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Vancouver to Moscow - 1 year anniversary!
Jun 2, 2005 14: 46 EST
The guys rowed across the Bering Sea in a boat they bought on e-bay, and went hiking through Siberian wilderness, determined to make it on foot all the way from Vancouver to Moscow.
That's when disaster struck. Colin got dual kidney infection, infected bladder and an acute urethral stricture. The team took a break while Colin awaited surgery in Vancouver. He swore to raise additional funds for the expedition right from the hospital bed and return to Siberia - and did exactly that!
The expedition continued, and everything was going fine: Last week Colin was looking to reunite with Tim and Yulya. But relations took a mysterious turn for the worse: “Irkutsk is the city where the team had intended to reunite, but unfortunately that is no longer the case. Since the last update the team dynamics have degraded and they have decided to continue independently until they reach the outskirts of Moscow. There they will wait for one another and enter the great city together,” was the latest. There you have, expedition drama to the very end.
One year anniversary
Today marks the one year anniversary of the Siberian expedition. The team has traveled 14,000 km by human power during this time. They have gone from the mid summer heat of British Columbia to the coldest inhabited place on earth. They have crossed the Bering Sea by rowboat and have waded through freezing rivers that reached their waist. They have made their way through a land without roads and traveled alongside reindeer herders.
In this past year, the team has faced many challenges - physical, mental, health, interpersonal and others. They are now on the home stretch of the expedition with only several thousand kilometers to go until reaching their destination - Moscow. Here's the latest from the home team:
May 30, 2005 Week 52: A Year on the Road
"On June 1st, our team celebrates a year on the road. On this rainy day in 2004, they left Vancouver to start a journey that many said was impossible. That first day it seemed impossible. We cycled only 40 km, barely making it to the outskirts of Vancouver. Our shiny new gear and a multitude of minor equipment failures made us wonder whether these people were right. But 365 days later after a number of problems (health, personality, logistical, weather, etc) they are close to finishing their goal."
The daily routines
"Today I'd like to describe what currently happens on a typical day since this is a question people frequently ask. I can't comment for Tim and Yulya at the moment because I haven't received an update on their progress for quite some time, but my guess is that it's pretty similar to Colin's day.
He rises at 7AM from his tent, which is forest green so it blends into the woods where he has pitched it. Usually the camp spot is not far from the road on which he is riding. He rarely overnights in towns as he prefers the simpler life of pitching a tent to the expense of a motel room. For breakfast he has coffee and Chinese noodles. Not the most nutritious way to start a long day of cycling but that is soon compensated for in the cafes that he stops in for meals. By 8 AM he has packed up his bike and is on the road."
Closing in on Novosibirsk
"The road right now is beautiful. It is asphalt and rumor has it that the road up to Novosibirsk is some of the nicest they'll encounter enroute to Moscow. Life is certainly a lot easier compared to only a month ago. Yesterday the temperatures were 24C and there were tailwinds helping. Other days have been less pleasant.
There has been a lot of rain and strong headwinds in the last week. Generally it seems that when the weather is nice he has tailwinds and when it is stormy, headwinds impede his progress. Every day he strives to ride 100 to 140 km, with yesterday being a record setting day of 160km. He has been riding for 10 days straight and his next break will be in Novosibirsk, which should be about 4 days away."
Chinese noodles
"Every 20 to 30 km there is a cafe and usually twice a day Colin will stop for food. The food is fairly consistent in price but the quality fluctuates considerable. The menu offers a decent selection of hot meals as well as fruit and chocolate, which are snacks for the road. These meals include borscht, goulash with some sort of meat, mashed potatoes and buckwheat. Desert is often bleen, which are pancakes with sour cream. And refreshments are either tea with lemon or compost, a drink made from stewed fruit.
The end of the riding day is about 7PM. Colin looks for a suitable camp spot to pitch his tent and gets ready for the night. He makes a dinner of Chinese noodles and coffee, and writes 1000 words for the novel he is penning. Before going to sleep he inspects his body for the ticks that are quite prevalent and can carry encephalitis. The next day the routine repeats itself."
Mafia?
Riding through Russia allows one to see and experience the land is a way that wouldn't be possible through the window of a car. Ernest Hemingway says it well when he states "It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motorcar only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle."
But more than the contours of the land it is the play of life that they wander through. Last week, Colin feared that he might be witness to a murder. Two men in suits were dangling a third man off the top of an overpass. He was pleading for his life and they were yelling at him. Finally they pulled him from his perilous position and pushed him into the waiting car. Was this a scene from the shadowy world of the mafia they are consistently warned about?
Stay tuned...
"Hopefully by next week, I'll be able to share some stories from Tim and Yulya with you. They are travelling along the BAM railway, which is a route that one of Colin's previous expedition partners cycled. Tim Cope, who is now travelling 6,200 miles by horseback following the route of Genghis Khan (www.timcopejourneys.com), describes the journey in his book "Off the Rails".
"He details one of the trickiest parts of the BAM route, which was a stretch where the road ended and they had to travel on the railroad tracks. They lashed their bikes together so that they balanced on the rails and then were able to ride them. Tim and Yulya will undoubtedly also have some exciting stories about their travels down the BAM."
No sails, no engines - just raw human energy. From Vancouver to Alaska, across the Bering Sea and into Siberia, two BC adventurers Colin Angus and Tim Harvey have rowed and bicycled their way since June 1. The trip is an 11 month, 18,000 km journey that will take them to Moscow using only human powered modes of transportation.
Colin and Tim started out cycling, the bicycles each carrying 140 lbs of gear, clocking 120 km a day. Grizzly bears and blistering heat were all part of the daily routine, in Yukon they were almost caught in forest fires reducing visibility to 30 meters. In order to stick to their schedule, they decided to canoe from Whitehorse towards Fairbanks along the Yukon River. The voracious forest fires created a river journey that Colin described as "the liquid road to hell". The flames crept up to both sides of the river, creating a constant smoke that obscured the river banks and made breathing difficult. "It's like being in pea soup with iridescent displays of light."
They cooked, ate, and slept in the canoe (bought in Whitehorse for $200). The boat carried more than 700 pounds, including both bikes and all the gear. This made it quite unstable and left little room to sit, let alone sleep. Strong headwinds assaulted the overburdened and undersized canoe for five days. They could not afford to wait a week until the weather system passed. The constant 24 hour daily paddle took on new meaning as they were both forced to paddle the canoe to keep its nose pointed into the waves and stay on a forward course. After nearly sinking and 48 hours without sleep they reached Fairbanks.
In Fairbanks, a rowboat conversion was finalized from a boat purchased on E-Bay only a few months earlier. The 18 ft rowboat was packed solid with 1500 lbs of gear and provisions - everything needed in Siberia. They set off to cross the Bering Sea and immediately almost sank in a storm. After a rescue by a giant Russian vessel, on their second attempt they finally made the crossing. Currently they are waiting to continue their long walk to Moscow.
Colin Angus
Colin Angus and pals traveled the 7,000 km length of the Amazon River in a raft - from the first trickles of melting snow in the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. In five months, they crossed a desert, climbed mountains, shot rapids and ducked bullets, and 119 days after setting out from Lima on Sept. 13, they navigated the entire length of the river.
Based in Vancouver, Colin has spent the last twelve years pursuing a life of adventure. Colin sailed across the Pacific Ocean (much of it solo) as a teenager, organized the self-powered expedition down the Amazon, and most recently completed a descent of the 5,500 km Yenisey River through Mongolia and Siberia.
Colin has authored two books for Random House and co-produced two documentaries for National Geographic, one of which garnered awards at the Banff and Telluride Festivals of Mountain Films.
Tim Harvey
Born and raised in BC, Tim has long enjoyed exploring the coastal wilderness by kayak and canoe. Tim spent seven months in Central America, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency to work as a photographer on biological inventories of threatened marine and wetland ecology.
Image of the team, courtesy of the Expedition.
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2004
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