9 minute read
that pipe
America – Day 100 – 11,356 Miles
Those first two weeks in America I was on holiday, rode the most generous Pacific tailwind and still turned out the slowest fortnight of the whole six months… all of it lost in discussion of capital punishment and gun laws, watching the Pacific, singing aloud, full of Dylan as every state in the Union went down into my soul.
Oregon. It was Oregon that really did it… it was Oregon that sunk me. I rode through Oregon, through Oregon, through Oregon… I want to ride through Oregon every day for the rest of my life. All down that coast you climb up into the forests. Climb up. Climb up. The road tilts, hugs cliffs, hugs hillsides, runs under cover of the trees until you reach the top and begin to pick up speed… lots of it… more still, and then you’re sweeping back down, and up ahead the dark of the forest gives way to the light of the sun, and you sweep out the forest so that the sun it hits everything at once. And the trees, they are emeralds… and the Pacific, it’s sapphire, and it all glows white in the sun, and the Pacific… my god, but the Pacific it’s such a good name for an ocean. Rocking and fluttering and sparkling, with the turning pages of books and stories and gossamer yarns. The ocean moved against white sands with their dusty trunks of driftwood, washedup and tossed to the beach, like dinosaur remains and whale skeletons, a cemetery of rib cages and tusks from creatures of another world.
I would ride down those hillsides, my head would fall to one side, my nose and the corner of my mouth would lift in enquiry, eyes glazing in search of clarification. Really… are you sure? Excuse me, but there must be some sort of mistake… for this cannot be. I died about five times a day down that Oregon coast, don’t hesitate in saying it ruined the rest of my life. The air from the Pacific made me sad to think one day I’d have to breathe the air of the deserts, the air of a city, the air of any place other than that Oregon coast where I rode my bicycle. I saw infinity there… that was the problem. Right there in Oregon I glimpsed infinity. The history of the world came down to meet me, revealed all of the serene chaos that wound up beautiful. I saw it all in the palm of my hand, and with it my mind blew open, so that afterwards, once I’d pieced myself together again, so it was that I saw how small I was against it all, my blink of an eye that passes for a life. I know I probably don’t seem so very old to most of you, down here and still shy of thirty… and yet, once you’ve seen infinity… you come to realise how soon your time is up, how quickly it all goes by. Live life like you’re dying… that’s what I’m getting at, my advice in all this. Day 163 – Castille – 17,103 Miles
I rattled big days: 150, 150, 150, 150, 150 miles… five in succession, knocking them off the bat, one after the next, with an average three hours sleep. I still like the ideal, that back-against-the-wall sort of stuff … but even with that… I’m not so sure I was enjoying life much by then. I hit La Mancha… La Mancha hit me back with a force far greater than I had spirit to resist, Don Quixote illustrated in town centres and bars for 100 miles, riding with horse and lance through the windmills of La Mancha in the name of chivalry and ideals. I chased after him with my bicycle and panniers, just as hopeless, the end of my quest for a world bettered by circumnavigation. The end was in sight, the money all but gone, my enthusiasm for records long a thing of the past.
And now, looking back, I have a peculiar relationship with the ride in so many ways. Despite the good intentions with which I set out to break the record, riding a bicycle around the world presents so many experiences that teach you how silly the idea of records is, and I was never that convinced to begin with. The idea of racing against someone else’s time was at lots of moments a lot of fun... perhaps even more so with hindsight, it’s exciting to remember waking up after a few hours rest and knocking out another 150 miles. That said, my fondest memories, really, come from the very steady, manageable, hundred-mile days I rode for the first three months, through central Asia to Shanghai. If not then, then the days in the US, when I forgot about the record altogether and just stopped to talk politics, or took it so beautifully easy as I rode the Pacific Coast. I think the record adds something to the book that I subsequently wrote; it lends a good narrative, and a context of time that I hope distinguishes it from a lot of literature from the saddles of touring cyclists. The sense of wanting to change the world, and the ideals I set out with, offered some strong touchstones that I always found myself returning to. The people you meet, and their own life stories, never stray too far from those same values, and now that’s how I see my book in some ways, the story of the world by bicycle. Next up is the story of the city by bicycle, drawn from three years as a courier in London. I’m still developing as a writer, just as we’re all always developing, either as people, or in the skills we turn our hands to. That’s what keeps the wheels of life turning. Julian’s book, Life Cycles, from which the excerpts above are taken, is out now.
Standing inside the pipe, our eyes looked up to the funnel’s beginning, as if we were tiny ants trapped in a sink’s plughole.
“Duuude! What massive alien pipe is this?” Tony screamed. “Damn, that’s totally off the hook!” I replied. Bit by bit we recognized my buddy Steve’s new profile photo on the laptop’s screen. He’s proudly posing in front of an enormous fullpipe made of concrete. We’d never seen something that huge before. Tony was so excited. He was partying inside. “We have to go there!” But Steve’s reaction was a bit of a downer: “That could be anywhere in the outback. You’ll never find it.” Big disappointment.
We’re from Germany, but were in Sydney, where Tony was looking for jobs, each and every day. We were in Australia to see as much as we could of the country, going from place to place with a disassembled BMX in the back of our car.
One day we visited the BMX shop Steve was working for in Sydney. Deep in conversation with the shop’s owner, Mike, about rad spots in and around Sydney, I felt thrilled like a rat on ecstasy pills. Mike had printed off maps and marked heaps of riding spots all along the east coast of Australia. Poring over these maps Tony suddenly yelled “THE fullpipe!” Fortunately Mike had been at the fullpipe with Steve some weeks ago, and could mark out the route and tell us everything about it. Bingo!
We had the red pencilled treasure map. It felt like christmas, birthday and a lottery win on the same day.
Alright. Tony didn’t find a job in Sydney and the weather forecast didn’t sound too good either. So we hit the road. Steve was definitely right when he said “It’s in the middle of nowhere”. We were driving for days at full speed, accompanied by rain, rain and some more rain.
We slept overnight in our cars, passing through tiny towns that looked like they’d been uprooted from some European country. ‘Skis and snowboards for hire’? Well, that was something mind-boggling. So we had a closer look at our huge map of New South Wales and suddenly it all made sense. We were heading slowly but surely towards the Snowy Mountains. As time and kilometres slid by, the roads were getting more and more narrow and winding. Bends for what felt like 200km, our ears aching from pressure. We crunched the last 25km along gravel tracks through milkvetch-fringed woods. After what seemed like an eternity we reached the end of a road, some 1600m above sea level. Suddenly a gorge and a vast dam appeared. Here we stood, with bated breath, waiting to see what we had dreamt of.
But at first glance there was no fullpipe to be seen, only a monstrous funnel-shaped thing. We had already clocked this via satellite photos on the internet as a suspiciously huge black hole, so we were sure we were in the right place.
Obviously a fullpipe like this isn’t part of your typical skatepark. This pipe wasn’t built to go for a family stroll. The only readily identifiable above-ground signs at the dam were ‘DANGER’ signs. That pipe’s black hole acted as an overflow for the huge artificial lake above the dam. We knew we’d found an opening, but to actually get in there we needed to march another twenty minutes to the ‘entrance’ – the overflow’s emergency outlet. The end, so to speak. We fought our way across loose boulders and after a few adventurous climbing manoeuvres we were inside. Inside the pipe!
After what seemed like an eternity we reached the end of a road, some 1600m above sea level. Suddenly a gorge and a vast dam appeared. Here we stood, with bated breath, waiting to see what we had dreamt of.
With every carve I got higher and faster, gaining confidence, swooping back down before pitching back up to those dark and dizzy heights.
The concrete was almost completely dry. We only needed to clear out the floor a little to get rid of the rubble before we were ready to carve a path around this alien channel. We inspected the 150-meter-long pipe. There we were, some 15 meters below the level of the dam’s stored water. Standing inside the pipe, we looked up to the funnel’s opening, high above. It felt as if we were tiny ants trapped in a sink’s plughole. With an uneasy feeling I rode my first cautious meters in that pipe. Uneasy, because if that emergency funnel was used we would have been washed out like ...ants from a sink’s plughole. The dam was already pretty much full. There were maybe one or two meters left that kept us alive - but it was raining, so we knew we hadn’t got much time. Since we love our lives, we shouldn’t risk too much.
But riding those strange subterranean curves was supernatural pleasure beyond description. With every passing minute the fun increased. With every carve I got higher and faster, gaining confidence, swooping back down before pitching back up to those dark and dizzy heights. I was deep underground and in the middle of nowhere. But I felt on top of the world and right at home.
