If I asked you to list the Seven Wonders of the World, would you be able to do it?
You would first have to ask me, “Which seven wonders?”
There are many lists: The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, The Seven Wonders of the Modern World … the Natural World … the Underwater World.
No matter what answers you gave, somebody or some organization would disagree with you.
But here is a much more important question, and one that you’ll always get right.
What are the Seven WANDERS of YOUR World?
Where do you want to travel? It is a simple question that I find many people don’t ask themselves. What are your travel dreams? Pedaling across the U.S.? Your own state? Alaska to Tierra del Fuego? A grand world tour?
Dream big. Dream small. Weekenders to no-time-limit life changers.
Now. Write them down. At least seven of them. You can include more … it’s your list. Remember, there are no wrong answers and your list is always “subject to change.”
Are these my/our next seven trips? Probably not. The next place we tour might not even be on the list. But every trip begins with a dream.
Whenever someone asks me about bicycle travel, I ask them where they want to go. It is amazing how often the answer is, “I don’t know. I just want to travel.”
Take it a step further. Seven steps further.
Make a list.
Seven correct answers that are always subject to change.
One of the few racing cyclists I met while I was in Cuba (1998) was a young man named Alexie. He came over to chat with me in a small town in the province of Pinar del Rio (west of Havana).
I thought he was interested in my bike. It was a Rodriguez, which is a common surname in Cuba. But I later found out he wasn’t interested in the frame or the brakes or the tires. He was interested in one of my water bottles.
He explained that he dreamed of painting his bike white and blue. But the water bottle he owned was yellow. Water bottles in Cuba, like everything else, were in short supply. He had searched for months and couldn’t find one to match his dream bike.
It just so happened that I had the coveted white-and-blue water bottle.
He held up his old, yellow water bottle with the black cap next to mine … assuring me that they both carried the same amount of liquid. Then he asked if I would be willing to trade.
I didn’t hesitate. I just handed it over.
Alexie beamed. And I thought, “What an easy goodwill gesture.”
Soon after, I learned that there is a difference between drinking from a white-and-blue bottle versus a yellow one … especially if the yellow one is filled with rum.
I took a huge swallow and almost passed out from the unexpected rush of alcohol.
Alexie and his friends couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed, too, once I’d caught my breath and wiped the tears from my eyes.
That journey was a dozen years ago — and to this day, if I hold that yellow water bottle up to my nose, I get the faintest whiff of Cuban rum.
I imagine a bike racer in the hot Cuban sun, pedaling in cadence with a pace line. He reaches down and grabs an old white-and-blue water bottle.
When we say we cycled Portugal, we mean it! Portugal is about the size of Indiana and friends joked we could see it in a week. Instead of hitting just the highlights, we took our time wandering the back roads as much as possible and exploring the major cities too. It was luxurious to focus on such a small region getting to know it intimately. The landscape changed daily and the culture and cuisine is distinctively different north to south. Wine is delicious everywhere! In three months, we pedaled 2,934.7 kilometers (1,823.5 miles) by crossing the country SIX times. Still, there are places we didn’t see…
Recently I was invited to a “Women on Bikes” meet-up … a salon of sorts where we batted around the question of “what do women want”. We were there to share our bikerly stories and share ideas—maybe someone in that room can run with it and make things happen in our city. Or perhaps as a community of women on bikes we can help a sea change. I came home and posted a similar query on Facebook, asking what will it take to get more women to ride bikes?
A great question with dozens of answers in person and on FB, but then Don Draper (Mad Men marketing genius for you non-TV watchers) crooned in my ear and I turned that question around. I know lots of reasons to not ride a bike—we all do—but what is the deep, underlying hook that keeps those of us who do ride bikes riding them in the face of all the challenges? What do we know that the rest of the world doesn’t know?
So with the tinkling of ice in my glass and Don Draper’s smooth baritone lulling me to explore my own motivations for tackling traffic, bad weather, aggressive drivers, time crunch, culture, and snobbish cyclists who want to impress themselves by racing me up the hill (yep, the vibe on the street, and in the bike shop, is a deterrent), I came up with my three hooks that keep me pedaling.
One. I wish it were the greening of the planet, but it’s not my great motivator. When I owned a car, I bike-commuted to school and work because parking and gas was expensive. I did it to save money when I really wasn’t making very much. Years later with a higher income, I don’t own a car, but every time I do the math and realize how much money I would need to spend on car payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, I decide I don’t need a car. And it’s not just the money that I can spend on other things like going to Portugal for three months; it’s actually the time I would need to spend working to make that extra money too.
Two. Riding a bike or walking most places is an automatic workout. I love that every time I go somewhere, it’s not time spent in a gym pedaling, or worse, trying to lose weight. It’s a twofer – a two for one bonus of getting somewhere I was already going and getting a workout at the same time.
Three. I think it’s a little bit cool. Riding a bike is my small rebellion from normalcy. It’s freedom. It’s empowering. I actually think I’m lucky that I’m a woman who rides a bike. I like the looks of admiration and the thumbs-up encouragement I get. I get that on trips, but I also get that just riding around town. When it happens it’s really fun, and no one ever thought I was cool just because I was driving a car.
These are my three reasons. What are yours? What is the marketing genius that will sell riding a bike, if the masses only knew?
Two kids came riding up to me in the middle of Saskatchewan, waving and smiling.
“Hey Mister. Did you come all the way up the hill?”
I looked to behind me to the west and then ahead to the east. It was flat as the eye could see. I hadn’t encountered a hill for at least a week.
These kids were obviously joking.
But, fortunately, before I laughed or opened my mouth, I looked into their eyes and saw nothing but earnestness.
There was a ever-so-slight grade coming into town. Two percent. Max. But in their world, this was the steepest hill you could pedal.
I’ve met plenty of folks on my travels who have never traveled fifty miles beyond their home town. And for at least hundred miles in each direction … this WAS the hill.
I smiled at the boys and said, “You bet I did. Never thought I’d make it.”
We pedaled into town together and I bought them an ice cream to celebrate our accomplishment. I bought one for me too. Couldn’t let them eat alone.
Over the course of my lifetime, my own definition of “hill” or “big climb” has changed. But whether it’s a two percent grade, or twenty-two percent … getting to the top has always been a reason to celebrate.
Happy Climbing (and even happier summiting) in 2011.
Holiday shoppers pop out the umbrellas in Sevilla, Spain
Our latest bike journey ended in the beautiful city of Sevilla (Seville), Spain.
I’m a sucker for Christmas/holiday music and also a huge fan of street performers. These musicians add life to any city. And I love being in the crush of holiday crowds … especially when I’m observing, rather than shopping.
As we wandered through the streets of Sevilla, I recorded the street performers we encountered. Quite an eclectic bunch. In the United States, once Thanksgiving has rolled by, the songs you will hear performed on the streets is pretty much limited to the canon of 20-30 holiday tunes. I still love them. But some variety would be welcome.
Well. That’s what we got. Sure, we heard some traditional tunes. But street musicians in Sevilla do not all march to the holiday tune drum … unless you consider “Knights in White Satin” a holiday classic.
Happy Holidays from Spain.
May your days be merry and bright. And may all your bicycle gear be light.
Our pedal into the city of Évora, Portugal was made easy by following a bike trail (ecopista) that runs north of the city about 25kms to the town of Arraiolos. The trail was flat, mostly through farm land. Away from traffic. The sun was out. Hoopoes (a delightful bird with a comical crest) flitted from tree to tree. The smell of fall was in the air.
Yet I was just a tad depressed. This trail served as a rail line in its former life. But like so many other rail lines, it had been abandoned.
Rails-to-Trails conversions has provided cyclists and walkers and runners with some of the best trails you’ll find on the planet. But each one also marks the death of a rail line. I want to celebrate each trail, but I’m also saddened with the loss … because I love trains. Do we have to give up one to get the other?
The only way to have both is to find other huge projects that use public land and are graded for easy use.
I would like to propose a new non-profit group … the Interstate-to-Trails Conservancy.
OK. I might be a couple of decades early, but I’d love to live long enough to see walking, cycling and public transportation become such the social norm in the United States, that our government wonders what to do with these outdated, enormous rivers of asphalt and concrete. Imagine the grand trails and greenbelts stretching for hundreds of miles. There would even be room to run rail lines. And instead of old rail cars as cute trail-side snack bars and restaurants … maybe we’ll see old converted semi’s and RV’s instead.
We only planned to bicycle to Seville to catch the train to Madrid after our 2 1/2 month pedal around Portugal. Little did we know that we were headed into one of the fastest growing “bicycle cities” on the planet.
In just a matter of a few years, Seville has gone from almost no one using a bike for transportation, to over 60,000 people biking per day.
It wasn’t accomplished simply by an ad campaign. The city built and/or marked a network of 120 kms worth of traffic-separated bike paths around the city. These are not your average recreational paths that end abruptly, leaving the cyclist confused and lost. These paths are meant as a transportation system — all connected, and, as we found, all easy to follow.
In addition, the city has provided a bicycle sharing system with 300 stations and over 3000 bikes (Their bike program is called Sevici).
Kat and I were blown away with how efficient and easy the whole system operates. We barely had to refer to our bike map.
Thirty years ago, cities were best avoided on a bike tour. Now, thanks to bicycle advocates and campaigns around the world, more and more cities are becoming bicycle destinations themselves.
This coming year’s Velocity Conference will be hosted in Seville, where advocates will gather to learn and share how to make the world a better place to pedal.
