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DAY 158 | Russia | How To Move The Stars | A bicycle ride around the world · How To Move The Stars | A bicycle ride twice around the world

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  July 21st 2013. Cheers.
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  I continued this morning through a magnificent half mile wide
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  valley with 1000m tall ridges running on both sides.
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  The snaking river on the valley floor was itself 400 feet
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  across. Even larger mountains with
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  jutting cliffs filled the horizon.
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  Ahead of me I passed forests and grassland, with cows and horses
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  grazing alongside the road. Distant villages of a few dozen
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  houses look comically small in the grand landscape.
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  As I passed 1 field of boulders, I was called to investigate the
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  largest 1A behemoth chunk of granite brought there by a
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  glacier, then abandoned after the last Ice Age.
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  The rectangular shape looked like a toppled monolith.
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  At the broken end was a flat surface where I discovered
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  petroglyphs of antlered animals scratched into the stone.
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  The boulder was most obvious toll feature across the wide
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  flat valley. I climbed up to sit on top and
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  admire the magnificent view. For millennia ago, until modern
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  times, hunters would have sat in that same spot scanning for
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  antelope. I don't often get to share a
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  seat with 100 generations that came before, but in that spot I
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  surely was. I looked out at the mountains
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  and the clouds beyond, the same view they would have seen.
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  I stopped to eat breakfast at a high point overlooking the
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  river, and while I was there, 2 local men came down the road on
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  their horses with a white dog falling close behind.
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  Both were middle-aged and when I could see their round faces and
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  narrow eyes, I recognized that I had arrived at the part of the
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  world dominated by Asian lineage.
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  I've bicycled so far that I have become a minority.
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  When the men saw me, they trotted their horses over to say
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  hello. One of them tapped the side of
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  his neck with two fingers. I've seen this gesture use since
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  Ukraine to ask if I wanted to drink.
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  The story I was told is that all vodka legally sold in the Soviet
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  Union used to be government control.
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  To keep bootleg vodka off the market, government officials
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  traveled the country taste testing what they were being
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  served at bars. To ensure that not just anyone
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  was showing up asking for samples, the official taste
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  testers were given a small tattoo low on their neck of a
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  rose. To get free samples, they pulled
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  their shirt collar to the side, revealing the tattoo.
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  In time, the culture adopted tapping or flicking their neck
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  to say let's have a drink. I accepted the offer and the two
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  men climbed down from their horses.
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  They wore old shirts and sweatpants tucked into mid shin
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  rubber boots. One of them stretched out his
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  waistband and reached his whole arm down his pant leg until he's
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  up to his shoulder. He came back up with a plastic
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  one liter bottle half filled with something brown and
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  homemade, literally bootleg alcohol.
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  The flavor was good and not too strong.
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  They each had a drink too and mounted their horses to head
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  down the road with their white dog falling behind.
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  I pulled into an overlook high above the confluence of two
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  large rivers. A couple of British men were
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  there with a guided tour that was getting ready to leave.
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  They gave me a beer before climbing into their bus.
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  The cold bottle was in my hand when they left, so I decided to
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  drink the beer right there, admiring the view.
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  A couple miles later, a van pulled off the road in front of
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  me and two men climbed out, completely happy to meet me.
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  Neither of them had ever met someone from the USA and they
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  wanted to see what my passport looked like.
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  I showed them a photocopy that I carry around for this very
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  reason. One of the men was a captain in
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  the army and on the back of the photocopy he wrote a note in
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  Russian saying to let me through at the border, which was kind of
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  him to do but hopefully won't be needed.
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  The day was still young but both of the men had already been
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  drinking. Bottle of vodka appeared and the
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  captain tapped his neck. We all drank 3 full shots
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  together. Before each one, the two men
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  raised their glasses to make a long, impassioned toast to me
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  and my enduring adventure. I didn't understand what they
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  were saying, but I could hear the sincerity in their delivery.
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  A short time later, a van full kayaker stopped to ask me what I
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  was doing. One of them spoke English and
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  invited me to their campground 50 kilometers down the road.
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  I had almost gone that far already, but I woke up feeling
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  strong, so I told them I would be there tonight.
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  The camp was actually 60 kilometers away, and I climbed
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  the whole way, spurred on by desire for company.
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  Pulling into the campground five hours later, I surprised the
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  people invited me. They thought the ride might have
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  been too far. There are a couple dozen
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  kayakers at the campsite. They shared their dinner and
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  handed me a fifth drink of the day, a Russian beer.
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  I sat at a long plastic table with the group and spoke with a
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  man from Saint Petersburg who was fluent in English.
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  I asked him to compare the 2 languages for me, and he quickly
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  replied that Russian is a very emotional language, much more
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  than English. I told him to surprise me
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  because the movie industry has conditioned me to think of
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  Russians as cold, unfeeling bad guys.
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  He laughed in agreement. Yes, he joked, always named
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  Boris. We discussed how the differences
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  in languages influenced our perception of the world.
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  I like the idea that there are Russian words for emotions that
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  have no English equivalent. If I were to learn those Russian
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  words where they unlock new emotions or simply give me the
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  vocabulary to express what I was already feeling.
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  His example is the Russian word tosca, saying that the meaning
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  was a sort of deep sadness that only a Russian could know.
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  Just after dark I was invited to join the campground Banya, a
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  Russian style sauna consisting of a small wooden building with
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  a porch and two inner rooms. The first inner room was a place
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  to strip naked and had a bucket of cold water on the floor.
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  The second room was smaller, much hotter and more cramped.
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  Stones cooked on a bed of coals. In the corner there are two
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  benches stacked like bleachers, each fit 5 people pressed
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  tightly against one another. Those on the lower bench sat
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  between the spread knees of people on the upper bench and
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  two more stood in front of everyone, their crotches at eye
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  level. For all who were seated, not one
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  more person could have fit. The atmosphere inside was
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  jovial. Two women were in the corner and
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  the rest were men making each other laugh.
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  I took a seat on the lower bench and watched as the two men in
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  front of me whipped each other with a fresh cut tree branch,
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  slapping the green leaves against their back, chest and
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  legs. A traditional practice, but I
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  don't know why The temperature hovered at 195°F.
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  Each searing breath cooked me a little more and I struggling
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  just to be in there. The kayakers had been in cold
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  water all day while I bicycled 7 1/2 hours under a hot sun.
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  I needed to hydrate and cool off, not sit in an oven.
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  A little water was splashed on the stones, filling the air with
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  hot steam. I inhaled one breath of the
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  humidified air and that was all I could take.
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  I lasted only 8 minutes. Stepping into the outer room, I
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  went to the bucket to dump cold water in my head and move to the
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  porch to sit naked under the stars in the warm evening air.
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  Occasionally one of the men would burst out of the door,
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  streaking into the darkness. I would hear a splash and a Yelp
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  from the nearby river. Then they would come running
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  back past me and into the banya again.
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  At the end of the night, the guy offered me marijuana grown in
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  the local Altai mountains. In my life, I've rarely smoked
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  cannabis, but I accepted. On this journey, I've learned to
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  accept the gift. He and a few others were smoking
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  out of what he called a gravity bong, a contraption I've never
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  seen before in practice. The rig utilized the bucket of
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  water and a plastic soda bottle to ram 2 liters of smoke into my
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  lungs. I lifted my head and blew a
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  cloud into the air above me. Immediately my vision became
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  pale, my balance began to falter.
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  I lunged for a chair only three steps away, managed to sit
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  before I fell. I put my elbows on my knees,
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  rested my head in my hands and stayed like that.
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  I was very high, a little drunk, dehydrated, and after peddling
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  68 miles uphill, my thighs were twitching from exhaustion.
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  I needed a moment. By the time I collected myself,
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  everyone had retreated to their tents.
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  I'm now lying on the ground next to my bike, looking up at the
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  starry sky gripping the earth as I race through the cosmos.