Anticipation and Remembrance

In the best cases, a good adventure pays dividends long before the trip, in the form of delicious anticipation, and for years following the trip, via memories and stories told.

As I write this, I am nearing the end of the anticipation phase, and it’s interesting how it progressed this time around.

I first proposed this trip in August of last year (it is now June). From then through around December, I lived in a blissful fantasy. The gear list was merely a twinkle in my eye. We hadn’t yet locked in on the logistics of travel and the progression of gear evaluation. We hadn’t spent much money on anything. And most importantly, I hadn’t dipped into the endless morass of Internet based stories, photos and videos on the trip. The trip was every fantasy I dreamed it to be – just riding light, sleeping in the huts, eating and drinking a bit and then riding some more. And there were mountains and wildflowers and mountain streams and wood nymphs and forest creatures and savage tans.

From the start of the new year until around April, I lived in the euphoria of gear acquisition and planning. Plane tickets were arranged (then altered by the apparatchiks at United Airlines FIVE times). Don landed rental cars. We found hotels and massages. We learned where to ship the bikes and how to ship them back. I bombarded my companions with a hailstorm of emails and phone calls, peppering them relentlessly with updated gear lists and advice and trivia.

In April, it then began to seem real. The term “two months from now” began to creep into conversations with people about the trip. I had most of the stuff on my list. I had done a trial run of packing the panniers and putting the rack on the bike. And that stayed fun until about a week before I shipped the bike. At that point, I was planned out. I wanted to finish the damn list. I just wanted to ride. I couldn’t WAIT to get the bike and panniers into the box and out of here. And the day, I took the stuff to Fed Ex about two weeks ago brought a feeling of massive relief. Once that was on the way, I was down to my daypack and the few personal things I would take on the plane. Nice.

So, the planning was over, for the most part, and momentum took over. I am now taking what I am taking, and I’ll have to trust that I made good decisions and live with any mistakes I made that I don’t catch between now and the trip.

Enter the waiting game. Life between now and next Wednesday is anticlimactic. I’ll get through the last items on my to-do list, help our where I can around the house and then fly. And then ride.

I unwittingly made a mistake during the anticipation stage – and succumbed to too much curiosity about the route, the huts and the experiences of those who came before us on the trip. The blessing and the curse of the Web is that it offers endless answers to any question. In this case, the hut system is profiled in major newspaper articles, and memorialized in dozens of journal postings from those who traveled those miles. And I read WAY too many of these.

On the positive side, I’ve seen photos of the area that make me totally psyched to be there, especially at this time of year. Its greener than I would have expected, the vistas of the surrounding mountain ranges are truly spectacular, the huts themselves are very cool and the food selection seems truly extraordinary. Mundane food tastes amazing in the mountains to begin with, and to have fresh ingredients and lots of options will be a treat. And cold beer – what else do I need to say about cold beer?

But too often those who write about their adventures online tend to dull recitations of what happened day by day – what they ate and what happened at what mileage point or elevation. Sometimes you learn something from this (such as the effects of deep snow on the trail), but more often than not, that type of writing can make a trip sound dull. I’ve read too much of this kind of writing, and now comes the time to make the trail ours. We’ll be touched by beauty. We’ll laugh. We’ll eat and drink. We’ll meet interesting people. Things will go wrong . . . but hopefully not too wrong.

I am reminded by a quote from one of my favorite travel writers, Tim Cahill. Tim was a founding editor of Outside magazine, and for much of his career, Outside and other publications would send Tim, who was not perhaps the most athletic person in the world, off on outlandish assignments involving outdoor adventure. His said:

“Misfortune is the travel writers best friend.”

It is true. Without weird weather, equipment failure, idiot border guards, strange bedfellows, group conflict, bad food and the vagaries of fate, travel narratives would be dull and lifeless.

So, I guess when I plan a trip that I also plan to write about, the goal is to allow for some amount of misfortune, but not too much. Little misfortunes can be exaggerated about later, but big misfortunes cause problems. Let’s not have these.

You’ll hear from me again when we reach the end of the trail. Ride on.