Day 50: On a Jet Plane to Kindness

May 21st, 2011

Days left to Journey: 2 Days

I’m backlogged on my blog posts, sorry everyone.

What is the biggest waste of money and horrible for the environment? Flying to Singapore for an hour and flying back just to get a tourist visa for Indonesia... I could’ve spent it on donating to our causes, or if I was more selfishly inclined to buy some rockin’ bike gear. In any case, it’s already spent and done. The only positive thing that came out of going to Singapore was a flight attendant. No, I didn’t get a flight attendant’s phone number – I simply told a flight attendant that we were doing this short journey to Singapore to get a tourist visa and do BikeJava. I explained to him, Denny, briefly what it was about. He replied, “Oh that’s good. Sorry I have to go, but I’ll come back so I can practice my English.” I thought nothing of it since it’s a normal response when I tell people I’m an English teacher in Indonesia. At the very end of our short flight he came back with a small bag of Singapore Airlines SWAG (Stuff We All Get – or just ‘free stuff’) and said, “Thank you for caring about our country”. Yes, the free items weren’t extraordinary, but what he said was very touching. Starting BikeJava I thought the campaign would simply be a bike ride, some photos, and an amazing experience. 50 days after the idea began it’s turned into an entirely different thing with sponsors, large donation solicitations, sleep-deprived nights, motivated Indonesians and Americans, and this realization that taking a chance on something is the hardest part of any journey.

                Heather and I returned to Jakarta in the morning and spent the rest of the day doing equipment preparation. There were so many things we had to prepare despite having the main 4 components of any bike-packing trip: a bike, a helmet, panniers, and a pannier rack. Eiger provided us with enough stuff to fill up our panniers without being able to add much else. The issues of a cycle tour change tremendously when you know you don’t have a support vehicle or a way to access supplies easily. If I barely lift the front of my bike (a 2012 Polygon Heist 2.0 bike, by the way) it feels like it will tip back and fall. I had to lighten the load. I wanted to take EVERYTHING!

Pannier Cover + Me = Eiger Turtle

If Worse Comes to Worse We Can Sleep in Our Pannier Covers.

                 The BikeJava preparation has been filled with random acts of kindness from many people I know and many people I never met or met once briefly. For example, I’m a PMI guy (Palang Merah Indonesia or Indonesian Red Cross). I’ve ‘helped’ with my school’s PMI club once in a while; by help, I mean I distract the kids from learning what the coach is teaching them or I try to understand but give up after half an hour. So when Om Iding from the national PMI organization came and gave us a PMI medic bag full of goodies, I readily turned into an over dramatic fan. I was soooo happy! I hugged the bag and thanked him about 10 times. Who hugs a medic bag? I do. I can’t wait to take it home with me to America.