There are a number of journals on this website that trumpet the joyous method of travel that is bicycle touring. The authors rave about how wonderful it all is, how much fun everyone is having, and how utterly brilliant traveling by bike is. Don't believe a word of it. The real truth of the matter is that bicycle touring is nothing more than lurching from mishap to disaster to near-death and back to mishap, interspersed with periods of riding a bicycle during which time you wonder what will go wrong next.

That's not to say that there are no days when everything goes well and nothing at all goes wrong, because of course there are. As I have only been cycle touring for four years, however, I have yet to experience such a day, although I've heard about them, and they sound very nice. Personally I work by the principle that if the number of things that have gone wrong during a day can be counted on one hand then it should be considered a resounding success.

To give you an example of what I am talking about I shall detail the events that took place during the evening of my fourth night out from Almaty. The day had been spent cycling under a sun that was far too hot on a road that was far too hilly. For reasons best known to itself the road insisted on remaining in the foothills of the mountain chain to our right despite the fact that there was an extremely flat plain to our left. I did all I could to explain the benefits that would accrue to both the road and myself if it would kindly move just 100 yards to the left, but it was adamant that it wanted to stay in the foothills and so it did. And the hills were made worse by the flies that swarmed around me as I cycled. I knew of only two ways to escape such flies, the first being to cycle very fast in order to outrun them and the second being to stop very suddenly. Unfortunately for me it seemed that Kazakh flies were too quick and too agile for these cheap tricks. Fearing it was my smell that was attracting them I washed myself and my clothes as frequently as I could find water, but alas the soap I had bought smelled like crap, and seemed only to make them crave me more.

Heart

2

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

Come late afternoon I had had quite enough of all this and was rather looking forward to setting up camp somewhere and making myself some eggs for supper, but my visa-schedule meant I had to press on. The paved road that I was cycling on was surprisingly good, but rather narrow, and as a rule I moved over onto the shoulder whenever cars came in both directions to let them through. On this occasion as I descended just over the brow of a hill a speeding motorist suddenly appeared from that hill behind me and, as there was at that moment also a car approaching from the opposite direction, I moved instinctively over. Unfortunately for me the gravel on the shoulder at that point was very loose and sandy and I was traveling too fast for it. The back of the bike fishtailed as I wrestled for control of the bike. For a moment I brought it back and it seemed like I might hold it but it was no good. I felt the bike fall out from under me and I leaped away from it, my body coming crashing down and rolling on the gravel.

I should have liked to remain lying there as I landed for a while to catch my breath but I feared how it may look to the next motorist that came along and so I quickly picked myself up and dusted myself down. There appeared to be no serious damage and so I continued. No damage to me at least, I wasn't so sure about the eggs, and I hadn't dared check. And on I went past the 100 kilometre mark and only 20 more and I could call it a night. Then I felt a rumble in my stomach. To be honest I'd had a very poorly stomach for most of my time in Central Asia, but since I'd gone back to drinking only bottled water in Kazakhstan I'd been okay. But now I suddenly had a very poorly stomach again and I made a dash for the bushes, a place I called home for the next 20 minutes.

I got back on the bike. Less than 20 kilometres to go, surely nothing else could go wrong now. Then I noticed that my rear rack was loose. Fixing it was only a question of tightening a screw but to do it I had to take every single thing off the bike, turn it upside down, remove the rear wheel and rear derailleur, tighten the screw, and then put everything back together.

I did it and I cycled the stupid last few kilometres until finally it was time to camp. Annoyingly I was now close to a village and the fields were cultivated, but I noticed a track leading towards the back of a field of sunflowers and I took it. There were a lot of puddles on the track and as it was almost dusk great clouds of mosquitoes appeared and began to attack me. Growing ever more frustrated I searched hopelessly for a spot to put the tent, deciding to take the muddy trail along the back edge of the field as I extended my search. Here I came to a stream of irrigation water that blocked my path. There was nowhere to camp further back so I needed to cross it, and I launched my heavy bicycle towards the water.

The stream was much muddier than it looked. But I gave it a good push, and the front wheel made it most of the way across, coming to rest in the mud on the far bank, while the back wheel remained in the mud on the near. The upshot of this was that the bike was very much stuck and appeared to be ever so slowly sinking. It was another right pickle. You might have thought that falling off the bike, and then getting the Shidz, and then breaking a rack would be enough misfortune for one evening wouldn't you? But no, now here I was stuck holding my stupid bike, straddling a stream and wondering just how the hell I was going to get out of this one. I should have like to have stopped and had a longer think about it to be honest, but the mosquitoes had descended, and I was losing a lot of blood. So I put my feet in the middle of the cold water, which was the only way I could get the leverage to lift the bike out. Even so it was still an almighty effort, and it was with tremendous difficulty that I forced it up and out of the stream on the far side. In so doing it became impossible to balance the heavy bike and it began to fall towards me. Instinctively I jumped out of the way, noticing the mud in front of me and diving for it, deciding to sacrifice my trousers and land knees-first in the soft mud. But as this was my lucky day of course it turned out that this particular mud, that I had decided to dive knees-first for, was completely bone dry, baked to a hard jagged finish by the sun. I believe they could hear my screams back in Almaty.

Battered and bruised I staggered along to an almost-adequate camping spot, put up my tent, and made preparations for supper. The eggs, as you may expect, had not made it. I also found that the garlic powder I'd bought the day before was no longer in its jar and had instead decided to coat a large percentage of my worldly possessions with the glorious aroma of garlic. I settled for half a tin of baked beans, congratulated myself on not setting my tent on fire, and called it a night.

The next morning I awoke with renewed and unjustifiable optimism at the start of a brand new day. It had been a slightly uncomfortable night that had done little to improve the crick in my neck, but I did manage to put up and take down my tent without it causing me any grievous bodily harm for the first time (the most serious incident being just the previous morning, when the elastic cord had pinged a metal peg with great force into the bridge of my nose; an inch either side and I would surely have lost an eye) and with great care I successfully navigated the assault course around the field and back to the main road. Yes, I was sure that today was going to be much better. It could hardly be much worse could it? And then I noticed that my front tyre was flat.

Of course I'd just been through a muddy field, so I had to take the muddy tyre off and get all muddy. And then the glue in the patch kit wouldn't stick. There are lots of reasons why patch kit glue might not stick - it's too hot, or it's too cold, or, as in this case, it's too cheap and Chinese. At about this point a car stopped and an annoying man got out and told me I was muddy. Then I moved on to the tyre itself, and couldn't get the little bit of metal out of it that had caused the puncture. A pair of tweezers might have done the job, but of course I'd lost those. I settled for putting a suspiciously garlic-scented spare inner tube in and the spare tyre on, a process during which I only lost half the skin off of one finger. In looking for the plasters I noticed the baked bean sauce from the half eaten tin running down the side of my pannier. And then, lest we forget, I had to ride my bike 120 kilometres.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what bicycle touring is all about. If you like I could continue to tell you about the rest of this day. I could go on to tell you about how my cycle computer decided it didn't want to work anymore, or how my gear cable came loose two hours later, or about the flies that got in my bread, or the truck that nearly ran me down, or the tree branch that smacked me in the eye, or the people that came to the field next to me as I was outside my tent so that I had to sit quietly and wait for them to leave, not able to move or make a sound at just exactly the time when the mosquitoes came out to feast on me again. But I think you've heard enough. I think you've got the picture. The honest truth about bicycle touring, you have to agree, is that it is really, really, really, really sh!t.

But the funny thing about it is that somehow, and this is the bit I don't get, I'm really not sure how this works at all, but, one way or another, it's still the best bloody thing in the whole entire world.