The mushy sidewalks of Amsterdam- moss, oil, used condoms, red bricks. I am walking amongst it on a Tuesday at 4pm, my feet sliding through the mess, my legs heavy with exhaustion, mud rolling off my tires and into the dirt salad. I pass an old lady struggling to get onto her Omafiets. I pass a man my age, fuzzy beard, white eyes, wearing paint stained overalls and putting a new glass panel into the e-bike store. I pass a plastic cart that carries small children to school every day. There too is moss growing on the rounded corners of this little bicycle school-bus. It has been growing since I’ve been gone. Coming home, you notice how everything has changed.

I am pushing my Hudski Doggler through the streets of Amsterdam, not riding it, because it is broken. My chain broke, my derailleur cage is bent, my hanger is bent. Yesterday I returned from six months of bikepacking around Morocco, through death mud and desert sand, up alpine passes and down donkey trail singletrack. I have slept in several dozens of homes and drank thousands of cups of tea. As I walk home I stop for a coffee and still accidentally order in Arabic. I have lived off my bicycle for months now, creeping around the Atlas Mountains, immersed, curious and obsessed with Amazigh culture, granite peaks, football games, Islam, a world so foreign I feel unlike myself. I take pieces of this world and store them in my mind for later use. I have lost everything in this small corner of the world. And now I must find what’s left of myself lurking underneath.

In Tangiers, two days prior, I finished the final scouting mission of the new Route of Caravans. I smoked a cigarette on the water and walked around the medina, asking for cardboard boxes, lazily thinking of gifts, getting ready for my flight home a few hours later. I found pieces of cardboard in a motorcycle store, and taped them to my back before riding to the airport. I ate stale and cold chicken sandwiches and cut, splayed, jigsawed and arranged a bike box in the small Tangiers terminal. The lady boss of the airport was mad at my mess. I ate my final Iftar dinner, (breaking of the fast during Ramadan) with a family sitting next to me that, as customary in Islam, were obsessively generous with their food. I slept a few hours on my camping pad in the corner and flew home at 5am. I was back in Amsterdam at 9.

It was a new experiment, this riding to the airport, packing the bike, flying, unpacking the bike, and riding out of the next airport. I hoped it would add a feeling of continuity to the trip. Jets often break my mind, their shrinking of the world, the abbreviation of culture, the dot and skip from one fantastic world to another. There is no middle ground. There is no gradient. So landing in Amsterdam, building my bike in baggage claim, buying a $6 coffee and riding out, it was supposed to make it all make sense. A world away often will shrink to a few hours and a few hundred bucks on a plane today. Or you can spend months and that same few hundred bucks riding a bike there. As the plane explodes through the sky I stare out the window and wonder what all beneath is being missed. What people and conversations, what animals and camp spots, what food and whimsical celebrations of life.

I build my bike in the baggage claim and talk to a man with two small children who says he misses the days he could do this. I tell him I look forward to the days of actual responsibility, of domestic life, when it isn’t all so chaotic. We shake hands. The kids run on the conveyor belt. My bike has flipped inside the motorcycle box and is poking out the sides. There are new scratches all over the frame. I did my best packing it but it wasn’t enough. The chain is looped in four different ways. I try and undo it but these things never make sense. I use my leatherman and break the quick-link. I re-route the chain, put back on the wheels and pedals, bars and saddle, bags and bottles. I bikepack out. I am still muddy from the last few days of riding in the rain. I haven’t showered in a week. I am an outlier in the clean and efficient Dutch airport, ragged, drained, dirty and on a bicycle.

My girlfriend comes to meet me on her commuter. We ride back to our apartment together. I will finish this intense journey of life and find closure in reaching home. I tell myself this, lying, hoping, reaching. As I pedal out of the airport, my chain snaps and my derailleur goes into my spokes and my tire flats all in one motion. It is raining.

Fuck me.

I cut the chain and make the bike a single speed. I strap the derailleur to the seat stay. I plug the flat. I will not quit now. After months of mud and hard riding and long days, I refuse to quit 20km from home. The chain jumps between cogs and skips and anger is deep in my body from how hard this last ride was, how it can’t ever be easy lately, and I want to just scream. Bo holds the bike as I fix the chain again and again. We will finish the ride together to the apartment. I will celebrate. I will feel so proud as I ride up and finish this long epic around Morocco.

We have one week until we leave for Tanzania. Bo is working there for a few months and we will have a few weeks beforehand to bikepack around the country. We will see incredible things. We will face endless challenges. We will learn facets of life in rural Tanzania and stay with families and experience the world as it can most vividly be, on bicycles, moving through another fantastic world slowly, intimately, genuinely. We will be present as we climb up the rainforest of the Lushoto plateau and scream as we descend down the backside. We will eat avocados straight off the ground and swat mosquitos and chase zebras away from our tents. We will have conversations with strangers and be screamed at by children. We will ride bikes and we will truly live.

But first I must fix my bicycle.

So I walk it to the shop. I buy a new derailleur, a new chain, I replace my hanger, I put on a new tire, I swap the brake pads. I think of the old adage my grandfather harps on me. Take care of your equipment, and it will take care of you. He talks about his car this way. And his boat. But my bicycle? My Yellow Hudski Doggler that has been through hell and back again. This bike, it is my home, my friend, my accomplice, it feels even more important than a car driven through the suburbs. I will in a few months take this bicycle up the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. I will constantly rely on it to get me to the next town with food and shelter. I will ride it in rural pockets of the world with no access to shifter cables and bleed kits and tire sealant. I will not worry about that in the moment though, only now, here at the bike shop, here in Amsterdam. This bike will bring me to the horizon and then home to tell my family a story. It will move when I pedal and show me the world around as I don’t yet know it. This bike will change my life. So today, there is no room for error.

I center the brake pads. I add a few more ounces of sealant. I regrease my axles. I wash my sleeping bag. I get ready to go do it all over again.