Kru Joel by Bicycle!: Longest Shortcut Ever to a B-Day in KK, Feb 2017

Longest Shortcut Ever - MTB - Feb 18, 2017

(Khon Kaen Round Trip using ONLY the most Direct Route.)

Last night my friend and fellow Professor was having her birthday party, she wanted to have it after work in Khon Kaen. I always ride after work on Friday, one of the days where I have a guaranteed block of free time (very different than last year, where I could be free at pretty much any given time of any day, any week :) ha! No longer!).

I thought I could easily finish up work on time, maybe even beat them there! I have however, been even more against riding out on the open roads, having to be wary of cars, trucks, all the mishaps that can come about on these brand new smooth highways popping up everywhere... So I would need to finish a bit early to give myself that 30 minute cushion (which I usually use up after spotting some lovely looking sandy trail branching off into nowhere, and instead of 30 minutes early I end up being 30 minutes (or more) late to whatever I was trying to attend in the first place). Last night was no different!

Both of these flowers (the other orange one far below) show
off their beauty for just 3-4 short weeks a year. It really
keeps us waiting for them though, such a treat to be
there for the rare times it does happen :)

I left at 430pm, the ride was about 60km by the main road so I was assuming 5-8km more after using a few side roads to avoid the highway. I made great time, had some lovely afternoon breeze, sunshine, lovely photos which you can see below... (take a break to check them out! :) )

Oh the benefits of getting lost!

And then! Heading into a new area! Several square kilometers, well maybe even a full 100sq.km area that I had never been to before! Very cool, exciting even, but I was going to have to rely fully on Google Maps. I was not out for an evening cruise, I had a party to attend!!

Google failed me, pretty badly in fact, I arrived at my destination only to find that it looked less like a hotel, and more like this... (see photo to the side)

So I took off heading straight South, it was pitch dark by now but at least I had charged my headlight, and I could see the string of lights in the distance. I could use the main road to get back, and then I would again look for the sign itself (back to the old method of finding our way round, using signs instead of Siri/Voice Commands/Tomtom/Garmin :)

Found the road, was SMASHING it by this point, using the gear one up from the lowest gear, whew. I was trying not to sweat so that I wouldn't need to shower before dinner, had a nice easy pace going, quite enjoying myself... haha, not anymore, but at least the last bit was a blast! Racing into the darkness, no holes big enough to wipe out over, no cracks big enough that I couldn't still be out of the saddle. Quite Exhilarating to say the least!

Made it to the hotel, then made it to dinner, great night, good friends, lots of laughing (mixing Thai English, French, Esaan, and everyone not only mixing them but mixing them up as well! One of the coolest things of living between/among cultures) Back to the hotel, crashed for the night.

Well ok, I have to mention one delightful encounter from dinner, there was an old French man, he was very interested when he heard that I like to ride my bike instead of car/bus/motor-transport, and he wanted to talk a bit. I don't speak French well enough to have a conversation, and his English wasn't much better, so we actually spoke together in Thai!! Not much trouble at all either! It was great, so great, such a cool little memory to take away from what someone else might just think is straight-up ridiculous :)

So, back to the hotel, and sleep.

Woke up early, felt quite refreshed, and had a rarity appear at the breakfast table (rare for Thailand as well as my life. I do NOT stay at nice hotels when I am the one paying for them, and even at age 30 it is still quite the opposite, I will sleep on a mat on the floor if it saves me 100 baht).

There was a cappuccino machine!!!!!! For free!!!!!!! Good cups too, all good quality stuff!!!

So I missed the 'golden time' to leave for a morning ride home, that perfect 15 minute window just as the first light takes hold, and gives way to enough light so that one can barely start to distinguish colors besides the monotone ground cover and sky... the pale blue, the pinks and orange hues that creep so wonderfully, the leaves start to look a bit less-scary in the headlights... haha ok enough, because I didn't see any of that today :) After 3 cups of coffee and some fruit, ok, a ton of fruit, I strapped on my backpack and saw the time of 7:45am ticking by.

I knew how windy it would be, and I decided that instead of taking the main road, or even any of the smaller (but still paved) shortcuts I knew in the general area - I would ONLY take the MOST direct route. This is of course, the most direct route according to white LINES on Google maps!, which are generally just a guide out here in the countryside. I found out today more than most days just how much of a 'guide' they are... If I can say one thing to be true, it is this: Unless the line is yellow AND it has a number, the only thing you can no for sure is that there has been at some time, a road of some kind. You can't know if it is just a footpath, a cow path, a rocky trail, a sand pit, a motorbike track, a trucking route, or of course, sometimes, it is the normal road that you had in mind. But only sometimes...

Here you can see an example, I don't have the google map screen shot attached but trust me! Look at the next four photos, compare the SLIGHT difference in road quality, and trust me when I say that they are EXACTLY the same little white line on Google Maps :-D !!!

Little white line, heading East...

Same little white line, a bit further East...

And then, yet again, the very same line, now heading North...

Ha!!! Trust Google Maps at your own risk! It is just a guide...

They're all the same! You see the number there, well that only means that you can trust it to go somewhere! Might be
dual-carriageway, nicely paved, signs to any and all attractions, or it could be a sand pit forgotten by the government for
20 years, but still a white line on Google Maps.

So, after carrying the bike over that little bridge, a fun bit there (Definitely the safest and most sturdy hike-a-bike section I have ever been on! Really, that thing didn't move a centimeter! Well done, with turns and everything...) from there, things started to heat up, and the rough bits started to be a little less fun.

Again, reminding myself that I was picking such a route in order to not care about the fact that the wind was pushing against me the entire time, I pressed on taking one sandy trail after another. A tricky part of having SO much water in the area (I am thankful for this, definitely grateful! But it makes navigating a new area VERY tough if you care at all about the speed at which progress is made...), I had no idea where I was going, I had actually run out phone battery constantly stopping for 10-20 seconds at a time, debating whether to trust the iPhone, trust my eyes, just use the sun as a gauge... I ended up just memorizing a general picture from Google Maps to get some general reckoning going, and then just followed the sun. I was heading almost directly East, so that was pretty easy. Didn't help the eyes, and my arms are quite red, but I would say that was really one of the more convenient things that happened...

After what must have been a full 30 times stopping to check the iPhone, I was now out of battery, and just had to use the amount of motorbike tracks in the dirt to judge which road was the more heavily used. Any paved roads were long behind me, any direction was going to be either dirt or sand, so I just wanted to avoid getting stuck. Not stuck in the sand, but the river had so many bends in this area, with so few bridges, that it would be easy to ride for several kilometers right into an ox-bow, and just have to turn straight around. Much like the old explorers had to do I'm sure! I was not in the mood in the building heat and sun...

You can see here how big the few bridges in the area are, and how really impassable this river is without them -

Finally I reached the worst part of the morning. I had convinced myself that this was the only way straight through (again, I was trying my best to head DIRECTLY East, still on an attempt to someday ride in straight line from my house to my church in Khon Kaen, no matter the road quality)... this road was TOUGH. One of the toughest bits I have yet to ride in this entire country. Actually, only these 2 days in Kenya stick out in my mind as being more uncomfortable on the hands/rear/back/shoulders. It was so rough that really one can only get by by pedaling a few times, rolling, bumping, losing speed, cranking a few more times, rolling, cranking, rolling. It is hard to ride fast without feeling like you are destroying your bicycle, and if you go slow then you are just riding one of those machines at a bar where people bet each other they can hold on to the bucking bronco (these machines are common in bars in the South of the USA anyways... ). It is much too rough to even sit down, so the whole thing has to be done out of the saddle.

Overall it probably wasn't more than 4 minutes. It is funny though how much the psychological aspect of cycling can matter when you are alone, lost (I wasn't too lost but I definitely was not sure where the road would come out, if I was making a right choice or not, if it was going to be worth all the aches or not, the sun was getting hot, my chain was already well full of sand and dirt, the brakes screamed with just a touch, so much fine grit caked into the disc pads...) This was the situation that you want to look back on and laugh, but definitely don't want to experience in the present much ever again.

Anyways, it was over, and salvation presented itself in the form of these stairs. I had seen this staircase before, and I knew I was within 10km of my front door! :)

The wind did not let up, and of course in my now tired legs and mind it felt like the wind was specifically trying to make sure I didn't soon forget this day!!

Of course, now sitting at my desk, it doesn't look nearly as rough from this photo... trust me, the gouges were deep, the rocks were rough. I was able to snap the photo because this was a section where I wasn't afraid the camera would be shaken out of my hand.

And for all my fellow cyclists, yes, of course, I went with the wind last night, and I DEFINITELY enjoyed the wind last night. Also, I see that I barely gave a second's thought to just how much it helped me last night :) Ha!! How human, we always think of our successes as due to our own power, but then our failures as due to about a million little things outside of our control... :)

Ok, well! I am back home, and the first half of this weekend's cycling is done. Now for a (4th?) cup of coffee, and a few hours of making some exams for midterms this week! Time flies, it really flies. Don't forget to make the most of each day! Whether it is by going out and riding the roughest roads you can (figuratively or literally!!) so that you are actually experiencing every single second of life, lined up in a row, however long... or if you take this day to relax, blow off some steam, and let a few hours drift by without doing much at all (but I hope you are smiling while they do!!)... PLEASE. Remember, treat yourself right, be thankful, be grateful, remember that you are lucky just to be alive. Anything beyond that is a blessing!! Take care, all the best!
-Joel