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In the Dunes in Egypt
Wadi Rum
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A Week on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal
Across Tibet

Joe Cruz is a professor, writer, and expedition cyclist. He is in the Department of Philosophy and is Chair of Cognitive Science at Williams College. He has toured and raced bikes the world over, most recently in Central America, South Africa, Greece.

Joe lives in his native New York City.

Latest Posts

Bunyan Velo Evening of Adventure Minneapolis
March 2, 2015
If you’re in the Minneapolis area, we invite you to join us from 6:30 – 9:00 pm at Angry Catfish on Friday, March 20th, for an evening of bicycle travel presentations and live music!
Greece Photo Album II
February 18, 2015
Back to Athens
February 14, 2015
Last days in Greece, a final circuitous up over crossing arc back west to Heraklion, then the ferry.
2
Greece Journal
February 13, 2015
Beauty and hills, water blue horizons. Mountains with clouds and weather up top. Home of the Homeric gods.

Recollections

6
Cycling to Machu Picchu
November 18, 2011
I did not want to go to Cusco and backtrack, nor did I find the usual way aesthetically appealing at all. I contemplated skipping it altogether.
3
First Bikepacking Trip
November 24, 2010
1988: We were simultaneously conceiving and articulating and inventing the constraints of our ambitions, our florid naivete and ignorance so deep that it swallowed even the possibility of a suspicion that there were crucial things we didn’t know.
5
Racing in Pakistan retrospective
August 22, 2009
In 2006 and 2007 I raced road and mountain bikes in Pakistan, first as a member of an American team and then on a Canadian/American composite team. The races were to keep world attention on the devastating earthquake that struck the north of the country on 8 October 2005.

Gear Highlights

18
South America Gear List
August 6, 2012
This is the gear that I had at the end of traveling in South America.
33
Touring on a Surly Pugsley (Progress Report)
November 13, 2011
Here’s what I think after two months riding the Pugsley in South America. It’s perfect, ideal, optimal, I wouldn’t for a second pack another bike if I was packing tonight.
24
Carrying Gear While Touring on a Road Bike
July 14, 2011
Okay, so you’re going to tour on your road bike. That’s a great idea. How do you carry your stuff?

Words

Trajectory
January 20, 2014
Nearly sixty miles on dirt today. Pre sunset I sit in front of a tienda sipping another coke, sideways conscious of my vacant look.
Expedition Portal Interview
December 24, 2013
Christophe Noel at Expedition Portal—a terrific source of inspiration for wheeled adventuring world-wide—was generous enough to interview me on bicycle travel.
White Mountains 100 Race Report
April 2, 2012
Tremble frigid, but thinking it in unfluid blocks stumbles far short of the cutting, the blades in your lungs, the warning away pain and strain in moving such that a warm pocket in your clothes might bellows inhale the cold. Exit the car when there is enough activity to confirm ten minutes to go, the way it always is before a race, even one that you didn’t conceptualize as it but instead as something perpendicular with a built in urgency…
Meditation
January 15, 2012
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. 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 …
3am Tracks
November 16, 2011
I have two hand-drawn maps, one on paper towel, one on a child’s ruled notebook paper, reassuringly they agree in spite of their wildly divergent styles, I memorized them over dinner last night…
Eating
October 3, 2011
You walk in, there are four or five tables. You don’t necessarily get your own, you just find an open spot, perhaps people rotate around and bring in a chair to make room for you…
Cairo journal entry
January 31, 2011
I arrived in Cairo, a lone cyclist pedaling into a metropolis, on the evening of 28 January, 2011 at the end of a tour of the western oasis circuit from Luxor. From the warnings of local contacts I knew that I should keep vigilant. The city — indeed much of Egypt — was rising to a new pitch in the protest against the government. Today, Friday, a day off work and a day of consultation after prayer, was expected to be a turning point, and it was. By now the world knows of the events on that day from television images of burning and overturned police tactical vehicles, teargas braving mobs, rocks against rubber bullets and water canons, allegations of live fire in some cases, and tanks rolling across urban bridges and through downtown streets…
India journal entry
December 8, 2009
Holy shit, went to a wedding last night, and it was insane and wonderful. Three of us — Sunil, his cousin, and I (Raju had to work) — took a cycle rickshaw uptown, stopping on the way due to the incredibly dense traffic and to get beetlenut. Of course, my mouth immediately filled with blood red saliva…

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