According to this website, I have been stuck in Huaraz Peru for about 10 months now.
Although there have been moments when I wish I was – I actually ended up moving on from Huaraz and have since made my way into Ecuador, past the equator and into Columbia before taking my return flight back to New York and eventually making it to Norway in time to start school.
It’s not that I didn’t have anything to write about, I actually had a full post handwritten in my journal. It’s just that I couldn’t bring myself to finishing off the trip and the story. But now I am feeling like its been long enough.
As I look through that handwritten post, most of it makes me smile but more of it seems pretty irrelevant to put here at this point in time. So instead I am just going to go through some final stats of the 7 month trip:
Countries cycled – 6
Kilometers – 10,643 (around 6,600 miles)
Full sets of bike tools stolen in Bolivia – 1
Times stuck in the Atacama Desert: lost, out of water and severely dehydrated for two days (this is a separate story I never posted before for the sake of my mom’s stress levels) – 1
Roadside protests and blockades broken through – 3
Flat tires – 24
Broken Spokes – 9
Wore out Bottom Brackets – 1
Replacement Chains – 3
New Rear Derailleurs – 2
Replaced rack screws – 4
Amount of zip ties needed to keep that damn rack together – countless
New Tires – 3
Helmets– 2
About the helmets listed above, my original was donated to a Patagonian National Park roadside early on in the trip – you would have to talk to English Matt for the full story on that one.
A replacement was later kindly provided by Andy, who joined the trip for 2 weeks riding through the Chilean Los Lagos Region. When he gave his old helmet to me, he made me promise I would pass it on when I no longer needed it.
To fulfill my promise, below is a picture of a Columbian cycling father and son duo that I met on the road during my last cycling day of the trip. I hope they are getting their use out of it and will pass it on as well when done.
And now as a final closer of sorts, below is a picture of what my bike looked like a day before the trip started in the dead of a NY winter:
And below is what it looked like a day after my trip ended in the heart of a NY summer.
Imagine the fun I had, unshaven for a month, going through US Customs/Immigration in Miami after getting off a plane from Columbia with just a beat-up cardboard box and mysterious rice sac:
And with that, until next time.
(I know that closing was cheesy but it was either that or ‘Stay classy San Diego’ which would have made no sense at all unless you have watched Anchorman recently like I have)
oh yeah…….. and to Martin, Nedo, Matt, Ian, Steve, Andy and Torstien….. we still have our Himalaya bike trip coming in a few years – I am going to hold all of you to that one.
