Bicycle touring is as easy as following a box or Rice Krispies or as difficult as getting run over, sick, robbed or thrown in prison.
Those are the yin and yang of bike touring experiences related in two newspaper articles this weekend.
What was a cross-country bicycle tour like for Katherine Gustafson? She writes in the Christian Science Monitor that it's hard to describe the whole trip in short, so she tells about one day that she and her self-supported group of 12 were riding across the desert.
Katherine writes she was struggling at the back of the group that was riding into headwinds in the heat. After a passing cyclist asked how she was doing, she lost control of her emotions. Then she focuses on a box of cereal the guy has strapped to his bike.
“Rice Krispies, my mind repeats like a mantra. Rice Krispies. I smile. It's pretty funny, after all, to be riding through a windstorm in a desert behind a box of Rice Krispies.
“As soon as I have smiled, I understand the mistake I had made. My earlier frustration made it impossible for me to keep up, which frustrated me even more. It was a vicious cycle. But now, as I chuckle to myself, it isn't all that difficult to keep pace with the cereal ahead of me.
“I continue to smile with my gritty lips, allowing blowing sand to collect on my teeth, and I continue to keep my gap in the line closed.”
In the New York Times, Scott Stoll writes about how he got into an around-the-world bike touring adventure that's encompassed four years, 25,752 miles, 50 countries and 6 continents.
He and his friend didn't have much of a plan, except to cross the equator every six months to stay in perpetual summer. The result was:
“… at any one moment, we were essentially lost. But being lost can be very beneficial.
“When I experienced my first case of altitude sickness, I went down the wrong side of a mountain in Mexico and found myself surrounded by millions of monarch butterflies weighing down the pine trees like a heavy snow. I experienced the reality (as opposed to the concept) of the cliché, life is a journey, not a destination. It was the moments of happiness that I was searching for, not a notch on my seat post.”
Maintaining a sense of humor and keeping your eyes open for new experiences sounds like the best advice for a successful bicycling tour.
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