This month I find myself having amazing experiences on my bike and I want to share some things I have learned about challenging travel experiences. I have been racing down glorious mountains with the wind at my back, sweating up barren hills with the sun and wind in my face. Finding myself drinking Miller high Life at a farmer bar listening to locals talk about hauling wheat and owl meat. Being exposed on the side of the road as you fix a flat and trucks are zooming by. Rope-swinging into the milk river while mile long freight trains thunder by, and chatting with the elderly local handyman named doo-dad as he sprays away the swarms of mosquitos. Eating breakfast in silence with benedictine monks looking out of the window at the vast Dakotan landscape.
I'm on a bike tour with four friends from Minneapolis to Seattle. We're currently at mile 1240 out of 2000, averaging almost 90 miles a day, and I am writing this on our rest day in Glacier National Park. Already some key elements for successful long and slow travel have emerged for me that I will share with you.
It boils down to the interplay between trusting and awareness, faith and vigilance. These two elements need each other and are also somewhat opposites. If you trust everything will be alright, why do you need to be aware? If you can always be vigilant, what's the point of having faith? On tough trips like these, you need to hold both in balance. The happy-go-lucky drifter and the hard-nose who plans it all in advance should try to become friends within yourself.
Trust yourself but reward Yourself:
Biking is hard, biking 132 miles is hard, biking uphill with a headwind is hard, biking all day every day is hard! Two of our team motivational shouts are "challenge!" and "shut up legs!". I spent the whole summer biking and training for this trip, but in the end, I just needed to head out the door and accept this is going to be uncomfortable and tired no matter what. Trust that you can do it, let go of the discomfort.
At the same time, take care of yourself! What you're doing is hard. So yeah, buy yourself an ice cream and a beer, you've earned it. yesterday we stopped for ice cream and coffee, it tasted so good on that hot day we were overwhelmed and one of us almost started crying they were so happy. Small things like that really help morale on physically challenging trips. The next 40 miles felt like a breeze after that break. Chocolate and my favorite music from a speaker make a huge difference for me in the long haul. Don't punish yourself more than you already did by signing onto this trip, marvel at the view, make coffee in the morning.
Be Vulnerable Yet Smart:
To some extent you can't avoid feeling vulnerable out on a bike tour and you're going to have to get used to it. But that does not mean it is acceptable to take stupid risks, planning is still a must.
We've biked across the sparse plains and I was in complete awe at how "out there" it all was, if something went wrong we'd have to figure it out ourselves or wait hours for rescue. Take water, for example, I have three water bottles and drink about one an hour. We take a couple stops per day to top up in gas station bathrooms, but sometimes there's just nothing but farmhouses and we resort to knocking on doors to ask to fill up. Sometimes no one was home and we just snuck around the back and used the hose. Through it all, I've had a UV water purifier in my bag that I have only used once. Planning places to stay, buying food, getting stuck in the rain, running out of fuel, of course, you're going to be vulnerable, just try to minimize it!
Appreciate Yourself, Check Your Privilege:
Another way I've been motivating myself push through hard spots it to think of how lucky we are to be on this trip, or how many people think this kind of trip is insane or impossible. No matter the discomfort or how many miles you do, the mere fact you're out there is remarkable. Yet for most people, a trip like this is frankly impossible and that should always be kept in mind.
The places we are traveling have been incredibly welcoming to me and my three friends, but we see constant reminders that this trip would be a lot harder if not impossible if I didn't have the identities I do. Gender identity, ethnicity, income, education, ability all come into play when walking into a rural bar to ask where we can camp for the night or needing to spend an unexpected $100 on bike parts.
Sometimes I think about my bike working when I'm riding it. It both terrifies me and amazes me. So many things need to be going right all the time that it's hard not to constantly be stopping to check there's still air in your tires. At some point you need to say "screw it" and enjoy the ride. I certainly am.
