Good weather today. Cycled London roads, around Osterley park and all the way south to Syon Park. All in all about 17km. Felt great. A bit grimy. Could do another 17km easily. I'm alive again.
Cycling
Got my bike back!
Finally had a chance to make the short trip from my buddy Kamil's to my new home. I feel so much more mobile now! If there's a sudden nuclear holocaust I can still get out of the city by bicycle! Yay!
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Cycling
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Daily Life
Adventure
I got my nail cut off yesterday. It's been hurting for as long as I can remember, and finally I went to the doctor and got it fixed. Before cutting into me though, they had to sedate my entire toe. It felt extremely weird to not be able to feel my toe. It's as if some dead body part happened to be dangling on to my foot. I had to resist the urge to pinch it or smash it just to see if I would feel anything.
You may wonder how this is related to adventure. The answer is: not at all. But because I wanted to blog about my toe experience I remembered an incident almost 2 years ago, back in Japan, when I was very suddenly reminded of my own mortality. It was in the evening, in pitch black darkness. I was cycling at speed on the main road south from Atsugi towards the ocean, Eurobeat music blaring in my ears, getting pumped up for a good exercise run. There's a crossing that's very difficult to get on to if you're a cyclist driving on the road, so I always take the footpath on there, cycle a bit further, and then jump onto the road at full speed when there's no traffic around. The area between footpath and car road is obfuscated by trees and it was hard for me to see in the dark, but that's no excuse for missing the giant truck that nearly hit me when I switched from footpath to road. He swerved and honked at me loudly, then just went on driving. It took me a second to realize that I would have been very dead if had I switched lanes a fraction of a second later.
At the time I didn't place a lot of value on that moment. In fact, I think I just cycled on towards the sea, not knowing what else I should do. I couldn't imagine myself cowering in fear of getting hit again and turning back, so I just kept going. And that was it. I didn't think I'd ever remember this moment again, but it comes back to me a lot. Whenever I think about my mortality, I remember that moment. Quite possibly the closest I've ever come to death. I like remembering this moment, because when I do, I am reminded that I'm still alive.
But I'm still not talking about adventure. Well, here's the link. I remember blogging about the aforementioned incident, so I looked for 'cycling truck', but couldn't find it. What I did find though, was some of the best things I'd written during my cycling trip to Kyushu last year. And I was amazed. Reading back the things I wrote I can hardly imagine that I was the same person I am now. I've changed, and not for the better. And who can I blame for that?
I blame Europe. I blame Western culture. I blame capitalism. I blame banks. I blame Holland. I blame the UK. I blame my family for being Dutch. I blame my friends for having jobs. I blame myself for willingly submitting to the endless dread that is hunting for jobs, and I blame myself even more for accepting a horrible horrible job in London with no prospects of ever seeing the sun again.
Alright, most of what I wrote above is bullshit, but it does feel good to get it off my chest. Ignore the above paragraph. What I was trying to say is that I blame Home. Home is the cause of all my negative experiences. Home is the reason I am slumping. Home is what is killing me. Life in Japan was an adventure exactly because it was never supposed to be permanent. It was home, but it wasn't Home. It was something long-term, yet temporary. It wouldn't have lasting consequences in life that could not be undone. (This is my fear of commitment speaking). When I'm in Holland, living with my parents, I feel at Home. So much so in fact, that I become a different person. A worse person. I slump. I become too comfortable. I just don't bother any more. When I went to London last year to find a job, I went there with the mindset of finding a future Home, and I dreaded the thought of continuing my life as that person, lifeless and comfortable. That's what killed me.
I know this is a mental thing. It's just a matter of shifting your mindset from the concept of Home to the concept of 'a temporary place to stay while living the grand adventure that is life'. It shouldn't make a difference to the present whether I know where I'll be 6 months from now or not. But it does. It's all in the mind.
As closing thoughts, I've probably offended a lot of people by telling them their country sucks or their life sucks. I've advised a lot of friends who were unhappy with their jobs to quit immediately and start doing the things they like. I stand by most of what I said, but I do want to offer this as an explanation: it's not that I have a problem with specific countries, jobs, people or personalities, but I have an innate dislike of the concept of Home, so I will do anything I can to disrupt it. I'm not going to justify any of this. I'm not going to say that the world will be a better place if people care less about Home. All I'm saying is that it works for me, and I have no desire to change that part of myself. In fact, it's the part of myself that I am most proud of.
And on that note, I'm off to London. Starting a new Adventure.
Compassbell 2: The Revenge
So my old compass bell broke in transit after Sicily. Here's picture of v1.0. The new one is spherical and surprisingly accurate for a 6 pound trinket. I am pleased.
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Cycling
Cycling
I have cycled for nearly every day for the past 2 weeks. Exceptions were rainy days and days that I went for a walk instead (which were not many). My usual trip around the lake went a lot easier than before the Sicily trip, more proof that I became fitter. Every day cycling seems to get easier, and I've been adding little pieces onto my route day by day, expanding a 25km route into a 40km one. I'm still very overweight, but I'm also fit. A strange combination.
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Cycling
Elevation Profiles
Google Earth is amazing! I was mapping the route we cycled in Sicily and found out it has a built-in altitude display that shows the exact elevation of a path. All you have to do is right-click the path and click 'Show Elevation Profile'. I love Google Earth. Here's the route we did, and here is the kmz file you can use to view the path in Google Earth.
Note that neither the route nor the elevation is entirely accurate. The reason the paths may be inaccurate is because I may have misremembered some of the roads we took. The reason the elevation is inaccurate is because it doesn't take into account tunnels or bridges. The elevation image shows us descending down into deep values and ascending over high mountains but in truth we were just taking the bridges and tunnels conveniently placed there for us.
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Closing thoughts on Sicily
Alright, so it's been over a week now and I still haven't really blogged about the trip (except for the liveblogging). I've pretty much cooled down so much that I only have a handful of things to say about it. Let's start with an imagedump: Sicily part one, two and three.
Sicily was just awesome. I was expecting to see beautiful landscapes, and I got them. It's truly a great place to cycle around in, especially the countryside. The urban area around Palermo wasn't too bad, although we had to do a 400m climb just to get to the coastline because the only other road was a highway. That's still a lot better than Catania, for which the only road going south was the highway.
Speaking of Catania, I would like to mention how much it sucked for cycling. The trip from the airport to the city center took us through the most dodgy areas I have ever cycled in, and it did look very very slummy. This coming from a guy who loved the city center of Catania and pretty much every other bit of Sicily. It doesn't help that we had to cycle on the bloody highway to get to Augusta, the next big town south of Catania. We encountered an alternate route, which was already on the map, but hadn't been completely built yet. That was a 10km detour. Besides that incident we encountered a lot of examples or modern architecture, road network design and other things like that which just made me think: Italians suck at building things.
The people of Sicily were extremely nice! They were all very friendly and we usually managed to convey our thoughts, despite our obvious dismastery of the language. Interacting with Sicilians is quite fun. Informal, sometimes random, sometimes impunctual, all in all very un-northern-european :D The Sicilian personality shines through in traffic as well, although busy cities like Palermo and Catania are quite different from the countryside. As usual, I prefer the countryside, although I remember my travelmates saying they liked being back in the city when we arrived at Palermo.
Have I mentioned the food? Because it was great. Every little thing I ate in Sicily was blessed with a very strong flavor. Everything just tasted... stronger, than in Holland. I still remember the delicious food we had at an olive farm one night. So delicious. It wasn't too expensive either, and neither were the hotels. The 3 of us could usually get a bed at a B&B or hostel for under 25€ each. I should note that we didn't camp at all, so I can't comment on how easy it is to find camping places or other places to pitch your tent.
The thing that I remember most about the trip though, is the cycling. The feeling of waking up in one town, cycling the whole day and then ending up in another town. That's the real essence of touring cycling. It's such a great feeling to cycle one-way only. It's been in a year since I had that feeling, and I'm glad I found it again. I started out really weak, but as we climbed more and more hills my leg muscles found back the strength from last year, and finally during the last few days of the trip I was able to enjoy the tough bits again. All this cycling inspired me to go on a cycling trip again this summer. I'll probably cycle back from London to Groningen, but I might make a few detours along the way. A plan is slowly forming in my head..
So, to summarize: Sicily: bloody great! Highly recommended and well worth a visit.
Asphaltcam in Sicily
Well, it shows more asphalt than Sicily, but you get the idea. There's also the full 9min+ version, but you will quickly grow tired of my foot nearly kicking the camera about 20000 times.
Why I like long distance cycling
It's quite hard for other people to understand my 'obsession' for touring cycling. The usual response I get is "Why don't you just take the train?". Other people are more understanding, like hikers and high-speed cyclists. But there is this unique experience about long distance cycling that is especially compelling to me, and it's exactly this experience that is the reason why I like long distance cycling.
Some people assume I cycle for the sport of it. The achievement of doing 100km a day on a road with many uphills on a bicycle loaded with luggage is by no means easy, and I do get a profound sense of satisfaction from being able to accomplish it. I like how cycling makes me lose weight, I like how it makes me fit. But it is by no means the main reason of why I cycle.
The main reason I cycle to places is because I believe that to truly understand a place, you must experience all parts of it, including how to get there, how to navigate there, and how to spend the night there. Cycling gives you the most complete experience of a place. If you're in a car you can't just stop on a bridge to take a photo or enjoy the view, and you'll have tons of trouble finding a parking space in a busy town or city. Walking might work but you'd be too limited in range and amount of luggage you can carry. A fit guy on a touring bike though, can go anywhere and bring with him everything that he could possibly need.
I've traveled with a lot of people both in Japan and Europe, and the vast majority of them don't get this. They don't appreciate the journey. They don't appreciate the points between destinations. They don't take the time to form a mental image in their mind of how two places are connected, how things are related to each other. To them, two towns are just two unrelated towns, and the train ride or bus ride in-between is meant for sleeping. To me, the distance between towns is the most important part. That's the area where you learn about why the towns are where they are, how they were formed, how people used to travel between them in the old days. It's also where you see the most beautiful landscapes.
You can experience a town in any number of ways: by tour bus, train, tram, metro, whatever. You can practice sports in any number of ways too: high-speed cycling, running, hiking, they'll all make you lose weight and make you more fit. But none of those things can make you experience and appreciate an area quite as good as long-distance cycling. The journey is what's most important, and long distance cycling will give you the best journey you could possibly imagine.
A horror story
Our homecoming did not go well. Everything that could possibly go wrong, did go wrong.
The first thing I should mention is the organization that is responsible for our horrible evening: Alitalia is the worst airline ever. When checking in they tried to make us pay extra for the bicycles, even though we already confirmed 3 times by phone and in person that we didn't need to pay extra if we only checked in the bicycles and not anything else. But this is not because Alitalia are trying to scam us, it's just that they're idiots. After weighing the bicycles a random security guy from Palermo airport showed up and took our bicycles to the security checkpoint. That is: dragged the bicycle bags over the floor in a rather devastating way. Carelessness is the word that best describes Alitalia.
Upon arrival in the UK all three of us were giddy to get home, and we decided to assemble the bikes at the airport, since it's only a short ride home. That's when we first noticed how Alitalia treated our bikes. There were holes everywhere in our (expensive!) bicycle bags. Very very bad. While assembling the bikes there were some major pieces completely broken. Kamil's gear wires were completely messed up and Tim's frame was so bent that the rear wheel could not possible fit, making his bike unfixable for the time being. Since Tim had to get back to Oxford I let him use my bike, which was in surprisingly good state (albeit dirty as hell). Kamil managed to fix his bike so he went with Tim to the train station, which is next to Kamil's place. He would pick up his car and then drive to the airport to pick me up, as well as the broken bicycle, and all the luggage that was still with me: a whopping 8 panniers, 2 bicycle racks and a bunch of heavy camping stuff.
About 20 minutes after Kamil started cycling I realized that I still had his car keys in my backpack. Suffice to say we were both not very happy. I'm usually the guy who remembers where things are, reminding people not to forget things. This time I forgot too. Kamil took a lot longer than expected to cycle home, so I (very, extremely) grudgingly agreed to somehow carry 3 people's worth of luggage onto the train. This was an extremely frustrating endeavour. I had to transfer once, and carry the damn luggage all the way from one end of the platform to the next. I have not in a very long time been so pissed off. Nobody dared approach me at the platform because I looked like I would throw them in front of the train if they dared speak a word to me. I waited for 30 fucking minutes until the right train finally arrived.
Finally I did arrive at the right train station, and Kamil was there waiting for me, just as pissed off as I was, and a lot colder. He'd been waiting outside at the train station for 30 minutes, trying to avoid drunk people and other shady characters. Carrying the super-heavy luggage up the stairs was quite a challenge. Having to pass several more shady looking characters did not make things any easier, but my face was set on war mode, and nobody approached us. We finally managed to drag the stuff up to Kamil's place, but what a horrible experience it was. For me it was definitely the worst ending of all trips I ever did, ever. And none of it would have happened if Alitalia had just been a bit more careful with our bicycles..
On the bright side, Sicily was absolutely fantastic. It's such a beautiful island, and the people are great. I'll blog more about that later, when I get the photos and the notes sorted. Right now I really need some sleep..