Where I Discover I Only Like Being On Epics For 5 Days. After That I Get Bored and Smelly.

Standing at 15,000 feet and watching your first blizzard tear through the horizon like a rusty saw, is unnerving.  It is scary.  It feels wrong.You feel stripped bare in a land you do not belong in.  Do not belong to.  A landscape of rocks and snow and yaks and carcasses and the vultures that feed on them.  It is not a landscape for you on your bike with your thin tent and bicycle and wife and fear.  We watch mountains and valleys and then our thin strip of crumbled asphalt smudged white under the finger of god.  All goes white.  All disappears.  We have nothing to hide behind or in.  We have no where to run.  We, sitting on our bikes, rise higher than anything for 100's of miles.  There are no trees.  Nothing grows.  This not a fun or gentle.  This is not a white Christmas.  This is a time for iron and marrow to break. 

 

You are at 15,000 feet.  There will be no cars, or motorcycles or people that pass you today.  There is nothing but snow and ice and cold and wind and wind and wind and wind.  My how there is wind.  It does not stop.  It cuts into you eyes and cheeks and lips and through your gloves.  You are higher than the clouds that tear past mountains in the distance.  You are above heaven.  You look down on the home of god and eagles.  You are watching the birth of storms.  You are experiencing creation.  There is nowhere to go but forward, to fight it.  You tuck your head and crawl into it's teeth.  Snow and ice and cold and wind.  The highest plateau on earth rolls on for thousands of miles.  You push your bike forward and hope this doesn't kill you.  You do this for 12 days.  All is white.  All is frozen.  You should not be here.

 

13 days ago, after a 5 day giarddia induced rest, we rolled out of Yushu for what we knew would be the hardest part of this trip.  We knew we would be going a long time with pavement, without access to food, or accommodations, or people.  We knew it would be tough.  I did not know it would be as tough as it was.  Rolling into it's teeth Breckan and I discussed whether or not this trip deserves to be called epic.  Gilgamesh is epic.  Dragging Achilles around Troy is epic.  Riding a bike for a couple months?  After an hour or two of discussion, we left it up in the air.  Now, after 12 days of snowstorms and ice sandstorms and wind storms; and days without seeing cars or permanent structures; and watching Charlie pound his tent stakes in with some animal bone; I can safely say, "this became epic."

 

We should of known.  The day before we headed into the wilderness we had a disagreement about our hotel price at 11 pm.  The hotel doubled the price, in the middle of snowstorm, while we were sleeping and demanded we paid them right then.  Instead, we packed our stuff up, got on our bikes and rode out into the middle of nowhere at midnight.  We left them stunned.  They just stood there.  At midnight, with the snow howling, we set up tents and slept for the night.  That was our last night of civilization.

 

We should of known.  That morning we packed up our tents, dusted the snow off our bikes and headed up, what we thought was the right road.  The lonely planet describes the area where we were going to spend the next 11 days as "an inhospitable landscape that is virtually uninhabited."  As the road broke into gravel, we stopped a car to make sure we were heading the right way into an virtually uninhabited and inhospitable landscape.  We showed the driver the map, pointed to the city we wanted to head to and motioned to the road we were on.  He gave us the thumbs up and smiled.  We rode off down the road.  15 seconds later, the same car skids to a stop next to us.  He rolls down his window and begins to furiously wave his hands.  Like he's waving us off.  Then he begins to speak rapid chinese and making all sorts of hand motions.  My chinese is a little rough, so this isn't an exact translation.

 

Chinese Driver Waving Furiously At Us Not To Go Up The Road:  Fearless and glorious travelers!!  15 seconds ago I made a very grave mistake.  No one can ride this road and not die.  I am a fool for pointing you this direction.

 

Us: (Thumbs up and smiles)

 

Chinese Driver Waving Furiously At Us Not To Go Up The Road: (pointing to a nearby structure and continuing to wave furiously)  You see friends!  There are none of those.  THERE ARE NONE!!!  Surely you will meet an untimely death upon this road!

 

Us: (Thumbs up and smiles)

 

Chinese Driver Waving Furiously At Us Not To Go Up The Road:  (making the universal motion for eating with chopsticks and then waving furiously)  American Fools!!!!  There is no food.  Even travelers as brave and glorious as you can not survive with out rice!  Surely you will meet an untimely death on this road!

 

Us: (Thumbs up and smiles)

 

Chinese Driver Waving Furiously At Us Not To Go Up The Road: (clearly exapperated you pulls out all stops.  Clasping his hands together in front of his mouth he makes a muzzle and uses his fingers to indicate sharp teeth.  He then howls and makings a biting motion towards)  WOLVES!!!!!  There are wolves!!! You will surely be eaten by wolves!

 

Us: (now laughing.  Thumbs up and smiles)  Thank you kind sir.  We will ignore your advice and ride on in search of glory and adventure.

 

The driver shook his head, as if we were crazy, turned his car around and drove off.  13 days later, we still hadn't seen a wolf.  We also didn't see anywhere to shower, we didn't see any real buildings, and we didn't see any food.  We spent days with nomads and yaks.  We slept through blizzards in tents and woke to snowy landscapes and cycled on.  We wore the same clothes, night and day, for almost two weeks.  We filtered water from frozen streams and huddled around stoves fed with yak dung with herders.  We lived in the 15th century.  It broke us down.  It brought me to tears.  It made us hurt and crack.  It was incredible.  I would never do it again. 

 

Breckan is made of daisy medals and iron ore.