Seeing the World on a Bicycle

By Arun Narayan Toké, Eugene, Oregon.

A few weeks ago, I bicycled the east rim of the famous Crater Lake with two good friends of mine. You might ask what’s so special about this bicycle ride?

On two Saturdays in early September, the Crater Lake National Park in Oregon (USA) closes the East Rim Drive to automobile traffic. Only bicycles and hikers are allowed to enjoy this beautiful mountainous landscape. It overlooks the incredibly beautiful, natural 2,000 ft. deep lake that was created about 7,700 years ago, when a volcanic eruption left a huge hole where the Mount Mazama once stood sky high—some 11,000 feet high. Snowmelt and rains over 750 years formed this crystal clear, deep blue lake. After the United States government made this natural landscape and its surroundings into a National Park in 1902, they also built a 33-mile long “Rim Road” at a height of about 7,000 to 8,000 ft. so visitors can appreciate the natural beauty as they drive around the lake to observe the varied vistas of the valleys and the mountains.

Each year, three to five thousand bicycle enthusiasts—young and old—come to ride around the lake on these two Saturdays. Some participants choose to hike or run parts of the scenic road with no shops or commercial activities. Every so often, you come across rest areas with incredible vistas of the lake (see photo above), distant valleys, and many spectacular mountains like the Diamond Peak. The organizers even provide several rest stops offering cold drinking water, snacks, and hot drinks. At one rest stop, someone even served us freshly baked, nutritious cake!

Two years ago, after bicycling a part of the East Rim Road during this event, my friend Daemion and I had hiked a mile down to the lake shore, and took an exhilarating swim in the icy cold waters, and then hiked back to the rim with about 2,000 feet elevation gain. (Daemion is a “pro” at bicycling. A few years earlier, he had bicycled 2,000 kilometers from his hometown on the Southern Oregon Coast to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, and after his Peace Corps volunteering assignment in Sierra Leone, he bicycled over 1,600 kilometers to Ghana before returning back to the U.S.!)

With the popularity of the electric-assist bicycles, senior citizens and others with limited physical abilities are able to participate in this adventure, once reserved for only the “physically-fit” athletes.

This beautiful bicycle ride reminded me of my five month long adventure, several decades ago, when I was young and full of zest for adventure.

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As a child, I grew up in Central India…my father had a bicycle repair and rental shop. Naturally, I learned from him how to fix simple repairs like oiling the moving parts and fixing flats in inner tubes. In the U.S., if you take your bicycle with a flat to a bicycle shop, they simply replace the inner tube. But in India, the repair shops actually found the pinhole using a container of water to see where the air was leaking out from the tube, and then vulcanized it. Similarly, when a tire had small hole or break in it due to wear and tear, they’d put a piece of an old tire as a backing to cover the worn out area, rather than replacing the old tire. It was inexpensive and meant for functionality, rather than speed. Only when it was absolutely needed would they put in a new part!

After I moved to Vermont (USA), I acquired a ten-speed bicycle. During my weekends or summer breaks, I didn’t shy away from bicycling 60 miles or so a day, over two or three mountain ridges with steep inclines. And, for the last 30 years in Eugene, my common mode of commute is bicycling. I believe I must have bicycled upwards of 50,000 miles (80,000 Kilometers) over these years.

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I have cherished memories of my five-month-long travels by bicycle in Northern Europe. On my return trip to the U.S. in the summer of 1986, I was invited to visit some friends in Germany and in Sweden. After spending a few weeks of summer with my friends in Germany, I went to Stockholm. It was mid-summer and the days were long and warm. I decided spontaneously to buy an old (I’d say, antique), single-speed bicycle for a very reasonable price in the university town of Uppsala and bicycled south to the Stockholm! It was strenuous, of course. But after a couple of days of resting at my friends’ house, I was ready to continue. I had no idea where I’d go, how far I might travel, which way I might take, and for how long!

I set my next destination as Karlstad, the City of Lakes in Southwest-central Sweden. While bicycling in the afternoon, it began to rain. I kept myself dry under a porch roof and after a while when it stopped raining, I continued on. I realized I had not prepared well for the trip—no raincoat, no spare tubes, no bicycle pump, no tools, no tent, no bicycling maps, and no plans. True, I did have a road map of Sweden so I could decide which general direction I might take and what my next immediate destination city might be.

Que sera, sera! Whatever will be, will be! I wanted an attitude of faith and trust. I decided I’d deal with what comes my way, when it does! Since I had not made any big plans, I didn’t feel like I was under any pressure that I had so much more to travel, or that I had so little time left to complete my journey.

When it felt right, I would look for a place to stay—either a youth hostel or, if I was in the middle of nowhere, just sleep under the stars in my sleeping bag. Sometimes, I asked a passerby or a farmer along the rural road if they knew of a place I might stay for the night. Many a times, the farmers offered their barns… but they made sure to ask me if I smoked. When I told them, “No, I do not smoke,” they invited me to use their barn; and usually there was plenty of hay in the barn to make a good padding under my sleeping bag. More likely than not, I was also invited for a morning breakfast of muesli (cereal), yoghurt or kefir (cultured milk), toast, a good cup of coffee, and light conversation. And, then I’d continue on my journey.

At times, I bicycled late into the night… at that high latitude, almost near the Arctic Circle, the sun did not set until almost midnight. As tired as I’d be most days, I slept like a log, and I had no idea what time I woke up. I carried no watch, and in those days, there were no cellphones either. It was a totally carefree way to travel. I had no schedule, no planes or trains to catch, and nobody waiting for me.

My Swedish friends had told me that in Sweden, you could camp out anywhere in the countryside as long as you were not bothering others. If you camped about100 meters away from a home for the night, you’d be fine. I did not see any “No Trespassing” signs anywhere!

Most campgrounds did not charge you to sleep there; but you had to pay for the use of their facilities or restrooms, etc. It being a warm summer season, I was very comfortable sleeping outdoors without a tent; and at times, I found refreshing places to swim. International youth hostels provided a reasonable place to stay and a good morning breakfast. I often bought my supplies in small stores—fruits, vegetables, bread, etc. to keep me nourished. At times, I found patches of wild strawberries and raspberries in the countryside too.

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One morning, after a good night’s rest out in the open countryside, I packed my bag and began bicycling. Soon, I rode by a few teenagers sitting on a culvert. They tried to make some conversation in their broken English and invited me to their home. Their mom served me a breakfast of fish curry and rice. They were refugees from Vietnam.

In one small city of may be 20,000 people, when I reached downtown it must have been past 10 p.m., I asked some youth (who looked Indian) hanging out in the town square, if they knew of a youth hostel in the town. They said they didn’t know, but that they were staying in a hotel, and I was welcome to join them. I walked with my bicycle over to their hotel. I found out that they were war refugees from Sri Lanka, and the government had housed them in this hotel. I watched them make hot, spicy curry and rice. Luckily, they had some yoghurt to go with the meal; I don’t think I could have possibly eaten that super hot curry with several tablespoons of red cayenne pepper. We had some good conversations before retiring for the night.

Another evening, it was raining—not very heavy, but a consistent rain. It was too wet to find a dry spot to sleep outside. So I waited out the rain under a roof before continuing on. Finally, when it stopped raining in the wee hours of the morning, I bicycled on towards the town of Holden in Norway until I found a picnic area, and I slept in my sleeping bag on one of the picnic tables; the grass was too wet!

Early that morning, I heard a car pulling into a nearby picnic area. So I figured it was time to roll on. Just as I was about to get out of my sleeping bag, a middle-aged woman from that car came walking to my table and said in Norwegian or Swedish, “Good Morning,” and handed me a hot cup of coffee and some snacks with a smile. And, she went back to her family for their breakfast. What a kind and considerate couple!

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I kept going towards Oslo for a while, but decided to head south instead, towards the famous city of Gothenburg. It is the second largest city in Sweden. It’s situated on the Kattegat, an arm of the North Sea. After enjoying swimming at a vast beachside park, I continued south towards Copenhagen in Denmark. I connected with a couple of other cyclists, and we bicycled together for a while. That encouraged me enough to continue on with my bicycle journey. It had become a way of life for me. I pedaled across the southern region of Sweden to Kivik on the Southeastern coast. I was having a light conversation with the owner of a farm and I noticed that they were using a wood pellet stove for heating the farmhouse. During our conversation he realized that not only did I have an engineering background but also that I had written a textbook on Energy and Society, so he invited me to see his wood-chip stove and the heating system. After that he extended an invitation to stay with the family for the weekend. He said they had a birthday party for their daughter the next day and that I might like to experience that.

So, next morning—bright and early—we all walked over to her window to wake her up with a Happy Birthday song in Swedish. And the party was on! I felt like I was a part of their family. I wrote a story of this Swedish Birthday Celebration in English and typed it up on their non-electric typewriter and presented it to the family for their keepsake.

Then I bicycled west towards Malmö and continued over the bridge to Copenhagen, Denmark. While pedaling, my knee was acting up; even a slight uphill was impossible to pedal over. So, when I visited a Danish-Mexican family that I had met during my travels in Sweden, they suggested to rest up for a week with them. After that week of rest, when they suggested that I go north with them to a folk music festival in Aarhus, I was more than happy to accept. This way, they said, I would be able to ride through much of Denmark and get a feel for the country. I bicycled up one of the tallest points, Himmelbjerget (The Sky Mountain) in Denmark (150 meters high!) and then fly down it on my bicycle.

In the rural area of Denmark just north of Holland, while enquiring if there was a youth hostel in the area, an old farmer saw that I was bicycling through Scandinavian countries and invited me to his farmhouse. He also asked an English teacher he knew in the area who had visited the United States to check me out. After talking with me for a while and seeing my valid U.S. passport, he told the farmer that I was to be trusted. And he told me I was welcome to stay with them. The old farmer, close to seventy years, quickly cleaned up a spare bedroom in the house for me. We played a game of chess and ate typical Danish supper with Danish beer. The old man spoke no English and I did not know any Danish; but we had a great time. I was asked to come to a party the next day, but I politely declined.

While bicycling through Denmark, I noticed that I could see the inner tube on my front wheel; the old tire had worn out in a place after traveling more than a 1,000 kilometers. I bought a new tire at a bicycle shop at 5 pm on a Friday evening, just before they closed. They couldn’t put it on until the next working day and I figured I would do it somehow.

As I was bicycling through the city with a tire hanging on the handlebar, a middle-aged man waved me down and asked if he could help me with tools to replace the tire. We walked over to his home a few blocks away and replaced the worn out tire. During our light conversation, when he realized I had been bicycling through several countries, he graciously invited me for supper and an overnight stay. He was a schoolteacher and we shared good conversations on various topics. And, the next morning, I continued on my journey south to Germany, all rested up and refreshed.

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Soon, I was bicycling through Flensburg, Germany. I continued on to the large city of Hamburg in Northern Germany, and visited a couple I knew from my trip to Guatemala. They had a new-born child, and I was amazed to see the planning and detailed work they had put in the bedroom for their baby. It was very conducive to a restful sleep. Every night, they read a couple of board books to the baby and turned on soft music to get the baby ready for a good night’s rest. I was included in the whole ritual!

After spending a few days with them sightseeing, I was on my way south. While crossing a bridge over the Elbe River in Hamburg, I saw someone walking about 50 feet ahead. I said to myself, I think I know who she could be. I yelled her name as I bicycled towards her, and sure enough, it was my friend Heike. What a pleasant surprise! We had met on our “Peacewalk Through Central America” a couple of years earlier and walked together over 500 kilometers through Costa Rica and Nicaragua. No wonder, I could tell who was walking ahead!

After a good conversation and quick lunch at an ethnic restaurant, we decided to bicycle on to Frankfurt. Heike needed to go visit her aunt there. She picked up her bicycle from her home, and we were on our way south. After spending a few days with her aunt in Frankfurt, I continued the journey to Heidelburg in Southern Germany. I had left my luggage with my friends there before I had gone to Sweden. After a few days of resting and sharing my experiences with my friends, it was time to begin my return journey.

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Much of the time, I was able to bicycle on scenic and safe bike paths along the rivers in urban areas of Germany. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, the bike paths paralleled the main roads but they were separated by rows of trees or some grassland and therefore, it was less noisy, more pleasant and much safer to bicycle on them. In some larger cities, they even had “Bicycle Only Roads,” with their own traffic lights! Throughout my travels, I felt car drivers were very considerate of bicyclists and pedestrians. They drove carefully so as not to endanger us. Once, I was pleasantly surprised when a big semi (a huge truck) stopped for me to cross the street on my bicycle.

The bicycle lanes and bike baths were free of litter. During my whole trip, not once did I get a flat tire; no nails, no broken glass or sharp objects halted my bicycle journey. My rear tire served me well until almost the end of my 2,500-kilometer journey. Then I discovered a slow air leak in rear tire near Wuppertal, a hilly city south of Dortmund. I rode up and down a steep, long and windy road on my single-speed bicycle. However, while climbing up I was going too slow for the headlamp to shine bright; the generator didn’t work at low speed! Other than that, this 50 plus year-old bicycle gave me no trouble on this long journey that covered parts of Sweden, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and Holland (the Netherlands). I visited some famous cities like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Bonn, Cologne, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Heidelburg, and Amsterdam. In a few cities, like Bonn (which used to be the capital city then), I even stayed long enough to know the local culture and attractions. This was the most wonderful, educational experience I could have had. It was beyond my imagination and it did not cost me an arm and a leg.

On my return journey, I covered the Netherlands in just a couple of days and arrived in Haarlem, about 25 kilometers west of Amsterdam. I had visited a Christian community in this coastal city some years earlier. So after a few days, I said goodbye to the Netherlands and left on a ferry to the United Kingdom, leaving my bicycle with the Christian community.

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Life has taken a different turn since then. I have been publishing Skipping Stones, a multicultural, global awareness magazine for today’s youth for the last 36 years. My European experience was definitely a motivational factor in founding the magazine.

In Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, like so many other countries on the continent, almost all of the young Europeans I met were bilingual or trilingual! I wanted to promote this concept of multilingualism in Skipping Stones. In the beginning years, many of our published articles, poems, and stories were in two or three languages, side by side. Having grown up using three languages in India, it was normal for me. But not so for many Americans!

Unless you grew up near the Southern border—like in Arizona, Texas or California—where many people do speak both Spanish and English, it’s not common to meet many bilingual people in the United States. Of course, most new Americans and Latin Americans (including Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans) are fluent in at least two languages. Because I have spent more than a year in Mexico and Central America, I have acquired some ability to communicate in Spanish, and I know first hand, how comfortable it feels to have the language skills of the region you are visiting. Most Indians can vouch to this fact of social life; for we grew up with learning and speaking three or more languages in India. Mahatma Gandhi could speak 14 languages, I have heard!

Recently, as I was about to start writing this article, I came across a news report of Lael Wilcox, an American woman who bicycled around the world—over 18,000 miles (that’s 29,000 Kilometers) in a record 108 days and 12 hours—averaging some 160 miles a day! While my bicycling adventure was nowhere near that caliber, I have acquired a lifetime of experience bicycling through, and immersing myself in, five countries in about five months. I would recommend it to anyone who can take time in life to embark on such a journey. I have met bicyclists like Willy Weir, who have bicycled in many continents and written a few books about their wonderful experiences. One thing for sure, people all over the world are more than pleased to meet and greet adventurous souls, break bread with them, have chai and chat with them, and make them feel welcomed, wherever they are.

Bicycling is an amazing mode of transportation; I cannot say that enough. In today’s world where plane-hopping and automobile travel has become the norm for so many of us, bicycling offers a welcome relief. We can soak in the beauty of life, away from the hustle and bustle of busy airports or crowded lanes of our highways. As we bicycle, often we’re able to stop frequently to have a look at something that calls for our attention, appreciate the beauty that nature has to offer, or to say hello to people we meet along the way. Our carbon footprint is much smaller with the bicycling way of life and travels, and we get more value out of our time and money. Our journey offers us many surprises along the way while we keep our body healthy and fit; our muscles strong and vibrant while we keep on pedaling.

By Arun Narayan Toké, Executive Edior.