The Official Final Post

While our travels ceased around a month ago, our journey is just coming to an end. After flying from Santiago to San Francisco, Trevor and I bicycled 300 miles from Newport, OR back up to Seattle. It was a much shorter stretch than the 1,000 miles we had planned on doing from San Francisco up, but we were both eager to be home and felt ready to begin the the next phase of our respective lives.
We arrived home happy, healthy, and immensely grateful for the journey we had just been on. It is easy for me to identify the single most valuable thing that I am taking away from this trip; that unique and priceless gift I doubt I would have received any other way. It is my deep and wonderful friendship with Trevor. We traveled together for nine months, bicycled some six thousand miles, met scores of new people, formed relationships and said goodbyes. We faced and overcame huge challenges and discomforts, unexpected, unimagined obstacles, and realities of ourselves and our own lives that we never wanted to admit, ever, to anyone. Through all of this shared experience there emerged one foundational element of our friendship and respect for each other: Honesty. Honesty is the base on which grew much affection and camaraderie; it was a wonderful gift to receive and practice.
Since returning home I have struggled. I have felt overwhelmed by all the things I want to or feel I should do. This final blog post, for one, is something I felt should have been done much sooner. There are friends I still haven't seen and boxes I have yet to unpack. Of course, everything comes in its time, and while I still experience that overwhelmed feeling, I am grateful that I haven't done everything in my power to "get it all done." Grateful because one of the changes occurring in me during the trip was a priority shift.
I have lived the last five years of my life with the focus to "get done" as much as possible. And, in reality, I have done quite a lot. There was a problem, however, and that problem was that my relationships were almost always lower in priority than work, or school, or anything else I could think to do at the moment. Traveling with Trev every day I could see how ugly it was when I went on with the attitude that biking however far I'd decided I wanted to bike on a given day was more important than being a friend to him, and yet it felt so natural, and even empowering, to me. Slowly, but surely, my priorities began to shift. It is meaningful and encouraging to me that when Jesus is asked what the most important command is, he replies that it is to know that God is one and to love him with all we are, and then that he volunteers the second most important command: to love our neighbors as ourselves. Two relational imperatives. Getting back to my point, I'm grateful that I haven't gotten all my stuff done because I have been able to choose to invest in some important relationships instead. It has been good.
While we were learning the centrality of relationships, we were also being guided and provided for. Trevor and I certainly worked, saved money, researched, and planned for this adventure, but please believe me when I say that I am thoroughly convinced it was only by the generously granted grace of God that we made it through our journeys, and that we survived them well, and together. We have just gone through a nine-month practicum on not worrying about our lives, what we will eat or drink; nor about our bodies and what we will wear, for life is more than food and the body more than clothes. God abundantly provided all these things, and the strength to carry on, and the love, and the honesty, and the joy.
At the end of our trip, many have asked me if I would ever do something like it again. My answer is definitely yes. I will adventure, with friends, in foreign lands for extended periods of time. I am not, however, looking to do it again any time soon. I'm quite ready to stay home for some years.
Many have also asked what we plan to do next, and it's relatively simple for the both of us to respond. I'll be returning to school to study chemistry (chemical biology eventually) and working much as I have for the last two years, and Trevor will be working rather more, going to India with our church, and applying for a plumbing apprenticeship program while investing much into his relationship with Megan. We're also thinking of renting a place together when Trev returns from India.
Finally, we've gone through the photos that we saved from our journey and selected the 30 that we most enjoy, either for their breath-taking quality or for the story of which they remind us. I hope you thoroughly enjoy them.
Much thanks, again, to those of you who prayed for us, loved on us, and kept up with our travels. It was encouraging to hear from you and read your comments. We are immensely grateful to God for taking care of us every step along the way, and for making the trip greater than either of us ever imagined.
Love,
William and Trevor
Guille y Trebol

Top 30 Bike Trip Pictures

Final Post

There's a final post coming, honest, and this isn't it.

Home!

We're back!
More later...

Newport, OR

I had a fun time with Trevor's family, running on the beach and listening to hours of stories. Trevor and I are with our bicycles again (if you ever ship something with Greyhound you must watch your luggage very carefully!) and preparing to head out from Newport tomorrow! The wind will be in our faces, but we're excited about this last short stretch of our journey.
Thank you for your love and prayers,
William and Trevor

We'll be home sooner than previously planned!

That's right, rather than returning from Oregon to bicycle up the coast from San Francisco, we've decided to bike up from Newport, which should have us home around the first of July! We're excited.
In considering our options for moving forward, neither Trevor nor I wanted to "cop-out" or miss out on some great last part of the adventure that God has in store for us. That said, we didn't want to bike 1,000mi into the kind of headwinds that there are right now blowing down the coast, and seeing as how we're both going up to Newport anyway...
So, that's that. We'll be biking a mere 300mi from Newport to Seattle, and then home!
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Love,
William and Trevor

Pictures!

Thank you for welcoming us back! Trevor and I are apart at the moment, he spending some time with his girlfriend, and me with my father. I don't know if I'm adjusting to being back, but I haven't gone entirely crazy yet.
Without further ado, here are the pictures:

From the High Plains to San Francisco

I got to do some work with my Dad, which was wonderful, but when I went to deposit the check I found I'd kind of forgotten how to do so. It was nothing serious, but while I knew I wasn't supposed to stick the bare check in the machine, I couldn't quite remember what I was supposed to do with it until I looked over at the man next to me and saw him with an envelope. Eureka!
Love,
William and Trevor

And I'm proud to be in America, where I can flush my toilet-paper...

Of course, we haven't actually left the Americas, but so goes the song...
Seriously, though, we're back and happy. The three of us (we met Fernando at the airport) managed to get to the gate with plenty of time to get on the plane, and yet missed our flight. We had, perhaps, too much time. Rather than get on the plane and wait, we went to goof off and spend the last of our Chilean money. Goofing off was so successful, however, that, while we did return to the gate before the moment of departure, it was less than a minute before, and the airplane door was already closed.
So, we missed that flight. The nice Delta folks were generous and booked us on another airline on a flight that would have us arriving in SF twenty minutes earlier than we would have had we not missed the flight. So, despite our efforts, we got home on time.
And now we're here! Megan (Trev's girlfriend) and Gunnar (his ex-roomate) are here and we're enjoying the city with them and my Dad.
Oh, it's so strange and familiar and different and good to be back. I think it'll all work out...:)
We really are doing well and I am indeed grateful to have adventured as we have. And, it's not quite over yet!
Love,
William and Trevor

Packing

Trevor and I are in Santiago again, ready to fly home. We did a lot of work preparing and packaging our bicycles to make them fit within the airline size restrictions. We felt rather good about ourselves until we got to the bus Terminal in Arica.
As Arica is a frontier city, we had to pass through customs again before getting on the bus to Santiago. While offering our bags for inspection, the agent asked us if our oddly shaped bags were bicycles, I replied that they´re luggage. "Are they bicycles?" He asks again. Yes, I reluctantly reply. 5,000 pesos ($12) each. What? Why?
"Bicycles are cargo, the busses don´t transport cargo, they transport luggage, luggage is clothing."
I was feeling a little indignant there. There were people who are checking through huge bags packed full of who-knows-what, bags much larger and heavier than our bicycle packages.
I went back and forth with the customs man a couple of times, pointing out the small size of the bags in relation to others, and each time he countered with, "Luggage is clothing, these are cargo!" He finally threatened that, should we wish it, the bicycles could be sent through a seperate company that could get the bicycles to Santiago three days after our flight and, that said company would happily charge us twice as much per bicycle. That, he advised, would be the proper channel for cargo.
I shut up for about 5 seconds, aware that arriving on time with our bicycles was an incredibly valuable aspect of our journey, but after those five seconds, I burst a little. As the man was walking away, I cried with all my marginalized-foreigner fury, "This is madness!" Without a pause he cried back, "This is Chile!"
We paid the 10,000 pesos for both bikes and are happy to be in Chile. I did tell Trevor that I want to get to the airport with plenty of time for ranting if they try to charge us extra for our bicycles simply because they´re bicycles and not because of their size or weight or anything of that sort.
I still feel a bit of what seems to be righteous indignation over the whole matter...perhaps I need to spend some time talking with God about it.

Our plans on returning to the states do not involve bicycling north right away. We´ll be met at the airport by my Dad and some friends and enjoy a couple of days in San Francisco. From there, Trev will be heading up to Newport, OR with Megan for a family reunion on the 22nd of June. I´ll stay in SF and spend Father´s Day with my Dad for the first time in several years, possibly doing a little work with him while there, and then join Trev and his family in Newport for a couple of days. After the reunion, Trev and I will return to SF to begin the journey back up the coast and expect to arrive around the third week of July.

Soon we´ll be back in our home country. Soon, Trevor and I will spend more time apart than we have in almost 8 months. As difficult as it has been at times, spending so much time together, I will most definitely miss it. We´ve gotten into eachother´s lives in such a good way and I´m a little sad when I think about living with so much distance between us. We are planning to get a place together after Trev gets back from India (did you not know he´s going to India for a couple of weeks in September?).

Anyway, off we go! Vroooooooooooom!
Will and Trev

Safe at Sea Level

We have made it back to sea level and are delighted. The air no longer attempts to suck the very life from my hands after sunset and I don´t get light headed anymore after bending over.
The last stretch of our bicycle journey in South America was beautiful and difficult, and now we´ve a 31hr bus-ride to return to Santiago and catch a plane to the US.
We are excited for all that is to come on our return.
Thank you all for your support, love, and prayers,
William and Trevor

More of Bolivia

Ahhh, and yet we aren't done with Bolivia, just yet. Will and I ran out of money, well the acsess to it by way of having no banks or cash machines since Uyuni. Needing some to contiue our next leg into the Chilean Mountains for seven days, and... missing the last buss into Chile for the night, we decided to bus further into Bolivia, Four hours, (Ah...Bolivian roads...they are truely beyond words) to the city of Oruro. It is really big, the biggest we have seen yet in Bolivia. Something told us when we entered that we didn't need to come quiet this far for a bank. But here we are, with our pick of the crop are far as internet postoffice and banks...Yey civilaization! And yet all these modern convenaces we prefer the smaller towns to the cities. Its funny when we talked about getting here, "So what did we come here for..? Oh yeh...a bank." Thats funny. We left our bikes at the paduana( customes) and took a bus that cost next to nothing. Bolivias are unbelievable friendly and nice. They seem to have their feelings hurt when we talk about leaving the country and going into Chile. They say..." they don't have the salars, the cactuses, the charm." It is true I like Bolivians they are really sweet poeple. I thouroughly enjoyed playing soccer with they on the island of Incahuasi in the Salar de Uyuni. Although the girls humilated me at the sport. I should have seen it coming, but really, I have an excues, my lugs don't usualy burn at sea level the way they do at 3600 mts above. I think any person playing anything remotly physical at such a level should be considerd hard core for just the effort. And now we will enjoy this city of Oruro and then head for the boarder of Chile, to take advantage of the beautiful mountains, hotspiring and the end of our time here.

Salars and Sand

Amigos,
Trevor and I are happy to be done with the Bolivian portion of our trip. It´s been beautiful and the people are quite interesting, but the air is cold and the roads are sandy and we´re just plain excited to get home. Friends, of course, are a huge draw, but it´s also amazing just how enticing things like school and work can seem to us.
As for Bolivia, it really has been wonderful, and we are continually taken care of. The salars really are all salt, in case you might have thought otherwise, big flat sheets of salt generally packed as hard as concrete. The Bolivian roads are as sandy as our experience on the bus led us to believe, and I managed to fall to the ground probably six times the other day trying to stay on my bicycle through the sand (my pedals were also very stiff so it was difficult to click-out).
From here, we're headed into northern Chile for a weeks worth of bicycling through four national forests and will finish it off with a climb over a 15,000ft pass.
We´re excited.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
We're almost done!
William and Trev

And here are some photos!

Traversing the Salars of Bolivia

Welcome to Bolivia

Trevor and I have been off our bicycles for several days enjoying some rest and allowing Trevor´s abrasions to heal. That doesn´t mean, however, that we haven´t been traveling.
We have had a sobering introduction to the nature of Bolivia´s system of roads by way of our bus travels from the border to the city of Potosi, and then to Uyuni, from which we´ll begin bicycling again.
After traveling a little more and doing some intensive route planning, we´ve decided not to go up to Peru after all. We just don´t really have the time for it in this trip, and there´s plenty to enjoy in volcanic northern-Chile.

Oh yes, and here are some wonderful pictures from the last stretch of our trip.

Jujuy Argentina

It´s interesting how the end of the trip doesn´t seem easier than the beginning. It is, in many ways, I suppose, but the reality that my relationships with God and Trev and friends and family are so much more important than this particular journey is...right in my face. While Trev and I have gotten a lot closer during this trip, it still seems...I don´t know. I´m stopping and starting and generally wandering around my mind not sure of what I want to say or how to say it.

I guess the bottom line is, please keep praying for us, that we might finish well and continue to learn to love eachother more.

Thank you!
William and Trevor

Also, thank you for your comments! We found some antiseptic cream, and along with rest days, Trev´s almost completely healed up.

Elevation

Trev and I have been getting high the last few days. Slowly and steadily higher and higher...wouldn´t want to rush such things.
Up at 3,500m (we got to descend about 280m to finish off this days riding) we´re higher than all but a handfull of places in the state of Washington, yet all around is desert with rolling hills and frozen streams (the ones in the shade, anyway).
We do well, and find ourselves about 70km from the southern border of Bolivia. Trev started having some interesting chafing issues, so if anyone can recommend a miracle remedy that we´ll be able to get ahold of here, please do. I´ve suggested butter and chain-lube, but he´s not interested.
Ahh, the journey goes well, but we´ve only got a few weeks left on this continent!
Yikes...
Love,
Will and Trev

Our Last Visit to Tucuman...For Now...

It's been good returning to Tucuman. We've gotten to spend time with Fernando, relax, celebrate Trevor's birthday, visit friends we made on our last visit, and plan for the next portion of our trip. Life always has its difficulties, of course.
I found myself not particularly good at adjusting to life here. There are many opportunities or eager distractions, things that are not important to me, that have come in and taken the place of some things that I really do want to invest time into. Perhaps it's been a bit of a window through which I get to see what some of the difficulties of getting home might be. Either way, it's been good time and a welcome break from cycling.
The next portion of our trip will take us through the last stretch of northern Argentina into Bolivia where we'll ride through the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, and then across the arid and remote high plains. From there we'll swing west to La Paz and then, hopefully, up to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. We didn't want to spend the money necessary to change our tickets and fly out of Lima, so we're going to have to hustle it back to Santiago before the 8th to dismantle our bikes and get ready to return to San Francisco.
And...here are some pictures!

I've been getting some route advice from other cyclists that we've met in our journeys and I think this will be the best route for us to take through Bolivia. Perhaps the most difficult as well.

I was up and antsy quite early, but I could only stand around 10 minutes at a time outside of the tent because of the cold.

Finally in Tucuman, Fernando took us to a futbol game at the local stadium. Their team isn't even in the top division, but the stands were packed out and it was plenty loud. They won, too!

The warmer northern climate seems to support larger bug-life. Look at the needle on that thing.

One of our friends, Pablo, who introduced us to some beautiful bike rides here in Tucuman, made this model of the three of us so that he could travel with us in effigy. I think he did a fantastic job, and even included such details our Crocs.

We never know quite what to expect when we head out for a new leg of our trip, but we have been wonderfully cared for thus far, and I have every reason to believe that as we throw ourselves into new and difficult situations, that great care will continue.
Love,
William and Trevor

A Tucuman Birthday

Not knowing what to expect in an Argentine celebration. I awoke uncertain on my birthday. The night before, Paster Aguirres told me I would learn, how we celebrate birthdays. This comment sent my mind spinning with crazy unsertanty about the day. In Argentine Weddings the groom is egged and feathered and paraded around town in his birthday suite. I got to see this first hand and almost interfered for him until someone told me they were his friends... But, when I arrived downstairs and found two dozen donuts, Facturas as they call them, to my name, my mind was at ease. I knew this was going to be a good day. Oh...and it was glorious. We finished the donuts and later played video games and drank beer in coke together. Hey! don't judge, the coke gave it some badly needed flavor. The gloriously burned CDs for the Playstation were crappy but we made the best of it. Then we watched movies until the party started at a early 10pm. Totally for getting about our massages...Aaaaaaaah, oh well. Really I felt loved the whole day...I don't even speak Spanish and everyone was at my party. Hats, balloons, crazy Spanish dance music, Meat, Empenatas, pizza, Wine and coke together... the list goes on! Really, if I couldn't spend my birthday with my family back home this is were I wanted to be, with my family here. Who cares whether we can't understand each other, words are a secondary and almost unnecessary line of communication, really. Ok, maybe not, But, I felt like a King all day. A king that gets egged and floured and his hair straightened. Thank you Fer, Will, Aguirres Family and Abuala Clerita por el todo feliz! Grasias, I will never forget my twenty eighth cumpianos.

Here are some photos from the day for you to enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Trevor!

Frozen Water

This morning was only the second in which Trevor and I awoke to find the water in our bottles decidedly crystalized. It´s not a particularly welcome discovery considering that the only two warm places around are inside our sleeping bags, and that there´s not really enough warmth to share with the crystalized water.
Fortunately for us, out in the middle of the desert where we´d camped, there are no pesky trees or large bushes to block the sun. So, at the not so early hour of 7:30 when it finally showed itself over the distant hills we enjoyed it´s slow but thorough warming of this side of the planet.
We finished our ride through the beautiful and arid mountain valley in the northern part of the province of Mendoza, and now have plans to bus the rest of the way to Tucuman. We´re hoping to leave as much time and money as possible for the next portion of our trip. The budgeting is getting a bit tighter, but we´re still hoping to make it through the huge salt flats in southern Bolivia, the volcanic desert of north Chile, and up to Macchu Picchu (I really need to check to see if I´m spelling that correctly) before returning to Santiago for our flight out.
It´s strange to feel that our adventure is coming to an end, but as I´ve been reminded by Trev´s girlfriend, we´ll be back in the US next month!

Thank you to all who love and encourage and pray for us.
Will and Trev

Perfect Timing

Trevor and I reminisced a lot as we rode the familiar and arduous road up the Andes. We spotted our old rest points, remembered conversations, and generally appreciated that we hauled so much less gear with us this time. A lot has changed for us since our last visit to this place, and we certainly feel a lot more comfortable traveling.
That said, we are still surprised sometimes, and abundantly grateful for the fortuitous timing of our trip. Had we left one day later, we probably wouldn´t have been able to cross the pass. As it was, we had plenty of adventure.

Up the Andes...Again?!?

Thank you for your love and prayers and comments,
Will and Trev

The Road Warriors Have Arrived!

Trevor and I decided to push ourselves hard from Villarrica and bike along the main north-south highway through Chile in an effort to reach Santiago (some 780km away) as quickly as possible. Here we are! Yesterday afternoon, while still some 340km outside of Santiago, we decided to try to hitch a ride the rest of the way into town. You see, we had a slight head-wind, the weather was crummy, and well...we were tired. We also wanted to spend more time on the other side of the Andes.
It all worked out, and we actually hopped a bus arriving last night. After dinner, we went walking and came across an authentic Chinese restaurant. The family working the restaurant came over to Chile from China six years ago. Trev and I decided to get some takeout for an after-dinner-snack (being the eating machines we are), and walked back to our hostel happy as can be.
Sadly, the food was horrible. I say it was worse than China Express. Trev isn´t quite sure. China Express has better sauce, but this food had real chicken (yes, it was dry). Of course, we ate all the food. We were just dissapointed as we´d been hoping it would be so good that we would want to return for breakfast. I bought a box of cereal instead.
Today, we´ll be getting together with our friend Marina, the British gal we met in our hostel in Ushuaia, and then it´s off to the Andes!

Here are a few photos, too (though I can´t use my normal photo editing software :( )


Bicycling through beautiful pastureland by some gorgeous trees that are almost completely obscured by my head.


Fall has returned! As we bicycled down the west coast at the beginning of our journey, the leaves were changing and showering down around us. Though we´ve had some especially cold days, we never really had a winter. Now that fall is back, it´s special and reminds us of home.


Goodnight, sun.


We´d better find a place to camp soon...


School children in Los Angeles preparing for a parade and enjoying the gringos (us).

Love!
Will and Trev

To Villarrica and Beyond!

Hello dear friends and family,
Trevor, Felipe, and I have arrived in Villarrica, Chile, and are enjoying a couple days of rest. Well, we kind of rested yesterday. We tried to summit the Volcano Villarrica but were stopped by unfavorable conditions. Here are some photos!

Villarrica

From here, we´ve decided to try and push it back to Tucuman, well, to see how far we can get on bicycles and still arrive before May 7th (Trev´s birthday!). It´s about 3,000km (very rough estimate) and I don´t expect us to be able to make it on bikes, but we´ll see :).

We will probably be parting ways with Felipe tomorrow when we head north, so tonight we plan to do some loving on him. Other than that, we´re doing well. I´m in the midst of the too-much-time-on-the-computer haze, and while I´m sure there´s quite a lot I´ve wanted to write here, I can´t think of it at the moment.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the photos. And may we honor, respect, and worship God.

Love,
Will and Trev

Some Forgotten Photos

I uploaded these photos some time ago, but never shared them. So...here they are. The last of our photos from the Careterra Austral in Chile.

The Last of the Careterra Austral

Enjoy!
Will and Trev