The trip started around the corner from my friend Lena’s squat, at the public library. It was one of the few times in Catalunya I sensed animosity for speaking in Castellano (regular Spanish)

– this anciano behind the desk didn’t humor me at all, and I only caught little snippets of his directions in Catalan. It’s crucial that the language – and hence the culture – stays alive, don’t get me wrong, but to my ear, it sounds like a mutant Italian-Spanish biogenetic tongue experiment, aborted and carved out of the mouth. Thankfully he drew the route on my map.
Once out of Valldoreix village it was up to me, though. I explored a gravel forest track over a huge hill(a bit taxing on day one), found my way out the other side onto the farm road, into another village(from the back where they don’t post road signs), and finally onto the N-340 to Vilafranca del Pened�s.
The elevation started rising, interrupted by short descents to let me know I was still climbing. The hills were one thing – the word “Sierra” was written all over my maps – but I can handle mountains. Just put it in low gear and push on over; besides, what goes up must come down. But that wind! The wind was the first thing, the worst thing. For five days I dodged tumbleweeds and gusts; five days of headwind, five days of wind in my face, filling my cheeks and drying my eyeballs, robbing me of downhills and turning climbs into nightmares, never letting up…. After five days I learned: this wind has a name. El Cierzo, with a capital C, cruel Eastward product of Iberian weather patterns. Ugh. The only thing going in my direction were the wind turbines. I had to cackle like a crazy person when I saw the newspaper celebrating the first time ever in Spain that ecological energy beat out the rest, for five hours on a Sunday morning. Yeah I remember that Sunday morning, it was hell….
Besides that, it was freakin’ cold (my air mattress has a half-hour leak and I left my winter hat and scarf back in Croatian summer), but it was nothing compared to last winter in Scotland; and I am from Wisconsin, after all.
I took my refuge in cafe-bars and behind boulder ridges, drinking caf� con leche and peeling mandarins. I sold my first drawing ever, for the price of my coffee, in a freak colored-pencil accident — they saw me taking a thistle sketch and mistook me for an artist. Once I was treated to piping hot bean stew and home-made wine that left a smile on my face even in the cold November drizzle. Once I begged an old man for the sanctuary of a straw-strewn sheep corral, and penned a letter by the light of a vine-wood fire. Several times I was shunned by timid villagers with a “Not here, keep going” or a “Get out of my town” but I found the public library anyway. Every day my Spanish improved, every day I got a little closer to Madrid. And always, as always, the adventure grew inside.

Eventually the wind calmed down and the mountains were replaced by hills; I had reached the high plateau of Castilla la Mancha, Don Quixote’s celestial stomping grounds. For the last week or so all I had to really worry about were frozen toes, internet access, and the worsening condition of my valiant steed….
It was the tires, mostly, though the fork threads had actually all stripped and my front rack was tied on with a baling-twine tournequet…. Okay, that could’ve been a disaster, but I’ve got enough tricks up my sleeve to keep fifteen kilos afloat for six days, so no, really it was mostly the tires.

The front tire, to be precise.

Leaving Madison with this tire was almost an ancestral memory. Long ago, it was already old. Rubber riding surface was a luxury of the past, disintegrated into a ragged missing strip; for months I had been riding on the kevlar alone. The puncture resistance was certainly suffering, and with inreasing frequency I had to resuscitate, stitching a sidewall hole, reapplying duct tape to rusty exposed bead edges, or installing emergency “boots,” as they’re called: a temporary layer of material under an exacerbated wound in the tire, to keep the inner tube from bulging out and exploding.

This tire worried my father, all the way in Wisconsin; it caused friction on the road with Lily; it caused innumerable flats and required thousands of strokes with my old Roadie pump. People cringed when they saw it, mechanics refused to fully pressurize it. But I wasn’t worried about its condition — I had developed an intimate trust in it. What I was worried about was giving it the respect it deserved; allowing the story to write itself naturally. Like lovers, we had carried each other, through so much, so very far. I wasn’t ready to let go. Her grave was waiting in Madrid, i to je to.

It was a close one.

At least once a day, there was a problem with the tire; constantly I was forced to apply ingenuity, not to mention patches, just to keep going. About three hundred kilometers from Madrid, I started to sense the climax of this story surrounding me. My hi-pressure frame pump had given up the ghost a few days earlier and I was on to using the leaky back-up pump. For the first time I began to wonder what in the world I would do if I couldn’t bring her back to life; not a comfortable thought, especially when I refuse to use motor vehicles.
The pressure of the situation gradually coalesced to a single point: two of the larger holes in the riding surface, right next to each other, finally joined together with one sharp *POP*

Boots of plastic, paper, and cardboard, rubber boots of folded inner tube and craft swatches, layered boots of duct tape and rim tape — they had all become insufficient, even in combination stacks. I sat there in the orange dust of the Castilla scrub, searching through various bags and repair kits, assembling all my options for the repair. Nothing seemed tough enough to hold the tube inside the tire for more than a few kilometers of heavily-loaded road wear. I sat calmly with that particular uncertainty, breathing back pushy wisps of potential disaster, and meanwhile installed my biggest patch over the ragged thumb-sized hole in the tube.
Then I remembered: back in Caminreal, I had found a ripped leather wallet while looking in a dumpster for useful goodies! Relief! There’s a cosmic reason for everything, it’s all connected, and now this wallet’s destiny was revealed. With a giggle, thinking of Bob Dylan’s song, I set to work fashioning a pair of boots for my front tire; a double layer to take me to my destination.

Serendipity lasted, happily pedalling in tune with “Spanish boots of … Spaaaanish leather” — but only for about fifty kilometers. Unfortunately, it turns out leather isn’t the best material to withstand extended use either. No wonder they don’t make tires out of leather….

Before another dangerous blowout could occur, I set aside all cute notions of universal harmony and buckled down to hard practical truth. If I didn’t find a working solution, I wouldn’t even make it to Madrid, i to je to.
The real fix was easy to find, a common sight on the shoulders of highways world-wide: car tire. What else? I installed a scrap of busted semi-truck rubber in there – now this is definitely made to withstand road wear. It was so thick I had to sew it in place with needle and thread, and for the remainder of the trip it transmitted a disconcerting thump-thump-thump-thump through the whole rig, but it worked.

I made it to Madrid.

Seven months later than I had “planned,” back in Paris, but I’m here.

Y estoy muy bien colocado aqu� con Ricarda y amigos, me han dado mi propio cuarto, cenas fabulosas, todo apoyo y buen rollo VENGA

My bags are empty, my gear spread to every corner of my room. I’ve been holed up working on Priority One – African visas – but I’ve had a chance to get out into the bike scene here in Madtown-Madrid, and in between… well, I’ve been busy enough! I’ll just copy the huge to-do list I wrote on the back of my map — last chance in Europe….

[some items have been crossed off - NOV 30]

maps to Marruecos
package home
Ciclos Delicias – job?!?
bici cr�tica THU NOV 26
contact Spanish press – parasaber.com
visit internet friends
bake bread
photo CD
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
www.bicycle4earth.org – organize & familiarize
tires -video
-photos
-souvenir
-decoration for bike
art booklet
Walden quotes
translate newspaper articles – Croatia, Italy
Hrvatski sentences
scan newspaper articles
Skype
sharpen blades
update email list
collect world MP3s – email requests
organize Zen player
share music
craft origami book
make waterbottle netting
make flag
stove?
LETTER REPLIES

WRITING
travelogues
article
letters

VISAS
Couchsurfing invites / info – fax?
embassy – info(free) meeting possible?
APPT – Algeria
haircut / beard trim
sailboat — Maroc
schools — Arab�

invitations
school programs
L&L?
news articles
bank statement
travel insurance policy
immunizations
passport
original documents?

BIKE
f. rack solution – reform rack?
spare brackets prepared w/bolts
install tires w/ new tubes
true wheels
chain
HB tape – crisscross?
hubs?
decorations
FRAME =(

pulley wheels
bottle cage
brakes
brake levers
full cables
seatpost collar
HB bag

OTHER REPAIRS
pants
hoodie
panniers -patch holes
-bike earth patch
-wash rainflies
mattress
tent -mosquito net patch
-rainfly

GET
Dutch Sampson patch kit box
bicycle earth flag
back-up pump
metric bolts
bike chain
inner tubes
water bottles
HB tape – black
post cards
bota del pa�s basque
boxer shorts

cork for weird little bottle
purple fabric for pants
beer cardboard for dictionary cover

Thanks to Ricarda, Manuel, and Nico for holding my mail for so long and for putting me up so nicely; thanks to everyone who sent me mail — it really helps! And thanks to you all for reading! More writings en camino!

Amor y Gozo, Love and Joy,

Charles Brigham
old website where my caveman brain can figure out how to upload photos : http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/worldtour07
videos : http://www.youtube.com/user/worldbiketour07

A couple more days at the squat in Leiden…. working the security-barricade door at a huge techno party; “Whaddya mean everyone has to have invitations? Nobody has an invitation!”…. an impromptu scavenger hunt, conceived on a whim, with our legs dangling over the canal: one broken inner tube, some cat hair, and a poster with Dutch written on it; one white flower, a high-pitched noise, and one shoestring; all found within 45 minutes on the brisk Spring streets of Leiden…. a speech, requested by our host after a Wednesday night eetcafe, about my trip and my philosophies…. one final, quiet dinner with Sandor – an oldschool squatter with the use of only one arm(still rides his bike – coaster brake – still rolls spliffs no problem and still cooks vegan gourmet deliciousness)…. some city sights we didn’t discover till our last day…. aah Leiden – one of the gems of Holland.

A couple more days in Amsterdam… to say goodbye I suppose, though it isn’t hard to find reasons to stay. I was just getting back to Casa Robino with a big load of dumpster dived vegetables as Lily and Mandi were coming out. And as we were dividing the goodies on the street, Robin just happened to return right at that moment from a big hitchhiking trip to Slovenia(the Casa operates just fine without him). He was shaven-headed now and wrote “HITCH HIKE” in huge chalk letters on the sidewalk, his whole body beaming with pure joy of life. Hitchhiking sounds like a lot of fun, in a serendipitous magic-of-people kinda way. Wish I could try it… but for now I am all bike.
I scored an interview with the Netherlands national press agency, the ANP. The kid said it was his third or fourth interview – I guess they don’t send heavy-hitter grizzled pro reporters to interview American bike bums. I told him, “That’s cool, I’m new at this too.” His Engels was, like most Dutch people’s, excellent. Coffee was on the agency and there was a photographer too. The next day, an article(in Dutch) about my tour and my principles was published in dozens of online and hardcopy papers. But of course, despite saying he would, he didn’t notify me when or where it would be published – those reporters, can I trust ‘em? – so it was only random chance I was able to get hold of a copy. “Ik ben tegen snelheid” : “I am against speed.”

Leaving Casa Robino – this time for real – was a slow process. Natural. The snail in me couldn’t bear to hurry, especially after such a momentous time there.
The scheduled day of departure didn’t feel quite right. The day after, it still felt rushed and I wanted to do a little more around the house. On day three, as the sun came up over Amsterdam, I was finally ready to leave. The time was right, and the way had opened itself. Having been out all night, I woke Lily with a kiss and a cup of tea. We said goodbye to Robin – all other nomads were asleep – and after a few final adjustments, we were on our way to Paris!
It reminded me of the day I left home, a little – low on sleep, emotionally taxed, but ecstatic to be on the road again. And not going to make it very far that first day – we stopped in Leiden for some more final goodbyes.
On my way to meet Josta, my first Dutch friend, I passed a group of squatters I knew, outside the local police precinct. They were exercising their rights, giving away free vegan dumpstered food(Food Not Bombs) and banging on djembes right there on the steps of the copshop; one of the crew was inside, in jail, and they were there for support. What a nice feeling it must be, to be sitting in jail, and every time the front door opens, you can hear your friends shouting and making music, just for you. Later the homie was released, and we all sat on the roof of “the Couch” drinking beer and getting the scoop. The cops had taken his fingerprints but still don’t know his name….

Next on our way was Delft, where we had some other friends to visit at another krakhuis. There I was contacted by a Dutch TV show requesting an interview – they had seen the ANP article somewhere – so we delayed for a day. We made vegan pizza from scratch – the secret is hummus in the sauce – and Lily screened her documentary for a house full of folks. I fixed a coffeetable. And there was this bike dude Jason, an American doing PhD work at the huge engineering school in Delft. “Bike handling” – what a program! Live in Holland, the center of the bicycle universe, and study bikes all day every day with other bike nerds. Wow. He has a totally bike-centro blog on http://www.moorebicycles.blogspot.com/

In the morning I went to the train station to meet the TV crew for the interview. My television debut, how exciting! While I was waiting, I spoke congenially with an elderly couple – seeing my loaded bike there had reminded them of their youth, and a few happy weeks touring across Europe on bikes. Then the charismatic producer appeared – I think he had been spying on me beforehand – and bought me coffee and food. A couple minutes later, a smooth TV personality in a black suit and red tie arrived with the camera guy, and we went out into the rain to do the interview. This slick fella, a Turkish-descent, well-manicured celebrity, standing with the coldsore on his lip away from the camera, was one of “De Jakhalzen” – a small, comedic relief portion of a show called De Wereld Draait Door – The World Keeps Spinning, Holland’s most popular primetime show. He offered me to stand under his umbrella with him – “Uhh, no thanks… when it rains, I just get wet.” And so he put up his umbrella and got wet too – probably his wettest interview ever =P
They put a mic and wireless battery thingy on me and began rolling. Within minutes I got the gist – they weren’t here to give me an opportunity to promote alternative methods of transportation; I was the opportunity. This wasn’t unbiased journalism, this was comedy television. He started asking me questions about Americans thinking they were heroes and leaving messes behind – read: US foreign policy – trying to get a rise out of me or hoping I’d slip up and say something they could shamelessly edit for millions of Dutch people to laugh at over their dinner ofstampot. I didn’t slip – I was actually surprised how cool I was on camera. He prodded me on my trust in humankind – “People LIE, man!” – and tried to get me to ridiculously ask people at the station if I could stay with them tonight. Then, as we’re talking about what I eat and what equipment I carry, he gestures behind him – “Your bike, I mean, it must weigh a lot… hey – where is your bike?”

Oh. My. God. My bike was gone.

Minutes earlier, out of the corner of my eye, I had seen someone move it, but I was almost positive it was the producer, and I just thought he was putting it somewhere better. I could tell it was a gag – no wonder the producer was dressed like a bike thief – and they had been planning it the whole time. The camera kept taping, but I don’t think I gave them the reaction they were hoping for; I told him to call his producer. “Oh he’s putting money in the meter, is he?” “If this isn’t a gimmick, then yes, I do want you to call the police.” The jackal tried to keep the joke going, but eventually the guy came back and we had a laugh. Dicks.
The only fun part was when they taped me riding, shadowing me in their car. They had already told me it was okay, even encouraged, to swear, so when there was another cyclist coming, I told them, with genuine rancor, to “Get the fu€k out of his way, give the man some room!” And they got some good shots of me saying, “I’m not in any hurry.”
In the end, they seemed like pretty cool guys, despite the whole rape-you-for-laughs veneer; I think they were actually feeling a little guilty when they left. And I learned an important lesson – a dubious prospect for promoting my message is not worth my integrity. I’ve got a good sense of humor, and my dignity isn’t much of a foundation for my ego, but still – the last thing I want is to make bicycle touring seem laughable.

Their bigwig emailed me and said they’d air it in one or two days. I wanted to see it, of course, but we decided to hit the road and just try and find a TV to watch it on wherever we happened to be. I picked up a little leather case from the squat’s free-shop, for my spice kit; we said goodbye, and pedalled off in the drizzle.
We passed through Den Haag and Rotterdam on our way to the coast, and followed the North Sea Southwards, battling the wind – it’s not a good sign when there’s a hundred huge wind turbines, all pointing in your direction and spinning like mad – and crossing the mighty dykes that hold back the sea. Fifty percent of the Netherlands(literally the “low land”) is below sea level, and much of the country’s land was actually manufactured – as in: erect a big wall, fill the sea with dirt, drain off any leftover water, and build houses. And somehow it works; they used to use old-tech windmill-driven pumps, but now it’s all electronic I guess. Hope global warming doesn’t wipe ‘em out!

First night out, we stopped in Renesse for water and to try to find a TV. Water was easy, but people weren’t offering their cozy sitting rooms to two dirty hobos. We did, however, get a lead on a Christian vicar whose home is an official stop for pilgrims on the famous Santiago de Campostela trail – which is actually in Spain, but people head there from much, much farther away. We found his house and his wife was appropriately welcoming. She invited us in, fed us coffee and biscuits, and spoke politely before going back to what she was doing. When Peter the Priest got home, he gave me the official Santiago de Campostela bike-pilgrim stamp and agreed to watch De Wereld Draait Door with us. And we were treated to a great family dinner! Their son said it was great to have guests – “Mom always cooks better food when there are guests.”
But my segment didn’t show, and after the credits rolled, sitting there a little embarrassed, Peter told us that he and his family “had their own program for the evening.” It was a polite eviction. We were more than a little surprised – what priest kicks out two poor travelers after dark, anyway? Maybe he thought we were just conning him for a meal and a place to stay…. But they had been more than hospitable already, and anyway, we had a tent. We found a sign out at some rural crossroads that said “Camping –> 2 km” and the grass under the sign was looking pretty lush… we pitched up right there in the ditch and laid in our winter hats and gloves, looking at the stars.

The next day we passed through Goes and stopped at the library to check on De Wereld Draait Door – the bigwig said she would email me – but the library was closed. There was an intercom though, and after I brazenly buzzed it, someone actually answered! After a quick explanation, she agreed to let me in and use the internet – in a closed library! I love public libraries, hot damn! But of course there was no info on my segment. Shyeh, media.
Next door at a cafe we decided to have a hot cup of tea – it wasn’t warm in the Netherlands, by any definition, in early March. We passed a pair of beer-bellied and bearded old codgers outside; they asked where we were from(America! No! Australia!) and I complimented one of them on his crystal pendants. Minutes later, he comes inside and approaches our table with almost zero English, proffers his card(Bert – he’s a drum-maker), gives Lily one of his pendants(!), a rose quartz, and intimates that if we ever come to Katendijk, he will find space for us. Nice! Thanks old dude! Now, where’s Katendijk….
We found it on the map and it really wasn’t too far out of our way. We figured this was a chance to hang out with some locals – Bert was true Dutch for sure – and maybe even have a warm place to sleep for a change. Lily, having grown up in Vanuatu and Australia, is accustomed to tropical paradise – her first time seeing snow was last winter – and despite a few tricks up my sleeve to keep her warm, she was hurtin’ in those frosty nights.
So we pedalled to Katendijk to look for Bert. It wasn’t a big town but we didn’t see the street, so we went back to the bar to ask for directions, and who’s there drinking beer but our friend Bert! Of course he’s in the pub!
Lily bought him a beer and we chatted, but soon our common language was exhausted, and an awkward silence settled over the afternoon village pub. It seemed Bert couldn’t put us up in his place – some big mess, I gathered – and his girlfriend was sick or something…. He made phone calls, he spoke to the other brooding clientele; he looked embarrassed, he looked apologetic; we tried to tell him that any dirty corner of the floor was more than enough, but by the end of the beer, it was obvious we’d be out in the cold again. Thanks anyway Bert!

We never did find a warm place to sleep in Zuidland, but we huddled close and kept the pedals pumpin’. And we never did see the segment on De Wereld Draait Door – maybe they decided I hadn’t acted enough of a fool to make anything out of it. Probably for the best.

We traveled. We smiled and joked and flirted and said “hoi dag” to everyone we passed. We met strangers and were given stroopwaffles and pannenkaken. A woman delivering mail said she’d invite us for coffee if she wasn’t working. There were no hills, just gloriously flat bike paths along the dykes, with Dutch village roofs sticking up over the ridge and a cramped Dutch countryside full of sheep and horses.

Nearing the Belgian border, we were confronted with the Westerschelde, the huge estuary that connects Antwerp with the North Sea. As far west as we were, there was only a ferry service… but with one look in my eyes, Lily agreed to cycle east and find a different way. Farther on, we found a tunnel that goes under it – you can take your bike, and it’s free, but you and your bike have to get on a bus… sorry Lil, I don’t take buses either. A bit inconvenient, perhaps, but this just meant that we had to cycle all the way to the bridge crossing over the River Schelde, and in lieu of visiting Brugge or Gent, to reach Brussels via Antwerp instead.

Shortly before this massive industrial port city, we came to the town of Putte – the border town. We weren’t sure if this was pronounced like “putin,” the French word for asshole, so to confirm I asked some random girl, “Excuse me, which village is this?” I caught up to Lily, reporting, “That girl just called me an asshole!” They speak French, as well as Dutch, in Belgium – maybe the town got its name from border arguments year after year… “Putin!” “Tu putin!” “Non, tu putin!” “Mais non, TU putin!”

We didn’t see any huge sign saying, “Welcome to Belgique,” so I asked another cyclist if we were in Belgium yet – oops, it was a quarter mile ago. We went back for photos – no Belgium sign, just the Antwerp Province sign, but we still took the obligatory border shots. As we were preparing to continue – Lily was actually in the Netherlands, and I was in Belgium – tons of police started arriving by car and van-load, Dutch and Belgian both…. at first I was confused, but then I remembered which border this was. “The Netherlands…. riiiight. They’re setting up a roadblock to check for drugs.” Most of the cops just eyed us with passing interest, but one young buck approached me, saying something in Dutch, then English: “Where are you coming from?” Uh oh.

What I said was “Madison, Wisconsin,” which, thankfully, confused him slightly and pointed him in a “Wow, a world-wide bike tour” direction instead of a “We’re going to search you” direction, which is probably the way it would’ve gone if I had answered with “Netherlands,” or worse, “Amsterdam.” And I think they wouldn’t have been too pleased with a couple of the particular Dutch souvenirs I had stowed away in my panniers…. close. Too close for comfort! But before things got too involved, we saddled up and took off, and the Belgian police wished us a poorly translated “Good trip!”

Now why don’t they just say “bon voyage” like any other English speaker?

The BOAT is named Ninni. It’s a name traditionally given to girls in Sweden, and applied affectionately to the boat by her Finnish skipper, Mikko, who was just completing his own three-year world sailing tour. She’s a 40-foot glass-fiber cruising sloop, an IS400 designed in Finland by Hans Groop. As an accomplished traveling boat, it’s equipped with the de-salinating watermaker(the water from which doesn’t taste too bad, actually), energy-efficient LED lights(for both navigation and interior), solar panels on the roof of the doghouse, a towing generator(a sort of propeller on a rope that makes electricity) and the crowning piece of equipment, named “Peter” and making our lives tremendously easy: a self-steering wind-pilot, an ingenious sailboat invention which employs secondary rudders, wormgear, and windvane to automatically correct the boat’s course if the wind changes direction. Brilliant.

The CREW consisted of Mikko, a 62 year old retired Finnish photographer; Irek, a 35 year old Polish building-company manager; and me, a 29 year old student of foreign cultures. My first real introduction to international people, and an intense change from all that lonely bike riding.
Mikko is old salt. He enjoys a joke or a beer like the next guy, but he is very set in his ways, and after a few days living on a cramped boat, certain aspects of his personality started to get ugly. He was overly meticulous about his gear, for one; disallowing a plastic scrubbie to be used on a teflon pan, for instance; and for two(something that would eventually prove to be quite distressing) he was rather obsessed with doing everything himself. He’d made the Ninni up as a project boat, carefully crafting every bit of woodwork by hand, and replacing winches, blocks, and lines, adding extra stays to the mast, and various other personal touches he can trust. Then he sailed away from his wife, saying “I’m going sailing for a while.” (He never said “I’m going to sail around the world,” and advised me that it would’ve been wiser for me, too, if I hadn’t declared my intentions to ride my bike around the world. I guess he’s not into point-of-no-return drama.) On the way he’s had various different crews, mostly strangers he met on the internet(like me), and apparently learned not to let anyone touch anything on his boat. I started calling him “DIY Mikko,” watching him handle everything himself, from deckwork and sail reefing, to steering and entering the course, to cleaning… he even cooked almost every meal we ate, leaving Irek and I sitting with nothing to do, in danger of being seen as lazy. Once, I was graciously allowed to cook dinner, and when I innocently asked him how the unlabeled rice is cooked(instant or normal?), he nearly jumped out of his seat to take over, saying, “I can cook it!” instead of answering my question. This epic struggle, just to let me figure out dinner, was plainly visible on his face. Needless to say, the skill-building and sailing practice I had been looking forward to did not include the assistance of a teacher – only rarely, when “absolutely necessary,” did he explain things to us. But many sailors will agree that it’s better to train your crew before that big black cloud hits your boat….
Since we were to be stuck together on a little boat for so long, I thought maybe I’d be able to pick up a little Finnish or Polish. “Since you fly a Finnish flag, technically we’re in Finland, right? And we should speak Finnish?” Nope – English was the official language on the Ninni, despite Mikko admitting that he “can’t English” and Irek having only intermediate command of the language. But he still seemed to expect us to read his mind, despite investing as little time as possible in training. I suppose it would’ve actually been worse if we all tried to talk in Finnish.
Of course I did learn a lot, even without his help. Irek, who flew down for the voyage just to gain experience(in hopes of one day becoming a yachtmaster himself), would go out on deck and simply start doing things he thought needed doing, often drawing blustery criticism from the captain. But at least he was practicing, and eventually I grew comfortable enough to do the same. It was the only way to get our hands dirty – if we were to confer with Mikko first, he’d just end up doing it himself!
I will admit, I should’ve maybe expected such fierce independence. In one of his first emails, Mikko told me “I can do the sailing myself, but another person is nice to get good sleep.” Indeed, Irek and I were only really useful as watchkeepers, and really only at night. On any boat, it’s standard practice that the person coming off watch wakes up the person coming on next, usually early enough to make tea or breakfast. But Mikko would often let me sleep in and take my watches himself. Sounds great, yeah… but in reality it was aggravating. It enforced his apparently pre-determined image of me as a lazy American, and it screwed up the watch schedule. Nevertheless, when I begged him to wake me up on time, he angrily vowed not to!
I think I grew a few new gray hairs that first week, but eventually I got used to feeling useless, and though I was always energetic and willing to help if asked, and learned all I could on my own, the voyage took on a more “on vacation” feeling.
After that it was nice to be lazing about, reading or watching the sea, being served meals(most often described as a “sea mess” – canned fish, beans, and vegetables with garlic and onion; most fresh food only lasted the first week), maybe having a conversation. On occasion someone would spy a passing ship on the horizon or some sort of animal, and we’d all rush up to get an eyeful of something that wasn’t sky or sea. The ocean rolled steadily by beneath us, and each day brought us a tiny bit closer to the rising sun.

Watching the MARINE LIFE was one of the most rewarding diversions. There is an amazing microscopic plankton in the water that produces a small amount of light when agitated. After dusk, the wake behind the boat begins to glitter like the stars, and if you’re staring transfixed over the railing on a dark watch some night, it’s quite exotic and surreal. If the wind is really pushing and the boat is crashing into the waves, their sparkling brings to mind a grinder wheel, spitting out sparks. And when the sea is calm and you’re gliding clean through the water, it’s as though some gentle hand is spreading a carpet of fairy dust below the boat.
There are no mosquitos at sea; it’s nice. In fact we embarked a day earlier than Mikko had originally planned, just to escape the bloodsuckers that had been eating us in the Antigua harbor.
Flying fish are a common sight, exploding out one side of a wave and skimming along the surface, sometimes as far as twenty yards, before splashing back into the sea. Sometimes they land on the deck at night, and in the morning there are little cigar-shaped cartilage-boned breakfasts waiting for us.
By simply running a jelly-fish lure behind the boat as we sailed along, we were able to catch quite a few bigger fish, and stayed in fresh tuna and dorado(mahi-mahi) almost the whole trip. The biggest one we got, an albacore, was about 2.5 feet long and weighed about 13 pounds. Every time, Mikko would reel in the fish, then lean over the side and stab its underside with the gaff, a wicked-looking extendable sharpened hook. As the blood began to flow, he next clubbed it on the head with a big piece of wood he kept, for this express purpose, hanging on the lifeline near the rod. The poor fish would jitter and twitch at each blow, and finally die with one rather sickening and extended convulsion. At this point the dorados, which are normally a beautiful bright opalescent orange-green, would lose their color, and their scales would fade to grey, almost as if marking the passage of their soul. Next, with the cold remorselessness of a lifetime fisherman, he cut them open at the neck and plopped them back into the water to bleed out, while he went to collect his knife and bowl. Then, using a fold-down cutting board mounted to the railing, he would expertly clean the fish, producing chunks of pale boneless fresh fish. Many times, I saw this old fisherman pluck a piece of meat from behind the fish’s head and eat it raw right there in the middle of cleaning it; usually he would also serve a sashimi raw-fish appetizer with soy sauce and wasabi. Mikko let me clean the catch once, a very slimy procedure and quite precarious on a heeled-over jostling boat. I got to cook it once, as well, and (despite almost losing the privilege because I asked a question) produced a delicious blackened mahi mahi over olive-oil-n-oregano spaghetti with crushed tomatoes. The guys were impressed, I think, and I thought maybe I could become the boat’s cook, but the next day we were back to Mikko’s sea mess.
I never saw any sharks, but several times a pod of dolphins would catch up to us and romp around nearby, racing along the bow and obviously playing. Wonderful creatures. There were even baby dolphins once – very cute. Every time, I would welcome the sight of the dolphins; they always made me feel protected, and somehow welcome.
We saw a whale once, about 100 yards off the starboard side. It blew water as it sounded, shooting a geyser into the air, then majestically banked a bit and rolled over as it began to dive, revealing a humongous flipper, then a humongous tail, and then it was gone.
There were Portuguese man-o-wars floating near the Azores islands; little puffy, semi-transparent, purplish-pink blobs with long slimy tails, floating on the surface and being pushed by the wind. Sailing jellyfish!
And finally, there were birds. Frigate birds, petrels, fulmars, gannets, shearwaters, and gulls of many kinds. It’s crazy to think how far they must have flown, to be here in the middle of the Atlantic. But then you realize that they actually sleep while floating on the water – they spend almost their whole lives at sea. Although once I happened to pop up from the hatch one afternoon to the sight of a tiny, cute, intensely yellow canary having a rest in the rigging! I guess we must have helped him make his journey – do they really fly from boat to boat across the ocean?
The fishing birds were soothing to watch; they skim incredibly close to the surface, in a sort of dance with the water: up and down, along a trough and over a crest, following the waves and dipping below the surface for fish. Once, a pair of fulmars were trying to eat the fishing hook, and one of them got caught before we could reel it in. “Oh no…” I thought, “We’ve killed a bird.” Mikko stood back, saying that removing a hook from a bird would surely spell its death. Irek reeled it all the way in and on to the deck, and I realized with relief that it wasn’t hooked, it had only somehow got its wing wrapped up in the line. It didn’t fight me as I gently pinned it down and unwrapped it, and I held my breath as it plopped off the side of the boat back into the water. After a few moments of praying, “Please survive! Please survive!” it took to wing and rejoined its mate in the sky. Whew!

SURVIVAL is often on my mind, as one of my favorite pastimes, but at sea it took on a wholly different context. I had learned a lot about maritime survival during the STCW course in Florida, and was happy to see all the appropriate gear onboard the Ninni: the self-inflating liferaft, emergency water supplies and rations, the EPIRB beacon, dan bouys, flares, life vests and life lines, hand-held VHF radios, and a first aid kit. In my travels on the East coast I spoke to a lot of mariners, and can clearly remember certain phrases, such as “Boats just disappear,” “Any less than five crew on a transAtlantic and you’re playing with your life,” and “Every hour, somewhere, in some ocean, someone is sinking.” Then I started reading some maritime survival and adventure stories someone had left on the boat, and by the time I got a good sense of the pure vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, a constant (exciting!) sense of danger had settled over our little boat. I had my own personal ditch-bag, ready to throw into a liferaft, with full water bottles, CLIF bars, signal mirror, compass, fishing kit, wallet, and passport. Just in case.
I took a swim in the 5-kilometer-deep, royal blue water one day, with nothing but my fingers’ grasp holding me onto the Ninni, and thinking about the sheer magnitude of the ocean left me in humbled awe. There is so much massive force, so much power and energy beneath the waves; not to mention sharks or pissed-off whales, or floating cargo boxes or exploding propane tanks or hurricane-force gales that rip your mast off… it pays to take precautions when you’re a thousand miles from the nearest land.

Way out there in the ocean, the POLLUTION is different as well. It’s no less than on land, perhaps even more, actually(think New Jersey garbage barges), but everything except plastic sinks, so I guess most people are going with “out of sight, out of mind.” But sometimes it’s not out of sight. I’ve seen Coca-Cola bottles floating, I’ve seen BP oil drums floating. There is a place in the Pacific where all the plastic in the ocean collects – they call it the Great Pacific Garbage Patch(http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm). It’s the size of a continent. The plastic absorbs chemicals and interferes with the hormones of marine creatures, among other problems. And so on a boat, appropriately, it is illegal to throw anything made of plastic overboard. MARPOL actually pays people who report boats that break marine pollution laws – half the amount fined. Not that that stops people – it’s much like litter laws on land: ignored when no one is watching. What really frustrated me, though, was that beyond three miles from land, it’s completely legal to throw almost everything else overboard! I was forced to jettison aluminum and tin cans, glass bottles, cardboard and paper – almost all of which could’ve been recycled. I tried to save my beer cans – but Mikko wouldn’t let me. “We don’t have room to keep that” and “What if they don’t have recycling in the Azores?” Bah!
In Antigua I said “I’m using wind power to cross the ocean, instead of gasoline,” to a guy who builds sailing boats, and the response was something like, “Do you know how much waste there is just to build a sailboat? A lot.” Critics love to try and shoot me down, I guess. Actually, though, he had an interesting point – take a minute and think about how much energy is used, not to run, but just to manufacture your car, the siding on your house, even your solar panel, or (eek) your bicycle. But like anything else, it’s a lesser-evil type of situation – out of all the boats in the world that you can fit a bicycle onto, the sailboat is still the most ecological.
One type of pollution that doesn’t exist at sea is light pollution. The stars, the milky way, and the planets were all absolutely amazing. One night I was even lucky enough to witness a meteor shower, where shooting stars streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of light for several savored moments after each precious one. And the moon; aah la luna. I was able to see, for example, a crescent moon, as normal: a perfect sliver of silver, shining over the vast sea, directly illuminated by the sun; but it was so clear out there that I could also see the rest of the moon, darkened in the Earth’s shadow but still catching a few light rays reflected off our atmosphere. It was the most breathtaking celestial view I’ve ever seen, and I’ve looked at the stars from some pretty remote locations.

There is also a RADIO that bounces signals off of the Earth’s atmosphere – the HAM radio. It’s old technology, but still in wide usage. The longest piece of metal on the boat, the backstay(16 meters), which helps hold the mast up, doubled as Mikko’s antenna. The electronic guts of his system were coated in spray-on varnish to protect against corrosive, salty air, and he never had a problem with it despite using it every day, at sea and in harbor.
There is a whole sub-culture of geeks that really get into amateur radio. Some collect callsigns of different countries(each country has different ones), some collect only callsigns from islands, and some collect weird callsigns, like the maritime mobile station on the Ninni. Mikko’s Finnish callsign was OH2NIN/mm: “Oscar Hotel Two November India November stroke Maritime Mobile.” My gawd, I heard that callsign so much – imagine, if you can, the Finnish accent – I was hearing it in my sleep. Most times he would contact random people from across the globe – it really does bounce its signal off the atmosphere, so its range is, well, anywhere on Earth – but there were a few memorable ones.
Once he talked to an Algerian, and since both Mikko and Irek had become quite interested(and skeptical) as to how and why I would cross that particular African country, he took a moment to describe his crazy American crewmember and ask Mohammed’s opinion. Thanks Mikko, but I don’t think Mohammed understood your English – he didn’t respond.
Another time he contacted a bicycle mobile station! Some crazy guy on a bike in Blackpoole, UK was riding down the beach with a tire-rubber generator system, a 3 meter aerial sticking up behind him, and a trailer full of batteries, yapping away into a microphone! I was tickled. The guy had actually tuned his radio to resonate through the steel frame of his bicycle to amplify his signal. Apparently he had the strongest signal in all of Europe, and was very popular on the airwaves that day. Mikko again told him about his cyclist crewmember, and I heard the radio voice, bounced all the way from England to our boat in the middle of the ocean, say in a British accent, “I hope Charles enjoys his cycle trip here in the UK.”
But the most impressive use of the amateur radio was an American organization called Winlink. These guys have set up stand-alone radio stations, connected to computers, in various strategic points around the world. Any radio amateur with the (free) software can contact the station, and have a very reliable way to send or receive email or faxes. For maritime mobile operators, you can also download weather reports. It’s like an indirect sort of internet, without web-surfing, that relies on inexpensive, tried-and-true technology instead of $25,000 satellite uplink systems. Pretty amazing. Except I wasn’t allowed to use it! Oh well – he did actually let me send a few short “I’m still alive” messages to my family during the crossing.
Mikko didn’t like the weather reports he got from Winlink. He had a better source, a personalized, daily weather strategy that all but completely replaced older methods, such as looking at the clouds. This god-send is named Herb. “Southbound Two” is his callsign, and he’s a German mariner living in Canada who decided after a few rough transAtlantic passages that there should be something better than weatherfaxes. He’s not a meteorologist, but he talks directly to any boat(on the Atlantic) that needs his help, for free, every day at 4:00 UCT. He queues everyone up, then goes through the list, from Caribbean to Europe, listening to their position and weather conditions, and then delivering concise tactics and a waypoint to head for during the next 24 hours. I can’t believe he’s allowed to do it – shouldn’t some asshole have sued him already? – but everyone on HerbNet seems to know that his advice is “suggested course only.” Irek and I certainly would have preferred a little more do-it-yourself weather tactics; we were still learning. But this was the one thing Mikko didn’t do himself: he placed complete and utter confidence in Herb, saying “We’ll just see where Herb tells us to go.” Good thing the radio didn’t break!
When we were finally within about 100 miles of Europe, we were able to tune into FM frequencies. The BBC and its warm British accents and prestigious news reports were a welcome sign that we were getting close. But no music – the only music Mikko ever listened to was “The Best of Queen,” more specifically “Bohemian Rhapsody,” though he did play the bicycle song for me once. “Biiiicyle, biiiicyle, I want to ride my bi-see-call, I want to ride my biiiike….”

Indeed, by the time I arrived in Falmouth, I was out of shape, a bit tubby around the waist, and more than eager to get back on the bike. It was a total of 40 days at sea, ten twenty ten. Think about that for a second. Twenty days straight.

I can’t really even believe it myself.

The terra firma was so very, very enjoyable then, after such a long journey over the waves. I savored the act of pitching my tent, surrounded by the intense green of the well-watered English forest, getting soil under my fingernails and listening to the birds… Aaah, the whispering trees, swaying in the wind, yet anchored still to the deepest of roots; poetically balanced in elemental forces, reliable and grounded in the stillness of this Earth.
I have landed in this exotic land with a greater appreciation for everything: for solid ground, for pavement and rubber, for plants; for wind, for boats, and even(especially?) for water. For leaving my comfort zone, for purposefully breaking the routines dictated to me, and trying something so new, so uncertain and unfamiliar, I’ve come to appreciate all of life, more than ever before.
So try something new today! It makes life taste better.