Tuesday, January 24, 2023
7:56 a.m. Room 4, Tengkong Kost
(SPOT ON 91950 Guest House TekNong Syariah)
Bangkinan, Sumatra, Indonesia
Once again, it is a bit late in the morning for me to be typing away. But I’m spending another day here in Bangkinan resting my knee and waiting for the thunderstorms to end. I’m not sure how my knees are. As I mentioned, they both feel absolutely fine when I’m just walking and living normally. I won’t know what is going on with them until I’m cycling again. But I do know what is going on with the thunderstorms: they are continuing. It rained heavily yesterday and last night, and the skies are black with clouds right now. It looks like it is going to rain a lot today. And according to the forecasts, the rain will continue in this area for a long time. I just looked at a 10-day forecast, and it is calling for non-stop thunderstorms. I don’t know if that is normal for this time of year. It was raining a lot when I first arrived in Dumai. But then the sun came out for a few days, and I experienced some good weather on the days of cycling to Pekanbaru. I also had good weather for my ride to Bangkinan. But the rain has been non-stop ever since I arrived here. Ironically, the Korean cyclist Jin with the YouTube channel Cycling Around the World just posted another video from Taiwan. And it is raining on her in Taiwan. But she does not stay indoors. She is back on her bike and riding in the rain.
It’s fascinating to see the vast range in travelling styles. Yesterday, I was writing about all of the incredible gear and equipment and technology that Kristian Hansen has with him on his motorcycle journey. And Jin lives in stark contrast to that. She is an extreme example of the exact opposite. Everything she has with her seems to be completely worn out. It’s astonishing that she manages to make any progress at all down the road. I’m actually surprised that her gear is in such bad condition. With the popularity of her YouTube channel, I’d think that her subscribers and fellow cyclists would want to help her out. I know that I do. In this most recent video, I got a good look at her handlebar bag and it looks like a grizzly bear recently chewed an entire corner off the thing. It’s all torn up. And I know that if I met her while I was in Kuala Lumpur, I would have showered her with all the extra gear that I have and don’t need. I have a really nice and almost brand new Ortlieb handlebar bag. I took it off my bike in KL because it interfered with my camera mounting systems. I would have loved to give it to her to replace the old one she is using. In one of her older Taiwan videos, she also rode all day in the rain, and as she unpacked in a hotel, she showed how an inch of rainwater had accumulated in the bottom of her pannier bags. And that’s crazy. She has Ortlieb pannier bags, and they are designed to be 100% waterproof. A single drop of water shouldn’t be able to get inside them, let alone a full inch. She has all her gear inside plastic bags inside her Ortlieb bags to try to protect her stuff, and I have no idea how she can live like that. You know that Kristian Hansen wouldn’t put up with that. He’d contact Ortlieb, sign them up as a sponsor, and he’d have brand new fully waterproof Ortlieb pannier bags before you can blink. It kind of surprises me that Ortlieb hasn’t tracked Jin down just to give her some new bags. It can’t be good advertising for them to have this around-the-world cyclist using their waterproof bags but ending up with tons of water inside the bags.
Jin surprises me in so many ways. She’s tough, of course. She rides in the cold rain all the time. In this video, she was just talking about how cold she was and how she was shivering and wet, and her hands were frozen stiff. And she showed her hands, and I was surprised to see that she wasn’t wearing any type of gloves. She just had bare hands. And that’s kind of silly, to be honest. It’s one thing to use old and worn-out gear because you can’t afford to buy new stuff. But it costs next to nothing to just buy a pair of work gloves from a hardware store. You don’t need to buy the ultimate protective riding gloves for $200 US like Kristian Hansen. Just buy the cheapest work gloves from 7-Eleven for fifty cents. Wear them for a few days in the cold rain and then toss them away when the rain ends.
I know that if I was riding in the cold rain with bare hands and talked about how cold my hands were, everyone in the YouTube comments would be telling me to buy some gloves. I get lots of advice from people about what I should buy and what I should do. And I noticed that when Jin records herself on video while cycling, she does it by holding the camera in her right hand and way out to the side. She doesn’t have any kind of a mounting system. And that means she has only one hand on the handlebars of her fully-loaded touring bike. And that is really dangerous. It would take just a small stone or small pothole on the road to twist the handlebars and she’d crash. And I know that if I was riding along and holding a camera in one hand and talking into it, I would get tons of comments telling me to stop doing that because it’s too dangerous. But I’ve noticed that other YouTubers don’t ever seem to get these comments. I seem to get a lot of advice about things I should or shouldn’t do, but other YouTubers don’t seem to. I find that kind of funny. I just scanned all the comments on Jin’s video, and no one tells her it’s too dangerous to sleep in her tent at night. No one tells her that it’s too dangerous to have just one hand on the handlebars. No one tells her to quit being silly and just buy a $1 pair of gloves to keep her hands warm. No one tells her to get out of the rain. No one worries about her catching a cold or the flu from the cold rain and terrible conditions. No one tells her to stop riding in the rain because the road is too slippery and visibility is poor. I’m pretty sure that if that was my video, lots of people would tell me those things. But on Jin’s video, people wrote things like “You are very brave. Love your attitude. Stay safe.” The same people would probably tell me to quit being a dummy and just buy some gloves and get out of the rain.
Jin hoped to camp out again that night in her video. It was very cold and rainy, but she wanted to camp, and she asked at a temple if she could put up her tent there, and they said no. So she kept riding until she reached a town, and she found hotels that cost $50 US/night, and she can’t afford that. But then she found a cheaper hostel that cost around $17/night, and she stayed there. Then the video jumped to the next morning as she was riding away from the hostel. She showed the weather forecast, and it was supposed to be 6 and 7 degrees Celsius over the next week. And rainy. That is so cold.
But with my interest in logistics, I wish she had shown the process of simply unpacking her bike and moving into this hostel. In the video, we just see the front door of this hostel, and it looked like a small door that led to a narrow staircase. And I’ve spent a lot of time in Taiwan, and I know that rooms can be tiny, and you don’t get much for $17 US. I wondered what her room was like. Was it a dorm bed? Where could she possibly keep her bike? It looked like a very difficult place to stay at with a fully loaded touring bike. Just for my own interests, I’d like to have seen what it was like staying there. And she had arrived late at night when it was already dark. So, what did she eat? How did she find food? Given those weather conditions, and the fact that she arrived so late after a really tough day and after camping out, I’d definitely have stayed for a day to rest and recover, and, frankly, enjoy life in Taiwan. But she was up early and back on the road the next morning in practically freezing temperatures. People admire that kind of toughness, but it can also be a bit silly, I think. But it’s her style.
On this next day, I noticed that she was now wearing gloves. I wonder if she had those with her all the time or if she just bought some cheap gloves. I also noticed that the straps on all her pannier bags weren’t fastened as she rode. They were dangling down free, and that can also be a problem while cycling. Depending on the design and their length, they can get caught in the spokes of the wheels or on something else. I was surprised to see that in this video, there were brief moments here and there when she filmed herself riding past her GoPro. So she took the time to stop and set up the camera at the side of the road and then turn around and ride past it. I know from experience that that can add considerably to the time and energy it takes to ride in the day. But then at the end of the day, she completely skipped the night on video. She showed herself in a market late at night and eating. And then the video jumped to her cycling the next morning. There was no mention of where she spent the night.
The next night, she was in a small town, and she stopped at a police station to ask about putting up her tent somewhere. The police got in their police car and escorted her to a community center with a big roof and toilets, and they allowed her to set up her tent there. And then the police came back and brought her a meal and water. And other people came in the morning and brought her hot tea and breakfast. She rode up into the mountains that day and then down the other side to the ocean, where there was a surfing beach. She camped out in the bush somewhere near the beach and then rode again the next day. She got some nice sunny weather on those days, which was nice to see. In the video, you finally got to see some of the mountains and the coast of Taiwan.
Overall, it was an enjoyable video. Of course, I would want a LOT more detail and information about everything. She included very little from each day and night. I lost count, but I think this one video covered five days and nights of cycling, and it was all contained inside of twenty minutes. That’s quite an accomplishment. It takes me an hour of video just to document a trip to the local convenience store to buy some milk. Jin needs only twenty minutes to tell the story of five full days and nights of cycling. For me, it isn’t enough. But I imagine the average person would enjoy her video.
Yesterday, I watched another full video from Kristian Hansen. He was still staying at the fancy beach resort. It’s called BeOcean, and he booked a room there for ten nights. However, on one day and night, he went with a local guide on a boat trip out to his guide’s hometown, which was a small village on Pulau Pisang, or Banana Island. And this video was all about that trip. It was a very enjoyable video. In fact, the other video was also quite enjoyable. That’s the one about his trip to this beach resort. At one point, he mentions to his guide that he spends about 50 hours to edit each video. And if you’ve never edited video, that might seem like an exaggeration. After all, that is at least four 12-hour days of just editing. If he edited for eight hours a day, it would take over six days. And that seems insane. But I know from experience that he is probably telling the truth. And you can see the results in his video. He puts a lot of work into every aspect of them, including the audio and the thumbnail and drone shots and an intro and cinematic sequences. And, for me, there was a very pleasing range of content. I was surprised about that. To be honest, Kristian and I are very different in tone and personality. He’s young and full of energy and very optimistic. He does a lot of “whoohooing!!!” while he rides, just like Paddy Doyle and people like that. I’ve never woohooed in my life, and I’m sure I never will. So I wasn’t really expecting to get much enjoyment out of his videos. I was watching them mainly for the logistical side of things.
However, he switched gears a couple of times, and I really enjoyed those portions. I was impressed that he did this. For example, he put a microphone on the owners of the BeOcean resort and interviewed them about their life and about how they came to live here and build this resort. I always think about doing things like that. He also sat down with his guide when they got to Banana Island and interviewed him about his life, his family, and the island community. There was an overall tone to his videos that didn’t appeal to me. His style is not my style. But the videos themselves are quite impressive and enjoyable even for me. And he came up with one idea that I really liked and which had never occurred to me. He stopped at a lot of places and was chatting with local families. He can do this because he can speak basic Indonesian. And while this was happening, he would give the local children one of his GoPros and just let them run around and play with it and record whatever they wanted. And then he incorporated clips from that video in his final video. That’s a very cool idea, and something like that never occurred to me. I’ve thought a lot about wanting to interview people that I meet. I’ve just never done it. So that isn’t a new idea. But I never had this idea that you could just give a GoPro to some local children and let them go wild. I suppose he could do this because he can speak Indonesian, and he can make it obvious that he eventually wants the GoPro back. Maybe if I did that, the kids would think that I was giving them the GoPro as a present. That would not be great.
The next video on Kristian’s channel is about going paddle boarding with the owner of the BeOcean resort up a jungle river. I have to say that Kristian does manage to hit a lot of my pet peeves. For some reason, I don’t like it when a YouTuber constantly says “guys” into the camera. I don’t know why, but it bugs me. They will say, “Look at this, guys! It’s so beautiful.” Or “This is why I travel, guys!” “Can you believe it, guys?!!” “This food is amazing, guys!” Once I start hearing someone say guys, I can’t unhear it and I notice it every time. I also dislike the overly dramatic tone of words like “solo”, as if being on a trip by yourself is some kind of amazing and incredible achievement: “Solo Motorcycle Trip in Indonesia.” The word solo in YouTube video titles annoys me whenever I see it. I prefer understatement and a matter-of-fact approach. It’s no big deal to be by yourself. Putting solo in the video title always strikes me as weird and overly dramatic.
But despite my pet peeves, I enjoyed the video very much. He works very hard on the production of his videos. I was surprised, though, that he did this paddle boarding trip up the river in flip flops. In fact, when he was on Banana Island, he did a hike up a river to a waterfall and climbed a very high tower on steep ladders, and he did all those hikes in flip flops as well. I talked a bit about all the dedicated gear he put together for this trip, and much of it seems like overkill. So it surprises me that he would be doing a hardcore jungle river trip in flip flops. Even I wouldn’t do that. You can’t walk through mud and over river rocks on flip flops. The flip flops would just get stuck in the mud. And you can’t walk through water in flip flops anyway. They’d just come off your feet. So you have to remove them. And then you are walking on slippery submerged rocks for long distances in bare feet. I’m not one to get stressed out over safety. I find the modern world has gone insane with its concern for safety and danger. But even I wouldn’t go up a jungle river in flip flops. And it’s not just a question of it being dangerous with the risk of twisting or breaking an ankle. I simply couldn’t physically do it. Walking on rocks in my bare feet would hurt way too much. It would be so painful. Perhaps Kristian has tougher feet than I do, but it seems odd to me that he wouldn’t have a simple pair of Teva sandals for river hikes like that. In all his shopping for survival and adventure and safety gear, it seems like a pair of Teva hiking or river sandals would be a no-brainer. But he’s doing all these relatively dangerous activities in flip flops.
A funny thing, of course, is that I spent a lot of time and put in a lot of effort trying to track down some suitable sport sandals in Kuala Lumpur. And being a dummy, I was never able to track any down. I was even in a shopping mall that had a dedicated Teva store, and somehow I couldn’t even find that store, and I concluded that it didn’t exist. I ended up buying the only sandals I could find, and these were department store sandals. When the dust settled on that purchase, I was more-or-less satisfied with them. They seemed to be the same as the Teva sandals I wanted but were half the price or less. However, these sandals have quickly proved themselves to be quite bad. I would have been much better off giving them away in Kuala Lumpur and buying the Teva sandals when I finally found the store. These department store sandals don’t fit well and are uncomfortable. They’re actually dangerous to walk around in. And I’ve used them for about one month, and all the Velcro has worn off. There’s a spot where the strap goes through a buckle. And the Velcro they used in these sandals is so cheap that it was scraped right off where the strap goes through the buckle. These sandals are cheap pieces of junk. And they won’t last even a couple of months.
With my interest in gear and logistics, it’s interesting to go back and forth between videos from Kristian Hansen and from the South Korean cyclist Jin. They strike me as opposite extremes. I was just watching another of Jin’s videos from when she was in the South Pacific islands. The video is called the somewhat melodramatic, “I nearly died on a steep downhill.” Apparently, while she was going relatively fast on a downhill section of quite rough road, a section of her bicycle’s front rack broke off. I wasn’t able to figure out the details, but this somehow led to her crashing and going right over the handlebars. It was a Superman crash, flying through the air. She landed on her chest hard and she cut the palm of one hand. The crash really shook her up. It was a bad one.
That night, she was able to find a place to stay with a family. And the father/husband in this family had a full set of tools and was quite skilled at metalwork. He spent the whole evening rebuilding her front rack and putting it back together. While this was going on, Jin talked about the history of this rack as well as the rear rack on her bike. I knew much of this history from watching her videos over the years. And these pannier racks were both built by hand. But not by skilled metalworkers or bike professionals. They’ve always struck me as dangerous pieces of junk. And they have broken down constantly on her trip, and she has had to get them rebuilt multiple times. It seems like this is a point of pride with Jin. In this “I nearly died” video, she says that she doesn’t want to buy new racks. She likes to use these homemade ones. And I suppose lots of people would applaud the sentiment. It seems like a good idea to keep using what you have rather than spending tons of money on new gear. It’s a question of using DIY smarts to avoid a modern life of consumerism.
However, I see problems with this approach. For one thing, these homemade racks have never worked properly. They are always breaking down and needing to be repaired. And Jin doesn’t have the skills to do it herself. She is always turning to other people that she meets to fix her gear for her. It’s one thing to want to get by with rough homemade gear, but if this is only possible because people you meet on the road are always fixing it for you, it’s not such a great idea. And the same goes for being well-equipped and having good plans in general. It’s great to post videos about how nice people are around the world and how everyone helps you out all the time. But to a certain extent, you have to come at this in good faith. You should be making an honest effort to take care of yourself. You can’t just asssume that you can wander around the world without any plans or good equipment and expect and assume that kind people around the world will just step up and help you all the time. It’s great that people are willing to help out a traveller in an emergency. But I think that traveller shouldn’t take advantage of that. You have to take care of yourself as much as you are able.
The other problem with these badly-made homemade racks is that they are dangerous. That was clearly illustrated in this crash. There’s nothing more dangerous on a touring bicycle than your bicycle rack snapping or a pannier bag coming off while you are going downhill. That’s a recipe for disaster. You do not want to skimp when it comes to the quality of your pannier racks. Again, I’m not one to get overly concerned about the worldwide mania for safety. However, there is such a thing as common sense. And a cheap homemade pannier rack that breaks all the time is a bad idea. It causes endless trouble and is dangerous. And a contributing factor to her crash and troubles afterward is that her brakes were very loose and not working. And when that kind man rebuilt her pannier racks, he also adjusted her brakes and tightened them up. The next morning, Jin properly thanked them and talked about how much this man helped her. And that’s great, but as a cyclist, you should keep your own brakes tight and in good condition. It’s great that this man was kind enough to fix her brakes for her, but this is something she clearly should have done herself.
I can only imagine the comments that people would leave after one of my YouTube videos if I had a crash because my cheap pannnier rack broke and I had no front brakes and then I had a local person get out all his tools and rebuild my racks for me. This man did actual metalwork and fabricated new mounting parts for her racks from scratch. People would tell me, rightly, to quit being such a dummy and buy some decent and reliable pannier racks. I come at this topic with a fair bit of personal experience. I’ve done trips with cheap pannier racks long ago. And they are cheap for a reason. They come loose. And they snap and break. And your pannier bags pop off them when you go over bumps. And this always happens at the worst possible time – when you are going fast. They are designed for you to carry your books to school at best. They aren’t designed for fully-loaded bike touring. For touring, you have to spend some money and get something more durable and more reliable.
Compared to Jin’s experience, I now have that of Kristian’s. At least he has the absolute best gear that money can buy. And he has made every effort to be able to maintain his own motorcycle when it comes to basic stuff. Obviously, with a bike like the KTM 390 Adventure, it’s impossible to do real repairs. These modern bikes are very sophisticated and require professional garages with trained mechanics using special tools to really work on them. But I can say with some certainty that none of Kristian’s racks are going to break anytime soon and that his brakes are in tip-top reliable condition.
And since I’m babbling about gear, I should reserve a few words for my own gear. I’ve hardly done any cycling since I arrived in Sumatra, so there shouldn’t be much to say about my bike gear. Before I went to Myanmar and left my bike in storage in Kuala Lumpur, I had invested a lot of time and money in bringing my bike up to date and making changes. That involved brand new wheels that were custom made with extremely strong touring rims. I also upgraded my pannier bags. I added fenders. Everything mechanical was tuned up and repaired. Given all that, it would be surprising if something broke right now. Perhaps being in storage so long might have damaged something I’m not aware of, but everything seems to be working okay. My one big problem was the day that the wheel fell off my trailer. That appears to have been entirely my fault and a result of carelessness plus an unexpected consequence of how I had loaded the trailer. I set off that day without realizing that the axle hadn’t clicked firmly into place. And that happened because the trailer bag itself had pushed down far enough to cover up and block the hole where the wheel axle is inserted. And that accident could have been much worse than it was. I was able to brake very quickly once the wheel fell off and the trailer started dragging across the asphalt. That minimized the damage to the trailer. The only damage was a small tear in the fabric on the bottom of the trailer. And that tear isn’t a big deal since the trailer bag is built with two layers. The tear is only in the outer layer and right out at the edge. And that has no effect on the interior layer. Therefore the integrity of the trailer bag was not affected in any way. When I came to a stop and looked back, I saw that the trailer wheel had come to rest quickly. It didn’t go rolling away. But it had stopped right in the middle of the lane. Had there been traffic passing when the wheel fell off, it’s possible it could have been run over or caused an accident. You could say it was lucky that it fell off at a time when there were wasn’t a convoy of large trucks thundering past.
Considering the age and wear and tear on my own pannier racks, there’s a possibility that they should also be replaced. I bought them with the original bike 23 or 24 years ago. They are Jandd Extreme and Expedition racks, and they were the strongest racks I could find at the time. Jandd still makes them today. The rear rack is designed to carry up to 75 pounds and the front rack can carry up to 40 pounds. Right now, I don’t even need the front rack on the bike. In order to save weight, I should have removed it and left it behind in Kuala Lumpur. I’m not using any front pannier bags, and I don’t have any gear on the front rack at all. It’s just sitting there and doing nothing. However, I kind of like having it there. I thought it could come in useful for mounting a camera. It also protects the wheel. And I thought that if the trailer breaks or I decide to continue without the trailer, it would be nice to have the option of putting some pannier bags on the front rack or just strapping down some items with bungee cords.
I had a typical experience, however, when I bought those racks long ago. They arrived on a day that was very close to my departure for Ethiopia. I’d had them shipped to me from Jandd. And the front rack turned out to be defective. The parts had been welded together improperly, and the mounting arms and holes didn’t line up. One side lined up with the mounting bolts on my bike but the rack was misaligned and the other side was way off. If I’d had enough time, I would have shipped it back to Jandd and had it replaced. But I had no choice but to try to alter it myself. And I had to use vice grips and other tools to bend the aluminum arms so that they would line up with the mounting points on the bike. And that resulted in the front pannier rack sitting on the bike at an angle. It sticks out to the side and doesn’t point straight forward. That doesn’t seem to affect handling, strength, and durability, but it annoys me. Every time I get on the bike, I look down and see that rack pointing off to the right at a strange angle, and I get annoyed all over again.
These racks have taken a lot of abuse and have been bashed in from the side on multiple occasions. It’s possible that the aluminum arms and welded joints are weakening and have become brittle over time. It’s possible that these racks should be replaced. But they are so heavy duty and made from such thick aluminum struts that I have confidence that they should be just as strong today as the day I got them.