On Getting There

Author: William

Early in our relationship, many decades ago, Mia floated the idea of a Grand Adventure for the two of us. We would work and save for the next year and then go on a three month bike trip through Europe.

We were not avid cyclists at the time. In fact, neither of us owned a bike! All we had was a book, found at a garage sale, that recounted the travel of another couple that had done it.

But it was enough to spark our imagination and desire and so we did it.

One year later we were on the tarmac outside London, in the village of Staines.

We were so green, so ill prepared for this trip. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Sure, we had read other books, studied maps and created a rough itinerary. We had ridden our bikes every morning before work to get used to riding. We had intense desire and that was enough. So off we pedaled reveling in our Grand Adventure.

Until we hit the first hill.

It was a doozy. Steep enough to have a grade percentage posted on a road sign. Steep enough to have a pull out lane for slower vehicles. And to add to the pain, it was a very long hill. This would not be over soon.

Picture this. Two, essentially unexercised, newly arrived Americans, cloaked in plastic rain ponchos bearing over-packed, unbalanced panniers on heavy bikes attempting this tough grade. Thank goodness we had youth on our side.

We tucked into the hill, downshifting mightily. Our feet turned faster and faster as our headway slowed to a crawl. We seemed to go nowhere and not very quickly. Shortly, out of breath and sweating, we stopped. It was humiliating. Our first hill and we were defeated. What were we going to do for the next 89 days? Thoughts of trading in our bikes for two Eurail passes danced through our heads.

After a bit of rest and having caught our breath, we hit upon an idea to forestall failure. We would ride to the next light pole, where we would stop and catch our breath. And so on, until we crested the hill. Which we, very eventually, did.

Clawing our way up, it didn’t even enter our minds that this hill would have a back side. We were too focused on our task at hand. Imagine our amazement as we topped the hill, only to see the town of our hostel way down below in the distance.

Talk about exhilarating! We flew down the hill, yelling and whooping. We felt accomplished, proud and free! We had not let the hill best us and had an amazing ride down the back side to boot.

We pulled into our hostel elated and very tired.

We learned a lot on Day 1. Some takeaways:

1 – Plastic rain ponchos and cycling are not good bedfellows. Just get wet. Please allow me a heartfelt thanks to the thief who stole our ponchos on that first night and set us free.

2 – Just start. I can’t emphasize this enough. Don’t wait for all the information or the perfect scenario. Had we known all the challenges we faced, we might not have gone but we were young and foolish. We went and now we have a plethora of experiences to recount and draw on.

3 – Chunk your goals. Often, it’s impossible, at least in the beginning, to accomplish a goal in one swoop. Break your goals down into stages and celebrate each success. Start small and add to the challenge as you begin to succeed. 

4 – Be consistent. After riding every day for sometime we built up our strength and were able to ride up very large hills in one go but we continued to use a similar though altered strategy. Rather than looking at the top of the hill, we would focus loosely on our front tire, then pick a point up the hill that seemed attainable, but a push, and aim for that. As we passed our goal we would pick the next point and aim for that.

Before we knew it, we were over the hill and screaming down another back side.