Cambodia Diaries - 15 February 2009

I want to ride my bicycle

I set off for PP on 28 April 2008 and after a brief stop off in Singapore, I got here on 2 May.  Matt Blake left a day after me, but he didn’t arrive in PP until 23 January 2009 and as he didn’t fly out of Terminal 5, one has to ask oneself, what the hell was he doing in the meantime?

Now unless you’re Dutch or a mature student, one thing you are unlikely to bring into adulthood is the simple pleasure derived from riding a bike everywhere from the day you first learn to ride until at some stage in your teens, it suddenly doesn’t look so cool anymore.

In 1984 I got off my bike and it was not until 1993 when I returned to the massed ranks of students that I got back on one.  However, after a brief return to London and a couple of situations where the unforgiving and thoughtless nature of the metropolis’ car drivers resulted in a few squaring up situations, it was another 8 years before I got back on a bike again on the fabled ‘world’s most dangerous road’ between La Paz and Corico in 2002. 

Aside of a little biking holiday in 2004, it’s been 7 years since I was on a bike, but that all came to an end with the recent purchase of my latest set of wheels, the aptly named La Ponderosa.

La Ponderosa

Every Saturday at 7am, a group of expats go on a big cycle into the countryside around PP and as I let my legs recuperate after Berlin, La Pon and I finally went out on a little run down the Mekong river a few weeks back for what was an enjoyable 3 hours of peddling and then 3 days of walking like John Wayne.  I seem to have progressed somewhat and after quite clearly being told it was a 40kms ride on the weekend just gone, imagine my delight when it transpired that it was in fact, going to be a 70kms peddlefest.  

Anyway, last year I was particularly impressed with two friends who successfully attempted two incredible cycling feats.  Graham cycled over the Pyrenees from Biarritz to Barcelona and Tessa cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats - all of which was very impressive.  But then out of the blue, you get an email from someone you don’t even know and it makes these notable efforts and my ambling around 26.2 miles seem a tad insignificant.

I got into work one morning and as is customary, I like to check emails and there was one from a chap off a QPR website enquiring if I really was in PP.  The reason being was that Matt, his son, was coming to PP although he could not be specific as to when.  This it transpired, was because Matt unlike most sensible people who go traveling, is actually cycling around Planet Honneywood and at the time his father emailed me, Matt was somewhere up to his neck in snow in China looking for someone to mend his back axle!

Another QPR fan in Indochina, let alone one cycling himself around the world, the very least I could do was throw the doors open at Chez JH and offer the boy full board and lodgings.  I emailed his father and promised that if the boy was in my parish, he would be put up, fed, watered and I would ensure that he called home to let Mum know he is well.

I then started to email Matt and follow his adventures on his website at www.projectbike.co.uk and if you have a spare hole in your diary, then so should you.

What a hero. He had set off from Blighty having only had a couple of weeks training!!  Some two and a half months earlier, he had damaged knee ligaments and was laid up as time approached to the off.  Undaunted he stuck to his plan and when the doctor said the knee was mended; it seems that two weeks was more then ample time to physically prepare for the rigours ahead!!

His trip is split into three simple parts: Banbury to Tokyo, sail over the Pacific to Canada (probably by peddle boat) and then get himself to the most northerly point in Anchorage and cycle all the way down to Buenos Aires.  More peddle boating over to Cape Town for the final bit up through Africa, into Europe and then the short hop from Dover to Banbury and his Mum’s Christmas dinner in 2011. 

So, that roughly equates to 3 years and 8 months and it has taken him 11,000 miles to get from home to PP.  We met on 23 January by the Independence Monument and a flurry of emails had narrowed the time of the meet to 11am.  Matt indicated that he would wear a QPR top and I responded in kind.

Why we thought at such an hour on such a day at such a place that there would be hordes of people similarly waiting to meet other like minded self-propelling circumnavigators I will never know, but sure enough, the young Road Warrior as I have taken to calling him, rocked up 5 minutes early to be greeted with a big smile and with me thinking: “Bloody hell, it’s a young Dumbledore”.  It would be fair to say that the long hair, beard and an appearance of a man who had cycled 11,000 miles to get here was more then enough to give him away.

“I say, are you the QPR fan cycling around the world?”

The first thing to do upon getting back home was the need to get his QPR shirt in the wash!  I showed him to his room and pointed to what he once knew was a bed.  My little wash room doubles as the guest’s shower room and so the Road Warrior and the QPR shirt entered looking shabby and exited looker much fresher for the experience.

Before I asked him the question I am sure you would all want answering as well, I broke my strict rules of marathon training and blew the froth off a few cold ones with him as I sat down and asked him: “Why?”

It seems that he got into cycling at university as a means of getting about and then he started to go on longer and longer distances and then one day, he got it in to his head that it would be a wheeze to cycle around the world…as you do. 

No sooner was he washed, fed and watered, when the young Road Warrior asked if I minded if he crashed out for a bit.  Although I had taken the day off and was up for a few beers, it would have been churlish to have said no.  Over the next few weeks he was more then willing to answer the same questions from my friends about his trip thus far and for the future.  I am sure he must get bored with it time-and-time again, but its an incredible endeavour.

A thirsty and hungry Road Warrior demolishing all before him

He sleeps wherever he can pitch a tent at the end of the day and tells tales of generosity from people he neither knows nor will ever have the chance to repay.  People who, in the ordinary course of things, have precious little themselves, but who warmly take in the Road Warrior and offer him a roof for the night or to share their food.  It seems there are many characters on the road as well and as I say, check out his website.   

My token offering in many ways is a case of repaying the Karma Gods for the generosity shown to me over the years as much as it is to house a fellow QPR fan whose determination is something I admire as much as I guess I can appreciate.  I have been regaled of tales from places that even I needed him to go and fetch his blow-up globe to find out where the countries, with names that sound like you need a course of penicillin to clear them up, were.  

Thankfully, only minor problems have blighted his trip.  A little bit of kit knicked here and a busted inner tube there.  I have been able to help patching him up, getting some sustenance down him and to get him in one of the local papers over these last few weeks, before wishing him well as he set off towards Vietnam and the many countless thousands of miles that lay ahead of him.

I myself would not dream of undertaking such a task as I unashamedly like my comforts when I am on the road.  Matt is going properly around the world and by his own means.  I understand that last year another Brit claimed the title of the fastest person to cycle the world.  However, there appears to be a little more to the story then that.  Firstly, to claim that you have cycled the world, you have to go a ‘mere 10,000 miles’ and cycle in four continents. Whereas Matt is cycling the whole way, the record holder flew between continents and of course, had the benefit of a huge effort behind him.

Prior to Matt’s arrival, I was having a few cold ones with some chaps and mentioned the impending arrival of the Road Warrior when the conversation turned to the so called motorcycle adventures of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boreman, which have occupied airtime on the Nat Geo channels out here.  Frankly, the real story is not with these two, but guys and gals like Matt.  Indeed, I refuse to watch such self-indulgent corporate blar-blar but one night the Road Warrior and I did watch an episode of The Long Way Down and it was interesting to observe Matt’s reaction. Especially when one of the producers introduced the support vehicles, the rest of the traveling team, the medic, the expensive bikes, whilst ignoring the back-up crews, ‘fixers’ in the countries they visit whom aid their passage and heavily prominent corporate donors funding this, for him to add: “But apart from that, it’s about Ewan and Charley on the bikes”.  So, they are not short on company and help then!

Road Runner, La Pon with a scrubbed up Road Warrior
on the Mekong of a Saturday morning

Well neither is Matt it seems.  I was out one night with him and some others that he has met on the road and was in awe as they traded stories of their travels.  It seems there are many out there similarly peddling furiously around the world all fulfilling something that they have wanted to do and in many cases, worked all their lives for.  My respect for them no knows only one boundary and that is the one set by La Ponderosa and I as weekend peddlers.

Cheers

JH

Ps Matt is cycling for a children’s hospital in Zambia and if you wish to donate to it, then the link is on his website.  Equally, check out the Road Warrior’s route and if he is coming to a place near you, why not offer him a mattress, shower, bit of tucker and a cold one.