life @ 13

peru, part 1

the past week has reminided me that travelling by bicycle is really a compromise. the uncontested best way to travel, if you're looking to get as close as possible to a country and people, is to go by foot. hands and knees might be a little too much. but by foot, you see everything, you are vulnerable to everything, nobody misses you and you miss practically nobody.

what reminded me of this? i was dumped in an "underprivileged" part of Lima at 6am, with nothing to do but wander around. one of the great things about the bus, besides being an excellent place to think, is that it often drops you somewhere strange and unfamiliar -- whereas on the bike you always ease your way into things.
i had a good 6 hours to catch the next bus onward to Cusco, and once the bus terminal security woke me up from my uncomfortable nap (head on top of arms on top of chair in front of me) and said that the only reasonable way to catch my next bus was to take a $4 taxi, i knew the best way to go would be to walk. every person i asked for directions along the way said i should be in a taxi. excellent sign. only had to turn around once because of shady looking blocks. i was looking for one of the largest avenues in the city; half the people i asked directions from claimed not to know how to get there. i was tired and got a little heatstroked again, looking like a total fool with my 2.5L bottle of water in one hand, red fleece jacket in the other, cowboy hat on top and beard protecting my cheeks. every little store and bakery i stopped at had a separate person at the cash register, all behind bars so thick you could not even be certain there was a person behind them. 90% of the shops i passed were selling car parts or small repairs. Lima is spotted with some big supermarkets, all playing a jingle based on "mambo #5" with the recurring theme "you must buy". I was in a good enough mood to actually make conversation with a guy on the street who started off with the typical "hey! gringo! tourist! lots of money!". i still feel that those who have the privilege to wander the world with a working bank card have an obligation to make cultural exchanges where possible.

going back a little, i spent 5 good days relaxing at the casa de ciclistas (google it), a guy named Lucho allows all travelling cyclists to crash at his little house/shop for free for as long as they want. an unparalleled hangout. the sad part is my body needed those 5 days to relax.
Trujillo has the worst traffic i have ever encountered. not as blazing fast as medellin, but at a maximum degree of anarchy.

and now i'm in Cusco with my gringo pal Miranda, both of us taking it easy for the first day at 11000'. a little touristy, but like most gringofied towns, you can always walk a few blocks away and find some locals to befriend.

the camera is back

an early hiatus from my hiatus

i had already planned to meet some friends in south peru and northern chile at the end of the month, so when things were not healing on their own, i decided to cheat a little, take a bus to northern peru (trujillo), and do whatever i could to get better. a couple weeks ago, my desire to keep going manifested itself in riding through being ill...now the desire manifests in rest. i look the last day riding into Loja with almost 8 hours on the bike and 2400m of climbing and wonder how i didn't collapse mid-ride

details would be a little off-topic, but i have found much, much better help here and expect to be in good shape in a week or two...but not back on the bike for almost a month. i'm worried about bike withrawl more than anything else.

the plan is to hang out here in Trujillo for about a week, then head down to Cusco, hang out for 10ish days around there, then down to the Atacama desert for a chunck of days, then back up to Trujillo to start cycling again, La Paz being the goal for completing leg 2.

i've learned not to speak for a country as a whole based on a few days and one part, but so far i'm very pleased with this border crossing. the peruvians have impressed me with the combination of energy and manyana that i enjoy about latin america. this part of peru seems both poorer and more developed than ecuador. shit is damn cheap. the 3.2:1 exchange rate highlights just how cheap...the number value of items in soles are similar to dollars. the weather in the northern peruvian desert is spectacular...dry, windy and 90 during the day, cooling off to the 60s at night. just a few miles from the ocean.

blah

still in Loja. there is a new rule now....when you're sick, particularly with respiritory infections, do not ride. even though i was clearly well enough to cycle from cuenca, it was not a good idea. just because your legs can carry you doesn't mean you should let them.
much better now, but i'm still on for a couple more days of rest.

The Sprit Catches You and You Stop at Page 60

man's best friend is going down for the count

pics updated

i admit that i did not explore very much, and it clearly had a certain kind of charm (a unesco world heritage site, whatever that means), but by my standards cuenca fell just on the other side of awesome...and this is with lots of awesome ice cream and real coffee. without those it would have fared worse. maybe i'm being unfair (note: search blog, i seem to say this a lot), but when i walk into a store and someone shouts to the back "ingles!" as if because of mywhite face and hands and red hair i cannot communicate in spanish. this happened twice. but i got some good things done...the bike has the correct number of teeth, there is a dreamy new $50 .25" of padding between my ass and the seat, and i'm a little leaner and meaner -- 7 lbs less crap, and apparently 10 lbs less me.

so i left the city on time...but after 6 crappy hours sleep. and i'm still near the depths of a cold. and my body is only about 80% as far as the food processing goes.

BUT

for the first time in a couple weeks, i have SPIRIT. it feels good to turn the cranks. the legs are flowing with ease. once the morning food goes down, i'm actually generating some real power. hell yeah.

the road is flat and busy for 20k, then it turns off and even though it's still the panamerica, it's quiet....like a car a minute quiet. quiet enough to listen to mozart quiet. then is climbs 800m at a fairly severe 8% grade...and near the top of this ascent are two big ass dogs, one of which gets a mouthhold on your pannier. you are not pleased, and for a few moments you are not at all one with the world.

then you reach the top....the road is brand spanking new concrete, you get a 10k cruise along the top of the ride, the view is excellent on both sides, the carfee air is delicious, it's a pleasant 60 degrees -- feels like freedom. hell yeah. ups and downs for a while, wait out some rain, descend 1000m, ascend 400, and you're in oña, hanging out near a peace corps volunteer from minnesota who is at least a little drunk and is more interested in talking to the people she has seen every day for a year than you. no big deal, at all. then the family invites you in, makes a bigass meal of soup and rice/lentils/chicken/salad, says they have a bed for you (no hotels here), let you spend the night, make coffee and eggs in the morning and send you off with a shot of whiskey. only notsoawesome part of this is they are running a business, and charge you a slightly steep $10 for all this. oh well. 105 km and 1700m of climbing, a sportsman's day

got up early today and was on the road by 7. road went up right from the start, from 2000 to 2900. i'm really not a morning climber. afterwards, it's pretty much a day in the office....if the ecuadorian andes are your office. thank god for the ipod...it really helps on the climbs, which can get particularly boring. the descents and scenery were spectacular today, though. another climb from 2150 to 2850, down again, some upward blips on the descent, up from 2275 to 2450 at 9%, down to 2300, then up to 2700. i really flew up the last climb, took just over 40 minutes of wheel-spinning time (14 minutes per 100m is average, 11 is pretty fast....when i was sick coming out of ambato i was struggling to climb 100m every 30 mins). lots of wind at the top of the ridge, a couple little climbs which tried to finish me off, then 800m of descent into Loja...a university town, maybe my favourite kind. 69 miles, 7:40 on the bike, and 7800' of climbing, not a flat spot the entire way.

taking a rest day to kill the cold and eat lots, then 2 more days and i'm in the desert in Peru. Unless plans change, i might not see the andes again until late march (going to take a vacation from the "vacation").

new wars, new enemies

the lows are OK

i'm sure everyone has this expererience at some point. when one or two things stop going your way, it's usually not a big deal, and you keep going and wait for them to pass. but if enough things happen and you reach the critical mass of bullshit, i think it's only natural to fall down a little

and fall i did. if we ever got into a deep conversation about cycling saftey, i would certainly point out that since i, personally, have made pretty much every mistake there is to be made on a bicycle, i am better off than most because i am pretty well aware of just about everything that can go wrong. but i found a new one (or a new combination).....a fairly rapidly-deflating front tire, moving at low speed, distracted by the little village i just entered, sand, and a turn. in my experience, most cycling accidents involve the bike sliding out from under you. this time, i'm moving pretty slowly, and the road rash was pretty minor. take out any one of those above circumstances, and only my feet touch the ground.

the bad news was the fall wasn't the bottom. i was up and running soon enough, the only real problem was that one of the scrapes was on my palm which did not make for much riding comfort (i'm really missing the bike shorts now, too). the next day, even though i could tell that my body had finally turned the corner and was going to start accepting and processing food in a more normal way, and i had done 1200m of climbing at an average 5% grade on a shitty road, and had met a couple good characters along the way (someone forced me to take $1), and had figured out how to deal with the endless dogs (bark loudly and carry a big stick), the real enemy appeared. the fucking clouds and rain.

i'm sure at the time i came up with numerous justifications for this, but i think in the end it was worth bruising my pride to keep the depression away...i took the bus out of the clouds. no big deal, really.

the good news is that i'm already regrouping. the bike has been slowly eating away at its chain, hopefully this will be fixed. i'm going to get rid of some stuff i'm not using...always feels good to be travelling light. i will get some bike shorts no matter what the cost. i met a dutch cyclist going the other direction on the way to cuenca...been riding with the same stuff for 25 years and had a really good spirit. somehow, i'm enjoying the constant bombardment of water balloons.
ecuador, in its humble way, is slowly growing on me, although i have to admit i miss the electricity of colombia. i have almost completely fixed my riding position on my little bike. my body is finally hungry like it's supposed to be.


pictures soon

the world IS flat

unforatuanately, the flat world is not really full of great things to blog about. me, i'm definitely a mountain person, but it's good to take a break from the religion once in a while. there are many months of the andes ahead of me

some have mentioned that it looks like i'm having too much fun....there is a case to be made, but it's worth noting that i leave a good amount of the crap out of this (bastard descents in the rain stay, though), because the shitty side of travelling makes for poor reading.

on that note, the weather is so fucking perfect here, you can swim in the 78 degree water in the very late afternoon in all your clothes (an easy way to wash), walk around the beach for a little while, eat a tasty and filling $2 fish dinner, be dry by the time you finish eating, and not be the slightest bit chilly once. seriously, you can descend from the high mountains to the beach in one day on a bike here (no the route i took a few days ago). maybe not THE life, but it's definitely one.

was an easy ride from guayaquil to Playas...the city is absolutly dead on sunday as everyone is at the beach. not that i needed to ask, but the locals confirmed that everyone comes back sun night, so i left a little after noon, cruised about 100k and arrived well before sunset. was really flying once i left the city, averaging 27 k/hr, but my body reminded me that this is not sustainable in 95 degree weather. rained the second half of the ride, but in ths climate it's welcomed.

gave the bike a nice tune up today, evened up the number of spokes and trued the wheels...even cleaned the caked grease out of the drivetrain, which i know is largely pointless, but this time it revealed that, holy shit, i'm missing two teeth from the middle chainring and the tooth bearing all the load is badly sharkfinned. this explains the shifting weirdness from the granny ring to the middle. will have to look for one in guayaquil tomorrow (only reasonable way back is go pass through)

looks like i'm going to spend less than a week down at the coast here, but i'm glad i came. i'm reminded again that with great spirit comes incomprehensible spanish, but with incomprehensible spanish comes personal growth. in a couple days i should be back in the clouds, above 3000 yet again.

(PS more free internet for network and PC troubleshooting at the internet cafe)