FEATURE STORY -- August 2004
Lost & Found by Paula Holmes-Eber
|
A Family Cycles Around the World for Asthma
"Shosenji, Shosenji," the little mud-stained Japanese farm woman gesticulates, pointing to a steep mountaintop to our west. Bewildered,
our family huddles around the map, trying to figure out why our two-thousand-foot descent from the top of a lush mountain ridge has
landed us in this sun-browned farm woman's vegetable fields instead of a busy urban valley in northern Shikoku.
We spend several more minutes fruitlessly pointing at lines on our map. The patient Japanese woman finally smiles politely and kneels
back down to dig in the dirt. Our two daughters, fourteen-year-old Anya and twelve-year-old Yvonne, pull out books from their panniers
and settle down to read under the completely unintelligible Japanese road signs. Always pragmatic, my husband Lorenz devours a bag of
rice crackers as he ponders our compass readings and wonders why they do not agree with the map.
We are lost, and not for the first time on our family's ten-thousand-mile cycling trek around the world. Pedaling with two kids for
sixteen months across four continents and through twenty-five countries, our family's path has often turned in unexpected directions,
leading us to places that no book or map could ever show.
|
Lorenz, Anya, and Yvonne making the most of a roadside breakfast.
Three years before our departure for Greece in May 2003, our family began planning for the longest ride of our lives: a continuous,
unsupported circuit around the globe on two tandems to raise money for asthma. Maps were spread out over every available surface, and
books on Turkey, Thailand, and Taiwan were stacked in the kitchen and by our beds. Our desks overflowed with every conceivable cycling
guide. Slowly a route emerged -- one that would traverse, from east to west, as much of the world's land space as possible. Our route
would avoid clearly unstable nations; avoid winter by cycling near or below the equator from December to April; extend from Greece to
England, through eastern Europe, China, Japan, and Taiwan; then take us across the South Pacific before finishing in the United States
by following the Lewis & Clark Bicycle Trail to Washington, DC.
One year later, as I sit at a picnic table in a campground on the Clearwater River in Idaho, our family has almost completed our route
-- surprisingly close to our original plan and schedule. That's not to say there weren't a few fabulously unforgettable detours.
Early in the trip, on a scorching morning in Greece, our daughter Anya skillfully convinced the family that it was unthinkable to bypass
one of the world's most important archaeological sites simply because it entailed a seventy-mile detour up a dizzying vertical climb. As
we pedaled a road so steep it turned in 360-degree circles over air-suspended bridges to reach the Temple of Delphi, I cursed Anya's
persuasiveness. Yet, as we followed the three-thousand-year-old pilgrims' path up the steep mountainside to the sacred temple, the view
of vast ancient olive groves stretching below us to the sea, I could almost hear the echo of past voices and chariots rolling slowly
along our route, carrying hopes, dreams, and prayers to the oracle.
| |
 | | |
Mother and daughter. Paula and Anya on their tandem in the Austrian Alps in front of the 9,718-foot Zugspitze, Germany's tallest
mountain. |
That evening, as we sat cross-legged in front of our tent with Greek pistachio bubbling in our one-pot stove and a crimson sunset
spreading over the ancient olive groves below, I was grateful to be pedaling with a daughter who understood the difference between miles
and memories.
Too often in our one- or two-week American vacations, we feel the need to hurry our trips, to put in as many miles and hours on our
bicycles each day as possible. Getting lost, taking detours, or just kareening off on a little adventurous exploratory turn seems almost
sacrilegious. After all, we have planned our route fastidiously. And yet, after one solid year of pedaling day after day with my family,
I can honestly say that there is nothing more delicious than packing up a tent in the morning, loading it on your bicycle, and heading
off to unexpected destinations, including places and experiences that don't show up on our maps. Perhaps we all need to take our
children (or at least the child within) along to remind us to stop, explore, and truly see the world.
In southern England, Anya and Yvonne voted that we take a shortcut and pedal along the Ridgeway, part of the ancient Stone Age track
that was once used to transport salt from the ocean. It was raining, as usual, as we wound our way to the Avebury stone circles and
Stonehenge. Mired in mud, we dragged our tandems through mile upon mile of puddles and ooze. Yet my memories of that day are filled with
the vision of our two girls, arms stretched up and hair blowing in the wind, standing in awe above an enormous prehistoric white horse
etched into the side of the hill. No paved route on our map could have led us to the mysterious horse or to the haunting barrow hidden
in the trees beyond.
On a sunny December day in Taiwan, a brief rest stop in the beautiful gardens of a Buddhist temple led to an invitation to drink tea
with the monks. Tea became a simple vegetarian lunch, which led to an invitation to spend the night in the monk's humble futon beds.
That afternoon, we pedaled on a forty-mile detour to their monastery, with one of the monks acting as stoker for my husband Lorenz's
tandem. The image of the monk, head shaved and grey robes streaming past squawking chickens and pineapple-bearing palms, sent Anya,
Yvonne, and me into hysterical giggles as we fell asleep to the musical chanting of a prayer from the temple below. If memories had been
miles that day, we would have pedaled well over a thousand.
While thorough preparation and research for a long trip is essential, we should learn not to take it too far, to leave room in our lives
and our travels for unexpected surprises, detours, and adventures.
North of Kaunas, Lithuania, we chose a circuitous route to Latvia, wishing to avoid the inexorable belching of truck after truck
carrying western goods to the new, commodity-starved Baltic states of eastern Europe. Our sometimes cobblestoned road soon became a
gravel track, passing through crooked little wooden villages, alongside horse-drawn carts and into fir forests dappled by sunlight and
filled with the chatter and laughter of brightly kerchiefed women and children collecting mushrooms in the shadows below. We wondered if
Hansel and Gretel had once gotten lost near here.
|
Forbidden City, Beijing China. A Chinese tour group swarms the girls. Everyone wants their picture taken with the
two blond haired kids. The women exclaimed "pualeen, pualeen" (pretty, pretty) and pinched the girl's cheeks.
In Australia, we chanced upon a silent, little-used back road, that led us past eucalyptus trees that held koalas peering down from
their branches. The shrieks of cockatoos and parrots were the only sounds to fill the air until we added our own shouts of excitement at
the sight of a hedgehog-like echidna waddling across the road.
And, after a run-in with several wasps and numerous mosquitoes along a grass-filled yet muddy track on the Polynesian island of Tonga,
we pushed our Burley tandems to an unspoiled sandy cove surrounded by waving coconut palms. We spent the afternoon snorkeling among the
coral reefs and tropical fish. Our sunburn was our only regret as we cycled back to our grass-covered huts in the village capital of
Nukuolofa.
Planning, organizing, and controlling our route during the three years of preparation for our world ride for asthma caused me to buy
every cycling book on Europe, Asia, the South Pacific, and North America I could find. I searched high and low for detailed maps of each
region and organized mail drops along our route to collect the masses of literature I had ordered. Two of the books were invaluable:
China by Bike and New Zealand by Bike. Both provided excellent long-distance route descriptions. Indeed, China by Bike became our family
bible in China and Taiwan, providing not only detailed kilometer-by-kilometer road and sightseeing descriptions, but also such
wonderfully useful Chinese phrases as: "Do you have somewhere to store our bikes for the night?," "Can you point to where we are on this
map?," and even "Can we have a room with no other people sleeping in it?"
Disappointingly, many of the other cycling guides focused on short, three- to seven-day cycling loops, which aren't usefual for a
year-and-a-half long-distance world circumnavigation by bicycle. Piecing as many of these short segments together as possible, we filled
in the gaps with local maps, bought along the way in gas stations, tourist offices, and bookstores. Where possible, we used AAA touring
maps at a scale of 1:200,000. Interestingly, the less professional, local productions often provided much of the colorful (although not
necessarily accurate) information that inspired many of our spontaneous detours.
|
Which way to Kaunus? Somewhere in Lithuania.
In Austria, Germany, and Holland, we were thrilled to discover the superb German Bikeline series (www.ester bauer.com), which not only
provided detailed cycling routes, frequently on quiet cycling trails, but also extensive sightseeing and lodging information, albeit in
German. And, in such unlikely places as Estonia, we were impressed to discover that the tourist offices sold English-language maps of
cycling routes along the beautiful coastal islands.
In Russia, Mongolia, China, Japan, and Taiwan, however, even the maps became unintelligible, written, as they were, in the Cyrillic
alphabet or in Chinese and Japanese scripts. Indeed, we soon found that English-language maps were of little assistance since local
people could not read them if we were lost. The English transliterations of place names were also of no use when standing at an
intersection where the signs were written only in local script. Did the tree-like looking character with a squiggle on the right match
the road sign? Such family debates became legendary. Suddenly illiterate, we pedaled ignorantly past signs to ferries, campgrounds,
hotels, and even toilets. We soon learned to stop and ask the friendly local people for assistance, pointing to pictures of such items
as boats, food, or tents in our little international "point and see" picture book.
As our family pedals on our finale ride across the United States, along Adventure Cycling's Lewis & Clark Bicycle Trail. We appreciate
the comfort of knowing how far it is to the next campground, where we can buy groceries, and how many hills are ahead. We treasure such
luxuries of American life as heat, air conditioning, fast food, clean water, and public restrooms and the ability to navigate in a
country where we can speak the language, understand the road signs, and read the maps. Yet, there are moments when I long to be lost
again, back on that lonely Japanese mountainside, puzzling over our unintelligible map with the kindly, brown-faced farm woman.
We were rescued that November day by the arrival of a solitary postman, puttering up the bamboo-lined lane in his white postal truck.
With an unequivocal jab of his forefinger, he pointed on our map to a remote valley, closed in by five-thousand-foot mountains
separating us from our original destination. The farm woman's insistent cries of "Shosanji" now held painful meaning. The nearby
mountaintop was crowned by Shosenji, the twelfth temple on the Buddhist pilgrimage route of one hundred sacred Japanese sites on
Shikoku.
|
A calm and quiet lagoon. October snow settles over the Summer Palace near Beijing, China.
With the sun slowly setting and no other obvious landmark in sight, we wearily climbed another thousand feet to reach the magnificent
temple perched over misty green valleys and pierced by jagged mountain peaks. Relying on our hands, feet, and desperate facial gestures,
we convinced the resident monks to let us set up our tents in the parking lot below the ancient white stone buildings. We filled our
water carrier from a fountain near the crooked stone steps at the entrance and gazed in admiration at the giant stone Buddha seated
cross-legged below the curved eaves of the temple. We left a persimmon on the incense table as an offering in hopes that we'd gain
guidance on our journey over the mountains the next day.
At three thousand feet on the top of an exposed mountain in November, the night air was frigid. For warmth, the four of us piled in the
three-man tent that Lorenz and I usually had to ourselves. Feet at heads and heads at feet, we alternately laughed and shivered as the
wind howled in the night, jangling the chimes at the temple entrance.
At dawn, I crawled bleary-eyed out of our tent to witness a rose-tinged sky circling the wooden temple gates. As I carried another
water-filled Platypus down the stairs from the tinkling fountain, I passed the morning's first group of white-robed pilgrims singing
softly as they climbed the uneven steps. Perhaps they were also seeking guidance on their sacred journey. Suddenly, a kindly, elderly
man broke from the group. Grinning broadly, he pulled a tangerine from his pocket and placed it into my hands -- a simple gesture of
friendship and blessing as we each headed off on our own personal quests. The group continued to wind their way slowly up the stairway,
the sky now a soft pink crowning the graceful roofs of the temple. As they disappeared under the simple wooden arch, I smiled.
In order to find our way, we may all need to get a little lost sometimes.
Paula recommends Roger Grigsby's China by Bike and Bruce Ringer's New Zealand by Bike, both published by Mountaineers Books.
The Eber family departed on their sixteen-month cycling tour around the world for asthma on May 6, 2003, World Asthma Day.
To read other stories from this amazing trip, check out Part I,
Part II, Part III, and Part IV.
You can visit their site at www.bikeforbreath.org, send them mail at: World Bike for Breath,
P.O. Box 11581, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110, call their headquarters at: (206) 855-2907, or email them at
bikeforbreath@hotmail.com.
Photos courtesy of the Eber Family
|
|
