Panamerican Peaks Project

Since coming home after finishing my project in Ecuador I have been reviewing all my photos and scanning through my emails and daily notes I took while on the road and on the mountains. Now that I have begun writing the book about my adventure, I realize the need to immerse myself back into the details of certain situations to regain that same perspective of being ‘out there’ as compared to sitting back home and writing from a distance.

I have also been reading several books in the last two months, mostly about happiness and behavioral economics. It fascinates me to understand what incentives we respond to, what influences our decisions and causes us to make mistakes and/or irrational decisions, and what we think will make us happy. I have mused here before on the topic of enjoyment and happiness, mostly focusing on the difference of short-term pleasure (instant gratification) by satisfying simple urges vs. long-lasting happiness after achieving complex goals.

When reviewing my materials I am often struck by how I described the experience back then as compared to how I remember it now. For example, there is much more fatigue and discomfort in those daily notes and emails than what I remember most from certain parts of my trip. It has been known that our long-term memory of experiences can differ substantially from the actual sensory experience at the time, specifically when it comes to the sense of happiness. Cognitive psychologists have studied this experimentally. A typical experimental setting would have volunteering subjects carrying a pager throughout the day; they were asked to record their level of happiness each time when the pager beeped at random intervals. Later they were asked to rate their overall level of happiness when thinking about their lives over the entire period of time. The first is a rating of happiness in the present moment by the experiencing self; the second is a rating of happiness about the past by the remembering self. As Daniel Hahneman has pointed out, there is often a big difference between the experiencing and the remembering self.

If I had been paged at random times throughout my trip, chances are you would find a lot of low happiness recordings: Being tired and thirsty on the road while cycling towards my daily goal; being cold and hungry on the mountain while climbing towards the next camp. Yet, when asked after the fact, my recollection is far more joyous and optimistic – I am genuinely happy about the entire experience. Why is that?

I suspect that there are at least two reasons:
First, the way our memories work at the neurological level is such that we remember emotionally intense situations more clearly than the average, dull moments. The joy of reaching the daily goal or camp, taking that hot shower and eating that satisfying meal is remembered long after the many hours riding towards the horizon on seemingly endless roads will be forgotten. The exciting sight of a grizzly or black bear in Canada is remembered more vividly than the endless tundra or forests during what someone called “counting 3000 miles of trees”. While we forget the multitude of average moments feeling rather tired and uncomfortable, we remember the few exciting moments feeling exhilarated very well.
Second, memories and biases therein are self-reinforcing when recalled frequently. The experiencing self is gone forever shortly after the event; thereafter it is only the remembering self controlling the ‘experience’. And if one favors one emotion over another for whatever reason one tends to remember and associate that emotion more with the actual event even if it wasn’t as strong when it actually happened. If I repeatedly state that I generally felt great while up on the mountain, I will over time be less able to distinguish that stated sentiment from how I really felt up there anticipating getting out of the sleeping bag in the morning into -25 degrees freezing air. Not until I look at my daily notes typed on the iPhone for that day…

The remembering self tells us how happy we (think we) were in the past, the experiencing self tells us how happy we are in the present. One could add the predicting self which tells us how happy we (think we) will be in the future; it obviously plays a huge role when we are planning our journeys or adventures. However, as psychologists like Daniel Gilbert or Dan Ariely have found out, we are notoriously poor predictors of how certain events will impact us emotionally. We predict being deliriously happy after winning the lottery or devastated after a crippling accident. Yet, a few months after such events most people are right back to the level of happiness they had before. So did I fool myself predicting that this adventure would make me happier? Something to analyze in more detail in my book…

High above King Col near 5000m on Mount Logan, with King Peak behind and the Kluance Icefields in the background

It’s been two weeks since I returned home from my grand journey. Time to reconnect with family in Florida, time to unpack everything and time to settle in. Also time to adjust to a more normal life back home and to think back on the past year of adventure. Many friends have expressed to me that this must be a big transition for me – and yes indeed, it is. There are many deep questions: To what extent did the trip impact me, and in which way, shape or form? What did I learn from this trip? How does it change my future life? What now? – Here are some of my emotions during this transition and thoughts on these questions.

Emotions
My very first emotion is that I’m very glad I decided to go on this trip in the first place. I know it sounds like cliché, but it really was the adventure of a lifetime! I remember there were many skeptical voices and at least at one point in the spring of 2009 I felt like almost everyone was advising against the trip – I listened to my heart, trusted my own judgment and gave myself permission to go. I also feel proud to have completed the entire journey, to have reached 12 (of 15) summits, some of them way bigger than anything I’d done before. I am happy that I returned home in good health and without any accidents or crippling equipment failures. People have asked me what is the most important quality to have in order to successfully undertake such a trip. I would say you have to have the determination to start, the perseverance to finish, and a bit of luck to come back unharmed.
I am extremely content and thankful to see that my family and friends are still here for me (as they were throughout the entire journey), almost as if I’d never left. I am also proud to have raised considerable funds for Doctors Without Borders – albeit very unevenly distributed and a bit less than I expected.

Surprises
When I think back, I ask myself whether the trip went off as I expected or whether there were any surprises. In most aspects, it did unfold more or less as I expected. The bike proved to have been a good choice and held up well. I enjoyed the comfort of its ride and I did muster the perseverance to see it through to the end. The mountains turned out to be hard and rewarding, and I was denied just a few (20%) of the summits. (I didn’t expect a 100% success rate, albeit for different reasons.) Technology served me well to communicate with my loved ones and to document the journey. I expected people to be friendly and curious, although sometimes the positive attention I got bordered on overwhelming! I only got sick once during the entire trip (in Bolivia, likely due to contaminated salad at a road-side restaurant) which on balance I think is about as good as you can hope for.
I did not expect South-America to be as tough as it was: First there was the extreme wind in Patagonia, which often scared me, slowed and at least once completely shut me down. Then there were the bad roads and incessant rain of the “Carreterra Austral” in South-Chile. While I had been very lucky with the dry, warm Northern summer 2009 in Alaska and Canada, the following Southern summer was very wet in South Chile. Sometimes I wonder whether I mentally could do the whole trip again (not that I’m planning that, certainly not); now with the knowledge of all that’s ahead I wonder whether I could set out again in Prudhoe Bay and persevere all the way across the Panamerican Peaks down to Ushuaia. I feel I was so excited and unburdened at the beginning, almost with a certain naiveté towards what’s ahead, it helped me break the project down into smaller, more manageable chunks. The recipe: Just take it one day at a time. And enjoy yourself while doing it. I also often found myself in the somewhat paradoxical situation that the less I worried about the little daily challenges along the way, the easier it was to overcome them. (For example where to find food or a place to stay for the night.) It always works out somehow, and pure confidence in this simple fact seems to alleviate many issues.
I certainly did not expect my bike frame to crack, which set me back by a good 2 weeks – but also gave me the opportunity for a surprise visit at home for Valentine’s Day! Chile’s highest mountain (Ojos de Salado) also eluded me, the only defeat in the mountains when the weather was very good! (I thought Ojos would be relatively easy after our success on Aconcagua, but I ran out of air way below Ojos’ summit – just goes to show that high-altitude performance remains a bit of a mystery.)
Unlike North and Central-America, I took several bus rides in South-America to overcome bad roads, bad weather, bad luck with my bike and at the end lack of calendar time.
I enjoyed having to spend little money on food in Central and South America as well as being able to converse a bit better in Spanish in the second half of my trip. Somehow the end of the trip seemed to come too fast, almost overnight, despite the fact that I could clearly anticipate it for many weeks. Just goes to show that you can’t really prepare well for the emotional impact of such a transition, no matter how long you are anticipating it.

Thoughts
Some friend wrote in an email “Welcome back home after this life-changing adventure!” It gave me pause: Was it life-changing? Not really. It didn’t change who I am or what I believe in. I didn’t set out for it to be life-changing, rather more life-celebrating. And what a celebration it was! I had weighed the relative merits of “more time” vs. “more money” prior to this trip, and I clearly decided in favor of more time: During the last one year I had more time to explore new countries, ride more roads, climb more mountains and meet more people doing so than I otherwise would have had in an entire decade!
I think back to my prior analysis of the journey’s likely risks and mitigation (Environmental, Crime, Political, Medical, Traffic). For the most part, I believe I was right on (and I don’t just say this to justify my expectations after the fact). Other than a one-time attempted inner-city robbery (zipper opening of my little backpack in Mendoza, Argentina) I never encountered any dangerous or criminal situation. Other than my one-time bad stomach in Bolivia I never had to open my First-Aid kit for any pills or to tend to any wounds. Really the main threat came from traffic – no wonder over the course of 20,000 km and often in countries where safety standards and practices are often woefully inadequate. If you ask me for examples of when I felt unsafe on the road, I can tell you of one incident in California where I was riding uphill through a right turn with tall grass impeding visibility; a pickup truck came roaring up the road, hugging the inside right turn; the driver must have seen me at the last moment and just barely avoided hitting me while passing at 100 km/h. Or one evening when I rode in the Baja California around dusk on a road with lots of traffic, but without shoulder, and three times trucks approached from behind honking, but not slowing down – had I not seen them in my rear-view mirror and quickly performed emergency exits off the road into the deep grass I would probably not be here now. I once rolled down a hill in British Columbia, doing 65 km/h with an impatient truck driver right behind me, when the whole bike starting wobbling ominously! At the bottom of the hill, after the truck had passed, I rolled out and examined my then near-flat rear tire only to find a one-inch nail sticking in it producing a slow leaking puncture! I was lucky, as that could have ended badly… I saw many wrecks besides the road, some that happened very recently, others just rusty remains of a bad mishap long time ago. Seeing those wrecks down in the ditch made me wonder whether I could potentially get caught up in such an accident, but I trusted my sense that this would statistically be extremely unlikely.
In the mountains there were a few risks, in particular icefall (barely predictable) on Huascaran and lightning (unpredictable) during one thunderstorm on Aconcagua. Overall I think I took reasonable precautions and made conservative and risk-averse decisions. Perhaps more than in other areas, in the mountains my experience helped me with good judgment to stay out of harm’s way.

Rewards
I learned a lot about the 14 countries I visited, particularly those I had not seen before. I learned a lot about myself, my (often complex) motivations, my (often basic) desires, and that I can get along just fine with very few possessions and comforts. (“Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little!” ~Cheng Yen) I was pleased to see my body hold up well to the rigors of so many miles and mountains. I felt I had more fully realized the potential of my legs and lungs, stretching their limits and enjoying the process. It was brilliant to consume huge quantities of food and drinks, while simultaneously only worrying about not losing too much weight! It was great to have so many opportunities to just pitch the tent, drift away to many hours of deep sleep, wake up refreshed, quickly pack up the few things and set off in the cool morning hours for yet another day of unburdened discovery and physical exercise.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the journey was to have met many interesting people (turned into new friends) and oh so many friendly and mostly hospitable strangers (most of which I’ll likely never see again). Many friends (new and old) have sent me emails of encouragement and expressed some form of inspiration through my journey. After innumerable friendly contacts, small gifts, invitations, and encouragement from so many people I can’t help but think that wherever you go there are good human beings, trusting, warm-hearted, genuinely excited to see such an adventure playing out and helping along in small ways. Seeing that broad smile on the faces of the truckers, the road-side workers, the sheepherders and farmers out on their fields, the school-children or business people at the bus stop, or the astounded officials at borders, airports or bus terminals – I can’t help but imagine that this journey touched and resonated with a universal sentiment for freedom, wanderlust and outdoor activity. I can’t help but thinking that some of the many kids who alerted their friends or family about the strange, funny-looking bike they had never seen before (“Mira, Mama, Mira la bici!”) would dream of maybe one day doing some similar such trip. I can’t help but think that some of the hundreds, if not thousands of car passengers hanging out their windows and taking cell-phone pictures of me while passing were reminded of their own big plans and dreams. If my demeanor during those encounters “out there”, my writings and my photos online inspire just a few of the thousands of all these people to take the initiative and live out their own big adventure, then I would see that as a great success. One close friend said he was now thinking bigger in his own adventures after having learned about my project. To inspire others is one of the most gratifying sensations I have had on this journey. So let me close in this spirit, by reminding you that you, too, can dream it, plan it, do it!

A particularly nice day riding along the Pacific Ocean in Southern California just North of Los Angeles