(A Different Kind of) Bike packing

Graced with layers of differently colored dirts, pulling off the Revelate bags exposing patches from hard to say when back. Hose it down, new wear marks showing bare steel, needs a repaint, and affording a chance to drill those bosses. Neglected repairs: rear shifter housing split at a bend exposing the cable so the last week with only front gear changes, and even those had to be done with a heel kick to get the granny, front derailleur sticking reluctant, every day thinking I only have n days so whatever. Some large part of the caliper on the front brake — that red dial and the steel bore it is attached to — had gone missing awhile ago. Luckily Avid evidently adds all that mass as decoration, so it wasn’t relevant for stopping the bike, more or less.

Now sun dry, Pugsley looking forlorn and discomfited without the luggage, hefting it about like a road bike. Pull off the parts that are so worn that there’s no point dragging them home: chainrings, chain, tires bald with tiny cuts I’d been monitoring, cracked bottle cages, dented aluminum bidons, manky grips, cogset. The cyclist on the hostal staff accepts the bits to see what can see reuse.

Then packing, twisting it apart absently automatically while also trapezing over emotions images recollected sensations. All positive including this instant, not a reed of sadness, couldn’t see it if it was there underfoot what with looking forward to walking those last few steps to my doorstep confidently in boots.

Carretera Austral photo album II

Carretera Austral Afterimages

Freeze thaw hissing breathe head down shielding body mood against hypothermic rain hours. Or searing piercing spike sunpunish heat sweat burn. Reflectance surface spectral anger froth ocean retreating to grey infinities. Men on horseback wearing berets without irony. An impossible green textured fern dazzle. Racing old testament pestilential cloud of paperclip sized flies. Grit dust choking blinding blinking through a car truck working memory. A lunch watching women and men drinking lager with the meal completely normally. Realizing it’s 5pm with 70k to go to time a ferry right, tension my seatbelt for high speed air guitar and karaoke practice. Entropy glacier crack carve landscape and hearts. Time through circles in linear spatial movement.

Codes in the moonglow’s shadow’s hours and above.

These two weeks.

Carretera Cast of Characters

Just some of the great folks I met while cycling the Carretera.

Ken from Japan. Rode Alaska to Ushuaia, now on his way back to Bolivia for more exploration.

Super fun quartet from Italy riding the Carretera.

Villa O’Higgins to Chalten

Villa O’Higgins, a proudly end of the road town, angled cooked dirt streets desert thorny plants growing along paths linking the tiendas, the horsetack shop, a panaderia, a smart looking new community activity center. Curious, on surface empty but folks hiding from heat or the appearance of bustle, the border beyond and across no mans lakes and glaciated cragtops witness to the imaginary boundary between Chile and Argentina. I book passage on the two ferries for the next day, return to the hostal with cyclistas and mountaineers loitering against the boat schedule, each eyeing the other friendly cautiously suspiciously across the sport divide, climbers not nearly as cool as they hope and cyclists far dorkier than they realize. Swiss friends roll up in the afternoon, we drink tea and beer alternately, talk about nexts or who we are returning to and when.

Ride to the ferry in the morning, the Swiss guys leave well before my chronically late to my best intention start, worry that I’m going to miss it so put the foot on the gas and it takes the duration of “Swim to the Moon,” well in time. Ferry drops me off solo — the boys doing a glacier tour and turning it into a two day border jaunt — passport stamped and I climb into the woods. Once over the country line this is the section people talk about pushing their bikes through, it’s proper singletrack like riding in Flagstaff, rocks twists loghops stream crossings. The Fat Bike bikepack setup howls brash confidence through these kilometers, I’m grinning at the familiar but five months dormant feeling of being on a mountain bike ride, find rhythm and then I’m for kicks racepace, fifty five minutes of what the absurd conservative warnings said was a two to four hour effort. Get to the next dock in time for the 3:00 ferry but it’s full so wait for the 6, on the other side find an easy gravel pedal past breathtaking Fitzroy and into Chalten.

Wide boulevard, young and old walking with poles glacier glasses 40L packs and those eurostylee pants with black panels on the knees and ass over khaki. I zero in on pizza and porter and watch another pink splendorset.

Photo by Alex Morgan.

Chile Postcard

There’s the seductive melancholic caress of misty rain against a backdrop of grey hills mist rivers wood and doom, everything inscrutably ominous. Headwind, steep loose climbs, then whispy cascades to congealing clouds around the corner and the at first a gentle spittle turning into something a little less benign, just keep overing and overing away, it’s 9pm, soaked and chilled and exactly zero inclination to set up a tent so start looking for alternatives. Of which one is presented in a cluster of abandoned ramshackle wooden buildings, rusty pipes styrofoam piles fire damage, unpadlocked door and flapping shutter open to toxic looking linoleum but it’s out of the rain and soon my gear is hanging from crooked nails. Creeped out in spite of what I think of as a high tolerance, so I record a Coded message, resist making it an if you find this message sort of message, dinner in the darkness now every Pacific Northwest horror film, the wind, c’mon, really, it’s always the wind.

Sleep. My eyes lurch and whirl open in the pitch there’s this clicking, twik twik sound. Off of the center of my vision, no direct looking there’s a phosphorescent glow, I’m dreaming ghosts, right?, headlamp snaps on I scan and see nothing, empty space on the floor where the fuzzy luminescence was, headlamp off. Shnick fwik, again out of the corner of my eye, phantoms and the rain pounding and the rickety building is creaking swaying, sit up light flooding from my sweeping scan.

I go back to sleep, if the cricket needs the shelter, too, then so be it.

Chile Postcard

Arrive Tranquillo, a place, not the disposition though that, too. Hot, bright, rundown lakeside. Encounter Francis with a curious trailer setup and an even more curious bicycle.

He’s traveling with Philippe who also has a precarious looking homemade trailer, both from central France,

and they have recently been riding with Baptiste who has been on the road for two years.

They’re psyched about the Pugs, we laugh and joke and trade anecdotes. How strange it is to be on this two wheel superhighway after Peru and Bolivia. The Carretera is filled with cyclists and a ringing contrast to the earlier isolation we’ve faced for so long. These last days are the first time that I’ve passed riders and just wave to them, not stop to talk because I know there will be a dozen more over the day.

Invited to camp. I contribute a 2 liter carton of wine to their 3 liters.

We get very jolly. We celebrate home, Francis because of 29ers, Phillipe because of New York City, Baptiste because of Alaska where he started. We celebrate theirs, my love of Paris and the Pyrenees, of Merleau-Ponty and Mersaults and Looks confessed, it’s all simpatico, we’re cooking potatoes in the campfire, argue the merits and the fundamental Americaness of sporks. They’re not shy about lapsing into long spans in their home language, I appreciate that, they are three and there should be no other presumption, I try to keep up with my two forgotten high school years.

A older French couple with impossibly stylish haircuts and strong glasses from the site down the way hear the French chatter and show up with Anis, soon we’re all in a decent low orbit. We joke, but it’s ominous, about the time we’re likely to get started tomorrow. We tuck into the second two liters, my French gets much better in my imagination, but not according to the gang; what do they know? We eat grapes and chocolate and wine for dessert.

Later the gloves come off and they mock my soup in a packet with pasta avocado and tomato meal, dinner that with some of my past travel companions would be haute cuisine — theirs looks, um, better — but I make merciless fun of the enormous loads they are carrying in order to have their frenchie gravy and fancy vegetables and we laugh into the starlight and darkening sky.

South America Conversations

Walking across a plaza, wobbly. Five or six young people in a circle dressed full on 60′s hippies and with guitars call me over. “Drink with us. We will play music for you.” They finish the standard blues number they were in the middle of. We chat for a bit. “What is your country?”
“USA.”
“USA!” They have a conference and play a passable rendition of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.”
“Nice. But the blues you were playing is from the USA, too.”
“Really?”
“Where did you think blues came from?”
Blank looks all around.

* * *

After chatting for a bit: “Are you from Argentina?” “No, no. The United States.” I’m bemused since no matter how much my Spanish has improved, I can’t be confused for a native speaker, and certainly not an Argentinian one. “But you are wearing an Argentina shirt.” My futbol jersey, comfortable in the heat, seems to me to be an Adidas one. I suppose it does have some seals and symbols I don’t recognize and, oh right, it says “Argentina” very faintly on one sleeve. Still bemused: “But I have a USA Yankee hat!”
“Oh, is it? Everyone wears those.”

* * *

Old man: “What is your country?”
“USA”
“Oh, USA! When you go back tell your skinny President that I said ‘hello’.”

* * *

Needing a snack, take out the precious peanut butter and tortillas. Francis catches up and I hand him the jar, quietly excited for the experiment of how he reacts. He looks at it.
“Ziss I have neveur had! But I zee Americains with ziss, all like eet, no?” I nod. Francis is 45 years old. He samples some with his finger, considers it for awhile. “Not bad. Not magnifique but not bad. Maybe when you have eet mour, zen you love eet.” I’m smiling, thinking that that’s how I feel about Nutella, not magnificent but not bad, I don’t say anything, though, and Francis continues, “Now, Nutella, for me, it is zee tup!” I laugh. I put some on a piece of chocolate as Baptiste is rolling up. In his impeccable English, “Peanut butter on chocolate! I have never heard of such a thing!”
I shake my head.

* * *

I coast up to a couple sitting next to their bikes having a snack in the shade by a stream to say hello. His greeting, not looking at me, not smiling: “You’re riding the heavy equipment, it must be slow and very inefficient!”
I reply, “Well, let’s see, I heard about you dipshits as two days ahead of me yesterday and I’ve caught your sorry asses on your Eurotard fahrrad whatever trekking bikes like you’ve been asleep in the middle of the motherfucking ripio, so why don’t you shut the fuck up and consider some ordinary civility and a reality check?” But not aloud.

Chile Postcard

I have lunch with a couple from Buenos Aires. They seem comfortable touring, like they’ve done it before and I make discreet confirmatory glances at their bicycles. Front suspension, XT/XTR mix, decent kit. She’s a GP, he’s a pediatrician, they’re smart fun, funny, we have a great break together. It’s time to go and they’re going to head only as far as a campground 6k beyond the lunch spot. We naturally decide to pedal together, they’re lovely company. Rolling down the track I notice that we’re actually moving pretty well, I’m definitely pedaling. Fernando is in front and keeps slightly ratcheting it up. Okay, I get it, fit successful medical professionals, expensive bikes, tidy Craft clothing. They’re a type I recognize. (I am, no doubt, too, a type.) Um, wait, we’re going fast here. In a moment of I should know better, I’m thinking, huh, he’s surprisingly kind of a dick, we’ve dropped Sonia, he must figure she’ll just get there when she does and then I double take over my shoulder to sheepishly register that I’m the asshole, she’s drafting racer tight on my wheel, showing her teeth.

Their panniers bouncing crazily over holes, his shoulders bobbing, vortices of dust and kicked up pebbles, I’m trying not to laugh at our spectacle, in the big ring now, right, he drops off the front, here we go, can feel what pace they can do, it’s high, and I peg it there, head down, we’re moving, dusty ridiculous cyclotouristas time trial. We get to their camp area sweaty and grinning.

They decide it’s silly to stop so early so we continue on 50k more.

Carretera Austral photo album I

Meditation

A long climb at the end of a long day. You knew it was coming, thought about stopping just before it and tackling it fresh in the morning but there are more hours of daylight so you accept the slopes. You left at maybe nine, it’s eight forty five. A half hour for lunch, a few chats, 20 minutes sitting in the early evening just to listen to the sounds. If it was a race or an event with a name that you registered or saved up for, then you would have paid attention to your eating and drinking, but this is a bike tour, you let your jaw drop and your eyes rise at the scenery, you smiled and waved at gauchos, you rode hard when you felt like it, dallied in arcing lazy tracks such that riders behind will shake their heads at the wobbly inefficiency of it, not realizing that their own paths are similarly precariously sinuous.

After a steep loose wet switchback you stop, you’re trembling but it’s not cold, in fact you’re sweating arms slick. But it’s colder than you think, your piss is steaming. And your breath. You’re in no danger of falling down really but you’re unsteady on your feet straddling the bike, your legs, not now turning, ache and are slow, unwilling to tense. You’re curious about the phenomenology of it, present in your attention but that’s what’s compromised so you wonder about observation but wondering is effortful and ceases. Your sense of your body as having a location is a bit behind, spatially further back from where it normally is. Perhaps it is temporally, too, like a drag on reality but you’d need an independent fixed anchor to discern that, and there isn’t one in your consciousness, could there be? (cf., Refutation of Idealism).

Chile Postcard

Another day of flogging hissing pissing pelting sluice. We a spontaneous trio queue up at the ferry ramp for a few hours crossing, Andy and Francisco on a shorter jaunt from their homes in Santiago, roll the bikes onto the slick steel, welded ridges catching shoe and tires edges, random twine handed to us to tie them down stoutly, we’re told. Soon the pitching has me tumbling inside eyesclosed nauseous, fumes in the tiny three booth cafeteria, everyone else is in their cars on the open deck with the pummeling sideways sheets.

This is the first of two ferries on the schedule today, separated by 10k of overland travel. When I buy my ticket I ask how much time I have to make the land crossing. She smiles, as much time as it takes to unload the cars and trucks from the first boat and to load them on the second. The second boat won’t wait. “Are you a bike racer?” I brighten: “Yes!” “You still wont make it.” She’s an age where her mocking and flirting get all mixed up.

We touch land, I’ve made the rounds to make friends so load the bike up on top of some oddly shaped tarped geological equipment, Boris and his guys happy to help with the portage. Fran and Andy have scored spots on a tractor trailer hauling wooden planks. We roll off and suddenly it’s the Dakar but with heavy machinery — every driver thinking he’s going to be left behind — to the next port, close high speed driving on a narrow gravel track in the woods. Boris flips on a video camera mounted to his rear view. I raise my eyebrows. “Because it’s interesting, no?”

Load up, slosh, debark a second time, snack, Andy repairs a flat. It’s their first bicycle tour. The gravel now black, shimmying through ferns, overlooking lakes, hillock sentinels, almost floating like in Avatar. We set off together, but they’re slow and I need to give it some stick to stay warm, thirty second or two minute climbs, bucking little washboard descents. The rain drops are the size of locusts now, the boys, I dunno, I’m just trying to meditate through the fury: repetition, revolution, breathe. Shivering again, a background vibration hum for my count, fingers that never get warm.

Chile Postcard

Yesterday stinking stinging sweat blind over an unrelenting sine wave of shoreline dirt, dense atmosphere hours: still, cloying, deaf. Left camp after 8am, pulled the plug at about 9pm with the sky plenty bright to set up and cook and drink some cheap burn whiskey. Flies kept me honest about breaks, maybe forty minutes in total, so a long hypnotic roll.

Contrast today. Morning blowing mercurial sideways, collecting greys, first pedal strokes to vanguard drops. Contemplate waiting, letting it grater through, but I can’t see an edge and I need to roll south by ever south. Soon slamming columns of downpour, punishment from above, on the short climbs winding it up so the jacket wets out on the inside, freezing crack snaps down the other side, I spar with this equilibrium a few rounds too long. Pacific fury waves bearing unpitying witness, cascade past the recovery point so shivering uncontrollably. Tuck into an abandoned shack, enough of its boards missing so that another one, its figure/ground counterpart, could have been built somewhere. There’s enough roof and windbreak, though. I stand dripping stupid paralytic for a span, hands finally articulable enough to strip naked and put dry clothes on, minutes and minutes of gritted teeth effort.

Sky clears. There are no distinctive landmarks to tell me where or that I am. Just wind that roars warning and a gravel road that roars under tires.

Chile Postcard

Cross into Chile, now on the famous rough gravel roads. Feather the brakes, blur the reeds and broad leaves that line the periphery of attention, grinding the big tires indulging my too lazy to pick a line. Rivers bluer than cobalt blue, a synesthesic blue frothing toward the Pacific, slate marble basketball pebbles helpless over the long run. Dropping between volcanos, too conoid for mountains, a mathematical snow line.

I grin out loud at the temporary escape from the dense armor plated flies that buzz hover straight out of the Pleistocene and swarm madly at any pause. Evolved mechanism of intimidation and vengeance: once they land they have to be smacked so hard that you hurt yourself, too.

Long remote stretches unfurl into the chalk low sky heat, mirage to a handsome farm, dogs straining on leashes. Sheep, horses, llamas. And then traces of human beings dissolve behind as if politely humbly hastily excusing themselves, only the rolling ripio and hours hours, an internal chat in an E cypher, time stops to laughter. 10pm and light out looking up.

Argentina Photo Album