I’ve been out of the corporate world for a while now, but, as I recall, this is about the time of year I’d be receiving the ‘It’s PDR season’ email. A slightly awkward experience for all involved, where individual performance is evaluated and objectives are set for the coming months. Whilst my job title has effectively shifted from ‘Senior Engineer’ to ‘Roaming Vagabond’, it seemed an apt time to evaluate the trip thus far and basically subject myself to a similar process. The beauty of such a lengthy adventure is the tremendous scope to reinvent your approach along the way, learning from experience and changing the plan accordingly. And with an exciting new continent now draped out before me, what better time to do it…

A cycle trip can mean different things to different people, much as a backpacking trip can entail a huge piss up in South East Asia for some or exploring the deepest corners of western China for others. And whilst cycling inherently involves a reasonable dollop of adventure, especially in Latin America, there are still a wide variety of approaches one can adopt. In true PDR fashion, if we use the 1 to 5 grading system to evaluate ‘level of adventure’ (a key attribute in most professions), the extremes would be something like:

1 – Credit Card Tourer: Follows primary routes, exclusively staying in hotels and eating in restaurants

5 – Dirt Road Trailblazer: Tackles the remotest of routes over difficult terrain, fully self-sufficient and primarily wild camping

Thus far I’ve probably been scoring a solid 3, but as alluded to in my previous post, recent motivation levels have taken a bit of a hit. The drudgery of progress dominated riding on busy, paved roads has been slowly wearing me down and frankly I’m craving wilderness adventure. So, with relatively densely populated Central America behind me and the Andes on the immediate horizon, it’s time to shake things up a bit. From Western Colombia onwards I’ll be aiming for 4’s and 5’s, seeking out the most interesting and adventurous off-road routes through the mountains. The Andes have always been a key focus of the trip and in my mind, to really do them justice means hitting dirt tracks and getting way off the beaten path.

More of this!

Like any good PDR session, it’s prudent to consider what modifications or additional resources will be required to achieve these new objectives. And in my case, this largely means shedding weight from the bike and ruggedizing. Andean dirt roads tend to be of the seriously steep variety and as I’ve come to learn, tackling these with a heavily loaded bike is a rather frustrating experience, typically resulting in complete resentment of bicycle travel and life in general. As such, whilst the chilly High Andes may not be the best time to be ditching equipment, I’ve gone through a fairly ruthless purge of all my gear to get the total weight down to around 16kg (from the 30ish kg I started with). A not insignificant drop, which has meant some inevitable compromises; the Jeans had to go, as did the telephoto lens and I’ve resorted to a bike lock which a small child could probably bite through. Perhaps though, the most controversial and significant saving has come from ditching all panniers, front rack and handlebar bag, and substituting them with lightweight dry bags. Whilst this sacrilegious act will no doubt deeply disturb traditional tourers, it gives a combined weight saving of around 5kg and hopefully means everything won’t rattle about when off-road. In any case, with my panniers now back in the UK, there’s no going back…

The Beast before leaving the UK, in all it’s by the book, pannier laden correctness

The new set up

2.25″ ‘Extreme’ bad boys

Front

Rear

Gear tweaks aside though, the most important resource for achieving dirt road nirvana is time. Remote, winding dirt roads take significantly more time than the main, paved thoroughfares and route planning thus becomes an often-frustrating balancing act between progress and adventure. Achieving harmony between the two requires substantial time or possibly performance enhancing drugs, neither of which I have. As such, if I’m to make it to Patagonia before the 2015 winter sets in. the ‘adventure sections’ will need to be interspersed with head-down ‘mile munching sections’ along main routes.

The alternative is, of course, to skip the ‘boring’ sections via other means of transport and focus instead on really exploring the areas of most interest, pioneering new routes and getting way off the beaten track. A sane move in theory, but the traditional concept of a continuous A to B route is still hard for me to let go of. It certainly sounds more impressive to say I’ve cycled the length of South America rather than just parts of it, but in reality the later is likely to be the more adventurous trip. In any case, I’d like to think that by now I’ve risen above caring about other people’s perceptions. My demons instead stem from the rather irrational sense of guilt or ‘cheating’, associated with breaking up the cycling; a strange, but ultimately completely self-induced concept. So whilst still not a step I’m ready to take, I am starting to question the rationale of continuous cycling and time will tell if I decide to throw my rulebook out the window…