for most of dec 2011, i lived out of motorcycle panniers, tracing a winding, varied road across the face of thailand, crossing shortly into myanmar. here are excerpts from short correspondences with T along the way; these are probably the best and most raw logs of the experience:
…
12 dec
we rolled into chiangmai by lunch today. weather and traffic have been kind. went straight from riders cafe to the extreme sports park- bungee jumping and go karting. think my brains havent caught up with my body.
13 dec
roadthoughtdump before i concuss.
consider Living, as maybe a cake of Time- Time as a finite resource which people are inveterate consumers of. the timecake is tasted, chewed on and digested in completely different ways by different people- maybe some have complex intestinal folds and higher absorption rates, others just swallow without tasting, and eject most of it undigested.
which might help me understand why different folks have different reactions to stuff- 4 riders, 4 different thresholds of wonder.
will sleep on this.
13 dec
im the only thai speaker in the team, and its a very mangled street ver of the lang- enough to ask for toilet, road directions, order hot coffee and beg for our lives. been randomly making friends with locals and expanding my vocab haha.
my mind hasnt recovered from the mountains. happy sighs.
15 dec
the mae hong son loop by night is a whole different beast. by last light we still had 160km left to go before mhs town- to clear that, it took 4 hours, alot of dangerous roadside pee stops and one chain bearing scare.
i’d call it a mixture of survival instinct and muscle memory, the way we rode that 160km. the bends are out of some madman’s riding textbook, hairpin off-cambers, peppered with gravelly potholes and sections of road that’ve completely eroded off into space. pitchblack most of the way, because the starlight cant get past the trees.
at one point we stopped and killed the lights - looked up to find the sky had become a giant incandescent soup bowl of every feckin star, dead or alive, too many for the waking eye to behold in one lifetime.
no pictures to describe the moment- believe me, you must hold it in your own hands for yourself.
16 dec
haha these roads have now become too cold for proper thinking… i crashed my bike in a river today, now putting back life into my veins by our campfire.
its too cold, too cold. we’re alternating hot ovaltine and beer!
the bad knee got rebusted, but the fire is doing it a world of good
16 dec
never met a biker whose body wasnt fallin apart!
pai is the perfect zombie apocalypse town, foggy and full of dramatic red brown shrubbery. ah feck, its so cold everyone looks like theyre smoking
24 dec
wettest coldest ride to krabi ever, i nearly passed out from cold- the boys had to help me off the saddle.. but krabi is gorgeous and its almost christmas!!
26 dec
the team split ways after sadao.
i just rolled into ipoh not long ago- bloody punishing ride from krabi to here. suffocating weather, border crossing, terrible jam down NS highway, and having to hunt for un-haunted budget hotels. i feel like a wringed out towel, but happy to be on own time, more or less.
nighttime ipoh is really quiet and looks like a b-grade zombie movie set.. the first cheap hotel i found made me want to run home screaming lor. im at ymca ipoh now, which also looks like zombie movie set, but blockbuster level, so not so bad.
27 dec
maybe hard to believe, but i think im happiest like this. all mashed out from doing stuff.
28dec
HOME RUN! for god knows what reason, i cried like a fuckin puppy in my helmet all the way home from customs…
