Joshua Zamrycki's Weblog

I finally got out of London (not a minute too soon) and headed west to visit my friend Julian who lives in Reading. Julian introduced me to the fine traditions of eating minced meat pies, getting drunk in a pub every night, and climbing under old bridges at 4 in the morning (yes, in that order). I was also lucky enough to be in Reading for the much-anticipated solar eclipse of 99! This was such a huge event people had been planning parties all over England for over three years to celebrate. I say I was lucky because I think Reading was the only city in all of England that wasn’t completely covered in clouds when the sun finally started to disappear. We performed all sorts of grammar school science experiments like shining the sun through a pinhole in a piece of cardboard and observing the reflection of the sun in a tub of water. Don’t tell my mom, but I even looked directly at the sun a few times (I’m so naughty). Julian then showed me the best bike shops in town and I spent entirely too much money on a new bike. Have I mentioned that London sucks?

On August 5, I landed in Luton airport just outside of London right before midnight and so, instead of riding my bike at night, I decided to spend my very first night in Britain in style – on the floor of the departure lounge in front of gate 7. A very friendly British family on their way to Ibiza offered me wine and crackers while their kids raced around the terminal in the airport wheelchairs and I mapped out the ride to London from the airport. The next day I mounted all my gear on my bike and headed south for the big city like a bat outta hell. I never realized how far 50 miles was before! My very first day of cycling with all my crap on my bike and I decide to push forward for 50 miles over the hills that make up the nothingness that is the area around London. At least the weather was nice. Who says Britain is always rainy? Every time I had to trudge up a huge hill, doubts would fill my head about my ability to finish this crazy journey. I dreamt of public transportation and changing my airline reservations to an earlier date. I was already honestly thinking about quitting! Needless to say, I finally made it and collapsed under the Marble Arch in downtown London. When my body agreed to start functioning again, I contacted my friend Bob whose vacation just happened to coincide with mine – this proved to be more difficult than we thought because our mobile phones didn’t seem to get along with the British satellites. We finally found each other and decided to see some quality theater seeing as though Spain doesn’t appreciate the modern musical. We saw Chicago and it wasn’t all that great. Something about Brits trying to act with American accents just didn’t fly. OK, next came a fairly huge turning point in my vacation. After only two days in London, someone stole my friggin bicycle! I locked it up nice and tight with my heavy-duty bike lock and, not three hours later, I returned to find neither my bike, my lock, nor my handy-dandy bike computer that tells you how fast you’re going and how far you’ve gone. I quickly decided that London sucks. I stayed for a few more days in some dodgy hostel that was rumored to have bedbugs and did a few touristy things like have staring contests with the wax figures in Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum (Nelson Mandela kicked my butt).

On August 4th, 1999 Joshua Zamrycki was quoted as saying, “Plans rarely end up how they begin”. Not since Bill Gates said, “I think there may be some money in this business” had a greater understatement been uttered. OK, I’ll admit it: I had no idea what I was getting myself into before I set off on my very first “cycling trek” this past summer. Just call me wide-eyed and naive. I had known that I wanted to discover more of the world and have an adventure I wouldn’t forget, so when the idea of this trip first entered my head last spring I immediately logged onto the internet to do some research. I found a few people who had documented their cycling trips so I started to get an idea of how far I could travel in a day, what I should bring with me (and what I shouldn’t), and what to expect more or less. I was on cloud nine imagining myself cycling across some foreign country all by myself, exploring the countryside, meeting new people, having plenty of time for myself, tackling the killer mountains and enjoying the sweeping valleys, spending my nights in a huge empty field alone in my tent, getting some reading done, getting into shape, getting lost and loving it, and just relaxing for a month. My itinerary evolved from a cross-Ireland trek to a San Francisco-Los Angeles route to an Amsterdam-Paris journey to a North Carolina-Florida cycle to an England-Scotland adventure. I eventually settled on the last one and sat down and planned about 30 different bike routes before I finally bought my plane ticket for London. I had never been to any other country in the world besides the US and Spain so I was very excited. I then went out and stocked up on the necessary supplies: a saddlebag for my bike, an air pump and repair kit, the perfect tent, a pretty blue bike helmet, very tight biking shorts, a rain coat, and one of those handy-dandy bike computers that tell you how fast you’re going and how far you’ve gone. I was set and nothing could slow me down. I guess I should have realized my mortality when the airline charged my credit card $8400 for my $84 ticket. Damn technology.

¡Feliz año nuevo y bienvenido al año 2000! Some of you I just spoke to yesterday while others of you haven’t heard from me since last August. To those of you in whose short-term memory I no longer exist I would like to say “I’m sorry” and “I miss you”. I never want to go this long without hearing from you again. Many of you have written (highly concerned) and wanted to know if I was still alive. I just checked and can assure you that I am, so to all of you who I haven’t spoken to since August, this excruciatingly long email should fill you in on what I’ve been up to since then. And to all of you who I just spoke to yesterday, suffer!