Adventure is but a collection of detours

My favorite class this semester is called Travel Literature and in spite of the fact that one of the assigned books was Eat, Pray, Love the rest of the class is fun, stimulating and interesting.

Right now I am in the middle of a book called Catfish and Mandala. It’s a travel memoir by Andrew X. Pham, a Vietnamese-American man whose parents immigrate to the US in 1977. He is ten years old at the time.

Twenty years later, after his finance leaves him and his sister commits suicide, he bicycles his way back to Vietnam.

It’s the best book I’ve read since The Road. Pham’s writing is intensely lyrical and moving, especially his passages about learning to travel by bike. Before the trip he was not a “cyclist” and he makes the passage on a used $200 clunker.

I’m not a “cyclist” either, but as a person who participates in endurance sports I particularly liked the following passages (emphasis mine).

His initial departure — Page 30

Thin strokes of clouds score a sky as blue as a blessing. A brisk wind washes across the bridge. I wobble through the throngs of pedestrians and cyclists with a ready grin for everyone I pass. A light-headedness buoys me as if ambrosia courses in my veins. I am intoxicated with a feeling of rightness, a psychological snapping together of mating parts, a lucid moment of geometrical perfection. A liberating bliss.

“Yes!” I shout over and over as I race away from San Francisco.

The euphoria lasts until I crank up the cliffs of Highway 1. I’m not a cyclist. The bike is heavy. My precious enthusiasm dissipates with every incline. My map shows an inland road meandering some way from the coast rejoining Highway 1 at Stinson Beach. Confident that it will spare me grueling coastal hills, I huff up the grade, too exhausted to venture a guess why this stretch of blacktop was named Panoramic Road. It steadliy get steeper without a sign of leveling out. I inch up the mountain, pulling over to breathe at every half mile.

Endurance euphoria — Page 34

Alon the Pacific Coast, I meet cyclists who lick their chops at the challenge of a six-percent grade or an eighty-mile ride. I am a distracted rider, the sort that thrives on flat roads without wind. I haven’t encountered a mountain I like — from the front side. The only mountains I like are the ones I’ve summited. And there are no mountains finer than the ones I’m coasting down. On the road, I find myself vacillating between elation and abject misery, my senses narrowed to the hundred yards immediately before me. Beyond this, I am solely concerned with my next meal and my next campsite.

I learn it all the hard way. From San Francisco, I curse my way up the California coast. Every fiber in my body balks aggainst the strain of propelling two hundred pounds uphill mile after mile. The second day out, I heel over again, this time halfway up another mountain. My loaded bike topples like a wildebeest felled by one well-aimed bullet. I crawl out from under the bike and try to stand, but my legs give out.

I roll onto my belly, my legs locked rigid — a pair of two-by-fours jackknifed by a stampede of charley horses. I bite my knuckles, tears welling in my eyes. High school kids in a red Jeep roar by, laughing. I begin to suspect the authors I’d read weren’t entirely forthcoming about the physical ordeals of bicycle adventures… Every muscle groans and complains with each movement. My back aches. I am so stuff I can barely tie my shoelaces. What was I thinking? My Baja trip could hardly be called cycling. I had dragged that bike through the desert like a crucifix.

Milestones — Page 35

The day my odometer registers 500 miles, just before coming into Eureka, I feel invincible. I’ve fixed plenty of flat tires, warped rims, loose breaks and broken spokes. Somehow through the torment, I have developed a taste for bicycle touring. Every time I top a big mountain, I dismount and dance a little victory jig around the bike, not caring who might see me. The coast is gorgeous. I cannot swallow, breathe, soak it up fast enough. At least once a day, there is a moment of absolute perfection when my muscles sing with power, full of vigor, raw and very alive — the air sweet with grass and pine, the whirling chain and the humming tires but extensions of me.

For more good vibes, please see Web-Goddess’ post of inspirational running videos.