Ik
heb naar schatting zo'n 80 boeken gelezen met reisverhalen over grote
fietstochten, waaronder alle 17 boeken van Frank van Rijn, een flink
aantal Engelstalige, een stuk of 10 Duitstalige en zelfs eentje in het
Frans. Van al deze fietsboeken zijn er 6 die mijn lijstje met mijn
favoriete reisverhalen hebben gehaald. Van die 6 vind ik het vorige boek
dat ik las: "Ich radle um die Welt" van Heinz Helfgen en "Miles from
Nowhere" van Barbara Savage veruit de meest interessante. Nu ik achter
elkaar een Duitstalig en een Engelstalig boek heb gelezen, is het mij
wel duidelijk dat het lezen van Engelse teksten mij veel makkelijker
afgaat dan dat van Duitse teksten.
"Miles
from nowhere" is het verhaal van een fietstocht rond de wereld van het
Amerikaanse echtpaar Larry en Barbara Savage van april 1978 tot april 1980.
Ze beginnen in de buurt
van Los Angeles, fietsen vervolgens naar het noorden naar Canada, naar
het oosten en weer naar het zuiden tot Florida. Daar nemen ze het
vliegtuig naar Spanje. Ze bezoeken Marokko, Portugal, opnieuw Spanje,
Ierland, Groot-Brittannië, Frankrijk, Duitsland, Oostenrijk, Joegoslavië en
Griekenland. Vanuit Athene vliegen ze heen en weer naar Egypte en
vervolgens naar New Delhi in India. Ze fietsen van New Delhi naar
Kathmandu en vliegen van daaruit naar Bangkok. Vanuit Bangkok fietsen ze naar
Singapore. De twee
laatste landen die ze bezoeken zijn Nieuw Zeeland en Tahiti.
Het boek is
erg onderhoudend geschreven en geeft een goed verslag van de talloze
ontmoetingen onderweg en ook van de onderlinge strubbelingen in hun
relatie.
Citaten:
- There were twelve miles of low rolling hills between San Luis Obispo and the campground at Morro Bay. In that short distance I learned that the difference between the maneuverability of my bike with and without fifty pounds of gear closely resembled the difference in the handling of a Mack truck and a Porsche.
Gedurende een van de eerste weken van hun tocht hebben Larry en Barbara
de hele dag in de brandende zon gefietst:
- It was seven o'clock when we
reached the campground. ... Larry set to work pitching our tent while I lay
on the table ... I curled on top of my sleeping bag, and promptly passed
out. If Larry hadn't started ranting hysterically about an hour later I
would probably have slept through the night ... "What's the matter?" I
asked as I climbed out of the tent. [Larry had een onderdeel van het
kooktoestel verloren en kon dat nu niet gebruiken]. ... "Don't you
understand what this means?" he pleaded ... "It means I'm going to die of
hunger right here and now before your very eyes!" he shouted. "It's been
eight hours since I have eaten anything! ... I've got to eat somethin right
this minute or I'll die" I wanted to tell Larry ... that nobody who weighs
one hundred sixty pounds and is in top physical shape has ever starved
to death overnight simply by skipping dinner, but I decided that
wouldn't be a good thing to say at at the moment ... I tried to calm him.
"Look, I'll go borrow a stove from someone," I said. "It'll only take a
minute."
Een ontmoeting met een beer:
-
"I'm finding out what happened after the bear left us last night,"
Larry explained to me. "Turns out my ugly mug scared him so bad that,
when he took off, he didn't even take the time to look where he was
going."
"You bet," Dave nodded. "He
was makin' for home for all's worth, and I guess our tent was dead
centre between yours and home. When he came flyin' by us, he tripped
over one of our guy lines and crashlanded into the top of the tent."
"I'll
tell you something, wakin' up inside of a collapsed tent and feelin' a
bear on top of you is one horrifyin' experience. I knew it was a bear
right off, 'cause one of its paws was spread out over my face ..."
Na vierenhalve maand fietsen en 6.450 mijlen, logeerden Larry en Barbara twee weken bij vrienden:
- The livin' was easy at Fritzi's. Everything in her house was a luxury to us - the stove with its four burners, the oven, the refrigerator, the washing machine and dryer, the carpenting, and the pillows and clean sheets on the perfectly even surface of our bed. I'd almost forgotten just how pampered life could be. When I woke up in the middle of the night with an urge to go to the toilet, there was no need to struggle into shoes and layers of clothes, feel blindly for the toilet paper, fumble with the tent door and the rainfly, trip over rocks and ferns, and squat in the cold or pouring rain; then climb back into the tent and search out and squish any mosquitoes that had flown in while I was opening and closing the door.
In Marokko demonstreren Larry en Barbara het gebruik van hun tent:
- "We want to know how you get inside," Merouane explained.
Larry
unzipped the door, then crawled in and looked back out at us through
the windows. That impressed everyone; and when I unpacked our sleeping
pads and down sleeping bags, the men took turns feeling them. Merouane
wanted to know if President Jimmy Carter owned a tent like ours.
Cary, een goede vriend van Larry, komt over naar Schotland om een paar weken samen met Larry en Barbara te fietsen:
- "Tough! You folks 'er real tough. I'm dyin', and ya'll 'er goin' a mile a minute. They'll never believe this back in good 'ole Paso Robles," Cary chuckled in his country drawl. "I thought the rough part o' yer undertakin' would be gettin' used ta pedalin' long distances. Heck, that's only a fraction of it! You've gotta get used ta bugs in yer food and campin' in animal manure and shoppin' fer food three times 'er more a day. An' then at the end o' the day, when yer tired and hungry, you've gotta search fer a good campin' spot and cook up yer dinner on that little stove before ya kin eat. And then you've still gotta wash the dishes before ya kin go ta bed, and lotsa times ya go ta bed dirty. And besides all that, you hafta bicycle in the rain and git all wet and miserable. Now that's what I call tough!"
-
Larry suddenly realized that he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast
and that he was nearing his state of "acute starvation," which commonly
set in whenever he went longer than three or four hours without food.
In Egypte:
-
"Remember, foreign tourists never venture into the tiny villlages in
Upper Egypt, so be prepared fot the masses of curious peasants. Two
foreigners - and especially a foreign woman - on bicycles with huge
packs will be one of the strangest sights those people have ever seen.
As a matter of fact, in some of the settlements, this year will quite
probably be referred to in the future as the year when the fair-skinned
aliens appeared riding their bizarre bicycles"
Larry, Barbara en Geoff in India op zoek naar een plek om te kamperen:
- Geoff pushed his bike toward the lobby, but Larry and I hesitated. Geoff was a mess, and he stunk; and we knew we were no better off. It had sprinkled in the morning, and Geoff's dusty body was spotted with droplets of mud. His bare legs and arms were smeared with chain grease, and his hair was matted in sweet and dirt. His bike and panniers were filthy, and the wheels reeked from rolling through manure. Today, as every day, Geoff was wearing his shiny-blue running shorts and his tan tennis shoes - they were probably white underneath the layers of grease and dirt - and nothing else. Larry had on his khaki shorts, and I had donned a sleeveless T-shirt riddled with holes and my Egyptian pedal pushers. To the average westerner, we were a disgusting looking threesome.
Tot hun verbazing krijgen ze een uitstekende kampeerplek.
-
When I poured the rice into our pot of boiling water, dozens of tiny,
leggy bug bodies floated up to the surface. We watched the bodies bubble
in the water for a moment, and then we looked inside the sack of rice.
It was crawling with bugs.
"I'm
eatin' it anyway," announced Geoff, breaking the long silence that
followed our discovery. "If we toss it out, there's nothing else to eat
except for a few bites of granola, and I'm not to keen on cyclin' these
mountains on empty."
Fietsen in Nieuw Zeeland is relaxed:
- We were cruising. We'd returned to "civilized" bicycle touring. Everyone spoke our language, and we were no longer forced to communicate with people in some awkward mixture of grunts, hand motions, and a few foreign words. There was no need to hassle with purifying water or to worry about getting sick on it or the food we ate. We camped out anywhere we pleased without a thought about cobras, bandits, crowds of staring faces, or government regulations forbidding free camping. The campgrounds in New Zealand, which we rolled into now and then when the idea of hot shower struck our fancy, provided washers and dryers; kitchens with stoves, ovens, toasters and sinks; and rest rooms filled with sit toilets and hot showers.
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