Didn’t have a solid enough wifi connection on my last post to upload any photos so here they are now!
We came down to the coast to the French city of Montpellier where we spent a day of rest. We’ll head out today and have a weeklong stretch without any rest to go up and over the Swiss Alps and down to Genoa, Italy.
Riding out of Valencia, we hit the first rain of the trip. We were optimistic and felt a little more at home with the change in weather. The rain subsided but 10 miles from our planned destination we were slammed by a biblical rain that soaked us to the bone. Embrsing it, we were hollering and jammin to our music just a little bit louder. At camp, it appeared to be over. However, in the night it rained even harder and I awoke to find a puddle of water in my tent. The tart hadn’t helped much I guess. The following morning there wasn’t a cloud in the sky to celebrate our one month on the road. Hugging the coast, we hit the city of Peniscula where we missed the filming for the upcoming Game of Thrones season by only a couple days.
We pushed on towards Barcelonia where we were going to spend two nights as opposed to the usual one. Oh the life of a bike nomad. On the day of getting into Barcelona, the two of us had somehow managed to sepparate and lose each other within the first 10 minutes of biking. Riding solo was a great change of pace and a taste of what it’ll be after Istanbul. We both had the apartment of our host located on our iphone maps so I didn’t worry about finding him. It wasn’t long before I made it into Barcelona rather quickly. In the outer metropolitan area, with a lack of brake tension and probably attention, I hit a car’s bummer pretty hard. Hard enough launch the rear of my bike in the air. Miraculously the fork had just been bent back but the wheel remained unbent, making my bike practically the same as it was. The driver wasn’t upset and I bike on to Laia’s apartment. Laia had been a foreign exchange student at Oly two years ago and then I never would have thought in a million years I’d see her again while biking across Eurasia. She was an icredible host and it was great to spend a couple days with her. We always take advantage of having a full kitchen so throughout our 2 days, we made creapes, gourmet mac ‘n cheese, and tortininies with grilled chicken and a white sauce. The first night we went out to a jam packed club and unfortunately Laia had her phone pick-pocketed. In the two days, we saw La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi Park, and the 1992 Olympic Stadium. In the mornings we generally laze around and take quite a while before we start sight seeing around 1.
Leaving Barcelonia, we faced towards the Pyranees and pedeled on. The first of the three mountain ranges. The other two being the Swiss Alps and the Caucusus mountians between Georgia and Russia. Starting at sea level, we had about 7,500 feet of climbing to do before coasting into France. As we climbed on the second day we noticed a 5km tunel on our maps. I rounded a corner coming up to it, and was motioned by two men to stop. I dreaded the thought of having to turn around and lose the thousands of feet I had gained. They said the tunnel was too dangerous for cyclists but offered to drive me and my bike through it. After loading it in the back of the truck, we headed down to pick up Joseph. Just as we got him, suddenly half a dozen Spainish police came into view and we were halted. We weren’t told what was happening but could assume as several rushed out of their cars to lay down two rows of spike strips. They allowed us to continue on and didn’t get the chance to see a high speed pursuit. Next time. The two men drove us through the tunel and it was incredible how long it was. Biking on we were able to reach Andora by night and say goodbye to Spain after our long stay of about a month.
The following morning, we soon found out there was much more climbing to go when we saw a sign that put at 1000 meters when the pass was at 2400. Surprisingly, I felt stronger than the day before and reached the pass feeling accomplished to say the least. Joseph and I had a beer and soon made our way down as it was right around freezing and even colder with the wind chill as we raced down and into France! I apologize for the poorer quality post as I’m pretty tired and bout done with the drunken karaoke as I’m typing this in a bar. Also my wifi connectivity isn’t strong enough to upload any pictures but I will in a couple days. Much love from Spain!!
Well it’s been a week of beautiful, sunny weather…until this morning as I’m writing this in Valencia. A week ago, we continued cycling east towards Mercia and the eastern edge of Spain. We met only our second tourer in 3 weeks. A Dutch man going from Barcelona to Lison, practically reversing our trip. It’s always great to see another tourer. As contrast with the constant looks of bewilderment and confusion, we could talk of our trip and be completely in sync with the “why” of it all. He took a picture of Joe and I and we went our separate ways.
We hit Murcia and were welcomed by an incredibly hospitable host who was happy to take us out that night with some of her colleagues. Carmen is an avid environmentalist who has a strong passion for getting more people to bike and save energy and resources. We slept well that night and like always find ourselves taking advantage of a bed by sleeping into the hours approaching noon. October 8th, happy birthday Joseph! We started celebrating early with day drinking and sight seeing. As we biked, we strapped a portable speaker to Joe’s rear rack and blared Daft Punk’s Discovery. It’s a whole different breed of riding when you’re not loaded with gear. We came to The Christ of Monteagudo, an enormous status of Jesus up on a prominent hill. We were able to climb past a fence and up a wall to get fairly high up and see the city and the surrounding landscape. We sat up upon a ledge and reminisced of our childhood and how special it was for the two of us to be doing this trip together. Over a year ago, I had planed to bike Europe alone but I’m so glad my brother decided to join me. This’ll forever be a trip that we will remember fondly and someday it will be reminisced of. We finally decided to return back to the apartment and that night we went out for drinks at an bar full of energy and American music. Every song. Carmen took note that I was probably the only one to know the lyrics. We’ve noticed that American music is incredibly popular here and it’s 99% of what we’ve heard throughout Spain. Well done USA. Next thing we know it’s 5AM and closing time. The Spainish party hard. They love their long nights and keep the alcohol flowing. We actually realized this earlier in Grenada when we had to resort to sleeping in a public park and heard the loud bass of music from a nightclub until 5:30 in the morning.
The next day, not feeling the greatest, we took our sweet time to pack up and say our goodbyes to Carmen. As we were leaving Mercia, we stopped by a music store and both picked up ukuleles! It’s a bit more weight but provides hours of entertainment. It’s great having a skill to improve on and feeling like you’re getting better at something as opposed to just biking all the time. We both remembered how much we love playing instruments. Somewhere in the daily hustle and bustle it’s easy to forget about things you love doing. There just never seems to be enough time.
Hello! Quite a bit has happened in the past week or so since my last post. Leaving Portugal, we headed towards Sevilla, Spain. It would have been over two days if we had taken the back roads the entire way so for 50km we road on the freeway. Funny enough, just as we had gotten off, two policemen on motorcycles herded us off to the side of the road with flashing lights and fingers pointing. Their English was poor but we got the idea that it was illegal to bike on the freeway. Fortunately, it was only a warning.
That same night, Joseph and I were posted up in a café when we received some pretty terrible news. Eric had gone to the doctor and found out that sure enough he had torn or severely strained something in his knee. It was a pretty big blow to us. He was a fantastic addition to the group with always something interesting to say and in constant high spirits. With a potential surgery and a minimum of 4 weeks off his knee, he made the right choice to fly home.
We continued on to Sevilla the following day with the odd feeling that it would now be us three for the remainder of the trip through Europe. In Sevilla we took a day to see the Seville Cathedral (third largest church in the world), la Plaza de Espana, and many more sites of the city. We were then onto Ronda. It’s location tucked away in the mountains on the edges of cliffs was as picturesque as it gets. Several days prior, Micha had been toying with the idea of taking a train from Ronda to Granada, bypassing about 200km. He decided to do so and it came down to just the two Kestings for a couple days. We bumped up the mileage a bit and arrived in Granada to meet up with Micha. As we get past our greetings, we’re hit by him informing us that he has moved his flight from leaving on Dec. 14th to October 5th, flying out of Granada 2 days later. The two of our friends were out within just a week of each other. We didn’t let it weigh us down for the time we had in Granada.
We had the pleasure to be hosted by a local on Warmshowers.com. Warmshowers is a global community with the purpose of hosting bike tourers. For Granada, his name was Angel. He’s a jack of all trades as a musician, bike mechanic, welder, and construction worker. He fixed our many problems we had with our bikes and answered our questions. With a rest day, we helped Micha box up his bike, saw Angel play on the street, and rode through the city and up a hill to have an incredible view of Alhambra with the valley in the background.
The next day we saw Micha off at the bus stop to take him to the airport. He’s got a long 72 hours before he’s home with about half a dozen layovers. It sounds more frustrating than continueing on. Despite having a late start we still managed to best the best ride of the whole trip. A thousand meters more or less up a beautiful mountain pass. Halfway up I noticed a dam with potential of jumping height. I scoped it out and sure enough it was quite the jump. Joseph soon followed. We rode down the pass, curving with the road, side by side, into a quiet town just before dark. It was one of those moments that you feel like the luckiest person in the world. I couldn’t help but smile.
A week and a half in and it feels far longer. Just how I want it to be. After my last post the four of us continued south, following the coast more or less, until we reached Lagos. With Eric’s injured knee we took our time nice and relaxed. We’re getting all the sun we could ask for and would love to send some back on to Washington. The night before Lagos was the hardest day yet with several thousand feet of climbing in 50 miles. Climbing fully loaded with 90 pound bikes is a whole different game. We had gotten just a taste of how the Pyrenees and Alps will treat us. Once we reached the high point and could see Lagos in the distance, we rested in a small village café for Eric and his knee to catch up. We struck conversation with a Kiwi working on a WWOOF farm down the mountain a ways. He kindly offered us some beds along with a free dinner and breakfast. We couldn’t say no after such a long and tiring day. After following him 10km down the road and off on several gravel roads we finally arrived at a tight knit hippie commune that provided the best vegitarian meal I have ever experienced. The whole night Eric was off our radar after not responding to our texts (turns out his phone was dead). The next morning we got word from him that he’s in Lagos. In Lagos we met up with him and he had resorted to using his compass. He made his way down to a neighboring city and finally arrived just outside just outide of Lagos in the night and slept aside the highway. We took a day of rest and checked out the cliffs and caves that it’s known for. Pretty spectatular. Unfortunately Eric’s knee is still pretty bumbed up and he’s taking a couple nights of rest in Lagos while we continue on. The plan is for the three of us to make our way east and take a detour to the British overseas territory of Gibraltar just south of Spain. Eric will take the route straight across and meet us in Grenada, Spain in 7 days or so. Yesterday morning we were on the road again and headed back towards the hills We checked the map and decided to reroute and save ourselves a day, So it was back down to the Ocean and hear we are in Tavira, Portugal, 30 km from Spain!
I wanna thank about twenty of my closest friends and my girlfriend. Astrid and a best friend of mine spent hours putting together a 35 minute video that drew out the emotions in me. Twenty of the people I love most recalled their favorite memories of me and some excellent advice. I’m 100% certain it’ll boost my moral later on in my journey when I’m alone, tired, and longing for home. Thanks again. I love you all!
Next post will be from Spain!
It’s 2AM and I’m sitting alone in an expensive hotel(140€/$160) paid for by Eric. This is how I got here. I started with two emotional goodbyes to my Mom and girlfriend, Astrid, at the PDX on an overcast morning. Surprisingly suddenly, it dawned on me that I won’t see them for a long long time.
Then, I was off. The trip had begun and I had never felt more exhilarating excitement in my life. After the four of us met at the gate, we took a smooth flight to Chicago. Didn’t get the window seat. Damn. Unfortunately if a layover is over 24 hours, bagage must be claimed. Not wanting to lug our awkward bike boxes around Chicago, Joseph talked his way with an American Airlines employee into letting us store them in a room and paid a man $8 as a thank you. Eric’s sister, who lives in Chicago, gave us a quick tour of the city as well as a place to sleep for the night. The tour included Chicago deep dish pizza, The Bean, and some other sculptures.
When we arrived back for our flight, American Airlines had Micha and Joseph cough up another $200(Eric paid $100) in fees that didn’t make since. 8 hours more of flying and we were in London to see the incredible architechure of Westminister Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Parliment, and the River Thames.
Another four hours of flying brought us into Lisbon around midnight, eager to assemble our bike and get on the road. As our bike boxes began to head into the baggage claim, I noticed mine had my largest gear sticking out of the bottom. Nerves got to me and I assumed I’d have to stay a couple days to get it repaired. The edge of it had ground down and took off a couple mm of steel. Fortunately it wasn’t enough to seriously affect the pedal stoke and 5 hours later in an empty Portugese baggage claim area we were ready to go before sunrise. It was a surreal feeling. I looked at my bike and saw home for the next 11 months. 80 pounds of solid mass that took some time to adjust to. At times it seemed closer to a car than a bike. Turning it around was and awkaward back and forth motion as opposed to just lifting in up.
We headed out of the airport to weave through the predawn city that was surprisinly busy. I couldn’t imagine finding our way through the maze of streets even hours later. After a short ferry ride across the Tagus River, we made our way through the suburbs and small towns till we came to a quite village of several hundred. WIth the lack of sleep over the days we planned on napping for an hour or two and instead made it 15.
We woke the next morning with a herd of sheep and a shepard passing our tents on a hilltop. In the middle of the day as I was waiting for the other guys Eric was taking an unusually long time. We later found out that a car had hit him and he fell over and beat up his knee pretty badly. We could go much farther so we took a long gravel road with sign that translated into “hotel”. It ended up being a very high end establishment and here I am.
Week one is nearly complete and it’s been all I could ask for. Much love from Portugal.
It’s mid afternoon on a typical rain day in Olympia and the initial wave of goodbye is starting to hit me. I’ll miss this home like hell. Growing up in Olympia essentially my entire life has given me a sense of belonging that I can’t get anywhere else. The other day as I was biking around town I cycled past stories that I could tell from the different locations. “There’s that water tower I rappelled in the pouring rain” or “that’s where I finished that one cross country workout in a thunderstorm”. I’ve had an incredible time and I’d like to thank everyone who’s been in my life and got me to where I am now. Family, friends, teachers, coaches, teammates, girlfriends, parents, schoolmates, and many more that would take far too long. I feel I’m pretty damn lucky.
Goodbye Olympia. You’ve been good to me. I’ll be thinking fondly of you in the far east of Siberia when any human may be far and few.
Five more days!!
Well, It’s been a while. I now know blogging is going to have to be a forced process to begin with. I’m not much for writing but by the end of the trip I’m hoping this blog will be consistently updating what I’m doing, planning, and thinking. At present, It’s been 5 months since my last post and there have been some adjustments to the plan.
To start off, two additional people have decided to join my brother and I through Europe! The first is a friend of mine, Eric Daniel, who will join me until Istanbul where he’ll then board a plane and cycle around Southern Asia. Michael Diamant is the other who, like my brother, will be flying home in Istanbul to finish up his senior year at the University of Washington. There have also been some changes to the route. Group travel has it’s pros and cons but with it comes compromising. We’ve agreed to keep my route until Eastern Europe. However, following the Czech Republic and Austria, we’ll cycle along the Italian Peninsula and board a ferry to cross the roughly 100 miles of Ionian Sea separating Italy from Greece. Another change is once I’m in Turkey.
The initial route was through Northern Iran. In the past 5 months I’ve been taught how difficult it is for an American to enter Iran with a bike. It’s a tricky situation. Like all U.S. citizens in Iran, I would have had to be accompanied by a tour guide for the entirety on my stay. He would essentially be watching over me at all times to the point of staying in the same hotel. This alone wouldn’t be a problem. However, when you add a bike into the mix the game changes. Out of all the Iranian tour guides, only a fraction have the legal certifications to guide Americans. Even fewer are willing to drive behind me at a very low speed or bike with me in the cold of Winter. After dozens and dozens of emails and hours spend networking, I finally found the man for the job. Problem is, he was asking for $150 per day after finally bargaining him down from $250. He claimed a price any lower would not allow enough money for food, accommodation, fuel, and car expenses. I had trouble believing this considering I was in contact with a man from the UK, also biking across the country, who is using him as a tour guide for $70 a day. Well I decided he wasn’t going to budge on his price and I wasn’t willing to spend thousands in a span of a couple weeks. I continued networking for weeks after to no avail. I figured I’ll have to save Iran for another trip when it isn’t such a bureaucratic mess. So from turkey I’ll bike north, instead of east, through the beautiful mountainous country of Georgia. I may even have more excitement for Georgia as it is home to the impressively prominent Caucasus mountain range spanning east to west. I’ll also be happy to drop working on Iran’s bureaucratic struggles.
The departure date is September 14th with tickets flying into Lisbon. Planning is going well as I’m continuing to build up gear and equipment. Tickets are purchased. Visas are being processed. Vic’s Pizzeria saving are growing. The plan is all coming together.
I’ve had a couple people ask where they could donate and was blow away by their generosity having not even mentioned needing funds covered. I’ve set up a GoFundMe account(http://www.gofundme.com/thetaleoftwotires) for people to do so if they’d like. Anything helps and even a couple dollars could buy me a meal. The trip will cost me around $7000 in total including airfare and my new bike. Not bad for a year’s worth of travel. It just goes to show you don’t need large amounts of money to see the world.
What?
Who?
“There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more”
― George Gordon Byron
When?
Why?
Mark Twain couldn’t have said it better.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
The Tale of Two Tires 