Juliana Buhring - This Road I Ride: Sometimes It Takes Losing Everything to Find Yourself

To Hendri Coetzee, who inspired a dream, and Antonio Zullo, who helped me realize it.

People say that what were all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what were really seeking is an experience of being alive.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

CONTENTS

THIS ROAD I RIDE

DECEMBER 22, 2012

A noisy crowd of cyclists and motorcyclists has gathered outside the bar in the small town of Cardito on the periphery of Naples. Everybody wants to take pictures, but what I really want is a good espresso. There are groups of cyclists waiting to meet you along the way, Antonio says into my ear, checking his watch as I knock back a shot of rich, fragrant coffee at the bar. Its a typical Neapolitan bar selling warm cornetti , lottery tickets, and cigarettes, with harsh fluorescent lighting and a small flat-screen TV airing a soccer match. I couldnt be happier. How Ive missed a decent Neapolitan espresso over the last five months!

People will try and stop you to take pictures, but youve just gotta go. Theres no time. Remember, its important you dont stop. Midday you must be in Piazza del Plebiscito. As my logistics manager, Antonio has absorbed most of the stress of my eighteen-thousand-mile around-the-world cycle ride. He has not had a good nights sleep since the start of the endeavor and looks to have matched my own weight loss pound for pound. His curly black hair is unbrushed, and his tired eyes, often squinting as though deep in thought, are hidden behind dark Ray-Bans. He had little idea what he was signing up for when he agreed to manage the logistics for my journey just over a year ago. Then again, neither did I. The finish line cannot come soon enough for either of us.

Okay, Im ready. Wheres Pegasus? I havent seen my bike since Antonio took it off to the garage for safekeeping yesterday. His younger brother, Riccardo, wheels it over, filthy from yesterdays rain, dry mud crusted along the white carbon frame. The seat leather is torn in places, and there are dents and scratches on the paint, but considering the mileage it has done, Pegasus is in fairly good condition. For all the breakdowns and problems, it has gotten me around the world. I stroke the handlebars lovingly. This bicycle was my companion on the road for 152 days. Ive talked to it a lot. One last ride, Pegasus, I mumble now.

The waiting cyclists mount their bikes, and the motorcyclists rev their engines to I Will Survive blasting from a speaker strapped to one of the pillions. Antonio jumps into his blue Renault Clio, just ahead of us. People are whistling and clapping from the street, the apartment windows, and the balconies, shouting, Vai, Julie! Eager to escape from all the noise and attention, I clip into the pedals and push off.

Our procession grows along the last forty miles into Naples. Cyclists from Schiano, the company that donated my bike, join us. We head toward the bike shop, Cicli Caputo, where I first learned how to change a tube and disassemble Pegasus. The shops cyclists, whom I joined on training rides just eight months ago, are waiting for us there. Were now over fifty strong: teenage boys and older seasoned cyclists, amateurs and professionals, all accompanying me to the finish line. The police are on the streets to hold back the traffic as we pass.

The motorcade, blowing musical horns, blocks cars at the junctions so we never have to stop. The atmosphere is jovial. The sun breaks through the clouds as we crest Pozzuoli, where ruins of the former Roman port city mingle with modern apartment complexes. The ocean below is silver gray, the city of Naples a colorful tangle of buildings under the shadow of Vesuvius. I laugh with euphoria and shout to the guys pedaling next to me, What a beautiful day to ride! They nod and give me the thumbs-up.

More cyclists are waiting for us farther along the road: casual biking commuters and several women from the Green Cycle community. The pace slows to accommodate everyone as our ranks continue to swell. The last miles leading to Piazza del Plebiscito follow the new bicycle path along the waterfront and into the city center. The entourage disperses into the waiting crowd of friends and online followers as I pedal across the cobbled square and over the finish line. A Neapolitan flag is thrown around my shoulders. People are clapping and shouting Brava! A makeshift stage has been set up, and someone is standing on it, shouting into a microphone, Juliana is baaaaaack!

Antonio is waiting for me as I climb off my bike, and I give him a giant hug. Brava , baby! he says, pinching my cheek affectionately, as he often does. We did it! It is his victory as much as mine. I may have done the pedaling, but he has done everything to ensure I could.

Im led onto the stage with Pegasus, and a microphone is thrust in front of my face. They obviously want me to say something, but my mind is blank. It all feels so surreal. Ive made it around the world, and I cant quite believe its really over. I can feel the bruised, shredded skin on my thigh from yesterdays fall. My toes are black and blistered with frostbite. My face is raw from sun- and windburn. My body is near collapse. In this moment, standing at the finish line with the crowd clapping and cheering, the difficulties, the sickness, the exhaustion, the cold, the hunger, the pain, and the tears seem like a dream, something that never really happened.

Yet it did happen, against everyones expectationswithout a sponsor or any funding, without a technical or medical support team, with only eight months of training on a bicycle. Nobody believed I would make it, certainly not all the way around the world, averaging 125 miles a day. I was not an athlete or a cyclist. There was nothing to qualify me for such a huge undertaking: nothing but willpower and the determination to finish, no matter what. I had set out to prove that anything is possible, that we can do things that are far bigger than ourselves.

T he journey began five months earlier on a gray morning in late July. Weather reports had predicted rain, and heavy clouds were forming over the crowd of friends and curious strangers gathered in Piazza del Plebiscito, one of the largest squares in Europe. Hedged in by the imposing facade of the seventeenth-century Royal Palace on one side and the neoclassical church of San Francesco di Paola on the other, Napless central piazza seemed a natural starting point for my adventure.

Are you ready? Antonio asked, pushing through the crowd of well-wishers, photographers, and journalists who were waiting to see me off. The question was hypothetical, of course. Could one ever be ready for something like this? According to general opinion, I was not. All I had were a few thousand euros, a bike, and a dream.

A dream that was born out of grief. The kind of grief that makes you older and sadderor that changes you, becoming an impetus for random yet life-changing acts.

I had first met Hendri Coetzee eight years earlier at the Rock Garden nightclub in Kampala. I was standing with my back against the bar, half-painted by the neon lights, talking with a group of friends. Hendri was sipping a vodka Red Bull at the edge of the darkness when our eyes caught and locked together for what seemed like a very long time. It was as though he had no desire or intention to interrupt this unexpected meeting by looking away. How well I remember those eyesclear blue orbs even in the murky light of the club. Slowly he moved toward me, never breaking eye contact, till our faces were just inches apart.