Chris wrote a few mass e-mails of our time spent traveling together. I though I´d include them as another perspective as well as giving ya'll some lengthy reading to gnaw on.
I Am sure my body and brain are
still in shock from yesterdays ride. The words aren't quite coming to
me yet, I'm not even trying to understand spanish right now. My number
one goal today was to reach this city of Duitama and find ropa caliente-
warm clothes. Until this `point, my tank top cotton shirt has been
ample, and generally I was trying to keep it wet by soaking it in sinks
and streams so it would keep me cool. The climate has most definitely
changed for me. We entered the realm above the living yesterday where
the sounds of cows and donkeys and motorcycles and salsa music was
replaced with the dead still of rarefied mountain air. We entered a
crisp fall climate. I started noticing the difficulty in breathing well
before the mountain pass that would take me to 12,900 feet, under a an
overcast sky, depriving me of the rays of the setting sun. I grew
extremely hungry in my unusual fatigue, and stopped to eat a can of tuna
hoping my oxygen deprived body would eat it and not my own muscle
fiber- I thought of the stories of high elevation climbers and the
effects of elevation on the body and mind. I really had no idea how
high the climb would take me and grew a bit nervous, especially when my
head started spinning a bit and the white fuzzies showed up. I pictured
fluid seeping through the blood-brain barrier, and the arteriol walls
into my lungs I knew, fundamentally, the best thing to do at elevation
is to retreat in elevation, but I would have to summit first. I couldn't
decide weather I was hot or cold as I exerted my self with increasing
difficulty and decreasing velocity and experimented with my two layers-
my thin bergelene shirt and my thin goretex jacket. Pedeling non-stop
was no longer an option and I found my self unable to make my legs do
much on steeper climbs and had no choice but to walk the bike closer to
going down and away from the cold and closer to hot food. I kinda
forgot what I was doing and had to keep`telling myself out loud to go
forward, like I was my own horse. I pushed on and stumbled over the
rough rocky road. In the highest town, before domesticated life
stopped, where purple and pink blossoms indicated ripe potatoes, I found a
group of ruddy cheeked Andean looking people clothed in wool hats and
sweaters, sorting and washing potatoes- all I could do was stop and
stare dumbly. I was losing my ability to think due to oxygen
deprivation for certain. All I could think of was hot golden brown deep
fried potatoes. I stopped and talked for a while with a young man on a
horse, wearing a wool poncho that looked really warm. He told me the
summit was near and that I would go down the rest of the way to
Duitama. He also told me there was a tienda that sold arepas. My mind
had already ascended the pass and was eating hot arepas in a warm store,
maybe drinking a couple cold beers too. The fellow was right, it wasnt
much further, under normal circumstances, but as I gasped for air and
pedaled what I could and hiked mostly I found myself talking out loud a
lot, just begging the road that wound around mountain tops to stop going
up. I stopped a lot and stared and smiled at the shear mountain
summits, the sparse but colorful mountain vegetation of sage, lupin,
lilies, daisies, and hummocks of grass, clinging to the thin soil. I
knew I should be cold but I wasn't anymore, wearing only my sweat
soaked thermal shirt. I was in some kinda mountain zen state. Though
the road twisted and disappeared in front of me I could see the power
lines staring to go down- I knew I was close. I finally started feeling
really cold and put my rain jacket on to hold in whatever heat I had
left. The decent toward the store was about 6 kilometers and in that
time my fingers, nose and toes were pretty numb, and I was feeling
hypothermic and weak. When the store finally appeared around a bend on
the still jagged boulder and gravel road, and I saw the orange glow of a
fire inside, I smiled big. I asked for permission to enter the room
where two women were baking bread on a curious wood-fire oven setup, the
first of its kind Ive seen. The stone top had still white and flatish
round loaves that looked like cheese wheels with a brown top and bottom-
the first stage. On the sides were plump more round versions of the
previous, stacked in twos and rotating rapidly on little round pedstals
so as not to burn in the the direct heat of the flames. I really wasn't
sure what was being made but I asked for one. They asked if I wanted it
calient- did I ever! I first held the plump toasty bread wheel to warm
my hands and then devoured it and to my surprise found fresh melty
cheese inside- probably the single most enjoyable bread eating
experience Ive ever had. I ate two more hot ones, drank a cold
room-temperature beer to wash the bread down and bought two more to go
for breakfast. The sun was gone now and I was shaking from cold as soon
as I set foot outside- feeling fever coming on. The bright moon and
white sand and smoother road allowed me to descend another 5km or so in
hopes of finding warmer weather. At this point I hadnt seen Kurt in 8
hours, eye witnesses saw him miles ahead, but I thought maybe Id find
his campspot. I didn't find kurt and couldn't lose any more heat to
descending. I layed my tent out and slept right on top of it, with
throbbing head and heart, sucking air, I waited for my sleeping bag to
absorb yet more of my heat so it would loft and eventually make me
warm. I was really dehydrated and out of water- the high-dry-cold
mountain air may not steal your water through sweating but sucks it
right out of your airways. Eventually I did warm up and sleep and the
feverish feeling subsided. I awoke to the daylight and a light cold
rain, and packed my belonging as fast as I could and descended as fast as
I could, stopping to warm my hands in my pants and to drink stream
water and eat my breakfast bread. By the time I reached town this
morning it was only 9 am and within 30 minutes of lounging at a fruit
stand eating bananas and mandarin oranges, up rolled Kurt. A tortoise
and hair story.
He may not have seen me for several hours but I kept tabs on him. I would fall into my own pace and end up on ahead. When I hadn't seen him for a while I would stop and wait. Usually from some vantage point that I could see him a few switch backs down or coming over a distant rise. It was the chill and the cooling sweat that got me going soon as I saw that he was making progress. Though it was summit fever that had me blow right past that rural pandaria. I was feeling good and cranking out a good rhythm despite the thin oxygen and dropping temperature. I made the last saddle and stopped to wait. I walked around, jumped up and down and sang songs. I read, I shivered. 2+7* said he stopped at that last tienda (It did look warm and inviting). I couldn't wait anymore. That place was a good ways back. He is a big boy, his bike was working and he had options. It wasn´t gonna rain frozen chiwawas. I descended a few thousand feet and set up camp right on a big switch back. I didn´t figure he could pass without me hearing him rattle by. But he did.
*Word manglers note: If I though he was in any trouble what so ever, I would have gone back. In my 2+7 assessment was also: His gear- more than I carried for the entire Tour Divide. The temperature- well above freezing. Traffic and houses- fairly consistent. Chance of storm- pretty much none. Time of day- late afternoon with hours of light left.
And bit further down the road:
Finding the
perfect campsite at the end of a long day requires a bit of perfect timing and luck. The desired site will offer refuge from noise
and the beating morning sun. It will
offer a water source for cooking evening and morning meals, and some form of
bathing which I enjoy before I retire to my solo man cave for my daily
reflection, reading writing and rest. Hopefully
the rest subsides to a continuous sleep until either my urge for the morning
roast or bowel movement move me first. The
search begins when the star that lights our world shows signs of retiring for
the day (at least in this part of the rock i reside). Strange as it may seem, the sun has been
setting at about 6:30. Being this close
to the equator, I had no real idea of what season it would be upon arrival and
what weather patterns to anticipate let alone the time of the sunset. I knew we would be upon a cusp of the
inverted patterns of the Southern Hemisphere relative to the North, of my known
existence. It turns out there are really
two predominant seasons (estaciones del ano), invierno and verano (winter and
summer), and logically if it is summer up home I knew that if I continued south
enough it would be winter, and since I’ve lived in Florida for the past two
winters I was looking forward to some snow and briskness. What I didn’t realize was that here in the
center of the country, still a few degrees north of the equatorial boundary,
winter is beginning. At lower elevations
this means rainy season, at high elevations as I found out as I watched some
misty precipitation trying really hard to be sleet, that it would mean people
dressed like they were going to a football game, that is if they wore wool ponchos to football
games. Farm animals are also endowed in
winter coats. Even the Pigs had long
pink wooly coats.
After
suffering through the hot and now having cold thrust on me, my body and
wardrobe had to go through changes. I still shaking a phlemy cough. I
had to remember how to layer clothing again, and find a perfect combination for
physical exertion- for going uphill vs going downhill. I bought a nice microfleece hoodie and a
beautiful hand knit sheep wool hat (gorro de lana oveja) and some cheap
rubberized work gloves. On the climb up
to Lago Tota, I stripped layers off down to my cotton tank top and remained as
such in the rising morning sun, as a numerous local cycle group passed me in
pairs and lone ascenders. After a couple
thousand feet of continous ascending (my body adapting but not yet fully
adapted to the diet air), despite my high respiration rate I was starting to
cough up the cold air that I tried so hard to oxygenate my blood with and had
to add a layer. By the time we reached
the summit at lago Tota, and lounged around at the cyclist café I was wearing
everything I had and still downing hot water and honey to keep warm. We had the opportunity to converse with one
of the cyclist for a long while who spoke good English and joined him and a
small group for a partial circumnavigation of the lake. It certainly felt like a crisp late fall bike
ride around a mountain lake where little local Andean farm people in ponchos
and felt hats, harvested their pink purple and white blossoming potato crops
and onion cropsThere was also a fair compliment of peas growing up their
strings and sticks. I couldn’t help but
think of a hot onion and tater soup with cheesy bread floating on top. Fury
cows and horses and mules and pigs and wooly puffy sheep lazily grazed or just
stood in still motion in response to the windy cold- their shag and manes
playing in the gusts. With an optimal
clothing selection I comfortably lazily rode and gazed around the emerald
waters below, picturing the trout slowly scanning its cold oxygen rich depths,
and picturing me dragging a worm in front of their faces. In reality most of the trout industry is farm
raised in little floating pens. I didn’t
see anyone fishing in dugout canoes like in the Magdalena River valley.
We decided
to head toward my current location of Miraflores, a relaxed but lively picturesque
vacation mountain town, just out of reach of the hubbub of the Urban centers of
Bogota and Tunja. With two hours of
sunlight left we were in campsite procurement mode but still had plenty of
brisk riding left. A climb out of the
lake cauldron and into the land of mystical mountain majesty brought us into a
sheer rocky valley that played with clouds like toys, first thrusting them up, splitting
them in half, and capturing pieces to spin into cotton candy between their summits. Climbing ever higher we eventually arrived
within a cloud and cycled up rugged rock in an alpine wonderland of condensation
encrusted flowers and mossy boulders and stunted trees. Jagged pyramidal shaped peaks took turns
showing their summits as the clouds split and swirled in this ethereal world of
massive noiseless forces. The summit relinquished
a descent to top all previous descents in steepness and rockiness. With brakes nearly fully engaged we made our controlled
skidding thumping way in the diminishing foggy light down this stream bed that
passes for an Andean Mountain road.
Kurt scoped a pasture immediately near an unoccupied home. At that moment, to our astonishment, a public
transportation bus scaled up this eroded roadway- a ride on this bus wouldn’t be
magical or mysterious but more like being a kernel in a popcorn machine or a
ping pong ball in a select 5 number lottery.
we set up tents in the few flat unshatupon pieces of property. The resident cows here would have to be the
most athletically fit in Colombia to locate decent grass in this precipitous
switchback slope that serves as pastureland.
The river valley was clearly audible below us but totally obscured in
fog, but it could have been another hour thumping in twilight down to it and
by then dark would make camping procurement even more difficult, so we settled
for relatively clear drainage ditch water to do the cooking. The thing with a campsite like this is that
it becomes very difficult to pack up and leave when you awake to cloud severing
summits high up in Gods country, and the sun warms your cold nose in the
incipient hours of the day and dark Colombian coffee sipping and reading
literature and reveling in existence take precedent. Cycling just seems like a way to find the next
meal or campspot sometimes, and what for when you have a perfectly good
one. Of course we are technically
trespassing when we take up temporary residence and really, you can only drink
so much coffee and read so much and revel so much until the urge to move on
takes the saddle and rides to the next tienda filled town.
It was
sometime during the morning decent that became less steep but no less rocky,
that I investigated the rattle coming from behind me on my bike. I certainly pushed the luggage rack beyond
its useful limits and fractured the outer aluminum tubing that is luckily still
supported by internal steel rods and my added cord lashing. The rack is still there and serving its
purpose bu the rattling is also still there but at least I know the noise
now. It was the unfamiliar clicking
yesterday afternoon that miffed my limited bike mechanic knowledge (anyone’s knowledge
is limited in comparison to Kurt) and ended in a self destruction of my rear
gear cluster (the cogs in the back that make my wheel go round). I walked a couple miles to Miraflores. As of now I have broken one rear axle, bent
one badly, destroyed the bearings in my rear hub, replaced my bent rear wheel
with one of more durable construction to solve the bearing and axle issues all
in one, scrapped two pairs of pedals (I now rock translucent purple plastic
platforms) , torn and repaired my severely sun damaged Sunlite brand cordura
(waterproof drybag material) saddle bags, seriously damaged my top of the line
Explorer rear rack which will be decommissioned in Bogota if it makes it, and
now, even to the astonishment of the seasoned bike touring Kurt, exploded my
gears. Luckily my bike is extremely
standard and all repuestos (parts) are easily and cheaply repaired. Turns out all the weaknesses in my rig that
Kurt forsaw have met there doom in the realm of mountain gnar. I will strip what’s left of the bike and
leave its carcass here, returning home with nothing more than some carryon-
easy come easy go.
Yea, Chris was ill prepared, improperly equipped and tended to fling himself and his things in all directions. He is a large presence, queefs a cloud of debauchery and whimsical aspiration and grinds a peculiar metaphysical cud. Also happens to love coffee as much as I do (almost). All that said, Chris is also an intelligent, patient and thoughtful person. I know he´ll be jumping into all sorts of adventurous things through out his life. He is a great dude and I will miss him.
