Skyline in sight

All good things come to an end. Or not? Or maybe all good things end to make way for other good things? We’ll see. I’ve been home for two days now. And it kind of feels like I never left, like biking from New Orleans to New York is is something I did in another life, some vague memory from my glorious and adventurous past. Not to mention hitchhiking trough Argentina, riding mules in the jungle. Maybe those things were never even real. Maybe I just dreamt all of them… Luckily I have the pictures to prove it!

Anyway, it’s time to start telling you guys about the last leg of my bike trip: Washington DC – New York City. This leg almost didn’t happen. As I was posting some post cards in Washington Union Station, some scandrell stole my bike. My casanova. My only friend. As I came back from the post office, I noticed it was gone. This cannot be, I probably put it somewhere else… Untill I noticed the lock, cut in half, at 2 in the afternoon.

My first reaction? I don’t really kn
ow. I guess I was just baffled. I laughed, I mean, it is pretty ironic. I didn’t really believe it, I figured it’d just show up at some point. It didn’t. I went to look for a police officer, to get a report. The officer recommended me to go and talk to the owners of the station’s bike shop. Maybe they had seen it. They didn’t. They did have some reasonably priced second hand bikes. That was a lot to think of… I mean, it’s not like I had the money to buy another bike, but then… I couldn’t really give up on biking. I just couldn’t.

I decide to fundraise. Maybe I’ll be able to gather the money for a new bike? I wasn’t very hopeful at first, but with the help of my wonderful friends, and family. I decide to go for it and buy another bike. Best decision ever. On my whole biking trip, I never enjoyed it as much as I did on that last week from Washington to NYC. Couchsurfing, camping, riding. Even the fact that most of the ride was up hill didn’t bother me anymore. I felt like superwoman. I stayed in a place called Bel Air, I found a riding buddy for a day in Doylestown, camped in someone’s backyard, and last not but least: I drove into New York City. Well, not technically. I biked to New Jersey City, and took a ferry from there. I mean, Manhattan is still an Island, there’s not much you can change about that. But still, I made it! 

I did it. I biked 2000 km in exactly a month. It felt… weird. Kind of like my life was over. I mean, all I had been doing for a month was bike, eat and sleep. What now? 10 days in New York? Don’t get me wrong. It was amazing to see friends after 6 months of meeting strangers. It really was. I could almost not remember what it was like to just have a beer with some friends (I have a feeling this will make my parents quite happy). So I spent most of my days biking around the city, and having some beers.

And then. I came home. What a
weird feeling. And really normal at the same time. Let’s just hope I’ll find a job soon. But hey, It’ll be a piece of cake after this? 

This will be my last post. It’s the end of an era, of a story. But also the beginning of a new adventure. You’ll hear from me.

Love to all those who read me. I had a blast ventilating myself on the web. I’d like to end this blog with a quote from Hemingway about travelling by bike. I could not word it any better myself:

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~Ernest Hemingway

Veni, Vidi, Vici.

Less biking. More distance.

This biking thing is going better and better. I can actually feel that I’m having less trouble hauling my 25 kilo luggage around, keeping reasonable speeds no longer feels as if I’m climbing the Mont Ventoux 8 hours per day! Victory! As we would say in Dutch ‘De aanhouder wint’. I can actually say I’m a better biker. And the climate is getting more reasonable too: I no longer have to be on the bike at 6 in the morning to be able to get a few hours in there before excruciating heat. And to be fair, the whole getting up super early to exhaust myself on a bicycle was never really my thing. I enjoy taking my time in the morning, to take my time to wake up, maybe read a little bit, brew some coffee. I’m definitely not the kind of girl that can just get up, break down her tent and start biking like crazy again. But hey, distances of over a 100 km -praise the metric system!- per day now no longer seem like something only a professional rider could do. Victory!

Nothing is impossible until proven so. An important lesson I have learnt this week. Extremely last minute couchsurfing requests? – not a problem. Hitchhiking 600 km with a bicycle in one day? – Hard. But not impossible. Remind me of this in a couple of weeks when I’ll be struggling to find my first Big-Girl job: I hitchhiked 600 km with a bike. In one day. Finding a job should be a walk in the park now. 

I started this week in Charleston, and ended up in Washington DC. From Charleston it took me 2 days and 2 flats to get to a little place called Surfside beach – I was kind of disappointed not to have seen any surfers there -, where I spent 2 nights with a lovely young family. Here I started realizing that I had to make a choice. Sell my bike, and be able to actually see Washington, and maybe Philadelphia. Or bike, suffer, and not see anything of the country at all. I chose to bike to Fayetteville, where I would sell my bike and continue my trip hitchhiking. But hey, plans change! 

The next night I stay with Nick, on his wwoofing farm (www.wwoofing.com) in Tabor city. Nick is a self claimed ex-hippie -but to be fair, he still has a fair amount of hippie in him-, who invites volunteers into his house to help him in his organic farm, and in return they get to learn about organic farming. He tells me about a place called ‘South of The Border’, a tourist trap right off highway 95, and convinces me to try to hitchhike with my bike to DC. Why not? If it works, I would get to bike from DC to New York, and it would be truly amazing to actually bike into the Big Apple!

The next day I get to South of The Border at about half past 3 in the afternoon, I decide to give it a try for a couple of hours. No luck, people are not willing to take a smelly hitchhiker with a bicycle. Understandable. I camp out behind a church, and decide to give it another try the next morning, worse case scenario, I can always bike to Fayetteville and sell the bike there. At 12 I get thrown out of the gas station where I had been asking people for a ride. Auch. What to do?

I decide to give it one last shot, and actually stand on the ramp of the highway, in the hope that someone will pick me up! Bingo! 20 minutes later I’m on my way to Rocky Mount, a small town about a 150 miles north of where I was. From there I easily find a ride about 40 miles further. It’s already 4 o’ clock by then. Maybe I won’t make it to DC… I decide to try untill 6, and find a place to camp after that. 10 minutes before 6 I get picked up by … a 20 year-old chain smoking, gun carrying anglican priest -I really don’t know how to describe this person in any other way-. He drives around after work, because his parents won’t let him smoke by the house. He drives me past Richmond, just because.

After he drops me off at a truck stop, I don’t know what to do… it’s past 7, I should find a place to camp out. But on the other hand, I’m only about 150 km from DC. I could make it. And I did. I get a ride with a family of self-proclaimed gipsies, on their way to Washington. On the way, they make a quick stop. To get engaged. “It was perfect we ran into you”, they say, “now we have a photographer”. What a crazy perfect day. It ends with me, drinking a Leffe, in a Downtown DC apartment. Life isn’t all that bad.

So here I am. Enjoying the Capitol for a couple of days, before I hit the road again towards my final destination: New York City! I’ll make it. It will work out. It always does, as lang as I keep trying.           

Take me to New York

Another week. Another pit filled with adventures and stories to remember. Oh. and I hit my first big milestone this week: I biked a 1000 km since I left New Orleans. Only about 1500 or so to go. 

After leaving Panama City Beach, I was confident that luck would turn my way. It would, just not that day. It was the 3-flat day. After fixing the third one, I finally realized I should probably check my tire, and not just endlessly keep on fixing my tube. This was a good call: there was a big fat hole in the tire. Lesson learnt: when running a flat, always check if the tire is ok. Luckily, it was easy to temporarily (I will probably learn soon what temporarily means, somewhere in the middle of a forest or so) boot it with a one dollar bill – turns out those things are not just handy for strippers-. 

I thought it had learnt what it meant to be hot, untill day 2 of that week. A 110 degrees (43 degrees celcius), with a 100 % humidity. It’s like biking in a turkish steambath. Or a sauna. I decide to hitch a ride to Tallahassee, where I was going to be couchsurfing with Carol in , a girl who is planning a bike tour in South-America. You can only imagine all the things we had to talk about! It was absolutely reviving to be able to talk to a girl like we had been friends for ages, I realized how much I had been missing this all these months!

The rest of this week was one big chain of unforgettable couchsurfing experiences (and of course, some biking 😉 ). The morning I left Tallahassee, was probably even hotter than the day before. No way that I was going to bike through this. This weather would make hell feel like a pretty nice air conditioned space. So, I try to hitch a ride again. I get picked up by Evan, a thirty-something single guy from Jacksonville. Perfect. That’s where I wanted to go. Evan turns out to be an amazing guy, since I didn’t have a place to go before going to the next couchsurfer, Evan invites me to spend the afternoon in his house, where we have the best sandwich I had in weeks. And later that day he drives me to Jay’s house.

I feel like this post is going to be one big listing of all the amazing couchsurfing experiences I’ve had this week. But that’s really what my week was like. There’s just no other way to describe it. I never actually met Jay, but his roommates were just adorable. 3 middle aged, divorced men, living together, and non-stop hosting couchsurfers. Isn’t that amazing? And Glenda, an older woman, in Saint-Mary’s GA. She convinced me to let her take me to Cumberland Island (of which I had never heard). Reluctant at first, I agree to go with her, and stay a night in the house she takes care of on the island.

Little did I know that a private house on Cumberland is about as rare as the white deer I spotted there. All the private properties have been handed over to the State, and there are only 5 left that are still in the hands of private owners. When these people die, the state will take these properties too. Imagine staying in a house, on the middle of an island which is a natural reserve. What an amazing experience!

As promised, Glenda drove me to my next destination (lucky me ’cause it was pooring rain that day – the kind of rain that would instantly drown my dogs). In Townsend, I got to stay with the Smith’s for a night. The next morning, son McKinley drives me out to Savannah, where he works. From here I work my way up to Walterboro (South Carolina), where I stayed with the more than fabulous couple David and Jorge. David told me about another hosting platform, just for cyclists: Warm Showers. I’m hoping to finally start meeting other cross country riders! Because to be fair, it does get lonely sometimes…

And here I am, couchsurfing again, in Charleston. The way here was one of the most extremes I’ve lived so far. I almost filed a complaint against google maps. I got taken from dirt roads to biking on a highway (with no other way to go) to biking on the East Coast Greenway (the biking trail that will hopefully take me to New York) to biking on more highways. I had literally never been this scared in my life. The number of near death experiences was fairly high yesterday, hopefully it will get better!

New York, I’m getting closer!

PS: I forgot to mention the name that was given to my bike after a couple of beers in New Orleans. ‘Casanova’, because no-one gets quite between my legs like he does. 

 

Me, my bike, and I.

Panama Beach City: time to relax, and plan. Definitly Plan. That’s what I’ve learnt over the past week.

Before getting into my adventures, I’d like to comment on a topic that has really been bothering me for the past … 4 months, but really got to me this week: why can a girl not travel by herself?

Everywhere I go, almost every person I’ve talked to over the past 4 months during my travels has had the same reaction: you’re a girl by yourself? That’s super dangerous! You shouldn’t be doing this! Be careful! There are bad people out there. This has annoyed me SO MUCH. Not because people are worried about me, I know they all mean well. But because apparently, I am supposed to change MY plans, MY behaviour, MY being, because there are still people in this world that treat women by theirselves like shit, like something that is worth being treated badly. And this makes me very angry. Why don’t people keep more busy trying to get these Ideas out of the world, instead of warning women about things they can and cannot do? Why should I behave differently because someone else is a prick? Why should I be punished for that?

Sorry. I really needed to get that off my chest. Back to the story now: 

After spending a couple of days on Galveston Island in Texas – where I by the way got to hang out in the same bar as – wait for it- SWEET BROWN  (youtube it!) – , I took the train (The oh-so famous Amtrak, slower than the belgian NMBS) from Houston to New Orleans. Public transport is always an adventure in the US. Why, you ask? Well. There is none. And the few transports that do exist, seem to be unknown to anyone carrying a US passport. I swear on my new wheels (I’ll get to that later) that not even the local bus drivers can tell you where and when you can get a certain bus. 

Anyway, after an amazingly stunning 11 hour train ride, I finally make it to New Orleans. La Nouvelle Orléans. What a place. I still dream of it’s endless bars filled with Blues, Jazz, Grass, …, it’s beautiful small roads with picturesque little shops, the typical colored houses, the french street names, the Mississippi, and so on. After two days of wandering around in this amazing place, I hit the road again. Next Destination: Panama Beach City, in Florida.

When leaving New Orleans, I immediately feel like I made the right decision to start biking again here. There are bike roads, the climate is still hot, but a little more bearable than it was in Texas. On this first day, I make it to a little place close to Sidel, about 85 km from New Orleans, I find a small RV park, and camp out there for the night. Not bad for a first day! 

The next couple of days will be one big emotional roller coaster. And I am not prepared for that at all. I go from camping in the back of a church, after being rejected by 3 other churches, to people paying for spots on a campground, people inviting me into their houses (Thank you Jodie), being offered free camping space, to someone paying for an actual hotel room.

The hotel room day was probably the worst day of them all. Over all I had had a lovely week: camping in state parks, camping on the lovely Dauphin Island, taking the ferry off the island, being offered a ride for a couple of miles by a lovely family, and Jodie. She offered to drive me over a 3 mile long bridge to Pensacola beach Island, to a state park, where I was planning to camp out. Turns out the campsite was full, so she offered me to stay in her house, and fed me delicious smoothies! What a wonderful woman.

But by the day I was supposed to arrive in Panama Beach City, everything seemed to be going wrong. I could not find a place to stay, so I decided to bike a couple of miles back to a state forest. Once I get there, It turned out to be impossible to find the designated camp spots     … and it starts raining. No, raining would not be the right word to describe that. The whole forest turned into a freaking swamp in less than 2 minutes. On top of that, I run a flat. For some reason, this just breaks me. There I am, in the middle of a forest, all by myself, crying. I somehow manage to drag myself and my bike back to the road, and start fixing the flat. Ah, if only it had been just a flat… Once I fixed the tube (I am starting to turn into a real bike-mechanic!), I notice something else. My whole back wheel is – sorry for the language guys – fucked up. There are really no other words to put it. I panic. It’s at least 5 miles back to the closest town, and even there I wouldn’t find a place to stay…

But then… George stops. An invalid marine veteran, with a love for biking. He literally picks up what’s left of me, and offers me to stay with him in the nearby Marine NSA basis, where he has a room. He is retired, and bored, and adopts me as his new welfare project. Once we get to the base, we immediately get pulled over. It’s illegal to try to get into the base with someone of a foreign nationality. A second panic attack gets the upper hand of me: what if I get thrown out of the country? But, end good, all good: the officer could not fail to notice that I really wasn’t much more than a badly organised cross country biker! George ends up paying for a hotel room, for which I will be eternally grateful (especially since hotel rooms here cost about a month’s worth of travelling for me!). He finds some cheap second hand wheels for me in a pawn shop, and we fix the bike before lunch!

To be fair, I’m really not feeling like hitting the road again that day… I am suddenly hit by the fact that I should start planning things from now on, to avoid finding myself crying, in a forest, in the rain (yes it really could be a scene from a bad romcom). I decide to enjoy the free wi-fi of McDonald’s (the people who know me will know that this is really a sign of my desesperation – I would never go to McDonald’s, unless being very desperate or depressed). When I open my mailbox, I see I got a message from Billy, a couchsurfer, who invites me to stay at his house. Praise the Lord for Couchsurfing! And so here I am, in Panama City Beach, staying with Billy, planning my trip.

It’s been a rough week. And more rough weeks are to come. Hopefully I’ll get better at this. But I guess I learn a bit every day, right?

.    

Thank God for Texans and Pick-up Trucks

After spending a couple of great days in Dallas with my jungle-buddy Davis – who helped me with all the preparations of my upcoming trip: driving me to stores, taking me to buy a bike, etc. – I feel it is time to hit the road towards Port Aransas, to visit my friend Katie. So there I go.

I leave Dallas on the morning of the 6th of July. Set my alarm at five in the morning, got up at 7. Getting that early start: FAIL. But, no real battles lost so far. I take the DART (train) to the south side of the city, and start finding my way of of there. This turns out to be nearly impossible. I cannot believe how big Dallas is.

Luckily, there’s not too much sun. It’s only about 33 degrees Celsius. YAY. This means that I can probably ride through the afternoon, on the hottest hours of the day. Bad idea. Result: enormous sunburns, near dehydration, and a painful reminder why this side of Texas is called the Hill Country. (thank you to all of the kindhearted people that felt sorry for me and offered me water). About 6 hours into my trips I must have had 2 panick attacks, and about fifty-six breaks. Boy, is it hot in this country.

Around eight o’ clock, I realize it is probably time to start looking for a place to camp. I end up camping in the backyard of a cowboy-family, and watching bear grills with the grandfather.

Day 2: I am getting better at this waking up thing, I leave the cowboy’s yard at around seven in the morning feeling refreshed after a good night’s sleep. The biking was amazing! For the first 200 meters, at least. That’s when the bike breaks down. What to do, what to do? I decide on trying the international ‘HELP ME MY VEHICLE BROKE DOWN’ sign a.k.a. ‘wave your arms up and down’. After the first five cars pass I’m starting to get a little bit nervous, it’s going to be a walk of at least 20 miles back to the next town…. that will take me the whole day… and get me no closer to Port Aransas. Luckily, car (read: big-ass pick-up truck) 7 stops. A realty agent, who takes me to see some houses before he drives me to the nearest town, Waxahachie. Their bike shop doesn’t open until eleven in the morning, but no worries, there is a Mexican place right across the street from it, which gives me about 2 hours to stuff myself with all kinds of delicious tacos and about 3 liters of terrible coffee. Somewhere in between taco number 5 and 6, a friendly looking man walks up to me and starts asking me questions about my trip. He turns out to be a very nice man, and a cyclist! He is so fascinated by my adventure, that he decides to wait for me until the shop opens, and make sure my bike gets fixed. Thank God for this man. The mechanic cannot fix my bike, and the nearest shop that can fix it, is about another 20 miles back (by which time I would nearly be back in Dallas). Carl decides to drive me there, wait with me, and once the bike is fixed, he decides to drive me to a little town called Hillsboro, to make up for the time I lost in the morning. Bless this man. And his mother’s oatmeal cookies are probably the best thing I ever had.

That night I make it to Waco -after spending the afternoon riding down highway 77 in what is still for obvious reasons called the Hill Country- , and I camp in an RV camp a little north of the town. The owners of the camp let me stay there for free, use the shower, and even buy me a beer ! During the night I wake up because of a scary noise. No snakes or scorpions, – those things can’t get to me anymore – I wake up to the sound of my bike rack breaking, my worse fear. No rack, no way to transport my luggage, no way to bike. So, the next morning I have to rely on the random goodness of strangers again…. No biggie, the owner’s son will drive me to the nearest bike shop right away, and even gives me his number in case something goes wrong. Thank God for Texans! 

The rack ends up costing me 65 dollars, which is 50 dollars more than the Walmart version cost me, but it looks like it will be more than worth it. By the time it is installed on the bike, it’s already 12, the hottest hour of the day…. I decide to hitch-hike with the bike, at least a couple of miles, and wait out the heat. This was the best decision I ever made, turns out, the Hill Country is big. And its hills even bigger. Let me shortly list the amazing people I met this afternoon: the Mexican immigrant, who told me all about his illegal crossing the Mexican border into Texas, the rodeo cowboy, the couple of tow-truckers, who bought me a burger, and showed me a great time, and last but not least: the African american dad and his son, who showed me around several antique dealers and let me camp in their yard in Yoakum, a small town just a little bit north of Victoria. And so day 3 turns out to be an amazing day after all, even though not much biking was done.

Day 4: I finally get the super early start I had been dreaming of all week, I’m on the bike at 5.30 in the morning! What an amazing way to start the day! The biking is absolutely beautiful, it feels like I am gliding through a painting. I stop for a first small break in a little town about 25 miles further, and decide to make my way to the next town, another 20 miles, where I’ll stop to wait until the heat dies down. Turns out the other small town is very small. It counts exactly 2 houses and no place whatsoever to get some lunch, and more importantly, some air-conditioning. Completely exhausted from biking 45 miles before 11 o’clock in the morning, this nearly breaks me. I don’t know what to do… the next town is another 20 miles, and it is getting hot, too hot to bike. Luckily, another saviour finds his way to me. -‘If I would like a ride to the next town?’ -Yes Please! -‘If I have money to eat?’ Yes sir, please do not worry about me – I reckon I must have looked and smelled like a homeless person by that time- Once again, people in Texas are way too nice.

In the next town, I find a subway (the restaurant). While I am devouring a meatball sub (I might have picked up eating meat in the past 4 months 😉 ), another guy walks up to me and starts asking me questions about my trip. ‘Oh, you’re going to Corpus Christi?’, well, just hop in my truck, I’m going that way!

So I end up getting to corpus on Thursday. A day early. BAM. To conclude my first week biking I must come to a couple conclusions. I was not ready for this (even though everybody had warned me about this), biking in Texas is horrible, since there are no bicycle roads (even though everybody had warned me about this), and it is hot in this state (even though everybody had warned me about this).

After a couple of days of resting, and spending time with Katie and her wonderful family, I (we) come to the conclusion that I have to admit failure. I am not going to abort mission. But I will report the mission to New Orleans. That’s where I’ll get on my bike again. There are bike roads, it is flat, and I will no longer have to suffer southern winds while riding south. I guess the first key to success is to be able to admit failure, and to find the courage to change your plans. 

I Want to Ride a Bicycle.

Almost 4 months into my big adventure, and 10 Km into a 25 km hike in the Peruvian sacred valley, I’m trying to decide what to do with my 2 months in the USA. After 2 months of hitch-hiking in Chile and Argentina, riding mules in the Bolivian jungle, and many more adventures, something just doesn’t seem right about bussing my way through the States. So what to do?

15 Km into that same hike – it was a long and lonely day-, my mind gets stuck on biking my way through the states. This is in every single point of view a terrible idea, and I know it. Here are the two main reasons why I will probably want to burn the bike after about 2 days: Firstly; It will be hot, very hot, and starting my trip in Dallas, TX probably won’t help that. Secondly, the ride will be about 3000 km, in less than two months. I mean, I can cycle, but to be fair I’m nowhere near being Eddy Merkx-. Even though I have plenty of reasons not to do this, the idea is set in my mind. And there seems to be no way to get it out. The more people tell me I shouldn’t to it, the deeper the idea sinks into my mind (I wonder whom I got all this stubbornness from, dad?).

So there we go, the plans are made -read: the decision is made-. To avoid forgetting, to avoid feeling all to lonely and to keep my mind occupied in the warm afternoons, I decide to start writing my adventures down, thus, the birth of The Bicycle Diaries.

Welcome to my blog! Feel free to comment, laugh, and most of all, encourage me (I’m starting to think I’ll need it)

Love,

Loes