honest – Vague Direction

An unusual, exciting, or dangerous experience. Most of the time these blog posts fade away quickly and it’s hard to know if they’ve been read much, but very occasionally one gains a bit of momentum and gets shared around. A few weeks ago ‘An Open Letter To Self-Proclaimed Adventurers’ caught a little pace and it was surprising to see a few reactions. In hindsight the cloudiness of that post is a bit cringeworthy.

One reaction was “That’s an idiotic piece. Getting kidnapped is not an adventure, going over Niagara is a gamble not an adventure. The only one of the 3 stories that is an adventure is ‘No Picnic on Mount Kenya’.” It was tempting to write back with ‘ur an idiotic piece’ but this is the internet and adding fuel to the fire never works well. Another reaction was “I don’t get it. Does it mean we should all just stay at home because everything’s been done already?”. This was saddening as that conclusion is the opposite of how it was supposed to come across. Oops, sorry!

Adventure, going off the dictionary definition, is: an unusual and exciting or dangerous experience. Seeking those experiences is totally worthwhile, for everyone. Doing the thing you’ve wanted to do for ages helps you grow. Ticking off that trip or that thing which frightens you but calls out to you anyway. Has everything been done? No, that’s impossible because it’s subjective. From getting over your stage-fright and walking onto a standup comedy stage for the first time, to riding a bike a long way. It is infinite, it is for everyone, it is worthy, it is real, and simply embracing adventurous experiences has a positive impact.

The intended meaning was: If you want to go and have an adventure, go and do it. Don’t be put off by titles, or inexperience, or lack of ‘the best gear’. Do the thing that calls out to you. If you’re a receptionist – you can have an epic adventure. If you’re a teacher – you can too. If you work in insurance – you can as well. And you should! I really hope that anyone reading this will at some point pursue their big adventure (whatever that means) that is close to their heart.

Finally, one person said: “so are you saying that people shouldn’t write about their adventures?”. No, who is anyone to say that? Crumbs, this blog does just that! Quite the opposite – if you like sharing stories, that is awesome! And reading about people seeking out new experiences is brilliant. From people who frequently go on trips as a career, cool, but everyone else too. Say a caretaker who just ran a fell-race, a student who launched a satellite, a fisherman who plucked up the courage to take part in a rap battle. (Basically, the original post was an ill-thought-out vent about seeing a small few act like they owned something that can’t be owned.)

Moving on to the cool stuff!

If you were asked to choose, can a single moment rise to the top of many? I asked some peeps who’ve chased experiences that called out to them, one thing. To describe their most adventurous moment. Their responses are fun and insightful and sometimes unexpected – enjoy, then get planning!

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Leon McCarron:

“I’ve had my fair share of pretty ‘adventurous’ (or downright stupid) moments – listening to bears sniff at the flysheet of my tent in California, teetering over precipitous cliffs in Chinese mountains, capsizing a packraft in a remote Iranian gorge… when it comes to doing silly things in exciting places, I’m a pro. But I also know that without a doubt my most adventurous moment of all was very different from those higher adrenalin escapades.

The bravest and more daring thing I’ve ever done was cross the George Washington Bridge out of New York City on my first big trip. Physically there was nothing hard about it, nor logistically – there was even a bike path all the way across. Mentally, however… man, mentally it was a war zone. Every fibre of my being was terrified at the prospect of leaving behind all that I knew; swapping the familiar and the comfortable for a heavy bike, a cheap tent and an endless white line heading west. I would have found it so easy to give up right there, to turn around and make plans to fly home to the UK. Somehow – through stubbornness, stupidity and a small but growing realisation that things don’t always have to be fun to be worthwhile – I pushed on over the bridge, into New Jersey, and into the adventure of a lifetime. Since then, I’ve never looked back.”

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Rachel Atherton (photo: Laurence Crossman Emms)

“I suppose people would think that racing mountain bikes down mountains at speeds of 60mph every weekend all around the world for a living was adventure enough but I disagree!

You get so used to whatever you do day to day, no matter how adventurous it may seem, so adventures to me are things that I don’t get to experience, days out on the sea in boats, inflatable kayaks through quaint towns, but my most brilliant adventure that I still love thinking of was taking myself to Europe when I was injured and having a year off, I must’ve been 19, I camped for weeks in my tent with my bike, at lakesides and up mountains, the thunderstorms from the tent were amazing, I rode every day exploring the mountains, collecting wild strawberries and bilberries to go with breakfast, washing in the lakes and waterfalls, stealing vegetables from gardens (!!) and making friends with locals who plied me with homemade alcohol.

It was one of the most exhilarating, free, happy times I’ve ever had. A real adventure because I was away from the normal, away from technology, away from comfort, it was real living, being as close to mother nature as I could be, to me that is what an adventure should be.”

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Tom Allen:

“I was dragging my bike through a thousand kilometres of sand towards Dongola in northern Sudan. The Nile lay to my right, shimmering, tempting, as I sweated in the midday Saharan heat. I wondered what was on the other side of the longest river in the world. (Nothing, according to Google Maps.) The idea took hold, and when I arrived at the next Nubian village I tracked down the owner of a small boat and convinced him to give me a ride. And so it was about halfway across the world’s longest river, outboard motor sputtering, cool water spray on my sunburnt face, that I realised that not only did I have absolutely no idea where I was going, but that this leap into the unknown was precisely what made me feel so damn alive. This, right now, was my most adventurous moment to date.”

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Sarah Thomson (photo: Kate Czuczman):

“To me an adventure means taking a risk. Sometimes you run into trouble, and sometimes it turns out to be the most epic moment of a lifetime. One of my most adventurous moments was whist backpacking with a friend of mine in Indonesia. We awoke early, packed our rucksacks and headed off with no idea of direction. We passed peaceful lagoons, chilled out cafes and tiptoed through local farmlands, attempting to climb coconut trees for refreshment on the way. We walked for hour upon hour until we reached what we believed to be the end of the world! A huge of bank of black sand saw the end of the ever growing palm trees and we both stopped in awe. We laughed and told stories the whole way and yet when we reached this bay of black we had nothing to say, but just sat and soaked in the love of a wonderful adventure.”

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Charley and Sophie Radcliffe:

Charley: “I am constantly challenging the title of most adventurous moment but they keep having one thing in common: being somewhere I didn’t know I could get – whether I’m leading a hard (for me!) rock route, or running London to Brighton across fields and country paths. The moments that get your heart rate up, make you worry, and then break through the other side.”

Sophie: “For me adventure is all about trying something new, embracing the unknown and having the faith in myself that I’ll get there but also knowing that failure is part of the journey. It’s about sharing the highs and lows with friends, making new bonds, strengthening existing friendships, feeling like you’ve shared something you’ll never forget. It’s about the rewards and how well deserved they feel! The accomplishment, feeling of confidence, the beer and eating of cake. It’s about living and feeling alive.”

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George Foster:

“I used to think I was adventurous but the furthest I’ve been from civilisation in the form of say a phone or a car or whatever would be a few days camping in Scotland or a couple of days on a mountain in the Indian Himalayas. Not exactly Ernest Shackleton. I guess I may have done adventurous things to those uninitiated with fell running or those whose definition of adventure is markedly different to mine. It’s all a matter of perspective.

If it’s what you’re into, then all my adventures in running have been adventures of the mind. Many hundreds of people have run further or faster. Maybe not so many have done so at night, over hills, in the wind and the sweeping rain. Then again, maybe you have, in which case skip to the next guy!

This is the closest I’ve come to a real adventure. Something where the outcome is far from certain. Running towards the mountains without a headtorch to see what it’s like. The feeling when you float up the steepness and come face to face with the moon. Uncertain starlight giving way to a flood of brilliant radiance and you are able to pick out instantly a boulder here, or there, a puddle left from the evening downpour. All that was invisible moments before, now open for your private viewing.

That doesn’t have much to do with the mind on first glance. I’d argue that it’s experiences like that which remind you why you race on the fells. I need reminding sometimes when I’m racing. Legs melting into screaming lungs. The challenge in a lot of these isn’t to win but often just to finish. That’s the mental side. The not knowing is the adventure. The not letting your body give in when you do know. I think it takes a lot of courage to run up a hill into a gathering blizzard. Courage… and stupidity.

Anyone can have an adventure, though. As I said it’s a matter of perspective. When I’m 94 I’m gonna relish the not knowing if I’ll be able to make it to the toilet without pissing myself. How adventurous is that?!”

– – –

What is an adventurous moment you look back on?

[p.s. Leon’s book is out on the 7th July and involves getting chased through cornfields from a gun-toting alcohol-soaked rancher, and Tom just released a technical ebook that anyone interested in bike touring should check out.]

To post or not to post? I read my pal Andy’s blog post and could relate – it acted as a catalyst and a realisation that, for the last month or so, the content that has been published on this blog has been covering up the reality to avoid negativity. It’s easier to be positive if you just focus on what’s been happening in front of your eyes instead of behind them. And who wants to read a negative post, really? There’s enough negativity in the world without yet another blog joining the bandwagon. But covering up the truth in fake positivity is disengaging and it’s see-through. And maybe writing this stuff down will be therapeutic.

There’s been emails from people saying things like “Savour every moment”, and “You’re living my dream!”. And I just think about how ghetto it is, or the hour every night spent finding a place to sleep. Waking up in lay-by’s and carparks day after day, week after week, is not something to savour.

It isn’t glamorous, and there are times when I sit on the grass in the morning, looking at the bike with resentment. Why did I sign up for this?

In retrospect I’ll look back on this as ‘living the dream’, for sure. There are times now that I look back on with such fondness. It’s been one of the best periods of my life. No doubt. A bike ride across a continent and a trip that has brought me together with people who I’ve looked up to and taken inspiration from for years. Pinch-me, how-on-earth-did-this-happen moments.

But it can be so draining, demoralising and depressing, even when you’re in the most amazing areas. And there’s times when I think about those emails and think, it should be them doing this, not me. I’m a fraud and they’re not. They’d wake up stoked about pedaling all day, whereas I go through phases of waking up with dread. What’s the point in yet more days in the saddle? The tough parts are pedaling every day to get anywhere, and having to find a new place to sleep, dry out, wash and escape the rain, every single day. That quickly adds up.

I always looked at ‘adventurers’ with a hint of annoyance. They’d use terms like ‘quest’ and publish ‘memoirs’ about their time away. It would often hum of pretension and schmuck, and in more-than-a-few cases I got the feeling that their adventures were more about public speaking gigs than the actual experience. Even now, when somebody refers to themselves as an adventurer it makes me shudder. I’d read the blogs, and just didn’t buy it. Wasn’t this just hyperbole designed to appeal to a reality TV audience who didn’t know any better?

They’d talk about how mentally tough it had been, and I’d think, hang on a minute, you’re rowing across an ocean in a boat with a Sat Phone and pinpoint navigation, all you do is row, it can’t be that hard. Get-bloody-on-with-it or stop complaining and quit if you don’t want to be there.

The real adventurers were those who operated under the radar – they’d sail to uncharted lands at a time before GPS, flares and helicopter rescue, or escape from a prisoner of war camp and walk for a year through the jungle, battling anacondas and avoiding the arrows of tribesmen. The explorers who fought pirates with swords. They were heroes, rather than self-branded, media-savvy “adventurers”. And they got on with it rather than purposefully trying to grow an audience by telling everyone how epic it was. I thought that in a modern and connected world, adventure was nearly impossible to find.

And then I set off on this trip and my opinion didn’t change. If anything it was reinforced for the first few months. It wasn’t hard. It was sore but never unbearable. You’re connected almost everywhere. And then after a while, slowly my opinion did start to change.

It’s not the physical side that makes a hardcore adventure. You don’t have to walk through the jungle for 18 months or fight pirates. It’s 100% mental and unique to each person. It’s the toll of time, not the toll on your body. Overcoming the demons that grow in your head and scream at you to stop. It’s like athleticism in that respect. It’s arduous. The best athletes are the ones who do their time, push through it and put in the 10,000 hours. Results don’t come from a single race. But committing to that time is an intimidating thing, even after nine months.

My subconcious constantly asks “what’s the point of what you’re doing?” It’s ignoring that question, or trying to answer it, that’s challenging. It’s keeping going.

It’s this weird way of life where nothing is moderate. It’s great or it’s shit. Rarely it’s in between. Honestly, there’s no place I’d rather be most of the time. I feel a sick and twisted attraction to the mental game. But at the same time, sometimes it’s the polar opposite of enjoyable. That’s strange and full of hypocrisies, I know, but it seems to be the curse of movement, the road, and living a stripped down life that at the moment is literally strapped to a set of wheels. There are no sides – I love it and hate it at the same time.

This project has totally changed how I view adventure – it is real. And if it is mental, then this is most certainly a really wild adventure. But it’s still not a quest, ok?