The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

There are many people that can be blamed for the situation I am in right now, and most of them have gotten their come uppance. Certainly I have gotten mine for carrying through with this "vision", my parents who so many years ago decided that instilling a good sense of adventure in their son by taking him on family vacations to Europe have suffered by having to worry constantly as we slowly made our way across Siberia, but so far there is one person who has made it out scott free, just reading the blogs and laughing...

"Morning guys"
"Hey Adrian" the over tired wait staff replied. It was August, Nate Tarvers and I were heading into senior year of high school and we were both looking for a way out of that inevitable immediate transition to college, but right now we were just thinking of how well coffee works in August to keep you going. 
"Hey Ell check out this article I snipped out of the New York Times this morning." Adrian said with that wonderful positive enthusiasm that I curse when I am riding in the rain and wind.  "There is this mountain bike trail across the Rocky Mountains from Montana to Mexico, I guess it is the world's longest mountain bike ride. Sounds amazing, you like biking you should do it."
By the time the words were out of his mouth Nate and I already had the article in hand and were working out the details of the trip.
" We could leave the end of next summer and ride it in the fall, we would have to take a year off, but..." We looked at each other with a glow of excitement, we'd found it.
I took that year off, we went out west biking for two months and all I could talk about during my first year at Alfred University was the bike trip and doing another one, and we know of course who I did most of that talking to.

So now it is Adrian's turn, he got me into this mess, and on the 7th of December he is going to help ride me out of it.  We are going to ride the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage trail to Santiago, where the devout religious and the devout adventurer alike have been trekking to Santiago, Spain from as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia (and now Vladivostok). He will be the Third Idiot and perhaps the biggest one, having followed all the trials and tribulations he still wants in, you can follow him on the website, www.paneurasianbiketrip.com (shameless promotion I know).

But that of course is jumping ahead first Levi and I had to make it to St. Jean Pied de Port, the traditional starting point of the Camino de Santiago.
The weather for the last month has been so bad that it has transformed the entire structure of the bike trip, where as before we used to stop constantly and hang out, we now don´t stop at all, I see Levi in the morning  we go over the route and then I stop at any point where there is a change in direction or an unclear sign, and we take that segment together and then separate, eventually stopping to hang out and eat at night in the hotel room.
The first day out of Futurscope was no different, weather was crappy and we hopped on the "buses" and started riding.  I stopped at the first turn and waited for Levi to catch up, and waited...and waited, "Must have a flat" I thought. I turned back and retraced my steps eyeing as I went a small road off to the right "he wouldn´t have gone there would he?" I went half way back to Futurscope, and then decided there was nothing I could do, Levi knew the name of the town and the road we were taking, he would get there right, he might even have corrected his mistake and was now ahead of me. 
The weather got worse, the rain turned to driving hail, I was alone and flying fast along the road, our waterproof gear is not what it once was and made for miserable riding, I was just hoping that Levi would be at the town when I got there. He wasn´t of course, and I was shaking, it was freezing on the bus, I think the driver left the door open, it was Sunday too, everything was closed, but I stumbled into a small bar that gave me a good spot to look out for Levi.  You can imagine the looks a soaked shivering cyclist with hail in his beard gets walking into a small town coffee bar on a Sunday afternoon, but everyone was very accommodating and my hot chocolate was delicious (as were the coffee, the next hot chocolate and the final coffee as I waited for Levi to arrive and my core temperature to rise). 
He came in finally soaked and weary as well, we had both ridden almost twice the distance we needed to that day, and we compared notes and had a good laugh, our first separation in 7 months. 
We continued on to Congac, the home of all your favorites that I can´t spell, Hennassy, Courvousier, Martell, etc. We took another bike trouble day off, and for the first time in a month we saw the sun, of course.  But sun and Cognac go well together.
 
Our bike trouble put us behind for the 1 millionth time during this trip and once again the idiots found themselves stepping out of a day off ready to push one more time "the push to end all pushes".  We raced through one of the most interesting parts of France yet, a national park/logging camp.  It is a huge forest, beautiful and partially scarred from logging.  The roads were deserted except for logging trucks and military vehicles, very strange place.  Eventually the forest gave way to the mountains as we climbed for a few days to St. Jean Pied de Port, the beginning of the End.  We exchanged congratulations and enjoyed our last night before Adrian joined us.
ellski