A Sam Wilson: January 2018

31.1.18

Cape Loop XIII

Baja California Sur

When we returned to the airport parking in La Paz everything looked just as we left it, but a little different.

30.1.18

Cape Loop XII

Baja California Sur

But really though, at this point my chain was breaking at least every twenty kilometers, which was starting to get annoying. Going to have to figure that out before another bikepack trip.

29.1.18

Wrapping up a kayak trip on the Missouri River this fall, my friend Sam Gause said he reached a point where his biggest fear was that the trip wouldn’t be enough.

After Todos Santos, we turned north back to La Paz, and I began to finally feel that the weight of our time on bikes was behind us. There were so many unknowns on this tour that I imagined my cup to be much smaller than it was. I thought I would fill it neatly with the challenges and rewards of hundreds of miles of mountain biking in a foreign country, and when I neared the expected capacity, there was still so much more room for living.

25.1.18

Cape Loop X

Baja California Sur

We biked every single day except one, a rest day in Todos Santos.

24.1.18

Cape Loop IX

Baja California Sur

One day, while descending to the Pacific Ocean and Todos Santos, a huge dark cloud began to roll from the north over the Sierra de la Laguna mountains. I thought we would be able to out run the storm as we rode in a general downhill direction on smooth and hard-packed roads. Soon though, I felt the delicate first drops of rain, and just as I was putting my camera inside a drybag, the precipitation ratcheted up several notches of intensity. Alison and I made "oh shit" faces at each other and pushed off under the dark clouds. The rain drops became progressively heavier, until they started to hurt and balls of ice began accumulating on the road. Hail. By this point I was biking with no regard for my chronically breaking chain, or my packing system, which also had a tendency to fall apart with little warning. I ripped down the road in my highest gear, head down, welts forming on my arms for nearly ten kilometers until I hit the other side of the wall. Instantly, the hail ceased. When I wiped the water from my glasses, I saw the sun reflecting on the Pacific Ocean.

23.1.18

Cape Loop VIII

Baja California Sur

I learned just because all our stuff is on bicycles doesn't necessarily mean that we will be on bicycles too. Nonetheless, "bike-pushing" never felt like a chore, rather just a temporary means to get from point A to B. It was enough knowing that soon we would be flying down the mountains once again, shouting "YOOHOO" or "YAHOO" or something like that.

22.1.18

Cape Loop VII

Baja California Sur

We navigated the route with the GPS on our phones. Most nights we biked past dark until we found a campsite invariably dotted with cow pies.

19.1.18

Cape Loop VI

Baja California Sur

The route we took is a small portion of the newly devised Baja Divide trail, a 1700 mile journey up, over, around, under, and over the entire Baja peninsula from San Diego to San José del Cabo. We bit off 300 miles of the Divide route, looped around the very bottom of the peninsula like the dot on an exclamation point.

18.1.18

Cape Loop V

Baja California Sur

Another expectation was to eat a lot of tacos.

Another was miles of deep sand through which we would have to drag our bikes.

All three expectations came true.

17.1.18

Cape Loop IV

Baja California Sur

I had only a few expectations. One was that I would sleep on a beach.

16.1.18

Cape Loop III

Baja California Sur

Although I had never even gone on a bike tour before, I've always thought the idea of biking on dirt all day, camping at night, and repeating for hundreds of miles transcended type one fun. Let's call it type zero fun. Ultimate fun. Fun in concept, fun in execution, fun in memory. A type of fun so fun that even having a chain break eight times could not make a scratch in the fun. A real deep down, in your soul type of fun.