Two Strangers Meet by Chance on Their Epic Bike Ride Journeys

Metadata

• URL: https://www.bicycling.com/rides/a31245986/two-strangers-meet-bike-ride-journey/
• Author: kim cross
• Publisher: bicycling.com
• Published Date: 2020-03-25

Notes

• [?] I wonder how the author found out about this?

Summary

• A story of two men on journeys from ocean to ocean through the largest land mass on earth. Like God had messed up and forgot for a second which direction to run the clock.
  • Noel is traveling west to east, is a large man with a pristine bike
  • Leon is traveling east to west, is a small man with a janky bike
• Large emphasis on the philosophy of taking on such an ordeal.
  • The many many downs (especially for Leon)
  • And the many things that one gets to experience as a reward
    • Real threats. Which can be a good thing.
    • The simple pleasure of being invited into a strangers home out of pure humanistic altruism
• I feel like the story ends up focusing more on Leon. Perhaps because he has the more eventful trip (largely out of lack of planning and stupidity)
• What made this a story worth telling?
  • Each individual man by himself would have made a somewhat compelling story. But nothing at this scale, nothing this award winning.
  • It's really the symmetry and luck that we love.
    • We have an aesthetic desire for symmetry (humans love symmetry)
    • We love a story that makes us believe in a greater purpose.

What I liked

• Overall just a spectacular premise that, if it were fiction, I'd fault for being too unrealistic.
• The obvious yet... not to in your face emphasis on their contrasts
  • The opposite names, opposite builds, opposite directions, opposite fortunes
    • Though I wonder if the oppositeness of the fortunes was overdone for stories sake.
  • humans love symmetry
• Also, a great use of visuals mixed in with the text (multimedia)
• The use of dialogue that's really not dialogue. Rather just quotes interspersed where they're necessary.
  • I guess that's how journalism generally is. You don't really see long sections of dialogue like in a play or some novels.

What I thought was weird (what I would change)

• Things are very clearly over-dramatized
  • E.g. in the desert scene, Cross makes it seem like Leon is pretty much going to die. Was going to die if it hadn't been the Chaikuhna at which he met Noel
  • But from his blog, we see that he was able to find more water and even had the help of some North Koreans
• There's very little emphasis actually on the meeting between the two.
  • It's instead primarily an interwoven story of two men on their own journeys.
  • I'd have liked to see it told via the interaction between the two.
    • Noel asks "what's that scar on your carpal boss?" to which Leon replies about the dog attack.
    • Of course... this would make it slightly fictionalized

More thoughts on the presentation

• What would it have been like to write this story?
  • One starts with this amazing premise, and it must feel like a huge responsibility to do justice to it.
• What order should I tell the story in?
• Which details to include? (after all, we're compressing two people's more than year long adventures into a 25 minute read)
• How to start? How to end?

Order (start and end)

• The start and end here make a lot of sense. They're sort of the obvious thing. She starts with the real reason for there being a story: the meeting between the two bikers. The climax is their meeting, and the epilogue is what happens when they go off into their respective lives.

Details

• It's really a short story given the span of time it covers. But that's because both bike rides are probably largely boring

• One particular choice though was not including the observations about the locals. Looking at Leon's blog for instance, he has so many interesting pictures of customs and unique objects in the different cities he sees.

  • E.g.

  "it's just the bloody ubiquitous breakfast-table vodka bottle that can make these encounters such an unwelcome chore at times. Still, by using the disguise of Olympic atheletes in training we managed to get away without going on a pre-9.00am bender, or causing offence to our new pals." https://arc.net/l/quote/kwuirtoh

  • Actually, so many details left out! E.g. the North Koreans in Uzbekistan.

Takeaways/lessons

• Human nature is trust and kindness. It's only city/dense life that forces us to abandon our natural altruistic tendencies. #^ju4va8
• Adventure is there for those who seek it.

Highlights

Leon believed in the “Tao of travel, where you’re carried by a randomness through a string of highly fortunate and unlikely experiences.”

Leon loved the motto of the British Special Air Service: Who Dares Wins. He lived by this tenet, embracing the price of authenticity: the risks, the fear, the unknown dangers of sketchy places and dodgy strangers.

People told him he was crazy. The world, they warned, is a dangerous place. Noel believed otherwise. “If you listen to people, you’ll never go anywhere,” he said. “It’s best to go out and explore and realize the world is a good place.”

As he set up camp in the woods by the side of a road, a murmuration of starlings “danced in great swirling flocks” above his tent, “then proceeded to poo all over it.”

“Wouldn’t have been able to hail a lift if I was fighting at Stalingrad, or halfway up Everest. But no, I had to be born at the first point in human history when adventure must be sought out and contrived, and isn’t just thrust upon you.”

From dawn to dusk, in every direction, the landscape looks the same. The only thing that changes is the angle of the sun.

In Kyrgyzstan, Leon met a mother who was raising four children on a roofless platform that served as living room, dining room table, and family bed. Leon joined them on the bed-thing for a simple meal of melon, bread, and tea. They asked for no payment, but Leon gave them cash, a flashlight, and a few family portraits he had printed in town.
Note: What is AI to these people?

Leaving China, Leon traced the border of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, where the Kyzylkum and Karakum deserts meet. One morning he woke up to two flat tires and ended the day with a broken tent zipper, through which he fed the mosquitoes. The next day, British chaps in a battered Mongol Rally racecar gave him one of their tents.
Note: This is what life is supposed to be: endless ups and downs

without the tools or knowledge. “But sod it, I was going to throw caution to the wind and keep going till I couldn’t go on any further, and then, who knows? After all, it was only 1,000 kilometers of inhospitable terrain in furnace-like heat, with just a few possible water stops. Shouldn't be too bad.”
Note: Sounds like a dumbass

“You do something like this and you’re supposed to have an epiphany,” he would say. He would not have an epiphany. He would wonder: “Did I fail?” No, he would decide. “I went on a bike ride, and that’s enough.”

The man did not speak much English, but he invited Noel to his home. Five weeks later, after meeting Leon, Noel would roll up to the only car wash in Chust and speak the man’s name. The man, so moved by Noel’s visit, would welcome him like a king. The next 36 hours would be a whirlwind of feasting, touring the town, and gathering with curious, smiling Uzbeks. Noel “almost had to escape this typically Central Asian uber-hospitality for fear of becoming too indebted to his kindness.”