Thinking About The Spirit

of the blog- DONT THINK RIDE. It's about the single minded pursuit to bike and adventure, which is more of an ideal than a reality. 

Graffiti five miles south of Da Nang, Vietnam

Sure, we don’t plan more than a couple days in advance and spend most of the day cycling. And yes, most of our time spent off the bike is either eating or sleeping.

We are also spending hours booking accommodations, refining our route, and recovering from the a sixty mile bike ride in ninety degree weather in a place where we don’t speak the language, are at the mercy of strangers, often surprised, confused, and overwhelmingly appreciative. It's dizzying. Also, we are on a great adventure.

DONT THINK RIDE as a motto reminds us that yes, we’re biking in territory that’s uncharted for us, but don’t over think it. Everyday is new and wonderful and weird to such an extreme that it's thrilling. 

We're able to make this happen with an app called Komoot, largely used outside of the US, which routes through our Garmin watches. We love our current system, and it's the best I've had for any bike tour. Our only experience with Komoot is on this coastal route through Vietnam, and the routing has been great, preferring direct routes to the destination that often include convenient backroads adjacent to major roads. Most of the time the backroads are bikeable. Only on a couple occasions the roads have been dirt paths pocked with puddles, a single track through a dense forest (which was actually cool until it turned into a sand pit we had to push the bikes through), or the road didn't exist. A couple roads out of hundreds. Decent odds all considering.

In Vietnam, bikes are allowed on the highway, and Komoot will do anything in its power to keep you off of it, including a couple block break on a side road. So we don't follow those short inconvenient directions, and have to watch the map closely for silly side detours. All said, we're about a month in and we've gotten the hang of it. 

Countryside in central Vietnam close to a village

With Komoot and personal acumen, we are able to minimize the time spent scrutinizing over what’s next and focus on the things that bring us joy, which is what this trip is all about. 

We both have an idea of what we’re physically capable of and what needs to be considered to accommodate our personal and physical needs. Behind that are the experiences we have as athletes. James has been a long distance runner since his teens and an all around athletic badass who picks up sports- volleyball, basketball, kayaking, hiking, skiing, cycling- with enviable ease. Most of my experience is in cycling both recreationally and for hire as a bike messenger in Chicago and rickshaw driver in New Orleans. I tend towards physical pursuits and finished a half ironman last year in a time that was perfectly average for the course- six hours and twenty nine minutes. We both love a physical challenge, especially one that is mired in the unknown.

Riding through the countryside and coast of Vietnam is awe inspiring. The landscape is distinctly different than anything I've rode through- old villages with narrow streets bending and intersecting while scooters courteously honk around blind corners, limestone cliffs studded with ancient growth, eight lane highways with cargo trucks, SUVS, scooters, and cyclists whose occupants are usually old enough to remember the Vietnam war.

More often than not, we are met with excitement and curiosity that ranges from an eye brow raise to someone waving us down yelling "hello, hello, hello". The excitement of others buoys our spirits.

One kid from a posse of five that swarmed James in central Vietnam

Some days we really need it.

The riding days feel long and hot with temperatures averaging in the nineties. We are always sweaty (hungry and thirsty). We learned to start our days like locals. So we ride in the cooler mornings around 5/6 AM where streets have already become markets for prepared food, coffee, and produce. I started carrying a Phin filter, which is the Vietnamese version of a french press. It was a well spent dollar at the grocery store and feels like it weighs the same as five marbles.

It brings me joy to start the day with this ritual- I put a tablespoon in the main chamber, cover it with one perforated plate, top it off with enough water to rinse the grinds, let that seep out and press the plate till the coffee begins to extract, then slowly pour four ounces of boiling water that has cooled for twenty-five seconds. After a couple minutes the coffee is ready and the drink is finished with a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk making it a proper ca phe sua. The rhythm of this ritual is soothing and energizing.

The days are long and short. We ride. We eat. We drink. We rest. After about sixty miles of riding, there is so much pleasure in doing almost anything else. It's a hard trip. It's a comfortable trip. It's a long trip. When it's done it will feel like a short trip. I often feel so lucky to be able to do this and try not to over think what the purpose is remembering, don't think ride, which can become a plea rather than a statement. Eventually I forget to think and everything settles into a familiar rhythm. Countryside passes with continued pedal strokes as effortless as saying, YES to this trip every day. Good fortune brings us here, with that we hope to embrace all of it while not overthinking.

-Don't Think Ride