Crushing Power, High Morale

last ride

2007-05-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

It turns out biking without panniers is way easier. For our last stage we dropped the bags at our hostel and headed up the northern slope of the Merida valley. When we topped out we found ourselves out of the jungle, riding along a snakey road through the Andes. We saw mountains covered in those big soft cloud banks you always see in hot air ballooning documentaries, a guy on a scooter who used to live in Yonkers with forgotten English, and each other. After eating peanuts we turned around and whizzed back to town. Bull went to fast and ended up in a ditch and everyone sang songs. We can´t wait to play with everybody when we get back.

Reaching the Coast

2007-05-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

Roundhouse kick!

Some days we do not bike at all. Sometimes we just put on dirty bike gloves and pretend to be tired and watch tv. And then I do photoshoots of dorky boys in spandex watching tv. You could join us next time.

Gran Sabana

2007-05-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Here some pics from the Gran Sabana near the Venezuelan/Brazilian border. This was probably some of our best riding in Venezuela - flat roads, big crazy looking tepuis and waterfalls everywhere. Plus Venezuela is nuts about Gatorade, a special treat after the poison water of Bolivia. Remember in Willa Cather books when the well got poisoned and everybody got sick and Ma and Pa had stay up all night nursing their fevered little ones? That is what Bolivia feels like all the time. But Venezuelan water has been pretty good so far; check out this sweet waterfall made completely out of jasper. Wow, beautiful!

Wind and waves

2007-05-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

After an extra night stuck in San Felix as the result of a broken hub we took off for the north and the last 400km of our journey to the coast. However, try as we might to escape the un-endearing urban sprawl of that great city, we couldn´t. Kilometer after kilometer we were cozily wedged up next to 18 wheelers as our bikes teetered on the narrow shoulder. Eventually the highway dead-ended on a river, at which point we boarded a free ferry loaded with an unusually high number of crazies, even by south american free ferry standards. After shooing away a couple of 3 card monte hustlers, some beggars, and one man who was determined lob spanish gibberish at us for the duration of the ride we had a group huddle and came to the unanimous decision that it would be a wise decision to try to hitchhike the next 160 km to Maturin, so an not to tempt fate, which had been especially generous to us up to that point. As we got off the ferry a good samaritan with a truck offered to take us to the point where passing trucks picked up hitchhikers. When we arrived it was the early afternoon and we plopped down beside the liquor store / gas station (a unique Venezulan institution that says a lot about the prevailing sentiment towards drinking and driving) and waited for a ride. We were surrounded by kilometers of pine tree farms in every direction. People often stopped, not to offer us a ride, but to tell us how incredibly dangerous this part of Venezuela was. They often stuck their thumb up while extending their index finger, so as to emphasize the expression "muchas pistolas." Needless to say, we were thrilled. One hour turned into three and four and the falling sun created an ominous crimson sky over the tall stands of pine trees. Still no ride. We stopped a passing police truck and asked if there was anyway we could sleep at the police station that night. The police obliged and, as it was almost dark, gave us an escort to the station where we crashed hard in the sweltering heat and woke up right at dawn to make the journey toward Maturin. Less than a dozen kilometers after the police station the road opened up to a wide, luxurious shoulder, the traffic lessened and we completed the remaining 130 km by 2:30 that afternoon. An air conditioned hotel room and a schmorgosborg of delicious chinese food followed soon thereafter.

The next day was mostly the same Venezuelan crap. Flat road, road kill, broken glass, the acrid smell of burning garbage mixed with the acrid smell burning grassland, 95 degrees, 95% humidity, but as evening approached the road gained some curves and climbed into the mountains. The scorched expanse surrounding the road turned into amber fields encompassed by verdant peaks. We camped at a gorgeous lake and ate animal shaped pastas for dinner.

The next morning we saddled up and faced the 30km climb to cueva del guacharo, which is one of the world´s largest caves filled with some 15,000 guacharo, or oilbirds. They are the only nocturnal, fruit-eating species of bird and they use echolocation, aided by the help of audible clicks, to find their way in the dark caves in which they roost. Along the way we stopped at a few strawberry and cream shops and engorged ourselves on this regional delicacy.

We took a long lunch in the town of Caripe and made it to the cave just after the last tour where we learned that the cave would be closed to visitors for the next two days. Nonetheless, we still got to watch the birds make their nightly exit from the cave to forage.

I (Harris) woke up at 4:30 to the sound of the birds returning to roost. I made my way quietly to the entrance of the cave to see the birds pouring back into the cave´s mouth. Steping over the limp chain guarding the entrance I turned on my head lamp. I made it about two steps in before making a hasty retreat. There is something especially unnerving about entering a strange, behemoth cave, alone and under the cover of night. Of course Freud would have a thing or two to say about this, but I think the squawking birds flying low over my head were a major contributing factor to my unease, I later found out that they do not take kindly to light in their roost. I made another approach into the cave and took four hearty steps before jettisoning out again. The third try was the charm; holding my hand over my head lamp so that it shone only a sliver of light I walked the kilometer long tourist path into the cave to see massive stalactites and stalagmites, oilbirds, and cave mice darting in front of my path. But to tell the truth, it was dark, and I saw only shadows of those things.

We got out of camp before seven and by eleven the atlantic lay before us. I had envisioned us jumping off our bikes as we got to the ocean: running into the warm water jubilant, snapping pictures, splashing water, pumping our fists in the air in victory. Of course it was not quite like that. There was no ocean access and our day´s goal, Cumana, still lay more than 40km away. The ocean breeze barely tempered the mid-day heat and soon the quiet road coming down from the mountains was turned into a boiling coastal thruway with trucks careening past us at incredible speeds. We made it to the city by the late afternoon, dehydrated and very tired of hecklers who had hurled insults, sexual advances, and all manner of drunken gibberish at us all day. We celebrated with a few beers before passing out at ten and planned to make our way to the backpacker´s town of Santa De the next afternoon for a few days of r and r.

An hour before taking off, the owner of the hostel came to talk to me with a grave face.
"You are going to Santa Fe this afternoon?" he asked
"Sure are," I replied, "I hear it´s relaxing-"
He cut me off with broken english, "Do not go. For your lives. It is no joke."
It turned out that there was a non-trivial amount of civil unrest there, somehow related to a drug war, and that biking through there, never mind staying there would be especially unwise, not that any us of were all that excited to bike to Caracas along that busy highway anyway.

There is that haiku about the flexible reed lasting longer in the storm. We booked a ferry for the tropical island of Isla margarita for the next morning and by that evening we were eating seafood on the north side of the island and watching the sunset over the water. We hung out at the town of juan griego for a couple of days and then Ben, Thea and I took off to the other side of the island for the windsurfing capital of south america, El Yaque, while Matt did a circumlocution of the island and promised to meet up with us in a day.

None of us lasted more than two days windsurfing, as the muscles necessary for that sport are exactly the same muscles that had atrophied while biking. However, we did get a good arm work out carrying cases of beer from the nearby minimart and some cardio looking for the remote to the DVD player (Luckily, the air conditioner remote had its own wall mount). In the evenings we had dinner with a pair of swedes we had met on the first night, told stories, and played yatzee and other assorted games. In the day time we worked through an ardours schedule of sleeping in, going to the beach, watching movies, and eating. Oh, this is why people go on vacation, we realized. However, our thighs started to twitch with agitated impatience and after four nights, we had to go.

We are now back on the coast. Tomorrow we take a bus to Merida, a city in the mountains of western Venezuela where we will hopefully have a few more days of thigh expanding experiences before heading back home to the good ol´ US of A.

So close,

Team CP

Venezuela rapido

2007-05-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

Venezuela is fast, fast, fast. Got into Santa Elena on the border, had a beer with Ben´s cousin, traded some currency on the Venezuelan black market to avoid artifical inflation by the Venezuelan government, saw some tepuis (huge plateaus rising out of beautiful grassland) and then go, go, go. We´ve been moving through the searing hot landscape like cheetas, and now we´re in San Felix with only 400km to go. If you ever win a contest to come to San Felix, politely decline. Riddle: What do you get when you mix 5 parts urban decay with 1 part mall? (Hint: I´m writing from it right now.) From here on out we´re riding with our heads in front of our handle bars, mouths agape, so we can taste the sea salt on the tips of our tongues.

Team CP

Fargo

2007-04-21T12:20:00.000-07:00

Hey Eric and I went to hockey camp together when we were twelve. Then we rowed boats together when we were 18. Then we were miners for a day when we were 23 in Potosi. Pretty soon we are going to enter into a platonic life partnership. We´re just waiting for some sort of federal recognition; you know, medical power of attorney and tax exemptions and stuff like that.

Gavin Newsom is the man.

2007-04-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to the opera. It was like a regular opera except instead of being inside the opera house it was outside and instead of paying 5000 dollars for seats we had to pay zero dollars. About three thousand people showed up and they all payed zero dollars too. I think someone made friends with an Amazonian financier. There were carnival floats and sopranos and a drum band and dancers in revealing outfits and a symphony and churros and about 8 megatron tvs projecting all the fun in minute detail. Then there were fireworks and I thought about the 4th of July back home.

Basically Manaus is a great city. Yesterday we went to a buffet lunch where they brought us meat and swords and then used another smaller sword, otherwise known as a knife, to cut off pieces of meat to strategically land on your plate. It was delicious. After that it was on to the ice cream buffet where you pay by the kilogram. Imagine that.

Outdoor Opera in Manaus

2007-04-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

The first night of an opera festival- flashy dancer distracts the audience from singing priest. Don´t you love Brazil?

River Boat: Porto Velho to Manaus

2007-04-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

Three days and three nights in a hammock sounds tranquilo, but things turned surprisingly dramatic. The clock struck midnight on the second night and a teenage boy decided to steal a box of golden strappy sandals from underneath the hammock of a middle-aged shoe salesman. The young punk tried selling the sandals, so when the salesman found a woman on the boat wearing those very shoes, trouble ensued. There was a police boat arrest and the boy is now stuck in a jail in a tiny town along the Madeira river – there are no lawyers nearby so he will be waiting and waiting for a court date. It seems unfair that we played dominoes.

A Tale of Two Busses

2007-04-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

(Harris getting some mud out from between his toes and surveying the scene)

As we sat in Rurre on our last night, enjoying a unique Bolivian tradition known as 2 for 1 happy hour we made the rather astute observation that we were facing a very large continent : time ratio. A few back of the envelope calculations showed clearly that moving at our current rate we were destined to spend approximately -3 weeks in Venezuela, give or take. A BUS! A BUS! We realized that was our solution. A deal with the devil maybe, less biking, more time wedged between fat ladies with narrow notions of personal space, but it was our best option, as we saw it.

We arrived at the bus station at 7:30 the next morning for an 8:00 bus slated to make the 500 km journey to the border between bolivia and brazil in about 18 hours, give or take. There was a bit of rain as we peddled to the bus station and we'd heard that it was possible in the rainy season for the journey to take as many as 3 days because of deteriorating roads. 3 days for 500 km though? Really? We saw this figure as an outside bound, two standard deviations from the norm, more of a statistical anomaly than anything else. We pointed to the figure in the guide book and laughed. Sure would feel sorry for those 3 day bastards.

By 8 the rain had picked up, by 8:30 the sky was filled with a cube of water. 9, 9:30, 10: ditto. The bus arrived and at 11 the bus driver decided that it was now or never. We clamored on and took our seats in the back of the bus. The bus rumbled on at break neck pace, bump, bump, BUMP, bump. We were tossed like fresh, leafy greens. We were the Micheal Jordans of bus riding. All two hundred odd pounds of Matt Turnbull were thrown against the overhead console and he came down holding his forehead with one hand and his butt with the other. Thea pulled the same trick and soon we were asking ourselves what we had gotten into. It was less than two hours into the trip when the bumps stopped and we found ourselves caught in a rut. A few men got off, some shoveling was done, the bus moved on. A kilometer down the same story, and then two kilometers after that.

We were all ordered off the bus when we had to get through a particularly muddy patch. The driver revved the engine and shot the bus out of the mud, careening through the next spat the bus leaped onto two wheels and returning from a 30 degree journey, fell back down on its tires with a thud. Its amazing how fast people run when they think a bus is about to land on them. We climbed back on and after another couple of kilometers the bus was stopped again. The shovels and pickaxes were brought out, digging commenced, the bus still wouldn't move, more digging, a rope was tied to the front of the frame and every able bodied man and Thea pulled with all their might, trying to free the great steel Leviathan from its muddy grave. Nothing. More digging, more pulling. The bus is equipped with two drivers. One drives the bus, the other drives the passengers to pull harder.

The locals were getting restless, they were calling us some impolite names within earshot (four gringos are a good scapegoat if you need one on the quick). There was a good chance that we would be the first to be eaten if this bus didn't start to budge. It was starting to get dark, we dug, we pulled, we repeated. Sometime around 10 we moved, we cheered, we were stuck again in 50 yards. Another four hours, another fifty yards. We were Doctor Faustus and the devils with sparklers had finally appeared.

A muddy expanse lay before us and we realized that it only got worse from here on out. We were no longer just pulling the bus out of the mud, we were building road in front of the bus. We would shovel out the soupy slop, use pick axes to tear up the ground to create a tractionable surface and when there weren't enough tools to go around we squatted down and used our hands to ladle the mud to the side of the road. At some point a Lord of the Flies scene erupted when passengers from the long line of buses that had formed behind ours gingerly walked by, not offering a helping hand. Someone threw mud and then a volly of mud came directed at anyone, man, woman, or child who walked past. It was a messy scene.

The coca was passed around and we shoveled and pulled more. By 2 am we were still going. Thea told us about an email she'd recieved for a jungle party back on campus. Now this is an f@#$@ jungle party we thought. We were tired. My bare feet had been bitten by ants and cut up by the rocky road. Getting back on the bus was a clear faux pas, however. 10 more minutes! our foreman, er, driver said. It elapsed to 20, 30... By 3:30 we had done the last ditch of the stretch. We cheered shook hands, passed out on the bus. The worst of it was over.

The next morning we had a traditional bolivian breakfast. It was suspect, but we hadn't really eaten in the last day, so we weren't going to complain. We had gone about 80km in 30 hours. Even the bolivians on the bus couldn't help but comment, Wow, this is an adventure. That night we unloaded again for dinner. Jamie told me that Saturn was the bright body on the horizon, and that in Bolivia, Orion's belt was known as the 3 marias. We ate some more food of unknown origins and got back on the bus. Matt and Thea befriended a copy repair man who was going to fix a broken copy machine in Riberalta, Ben befriended a burly man with "sex instructor, first lesson free" written on his mud covered tee shirt.

The pace picked up and in just under 60 hours after the start of our trip we arrived safely in our final destination. We shook hands with people as we got off the bus, gave them well wishes. We confided to the driver that it was quite an adventure. He just laughed, it had taken him 18 days once last year, he said. We had gotten off easily.

We spent a night at the border and the next day crossed into Brazil and hopped a bus to Porto Velho. It was air conditioned, our bags were luggage tagged and our seats reclined. The 300 paved kilometers were covered in 5 hours and we arrived in Porto Velho without a story to tell.

Don´t worry, the bus is not on fire. The smoke is just to keep bugs away while we push the bus off the road and through a river.

Ronny´s House

2007-04-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

Still in Rurrenebaque, still sweating. We hit the road tomorrow for Brasil. Matt feels good. Thea and Ben and Harris spent the afternoon eating banana bread and watching Creation Science videos at Ronny´s house - you all know Ronny, right? He moved his family here from Florida after working as a horse jockey for a couple years in various south pacific nations and then organic farming in Santa Cruz.

We have been travelling for a while and so it has been great to have a chance to catch up on all the latest world developments. In case you are feeling a little out of the loop, let us clue you in to a few recent international developments: Dinosaurs co-existed with humans about 4000 years ago, all your federal income taxes go directly into the pockets of JP Morgan (or now his heirs, presumably), the US government infused radioactive uranium into tank armor during desert storm to purposefully irradiate Kuwait during Desert Storm, and evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. Surprise! Sorry to spoil your birthday party, Darwin.

Ronny has some very informative dvds. We have found the most enriching presentations to be those of Dr. Kent Hovind, a public intellectual whose quest to expose factual errors in science textbooks clearly demonstrates a deep commitment to the public good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind

Ronny makes some pretty good cinnamon rolls too (lots of raisins). Actually, he doesn´t really make them (his daughters do), but he sells them on the street and is more than willing to give you the recipe. Yesterday we spent a couple hours helping him fix up an old mountain bike of his and drinking orange juice under the star fruit tree. It was very informative. We had been under the mistaken impression that The Da Vinci Code was a work of non-fiction and that Dan Brown, the most recent of the great Christian philosophers, was about to inherit the mantle of St. Augustine and become a Cardinal Bishop in Rome. We were so wrong! Apparently the whole thing is fiction and shouldn´t be used as a model for popular religion or even material for assessing the current state of the Catholic church. It must have been the heat that made us so confused.

Seriously Matt is feeling really good and tomorrow we are probably going to go swimming with about seventy pink amazon dolphins. Either that or ride bikes.

Rurre

2007-04-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

After Coroico we rode for a couple days on muddy roads, got a couple flats, broke a spoke, were bitten by lots of bugs, and found about three table spoons of rocks inside Matt´s crankset. This usually makes riding difficult to impossible. So we did what we usually do when the Powercrushers are faced with adversity; we took a truck. Now we have seen some bad roads, but the ones in the jungle really smooch the pooch. While it is relatively easy to find empty transport trucks heading out into the jungle, they are by no means fast. Our average speed from some nameless town outside Caranavi to Rurrenebaca was about 8 mph. We bounced around in the back for about 18 hours, trying to read and not ingest too much sawdust or flies. During the long six or eight hour stretches of jostling the bathroom situation was resolved in numerous creative fashions. At one point Ben dropped his crankset (the round, pokey sprocket in front) on his foot and made a hole where you could see the bones. The doctors told him later that this was impossible (it got infected), that it was merely a sub-surface tendon, yet he persists in his claim that bones were exposed. This is in line with his usual ploy of making himself feel tougher than he actually is. Also, while Ben and Harris enjoyed a sensible breakfast of boiled mystery meat, rice, and fried plantains at a roadside restaurant, Bull and Thea opted to try the fare at the shack a few blocks down where all the locals were eating. Fried pig parts were served and Matthew, courteous as ever, consumed them and barfed. It has been two days and the purging continues. Everybody else is happy and sweating.

PS. Thea is putting up some sweet photos on old entries so scroll down if you have 6 seconds that haven´t already been spoken for.

The View to Coroico

2007-04-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

WMDR

2007-04-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

Leaving La Paz was exciting. Some guy with two beards at Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking (home to the most incompetent bike mechanics on the continent) told us that a Canadian cyclist was mugged three weeks ago leaving La Paz on the climb through El Alto to the 4700 meter La Cumbre pass. Apparently a couple homestars met him at the top and relieved him of his wallet and his life. We opted to take a cab.

At the top of La Cumbre it was rainy, misty, and cold - perfect weather for a high speed 10,000 foot descent. We passed lots of slow moving trucks, drug checkpoints, and mysterious dogs on the way down, all engulfed by the mist that caused us to blow alternately on our frozen fingers. The road was very wet, cut into the sides of steep green cliffsides, and it felt like we were descending into a Tolkien novel. After about an hour of pavement we found ourselves at the gravel turn off for the "World´s Most Dangerous Road." Everybody had a candy bar and we went for it.

As we descended the temperature slowly increased, causing us to stop regularly to shed layers and snap photos. It was amazing to see our environs change from harsh Altiplano desert to humid jungle over the course of an hour. Lots of Crucifixes and Stars of David as we descended - one side of the road is a sheer cliff the whole way to Coroico and occasionally a tourist from the regular mountain bike tours takes a plunge. Sobering.

About four hours after starting off from the top of La Cumbre we reached the bottom of the descent, taking a minute to rest in the practically soupy air of 3000 ft. Then a miserable 2000 ft climb up a cobblestone road to the town of Coroico where most of La Paz had already assembled to celebrate the Easter weekend by getting hammered in the town plaza. We ate Mexican food and worked out a sleeping deal at an already full hotel, though breakfast and pool use were not included. Everybody agreed biking is way easier when you don´t have to pedal.

Harris´ spring break or how I learned to stop worrying and love the climb

2007-04-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

As Matt and Ben went to see their respective Schwartzes and Thea went to see her sister, I, an only child without a significant other, took to the open road carrying only the spring break necessities: a small European swimsuit, a drum of Hawaiian tropic lotion and the sat phone. Heading out of Uyuni an ominous thunderstorm loomed in my path. I found out quickly that ominous and looming would be two words that would define much of my next two weeks. 5 km out of town a Bolivian man in a truck pulled over in front of me and told me to throw my bike in the back so that he could drive me through the storm, I demurred and luckily missed the storm, only to ride in its muddy wake, however. Although I was dry, my bike was not, every component and every cog was lathered in foot deep mud (and would be for the remainder of the 200 km to Potosi). My chain could barely get a grip on the rear cassette and I walked up many of the hills. Much of the road was washed out and at dusk of my first day I came to a seemingly impassable river 30 yards wide. I was sitting on the bank, contemplating the moronic idea of trying to ford it as night approached when a huge, four eyed monster rumbled towards me. The huge backhoe slammed its shovel down on the ground in front of the bike and the driver, Frances, motioned for me to get in. Like Washington crossing the Delaware I rode across the river triumphantly and was dropped off a kilometer down the road at the construction worker´s camp.

The next morning the workers crowded around to ask questions about my strange looking stove and my even stranger looking tent. They told me it was all flat from there on out and wished me a safe journey. As I was to be reminded of time and time again, the Bolivian term for flat really meant that large mountains would soon greet me. The second day was the usual mix of cold thunderstorms, hail, and mountains, which explain why one doesn´t see many bicycle tourers in Bolivia. The third day was slated to contain my joyous arrival into Potosi after 80km of biking. By 11 o´clock the sky had turned black and the clouds opened up. The rain turned to sleet and showed no sign of stopping and by 5 I had to pull over every kilometer to stick my hands into my jacket (and into my mouth) to keep them strong and warm enough to be able to operate the shifters. By 6 I was 10 km outside of Potosi, it was starting to get dark and I was sure that things couldn´t get any worse.

Of course, they did when a bracket holding my front rack to the bike snapped clean in half. I took a deep breath, got off my bike, and started walking the bastard. Less then a kilometer down the road a Portuguese motorcyclist on a bright orange honda, his girl on the back, "ruta che guevara" emblazoned on the side, pulled over and asked if everything was alright. Frankly, I said, things had been better, and I asked jokingly if I could grab a ride. "No problem!" he said and told me that their friends were in a truck only ten minutes back. Sure enough, three other motorcyclists soon followed, and a boxy red truck pulled up the rear. It was an old British ambulance that had been through every populated continent but Africa, I was soon to learn. "THE BEAST" was painted on its rear doors. After some shifting of things and cajoling, my bike was shoved into the back of the beast, but there was no room for me. "I could jump on a bike," I offered. And soon I was riding into Potosi in style sitting behind an amiable German named Chris, wearing a big motorcycle helmet and blue bicycle shorts. Potosi looked like a war zone at night, dimly lit, jagged streets were covered in rubble and lined with tiny store fronts protected from the street with thick iron gates. Potosi was once the richest city in the world as the spanish plundered the nearby mountain to extract enough silver (as the story goes) to build a silver bridge to Spain, but it has aged poorly and now it is an over sized mining town with an overabundance of Cathedrals.

They dropped me off across the street from their hotel; I thanked them profusely and insisted on buying them a round. They were not the type of group to demur. After I regained the feeling in my extremities during a wonderful, scalding hot shower, I bought a couple bottles of wine and went over to their lobby. I met the gang, Nuno and Tati (the husband and wife who had first stopped), Chris, the German, and a rag-tag bunch of Kiwis and Brits, Pete, Jason, Alexa, Greg, Jacky, and Trent, who were all either married, family, or had known each other since way back when. A couple of bottles were joined with a couple more and at some point a 2 gallon jug of something that tasted like Sherry appeared on the scene. This was the start of a beautiful friendship and a number of very painful mornings.

It turned out that there was a welder right across the street and a cobbler a block up (my sole had come free, a common experience when travelling) and by 10 o´clock the next morning the world was right again. I went to the mines in Potosi, a truly harrowing experience, as the mines have some of the worst working conditions in the world and most miners are dead within 15 years of entering the mines from black lung disease. Many start work before the age of 10. The dust is thicker than the air and Í had to crawl on my stomach to move from passage to passage. I know it was a once in a lifetime experience, because I will never do it again. I also went to a soccer match, Potosi Real vs. Venezuela. It was a spirited match until the second half when it became clear that the altitude of 14,000 feet had taken its toll on the endurance of the players. Large fire works were set off in the stands, I eat half of a chicken and drank a bag of coke, it was pretty much like being at home.

The next morning I took off for the long, paved, downhill route to Sucre. Waking up late and stopping early I clocked 110km on this idyllic section of road and slept within the compound of a local school teacher named Mario. "Professor Mario" was something of a local authority figure and all morning respectful locals came through the gates to ask him questions. He gave me dinner and breakfast and I gave him a sweater I had bought in Santiago for 2 bucks. The next morning the sun was shining and after a hill of 40km I arrived in Sucre, a clean, white washed city, which felt downright tropical at an elevation of just around 10,000 feet. There was chocolate, a schwarma restaurant, wood fire pizza, and "Joyride," a very respectable Gringo bar. This was like manna from heaven. I brought my bike into a beautiful hostel with a sunlit courtyard and they told me, sorry, no singles, but we´ll give you a double with cable for the same price (8 bucks a night). I had arrived.

Sucre is the legal capital of Bolivia and lawyers are to it as miners are to Potosi. Its not exactly a rough and tumble kind of place. The motorcyclists were half a day ahead of me and as it turned out Pete was staying one door down. He had gotten the last single (Cyclist 1 - Motorcyclist 0). We met up with Nuno, Tati, and Chris and decided to take a stroll down to the Joyride for dinner and a few after dinner drinks. The place was packed. Chris insisted to getting a round of this phenomenal German heffevizen, Tati insisted on a round of Caparinas, a strong Brazilian speciality, Pete threw down for the local pint, and by the time it was my turn I said, hey, why not a round of tequila. The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. Tati taught me how to samba, I tried to teach her how to swing. At some point Nuno and I engaged in a wrestling match in the middle of the dance floor, some glasses were broken, some toes were stepped on, but a good time was had by all.

After another two days of good food and good drinks I tore myself away from Sucre, leaving my biker friends to enjoy the bacchanal for a while longer, for the 350 km ride to Cochabomba, the city of eternal spring time, renowned for having the best weather in the world. The first day was glorious pavement, I slept in a windowless room next to a restaurant on a not so uncomfortable straw mattress. Despite only being 90 km out of Sucre, the people in this town, er, bus stop, spoke only the local indigenous dialects to each other and the children I talked to had never made the journey to the big city. The small pueblos in this region are medium-poor, but what really struck me was how bored everyone was. No internet, TV, few books. No basketball court even (a common sight in the slightly larger Bolivian pueblos), at night the 25 children ages 5 to 16 crowded around me to watch me read my book. These people have clothes on their backs and enough food, and are better off then many in the world, but their lives seemed blank. They said that travellers from all over the world stopped through their town, but none of them had ever left it. I wondered, what do they think about and hope for? Do they have a concept of a world more than 100km in either direction? Unfortunately, my spanish was not up to the task of finding out. I left early and the second day was medium glorious smooth gravel, rather flat by Bolivian standards and I slept in an abandoned church (the priest took out a box marked "TV" before he allowed me to stay, as if I might steal it on my bicycle).

The third day was a mess. I had slept about 20 km past the small town of Aquille, which had been paved with rough hewn cobble stones. This was charming, almost Parisian really, I thought as I biked out of town. When I pulled over to the church the cobble stones were still going strong, but their charm was wearing out fast. 15, 20, 30 km past the church the cobble stones were still going. Biking along them was like sitting on a paint mixer. And then the hill started. I had descended into a valley that morning, so I knew that a big hill would be on the other side of the river, but I was totally unprepared for this monster. It ascended along switchbacks for 30 km, and then when I was sure it would taper off, "its flat up there" the locals assured me it kept rising relentlessly for another 20 km of romantic cobble stones. Sometime in the early afternoon I asked a man standing on the edge of the never ending hill side, "When does this climb end?" "Esta plano aqui," he said, "It´s flat here." I looked around, I was higher, hundreds of meters higher, than any of the surrounding mountains and yet the road kept going up into the sky. Small school children followed me silently as I climbed at a slug´s pace. At times twenty or thirty of them would walk behind my bike, the leading ones sidling along my rear tire. I imagined them mocking me behind me back as I heard their giggles. My own Greek chorus laughing at my arrogant attempt to climb this mountain. I was tired and frustrated. I wanted to shew them off, yell at them to go away, but they were just curious and bored and meant no harm. I peddled on with my procession in tow.

At 5 o´clock the cobble stones and the climb stopped. All that stood between me and hundreds of kilometers of smooth pavement was a tiny section of downhill gravel. As I glided down this fine road the harsh sun of midday gave way to a cool dusk, the mountains were reduced into rolling hills and I entered a fragrant eucalyptus grove. For a moment I left the grueling Bolivian landscape and found myself in the gentle foothills of Northern California, imagining riding my old Yamaha on a friday afternoon. I was overcome by the smell of the trees and I started to cry, I didn´t want to cross any more mountain ranges, I wanted to go home. (Mountains 1 - cyclist 0). A man riding his bicycle, stopped, handed me a peach and patted me on the back. The Bolivians aren´t the friendliest of people, but when you need them, they always seem to come through.

I got to the pavement ten minutes later and kissed it. Smooth sailing from here on out, I thought. I rode a few kilometres down and stopped in at a farm house when it started raining to ask if I could buy dinner. "Of course," the drunken proprietor said, "what would you like?" I listed off some typing Bolivian staples, "I like soups, chicken, meat, anything." "Eggs, we have, eggs," he said. "Eggs, great," I replied. I sat down in the adobe kitchen, the straw roof blackened from years of cooking and ate a tasty dinner of eggs, french fries, potatoes, hot peppers and a fortified yeasty beverage, which I will never have again, god willing. He said that I could sleep on a cot (straw mattress) on the floor since the rain had picked up and we agreed on the price of ten bolivianos ($1.25) for the whole package. One of his drunken compatriots came in and announced "I am Bolivian." The Bolivians are very proud of their heritage and especially vocal about thier pride when hammered. "You are American, you have lots of money, give me some money," he slurred. I told him that I would prefer not to and the proprietor pushed him out. The next morning the proprietor would say the same thing, only slightly more diplomatically, when he insisted that we had agreed on ten dollars the night before. His wife shot him the universal look that wives across all cultures give their husbands when their husbands are being asses, we settled on 20 Bolivians and I rode the 120 km to Cochabamba by 4 o´clock thanks to some truly epic downhill.

It was time again to relax . I ate at Cantonata, the most expensive restaurant in town, (Cesar salad, steak covered in shrimp and a decadent cream sauce, half bottle of excellent wine- $12), had a massage ($4 including tip), and lounged in the local French cafe, eating crepes with salad and drinking espresso ($3). For all the flack Bolivia gets about its food, I wasn´t complaining. I also saw a local concert at the cultural center: A man with a golden voice on guitar accompanied by an equally talented pianist. Some of their songs were truly moving and it was refreshing to see a side of Bolivian culture other than impoverished rural life.

I fled the good life after 36 hours and figured that the 380 km to La Paz would be three and a half days of cake. I wanted to make the Seder in La Paz on April 2nd and figured that I would arrive with time to spare. I had been told that from the junction to Oruro, half way there, it was totally flat- I extrapolated that it would therefore be flat the whole way. I was wrong. 30 km outside of Cochabamba it began, ominous, looming. The first hill would go on without respite for close to 50 km, up and up and up. By 80 km out of majestic Cochabamba I was no longer living the good life. I had suddenly been transported (or not so suddenly, I should say) from an idyllic, oxygen rich 2600m, to a cold and unpleasant 4200m. Over the next day and a half the mountains would slope down only occasionally, just enough to refresh themselves for the next big climb. I would drop below for 4000m only to find myself climbing to 4500 before I could say "You mother f$%&/ing mountains, I want to..." The lack of an end in sight was driving me a bit crazy. By the end of day two I was looking for buses, I was cursing. If a smiley backpacker had asked after a deep breath of pure, country air "Don´t you just love the mountains?" I would have stomped on his recycled mug- not that I´d seen another gringo since Cochabamba anyway. As I woke up on the third day in an abandoned Unicef compound the last thing I wanted to do was get on a bike. And then, no mountains. Downhill, flat, farmland, heaven. By 2 I had gone 90 km (close to my combined total for the previous two days), when Nuno, Tati and Chris pulled up. "Those are some big mountains, respect." Chris said. "I figured you´d be in La Paz by now," Nuno chuckled. "Grab on," Tati said. I grabbed her wrist and they pulled me to the next town (which was safe because I am an expert touring biker), where we had lunch. I slept in the following town in a hostel with showers and TV, luxury, even if the TV only got one channel in spanish with a lot of static, rode 60 km in the morning and once I could see smogy La Paz looming in the distance (ominously), I jumped on a bus to avoid the city biking.

Naturally, they dropped me off on the opposite side of town from where I needed to be and I barreled through the city, trying to get to the hotel with bike and person in tact. There is a road north of La Paz, which was termed the "world´s most dangerous road" by some UN statistician. It has become a huge tourist destination and people pay $40-80 to rent a suped-up bike and be followed by a chase truck, lest anything should happen. But real thrill seekers, I have some advice for you. For that money you could easily buy a steel frame bicycle here and for free you could ride it through La Paz. I assure you, money back guarantee, this will be more dangerous then some rough and rocky road. La Paz is an orgy of buses, pedestrians, taxis and street vendors. Each intersection is like a magic meat grinder where things go in whole, mix with steel and rubber and honking horns and come out the other side whole again. And if you make it through you could give your bicycle to a Bolivian at the end of the day and feel good about yourself, too.

I made it to the Seder, expecting a small affair, but found 800 rowdy Israelis there instead. Apparently they all converge in La Paz and Cusco for a festival of deffining loudness. It was all in Hebrew and dragged on for ten hours. I felt out of place, strangely enough, but was glad to be there for the experience. The next day I finally met up Ben, Thea, and Matt for Pizza. The most gringos I had seen in a good long while and, boy, was I happy to see them.

la paaaaaaaaaaaaz

2007-03-27T15:54:00.001-07:00

The Powercrushers (or actually, just one of them right now) are scooting around La Paz after a series of especially "authentic" Bolivian experiences. After traipsing around Uyuni and Potosi with for a couple days we parted ways with the globetrotting Eric Adamson and booked an overnight bus to La Paz. Once there we planned to hike and rest while we awaited the arrival of new tires for the Tallies. Initially the ride seemed to be going well, on track to be our smoothest Bolivian transit experience so far - our previous bus experiences that included interior rain showers, a flat tire (you should have seen the jack they used - gaaaaaaaaaah it was huge!), sliding off the road in a rain storm, and an overnight ride that featured the same a particularly un-melodic bird song samled on repeat for six hours. Ka-Kaw Ka-Kaw! Anyway so the ride was smooth through the night until we got to Oruro where we had to change buses for La Paz...after reloading our bikes and bags we settled into our seats for the second leg of our trip, only to have the bus stop just as it was pulling out of the terminal. A lady with nice teeth but a bad haircut came on board and informed us that there was a blockade of unknown origin on the road to La Paz and all motor transit was impossible between the two cities. It was like, you know, a pretty intense bummer. This would have been the perfect moment to hop on our bikes and just bust the 150 km in a day or two, but alas, too many holes in our tires. So we found the cheapest dirtiest bus station hostal we could and crashed out for a couple days to wait. In the meantime Ben got pretty sick again and had to push the Cipro button. though luckily a strict dietary regimen of Pringles and Sprite had things back to normal by the time, bum bum bum, we decided to run the blockade.

href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_POqC7po0XKA/Rh1dzDgefpI/AAAAAAAAAJU/FkFqpRVzEJs/s1600-h/IMG_0719.JPG">

What Daring!

Ba-zang running the blockade was awesome. Although at first nobody seemed to have any idea who or how people where blocking the road (guesses included peasants disatisfied with the quality of the socialized health care/blueberry pancakes), by reading the paper (very slowly....) we discovered that residents of the three major villages in between Oruro and La Paz thought they were gauged in their energy bills and decided to stone anybody who tried to pass on the highway until the issue was resolved. At the end of the third day we were sick of waiting and threw our bikes on top of a cab, heading to the first roadblock in hopes of somehow being able to get around it. We had heard there was an "alternate route" to La Paz and, after being dropped off 30 miles out of town, where able to hitch in the back of a minerals truck as our driver drove over every ledge, pothole, and rock in between the two cities. We made it to La Paz 18 hours later after getting stuck in a ravine, bribing innumerable locals at road blocks, and guiding downed powerlines hand-over-hand over the top of the truck. Felipe, our driver, spoke a strange mixture of Spanish, Quechua, Mumble, and "I talk to myself a lot on long drives," making comminication hit or miss. We shared a delicious dinner of fried chicken and cookies at 1 am in El Alto before passing out in the back of his truck, hoping our sleeping bags wouldn't pick up too much of the sulfur smell.

Thea had a great point that the fact that anyone in this country can literally bring all commercial and private transportation to a standstill is mindboggling - in the US only transportation workers can do that, and then only for public transit. As we passed the roadblocks we saw thousands of trucks that had lined up to wait over the course of the three days. Locals had literally just rolled big boulders into the middle of the main highway and stood by with slings and rocks ready to pelt anyone who tried to pass. The back roads we took were sometimes blocked, sometimes not, though anyone we encountered was quick to stand aside in exchange for a bribe, money easily extorted from the desperate bus and truck drivers. President Evo Morales was elected as a populist leader, the country´s first indeginous president and the closest South American ally of Chavez. Because of this I had assumed that the road block, despite being a major hassle, would be something that people would be proud of, concrete affirmation of the populist sentiments that have recently become popular. People power, you know? But when asked Felipe was angry about the blockade - he thought the blockaders where were little more than mean, petty thieves using a political issue to financially exploit their countrymen. It was both amusing and sad to find groups of kids no more than ten years old demanding money from drivers in order to pass. Perhaps more sobering were the interspersed groups of adults doing the exact same thing.

el alto

2007-03-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

Cotton Candy; Wry to Embarrassed

2007-03-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

I am only, like, 35% embarrassed that I had embarrassed spelled wrong up here for so long. These shots (and the ones above) where taken at a female wrestling exhibition in El Alto that Claire, Thea and Ben attended a couple Sundays ago. It was at least six times more awesome than anything you can imagine. Many thanks to Uncle Lou for the tip - I´ve been trying to come up with a subtle intellectual framing for the event using the journal entries of Herndon but it is really too hot to think about anything besides Britney and cold sodas. My original idea came after reading a chapter of "Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon" in which Herndon describes cresting a ridge after a long hike and feeling disappointed that the view before him was not as spectacular as he had imagined it would be. I was nervous that I might experience similar emotions as I had been amping the group for months about how awesome the female wrestling in La Paz was going to be. Nothing could be further from the truth. While watching indigenous women in bowler hats and ruffled skirts perform WWF moves on each other (pausing only to kick the referee repeatedly in the crotch) may sound morally dubious, it was everything and more that a rising member of Generation Next could hope for. As Tim likes to say; Be Young, Have Fun, Drink Pepsi. And when you finish don´t forget to throw your bottle at the ref. It´s all part of the show.

Salt Workers on the Salar

2007-03-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Eric Adamson for this sweet snap. Check out his blog at http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/eadamson/everywhere/tpod.html. Many thanks to to George Lucas as well for instilling baby-boomers everywhere with pre-scripted notions of sci-fi realities, brother/sister/Harrison Ford romance, and Chewbacca.

On the road to Atocha

2007-03-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

Three Little Pricks, All In A Row

2007-03-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

We chalk up gear problems as "memories" - since entering Bolivia our memories include four flats, a tire blowout, a broken chain, a broken spoke, two hail storms, and lightning lightning lightning all the time (which is scary when you are at the top of a pass riding a big piece of steel). Here Thea does her best Vanna White with this lucky tire...the symmetry of these patches seemed a little fishy to all. There were murmurs of foul play around the campfire but nothing could be substantiated. In the end we just put another tube and sent this one on to it's great reward.

Hella Pastoral

2007-03-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

Bolivia is positively something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Our crossing from La Quiaca was tough - nine consecutive passes over 13000 feet. We wheezed our way through some of the shortest days of the whole trip - usually no more than fifteen or twenty miles between breakfast and dinner. Rain, thunder, and lightning every night promptly at 7:30. Sun every morning to dry our tents and gear before another day of big passes and smoked lunch meats. Each of us carried between 10 and 12 liters of water everyday and if it hadn't rained so much I doubt we would have been able to find enough agua along the way to actually make it between towns. This is the country where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came to pull their final heists (they died in a gun fight in San Vincente). It is easy to see how outlaws would be drawn to the zigzagging canyons and ridge lines that cover the Altiplano...lots and lots of really good places to hide out and play gin rummy. We talk a lot about that cowboys riding late into the mountains around here, drinking muddy water and eating cactus shoots. Except instead of horses they would probably be riding llamas. They would be really dehydrated too unless they found lots of lizards too eat. Harris makes fun of America's general obsession with charismatic mega-fauna but looking at these mountains really makes me want to track, capture, and tame a wolf to act as my travelling companion and night time guardian for bad dreams. This fantasy is actually straight out of "The Crossing" by Cormac McCarthy and is probably the greatest non-novella of all time. Thinking about cowboys can make you feel tough when you are curled up alone and cold at night in your tent wishing you would just fall asleep and escape the shame of having had to push your bike up the last pass of the day.

Salar de Uyuni

2007-03-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Salar is incredible - because of the rain the whole thing is sitting under about six inches of water and when the air is still the horizon line disappears and you feel like you just stepped into something out of Salvador Dali's frontal lobe. We had originally planned on riding it but all the water makes that practically impossible - we did what any committed group of cyclists do when faced with adversity and hired a jeep. The landscape made up for our guilt. Once you stop rubbing sunscreen onto the underside of your nose you can take some of those weird perspective photos where your friend is standing in the palm of your hand, or maybe just swish your toes around in the sand and pretend you are on the ice world of Hoth where the Rebel Forces had their secret base, only to be destroyed by Impèrial ATAT Forces that bear a striking resemblance to the shipping cranes in Oakland. The surface of the salar is entirely salt, lots of little crystals that feel and look exactly like sand. It is Bolivia's only source of salt and the jeeps full of gawking gringos intermingle freely with the teams of workers that fill dumptrucks by the ton. The gringos all look like devils with their sunburns and mirrored shades and the workers look like something our of Star Wars with their ski masks and long sleeves to protect themselves from the sun. Some of you may never have seen Star Wars and should probably be ashamed. At the end of the day our guide took us to a hotel on the edge of the salar that was entirely made out of salt - floors, walls, tables, chairs, everything except the beds and toilets. The entire hotel appeared to be deserted and we wandered around feeling somewhere between Goldilocks and The Shining. All the ping pong and foosball almost made us forget what a creep-town the whole place was, though something about the half-eaten breakfast in the kitchen and the laundry on the line outside might have tipped us off that we weren't alone. Luckily it wasn't until we had all stepped outside to snap some photos of the sunset that the proprietor emerged. Suddenly by some strange force everyone forgot how to speak Spanish and we high-tailed it for the jeep. Neither the Three Bears nor Johnny ever arrived.

Star-Crossed

2007-03-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you forget how awesome it can be to see people you know. I was sleeping in my bed in Uyuni after the big border crossing from Argentina when suddenly Eric Adamson is jumping on me and telling me how my whole body smells like armpít and how I need to take a shower. He had taken the overnight bus from La Paz to get to Uyuni and ran into Thea outside the tourist office. We had seen him in Santiago but didn't think it was going to work out for Bolivia. Suddenly we are all on the same jeep tour headed into the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat, talking about that time that we all worked at that summer camp in Tahoe or all the kids from our freshman dorms who are now doing important things in big cities or that other time that crazy hilarious thing occurred. Eric is on one of those round the world tickets which is very exciting, making it nothing less than fortuitous that we ran into each other in a place that could be described in no other way as Cat Butt, Bolivia.

How to Drain Pasta at 13000 feet

2007-03-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

The Bolivian sunsets have been more than making up for the fact that all our food is undercooked. Because of the altitude water boils at a much lower temperature and everything, pasta especially, turns out a strange combination of al dente and mushy. You can practically stick your finger in a pot of water when it is at a roiling boil and so far the clear winner of all our dinners has been the instant potatoes.

goodness gracious goodbye chile

2007-03-07T18:33:00.000-08:00

In Santiago there were errands to be done and goodness gracious they propelled us around the city into places that the new sleek and speedy bus system never would have. There was a hunt for English language books. There were used bookstores in the bohemian district with English language sections that included old non-fiction with titles like ¨Is Male Mysticism Really Over?¨ And there were street vendors whose collections of English books included used calculator instruction manuals and issues of playboy from 1980.

The best of all was the hunt for another tall-person tire. We biked down to a street named San Diego and goodness gracious there were about thirty bike shops all lined up within two blocks. And on a hot Friday afternoon the neighborhood was kicking and hopping with teenage boys on trick bikes and middle-aged men wearing neon jerseys. There were shiny party, old parts, tricycles, skinny bikes, fat rims and spokes being sliced like butter. Because the stores were too narrow to window shop, and because all the shoppers had, of course, come by bike, there was cramming and squeezing of people and their bikes and this knocked over more bikes that were for sale and it was all a riot.

In Santiago we reminded ourselves that somewhere in the middle of biking miles of lonely roads in Chile and always being hungry and eating lentils for dinner, and then again for breakfast the next morning, (Matt added honey to his- I respected this because I think he´s an innovator- but do you think this improves the situation?) we had promised to have a cookie eating contest when we hit a town with a big store and cheap cookies. So, in an effort to fatten up before hitting the desert, we got competitive during our last night. The cookies won.

39 hours of busing later, we reached a town just on the border of Argentina and Bolivia - La Quiaca. We always scramble to the station and once our big fat bus arrives, goodness gracious, we rip off our bags, and flip over the bikes and twist off the tires and balance our pile of junk. Matt assures the driver that we did indeed buy tickets for this bus, and yes, we can fit the bikes and so we toss them in and cringe when they bang around. The first six hour bus ride was good and the next 19 hour bus ride was fine, but the last overnight bus really won. It was a stormy night and a leaky bus. So between the hours of two and five in the morning, Matt and Harris passed my rain jacket back and forth between themselves, each trying to arrange a few minutes of dry napping. Ben kept a stopwatch going to ensure that the time was shared evenly. So, we arrived and already things feel so different from Chile- people are out in the streets wearing colorful clothes, the air is thin and the bread is tasty. We cannot wait to be back on bikes tomorrow and breaking for Bolivia.

Lots of love to our families and friends. We wish we had all the spandex and extra spandex and planes and bikes and tents and free-time-coupons it would take to bring over everyone we miss and have you ride with us for a few days on bumpy roads. Special shout out to my uncle Talbot and grandmother Snooky for doing solidarity rides.

No Clear Exit Strategy

2007-03-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,

Team CP is currently in Santiago waiting for visas to clear, after waiting in Puerto Montt for packages to clear customs, after waiting in Chaiten for a ferry to come. We have discovered that waiting is the new black. But I am not writing to bore you with fashion advice, I am writing to set the facts straight. Over two weeks ago now, Team CP departed Coyaique for a final go at the Carraterra. The details of our exit have been hinted at in our blog, but up until recently is has just been too soon to speak of the happening.

We departed Coyaique on a down note. It was damp and drizzling- that type of cold that fills your bones. We checked our tire pressure over and over, did stretches, grabbed one last ice cream. No one wanted to be the one to call "Lets ride." But in the early afternoon we set out and after taking a few wrong turns and stopping to grab two bottles of pisco, one of coke for the 2000 km party at the last liquor store on the outskirts of town we finally, reluctantly pushed out of Coyaique.

A huge pass waited for us just outside the city limits and as we trudged up it drizzle turned to rain, the temperature dropped, hail was added into the mix and soon we were caught in a maelstrom of bad conditions. We had ridden, at most, 8 km, but the thought of riding even one more was on no one´s mind. We stopped at a farm house. No room, a maid told us. And so we plopped back on our bikes, drenched to the bone and rode on until we found a pair of bus stops set in front of a few houses and a small church. We sat together on the bus stop bench and shivered violently.

Ben stepped out of the shelter and glanced at his odometer.
"1989 k," he read, "shame its not 2000."
"Yep" everyone burred in response.
"You know," Matt piqued in, "I´m not a stickler for numbers."
"Me neither," Thea added.
"The 1% rule," I said, " you´re allowed to have 1000 km parties within 1% of the target distance- it´s well known."
Everyone nodded, cups were quickly pulled from panniers and a bottle of pisco appeared on the scene. We drank with great verve, did some warm up dances and smiles were visited upon our faces.
"Thank god for the 1% rule," we said as our cheeks began to flush.
The last drop was poured out and we climbed back onto the bench to huddle next to each other for warmth. The rain was still coming down in buckets and a small woman sat down next to us at the bus stop.
"How´s everyone feeling?" someone ventured.
"Warm."
"Yeah, warm."
"Great. Could be warmer, though."¨

A mischievous grin spread through the group and in the way that old confidantes can communicate without a word being uttered and a decision was reached. The second bottle was presented and cups were filled. We moved to the bus stop across the street where a couple of policemen were conducting a consensus of local traffic and began to chat them up. There were many toasts and group hugs, back patting about turning lemons to lemonade. We stumbled and cheered.

Then we noticed that Ben was gone. The three remaining troops agreed that we hadn´t seen him for half an hour at least. It was a small town and no one was worried, and so the story telling continued. About half an hour later, it was decided through that Ben had been gone for quite a long while. I decided to look for him, more our of curiosity than worry, and so I carefully ambled towards the closest house. A yellow one, right behind the bus stop. ¨

"Hola," I said as I opened the door, "ma amigo, Ben."
The woman gave me a blank stare. "Where is Benjmamin? You know?" I said in broken spanish.
"Ah, Ben-ha-meen." she said. She did some motioning and said something in Spanish. I was sat down next to the wood fire stove and a cup of mate, made out of a short ram´s horn, was placed in my right hand. I sipped and told them I was from New York. They asked me more questions. I stared at them blankly. It was quiet for a while and then I said:
"Two friends, speak good spanish. outside, it´s good?¨
Whether they understood or not I motioned for Matt and Thea to come in.
Thea sat down on the bench to my right and Matt was brought into the other room.

It was about this time that I started to notice the crosses, one over the stove, a couple over the cabinets. A half dozen in the living room. And between the crosses there were bible versus and posters of Jesus. Like bank robbers that had stumbled into the annual policeman´s ball, we found ourselves in the local missionaries house, drunk as sin in the middle of the day.

Thea was given our host´s mate cup and took a sip. It was the straw that broke the camel´s back- she suddenly clutched her stomach and her eyes became wide.
She shoved a copy of the spanish bible she had been given into my hands and made a mad dash to behind the chicken coop. Whatever transpired there we´ll leave to the confidence of Thea and the chicks.

The missionaries looked at me with concern.
"Bad empanada," I ventured.
The missionaries looked at me with skepticism.

At around this time Ben stumbled through the door, ruddy faced with an ear to ear grin.
"We´re staying up the street," he announced.
As it turned out, Ben had somehow been taken on a long car ride with a member of the mission named Jamie (pronounched Hi-mee). How exactly this had happened is unknown by all members of the group, including Ben.

Soon we were pushing our bikes up a dirt road to a small house consisting of a room with a wood fire stove and a wash basin, and two identical bedrooms, separated from the main room by a pair of curtains. It was about 6 o´clock and as the rest of the group pulled off their wet clothes I passed out on one of the beds, shoes still on my feet.

I awoke an hour or two later feeling terribly hung over and Jamie was there, showing the group the travel magazines he had accrued over the years and post cards he had collected from other travelers. He possessed a baby face just starting to show its first wrinkles and his cheeks were slightly asymmetrical, the left drooping below the right. He had a strange effect and when we asked him if he would like some of our dinner he answered, "of course."

We slept soundly that night and woke up early to avoid any unnecessary awkwardness with this generous, but strange man. He asked us to write down each of our addresses and he poured over the letters, when he came to one he could not discern he asked us to rewrite it more clearly.

By a little after nine we made double time toward the gate. The sky had begun to clear and the mix of rain and snow that visited us over the night had finally stopped. It was Ben´s birthday- streamers and confetti would be in order.

HBO

2007-02-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

Anyone who claims to be glad they are glad they didn't grow up with a television must be lying - we have been waiting for mail and watching tv for three days straight in Puerto Montt and it has been GLORIOUS. We also saw Rocky Six the first night and shadowboxed the whole way back to the apartment. Total elation.

Tonite we will take a bus up to Santiago to gameplan the next stage of the trip and try to replace some broken parts. Everybody is probably 85% happy, especially Matt who shaved a very handsome goatee. Puerto Montt is a compelling mix of dirty and commercial - the mall has three stories of glass and you'd swear you were in Maryland if everyone wasn't speaking spanish. They have Pizza Hut in the Food Court; very exciting. Not sure how to feel about giving in to comfort food. Probably the same way Italians feel when they go to the Olive Garden while travelling in the states. They have Olive Garden in Italy, right? Maybe not.

Last night Harris made some of the most delicious fish I have ever eaten. We also managed to stop kicking each other in the queen bed we have been sharing. The first night he boxed me out while we were both asleep but I had my retribution last night in stealing the comforter.

Right now a bunch of long-hairs are covering Pink Floyd with pan flutes in the main square and the happiness factor might be jumping up to 90%. Pretty soon we will be in the desert getting our gums sunburned but for now it is all cable tv, comfortable bus seats, and chocolate milk. Moby Dick is waaaaaaaaaay longer than I thought it would be but I still love it. Big hellos and many thanks to Molly Petri and Matt Farrell for all the advice along the way, both aesthetic and practical.

Bumpy Rides

2007-02-21T11:02:00.000-08:00

Hopefully the roads will be better from here on out. There is no telling what´s going to happen in Bolivia but the thinking is it can´t get any worse. Only higher. Like 12000 feet higher. We just finished up the Carretera Austral, about 600 miles of gravel that was stunningly beautiful but pretty hard on contact points between (wo)man and machine...they are actually in the process of paving the whole thing, occasionally throwing backhoes and earth movers into the mix of things to avoid. Check out Thea and Harris carrying a bike up a horse track at the Argentinean border as we rushed for a ferry, Harris pushing it out through the mud after a big rain, and a CP team rider taking a digger as a Guns N Roses obsessed tractor driver blows past.

Breakdown

2007-02-21T10:49:00.000-08:00

We´re down to zero tires and zero tubes. Ben has a hole the size of a ping pong ball in his rear tire (currently patched by a piece of leather) and if we pop another tube we might be thumbing. The issue is wheel size. Ben and Thea are taller than average and have larger, road bike sized wheels. Nobody rides road bike wheels in South America. We knew finding replacement tires for the big wheels would be a problem but we brought them anyway. This is because we are Americans and it is our right, some might even say our duty, to do whatever we want wherever we want at all times. This begs the question; is it possible to ride a culturally insensitive bicycle? Or is it possible for an entire nation to be mechanically biased against tallies? Should we feel guilty, or slighted, or both?

Not Quite the Golden Gate....

2007-02-21T10:44:00.000-08:00

Party Time

2007-02-21T10:37:00.000-08:00

This party was moving. It began waking up on the floor of a house full of evangelical posters and bible verses, an exchange of fake addresses, a short ride down a chilly river valley, a nice campsite by the river. In the middle fishing line, bait, a beach ball, and some documents changed hands. It ended with a large glass bottle labeled ¨Breeder´s Choice.¨ The balloons only last a day but the memories just keep on coming back.

Ice

2007-02-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

Lost But Not Forgotten

2007-02-13T16:13:00.001-08:00

once again it is time to update the blog and once again we feel outmatched by the tour de force that is powercrushing.blogspot.com. excellent use of the term "bangarang" in a recent post, although we would have liked a nuanced discussion of serifs in the font-themed update. some of us have very strong opinions as to whether or not there should be little marks coming off letters. we'll save that discussion for another blog update.

before we get to the heart of this post, we'd like to address the clamoring of our rather large fan base (by 'rather large' we really mean the six of you who read this...). many of you have requested that we put a map up on the blog so that our friends back home can chart our progress through south america. we believe this is an excellent idea and would love to have a finely detailed map of the continent with some sort of line charting our progress. you would be able to see the cities we go through, the distance we are making, the sites we are seeing; in short, it would be revolutionary. nevertheless, this is going to be one of those things that just won't pan out. we have no clue how to do such a thing. our high tech blog with beautiful, digital pictures actually belies an utter incompetence with most things technological. putting a map up would probably mean something with a pdf file (or would it be a jpeg file) and we wouldn't even know where to begin to even start drawing the line on this hypothetical map. we apologize.

to compensate for the lack of a map, we'll give a few good search words for those of you who would really like to track our progess. we are currently in coyhaique, a bustling metropolis compared to some of the "towns" that we've been passing through lately. it's been pretty bleak the past 800ish kilometers. you know that you've been going through some pretty remote country when you see the hostel owner from villa o'higgins (a town about 600km south of coyhaique) here in town with his truck stocking up on supplies before he makes the 10 hour journey back to the middle of nowhere. we're on the carretera austral in chile and if you google image search those words you'll get a pretty good sense of the scenery we've been blowing through. it's "highly recommendable" (as one of our many road friends likes to say) to check out some pictures. another great search would be for caleta tortel, this amazing little city that was mentioned briefly in the last post.

it's now time for the real meat of this post. the heart of this update is our final homage to albert, stage name ice-t (friends call him Cop Killa though), the beloved dog who literally ran behind us for 130 kilometers from caleta tortel to cochrane and emerged without the slightest limp. he's a lot tougher than us, that's for sure. as you can tell from the picture, ice is a beautiful specimen and, had he not been born to the mean streets of patagonia, we're fairly certain that this divine, purebred creature would be kicking butt at the westminster right now. instead, ice t is wandering the lonely streets of cochrane, hopefully making stray dog friends in his new home. as tempted as we were to buy/build some sort of contraption to carry ice all the way to venezuela and forge "papers" for him so that he could cross borders, we ultimately decided that having a fifth member of the trip (let alone a fifth member who couldn't carry panniers) was something that just wasn't going to prove sustainable. unfortunately, we had to ditch ice-t in cochrane by splitting up in different directions and biking like madmen the moment ice got distracted. it was quite sad but we could not dwell on the loss for we had to get the hell out of town before ice got a hold of our scent (and believe you me, we definitely have a scent going). as hard as it was to say goodbye, ice will forever live in our memories and we wish him the best of luck foraging for scraps of food and rummaging through garbage with his new friends in cochrane.

Ice-T, thank you and good luck.

finally, this blog update would not be complete without a HUGE, patagonian shout out to grandma mary jane who is hopefully reading this post on her new dell laptop. grandma, everybody (mostly me and ben too) misses you and hopes that you're holding down the fort in napa. everyone says hi and hopes that you are enjoying your new toy.

that's it. more updates to come. we're almost out of patagonia so hopefully future updates will deal with potentially hazardous cultural misunderstandings and bouts of food poisoning instead of monotonous scenes of pastoral beauty. we miss everyone and hope this note finds you well.

best,
team cp

(We have a ton of pictures of Ice-t but right now the internet is outsmarting us. We'll put them up later, have no fear)

Reader Responses

2007-02-13T16:13:00.000-08:00

Dear blog readers,

I know that this whole blog thing can sometimes feel like a pretty one-sided relationship, with us posting to the blog and you all reading it. "Where´s the give and take?" you ask, "Where´s the interactivity for which the webternet is so prized?" Well, here it is, friends. Out of the hundreds of questions that have been sent to crushingpower@gmail.com I wanted to take a minute to answer a couple of them.

Uncle Stanley of Toronto, Canada writes: "You have mentioned a number of alcoholic beverages in your blog entries, but you have not mentioned the world renowned Chilean wines. Have you enjoyed any wine on your trip?"

Funny you should ask, Uncle Stanley, we actually have enjoyed quite a bit of fine Chilean wine in the last month. Although I wouldn´t call us connosieurs, we are certainly hoping to aquire that title by the time we leave Chile. The wine culture in Chile is much humbler and more down to earth then its American counterpart. Although Chile exports much of its wine to markets around the world, the very best wine is kept here and is served in a simple container, which preserves its fundamental essence much better then the bottles that are used in America and Europe. The name for this vessel has no direct English equivalent, but in rough approximation it resmebles what we know of as a box. Unlike in America with the plethora of varietals that no one can quite sort out, there are only two types of wine in Chile, Vino Tinto and Vino Blanco. Vino Tinto is something like a cabernet sauvignon, merlot, shiraz, or even a pinot noir, depending on the "box," whereas Vino Blanco is more similar to a chardonnay, pinot grigio, or sauterne, once again depending on the vintage and the batch. We have spent many nights enjoying the subtle, complex flavours and aromas of this "boxed wine" and have had no excess of early mornings as a result. Thanks for the question, Uncle Stantley!

A common thread that has run through many readers comments in varied forms is the question, "How has our time spent in South America changed us?"

Although I can not do justice to the varied personal transformations of each member of the group, I can safely say that our time down here has served as a thigh-expanding experience. In just a month down here we´ve gained so much, and not just in our thighs. Our calves and gluts have grown too. Every day there´s a novel experience pushing us outside the bounds of our traditional "comfort-zone," whether that experience is a gravel road with a 15% grade, or a 10km ascent on pavement, I feel that each is an equally important, valid thigh-expanding experience. At the same time as we are gaining so much, we are also being constnantly lightened. Matt has been lightened so much, it seems that he may return to the US as a totally different person. And as we move into Bolivia sometime during the next several weeks, I can only imagine that the diverse cultural and sanitary practices of that part of the world will continue to lighten us. Keep the questions coming!

Team CP

Eating Right

2007-02-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

Is more important than we realized. Matt demonstrates the proper technique for protein aquisition here - one part Cocoa Crispies, two parts powdered milk.

2007-02-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hello Internet Friends,

It has been a while. New things have come to light. Our legs and shoulders are a lot bigger and we all showered for the first time in a week this morning. Not bathing regularly isn´t really a big deal if everybody else you are with stinks too, right? Maybe?

We are now in Cochrane taking a rest morning and tuning up our bikes. The roads here from El Calafate were pretty hairy but everything except our bags and a tire made it through in fine form. Our first few days out of El Calafate were almost idyllic, the last stretch of big open mountain vistas much like the American West. Our next stop after two days of riding was El Chalten, a tenuous little mountain community the serves as the launching point for many serious mountaineers who climb the Fitz Roy…Most of them were French and had bigger scars, beards, and gear than the four of us combined. It was probably our favorite town so far…dusty roads, cheap food, and tons of stray dogs.

On Tuesday we raced against a ridiculous headwind to make the first of two ferries…we barely made it the 40 km in time only to discover that the boat was delayed until the next morning because of big winds, leaving us only four hours the next day to make it to the next ferry which only ran twice a week. Disembarking the next morning we found ourselves sometimes pushing, sometimes physically carrying our bikes up a washed out horsetrack of five kilometres followed by a rocky descent that we often had to walk as well. For a while it was two people per bike trying to get through the rutted trail. Tensions ran high when the video camera came out. Expletives were used frequently. Two bags were torn and there was blood and mud and all over our legs. Know this; we felt incredibly tough. That is until we realized the Spanish bikers in front of us had done the trail in half the time with no problems. Then we felt like rodeo clowns at a real cowboys´ convention; awkward, and only a little emasculated.

Anyway, the second ferry was delayed as well so we camped out on a big bluff right next to slaughtering yard and ate fresh raspberries and had a mild crisis when we tried to buy bread from a nice old farm lady who claimed not to remember that we had already paid for the bread we bought from her. Harris was confused and Bull refused to get involved and Ben thought about taking the photo of her father that hung above their fireplace and selling it on Ebay as retribution but then was overcome with wracking guilt that he would ever think about stealing a senile old woman´s only memento of her dead father out of some petty sense of moral outrage at being conned out of three dollars. Thea just talked to the woman and cleared it all up – she really had forgotten. Things were very exciting. Then we got on the ferry to Villa O´Higgins and everybody got sunburned.

That was about three days ago. From O´Higgins we started the Carretera Austral, a 1100 km gravel rode that connects up to Puerto Montt. Because it basically dead ends in Villa O´Higgins (there is no car ferry or other outlet for vehicle traffic) it is popular with cyclists and we have been meeting about as many people on bikes as in cars. The road is very lush, green, some might even say resplendent with big forests and snow capped mountains. Sometimes packs of horses run alongside us through the trees as we trundle along on our silly little mechanical contraptions. There are waterfalls. It is pretty much eye candy for arborists and lifestyle junkies.

And it has been raining a lot, and kind of cold. One day after a rain shower we were riding along this lake and suddenly there were thousands of dragonflies all over the road, swarming up as we passed and hitting us in the face and arms. Have you ever been to the park in San Francisco on a Sunday and seen all the people and their dogs running around and conversing and wondered whose birthday it is, for surely for all these dogs to be in one place they must be having a dog birthday party? Well, this was a dragonfly birthday party and we were invited. Some of them had been killed by passing trucks or other natural causes and so it might have been a dragonfly funeral, but really these things are much easier to think about in terms of birthdays.

And we have a dog. He followed us 110 km from this tiny logging town called Tortel. He only ate three hardboiled eggs and a can of tuna the whole way and is a complete hard-ass in every sense of the term, except of course the way he affectionately sleeps next to our bicycles at night and follows us all around town and even licks your fingers if you have jelly or tuna water on them. His name is Albert but his stage name is Ice-T. We will leave him in town here because even though it was an amazing thing (is it feet? or feat?) for him to run 60 miles his paws would wear out on the roads and besides, stray dogs are meant to sleep in parks and play with other dogs and trade parasites and what not. But he is our friend and we love him for being so sweet and tough. Tonite we will ride in a big group and he will follow us and when we get to an intersection we will each go a different direction and hopefully he will be confused and sad as to why we abandoned him but will soon resign himself to the noble matter of chasing as many cars each day as he possibly can. If he continues to follow one of us we will tie him to a tree with a note on his rope asking a kind passerby to release him in approximately one hour. No just kidding that would be incredibly risky and cruel. We´ll figure something out. Maybe he will come to Caracas with us.

Tortel, as a side note to the awesomeness of Ice-T, is this crazy little logging town built right onto the a rocky sea cliff that has no roads, only this intricate string of cypress-wood walkways by which everybody gets around. It was pretty amazing to see and we had this ridiculous campsite on a big sort of wood veranda. But it rained a lot so spirits were a little low, though luckily camping on a wood deck is sort of like sleeping on a slotted spoon – all the water drains off and the thing you want to keep (our tents, bikes, and mortal vessels) stay on top, ready to be served up for yet another day of riding bicycles.

Everybody check out powercrushing.blogspot.com for a laugh. Many thanks to Albert for taking the time out of his busy work schedule (from which he has a steady income, health, and maybe even dental) to parody our travels. Feel free to contribute your own comic…most of them have actually been incredibly true to life. Everybody who has taken the time to make fun of us so far...THANK YOU. You are awesome. We miss all of you a ton.

Bull topping out on a big pass

2007-02-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

The Muse taking a dip in El Chalten

2007-02-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

1000 km party

2007-02-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

Things were a little crazy at the 1000 km party...hard rolls with cucumber and chamois butter were served alongside mustard sandwiches and piscolas. Thea pulled some balloons out of her panniers and everyone lost their minds. Matt missed out...he was hitchhiking to town with rumbly insides and a serious case of the chills. We poured some out for him and did a couple balloon punches in his honor. Harris demonstrates here.

Throwing up six shooters at Perito Mereno

2007-02-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

We payed ten bucks for a boatride when what we really wanted was a couple of six shooters to pot-shot the ice...

Our Best Campsite Yet

2007-02-07T08:19:00.000-08:00

the bull may be injured, but he is not going down

2007-01-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

Hola amigos,

Team Awesome is currently in El Calafate- the most touristy city this side of Nuevo York. The streets are paved with lovely cobble stones and every other store sells either fine choclates or ice cream for a pretty peso, but getting here was no cake walk.
When we last left off we were but moments from enjoying a coffee with Miguel and his family. Coffee turned to eggs, turned to piscola, turned to a tour of the city, a dinner with corn, salad, and the best leg of lamb Ive ever had (literally a leg, with femur, tibia, hoof,and all) and before we knew it, it was midnight, shots of cognac were being forced upon us and our 6 am departure was pushed back to a respectable 4:30 pm. These people could really talk, we enjoyed 6 hours of conversation (er, monologue) about the school system in patagonia, the legacy of Pinochet, the racial background of estancia owners (apparently a lot of them are Croatian, who knew?), and a number of other fascinatng topics. Of course, I learned all of this the next day and fully understood exactly one sentance: Ostrich eggs are very large and make delicious omelets. "ah, Si" I replied knowingly.

In the 250 km between Puerto Natales and here there are 2 things: a town containing one mediocre burger joint, a gift shop for toursists, and the argentinian-chilean border, and 249.9 km of Pompas, dry chaparral. There is also a famous Chilean National Park, Torres del Paine. We biked an extra 60 km to the entrance, but upon learning that it would cost $120 US for us to enter for a day we did the math and realized that this would make a major dent in the 3 pesos we save every week for the special fund that will go towards a secret present for Thea once we arrive in Caracas (Ill give you one hint, it involves a stripper named Jorge and fistfulls of pesos). So we turned around and biked out.
Around this time Matt started not feeling so well. He began to lose large levels of fluids from an orifice generally reserved for the expulsion of solids. "Suck it up, you pansy!" Thea yelled and so Matt did and he rode 90 km over dirt washboards. The man is a machine. If youve never experienced washboards, theyre like small speed bumps, set apart every six inches, with large rock in between them. By the next morning Matt was also losing fluids from the other end and it was decided by all that it would be best if he hitchhiked, so he rode in the back of an empty uhual while the rest of us biked the last 90km of paved roads to here, passing the 1000km mark on the way. Thea brought baloons, but they were flown at half mast to mark Matts absence.
I am happy to report that he is feeling much better now and was even able to do his part at a tenador libre (an all you can eat meat buffet- literally "free fork") last night.

Today Matt slept in while Ben, Thea, and I went to see a huge glacier that calves regularly. Ice falls off into the water, people take pictures, Ben murdered me in Chess, the regular. You can see pictures of the glacier on the internet, Im sure. In the hostel people are playing hotel california and pink floyd on guitar and we will be leaving early tomorrow for a mad dash across another 250km of pampas to make the ferry that leaves twice a week. Wish us luck.

Team CP

2007-01-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

2007-01-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

at least the cops are on our side...

2007-01-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

We are currently rocking out in Puerto Natales. We have just glided over 250 km of beautiful pavement since our last stop in Puenta Arenas. I suppose glided isn´t quite the right term as the winds were steady and strong for nearly the whole time, prompting us to take a rest day by the side of the road under the wind monument pictured below as winds climbed to a reported 90 km hr. Nevertheless we made the best of things by making a few prickly pear, pesco martinis, a drink traditionally served in a leaky canteen at room temperature. It is a cocktail famous for its availability when all you have is a flask of pesco and some prickly pear drink mix.
After such refreshing energy drinks we were more than ready to brave the winds and get our bottoms here. We knew things were really awesine when even the downhills felt like steep uphills, we were Sisyphus rolling our bikes up the hill, but I guess Sisyphus never got to gorge himself on empinadas at the end of the day.
15 km out of town we stopped at a border crossing where the head of police there, Miguel, chatted us up while we sat on his lawn and rested our legs. He told us that a decade ago it was much less windy and it never rained here, only snowed. They used to give the police long sleeve uniforms, but a couple of years ago they switched over to short sleeves. He blamed it on some crazy liberal theory called ´global warming´,but that seemed really unlikely to all of us. Incidentally he also invited us to stay at his house. We slept in his very nice shed last night, with a puma Miguel had shot hanging on the wall. Their family cat slept on the end of my sleeping bag and Matt and Thea talked up his garolous and kind wife. Its good the cops on our side, because the wind certainly isn
´t.

Hasta luego,

the cp crew

2007-01-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

2007-01-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

Below are action shots from the last week - unpacking our bikes in Ushuaia, climbing the pass out of town and fending off dogs. Yesterday we ran out of food and had to hitch-hike to town...uh, yeah. Definitely awkward.

2007-01-10T16:27:00.000-08:00

2007-01-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

Off The Island

2007-01-10T12:02:00.000-08:00

Hi friends we are officially off the island of Tierra del Feugo and are happily munching on beef sandwiches in Punta Arenas. We left Ushuaia on Jan 3rd and have spent the last six days battling our bikes, our stomachs, and a twenty km headwind to get to the port city of Porvenir where we caught the ferry to Punta Arenas.

Overall we've been incredibly hgappy with our bikes but have realized we're carrying way too much stuff - will probably be sending home spare tires, extra parts and clothing tomorrow. Bull is thinking about going with only one shirt from here on out. That may seem extreme to you...that is, extremely awesome. Everybody smells terrible and it is glorious.

Things of course are exciting. All of our faces are peeling (please don't tell Mama), chamois cream has been applied liberally, and everyones' butts are en fuego. Tierra del Fuego itself is for the most part a windy, desolate collection of cattle and sheep estancias. There are many, many meeshees. On the way to Punta Arenas we passed mine fields, llamas, flamingos, a ton of Israelli backpackers, and a foursome of middle aged german cyclists whose calves made us look silly. They told us we were crazy to be riding against the wind and they were right - maybe if we'd cracked a guidebook open before getting down here we would have realised that the wind is predominately from the north and vicious. Last week in punta arenas they had to put ropes up along the side walks so people could go about their shopping in the 100 km gusts. BANGARANG GRANDMA.

But anyway everybody is so happy and healthy and full of empanandas. So much love to all our friends and family. crushingpower at gmail.com (i'd use the symbol but can't find it, though we do have a ton of çççççççç. anyone need any çççççççç? Nope. neither do we. I want the at symbol). Anyway email us and we'll hit you back. Smooches to Oberlin X and Jeff Burton for being number one fans. If you don't know what chamois cream is don't ask.

photos to follow.

We're Off

2006-12-30T23:33:00.000-08:00

Flight cancelled but spirits high. Re-estimated date of departure from Ushuaia - Jan 3.

Cargo Manifesto -
4 bikes.
1 sat phone.
9 pair of undies.
7 shirts.

New Years on the plane from Miami to Buenos Aires. Oh yeah.

Requisite Gear Photo

2006-12-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

Here's one of our bikes built up. We're riding steel-frame Surly Long Haul Truckers with steel racks and 36 spoke wheels. Our wheels were built by the boys at Menlo Velo, an excellent old-school bike shop in Menlo Park that steered us true the whole way through our bike-building process. Harris and Matt are riding 26-inch mountain wheels, Thea and Ben on larger 700c road wheels. The drive-train is comprised of all mountain components, a 44-32-22 crankset in front and an 11-34 cassette in the back. V-brakes and un-integrated Shimano shifters and brake levers were selected for simplicity and serviceability on the road. Unloaded weight is 33 pounds on the rig shown here. We chose to mix road frame geometry with mountain bike components in an attempt to get the best of both bike worlds: the speed and efficiency of a road bike with the low gearing of a mountain drive-train to make it up the steep climbs even when fully-loaded. They may not be light but at least they look tough. If you have any ideas for bike names drop us a line…

Hey We're riding bicycles

2006-05-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

This blog is still sort of pre-natal but we'll be putting up photos and posts here about our bicycle ride from the southern tip of Chile up to Venezuela. Our bikes are almost built and our spanish is colorful. Our power is undeniable. Check back in December for action shots and a more detailed explination of our route. Thanks for pointing your browser to us - come back soon.

-Bull, Thea, Harris, and Ben