This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,958 for Wednesday 4 October 2023.
Today's show is entitled by packing in 1993 without technology.
It is hosted by nightwise and is about 19 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, nightwise looks back at his very first bike packing adventure and its
absence of technology.
On the edge of real and cyber space, there is one place you can go and you found it looking
to the nightwise.com podcast.
And I got to say after quite a few years of doing this, this might just be a premiere
where you're not in the car or on a walk, but actually on the bike with me.
The wine you hear is the sound of my electrical powered hybrid bike that allows me to fly
around the country while I'm enjoying the scenery, getting some good air and for the first
time recording a podcast.
So it's a mini episode and today I don't want to talk about technology but the absence
of it and to do that, I need to take you back and I need to take you back in time 30 years
which for some of you might be more than your lifetime.
But I want to take you back to a very, very young nightwise that before nightwise was
even nightwise because that didn't happen until 95.
I went on life first adventure.
It was, let me guess, 1993 and my girlfriend at the time had to do a book report for school.
She didn't like the read I did.
So she gave me a book that she had to read called Summer 17 and it's about a boy who
has a difficult home situation and decides to buy a race bike, pack his tent and drive
to Santiago the Comparstellar from Belgium all the way to the south.
The book is a youth book, children are not a children's book but young adult book and it
talks about the adventures that he has and I read it and I immediately fell in love with
it.
I finished it, I read up her book report and I told my parents that for my holiday I was going
to go on an adventure.
So I did.
I got a mountain bike from my brother who just purchased one.
I got some cycling bags, some saddle bags from my girlfriend's brother and I got a map.
Where was I gonna go?
I had no idea, I didn't know if I could bike that well, I didn't know how far I could
bike, I didn't know what to bring, I didn't know anything and these were the days without
the internet where you could not research stuff, you needed a book, you needed a map and
you needed a library.
But what I did figure out is that it was not about the destination, it was all about the journey.
I wanted to travel, I wanted to experience what it would be like to go on a bike ride on an
adventure on my own.
So I calculated that I needed about 80 kilometers a day and started looking at the map and pretty
soon I got interested by the coastline.
Belgian coastline is about 60 kilometers long, it's any tiny up against the North Sea and when
you follow it down you come into the north of France, Dunkirk, Calais, L'Havre and all the way
down to the Omaha and the famous D-Day beaches.
It was perhaps a little bit out of my action range but I thought you know what if I can do
about a hundred K a day and I got about a week, I might be able to pedal up all the way from
Ostende to La Hoffra and that's what I did.
The only thing I had was a map and I went over to the local youth hostel to get a membership card.
I got a list with all the different youth hostels that were out there, I circled them on my map
and using a crude, just a ruler as kind of a crude action radius finder, I plotted a map
from youth hostel to youth hostel and it was adventurous to start that journey the preparation was
all the fun. I started going for bike rides every single night to work on my condition.
Pretty soon I would do 40k and evening without breaking a sweat.
Then I started thinking about packing. What did I need to take, camera, walkman,
clothes, what kind of clothes did I need? I did know that I need a good range, I could
good range pants and overshoes for my shoes when it would be raining because when you're
out on your bike trekking and it starts to rain well it starts to rain and you got to go you got
to go on. So the day of the big adventure came, everything had been packed and repacked and repacked
and repacked for about 1,000 times and this little 5,000 Belgian Frank which is dirt cheap mountain
bike with these hand me down saddle bags was packed with my clothes, my gear and even a tent because
I was afraid that oh my god should I strand somewhere I needed a tent. I'm a sleeping bag.
And I set off on my big adventure. I rode to the train station and took the train towards a
tent and even that first day was fantastic because you got to think about how adventurous it is
to go out and cycle on your own with only a map because I didn't have a cell phone.
There was no wireless internet so I was really on my own every day before every evening.
I had to call a head to the next youth host to book a bed and I had to call home to tell them
where I was and where I was going. My uncle, bless him, had a copy of my route and he knew
every day where he was where I was. He was basically a geography nut and he knew which roads
I was going to take so if I didn't check in they would know where to find the body. They were very
worried that never done that before and I was oblivious to whatever was going to happen to me.
So I set off that first day leaving in a stand cycling along the Belgian coastline.
The sea on my right, the cars and the trams and the people on my left.
First I rode the causeway, the boardwalk, it's correct word and then pretty soon
if I could I even hit the beach, plowing my little bike at an insane speed about 30 kph because
once you get that bike rolling it really rolls along the surf. It was hard to get back to the road
because that's a plow through the beach but those few kilometers on the surf with my tires through
the water that sea literally lapping at my feet it felt fantastic. One of the reasons it felt so great
was because I had prepared. I wanted to make sure that I would have the best time of my life so I
prepared some mixed tapes for myself. Some of them were with a orchestral music, you know,
movie soundtracks to really give it an atmosphere, some pop songs, some were like stuff with
the Vangelis and Enya and God knows what different moods, different mixed tapes and I would prepare
them weeks, at a head, mixed them down, make them ready and I had six or seven tapes with me
in my little walk man and I set off. The first youth hostel I wasn't very lucky. The first ride was
only 40 kilometers from Ostend to I think it's Maria Kèfke. But once I got there it was full.
I had apparently very enthusiastically walked around the back to ask if there was room and
the owner didn't really like that. I was supposed to ring the front door which he didn't answer
because he was in the shower. I walked around the back. The lady thought I was going to stalk her.
It turned into a row. She got mad. I didn't know what to do and she said, I don't have any room.
Go away. So the only youth hostel that I could go to at about I think it was
7 p.m. was the one in Ostend 40 kilometers back again. First night sleeping on Ostend. The
big adventure had begun with already one major incident. But I managed to pedal on and it was a great
adventure and I think that as I'm cycling right now with this hyper modern bike, my smart phone
with the GPS and god knows what, literally sitting on my steering column. I do start to think
if the adventure today, doing the same thing today would be just as adventures that it used to be.
Because there's many stories I can tell. I can tell you about the first stay in Kelle. Because
these are stories that I can only tell you. I have a couple of pictures snapped with my Kodak
camera but I don't have any selfies. I don't have any record of the events. Only the book that I wrote,
the diary that I wrote which is still somewhere and and that's it. Every moment counted because
you know it was the only way to perceive reality, not through your cell phone, not through your camera
but just being there. I can tell you a thousand stories about, I don't know, the first people I
met in the youth hostel in Kelle, dining with an international group of strangers who only met each
other for one night because everybody was off to the next destination the next day. So those
few moments we had were really, they were real, they were they counted. So I can tell you about the
first climb that I did in the pouring mist and rain up the cup bloney behind Kelle. The
suicidal dive down into the village of Escal which I only learned years later was an incredibly
steep descent that I did with an overloaded and poor break. This is entered bike. I can tell you
about the time that I looked for something to eat in Bulonya and I came across this Vietnamese restaurant.
That looked a little bit random. I sat down and I ordered something and the owner looked at me
and the place was deserted and he asked me who said dish. I said yes and he became ecstatic because
his father was saved by a Belgian medic while he was a prisoner of war. So out comes the dad and the
entire family because they had Belgian guests. I dined nearly for free and mits a family of strangers who
took me in as their own. I could tell you about the time that I got my first flat. I was on my way
from Bulonya to Lutripo when my rear tire gave out. I was excited because I had a wrench with me and
I was able to fix this. I need to find that the wrench that I needed to disconnect my tire was not
amongst the gear that I brought with me. So 10 kilometers of pushing my bike towards the nearest town
only to find the bike shop closed. I insisted permanently please fix my bike. I need to get to
Bulonya before the evening. I need to get to Lutripo before the evening's over.
So I had dinner at a local small restaurant. I got talking with the owner and patrons that were there
because it was half restaurant, half bar. And Madam Fools, she was called,
served me royally. I wasn't allowed to pay for my drinks because I was under the ventures she said,
if I could only send her a card once I got to my destination. I promised to do so.
And did when I got to Luhavra. I can talk to you about meeting Vicky. Vicky was a Canadian girl,
21 years old, who was doing that bike through Europe thing on her own for a year.
She was packed like a professional and taught me a lot about the maps that I needed to use
and what I needed to bring with me. Suffice to say, I was packed like a tourist,
which for a trekking traveler is a grave insult. I had too much gear and my bike was a disaster waiting
to happen. I followed her to Eftow to a youth hostel where I was not allowed to sleep inside
because there were three girls already sleeping inside. Two girls from Yugoslavia had booked a bed
in the communal sleeping hall to Canadian girl had booked a bed and I had arrived unannounced.
So, I was more than welcome to pitch my tent in front of the youth hostel. While the old
proprietor explicitly told me, Pozontre, Pozontre, he had defeated all. He did not want me
into mixing with the girls during the night. As the evening fell and everything got quiet,
I heard a soft tap on my tent. A lot of the Yugoslavia girls told me to get inside,
take a bunk and we all slept together until the morning. Each in their separate
bunks because, you know, I was an innocent guy. There are so many stories I can tell you about
that first adventure but it was one because I was so disconnected. I was disconnected from home
and I had no way to call or alert somebody when something was wrong which was exciting
but which was also extremely liberating because the only people you could talk to were the people
that were really, really around you. And that made for beautiful warm and honest conversations.
I would love I had a little flask with water of course and you go through quite a bit of water
if you're cycling 15 or 30 pounds of luggage on your bike in the sun. And whenever I would run out
I would just stop at the side of the road and knock on the door and ask if I could refill my water
bottle. And always you struck up a conversation with people and I've met many, many interesting
people who had each stories to tell. And those were the memories that I needed to store which
brings me to my second thing I mentioned earlier. I needed to pay attention. There was no
looking on my smart phone. None of the world was there. I had to see this and if I wanted to
really experience something I had to pay attention. Pay attention to the landscape, the roads,
the traffic but also to the people that I met. I really enjoyed that. And of course,
that was the music. A fast selection of six, 90 minutes tape, 90 minute tapes that accompanied
me through my voyages. Each playing over and over on my headphones as batteries slowly ran out
and each because I heard them in so many places, giving a soundtrack to some beautiful memories.
I cannot hear curie by Mr. Mr. Or Forever Young by Alphaville without thinking of a thousand
beautiful views, hundreds of places that I passed. People that I saw visage is scenery
memories that had been a custom that had been tied to those, I don't know, 150 songs that I had with me.
Maybe nostalgia makes us look more favorably upon the past and it might be the coming of age.
But on the other hand, there is something to be said about disconnecting and reconnecting with reality.
And maybe as I get older, I start to notice that more and more than in order to really connect
with people, we need to disconnect from the digital world around us to, I don't know, maybe
experience reality more, make memories last in our head not on our camera role to really
taste reality. And use cyberspace as a way to enhance it but not replace it.
Maybe it's just a one-dreams of an old guy thinking back on his glory days when he was
innocent and young and maybe extremely, yeah, probably extremely foolish. But the absence of
technology doesn't mean that there isn't absence of experience, that there isn't absence of the
things that you can remember or see or hear or talk or connect or whatever.
One helps the other but it doesn't need to replace it. So, let that technology work for you instead
the other way around. Bye.
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