Saturday, January 28, 2023
10:11 a.m. Room 4, Tengkong Kost
(SPOT ON 91950 Guest House TekNong Syariah)
Bangkinan, Sumatra, Indonesia
I did go for a test bike ride yesterday, and I did this ride wearing only flip flops. And I guess from a purely scientific point of view, it wasn’t a good test. I introduced too many variables. On the one hand, I had been off the bike again for over a week resting my knee. On the other hand, I was wearing different footwear. And on a third hand, I was riding the bike without the weight of my pannier bags and trailer. And I ended up riding twenty kilometers at a very high speed, and both of my knees felt fine the entire time.
And that’s potentially good news. I did not experience any knee pain during the entire twenty kilometers of fast cycling. But since I changed three variables, it’s not clear which one made the difference. Did I ride pain-free because I had rested for a week? Or was it because I was wearing different footwear? Or was it because I had no heavy load on the bike? Or was it a combination of all three factors and changes? I don’t know.
And I say that is potentially good news because I find that this morning, the morning AFTER that test ride, my knees do feel a bit off. I can feel some stress and light pain in my left knee this morning. And I guess that is almost certainly an after-effect of riding the bike yesterday. So I don’t really know what to think. I’m either on the road to recovery or I’m not. I don’t know. After that ride, I was feeling encouraged, and I started assuming that I would now continue my trip and ride up to Bukittinggi and then down to Padang, and then I would fly from Padang to Kuala Lumpur in order to fly back in and start fresh with a new 30-day visa-on-arrival. But this morning, I don’t know if that is wise. I’ve started to consider that it might be best to NOT tackle that climb right now. An alternative is to fly out of Pekanbaru. And then I can stay in this area on relatively flat land. I can stay longer in Bangkinan, explore this area, ride to Pekanbaru, take care of the flight to Malaysia and back, and THEN after all that rest, finally head into the mountains. And while I’m in Kuala Lumpur, I can pick up that pair of slim Teva sandals that I should have bought from the beginning.
I like this Pekanbaru idea, but at the same time, it isn’t very exciting. I will have spent two months in Sumatra and done practically no cycling. If I follow through on the plan to ride to Padang, I will at least have done some cycling. And the trip won’t feel quite so pointless. And perhaps that mountain and coastal scenery will inspire me. And I need that. At the moment, I am lacking inspiration. But I would be taking a chance on my knee being able to get me up those mountains. I don’t know if that is a risk worth taking.
And speaking of cycling and those mountains, I had a fascinating encounter with another cyclist yesterday. This was a pleasant surprise. I was sitting here inside my room and then came another knock on my door. This was the third knock of the day. Twice, a woman from the guest house had come to bring me something. The first time, she brought me a morning snack and cup of tea. The second time, she brought me a cup of diced fruit. Both snacks were much appreciated. But each time, this woman went through the procedure I talked about before: she knocked on the door and shouted non-stop. No matter how many times I shouted back that I was coming, she just kept knocking and knocking and shouting and shouting. She barely let two seconds pass between knocking sequences. It was quite annoying.
Given that experience, I noticed instantly that there was something different about this third knock. There was a knock on the door, and that was it. There was no shouting to go along with it. There was just the quiet knock, and that’s all. And I shouted back that I was coming. And the person on the other side of the door heard my voice and then waited. There was no shouting and no more knocking. And I quickly set aside my laptop and my cup of coffee and put on a shirt. And then I opened the door to find a smiling foreigner standing there. As I quickly learned, this was David. He was from Sweden, and he had just arrived at this guest house on his touring bicycle. The owners of the guest hotel told him there was another foreign guest here with a bicycle, and he came to say hello. And the fact that he was from Sweden explained why his knocking style was so different.
It was fascinating to meet David. One thing about being on a bicycle is that you end up in towns like Bangkinan, Duri, Kandis, and Dumai. These are just ordinary Indonesian towns, and normal tourists or backpackers would not generally end up here. Therefore, when you are bike touring, you meet far fewer fellow foreigners. In fact, you often meet none. And the rare encounter is usually another cyclist, and they are usually going in the other direction. So to have the chance to meet David and chat a bit was a great pleasure.
It was also really interesting because in the last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the various styles of YouTuber travellers. I’ve been looking at the videos from Kristian Hansen, Wandering Emma, and Jin from South Korea. And David introduced a brand new style. For one thing, he has zero interest in YouTube or anything to do with any social media platform. He just goes on his bike trips and enjoys them and completely ignores the Internet. There are no Instagram posts or YouTube videos or Facebook updates documenting his journey. I got the impression that David disapproved of all of that in general. We chatted about that a little bit and how social media can distort your own life and activities. It can have a negative effect in making people worry more about the image they are projecting online rather than the reality. And it can take them out of the present. Rather than simply living honestly in the present moment, they are busy taking pictures and shooting video and thinking about how they are going to package the moment online to impress other people and give a false impression of how amazing and wonderful and glamorous their life is. Of course, personally, I think there are many advantages to social media. I have a much more positive attitude towards it than that. But I acknowledge that there is some validity in that criticism or concern. And social media CAN have that effect if you let it. I think you see elements of that in Kristian’s videos. His videos don’t strike me as a very honest version or reflection of what his trip is really like. His videos and his social media posts are carefully crafted to show everything in the best possible light. And the Wandering Emma videos are similar in some ways. She seems determined to do things that constantly project the image of a woman going to places alone and doing things that the world at large might consider dangerous or risky. That is her self-image. She writes about it in her YouTube About page. She writes, “My passion for travel began a long long time ago, and i was never one for the main tourist destinations. i love the off the beaten path destinations. The places people know little about or places the Media has made everyone afraid to go to.” And that’s her self-image and what she tries to project in her videos. And I think she ends up doing things precisely to show this. She may not really be interested in this or that crowded street of Old Dhaka. But she goes there deliberately to show herself in this unusual place as a woman on her own. And I don’t have a big problem with this attitude or approach. But there is an element of defining your own nature and your own interests in terms of other people. In a weird way, she is letting other people define who she is. She defines herself in terms of what she is NOT, not what she naturally is. She sets out to NOT be a typical tourist. She doesn’t want to follow the beaten path. So she looks at where other people are going and then chooses to go somewhere else. And it’s a bit of a weird thing to do when you truly break it down. It’s one thing to go to places like Bangladesh and Afghanistan and Pakistan because you find them interesting. It’s something else entirely when you go there just because you want to stand out from other people. Her idea is that she is an independent soul and does what she wants. She doesn’t accept the media’s perspective that these places are dangerous. Yet, when she defines what she does based on what other people think and say, she isn’t really being independent. If your identity is based on being different from the norm, then you are still letting the norm define who you are. You are letting outside forces decide who you are and what you do.
Anyway, I’ve been having all these thoughts this last week and writing them down. And now I got to meet David, and he is very interesting for me because he seems to just naturally be the type of person and type of traveller that a lot of other people are pretending to be. What I mean is that Kristian Hansen talks a lot about being on the biggest adventure of his life full of challenges and risk and the unknown. Yet, in reality he’s on a very nice and comfortable holiday fueled by tons of money. David, on the other hand, is out there on the edge for real. He seems to be a true adventurer with no sense of projecting any kind of image or trying to impress other people. He enjoys what he is doing and he has his own interests. And he doesn’t need social media or other people to give him affirmation that what he is doing or who he is is valuable. He just does it.
If I had to put him in a category, he would end up much closer to Jin from South Korea than to Wandering Emma or Kristian Hansen or me. For one thing, he is cycling hard and fast on very limited resources and on an inexpensive bicycle. When David knocked on my door, I quickly put on some clothes and I went outside so that I could see his bike and have a chat with him. And it turned out that just as he was riding today, his bike started to fall apart. He had an accident in the Philippines, I guess, and this damaged his rear derailleur. But he has been doing his best to continue. But today, his chain kept seizing up. The damage to his drive train was so severe that he had to somehow fix it. And when I went outside, I saw that his bicycle was upside down in the guest house parking area, and he had his limited tools out and was trying to bend and twist and otherwise line up his rear derailleur so that it would work again. And he asked me if I was mechanically inclined, hoping that I would be able to fix this problem for him.
I instantly told him that there was no hope of that. I have some mechanical skills. And I have some tools with me. But whatever was going on with his derailleur was beyond my abilities. It had clearly been bent and broken and twisted so often that there was nothing really to fix in the normal sense. He was just grabbing it with a big wrench and twisting and bending the metal and then turning the pedals and trying to change gears with the hope that simply bending it would somehow bring it back into alignment and get it to work again. And I had nothing to offer in this situation. My solution, were I in his shoes, was a very simple one: buy a new derailleur. To me, this derailleur should have been replaced ages ago. It was a piece of junk. And I would have replaced it. The last thing I ever want is to be at the side of the road just banging on a derailleur and twisting it with a wrench and just crossing my fingers that it somehow starts to work again. Derailleurs are precise instruments. For them to work properly, they have to be in excellent condition and precisely aligned. And this derailleur looked to be a standard older Shimano. Assuming you could find the parts, it would cost very little to just replace it. That would be my solution.
To be honest, I had the same reaction to his entire bicycle. I admire people who can ride around the world on a bike like that. But I could never do it. Not a chance. As I said, he was asking me for advice on how to fix his rear derailleur. And my honest advice would have been to just buy a new one. And I would have given the same advice about his whole bike. I was kind of astonished when I saw it. My honest advice for him would have been to just leave this bike behind and get a new one. I wouldn’t even have bothered to fix or replace the derailleur. I would have simply gone to Pekanbaru and bought a new bike. I wouldn’t have been comfortable riding that bike in my home city let alone set off on a world tour through countries like the Philippines and Indonesia. It struck me as a source of neverending repair jobs.
The style of bike matched his style of travel, though. He was very much in the category of the hardcore rider. He liked to cover a lot of distance fast. And to do that, he needed a lightweight bike with thin tires carrying a very light load. Yesterday, he rode all the way from Payakumbuh to Bangkinan on a bicycle with a broken derailleur. And that involved 130 kilometers of steep mountain ascents and descents. If I do ride to Bukittinggi, I will pass through Payakumbuh, and my plan was to take four days to get there. He covered that distance in one day on a broken bicycle. And to my eyes, he looked fresh as a daisy. And he was busy working on his bicycle after moving into his room at this guest house. Had I ridden 130 kilometers in one day on even a flat road, I’d be totally zonked. I would just crash and worry only about getting food and water for the night before collapsing. Any work required on the bike would be postponed to the next day. But David did that ride, and he was still full of energy and working on his bike long into the evening.
And one of the reasons he could do this is that he was riding on some kind of old racing bike with extremely narrow high-pressure tires. I had a chance to pick up his bike, and it felt as light as a feather compared to my beast. And not only that, he had just a rear pannier rack on the back. There was no front pannier rack at all. And I saw no mounting apparatus for a handlebar bag. And that told me that he was travelling superlight with next to no gear or equipment. He would have perhaps two pannier bags on the rear rack and maybe a tent and sleeping pad strapped down on top, and that was it. With no interest in social media, he appeared to have one smartphone (with no SIM card), and that was it. He carried no laptop or cameras or electronics other than his phone. He did have a tent, but he said it was an extremely small and lightweight model. It was probably extremely old, just like his bike. He said that it was in such terrible condition, that it didn’t really keep out rain at all. I haven’t seen it, but I imagine it is some kind of a survival tent, a bivy sack essentially, and not a full tent that you can live in as you camp.
There is no way he could be carrying any kind of a heavy load, because even the pannier rack on the rear was a cheap department store rack. It’s the kind of rack that has the old-school top section that is spring-loaded. I remember using those back in the 1970s and 1980s in Canada. We used those racks for old ten-speed bikes when we rode to school. You would take your gym bag and put it on the rack and then this top spring-loaded portion would hold your gym bag in place for short rides to school on smooth roads. David’s pannier rack was never intended to carry any kind of heavy load let alone a full touring load with camping gear. I was astonished when I saw it. I had written earlier about Jin’s cheap aluminum racks and how they keep breaking and falling off her bike and need to be repaired. The last time one of her racks broke, it caused that terrible crash. And David’s rack seemed to be in the same category. I noticed at one point that one half of this rack was being held in place with a strap. One of the aluminum rods that attached it to the bike had snapped off. David showed it to me. He was still carrying it around with the idea that maybe it could be welded back into place someday. For now, he had just wrapped a strap around it and tightened it down as much as he could to try to hold the pannier rack in place.
The more I looked over David’s bike, the more I saw components that were broken or extremely old. Yet, he had ridden this bike all the way from Macedonia through Greece and then through the Philippines and now through Indonesia. I think he had ridden from Padang all the way to Payakumbuh in one day and then from Payakumbuh to Bangkinan in a second day. And I think the only reason he stopped here instead of riding the remaining sixty kilometers to Pekanbaru is that his rear derailleur seized up. That’s quite a physical and mental achievement. With my knee problem, I’ve been stopped cold at the very thought of even trying to climb up into those mountains. David went all the way up and over them in just two days. He went from sea level to the top and then back down again like it was nothing.
As I was chatting with David, he talked about his future plans. Apparently, he needs to get to Singapore by a certain date. And his trip appears to be winding down and he has thoughts about flying back to Sweden. And he was talking about whether he should bring this bike with him on the plane or perhaps leave it in storage in Malaysia or Singapore so he could return and then continue his journey. Again, my personal opinion was that taking this bike back to Sweden or leaving it anywhere to be picked up again was not worth it. I wouldn’t even consider it. It looked to me like it wouldn’t be worth $25. You’d be lucky to get that much for it if you tried to sell it. I would just finish the trip, leave it behind, and pick up a new bike in Sweden.
A funny thing is that I often have mixed feelings when I encounter a hardcore low-budget cyclist like David. On the one hand, I admire them very much, and I wish I had some of their toughness and focus. While going over David’s bicycle and chatting with him, I was laughing at myself as I thought about my own bike and gear. Compared to him, I was travelling with an entire universe on my bike. I had everything but the kitchen sink. Just my trailer, sitting empty, probably weighs more than his entire bike. My bike, even at 23 or 24 years old, is practically a state-of-the-art limousine or space shuttle compared to what David was riding. For example, just before the pandemic while upgrading my bike in Kuala Lumpur, I had special wheels custom made by a bike shop in Bangkok and then shipped to Malaysia. I did that because I had been experiencing broken spokes over and over, and I was sick of it. I even replaced all the spokes on my old wheels, and even after that, the spokes kept breaking. And I was tired of it. I figured there had to be something wrong with the rims, though I had no idea what the problem could be. So I decided to get brand new wheels with new hubs, new rims and new spokes. And I wanted the strongest rims and spokes I could track down. I wasn’t able to put together the exact dream wheels that I wanted, but I found high-end rims that were designed for touring with heavy loads. And I got the best spokes I could find at the time, and I had the wheels built by a master wheel-builder and then shipped to Malaysia. By the time all was said and done, these two wheels probably cost $500 US. And that’s just the wheels. As I said, I don’t think David could get $25 for his whole bike. Just one of my wheels is probably worth ten times what he could get for his entire bike. And yet, he makes do.
And that’s one way of looking at it. And then I feel a little bit embarrassed about my bike setup. Most people want to travel light, and I generally look very bad from that point of view. I like to have stuff with me, and so I travel heavy. I end up feeling admiration for people like David, and I start to think that I should be more like him. However, there is another way of looking at it. And the longer I chatted with David, the more that other perspective became apparent. And I started to realize that there was a price to be paid for David’s style, and I wouldn’t be willing to pay that price.
For one thing, he wasn’t spending much time anywhere. As I said, I think he rode from Padang to Bangkinan in two days. And those would have been two very long days of hard cycling. And so, he saw little of the region. He would have seen whatever was visible from the main road and that’s it. He didn’t stop anywhere and enjoy the places and go exploring. All he did was ride his bicycle down the main highway for two days. As far as I know, he didn’t spend a single night in the town of Bukittinggi. He certainly didn’t ride around any of the lakes or climb any of the volcanoes or check out any other sights of the region. I couldn’t do that. I spent a long time in the simple town of Dumai, and even after all that time, I felt like I hadn’t seen enough of the town or experienced enough there. And that’s just a nothing kind of town, and I wouldn’t break a sweat spending a month or two there and still enjoy every day. But David, I’m sure, will ride all the way from Pekanbaru to Dumai in one day and then hop on the ferry. He won’t stop in any of the places along the way. He’ll just blow through those towns, and that is moving too fast for me physically. I couldn’t physically even do it. And it’s too fast from the point of view of experiencing where you are.
The other price David ends up paying was represented in the state of his bicycle when he got to Bangkinan. He broke his derailleur way back in the Philippines, and he’s been dealing with that ever since. And his chain kept jamming up on him as he rode yesterday. And that could easily have led to a bad crash or more damage to the bike. He mentioned throughout our chat all kinds of repairs that he had to do along the way. He said that he had to get his wheels aligned twice. That’s because they are extremely thin racing wheels, and they aren’t designed to carry heavy loads on rough roads. His brake pads had worn down to nothing, and the brake mechanism had cut into the rim of his front wheel and dug such a deep groove that the rim was pretty much destroyed and the wheel needed to be replaced. One of the mounting arms for his rear pannier rack snapped off, and he had to jury rig a repair with a strap. He probably spent some miserable nights in his bivy sack survival tent that doesn’t even keep out the rain. He also had to replace the chain on his bike. He did that, and then he found that the chain would skip on his rear cassette. And that’s normal. Chains and cassettes tend to wear together. And when you put on a new chain, they often don’t match the wear pattern on the cassette, and the chain will just skip over the teeth rather than engage with them. So then he had to stop and get a new cassette that would match the new chain.
And now, here in Bangkinan, he was faced with a rear derailleur that didn’t work at all. It was completely jammed. And he talked about needing to replace that front wheel completely. It started to sound like this bicycle was breaking down all the time, and I would quickly become impatient with that kind of life. It’s great to get a bicycle for next to nothing and have that bicycle be a lightweight racing bike. But if it is so old and so lightweight that it isn’t suitable and it keeps breaking down and parts need to be replaced, then the advantage isn’t so clear. From that point of view, I would much rather have my much heavier mountain bike hybrid with its dependable components, 26-inch wheels, and 2-inch tires. I’m not sure that the thin racing bike tires on David’s bike could handle any kind of dirt or gravel road at all. They aren’t designed for that. I could be wrong about that, but I think his bike limits him to smooth pavement and he can rarely follow unpaved dirt or gravel roads.
However, arriving at the TekNong Homestay with a broken rear derailleur did lead to an interesting evening. It turned out that a woman who works at this guest house is related to a professional bicycle mechanic. I’m not sure if it was her husband or father, but while David was twisting and bending his broken derailleur and getting nowhere, someone at the guest house reached out to this bike mechanic, and he suddenly showed up to help out. He was an older man, and when he first got to work, I wasn’t convinced that he knew what he was doing. I felt bad for David at first, because quite often when local people try to help, it can turn out that they have even less skill and knowledge than you do, and they just waste time and make things worse. That has happened to me on multiple occasions, and I often dread the moment when local people dive in to try to help. They often take over the operation, and it’s hard to stop them, and you learn that they actually aren’t experts and have no idea what they’re doing. You just end up wasting a lot of time, and it can be very frustrating.
But in this case, it turned out that this man was the real deal. He knew his stuff. And he really did work in a bicycle shop and had access to tools and parts. He spent a few minutes fiddling around with the derailleur on David’s bike, and then he said that there was no point trying to fix it. It was done. It was broken beyond repair. And, he said, it would be a much better idea to just replace it. I agreed with him wholeheartedly. And I imagined that the next step would be for David to somehow limp and struggle his way the final sixty kilometers to Pekanbaru, where he could possibly get a new derailleur.
However, to my ongoing amazement, this man said he could hop on his scooter, go back to his shop and get a brand new Shimano derailleur for David’s bike. And, even more amazing, the derailleur plus a new cable would cost 150,000 rupiah. And that’s only $10 US. At first, I thought there was some kind of misunderstanding. How could a new derailleur plus cable cost so little? But that really was how much it cost. And then I assumed that there was no way this could turn out to be true. I’ve often been led astray by thin slivers of hope only to see that hope dashed against the cold rocks or reality. I assumed that the man would go off on his scooter and return with a derailleur, but it would turn out to be the wrong one. And there would be a lot of activity and trips back and forth and the end result would be that David would have to go to Pekanbaru at least to get a new derailleur. Hours would have been spent on this, and David would be no farther ahead. No progress would have been made. That’s how it always goes for me.
Yet, more amazement ensued. This man returned with not one but two derailleurs. Both seemed to be Shimano derailleurs. At least they had the Shimano name on them. It’s possible they were local knock-offs, cheaper imitations, but I held and examined both of them, and whether they were genuine Shimano or not, they seemed to be well made. And assuming they matched the bike’s other components, I saw no reason that they wouldn’t work fine. They were both FAR better than the broken thousand-year-old rear derailleur that they would replace. One of the derailleurs appeared to be slightly higher quality and more suitable than the other, and the mechanic told David that this slightly better model would cost 175,000 rupiah as opposed to 150,000 for the other one. Not surprisingly, David said that was fine and gave the green light to install the more expensive one.
And a relatively short time later, this bike mechanic from the heavens, this unexpected gift from the universe, had put on the new derailleur, adjusted it and dialed it in and got it tuned up. And David was back on the road. David had limped into this town on a bike with a shattered derailleur. And within three or four hours of arriving at the guest house, his bike was repaired and sporting a brand new derailleur that matched his overall drive train. It was amazing. And all this work was done right at the guest house. The mechanic did the work right there and drove back and forth from his shop to get the parts and tools he needed. I missed this part of the transaction, but I assume David tried to pay him for his time and labor and expertise. Yet, I don’t think this master mechanic accepted any money. All he wanted was the 175,000 rupiah for the derailleur and cable. And all the work and knowledge and time he applied to the job was free. Amazing.
Not to be overly pessimistic, but I have a strong feeling that if the situation were reversed, and I had limped into some random town on a broken bicycle at the end of a hard day of cycling through mountains, things would NOT have gone so smoothly. I seem to have the knack of making everything as difficult as possible, and my luck seems to be that, even though I get things done, it is never this easy. While the miracle bike mechanic was here, I joked that I wished my bike was broken in some fashion so that I could take advantage of his presence. But, unfortunately, I had barely done any riding, and my bike was in perfect running condition. No repairs were required. I almost wanted to go to my room and break something just so this miracle man could get to work on my bike.
Another very interesting aspect to this whole event is that David seemed to be communicating with everyone around him in Indonesian. Yet, as far as I could tell, he had been in Indonesia for just three or four weeks. How could such a thing be possible, I wondered. I asked David about this, and he told me that he just had a strong interest in languages. In fact, this interest in language seemed to be the driving force behind his travels. He loved languages and I think he spoke several of them. He was interested in grammar. And he knew a lot about the history of languages, and he spoke about how Indonesian had a lot of borrowed words from Arabic and Dutch and was related to Malay, etc. And when we talked about the rhythm of his days on the road, I got the impression that many of the decisions he made were based on putting himself in situations where he could chat with local people and keep learning more of the local language. This, essentially, was his passion. And he was good at it. He says that he gets restless if he is by himself. He gets restless if he stays in one place. And that’s why he keeps moving and spends such long days in the saddle. And he interacts with as many people around him as possible to practice the language.
What I really enjoyed about chatting with David is the way that all of this seemed to come naturally from honest interests on his part. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone with what a hardcore cyclist he was or how cheaply he was able to travel on such an inexpensive bicycle or how little stuff he brought with him. He wasn’t posting YouTube videos talking about how he wanted to be the first person to travel SOLO on a bicycle from X to Y to Z. He didn’t post pictures to Instagram to brag about how light his cycling load was and how travelling light was so much better. He didn’t seem to worry about any kind of image or impressing anyone or striking any kind of pose. He just bought a cheap bike because he didn’t want to spend a lot of money, and I assume, did not want to support a lifestyle of consumerism. And he did his trips this way because he liked to be out in the world all day long learning the local language. He just found language interesting. It all seemed very natural and sincere compared to the sometimes wonky image-conscious world you see in social media with travel vloggers.
As I said to David, I wish that he DID document his travels. It would be amazing to live his trips vicariously through posted videos or something like that. I would eat them up. He’s the kind of person that I wish was active on social media. Despite the profound differences between us, I felt a kinship with him. I felt like he was my kind of guy, and it would be awesome to experience his bike trips through YouTube videos. But he’s just not the type of guy to do anything like that.