Progress Rewritten
Wrong Turns
Part 4/12
I planned this trip the way I’ve planned most things in life—which is to say, I didn’t. I liked the romantic notion of riding wherever my fancy took me. No rigid itinerary, no spreadsheets, no backups. Just me, the road, and a spontaneous mind.
It was working. Until it wasn’t.
Leaving the beautiful town of Chester, with its ancient walls and cobbled streets, I was met with the first real tantrum from the Welsh weather. Rain, sideways and unapologetic, soaked everything—me, my bags, and most crucially, my phone. It blinked once and went black. Dead. Nothing.
‘Well shit’
And that’s when it hit me: I don’t have a single phone number memorized. Not one. If I got stranded out here, no signal, no screen, no lifeline—who would I even call? I wouldn’t know how.
For the first time on the trip, panic crept in.
It’s strange, isn’t it? How deeply we’ve fused ourselves to our devices. At some point, the convenience of technology stopped serving us and started hollowing out basic survival skills. I could navigate a GPS but not the countryside.
Eventually, I stumbled into a small café, dripping wet and slightly shaken. I sat for hours, drying my phone with napkins, praying to whatever digital deities oversee waterlogged electronics. Miraculously, it powered back on.
Before it could die again, I opened my contacts and scribbled down ten essential numbers on a napkin. Parents. Friends. I folded the napkin in half, taped it to my handlebars, and went to work committing them to memory like a schoolboy studying for an exam.
It’s amazing how something as small as having the right information can lower your anxiety. Just a handful of phone numbers and I felt ten pounds lighter. Still soaked, but lighter.
The sun peeked out again. I pedaled westward toward Liverpool, a little wiser and a little more prepared, not because of any great spiritual awakening, but because of a soggy napkin with ten names and ten numbers scrawled across it.
It didn’t take long for my lack of planning to strike again.
High on my newfound love for solitude and low on any desire to navigate city traffic, I decided to skirt the edge of Liverpool rather than ride into the center. It felt like a reasonable call at the time. Why tangle with buses, one-way systems, and crowds when I could glide quietly toward the open expanse of the Yorkshire Dales through the suburbs?
Critical error.
At some point, somewhere between glancing down at my napkin numbers and trying to keep an eye on the road, I’d drifted into a rougher part of town. I’m not entirely sure when I noticed it. Maybe it was the shattered glass under my tires. Perhaps it was the clusters of hooded lads slouched on corners, their eyes tracking me. Trackies hung low.
They didn’t say a word. They didn’t need to.
Just a slow, deliberate stare that made it clear: I was not from around here. Not dressed like this. Not riding that.
The realization that I stood out like a Christmas tree in June: a guy in lycra, riding a $3,000 bike, hauling his worldly belongings like a two-wheeled turtle.
I don’t say this with judgment, just… awareness. That this white boy ain’t no fighter.
Up to that point, I hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of a puncture. But suddenly, I could see it all too clearly. Me, stranded, bent over my rear tire with my spandex-clad backside facing the heavens, fumbling to change a flat in clip-in shoes. Not exactly a fast getaway.
Panic tightened its grip.
I could feel old voices rise up in my chest, familiar, familial ones.
“Jonathan, you bloody moron.”
And to be fair, this wasn’t my finest moment.
Not sure what the lesson is here, perhaps, maybe just a little bit more planning might go a long way. As the stoic Seneca once said.
“If a man knows not which port he sails to, no wind is favourable.”
Puncture free, I found my way clear of danger. Possibly just a fancy of my imagination, however, from then on, I spent my evening plotting routes.
—
iStock image
