All my bags are packed

And I start my journey back to Georgia in 9 short hours! (3am here, it really is a lovely time to wake up).

Having a final sushi dinner and saying goodbye to my nearest and dearest tonight. I have a lunch-time layover in Chicago where I will hang with some of my nearest and dearest from that time (in tennis shoes and a sweatshirt, it’s all I got). And then I land in Georgia to spend a whole weekend with so many of my nearest and dearest there, who I haven’t seen in far too long!

And that’s all I’m gonna say about emotions at this time.

On that note, I’m going to leave you with a riveting video of the joys and excitement I have to look forward to in the Ho Chi Minh airport. Ali and I took this when we were on our way back home from the north last month. Make sure your sound is up for full effect.

Slide Show

I’ve finally cut the slideshow down to a reasonable length so here it is!

I’ve personally always been a fan of cheesy pop and hip hop music for all occasions, but I think we’d all agree that that’s the best kind of music to get us up hills on bikes. Hence the song choice for this slide show.

Some cool bike ride pics

I’m working on a slide show to post here soon, but it’s incredibly long and in an effort to shorten it, I’m cutting out some photos but there are a few which I can’t stand not to share. Those are here.

Looking Back

Well we’ve been back for a few days now. And we’ve partied til we dropped and we’ve dropped it like it’s hot. We had a lovely welcome back party last night, which included a slideshow of the trip, a classic James Ortmann (AKA Seamus McFreedom) speech, a lovely rendition of Hey Jude (renamed Hey James) sung by 12 bikers, and lots of sangria. Lots of dancing, a little stretching, and a little bit of the dinosaur game. Great fun was had by all.

So we’re now officially in recovery mode on multiple levels, and I have some pictures and videos to share. I’ll start by illustrating some of the previous posts, and will do some bigger slideshows and stuff in a couple days when more of the pictures have rolled in.

This good lady and I have been through a lot together. She's a pain in the ass, but I'm bringing her home with me.

Made it: did we just do that?

I’m in Saigon! Just woke up in Ms. Loi’s – the place that will be my home for the next week and a half.

Most of the ride yesterday was dealing with lots of the traffic of the outskirts of Saigon and the stress that goes along with that, so it was difficult to focus too much on the excitement of where we were headed.

Until, of course, we hit the Saigon Bridge.

Before the bridge just dusty buses and trucks, and I couldn’t tell exactly where we were or how far we had to go to our finishing point. But I saw that bridge, and then I saw this big blue roofed building called the Manor behind it, and that’s a building I’m used to seeing on the horizon, and suddenly I was crossing a huge arching bridge onto Dien Bien Phu, a road I know well, and I knew the roundabout we were looking for, and I knew we were HOME . . . from Hanoi . . . safe on thirteen skinny little bikes. Now I’m a pretty excitable person, but I haven’t had many times in my life where I felt like I did riding over that bridge. I sped up to catch up with the riders ahead of me and just started screaming. What, I don’t know. But the celebrations began.

We arrived at the zoo, the place where the bikers met before crossing town to meet our friends at the Reunification Palace. We shared about 3 beers among 13 riders which seems to have gotten 13 hungry, dehydrated people drunk in a matter of minutes.

We set up our flying V formation, James had a big Vietnamese flag waving at the back, and we rode to the Palace. It’s difficult to maintain a flying V when there are 4 stop lights in your way, but we did our best. Random Vietnamese people were cheering us along the way, though I don’t think they knew what was going on.

Then we saw our people.

Then we showered and went to the bar to eat cheeseburgers and fries.

Then I went with four others to the tattoo parlor.

Then I met Ali and we went for sushi and white wine, exactly as planned.

Then I went to sleep, knowing i didn’t have to wake up and get on a bike in the morning.

And all is well in the land of H2H.

One day more!

I started the day with Les Mis in my head due to the (not so) fabulous hotel we stayed at last night. Specifically this part:

Charge ya for the lice, extra for the mice, two percent for looking in the mirror twice.

But the upside is that I actually love Les Mis and it’s entire soundtrack, so I quickly moved on to this part:

One day more! I did not live until todaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! (One day more) … etc … etc … Will you take your place with me? The time! is now! the place! is here! one day more!!!!

In case you can’t tell, we’re close to Saigon. We’re 110 short, flat kilometers away. We’ll be there early tomorrow afternoon if all goes well.To meet our friends at the Reunification Palace in downtown Saigon. Then we’ll take our stuff home. Then some of us will get tattoos to commemorate our journey. Then I’m going to eat lots of sushi and drink lots of white wine, as planned.

The ride today started with a massive, rocky decent out of the mountains of the central highlands where we’ve dwelled for (forever?) and into the flat land that will take us home. Decents are cool except when they’re littered with rocks and gravel. But it gave us some good flat tire oreo time by the side of the road to enjoy one another’s company.

We’re currently in Dinh Quan. It’s a terrible town. One of three towns on this trip which our riders have categorically dubbed  “bullshit towns.” If you saw it, you’d understand. And this blog will probably be especially long due to how very boring this town is (we already had a fight with the aliens invading our hotel, what’s left to be done?). Though I think we’re being especially hard on it due to our eagerness to get home.

November 2nd feels like it was a lifetime ago. I can’t believe we’ve only been doing this for a month. This month was such a long time coming, and it’s been such a priority for such a long time. And here we are less than a day from the finish. We’ve seen so many wonderful (and terrible) parts of Vietnam this month. And I, at least, have pushed the limits of what my body can do at times.

I’ve seen dogs chasing pigs and pigs chasing dogs. I’ve heard pigs being slaughtered. I’ve almost hit multiple water buffalo. I’ve seen Chet steering a water buffalo. I’ve touched the clouds, I’ve flattened tires, I’ve worn out brakes. I’ve been given a purple blind fold. I had a Vietnamese woman smack a bump on my head. We’ve received countless cheers and high fives from the side of the road. We’ve cursed many a truck driver. We’ve crashed. We’ve eaten lots of rice and noodles. We’ve been served pig snout and chicken feet. We’ve eaten fresh crabs on the beach. We’ve had many road side dance parties and made lots of kids laugh. We’ve done the chicken dance, the macarena, the iron man dance, and the peanut butter jelly time dance . . . and the hokey pokey. What can I say, we’re a bunch of teachers on bikes.

I haven’t always been a “kids” person. I used to think they were annoying, especially in large groups. And here I’ve spent over a year doing nothing but teaching little kids, and mostly loving every minute of it. And now I’m on the H2H: Ride for Vietnamese Children, where most of my enjoyable roadside interactions are doing silly things with little kids. Our favorite passtimes as a group are the dinosaur game and apparently fighting with imaginary aliens. My ability to connect with adults in this country has been limited by language and cultural barriers which have been difficult to overcome in such a short time. But kids are always just kids, you know? And I like that a lot.

Turkey Day in Bao Lac: Pizza and Bailey’s and good good people

Happy Turkey Day Errybody!

Today was a good day. I turned my turbo jets on today and went 110k before 1pm. My bum hurts and I figure the less time I spend on that bike between now and Saturday the better. Also, the nerves in my right hand seem to have died today. Before the ride started in Hanoi my big concerns were my back and my Achilles tendons. Both of those have been peachy all month! Instead the problems have been in my hands and wrists all month. Halfway through our ride today I suddenly realized I couldn’t change the gears on my right side. Assuming that my gear shift was broken, I stopped and pulled out my backpack only to find that I also couldn’t grip the zipper to unzip it. Then I realized my gear shift wasn’t the problem at all!

So . . . hopefully that’ll come back one day. But the good news for now is that my hands/wrists don’t hurt so much anymore, now that I mostly can’t feel them! This I can handle. It also means that my gear shift is still a-ok, which is GREAT news in these hills. Just had to adapt my shifting strategy.

In short, I was most relieved to find that the issue was in my nerves and not in my gears. Now that I write it, this seems sick and twisted but is entirely true.

So the ride was sweet. I even got here in time to wash by biking shorts and have them dry by tomorrow. I took a shower, and then my roommate and I bolted over to a place where they had PIZZA four doors down. PIZZA. We couldn’t believe it. It was like a gift straight from the heavens.

So to those in America, pizza might sound like a sad story for Thanksgiving. However. Every other night we’ve been eating rice and noodles. We couldn’t have actually asked for anything more exciting than pizza for this day.

We ordered a large pizza each, and began what became a revolving door of bikerseatingpizza which has continued until, well, now. Basically from 2-7pm.

After going back and taking a nap and running some errands in town, we walked back by said pizza parlor and joined them again. I learned they had Bailey’s for $1, and we ended up 6 people around a round table, 4 Americans and 2 Brits.

So we had a toast to Turkey Day, and started the good ole family tradition of sharing what you’re thankful for. Even the Brits joined in. It was really lovely. Before this month, most of those 6 people hadn’t spent much time hanging out together, and we had never even met Kat, who came over just for the ride. And it was nice to feel that they’ve so quickly become so familiar that it’s really nice to spend this day with them.

Kinda crazy right? On a trip like this, there’s at least a 50% chance that other group members will have driven you bananas by day 25, and that just hasn’t happened. We still like to hang out together. Durn good thing if you ask me.

TWO DAYS TO SAIGON! 180 KILOMETERS! I SEE IT ON THE SIGN JUST OUTSIDE!

Day 24: Getcha head outta tha clouds, kid!

OK! Yes please! Show me the way down and I will happily leave these clouds! And can I not touch them again for the next three days, please?

Yesterday was easy. Today was not. It was beautiful, but “easy” is not the word.

Today was 115k, which we expected. And we also expected it to be somewhat mountainous. But I think I, at least, underestimated the magnitude of this day.

The downside is it seems that the roads in parts hadn’t been paved since we bombed them, so there were about 3 potholes for every 10 yards of road, and it was all rocky gravel. This is annoying for bikers, and their hands/arms/shoulders/butts.

The upside is that the scenery was out of this world. We’re currently very close to Dalat, the Honeymoon Capital of Vietnam. And it’s called that for a reason. The area is stunning. Precisely because it is full of mountains that touch the clouds.

Do you know how I feel about mountains that touch the clouds? I think they’re pretty. But I don’t want to have my bicycle on any more of them for the rest of this month!

But as a result of the aforementioned cloud-touching, snobbishly beautiful mountains we passed through today, we rolled into our destination town at a very late 5:00. And we’re going to average 100k/day until we reach Saigon, so my time to type is limited.

But know that we are bolting down this skinny country as fast as we can, enjoying our last days of this ride and enjoying one another immensely, but getting ever more excited about the sleep and warm showers and pizza and sushi and recovered muscles and bones and elbows and foreheads that lie in our very near future.

And all is still well in the land of H2H.

Day 23: Simply lovely

The last time I wrote, we were pretty sure we had nothing but busy bad roads between us and Saigon. But then there was Day 23.

It was a very short day – only 50 kilometers, and we took our “halfway break” at something ridiculous like 9:30 in the morning. At the break, we remarked how strangely and wonderfully quiet the roads were. And SMOOTH!

So we hopped back on the road, and before I knew it I was 5 kilometers from the town where we were headed, and it was maybe 11:00. I was loving sailing throught he rice paddies on the smooth, windless road, not really wanting to stop. But it was just. so. beautiful. I was by myself at this point, and decided to just pull off the road and sit on the shoulder for a while and look at the grass blowing in the wind with the mountains behind it.

I must have sat there for 30 minutes before the next folks from the group rolled on by. And in the meantime, tons and tons of sweet Vietnamese teenagers rolled by on their bikes, with the most genuine smiles to be found in this country.

And in truth, I realised with some disappointment that this was the first time I had done that. We frequently take stops along the way to “take it all in,” but those stops are usually with at least a few other riders. This was the first time I had 30 minutes all to myself to just be there. It was wonderful.

So we arrived at our hotel around noon. And by hotel I mean lovely “resort” with a giant hut/house which all 13 of the riders shared. This sounds uncomfortable, but really it was lovely. And it had lakes on both sides.

But our hut wasn’t available until three, so we had some time to kill. So we all laid our tired bodies out on the pavement of the parking lot while fellow rider Sam serenaded us with his guitar and song.

Bach got involved in the music

Justene cleaned her chain

And everyone else, well, did this

Then, we went into the restaurant and had a 3-4 hour meal, exactly as meals should be, and as they have often turned out to be for us this month. Was it lunch? Was it dinner? Who cares! It was both, and we never actually stopped eating.

And it was good.

Where we’ve been