Photos: Bikes
16 Jul
Every photo of a bike or anything bike-related. Bikes bikes bikes – YAY BIKES! (more…)
16 Jul
Every photo of a bike or anything bike-related. Bikes bikes bikes – YAY BIKES! (more…)
13 Jul
Downtown Tunis, Tunisia.
A little cafe on Avenue Habib Bourguiba. The waiter offers me a “personal discount” on my coffee because of something I’ve come to describe as “the bike effect”: my rig looks bad ass resting next to my table, and here the travel-worn, custom-grub adventure bike is out-of-place enough to mark me as an adventurer, a traveler, not just another tourist who comes on the ferry from France for an afternoon-in-the-medina to say “I visited Tunisia!” It’s not just literally that a bike is “open to the world” – it opens the very soul of the rider, and affects the first impressions of others in a mysterious but undeniable way.
12 Jul
I’m not a terrorist, and I’ve never spoken with one, so I can’t really say what they’re really thinking. But it seems to me that the whole point of terrorism is to Spread Fear. (more…)
22 Jun
I left Oran late, after meeting new friends and really new friends in town. One random Christian Berber student taught me the phrase “asabi3 alyad mokhtalifa” – “each finger of the hand is different.” Allah loves wondrous variety!
“You sure you want to leave today? It’s five pm already….” Yes, I have to leave – my psyche is already out there pedalling.
“Aren’t you worried that you don’t know anyone down the road?” No. That is comletely normal. Adventure!
14 Jun
5 Apr
There are people everywhere in Morocco. They have an “outdoor culture”; there is always someone around. If you take a piss on the side of the road, someone is probably watching you. If you are talking to yourself as you pedal down the road, there is probably someone listening. Even before lunchtime, dozens of people look at you as if you were an alien, too shocked to return an “o-aleikum salam.” Sheperds in Adidas gear pause their conversations as you pass; farmers in jilabas twist on their donkey-seats to stare; women in hijabs quickly avert their gaze – but only after you notice them looking at you. And that’s in the rural areas. In a place more frequented by foreigners, like a city, or the Rif mountain roads, the tourist hustle is just a part of life. You can’t take a break without an obtrusive offer of a hotel at a great price, or a flashy guy in a car trying to discover which language you speak, or a cute little kid yelling “Stop!” so he can beg for a stylo or un petit pièce, or a bold restauranteur shoving a menu in your face, or a dumb mute villager approaching you with open palms because, to him, your foreign face means money. (more…)