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?

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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