And they are off like a herd of turtles!
There is nothing fast about bike touring, in fact, part of why we love it is our slow pace. It takes time to load up gear for the high-alpine mountains, the dry, hot desert, sweaty exercise, and professional in-school teaching. It takes time to ride 50 miles on gravel, pot-holed roads. It takes time to explain why we are riding our bikes 2,000 miles along the Colorado River visiting schools, libraries, and community events throughout the watershed. It takes time to plan a never-been-done, epic adventure. What does not seem to take too long, though, is connecting with a place and the people we meet as we travel through small towns and big cities on this wild adventure.
After two years of looking at maps, reaching out to sponsors, collecting bike packing gear, and convincing ourselves this was actually possible, our crazy plan was finally coming to fruition. With gear strewn about Molly’s backyard, moments before departure, I said, “we are riding down from the Alpine Visitors’ Center, right?” Molly stopped what she was doing, looked up at me quizzically, and said, “oh, I never thought of that, that sounds great!” And thus began a beautifully-designed, highly-planned, well-organized trip of making things up as we went along. It is not that the planning was not vital and well-executed, it is just that bike packing trips into the unknown require much flexibility. We have been on the road for almost a month now and we are becoming quite limber.
Each one of the six riders in this group joined for her own reasons and started with her own expectations for the journey. Having started from very different places, we are now riding down the same road and experiencing a similar reality, however I can only speak for myself in comparing expectations to reality. I knew we would be riding our bikes a lot. I did not know how complicated that would make getting around a new town every few days when you don’t know where anything is or if there is a giant hill to get to wherever you are trying to go. I knew we would be working with hundreds of children. I did not know how few of them would know where the Colorado River headwaters were and where the river meets the sea. I knew that we would be passing through some beautiful areas. I did not know how much that beauty would reflect in the hospitality and kindness of the people who lived there.
Lovely campsite views
As on any long adventure, there have been speed bumps and road blocks along the way. A literal landslide that destroyed the only road to take us where we were trying to go, forcing us to creatively problem solve our way through a canyon. Hills that look big from a distance and feel bigger when we are cranking up them with 60 pounds of critical weight strapped to our bikes. Miscommunications that result in too many breakfast burritos, or worse, not enough breakfast burritos for a full day of teaching. All challenges aside, over the past 500 miles of riding, over 1,000 students reached, and countless flat tires repaired, the best part of this journey has been taking time. Taking time to get to know each other as teammates. Taking time to get to know a town from the library out. Taking time to unpack, repack, unpack again because you forget where you put something, and then repack again the panniers to get ready to ride (and then maybe unpack again to find sunscreen you forgot to apply). Time is precious and we don’t always get enough with the people and places we love, so it has been an absolute pleasure to slow down to the pace of a bike to take time to enjoy this incredible journey and the amazing people and places we are meeting along the way.
-Leah Weisman