Captain, stoker, and a moment of suspension
Better try before committing
“The mundane just kills me. I wish it was all exceptions."
Clarice Lispector
By the time we boarded the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to St. Malo, we were drenched and had our first flat tire. Without a cabin, our plan was to sleep on the floor in the main hall, but we'd forgotten our sleeping mats with the bike in the depths of the ship. With frozen toes, I remembered reading somewhere that newspaper made for great insulation. I couldn’t find any, so I wrapped my feet in toilet paper instead. Not very dignified, but better than nothing and here probably lay one of the first lessons of cycle touring: dignity is overrated.
We found ourselves in this soggy state of affairs because somehow a longing, a book and a post converged into the idea of a very long bike ride. The 750 km from France’s Atlantic Coast to Bourgogne were our trial run. If we liked it, we’d commit to the big one.
The year before, I’d spent two and a half months travelling with my mum, in celebration of our 30th and 60th birthdays. We loved each other, hated each other, were awed and annoyed, at the world and each other, from Antarctica to the Amazon and eight countries in between. It was then I fell in love with the freedom of a longer journey, and felt I’d touched upon something magical. About halfway through I noticed we'd been travelling long enough for the worries I had in the life I’d temporarily left to no longer hold power over me. It was all so distant, like a blur, an abstraction. All the while, returning was still far enough away that future worries hadn’t had a chance to creep in. I just sort of existed, then and there. It was a powerful feeling of both presence in the moment and suspension from regular life, like being mid-air. A cathartic liberation from the everyday.
I got home and told Hugo we had to take a sabbatical. I wanted to feel that again and I wanted him to feel it too. He, in turn, had just read Full Tilt, the story of Dervla Murphy’s bike trip from Ireland to India in the 60s.
Neither of us remembers if Hugo actually threw about the idea of travelling on solo bikes, but we both remember when he came across a post on LFGSS, full of lovely pictures and tales of a couple’s cycle tour on a tandem. If we had ever even given a tandem bike any thought, it was as this thing self-professed oh-so-quirky people might have. This post though, was a revelation! Their bike was not whimsical. No buffalo leather wine bottle holder here. It looked like a regular bike, only extended. And it held the promise of enabling two people with different levels of strength and ability who wanted to cycle together, to cycle together.
Further reading revealed that: the person at the back is called the stoker and the one in front, usually the stronger rider, is called the captain. The captain’s job is to control the bike, steer, brake, that whole thing and, I quote, “make the stoker happy.” The stoker has some minimal duties other than, of course, contributing to power but generally, and again I quote, “The stoker makes no mistakes.” I liked the sound of that.
We bought a 1970’s Gitane Monts d’Auvergne in candy green for £60 and spent a weekend making it rideable — sanding down its considerable rust, degreasing and re-greasing it, changing parts. The thing was like riding a long fish, the tubes felt soft and bendy whenever we turned a corner, the tail (me) snapping back into place with a little delay. This is not a feature of all tandems, just that very old one. Even so, it fulfilled its promise as a great leveller. Hugo didn’t have to constantly wait for me, invariably puffing in anger and frustration, to catch up, and I felt comfortable going further than the neighbourhood. We loved it so much we soon upgraded to a Dawes Super Galaxy, a newer and nicer frame.
As we rode more and found we were well suited for it — I was more than happy to relinquish control, and Hugo was always willing to listen to my needs — we began entertaining the idea of taking a sabbatical on a tandem. All the long distance tourers we read though seemed pretty out of my league in their courage and willingness to suffer, and I feared I just wasn’t tough enough.
Then we attended a talk by Kat and Steve Turner at the first edition of The Cycle Touring Festival in the UK. Their story was similar to ours, except she had never actually ridden a bike before. And yet. They flew their tandem to New Zealand, the furthest place from home they could go, not to chance turning back the first week. A bunch of crap befell them, but they took their time and made it back to the UK, two years and 30,500 km later. This had been their honeymoon. I was in awe. And I hope this doesn’t sound diminishing to them, but here were two regular people, not athletes, not fearless adventurers, just two people curious about the world, who accomplished something extraordinary. It was both comforting and deeply inspiring.
We upgraded the tandem again (the Dawes was too crammed for me to see much beyond the back of Hugo’s head) to a gorgeous shade shifter Santana Fusion SE, with plenty of room for me, my camera and my snacks at the back.
France showed up on the horizon in the early morning with a sliver of sun, which promptly disappeared as soon as we landed. More punctures and more rain. At 11:55am, thoroughly soaked despite all our Gore-Tex, relieved to find a place to eat and warm up, we were instead chased out by a woman who ran up from the kitchen screaming. How dare us walk in through her wide open doors at 11:55, didn’t we know she only opened at 12? You’d think we’d pissed all over her floor. Probably should have.
The weather was so ridiculously bad, it crossed the line from miserable to surreally funny. Whatever progress we made was slow and hard earned against strong headwinds. My new, untested saddle squished my parts and cut circulation while fat, horizontal raindrops hurt my face, even with Hugo as shield. I could barely see through wet and steamed up glasses. But I didn’t hate it. I was not, to my own surprise, furious at the furious elements, at the bike, at myself, at France or even at Hugo for thinking this could possibly be a good idea.
I was, what was that? Exhilarated? Sold on this whole bike trip thing on day one, before I’d even ravaged our first boulangerie bounty? Before baguettes and croissants stuck out of our bags and wafts of stinky cheese rose from inside them. Before I met the mobile baker lady, who turned up in the morning at our campsite like an angel bathed in golden light, the trunk of her car full of fresh bread and pastries.
I loved the outdoorness of it all, and the simplicity of it. Eat, ride, stop for snack, ride, stop for lunch, ride, stop for snack, stop for snack, stop for snack, plan the next day, dinner, sleep, repeat.
Most importantly, I was beginning to understand, for the first time, the joy of the body as vehicle, as machine, as furnace: throw anything inside and it immediately disappears. This is not to say I’d couch potatoed my life thus far, but this was different. Yeah, that was the right word for it. It was exhilarating.
I love this.