Every Day's a Dan Day

What follows is a typical account of a day spent cycling solo...

7am: Alarm clock goes off. Wonder why the hell my bed is so hard and why it smells of plastic, stale tuna and feet. Remember that I'm in a tent somewhere. Wonder vaguely why the hell I'm in a tent somewhere. Hit snooze violently.

7:09am: Hit snooze violently.

7:18am: Hit snooze violently.

7:27am: Decide I now need to get moving because I need a piss. Hit snooze.

7:36am: Get out of tent in a mood, bleary eyed. Do a piss. Find my cigarettes and light one. Stare at the horizon, then at my bike, then at the horizon. Then at my bike. Then at my tent. Eat a cereal bar. Eat another one because cereal bars are a pathetic joke of a breakfast.

7:45am: Start packing up my tent. Wonder how so much stuff could have been spread so randomly in such a small space of time in such a tiny area. Retrieve my phone from one of my socks and my cooker from up a tree. Pack it all up and swear quite a lot. Roll up my tent and stowe it on my bike. Realise that my ipod is still in my tent so unpack everything and retrieve it. Pack it up again.

8:10am: Put on my gloves. Get on my bike. Look at my compass. Start to pedal.

8:11am: Realise I haven't put my speedometer on. Stop the bike, dig it out from somewhere implausibly inaccessible, put it on, and start riding again.

8:15am: Immediately get lost. Try to remember which way I came when I arrived yesterday. Invariably get it wrong and cycle 5 - 10 completely pointless kilometres while I get my bearings.

9am: Wonder why it seems so hard this morning. Realise that, like every morning, I have forgotten to top up the slow puncture in my front wheel. Consider changing the tube, but, like every morning, just top up the tyre with my pump instead. Because that's easier.

10am: Hunger starts hitting pretty hard after 20-40km. I start looking for somewhere to buy food, because I have nothing in my bags suitable. (Tin of tuna in oil for lunch? Sod that.)

11am: Find somewhere to buy food, just as I'm losing hope of ever seeing any kind of shop for the rest of my life. Become so insanely excited that I only buy chocolate, sweets, fizzy drinks and cigarettes. Come out and realise I've spent a fortune on a load of crap. Go back in and buy sensible food.

11:30am: Start looking for somewhere nice to have lunch. Inevitably find myself in the middle of an industrial park, next to a motorway, or in the vicinity of a smelly sewage works at this point. Cycle at least 10 kilometres to get back to the countryside. Ignore several benches on the basis that they don't face the right direction, they don't have a bin, or they're underneath the wrong kind of tree.

Midday: Find the perfect bench for a nice lunch. Swear silently at the people sitting on it. Cycle onwards.

12:15pm: Have lunch at an inferior but adequate bench. Wonder why I care so much about what bench I sit on. Wonder why I bought the crustier rolls instead of the soft bread. Wonder why I'm here in the first place. Wonder why I'm wondering about everything instead of just enjoying myself. Stop wondering.

12:45pm: Finish my second cigarette, stick my headphones in, and start grinding out the kilometres.

1:15pm: Plunge down an exciting downhill road at 55-60kph. Get to the bottom and realise I've gone the wrong way because my camera case was under my compass and north is actually south. Get a bit angry. Ride back up the hill.

1:45pm: Album finishes. Have cigarette. Eat some haribo, but furtively, to ensure not being spotted as a grown man eating Haribo on a bicycle. I shouldn't care. Haribo are good.

3:pm: Near 100km mark (on a good day). Celebrate by stopping exactly when the milometer clicks over to 100. This will usually be in the middle of a motorway, or on a narrow section of path next to a huge pile of cowshit. Smoke a cigarette.

3:15pm: Start riding, and think about looking for a campsite.

3:45pm: Start actively looking for a campsite.

4:15pm: Start beseeching random deities to present me with anywhere safe to camp that isn't in the middle of an army shooting range or a crack den.

4:30pm: It starts to rain.

5pm: Boots start to fill with water. Toes submerged. This makes for a pleasantly squishy sensation, which soon becomes quite unpleasant quite quickly. Wonder if it's possible to get trench foot on a bicycle.

5:30pm: Find a campsite. Act overly friendly with the campsite reception due to relief. Get some funny looks. Wait until someone comes out who can speak a little English. Explain that I want to camp (which should be patently obvious, since I'm at a campsite, wet and talking at reception). Pay whatever they ask.

6:00pm: Finally finish putting my tent up. Put all my wet stuff into the tent, therefore negating the waterproof properties of the tent. Get out my cooker.

6:10pm: Smoke a cigarette while I wait for the water to boil. These two things take exactly the same time, which is nice.

6:30pm: Tuck into a delicious steaming hot meal. This will probably be a bowl of pasta with an oxo cube, and either tuna or some kind of dried sausage.

7pm: Wonder what the hell I'm meant to do now. Probably read a book, or listen to something. Adam and Joe podcasts are a favourite. Smoke several cigarettes in my tent. Try to avoid burning the fabric. Occasionally burn the fabric.

9pm: Try to go to sleep. Eventually go to sleep.



Repeat.


Buried in Pomposity is brought to you by Dan, who is actually genuinely enjoying himself, despite what the above may indicate.

Viennese Whirlwind

Hey there. Thought I'd do one of these blog things again, since I've now almost ridden 2000km (mainly) on my lonesome and have finally made it to Vienna. Quite a lot has happened since Luxembourg, so I'll give you a few of the highlights...

• One of my favourite parts of the trip so far was meeting Tarek and Julien, a couple of guys cycling to the Black Sea. Being the friendly types that they are, they saw me riding past (as one of them was making an arboreal toilet) and thought that I looked like someone who was going somewhere interesting, so they chased after me to find out. We spent a couple of days together, drunk a few beers and generally had a great time. They were both ex-French Foreign Legionnaires, which made their camping style quite different from mine. Basically, they just rigged up a tarp and lay under it, open to the elements. I thought this was pretty hardcore. It was a shame to split off from them in the end, but I'm meant to be doing this on my own, which doesn't really work if there's more than one of me riding along. That sentence didn't really make sense. Ah well, I'm probably still drunk. What else good happened...?
• I saw a snake! It wriggled across the cycle path as I was riding along. It's probably not that big a deal for most people, but it totally kept me happy for the next 20km.
• My bike went swimming. Yesterday riding to Vienna, a 100-metre section of the cycle-path was completely submerged in waist-deep water. Not one to backtrack and find another way around, I took my boots off and plunged in. My bags have now been thoroughly waterproof-tested, since they were quite definitely underwater for some time.
• I rode my longest day so far, which was 132km. This is quite a long way to ride, but at the end I found that my average speed was 20km an hour. Which is fast, for me. I think this is due to a secret fuel I have discovered - a combination of Red Bull, Haribo and Snickers bars. An extra incentive is to deny myself a cigarette for stretches of 40 kilometres. This somehow induces my legs to magically find some extra power when I'm nearing the end of the stretch. Weird.
• I also did possibly the stupidest thing I've ever done. One evening, my tent was being mobbed by flies. I was pissed off anyway because I hadn't hit my daily target due to rain, so the flies were the final straw. Enraged, I got my Deet spray out of my bag (100% Deet mossie repellant - real nasty stuff) and angrily decided to spray it at the flies as they flew past. This was the idea, anyway. But you know the bit in Anchorman where Ron Burgandy and the woman - Veronica Thingybob - are having a fight, and he gets her pepper spray and accidentally sprays himself in the face...? Yeah, exactly what I did. Eyes full of Deet are probably the most painful eyes I've ever had in my head. It was lucky I'd left my waterbottle by my tent, because I literally couldn't see. Splashed water in my face (and consequently all over myself and my sleeping bag and everything else), and eventually sight returned. Leaving me the problem of how to deal with a soaking wet tent that was still full of flies...
• And finally, the thing that can still make me laugh even now when I think about it. I was having breakfast with some Finnish girls, and one of them said something and the others started laughing. I assumed it was because I had toast stuck to my ear or something similarly stupid, so I asked what was so funny. One of them leaned over to me, ut her mouth to my ear and very quietly whispered, 'The guy next to you... he is eating only jam!' I looked round and sure enough, there he was shovelling jam into his face with a spoon like the most natural thing in the world. I think maybe you had to be there, but it still cracks me up to think of it.

Some thoughts on riding a bike in general.

At the start of this trip, I thought I'd coined a phrase that seemed like a pretty good philosophy, but which irritatingly turned out to be printed on the waterbottle of the very first cyclist I met. The phrase was, 'If you don't know where you're going, then you can never get lost.' And I stick by it. It's a good way to stay sane after several days of waking and not knowing where you're going to sleep that night, or even which direction to start pedalling.

However, after a while of this riding, I started to question why I was doing it. Why, in this era of planes, and cars, and other wacky modern inventions, did I still insist on dragging myself painfully slowly across the face of the planet? So I thought, maybe a more pertinent question would be this: 'If you don't know why you're going, can you still get lost?' And I think the answer, mentally-speaking, is yes. Yes you can. Let me explain.

Our daily lives, for the most of us, are based on repetition. We do the same things, see the same people and visit the same familiar places. This means we tend to use the same bits of our brains all the time, which makes for some very well-trodden neural pathways. But when you take all of this routine away, then it's very easy to get lost in yourself. To start thinking differently, to start feeling differently, and to start looking at things differently. Now, I'm (clearly) not a doctor or neurologist, so this is just based on my own observations, but it seems to be the case. I feel very lost inside myself a lot of the time right now, while my legs keep mechanically pushing myself along. There is a strange disparity between the physical repetition and the mental meanderings. But yes, I'm often lost.

But we assume to be lost is a bad thing. Maybe it's good to get lost now and then. Think to yourself, when last were you lost? Getting lost means you can discover new things - things you would never have discovered were you on familiar ground. So for now, alone in Vienna with nothing familiar around me (apart from the ubiquitous MacDonalds' everywhere), I am very happy to be lost.

Buried in Pomposity is brought to you by Dan, who is clearly going crazy out here on his own...

DeLuxemBirthday!

Hello all. First blog of the trip. I was going to put some pictures up but they're mainly of hills, or drunk backpackers, or a bicycle, or me looking sweaty and tired and grim. All of which you have probably seen before. So maybe I'll do this tomorrow.

Anyway, I've been going on my own for five European days (it turns out that European days are exactly the same as English days, just one hour earlier. Or later. Basically, five days...), and I have to say it's been better than I expected. I don't want to bore you with an overwrought flowery diary in which I honk on about how hardcore I am, so I'll condense the last five days into bullet-points. In which I will honk on about how hardcore I am.

Before that though, I should say thanks to Ed and Tom who did the first 450km with me. We went to Amsterdam, and Brussels and there was a thunderstorm, and all was a lot of fun. If you want details on those days, track one of them down. They will bore you with the tales like some ancient mariner (but a mariner who traded his ship in for a bike and then drank a lot in Europe for 10 days).

Anyway, over the last 5 days I have...

• Ridden my way out of Brussels, with a tailwind, heavy traffic, no sense of direction and a stinking hangover. That was pretty easy, actually. No exciting happenstances. Sorry. I am too amazing for this to be an interesting story.
  
• Ridden 100km into the Belgian countryside. Failed to find a campsite, then been surprised by another thunderstorm. Pleaded with some cyclists who let me put my tent on their son's lawn. The mum went and made me a toastie and brought me a beer and some icecream. She also insisted I do a poo in her house. In the toilet, I mean, not just anywhere. They were strange, but very nice.
• The next day I did 100 more kilometres. Oh yeah. Like nothing. Like falling off a rock. I met a Belgian cyclist who refused to believe I would ever make it to Istanbul. He's probably right.
• Camped at a campsite, where some children insisted on using my tent as a kind of central column to chase each other round. They ignored me, so I ignored them
  
• The next day I found myself in the Ardennes. I had not really heard of this place, but it turns out it's Belgian for 'Land of the fucking steep hills and forests that go on for miles without so much as an ice-cream stall but full of horseflies who treat you like some kind of buffet service'. I did 85km. It was really really hard work. If you don't believe me, try this simple exercise. Tie a tractor tire to the back of your bike, then ride up and down a footpath in a nearby wooded area for 6 hours, with a sunlamp tied to your head. Drink 2 litres of water, but no more because the stingy owners of a cafe wouldn't let you fill your water bottles up. After that, put up your tent next to a motorway and then put a Belgian sitcom on your iPod and listen to it for 5 hours. Eat a bowl of pasta with an oxo cube in it.
• The next day I crossed into Luxembourg. Luxembourg is not small. It is huge and hilly. My back chainguard broke in the middle of nowhere and I had to cut it off with a penknife to free up the freewheel, as I do not have the tool to get the cluster off. It was bloody hot too. I cycled down a dual carriageway to try and make it to the capital (which is also called Luxembourg - imagine!) but I almost got smeared onto the crash barrier by a truck. I then pedalled like mad, shaking legs and poo-stained gusset and all, for 4 kilometres to the next exit, and went back on the country roads. Which were too steep and didn't ever go in the direction I wanted. So I found a campsite, had a beer and ate some chips.
• This morning, I woke up in my tent and it was my birthday. I got myself the best birthday present I could think of. A train ticket for the 40km left to Luxembourg city for 1 euro and 50 cents. I am not ashamed - far from it! The hostel was fully booked, but the girl called all the people who hadn't yet shown up and got me a bed. I am now going to have a well earned birthday beer! Next up... Germany and beyond!
  

This is my bicycle. There are many like it, but this is mine.

Hi all. Welcome to the second part of the 'How not to cycle round the world' series. Pull up a cup of tea and let me make you a chair.

Below you will see a picture of a bicycle. Her name is Heristorsen, because that's what I called my rocking-horse when I was 3.



Now, some of you may not be so au fait with bikes as your able narrator, so I'll take you through some of the notable features.

Wheels:

It's got 'em. Two of them, to be precise. To be honest, this was a cause for concern for me in the shop, as I was unsure how two wheels could possibly remain upright when travelling along. In fact, I'm still not sure. However, my requests for 4, 6 or perhaps even 8 wheels were greeted with a disdainful tut and much shaking of the head from the long-suffering shopkeeper. So two wheels it remains.

Saddle:

It's got one of them too. As a responsible customer, I was sure to check that one was included before I rode off. The saddle is made of leather, and is slightly harder than a comfortable anvil. I am assured that after 200 or 300 miles it will break in and mould to the shape of my rump. I am more inclined to bet that my rump will be doing the moulding, until I have a perfect saddle-shaped impression where my anus used to be.

Frame:

This is the bit of the bike that stops all the other bits of the bike from simply being bits of a bike, and turns them into a bike by holding them together. It is made of steel.

Bags:

I have various bags hanging offf the bike. There are three at the back, two on the front wheel and one on the handlebars. I put them all on myself, which pretty much guarantees them to fall off every five miles. Inside, there is a tent, a cooker, a sleeping bag, a few clothes, a medical kit, some spares and tools, and a penny whistle. And a multitude of other crap that is surely destined to find a final resting place on some roadside verge as soon as I get tired of lugging it around.

Deck-chairs:

These will not be coming with me.

Various accesories:

In addition to the above, I have also put a number of other things on to the bike, all of which I am assured are crucial, and none of which I am sure that I need. There is a bell for tinging pleasantly every 3 minutes, a speedometer to see exactly how slow I'm moving, bar ends to give my hands yet another uncomfortable position to hold the bars in, lights which I will use when I intend to cycle at night (which is never), a pump to hit aggressive dogs with in Romania, and brakes. Because what I really, really want to do after struggling and slaving with my poor legs to pick up enough speed to actually get anywhere, is to squeeze my hand effortlessly and come to a standstill. Fortunately, I don't intend to stop, so I can use my brake-levers to hang windchimes from. Which will be nice.

So anyway, that's about it. I leave on Monday, and will try and keep this updated reasonably frequently. Until then, enjoy the sun!

Coming soon...

...to all good cinemas on the Norfolk Broads.



Since leaving regular employment, I've found myself very easily distracted.