This Road I Ride

by Juliana Buhring

  DECEMBER 17, 2012

  The headwinds and rain from Cerignola to Specchia are soul destroying. I made good progress down the southeast coast, pushed by a tailwind the whole way. The road was flat, and the temperature increased a little every day. But now I have turned inland, heading toward the west coast and Naples, the winds are against me once more. I keep telling myself, Almost home now. You can endure just a little more misery. You can endure anything when there is a foreseeable end.

  Antonio calls to tell me a massive welcome party is being organized in Naples for my return. I know he is trying to keep that finish line at the forefront of my thoughts. He can hear I’m fading every time he calls. As tired as I am, I can only guess how exhausted he must be. I know he has slept less than I have over the last five months, setting his alarm at odd hours of the night to check my progress on the tracker and make sure I’m still moving forward. Through all the ups and downs of this adventure, he has been my one, utterly dependable rock. I could not have done it without his support. This journey has not been mine alone; he has shared each and every moment with me. That finish line cannot come soon enough for both of us.

  The support I have received throughout Italy has made this last stretch to the end a little easier to bear. Hotels have put me up for free all along the route home. Restaurants have offered free meals. It may sound silly, but having a good bed for the night and good food to eat right now is making the difference between whether I make it back in time for Christmas or not.

  DECEMBER 20, 2012

  I am just under 250 miles from the finish line, but it feels like five thousand. Every day it is a struggle just to keep pedaling. The moment I stop, all I can think of is collapsing somewhere and sleeping. It is hard to believe that the journey is almost at an end. Some days it feels as if it will never end. Even my dreams are full of planning routes and pedaling . . . endlessly. Pegasus is tired, too. He has endured twenty-nine punctures, eight broken spoke nipples, two broken derailleurs, and four tire changes. I have pedaled over six big mountains, across one desert, and through a cyclone. I have cycled with diarrhea, high fevers, and a chest infection. I have been attacked by countless dogs, magpies, and horseflies. Pegasus and I have conquered every challenge, achieved things I never would have thought possible a year ago. I should feel invincible, but I just feel old.

  I often wondered whether I had what it takes to see this endeavor through to the end. I guess I have my answer and have proved my point. We can do things that are greater than ourselves. If you believe nothing exists beyond a certain boundary, then you will never test the veracity of that belief and you will never discover new possibilities. If I had waited to achieve a higher level of fitness, to hone my cycling technique and mechanical know-how, to ensure the best weather conditions, to assemble a full support team, to secure a sponsor and more funding, I never would have left. Many people postpone making their dreams a reality to wait for the perfect time. There’s no such thing. The perfect time is right now.

  The word “extraordinary” keeps popping up on Facebook as people share posts about my journey. Funny . . . it was “crazy” when I set out. Maybe there are truly extraordinary people out there, but I’m not one of them. The most extraordinary acts are accomplished by ordinary people doing something a little extra and stepping outside their personal comfort zone. That little extra means something different for each individual.

  Who am I? Nobody important, nobody special, nobody especially talented or athletic. I would never have known that I could cycle at all, much less cycle around the world, had I not gotten on a bike and tried. I often wonder just how much human potential lies unrealized and untapped, how much we are limited by our own fears as well as by social, cultural, religious, and self-imposed limitations. If we can break through those, how far might we go as individuals, as a species?

  DECEMBER 22, 2012

  The weather forecast has predicted rain. As I dress for my last ride, the morning sky is spotted with gray clouds, just as it was on the day I set off. A group of cyclists have gathered at the bar across the street, waiting for me to come down. Then the Harley motorcade of leather-clad old-timers pulls up in a clamor of horns and sirens. “Oh Happy Day” blasts from speakers attached to their gleaming motorbikes. At eight-thirty a.m. in this quiet residential neighborhood in Cardito, all the commotion seems incongruous if not slightly ludicrous.

  I watch them uneasily through the beaded balcony curtain and half-contemplate slipping out through the back door and riding home quietly, back to my own apartment.

  “Sei pronta?”—Are you ready?—Antonio’s mother asks me, laughing at the cornered look on my face, much as she laughed at the brown-black water in her tub after I bathed in it. I rode into Cardito yesterday evening and stayed the night at the home of Antonio’s family. I cringed and apologized when the little group of waiting friends, his parents, and his brother embraced me. I stank so badly that even my Jack Russell, Mela, shrank from me.

  Today I am clean, smelling of peach and vanilla bath gel, my cycling clothes freshly laundered. Today is my victory celebration, and all the pandemonium downstairs is for me. The crowd is steadily growing. At nine a.m. it’s time to face the music. Literally. “Jingle Bells” is now crackling from the motorbike speakers. Surreal, all of it. I pull on my jacket, torn at the left sleeve from one of many falls, snatch up my helmet and gloves, and head downstairs.

  “She’s coming!” someone calls as I cross the street, feeling all eyes turn toward me.

  I dislike crowds, and I hate being stared at, so I keep my eyes fixed on the pavement till I reach Antonio. His voice has been the only constant throughout the ever-changing scenery and terrain, towns and cities, mountains, wilderness and deserts, food, currencies, and cultures. I can scarcely believe he has been half a world away for most of the last five months; rather, he seems to have been just next door. Seeing him again at the end of the road is like hugging a security blanket I have carried with me everywhere.

  “Ready?” he asks. He is probably even more relieved than I am that it is finally almost over.

  Cardito’s mayor and the director of culture and sport come over to shake my hand, kiss me on the cheeks, and present me with a plaque.

  COMUNE DI CARDITO

  To Juliana Buhring,

  Linked from the heart to our land, leaving in Cardito

  the last imprint of her epic undertaking as the

  first woman to circumnavigate the globe,

  cycling in defense of Children’s Rights.

  Thank you.

  I thank them in return and walk over to the waiting cyclists, shaking their hands. “Ciao. Buongiorno.”

  “She has a weird accent,” one of them says. “Where’s she from?”

  “America,” someone else says.

  “No, I heard she was born in Greece.”

  I smile. I’m from nowhere and from everywhere. I can hear Hendri’s voice in my head:

  Perhaps we are merely the transition; we have “lost” our old self the way a snake sheds its old skin. We are not strangers from life, we have lived as fully as any, and we are not outsiders because of the same reason. We are not lost because, as you say, we have merely been going for a walk. So who are we? . . . My favorite question.

  Like a work in progress, my identity continues to grow and change with every new piece of culture, experience, and idea I absorb. My lack of attachment to any particular culture, location, or possession has given me the freedom to question and explore outside the usual constraints of familial, religious, or social expectations. I can be at home no matter where I am in the world. Instead of asking where I’m from, perhaps a better question would be, Where am I going?

  Today I am going to the Piazza del Plebiscito and the finish line of the world cycle. Is it really over? “One last ride, Pegasus,” I whisper, clinging to my bicycle as if he were an anchor in a storm of noise, shouting, horns, and music. I have been alone on the road for so long that being surrounded by so many peo
ple is making me nervous. I am glad when the formalities are over and I can finally get back on my bike and ride, as I have done every day for the last five months. I clip in and kick off.

  Back in my element, the noises around me fade. Head down, hunched over the bike frame, I pedal on autopilot, a slice away from reality, all thoughts temporarily out of reach. I forget the world, and a stillness spreads inside me. I am a lone satellite orbiting the Earth. The road embodies something abstract and immaterial. Eternity.

  EPILOGUE

  APRIL 2013

  I often find myself staring out of my apartment window in Naples, into the horizon, at the sky. I cannot tell you how long I have stood there. It is a bit like sleepwalking—not really here, not really awake. I pedaled 18,063 miles in 144 days, across 19 countries and 4 continents, averaging over 125 miles each day. I also set the first woman’s record for fastest circumnavigation of the world by bicycle with a total time of 152 days.

  What is there for me to do now?

  Everyone wants to know what the journey was like. But how can I explain the power, the rush of being alive, of feeling connected to everything, of simply “being”? Pedaling over the finish line was anticlimactic in comparison. I felt a kind of deflation, a withdrawal after the high I had been riding on for five months. I still miss being on the open road, heading into the wind and the unknown. All I can think about is achieving that high once more.

  Why do adventurers and adrenaline junkies do the crazy things they do? Are they a particular breed? Or do they just wake up one morning and say, What if I try this one thing? and before they know it, that one thing leads to another and another? Perhaps chasing that elusive high becomes their drug, so they will do anything, even risk death, to experience it again.

  I think many of them, including Hendri, subconsciously yearn for death as a kind of release from the disappointment and mediocrity they find most of human existence to be. Chasing the high becomes ever more difficult, and the depressive inertia of the in-between times increasingly unbearable, so they run at things, seek out risk, look for any way to rise into the air.

  On his way back from a solo expedition to the Congo, a journey that deeply affected him and his view of life, Hendri wrote:

  There are few times in my life I feel as lost and lonely as when I return from a long mission. When you realize that no matter what you have been through, that no matter how much you might have sacrificed or learned, the world does not care. The world functions perfectly fine superficially.

  You feel the sadness creeping in when you hear people around you complain about a bad day and you know that in a month or two their simple worries will be yours again. In the weeks or months that it takes to readjust, you are left to wonder how what seemed so significant on your journey can now seem so everyday.

  In the first few weeks following my return home, I did not have a whole lot to say. In fact, I had trouble talking at all and found it difficult to find commonalities on which to build conversations or bonds with people on any level. I also didn’t realize just how mentally and physically exhausted I was. I had promised myself I would stay fit and keep cycling when I got home. My spirit was willing; my flesh, not so much. I was unable to will my body to get on that bike again. Perhaps memories of the suffering I had endured got in the way.

  But the most difficult part of all has been trying to reacclimatize to “normalcy.” Some days I am nervous and snappy from inaction; others I am reluctant to open the curtains and just want to stay under a blanket. I go out of my way to socialize with friends and immerse myself in human contact. And I think that getting back on the bike will do me good, when I feel I can manage it. My body needs some physical stimulation before I start punching walls.

  I recently heard from another world cyclist, Mike Hall, who invited me to enter the first ever unsupported cycle race across Europe—from London to Istanbul. I felt my pulse quickening at the thought of a fresh adventure. Perhaps the best way to recover from the last challenge is to start planning a new one.

  I have no money. I have not been on a bike for four months. The race isn’t far off. I will be the only female competitor. I have never entered a bike race before, let alone one against a bunch of men. As usual, my friends say I’m crazy. Their advice is to rest for at least a year. Antonio warns me that riding around the world and racing are two very different things: “You’re not a racer. Maybe it’s too soon to start planning another adventure.”

  But you know what happens when I’m told I cannot or should not do something. That little voice in my head starts counting down . . .*

  * Juliana was the only woman to race the inaugural Transcontinental Race from London to Istanbul in 2013. She cycled 3,400 kilometers in 12 days, finishing in ninth place overall. The following year she was the first female finisher—and tied fourth overall—in the Trans Am Bike Race, riding 7,137 kilometers in 20 days and 23 hours. Having cycled seriously for the first time in 2011, at the age of thirty, she is now considered one of the strongest female ultra-endurance cyclists in the world. Her around-the-world record remains unbroken at the time of writing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Antonio Zullo has been the person in my corner from the beginning, and as such, I must begin by thanking him. Antonio, this book is only a small piece of a much bigger story that only you and I will ever fully know or understand and maybe it is better that way. Thank you for believing in me when no one else did, for bringing out the best in me and helping me to realize my full potential as an individual. Know that you have been, and forever will be, an important part of my existence.

  To my manager, Steven Rosen, thank you for believing that this story should be told enough to make this book happen, for sticking around during the times when I was difficult to deal with, for your professional tenacity, and for many acts of selflessness which eventually won me over (that and your enthusiastic overuse of the word “amazing”).

  Thanks to my agent Caspian Dennis for handling me, my mistakes and occasional irascibility with the calm and grace of a gentleman.

  Thank you Joy Tutela for taking me around New York in the rain when you had a baby waiting at home. You are a super woman!

  I am further grateful to the incredible team at W. W. Norton who shaped my scribblings into something legible and without whom this book would not exist. Thank you Alane Mason and Marie Pantojan for your guidance and patience.

  It is easy to declare “I cycled around the world,” but the fact is, I would never have managed it without all the individuals who contributed monetarily and morally to keep me on the road. Whether it was a thousand dollars or fifty, all gave what they could and in the end it added up to a world record. So to all my friends and supporters who believed in my mad dream and helped to make it a reality, thank you.

  • Thomas Kelly (USA)

  • Chris McDonald (Australia)

  • David and Echo (France)

  • Steven Levithan (USA)

  • Mariana Buhring (France)

  • Richard & Zanny Martin (Switzerland)

  • Jason Scott (USA)

  • Mario Schiano (Italy)

  • Siobhan Stella (Ireland)

  • Guido Notari (Uganda)

  • Marek Hamšík (Napoli footballer)

  • Peter Frouman (USA)

  • Katrina Levithan (USA)

  • Elio Zullo (Italy)

  • Mauro Russo (Italy)

  • Antonio Vitello (Italy)

  • Riccardo & Angela Zullo (Italy)

  • Erinn LaMattery (Japan)

  • Whisper Wind James (USA)

  • Jesse Martin Nolan (USA)

  • Michele Auriemma & Carmen (Italy)

  • Michele Gentile (Italy)

  • Ilaria Martini (Italy)

  • Bruce & Michelle Warren (USA)

  • Marco Auriemma (Italy)

  • Paolo Chan (USA)

  • Kathryn Mercogliano (USA)

  • Kelly Rugely (USA)

  • John Mageropoulos (
USA)

  • Fiona McLeod (UK)

  • Kai Hayes (USA)

  • Stephanie Mills (UK)

  • Starr Guckert (USA)

  • Claire Turquin-Silhouette (France)

  • Isabelle Chouar et le Gambrinus (France)

  • David Hose (USA)

  • Lynn Etherton (USA)

  • Romolo Ponzo (Italy)

  • Marco Martini (Italy)

  • Gesualdo Di Prospero (Italy)

  • Salvatore Alfieri (Italy)

  • The Bennett family (New Zealand)

  • Vincent Miller (Australia)

  • The Fawkin Hawkins (Australia)

  • Anthony Booths (Australia)

  • Angel Smith (Australia)

  • Maria Gabriella Berti (Italy)

  • James Benson (USA)

  • Vincenzo Fedele (Italy)

  • Mark Jacobs (USA)

  • Petra Laila Bartlett (USA)

  • Dacil Bettinger (USA)

  • Michael McMahon (Australia)

  • Sean Preece (England)

  • Floriana De Stefano (Italy)

  • Gina M. Catena (Italy)

  • Clara Comelli (Italy)

  • Tommaso Fortunato (Italy)

  Also by JULIANA BUHRING

  NOT WITHOUT MY SISTER

  Frontispiece courtesy of the author.

  Map © Liane Payne/www.lianepayneillustration.co.uk.

  Copyright © 2016 by Juliana Buhring

  All rights reserved

  First Edition