Notes from the road. Before, during, and after.
I've crossed a lot of borders on this trip, and most of them involve a grumpy border agent in a dimly lit building, a crooked stamp and a different color of currency. This one smelled like popcorn. And then, the highest capital city in the world handed me a seat in the sky and gave me an emphatic “Buenos días!”
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The remoteness of this route is unrelenting. The towns are tiny, the transport is sparse, the mountains are high, and the wind is cold. I go days with no phone signal or resupply. Hours awake in my sleeping bag because it’s the only warm place after the sun goes down.
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“Useless language.” Useless for what? For the economy the colonizer built, in the language the colonizer brought, judged by the standard the colonizer set. "Lengua inútil." ¿Inútil para qué? Para la economía que construyó el colonizador, en el idioma que trajo el colonizador, medida con el estándar que puso el colonizador.
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Colombia humbled me, rerouted me, and taught me to plan days instead of trips. Colombia me bajó los humos, me desvió, y me enseñó a planear días en vez de viajes.
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An American businessman, a candidate in tiger-print, and a massacre the country agreed to forget. Thoughts from eighteen days of riding and reading Cien Años de Soledad in Colombia.
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The old man running the juice stand in Alcalá didn’t look like a cyclist. Seventy-something, unhurried, tranquillo. The kind of guy who’s seen enough to stop rushing. I bought a lulo juice and mentioned I was heading toward Salento. He nodded, wiped down the counter, and offered without being asked: “Los domingos, voy a Cartago. Unos otros días, voy a Filandia.”
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Every light bulb in Colombia so far has been precisely 1,000,000 Kelvin. Cold, harsh, blue, and absolutely determined to burn my eyes out of my skull.
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Why can’t we have walkable cities?
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There's a moment before every long trip where I second-guess myself. I installed my rack today, then looked at my loaded bike and thought, “is this the right call?” I've been having that moment a lot lately. Not because I have any doubts about the trip, but because the bike underneath me is not what I would have designed for the job.
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There's a sign at the bottom of Argentina that says Fin del Mundo. The End of the World. I've been picturing myself riding up to it for about nine years.
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So here's the thing about naming a bike — if you do it right, the name already exists somewhere, you just have to go find it. Mine was waiting in Ecuador, which is not where I expected to find it, but that's kind of the whole point of this story.
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