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. 

 

 

China Has Blocked Blogspot.

The Chinese government, in all it's wisdom, has blocked the potentially politically important blogspot.  I'm going to try to mobile blog.  If our blog is a wreck for the next couple of weeks, this is why.  Big ups china!  Big ups!

A Little Of This. A Little Of That.

Six days ago, as all our bikes and bags and hopes and dreams were smashed into the world's smallest van, and the driver refused to budge another inch, and we were still 2oo kilometers from where we wanted to be, and it started to rain- we realized we had a problem. The problem was Charlie kept making the rubbing-his-fingers-to-signify-money-sign and then waving his arms and yelling "NO!" and still everyone didn't seem to understand that we wouldn't be paying unless we were driven to the town we had agreed to go to. The driver kept making the "police will beat me up if I drive this van with a roof rack on it into the next province" sign. And so there it stood. For TWO HOURS!! Finally, Breckan decided we should find an English speaker. I walked around asking smart-looking people if they spoke English. Finally, in a teahouse, I met a guy named Tsering Perlo. Tsering Perlo spoke English. Want to know what else Tsering Perlo does? Oh, he hangs out with Uma Thurman's dad. Yep, this guy has Uma Thurman's dad on speed dial! How freaking cool is that?! We are in Backlick, China and find a guy who speaks English and when he speaks English he talks about drinking coffee with the foremost American expert on Tibet.

The guy solved the problem. Told us interesting stories and then ate Yak meat soup with us. Also, he had made a documentary about the place we are right now. It's hitting the film festival circuit but you can check out a preview here. AWESOME!

Pictures.

Breckan, Charlie, Horse.

Breckan and A Wall.

Breckan and A Curse.

Tibetans have a commitment to littering unmatched in the modern world. They call their litter "prayer flags."

Rock and Candles.

Monk and Candles.

A Lady With A Sucker. (also this lady was the loudest gum snapper I have ever heard).

Monks and Smoke.

Monk and Stairs.

Spencer and Car? (this deserves an explanation) I'm actually pondering how 5 adults (4 of them with the flu), 8 panniers, 6 duffel bags, some random kid with a sparkly Ed hardy hat, 6 80 pound bags of barley, parts of a yak carcass, and 7 bike wheels are going to fit in this vanish-like thing. Answer- they didn't. 60 kilometers down the road, the back of the van broke open spilling EVERYTHING out onto the road.

Monk and Kodachrome Background.

Even Tibetans go all Japanese.

This is my favorite picture from this trip.

Spencer and Mountains and Socks and Sandals.

Red Yarn Hat? Check! Yak Bone Thing? Check!

Pilgrims and Mountains.

Charlie and A River.

Cowboy Hats and Motorcycle.

Windy.

Spencer and A Fine Likeness Of Him.

4 Days of Bus Rides- On A Cycling Trip.

I'm pretty sure the woman sitting in front of me is about to die. I have only listened to one other person die, so I'm no expert, but no one can vomit as much as the old lady with watery red eyes, and still be alive 12 hours later. No one. She is a vomit machine. A puking factory. She is canning this stuff and selling it at discount chains and setting up cute stands off of freeway exit ramps. It's a cottage industry for her. For four hours, starting the moment the bus turned it's engine over, she has emptied her stomach. Now she has stopped. She must be dead. I expect vomit to slosh over my feet if the bus accelerates suddenly. The floor must be awash in it.

The bus is pressing through a landscape that looks like the third day of creation. God hung up has hard hat, went home to dinner and on fourth day forgot about the tibetan plateau. Got busy making animals and water and nice things. It's the physical manifestation of deity's over-reach, over ambition. It's Yaweh's unfinished basement. "Someday I'll get to it,' God says, 'stop nagging me. The game is on." Heavenly neglect has led to a film of green grass and strand of asphalt to grow across the surface. That is all. Black snow clouds slam into high hills and then retreat back into the valleys. Their tentacles scraping the ground white we snow. We reach a pass of 16,500. The old lady with watery red eyes lurches forward and vomits. I guess she is not dead... yet. Give her a couple of more hours.

I am on a fifteen hour bus ride from Yushu to Xining and tomorrow I will be on a 15 hour bus ride from Xining back to Yushu. 30 hours of bus rides with women throwing up their lungs is the price you pay for poor planning in Tibet. At home you have to run to 7-11 at 2 am. In tibet you EARN your comeuppance. I am earning it. We have ridden for two weeks without finding a bank that will change dollars or an atm that accepts our card. Push came to shove yesterday and I ended up taking a bus 15 hours to exchange money. 15 mother flipping hours!!! This is the country that we decided to let finance our war on terror? Well played Washington. Well played.

We rode out of Litang on a snowy morning. We knew we needed to get our visa's renewed and we knew we would need to get cash soon. The next couple of days were beautiful. The scenery changed with every pass. We found terrific campsites and it was fantastic. We stayed a day in the town of Garzi. The town was on lockdown. But not the cool MSNBC show kind of lockdown. A real lockdown. Cops and soldiers out numbering people on the streets. No one could exchange money. We couldn't send packages to America. We couldn't even use the internet until we sweet talked a cop into writing a note for us. He said, "you can use the internet for one and hour and you can no talk to foreign friends about Garzi situation."

"There's a situation here?"

"I no can talk about it."

Nice.

We stayed for a day to find out that we could not extend our visas. It left us in a predicament. Man, now that I'm writing this, it has been nothing but predicaments for the last 4 days. We had 500 hard kilometers to the city we needed to be to and two days to get there. Early that morning we rented a mini-van. Piled up our four bikes on the top, squeezed in some random little girl, five giant bags of rice(?), all our bags, and enough Tibetan techno cd's to power a london dancehall for years.

The guy didn't take us to the town he had promised and instead, after much fuss unloaded us at a bus station 200 kilometers from where we wanted to be. Apparently he couldn't take his van, with the roof rack, into the province we were shooting for. Note to self. No roof racks in Quinghai. We finally rolled into Yushu and got our visa's taken care of right away. The office that issues visa extensions was out of visa extension stickers (of course) and we have to wait five days. About 7 hours later, after exhausting every money exchanging avenue we could think of, we realized I would be taking a 15 hour bus ride to a city that does accept american visa cards. So here I am in Xining. Tomorrow I will be riding the exact same bus another 15 hours back to Yushu. Except this time I will have money. A whole lot of spending money.