The Cyclist's Mind Goes Everywhere

By Louis Frouws

Louis takes you on a cycling journey through Europe, mostly France: Six countries, 20/day, 38 stages, and averaging 100 km/day. His bike with luggage weighs 40 kg. His pannier bags contain everything necessary to travel, sleep, wear, navigate, photograph, cook and eat.

He travels on unfamiliar roads through countryside, villages, towns and cities. Each day presents new adventures with challenging thoughts.

He exposes his senses to wide-ranging input. Sometimes, he experiences something about everything, or everything about something. Louis wonders about reality and myth. How science and culture shapes the future. He wonders about large and small, the universe, photons and space-time. Should you think while cycling? Does energy produce continuity?

Louis realizes that his bike is his best friend. Is gravity also a friend?

Do you plan a cycle tour? The checklists may help you plan whatever physical or mental journey you desire. There is information about nutrition, bicycle functionality and self-reliance.

Join the cycle of life. Smell the flowers, hear the birds and see the stars.

Let speed-distance-time, echo in your mind! Lets ride together everywhere!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490720104

Louis Frouws

Louis Frouws was born in the Netherlands. He grew up in South Africa, where he immigrated with his parents as a young child. He likes cycling and thinking. His past or current hobbies: trail running, cycling, sailing, photography, and flying a homebuilt aircraft. He is married with three nest-fl own sons.

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© Copyright 2014 Louis Frouws.

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isbn: 978-1-4907-2008-1 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-2009-8 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-2010-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013921808

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Contents

Foreword

Tables

Preparing body, mind, and bicycle

Introduction

Motivation and other stuff

Let’s ride together everywhere!

Stage 0

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 6

Stage 7

Stage 8

Stage 9

Stage 10

Stage 11

Stage 12

Stage 13

Stage 14

Stage 15

Stage 16

Stage 17

Stage 18

Stage 19

Stage 20

Stage 21

Stage 22

Stage 23

Stage 24

Stage 25

Stage 26

Stage 27

Stage 28

Stage 29

Stage 30

Stage 31

Stage 32

Stage 33

Stage 34

Stage 35

Stage 36

Stage 37

Stage 38

Stage 39

My continent and safety

Comments

Bicycle Stuff and Safety

Planning a cycling vacation

Planning your cycling vacation

Why go?

Where to and what overnight accommodations?

What to eat and drink?

What to see?

What route to take?

Whom to visit or meet?

Who will go?

When to go?

What to take?

Tour checklist

How to travel?

Planning and cost estimates.

How far to cycle each day?

Goodbye, good luck, and more

Author’s note, epilogue and parting shots

Summary of resources

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

For Rosie, my family, and friends.

In memory of Joost Zwerver

Whatever you do, you do for yourself; no matter what reality you know or myth you believe.

Foreword

If you follow your mind, it goes everywhere. If you follow a road or track, it leads somewhere.

This book takes you on a bicycle trip. The facts are real and the myths unproven. What is reality? My bike is real. The places are real. The people are real. I ate real food. The ground on which I slept is real. I really got lost sometimes.

My story aims to promote a healthy lifestyle and inquisitive mind. We do not have to be inactive spectators conforming to whatever the captains of industry, politics, religion, or sport want us to desire. Be an individualist. This could be the beginning of your trip. It goes somewhere and everywhere. Where is everywhere?

What do you want to see and experience when cycling? Do you want to see large and small? Do you like to admire nature or examine human endeavor? What do you think as you cycle uphill or freewheel downhill? Do you wonder about energy, matter, gravity, or continuity? What happens to your awareness when your substance expires?

Should you consider environmental matters? Will your oil well run dry? A bicycle chain requires little oil.

This book comments on civilization, resources, energy, pollution, and materialism. We cannot stop human progress; however, by being more aware of our desires, we might redirect our efforts toward less consumptive happiness until an abundance of clean energy changes that view.

Occasionally, people ask if I work. My reply, I do not have time to work. I have too many hobbies and too much to think about.

Maybe cycling and thinking is my new job. Should one call that job creation?

Let’s ride together everywhere!

Tables

Table 1 Nutrition

Table 2 Tour Checklist

Table 3 Planning Schedule

Preparing body, mind, and bicycle

Introduction

I was on a long climb on a road in France cycling toward Switzerland. I leaned forward out of the saddle and pushed hard on the pedals. Is it a hill? I could not see the summit. Is it a mountain? With legs and arms straining, I was barely moving faster than walking. It became a race between split personalities: one cycling, the other wanting to walk . . . both racing against time . . . my time . . . my continuity.

I reprimanded,

You’re crazy . . . you’ve lots of time . . . no need to hurry . . . there’s no one in front and no one behind; however, push that pedal once more!

What would break first . . . the chain, my body, or my mind?

That last stroke took all my strength. I cursed adrenaline into my bloodstream. An earlier road sign had indicated a 5.5-kilometer climb at 10 percent gradient, but now I faced 200 meter at 15 percent gradient. Even 20 percent should be doable on a light bike without luggage. That mountain was too steep! It defeated my desire to cycle to its summit, and I started walking, pushing 40 kilograms of bicycle plus load. Adrenaline trembled idly in my hands and fingers.

I wondered,

How far could I ride today? Where would I sleep tonight? What is my goal? Is my goal to rush everywhere? Is my goal to sightsee, explore, and gain knowledge? Should I let my mind go everywhere and discover myself? Could my goal be all of these?

I rationalized,

"It does not matter. Every moment is a destination, every day the culmination of many destinations. I like that uncertainty . . . it feeds my continuity . . ."

As I sped downhill, a sideways-gust, the bow-wave of a passing truck, caused my heavily loaded bicycle to shudder.

It would be interesting to cycle through Paris, but fools rush in where angels fear to tread . . . Wait! I am cycling ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

My story aims to awaken them stuck in inertia.

*     *     *

Flying over Africa, destination Amsterdam, I mused over how it all started. It took some conniving and plotting to convince my family that I required a break. Some years earlier, my wife and her friend backpacked by train through Europe while I minded the children. It was my turn to let my mind wander and live my dreams. I also wanted to explore my cultural heritage and experience it within my ancestral environment.

Swallowed by an aluminum bird flying to Europe, it was our turn, bicycle and I traveling together to discover our ancestral lands. I enjoyed the direct flight from Cape Town, fascinated that an aircraft propelled by just two engines could fly that far; almost like a bike propelled by two wheels. From my moving perch high in the sky, I peered through a Perspex window at the scenery below. We flew over the rocky-sandy Sahara and then over the Mediterranean Sea. Europe seemed level, hilly, and mountainous; also cloudy, hazy and green, but cultivated and populated. On the distant horizon, far away on my right, I could see the snowy peaks of the French and Swiss Alps. Joost Zwerver, the wanderer, had walked on paths and roads over those mountains. Who was he? His genes urged me on. Would our paths cross somewhere?

Maps help you to visualize and plan. They program your mind to steer a bicycle wheel to wherever you would like it to go. Months earlier while gazing longingly at a European map, I decided to start my cycling trip in the Netherlands and head in a southwesterly direction toward Belgium and Germany, and then into France. Such flexibility should allow me to live each day anew with its adventures and challenging thoughts.

We landed at Schiphol at noon on a sunny Saturday. My luggage, bicycle, and I were soon reunited. My bicycle had a good trip without pampering inside the luxury of a box. I had only deflated the tires, twisted the handlebars through ninety degrees, and reversed the pedals. That bike had been places and I would not know if it gained more dents or scratches.

My brother met me at the airport. I had two days to make final preparations before starting my cycle tour on Tuesday.

I like bicycling. I am an ordinary bloke that enjoys cycling. I have no claim to cycling fame and am blissfully unaware of noncelibate priests, politicians, or other primates that somewhere in antiquity nurtured our family tree into mutating pedigree cyclists. Maybe I am not a cyclist.

My self-absorbed, almost narcissistic, two-wheeler experience started with a step-scooter in the middle of the twentieth century. That scooter moved forward by converting my energy into forward motion as I pushed either foot linearly against the ground. Soon thereafter, I started riding my sister’s real bicycle, a single-speed backpedal that could go forward or backward, a handy feature for playing crash-bicycles with other kids. My legs were too short to sit on the saddle so I tolerated it pounding my spine. That bike was equipped with mudguards, a bell, medium-size tires, reflectors, and a flashlight bracket.

Over the years, I progressed steadily up the ladder of cycling technology: I owned a black bicycle, a white one, a green one and eventually a blue bike. My next bike could be a rainbow-colored exit-level bike. My rusty, almost twenty-something blue bicycle, accompanied me on this trip. My first bike did not have gears, but that did not limit it to level terrain, or prevent it from going off-road. However, uphill cycling became easier when I acquired a three-speed bike equipped with internal hub gears. Its hub-shaft connected via a small chain and cable to a gearshift, which allowed trigger shifting between three different gear ratios. Back in the day, internal hub gears, comprising of sun and planetary gears were high-tech, and you qualify as an inquisitive baby boomer if you know the workings of such mechanical device.

Eventually, I bought a twelve-speed bicycle because many gears make racing and long distance touring easier. Slowly but surely, my blue bike propelled me into the higher echelons of energy, power, and work rate. In time, it allowed me to conquer almost anything presented by wind and topography.

I fitted a mechanical counter onto the steering fork of one of my first bikes. Mounted on the shaft of that counter was a spider, which cyclically hit a pin on a wheel-spoke while cycling. It went click . . . click . . . click . . . as the wheel rotated. That counter converted and accrued those clicks into distance cycled, consistent with the preset wheel circumference. I timed my trips with a Westclox pocket watch.

"Yippee . . . Speed is distance divided by time!"

Some people might call that real magic.

I live in a country where speed-distance-time . . . speed-distance-time . . . speed-distance-time . . . echoes unrelentingly and obsessively in most cyclists’ minds . . . sometimes even in mine. Eventually, maybe for that reason, I fitted an electronic cycle computer onto the handlebars of my blue bike. It has a pick-up that clicks electromagnetically instead of mechanically. Incredibly, that common speedometer indicates, calculates, and records eight functions: current speed, average speed, maximum speed, trip distance, total distance, elapsed time, daily trip distance, and time of day. We should talk more about speed, distance, and time later. It provides awareness of continuity . . . Various questions need answers before you can go on a cycling tour. What do you want to see and experience on a biking tour? Do you want to learn something about everything or everything about something? Should you expose your senses to wide-ranging or specialized input? Do you want to challenge your physical and mental capabilities? Do you want to experience reality and wonder about myth?

My journey of cycling, sightseeing, eating, and self-discovery aims to experience everything. What is body and what is mind? What is real and what is myth? What causes happiness? Perhaps cycling empowers one to figure out all kinds of stuff . . . To get going, like most things in life, one needs to think and prepare. Every story starts with things to consider and remember: A checklist of real stuff filtered by your intellect and emotions into practical activity. Preparation is part of the fun, but real cycling only starts at stage 1.

How do you motivate yourself for a bicycle tour?

Motivation and other stuff

Welcome to the cycling fraternity! Let’s mull over basics. You need two things to go bicycling: You need yourself and a bicycle. Have you tried cycling with neither? Maybe, virtual reality will allow you to cycle on a zero-mass bicycle . . . think of the advantages: no need to leave the comforts of home, no need to balance on a bike, no aches or pains, headwinds, or rain. However, once you brainwashed yourself convincingly out of elusive normality, it should be easy to prepare you and your bike to experience reality and explore its myths.

Before we hit the road on stage one, we should say something about the human body and mind. The human body is the most complex thing copied and produced billions of times by unskilled labor, and perhaps for that reason it comes with a lifetime guarantee. Your biological mother and father did not require special skills to make you even if they allowed you to jump out of a test tube. Over time, you ate, grew and developed your body, and with input from everywhere and much personal reasoning, programmed your mind. Congratulations, reading this is part of that never-ending process of preparing your body and reprogramming your mind, for cycling and other mind-blowing stuff.

A bicycle tour is a physical and mental journey; paradoxically the mental could be harder than the physical or the physical harder than the mental.

The physical

When did you last sit on a bicycle? To function effectively as a cycling creature, you need a head, heart, lungs, and a large bladder; also a few muscles and other bits and pieces like a liver, a kidney or two, and a hard bum.

For a moment, think exclusively about your heart; how exceptionally hard it works and how little it weighs, that faithful blood-pumping organ which pounds regularly in your chest, each heartbeat a complete contraction and relaxation of the heart muscle. Cyclists often fret about weight, but here is excellent news: the average adult heart weighs 286 grams, which is slightly more than the weight of a crash helmet or that of two toilet rolls.

What is the pumping capacity of one’s heart? In your lifetime, your heart might pump enough blood to fill a million empty oil barrels.

You may well ask,

How is that possible, my heart pumps only 4.7 liter per minute?

Seventy beats per minute is 100,800 heartbeats per day so if you live for seventy-five years, your heart might pulse 2,800,000,000 times while pumping 161 million liters of blood. A barrel of crude oil holds 159 liter; therefore, one’s heart could fill more than a million empty oil barrels before it finally conks out.¹ What a pump! Many cyclists are older than seventy-five. Just think what superlative pumping statistics they could generate.

How does that compare with the mechanical world? Your heart pumps about thirty five times the fuel-volume requirement of a medium-sized car. Therefore, it seems okay to buzz around on bicycles rather than in cars.

Treat your heart with respect and it will reward you with continuity. Of course, that applies all our body parts.

You do not need all your limbs to play sport, e.g. football players barely need their hands and arms except the goalkeeper. Disabled people may well go on cycle tours and so enjoy self-reliant mobility. However, they might need specially adapted bicycles or tricycles to cater for individual incapacity of hand, foot, leg, or arm. We should admire the disabled wherever we see them moving about self-propelled.

Habitual regular cycling makes anyone reasonably fit for a cycle tour. When I wrote this, I was cycling about 50 kilometers every second or third day, but less in winter due to weather-induced laziness. Occasionally, I go on a longer ride of about 150 kilometers. It all adds up to roughly 10,000 kilometers per year, which includes cycle tours. Cyclists preparing for the Tour de France cycle about 36,000 kilometers yearly, but lesser mortals have softer bums. To add interest and intensity, I vary my route by including a few hills. I do not carry much stuff on practice runs, only a few spanners and sometimes a camera. I prefer cycling outdoors, but others might like spinning in a gym. My bicycle is my gym!

A bicycle tour is not a race, but some cyclists might think that every bike trip is a race, particularly when going uphill. Perhaps it just feels like a race when you are unable to keep up! However, if speed-distance-time is important to you, then you might as well race against yourself on a solo tour as it presents an opportunity to win and lose at once while wondering about self, ego, or whatever. Otherwise, compete against anyone or anything that you see moving in front, or anyone following you from behind.

Cycle touring is not just fast downhill riding on sunny days pushed along by strong tailwinds. You need to cycle regularly to prepare for most weather conditions. Learn how to protect your body from cold, heat or rain, and how to shield your skin against sun, wind, dust, and chafing. Also, try out good sunglasses that adequately protect your eyes. Determine your energy needs by including hills. Go on a few overnight trips in preparation for a memorable tour.

Terrain, in particular, changes in elevation and road conditions, tourist attractions, weather and load all play a major role in what distance one might cover on a certain day. Plan your route according to your level of fitness and the sights you want to see. If you consider going on a group tour, it is advisable to reach consensus beforehand on places of interest to visit and then plan a route according to the lowest level of fitness and endurance in your group. Another option is to share luggage in proportion to individual fitness but that might develop into a handicap race. However, it helps if all tourists are of similar physical ability and like-mindedness. Of course, that is impossible: Cyclists come from all lifestyles, Vive la différence! The section, Planning a cycling vacation provides some ideas.

The bicycle

A bicycle is an efficient machine as it has two wheels mounted in line in a suitable frame and fork, which makes it useful for commuting, recreation, or racing. You steer a bike by turning the handlebars that connect to the wheel-fork. You propel a bike by forcing pedals in circles, which then via a chainring and chain turn the rear wheel and push it along terra firma.

Use a bicycle that best suits your dimensions; otherwise, you might convert simple motion into pain. Surely, cycling should provide more pleasure than pain. On my tour, I used my old bicycle because practical attachment prevented emotional affection for another. Nowadays, I find my bike reasonably comfortable despite the drop-handlebars causing some neck fatigue and other aches and pains. Over the years, my shape adapted to my bike because I failed to hammer it into my shape. Some people might describe my rusty old bike as a piece of junk, and I agree with them, but it takes me places that provide more pleasure than pain. It serves my purpose. Maybe that is why I have kept her so long. If her old frame clocks 200,000 kilometers someday, I might shout, Wow . . . that’s continuity! On the other hand, I might paraphrase, happiness is appreciation for the wealth I have.

I was somewhat uninformed when I started bicycle touring. Therefore, I gradually adapted my steel-frame racing bike by fitting front and rear carriers, a kickstand, and mudguards. Luckily, the frame and fork have handy mounting lugs for that purpose. A modern racing bike requires frame-clamps to mount carriers, and it is unlikely that mudguards would fit into their narrow frames. Besides, it would be disrespectful to the racing fraternity and just think of the extra weight! Furthermore, an expensive racing bicycle does not come equipped with a warning bell or kickstand. My friends just smile when I ask, Why pay so much for a bicycle without those essentials? Others just stare pitifully.

You might be better off financially by buying a comfortable touring bicycle instead of converting a racing bike into touring mode. Assembled-to-order, those bikes come equipped with front and rear carriers mounted properly for carrying heavy loads. A touring bicycle has a longer wheelbase than a racer; which makes it possible to position the center of gravity of the rear pannier-bags forward of the rear axle, and so reduce fishtailing tendencies. If the mount of the front carrier rack with its pannier-bags is too high, it can also cause steering difficulties. When I started bicycle touring, I did not investigate why it was hard steering my bike and decided it was good exercise for my arm and shoulder muscles.

Equip your bicycle with suitable gears, particularly if you intend carrying heavy loads over hilly and mountainous terrain. You could convert a hard-tail mountain bike into touring mode by fitting carriers, and to reduce rolling resistance, replace knobbly tires with slicks. It increases the distance one could travel per day.

On my tour, my blue bike still had its gearshifts located on the upper-end of the down tube, which is a simple system requiring little maintenance. As a party trick, I could change gears using my toes when not wearing shoes. However, integrated brake and gearshift levers, or STIs, on the handlebars make it safer and easier to control a bike, particularly when lugging a heavy load uphill, which might require double shifting to take advantage of half-step gearing.² Equipped with two chainrings on the chainset and six gear-sprockets on the rear hub, my bike was ready for anything it might encounter. A triple chainring would be a better option for mountainous terrain. Read more about upgrades to my bicycle and safety in the section, My continent and safety.

*     *     *

If you are self-motivated, energetic, and in a hurry to join my bicycle tour, then skip reading the whiny motivational-speaker lecture that follows. However, many things need to happen in your head before you can go . . .

The mental

Cycling can be a lifelong-hobby transcending age and gender. It can be more than a hobby. It can be part of your culture and lifestyle. Cycling can be one of the pleasures of life, which provides a wise means to experience the bigger picture. Life can be simplistic:

• Dream it.

• Do it.

Conversely, life can be complex and crammed with barriers and excuses that prevent one from doing and experiencing exciting things. Can you transform your ingrained culture? Do you really want to go on a bicycle tour? Do you like cycling? Who are you? What do you see when you look within? Could cycling be more than just cycling? Could it be your vehicle to escape the ordinary? Our reasons and excuses for doing or not doing vary. Happiness resides within self. Where else can it reside? Only you can liberate that happiness. We all have special skills and abilities, which need activation to tackle great journeys and satisfy dormant desires.

A bicycle tour could be more than just cycling. It could satisfy one’s need for achievement, affiliation, and power. You and your bicycle could be a dynamic combination operating at the cutting-edge of awareness, fulfilling your needs and desires by looking and thinking.

You can achieve your goals of distances cycled, sights seen, and things experienced. You can earn bragging rights when reaching a destination by means of self-reliant power, within personal objectives of speed, distance and time, and then talk about it to whoever wants to listen.

On a group tour or as a solo-cyclist, you can affiliate and socialize with others or with anyone that you might meet along the way. That truly expands the fun of cycle touring.

Then there is that need for power, which does not refer to muscle or money power but to the mental power required to manage and enjoy a cycling trip.³ It could entail being talkative, opinionated, and challenging, with the ability to impose, skilfully, your will on others, e.g. to obtain a good campsite. Knowledge, confidence, charisma, skill, determination, and beauty are some of the personal attributes that convey power. Beauty may come in handy when tubes need patching and tires need pumping, and that is not a chauvinistic opinion. In addition, determination and even foolhardiness empowers one to overcome doubts before and during a trip.

Does fear or greed prevent you from cycling? We all suffer from those powerful emotions, but can reduce its impact by changing the thoughts that make us feel insecure about ourselves. Collectively, we exploit everyone’s fear or greed to further our real and mystical needs.

However, everyone has a stake in something because we are the cogs that keep the wheels of the global economy turning. Let us think of examples without fearing we might disrupt those cogs and so lose friends and acquaintances by being forthright. Think of what you could have done with that time and money spent on tangible and intangible goods and services. Was it essential or was it to soothe fear or feed financial or emotional greed? List everything and query it. Was that time and money spent on services like healthcare, security, insurance, politics, religion, or myth necessary? Do you need the tangible and intangible continuity that they promise? You may wonder about clothing, food, cars, entertainment, or sport. You might question the purpose of alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs. How do personal emotions influence your expenditure on hair care, nail care, or spectacles? For what purpose do you use telecommunication? Are you involved in litigation? Will it soothe fear or greed?

Do you get the message? Does it shake your stake? Does it touch your culture? By examining your wants and needs, you might release mental energy, time and money to embrace a new lifestyle of cycling and cycle touring. Of course, there will be new brand names, fads, fashions, gadgets and buzzwords that will tempt exploitation. Does that sound paranoid? However, when you reduce fear and greed, it becomes financially and emotionally cheaper and easier to cycle toward self-discovery . . .

Let us not delay cycling any longer… we can sneak in more excuses when it is irrelevant to whine…

The road to adventure

You can do it!

Please ride with me.

• Feel the wind on your face and the sun on your skin.

• Flex your muscles propelling that bike.

• Discover the world through all your senses.

• Experience the rhythm of leg movement.

• Smell the flowers, hear the birds, and see the insects.

• Feel your fingers straining on brake levers.

• See the forests, animals, sunflowers, and grain.

• Feel roads and tracks their smoothness and bumps.

• Hear bicycle wheels sing.

• Let your energy make every moment a destination.

• Feel the rain, the heat, and the cold.

• Succumb to the exuberance of self-reliance.

• Listen to new friends showing you the way.

• Be a thinker, writer, artist, photographer, and poet.

• Enhance the splendor with your presence.

Let’s start on our journey . . . cycling, looking, eating, listening, talking, resting, thinking, and sleeping.

Let’s ride together everywhere!

Stage 0

Monday morning.

Weight and space are major considerations when planning a bicycle tour because more stuff adds weight that requires more space. Everyone knows that but not everybody believes it. I required more space for clothing hence modified an old carrier and fitted it onto the front fork. Next, that carrier required pannier-bags into which to pack the clothes.

I cycled to Osdorpplein to shop for pannier-bags and other last-minute essentials: maps, mudguards, camping gas, and groceries. I scurried round in a supermarket and read food labels advertising nutritious foodstuffs. The brand names differed from what I knew back home, but delicious pictures on tins tempting my taste buds were helping with selection.

I purchased two pannier-bags for €40 at a large shop. I did not see an open bicycle shop to buy mudguards and decided to buy them later.⁴

If you fear uncertainty, you could plan a cycle tour to the nth degree by surrounding yourself with people you know and scenery you see in guidebooks. It might remove most uncertainty. On the other hand, you may plan less if you prefer the flexibility of figuring out things on the go. Excessive planning could prevent you from deviating from your plans. Individuals may follow different routes to whatever physical or mental destinations they desire; but preconceived reality might limit one’s experience of reality. In other words, one’s expectation may cloud the future before you see and experience it. I try not to be one of them, but concede that to some extent I might be one of them.

I went into an ANWB (Algemene Nederlandse Wielrijders Bond) shop, a cyclist’s paradise for those who embrace efficiency. I bought a few kilogram of information: guidebooks and detailed cycling maps for southern Holland.⁵

Elsewhere I bought a gas canister for my small cooker and groceries for the next few days. At a fast-food restaurant, I had a meal of carbohydrates for energy and proteins to repair body cells: French fries and fish sticks flushed down with a fizzy cola.

Some might say,

What an unwholesome flush!

That evening packing was in full swing. I displayed everything on a bed, table, and floor. How much could I carry on my bicycle? The limitations of weight and space require squeezing and compromising. Check the checklist. I scrutinized each item: take it or leave it. Should I pack light for cycling comfort or heavy for other comfort? What does it weigh and how much space does it take? Does it serve single or multiple purposes? Do I need a jersey, long pants and long johns? Should I take pyjamas? Could long johns double as pyjamas? What should I wear on cold or hot days? What provision should I make for rain? That plastic raincoat is practical, light, small and waterproof, but its gray color unfashionably ugly and not very visible. Could my fluffy jacket double as a pillow? Should I take cycling shoes and sandals? Underpants, socks, shorts, and shirts went through similar scrutiny. Deciding and packing took hours.

Was I going on an eating holiday or a cycling trip? I had had visions of cooking sophisticated meals like French fries, but space and mass limitations had me ditch the frying pan and cooking oil. I finished packing late evening and went to bed in an excited state.

Questions raced through my cyclist’s mind.

What will I see? Whom will I meet? Where will I stay? What will I eat? Will my body and bicycle survive the challenge? How far should I ride each day? What will I think? Will answers to those questions provide meaning to my journey?

I could not soothe the mysterious circles of my mind. I longed for the morning and the prospect of pushing pedals through millions of circles.

Stage 1

It was Tuesday morning.

I was nearly ready to go but fussing with last minute attention-to-detail. For months, I had prepared to experience life in the slow lane, like a morphed bride going to her wedding. Did perfection to the nth degree cater for most eventualities?

I applied sun block while gazing in the mirror. I saw an ordinary person in ordinary clothing