A Satchel of Soil. An Essay from hIrSch

This is the second of three essays from hIrSch who Backcountry.com has been helping out in his ongoing bike ride around the world. In this essay hIrSch explores the topic of sleeping while on the road.

i am often asked what the hardest part of the trip has been and the answer is simple: sleeping.

every morning i wake up wherever it is i am. and i never know where my head will lay at the end of the day. from drainage pipes in patagnia to people's front porches (thank god they never came home!) in norway, i've done it all. most nights in my tent, some nights in barns, one night in a ladie's bathroom (men's room reeked of urine). schools, churches, abandoned houses, fire stations, cemetaries, shacks, cabins, even garbage dumps. yes folks, i dirtbag it.

i camp wild. free camp. stealth it. choose your own apellation. but if there's one thing i won't do, it's pay to sleep (ok, ok, except in central and south america where even i would occassionally splurge on a $3 per night room....). i don't really like showers. i prefer digging my own toilets (much more sanitary when you really think about it....). and hell's bells at the end of the day the last thing i want to be with is a bunch of yahoo's. so forget camping grounds and forget "official" places. just give me some trees and less than a 15 degree slope and i will dirtbag it yesssir!

but it ain't always easy kids.

here is a little exercise for you. the next time you are driving, pretend you are on a bike. pretend the sun is setting. pretend you are exhausted (a great feeling...) from eight hours of riding and hauling all your gear behind you in a trailer. pretend you are salivating for your dinner. and pretend you are looking for a place to sleep. now don't just look out in the trees and think that it's easy, that you could just camp anywhere. because, are you sure there is no barbed wire fence in the way? are you sure you can pull and drag and push and curse your fully loaded bike and trailer to wherever it is? are you sure that you are invisible from the road? are you sure that spot is somewhat flat and even doable? now add rain or snow or the constant 30mph winds of patagonia.
yes my friends, sleeping just isn't easy.

but sure sure and yes yes, it can be. i have met some cyclists who hotel it every night. a swipe of a magnetic strip and they have it all. oh and god forgive me for the occassional (and incredible!) envy i have sometimes felt for these wealthy cats. but when it all comes down to it, i prefer my method. they can have their bleached white towels and free soap. i'll take my bag of dirt, thank you!

but dear lord sometimes i have ridden and ridden and ridden just praying for something...ANYthing...to pop up. and in the end....sometimes a VERY long ending....it always does.

so even though sometimes it can try your patience, this method of travel keeps the dollars in your pockets where they can escape to better and more useful things. i have travelled for 2.5 years. even if i got a cheap hostel room or went to one of those cheesy gawdawful campgrounds just once a week, at say $10 a pop, that would be $1300 clams just for sleeping!!! RIDICULOUS! and even more so ridiculous when you have no income. welcome to my life.

Coming up next is the second half to this essay that dives into the art of dumpster diving.

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Europe....You're Up? An Essay from hIrSch

Some of you may remember hIrSch who Backcountry.com has been helping out in his ongoing bike ride around the world. After a short stint in Africa hIrSch has found himself in Europe traveling from the southern tip of Spain to the northern tip of Finland and most everywhere in between. This is the first of a couple of essays hIrSch has written for the Backcountry Blog.

and so i took a boat from morrocco to spain because riding my bike is both what i want to do and what i do (a convenient couplet) and those african borders and visas and "independent travel permits" weren't going to allow me to do that.

but europe? aw hell...europe?? first of all, how am i going to do it on my $6usd per day budget? and thirdly, will it even be cool?

well johnny rockets, i am here to tell you one thing right now. a) no, i will NOT be able to do it on my $6usd per day budget, but rather, for less!! (more on this later) and b) europe is cool.

but my europe is not "europe." my europe was spain, but not madrid or granada or sevilla. my spain was ubrique. and saint feliu. no salsa nor flamenco dancing. but goats with bells on their necks. and bread and jam sandwiches under a tree while an indifferent river went where it goes. and france was not paris or wine or crepes and i didn't go to the louvre only to be disappointed by the mona lisa, but rather france was the famous passes from the tour de france and staying with a farmer's family who gave me udderly delicious warm milk straight out of their cow with a chunk of homemade bread.

how i move, how i travel, how i experience this planet is different. the world is my movie, and my bike saddle is my seat. and everyday, i watch. that is what i do. it's what i have been doing for 2.5 years. and what i hopefully will be able to do for about 2.5 more.

so yes, switzerland was the awesome alps, but not from behind a pane of glass at an overpriced hotel with a cup of tea in hand, pinky extended. but rather from the top of an 8,000 feet (high for europe) pass where the declivitous descents dried out all the accumulated sweat from the 30 mile climbs. and italy was not a paid picture with a man dressed up as a gladiator in front of the colosseum, and austria did not have me running around tra la la'ing that the hills were alive with the sound of music and germany was not buying an actual and authentic piece of the berlin wall.

not that there's anything wrong with that kind of travel. i mean, yes, sure, i like to extend my pinky while drinking tea too. don't we all? but this trip is not about that. this trip is about a life of movement and watching places, people, and culture unfold - not as pages - but as reality opening up before me.

like watching that lonely old woman dressed in her robe open the door to her farmhouse look left, and then right, and then lean down to pick up her paper and wondering for miles if she ever looks right first. like getting summoned from the side of the road by those friendly moroccons for some of the ubiquitous mint tea. like that nice family from norway asking me about my trip and then insisting that i follow them to their house for a shower, meal, and bed. that is what this trip is about. if you watch and believe cnn, nbc, etc., you begin to lose faith in humanity. when you travel the world on your bike, you regain it.

and now my three tires have found themselves in the land of scandinavia. sweden, to be exact. norway was first, and it will be again when i cross back over to go to the north cape, the northernmost point in europe. and then? down the finger of finland through estonia, latvia, and lithuania. into poland and all over, this way and that, eastern europe. utlimately to turkey. and then it's georgia and azerbaijan and kazakhstan and china and i will just keep pointing my front wheel east east east until i lose interest, complete a circumbikeulation (or three), or die.

this trip has become a self-defined norm for me. i can imagine no other lifestyle. the day will of course come when the atm receipt reads $0.00. but until that day, i'm living it up!!

hIrSch, who does not own a cell phone, has the amazing skill of sniffing out a town library and has been honing his stealth skills across the globe in order to update his blog from time to time, for free of course and free of suspecting librarians. Check out hIrSch's iFitiStObeiTisUptOmE blog from time to time.

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