on the phone to Antonio, muttering, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  He is concerned. This is the first time he has ever heard me use the word “can’t,” so he knows it must be serious. “Ju, just stop for today. Turn around, go back down the hill, and find a place to rest.”

  The words “stop” and “go back”
work like vinegar on a wound. Anything but that. Going back has never been an option. In the words of Dr. Livingstone, “I will go anywhere, provided it be forward.”

  Stop being such a baby, I scold myself. There’s nobody to get you home but yourself, and the only way to get home is to move. So move!

  I walk my bike up the last stretch of the climb, remount near the top, and pedal victoriously across the border and into Italy. A couple of cyclists from the Salvaiciclisti, or “Save the Cyclists,” a group that campaigns for rights on the road, have been following my journey online and are waiting to escort me into Trieste. I am back in Italia! As soon as we hit the city center, I insist on stopping at a bar for a good coffee. Ah, espresso—how I have missed you! It is not Neapolitan coffee, but it is pretty good all the same.

  My two companions are putting me up for the night, but first we have dinner with more cyclists from Salvaiciclisti, and I tell them all about my travels. They warn me that the temperature is about to drop dramatically and snow is expected within the next couple of days. Having lived in tropical climates most of my life, my body does not adapt well to extreme cold. Couple that with not having adequate clothing or equipment for anything below forty degrees Fahrenheit, and the forecast is grim. I can only hope that by some miracle I will clear northern Italy before the snow starts to fall.

  DECEMBER 8, 2012

  Two years ago today, I was sitting on the sofa, scrolling through my Facebook news feed, when I saw the news of Hendri’s death. I was in shock for the first couple of days, unable to believe that it was real. When at last it sank in that I would never see him alive again, my world went dark. I couldn’t imagine living in a world without him.

  I believe that some people enter our lives for a reason. They may not stay long, but they have a lasting effect. Hendri was such a person for me. Today I’m just a couple of weeks away from finishing a world circumnavigation by bicycle, a journey I never would have thought possible two years ago. The irony is not lost on me. If Hendri had not died, I never would have done something this extreme. I never would have known I could cycle any distance at all, let alone around the world. His death was the catalyst that launched my life in a different direction. That seeded a new passion. That awoke a hunger for new experiences, discovery, and self-realization.

  Yet I would press rewind, give up everything I have seen and done and experienced, just to see him once more, to have one more conversation with him. I tried to hold on to his memory, tried to keep him alive for as long as I could. I thought that if I didn’t accept his death, it wouldn’t exist. This cycle ride has been as much an inward journey as a physical one, a symbolic act of release, of letting him go, of realizing that life keeps moving forward and so must I.

  The most beautiful things in life are fleeting. That is part of their beauty. To have something go on and on forever would dilute its potency. I loved Hendri. The moments we shared were beautiful and always will be. The passing of time can never change that. But the cycle of life goes on; and with death, something new is born.

  On this day last year I cried, but I am not crying today. In fact, I no longer cry when I think of him. When his face appears in my mind, he is smiling. I whisper the words he wrote in one of his last blogs like a prayer:

  Thank you for the flat rock I sleep on.

  Thank you for the peace I feel.

  Thank you for the chance to live my dreams.

  THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

  DECEMBER 9, 2012

  The snow has arrived, as predicted. Light flakes were falling as I wheeled up to a pensione in Olmi last night, and I awake to a steady snowfall. The countryside is already covered with a powdery white blanket. The flakes keep coming down, soaking through my gloves and shoes. The sun eventually breaks through the fog, but it makes little difference. I am wearing three pairs of socks and two pairs of gloves, but somehow the wet and cold still penetrate.

  When the sun shines, the cold is just about tolerable. But daylight hours are short and getting shorter. I watch each sunset with dread. In the darkness, the black ice on the roads is treacherous, the freezing temperatures unbearable. I am doing everything I can just to keep my core warm. I stop at a bar after dark to try to get some feeling back into my hands and feet. Remembering how well the bourbon worked in New Zealand, I order a shot of whiskey from the bartender.

  “Whiskey?” he repeats, not sure he has heard me correctly.

  “Sì. Whiskey. Fa freddo.” It’s cold.

  He smiles and shrugs, pulls out a tumbler, and fills it to the top with the equivalent of at least three shots. I drain it in one go.

  “Ancora?” Another? There is admiration in his voice.

  Why the hell not? At least I will be cycling happy and hopefully numb. He tops up the glass.

  “Cheers.” I raise my glass to him and down it in one again. A delicious heat spreads through my chest.

  The bartender is so impressed that he charges me just two euros for my shots and waves me off. My hands and feet are still ice cold, but for the first time since the snow started falling, I cycle with some semblance of warmth in my core.

  DECEMBER 11, 2012

  I have reached the point of total exhaustion. My body is ready to quit. I could collapse right now if I let myself. The temperature has dropped to sixteen degrees Fahrenheit; the bitter cold drains the little energy I have left. I’m eating every couple of hours just to stay warm. My face is raw with windburn, my lips cracked and dry. Blood is running from my nose, and I cannot stop coughing. My hands are swollen and blistered from the cold. My feet no longer ache, but only because I can’t feel them. What I can feel is a dull pain deep within my bones traveling from my ankles up to my knees.

  Instead of keeping to my usual schedule—stopping once for food after sixty miles—I am forced to take more frequent breaks to warm up and get the blood circulating through my limbs again. I stop at bars along the road, ordering double hot chocolates and stuffing down whatever food they have on offer: panini, cornetti with Nutella, pastries, and pies. It’s like feeding a dying furnace. I sidle up against the heaters, body trembling, lips blue.

  I am still on track to finish in 150 days, but all these stops are consuming valuable time.

  My feet are not a pretty sight when I pull off my shoes at the end of the day. Two of my toes are black; the rest are a deep, raw red, covered in painful chilblains, with dead yellow toenails. Tomorrow they will refreeze, and the blisters will grow. If I can just get farther south, where it is warmer, I am hoping the damage will not be permanent.

  Bob Marley reportedly said, “You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” I have reached the point where I have nothing left in me. My body should be giving up. Even my willpower has gone. At this level of mental and physical exhaustion, the slightest hill feels like a mountain, the gentlest gust a hurricane. There are only about nine hundred miles left, but it might as well be nine thousand. Every day feels like a week, every hour a day. I know it’s almost over, but today it seems as if it will never end. Every tiny setback mushrooms out of all proportion, but the idea of curling into a tearful ball and sucking my thumb makes me crack a smile. Perhaps the only thing keeping me going now is sheer dumb stubborn tenacity. I never seem to run out of that.

  Many people have written to compliment me on my strength throughout this endeavor. But I am not strong. I am the furthest thing from strong. I have suffered deep pain. I have lost everything I had and the people I loved most. There have been days when death seemed like a tempting gift and continuing to live the most difficult thing in the world. But I have kept on going because I am stubborn. When the pain becomes too much to bear, when I am too tired to carry on, my tenacity and pride force me onward. Giving up completely would be even harder, because I could never live with myself if I did.

  DECEMBER 14, 2012

  I should reach Ancona, on the east coast of Italy, within the next day or two, and the temperature will rise with every mile south from there. The
sun will be a game changer for me, physically and mentally. I am back on my own SIM card and have ready access to wi-fi. Reading people’s messages of support on Facebook is a great boost to my morale.

  Since I am online more often now, bits and pieces of news from the real world start to reach me on the road. There has been a terrible tragedy in the States today. A young guy went into a primary school and shot twenty children and six teachers. Everybody is screaming about the need for more gun control, and while I agree that would be a good thing, I cannot help thinking that guns are not the problem. Human nature is the problem.

  Cycling around the world has helped me to see our planet through new eyes, to challenge the preconceptions I held about myself, society, and other individuals. I have suffered from a feeling of disconnection from other people for many years, never able to shake the sense that I am different and don’t belong, thereby isolating myself from what is essentially the human experience. I imagine it is a similar feeling of isolation, taken to an extreme degree, that prompts a young man to walk into a primary school and start shooting.

  The more people I have met from different backgrounds and cultures, and the more I have listened to them speak about the things that are important to them, the more I have realized that while we may differ in some of the details, we are all fundamentally connected. We are all here, just trying to figure it out, trying to find a purpose, in pursuit of happiness. Yet instead of focusing on our commonalities, we look at our differences. We segregate, we judge, we assume. We live in a world of “us and them.” We are riddled with prejudices and moral superiority, separated by religion, race, belief, color, social status, wealth, poverty.

  I have been listening to a lot of Charles Bukowski over the last week. It was probably his dark, absurdist understanding of human nature that drove him to the bottle, but his dysfunctional genius was pretty spot on a lot of the time. “We’re all going to die, all of us,” he says through my earphones. “What a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.”