The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

 

Cycling on the off road is an extreme test of your ability to stay positive. We are riding road, not mountain, bicycles because nearly all of our trip will be on paved roads. When we reach asphalt again, the bikes will be a dream to ride, but for now the experience can be closely defined as a nightmare.    

Each morning, I gaze out at the road before me. Infinite potholes and small humps caused by the motion of cars over time fan into the distance like myriad lillypads floating atop a murky waterway. It can take nearly 8-10 hours of bicycle riding to go sixty miles. The road goes through a series of steep mountains and you must concentrate fiercly to avoid crashing while trying to block out the pain of the bicycle's seat constantly jabbing your rear end. Riding the bike feels like sitting atop a jack hammer; the constant jolting develops knots in your back muscles and feels like your skeleton is being ground to dust.  

Inevitably, cycling on this road makes one lose their cool. I daily find myself blaming the road for my sore back and aching muscles, stopping to yell expletives at vindictive potholes and malicious pebbles. The harsh words just echo within the wooded vastness of Siberia. These break downs can only be described as temper tantrums, in which Ellery and I pathetically resemble children who cry in a store when their mother won't buy them a toy they want; the road reduces you to those childish moments when we first discovered the overwhelming feeling of helplessness, stuck in a situation we cannot control.  

The day after we leave Yerofei, dark storm clouds gather over mountains to the north and south.  

"I hope we can make it just twenty miles further before the rain falls,' I say to myself.  

I feel like a caged animal as I watch the heavy clouds looming closer above us. Oftentimes, these storm systems become stuck on mountains and you can escape them if you make it over the next pass. We ride quickly and avoid the rain, but must keep going, taking short rests to escape inclement muddy roads. My adrenaline pumps as I look behind me and see rain falling several miles behind us.   

At midday, we dip into a valley where a construction crew dumping rocks onto the road to fill in potholes and another rain storm shimmering in the distance await us. We loathe these road workers; the rocks they pour make the terrain so rough we often must push our bikes to avoid damaging them. We put on our rain gear and continue. Seconds later, a rough bump causes a bolt connecting my rear rack, on which my panniers, or saddle bags, rest to snap in two. These bolts are one of the only spare parts we do not have, one of the only things we cannot fix on the road. Rain begins pouring down as we stand over the broken bicycle and weigh our options.  

Suddenly, one of the construction workers we have complained about so much during the previous weeks stops his truck by us and asks if we need help.    

"The men there might have a spare bolt," he says, pointing to the construction crew a half mile away, after we explain the problem.  

Ellery walks down the road forlornly while I wait in suspense. Twenty minutes later he returns.  

"They had a huge box with every part you can imagine," he says revealing an identical iron bolt in his hand.  

For a moment, we are too awestruck by our good fortune to utter a word.  

We fix the bike and continue up a muddy mountain, suddenly just feeling lucky to be on this wretched road. On the other side, the rain stops. Twenty minutes later, I hit another bump and my rear tire goes flat. We stop to change it. In minutes, the rain storm catches up with us and we are soaked again.  

Several hours later, the storm clouds clear and it becomes hot. We take a shortcut to the next town on a rough back road beside a rushing river. Rounding a bend to a cool area in the shadows of tall fir trees, I spot a snow drift still melting by the road. A bush with purple flowers blooms above this last vestige of winter. Some of its pedals have fallen atop the snow and rest alongside dead birch leaves, autumnal artifacts which unfold from the ice like relics uncovered from an archeology site. I stop to marvel at this kaleidoscop of the earth's seasons. It is almost June, but I cannot classify this time of year in Siberia as spring, summer, or mud season.  

Continuing down the bumpy road, the vision of purple flowers frozen in snow monopolizes my thoughts. The strange fusion of the same familiar seasons I grew up with in Maine suddenly makes Russia seem exotic. Witnessing the wonder of this schizophrenic begining of spring makes me feel lucky just to be here.  

My sore body bouncing over potholes after another tumultuous day makes me groan. I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Russian Federal Highway is the only road which crosses the entire country. Entering Siberia, you reach a point where the pavement suddenly stops. In its place, a dirt road dissipates into remote wilderness occasionally interspersed with small towns. Five hundred miles later, the pothole-riddled path kisses asphalt once again and leads to the small city of Chita.
 
Before leaving the U.S, my friend Ellery and I put a great deal of planning into surviving this section of off road. We carry a lightweight water filter, wind-proof lighter, and antibiotics in case of a medical emergency. As I push my bicycle off the asphalt, I feel as if we are embarking on an entirely new trip.
 
Seconds after we enter the dirt road a trucker pulls over to ask us where we are from. When we say we're American, he excitedly runs back to his truck and returns with a digital camera.
 
"Can I take a picture of you?" he asks smiling.
 
The query is not abnormal. Each day, hordes of Russians stop their cars to take pictures of us as if we were animals in a zoo. This pattern amazes me; it is astounding just how many people around the world now possess the technology to take digital photos. 

"Be careful on this road," the trucker cautions us before leaving. "There are no police out here, no laws, and a lot of drunks," he says, flicking his index finger against his neck in that odd Russian custom which signifies drunkenness.
 
Like hearing a distant cry in the night, his admonitions later evoke a sense of vulnerability within me; sometimes over an hour passes before we see a car. We are more or less alone out here.
 
This section of the Federal Highway is nearly brand new. For decades, the Trans-Siberian railroad was the only link between Moscow and the Pacific Coast. Steep mountains arching out of northern China made this road's construction a lengthy and difficult process which was not begun until after the fall of the Soviet Union. We are some of the first people ever to cross this road on a bicycle.
 
In 1989, three Americans and four Russians were granted permission to ride bicycles across the Soviet Union. When these brave adventurers reached the same point that we have, they spent weeks slowly pushing their bikes along wilderness trails, railroad tracks, and baloto, the large sections of swamp which invade Russian topography. One of the Americans, a man named Mark Jenkins, wrote a book about their adventure entitled Off The Map.
 
The Siberia which Jenkins describes in his book was pastoral in nature, the author recalling afternoons spent with old women milking cows and accepting gifts, like a sack of potatoes, from humble villagers. Twenty years later, we find that many of the rural Russian villages in this part of the country have changed little. Entering them to buy food, we observe bands of cows and goats meandering along dusty streets past families who inhabit modest log cabins and are often found outside tending their gardens or chopping firewood for the coming winter.

Cycling into isolated Siberian towns on the off road often feels like peeking through a window into the past; the simple way of life here makes it seem like a whole century has been washed away. As we enter the small town of Magadachee one evening, the subsistence farmers toiling in their gardens appear like a daguerreotype magically come to life, animated and painted with vibrant colors. Yet this sensation can disappear instantaneously. In seconds, a group of teenage boys sees our bicycles and rushes up to greet us. They each pull out a cheap digital camera made in nearby China or cell phone with the ability to take photos and ask if they can snap shots of us; in a split second, I'm back in the 21st century.
 
Traveling to parts of the developing world in year's past, I once loathed these moments, fearing that the infiltration of modern technology into distant corners of the earth erodes local culture. On this trip, my attitude changes while watching the boys curiously observe our bicycles. We show them how we use small solar panels on the backs of our bike's to charge our cell phones. Ellery and I are trying to promote the use of clean energy around the world as we travel. After we pose for photos with the boys, we hand them cards with our website address where they can find more information about the uses of green energy. As we leave, I hope they will show these photos to their friends and tell them about us and our mission.

After the end of the Soviet Union, my mother traveled to rural parts of Russia and Kazakhstan with a group from Maine to promote peaceful relations between these countries and the United States. Today, I wonder how simple things, like cell phone cameras and the Internet, might have facilitated the spread of their ideas, so that their presence in villages like these would have left a more widespread and positive impact long after they had left.

I, too, am a recipient of the benefits of modern technology. Before leaving the U.S., we found Mark Jenkins email address online. He now writes for National Geographic. We emailed him several questions about cycling across Siberia, and, to our delight, he responded.

"You boys will be just fine," he wrote, in reference to the kindness and hospitality of Russians. "Absorb the landscape, absorb the culture. Just remember that the bicycle is the only means; the point is to be where you are soaking up the present."

Making my way down this dirt road, I can't help but compare my experience here with Mark's and ponder how this section of the world might change over the next twenty years.    

'The answer may just lay with the road I am riding along,' I think to myself one day. 

A massive project to pave this dirt road and create a real highway here is currently underway. Every few days, we pass Russian and Chinese workers stringing the first guard rails along the roadside. An efficient highway will undoubtedly bring new businesses, opportunities, and, maybe even running water to these communities, but what else? I stare out at the wilderness as I pedal my bike, and shudder imagining a McDonald's sprouting up from the forest.

During one of our fist days on the dirt road, we are caught in a torrential rain storm. The water reduces the road to a quagmire and my tires spin in the mud. I rest on a small bridge running over the Trans-Siberian railroad. Below me, an old service road runs parallel to the tracks. Bushes and ferns now grow above the vague imprints of tire tracks, erasing the days when this road once served as the sole link between two rural villages. Looking down, I envision Mark pushing his bike through the muddy road beneath me twenty years ago.

"The bicycle is the only means," I imagine him saying to himself.

I gaze downwards at the new road beneath me, and, once again, find myself amazed by how the slowness of bicycle travel allows one to glimpse the subtle changes of the world around you. To fully absorb the enormity of the present. Pushing off down the muddy road again, I suddenly feel stuck somewhere between the remoteness of the past and uncertainty of the future.