The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

I began to wonder if each of us was in fact running away from something.  

Human beings, I'd noticed, at least appeared to each be bent upon achieving a state of insanity, perhaps unconsciously, in one form or another. The over-achiever, the narcissist, the slacker, the addict, the devout sage, each one had immersed themselves so fully in a goal or style of living that in turn created a sense of self.  

But in attaining this individuality, I thought that we had each, with our own personal sense of compulsion and necessity, embraced madness in a unique way. People I'd met in college who drove themselves to a state of such somnolent stress in attaining a 4.0 each semester in some ways did not seem much different from their idiot frat boy alcoholic counterparts. In each case, by utilizing various methods they were pushing themselves to extremes, both physically and emotionally. While the scholar was skipping meals studying for a physics exam and the party boy was running about planning another keg party, they were each all at once losing sleep, stressing out, making decisions, maintaining various human relationships, eating, showering, inhaling, exhaling and structuring their daily schedules in a desperate attempt to construct the reality within which they sought to exist. The fact that the end goal for one was success and the other debauchery didn't outwardly seem to make a difference, for they were each completely and inevitably absorbed by the act of maintaining a lifestyle they had either consciously or unconsciously chosen or submitted to. Their different lifestyles, the serious student's quest for knowledge leading to long nights at the library twisting their cerebral corridors in exhaustive mental gymnastics reeling with plans of career and the future and the drunks cloudy visions and base yearnings linked to the immediacy of the present manifesting themselves at the same hour of the evening in a sweltering house party, essentially stemmed from their respective desires to give meaning to this life. To experience and exist. To live.  

And in my opinion, there was something about this overwhelmingly consumptive behavior which in every person bordered on insanity albeit in different ways.

Man Greeting Sunrise, Mexico City, Mexico

Yet surely the world was full of rational people too. Sane, indifferent, boring individuals who meandered through life like a twig floating down a stream, who dipped and bobbed through this existence and at times got wet, but always resurfaced in the end to rest for a spell along a sunny shoreline. But did the simple farmer never worry about money? And if not that, surely he was working and putting his energies into raising a family, or pleasing his wife, or spending long hours in the garage at night restoring the hot rod he drove in high school along slow roads on sultry August nights long hair flying back against the cool breeze? Even the single mom with 6 kids who sat at home all day popping pain killers, collecting welfare, and obsessively watching her multitudinous soap operas was seeking: fulfillment. No, we weren't running away from anything, we were each simply taking advantage of and enjoying what the world has to offer. In any way we could. 

And this act engaged each of us in a crazy, insane, brilliant little personal journey.

French Men Singing Opera In Bar
Saint Jean Pied de Port, France

During our bike trip, I will be immersed in my own desperate attempt to meet just some of the people within our family of man. I'll be looking into what makes these folks tick. How and why they embrace life in the ways they do. Try and pinpoint what gives them fulfillment and describe how each life is blessed with its own unique little sense of inscrutable madness.  

I will also be exploring how we are all victims of culture. Biking through Russia and Europe, (there has been some talk of doing the U.S. after Pan-Eurasia, but I'm trying to take things one continent at a time these days) offers one the amazing opportunity to travel slowly and meet normal people whose stories are often untold because they live within the national borders of world powers, whose governments and leaders often get more attention. By listening to and sharing the stories of people in rural Russia and elsewhere, we will also be able to try and understand what economic, political, and historical factors have shaped their lives and opinions. As we hit Eastern Europe, the same will be true for explaining how the European Union and Russian interest in the area is influencing and changing the lives of ordinary people in a variety of manners. By telling the stories of everyday people, we can observe the ways in which they are a product of the society they live in. Explaining how historical and social factors have influenced people who give voice to these stories, shows why different folks around the world feel and experience life the way they do.

College Students on Halloween, New York, USA

The beautiful part of the equation is that despite our inevitable personal connections to history and culture, we are still individuals, who become unique through our own ideas and perceptions.  

And for that reason, everybody has a pretty amazing story or three to tell. 

Behind the tales of the people we meet, I'll be telling the sub-plot of the bike trip. In our own way, we will serve as the microcosm of the ideas stated above, representing the extreme side of what happens to people when they push themselves outside the realm of a normal life in order to get just a fleeting glimpse of what the world at large is really like.

Kid Sailing In Thunderstorm, Maine, USA

We are all subject to impulses and desires. 'Maybe I'll take a take a trip to India' you say one day, and the next, 'you know I've always wanted to bike across the U.S.' or 'hike the Appalachian trail.' What happens when we act upon these impulses? When we do what we really want to regardless of how fantastic or impossible it may be. What do we gain, lose, or hold onto when we choose to have, what many would call, an abnormal life? As we bike across the back roads, dirt paths, and trails of Siberia, we will surely be pushing ourselves physically and emotionally harder than we ever have before. Can we succeed in separating ourselves from the norm, or, like the scholar and the drunk, will we merely be unconsciously embracing our own mad inevitable tirade?  

Will we go insane or escape anything? Or just like every human being on the planet, will we discover that we are merely consumed by that primal and unbound desire to give meaning, in our own unique way, to this gorgeous existence we share?  

I can't wait to find out.  
-Levi

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