Posts by Isaiah Berg

Sep 14

Mudslides & Mama Z

We leave the Cassiar Highway of British Columbia with heavy hearts. Good old #37 has been just what we needed when we needed it, even if we didn’t ask for it. Small miracles define our days. We ride too quickly and often overlook their occurrence. Yet like our shadows they are never far, and when the days grow old they remind us to reflect and to talk.

Endless roads in British Columbia.

Some days we finished with no energy left to speak into an audio recorder. Ever been high up on a patch of cold highway asphalt in the Cassiar Mountains, chilled to the bone with the sun on a long vacation, and holding a hot plate of rotini and Campbell’s Prime Rib in your hands? You praise God for your good fortune, wolf down your food, and figure that it is best to pass out quickly in your sleeping bag before a bear comes along to change your luck. At least that is how I rationalize all of this fun to myself.

Feast at our abandoned logging camp.

New fall fashion: roadside belts.

It is fun, after all. There are the difficult parts to contend with. Drying off a tent on a cold wet morning is one of them. I still have not mastered the Sleeping Bag Arts so as to not overheat as I fall asleep or freeze my toes by 6AM. Heavy bikes get heavier when the hills get steeper. I smell bad and look questionable, which makes our efforts at spreading goodwill and attracting support a dubious endeavor at times.

: Cold sunlight in the mountains.

Yet to quote George Santayana, this difficult world of ours is “shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.” Riding our first day on the Cassiar Highway, we passed up a pleasant campground to fight the dying light and move another 25 (or so we thought?) kilometers to Jade City. We finished our ride in the pitch black of the mountains, headlamps as our only light, looking like ghosts on some twisted family vacation. Through the bright lights of oncoming big rigs and the real or imagined sounds of large animals beside us and the snow flurries, we made it. You dig deep inside of yourself and lean on your brothers in a profound way after a day like that. Small miracles, like shadows, weren’t even recognizable to us until the day after.

First glorious live potato sighting since Whitehorse.

Claudia's unforgettable rhubarb cake in Jade City, BC.

The family and owners of the Jade Store took us in from our cold tent the next morning. We dodged torrential rains the next day and were given the gift of goulash and potatoes and meatloaf and rhubarb cake and love, all of it thick enough to cut with a knife. We left dry, warm, and well fed only to be cold and hungry once more on the doorstep of Dease Lake. I stopped a man outside of the grocery store in the rain for information; he happened to be a chef at the restaurant just down the street.

Brotherhood: I'll trade peanut butter for your honey.

Before we knew it, we had a tenting spot out of the rain on the back porch of Mama Z’s Jade Boulder Cafe. Zora is the name of the owner of the establishment, and she is a spectacular woman. The chef at Mama Z’s is a man by the name of Chris, who happened to share David’s love of music. Chris has tremendous talent as a chef, and we miss his creations dearly. Chris and Zora were so generous and kind and we cannot thank them enough for giving us a place to stay for a time. We will pay their generosity forward and hope it returns to them tenfold. Torrential rains continued to plague the Cassiar Mountains, and Highway 37 was closed to all cyclists and vehicles alike for a time. We rode on past the highway barriers and closure signs, trusting that we would figure things out when we got there…wherever “there” was. And we did.

Surprise roadside reunion with Zora, one week later. We will miss her.

Mud, water, and debris strewn cross the Cassiar.

Abandoned logging camp of luxury.

One of many mountains.

We rode all but the 35k of the Cassiar Highway that a Ministry of Transportation truck evicted us from. Kindness continued to come from unexpected places, like a campground that placed us in an unbelievable cabin after one of our hardest days of headwinds and climbing. The rest was unforgettable. We tented on questionably bear-ridden rest areas in the freezing cold. We camped inside deserted old logging camp trailers. We consumed disturbing amounts of peanut butter, Oreos and some awfully discolored water. Things could not be better, except perhaps our laundry situation. And maybe that is what keeps us going, why we leave each morning for a new patch of earth to pitch our tent. There is more road before us. David just finished On The Road by Kerouac and found a particular quotation that we would like to share:

It was no longer east-west but magic SOUTH. We saw a vision of the entire Western Hemisphere rock-ribbing clear down to Tierra del Fuego and us flying down the curve of the world into other tropics and other worlds.

Watching the washout before they closed the Barrage Bridge once more.

Something deep inside me feels left behind here on the Cassiar, bound to be picked up again on another ride or drive through these mountains. It’s that feeling that there is too much we didn’t get to see, too many conversations that we didn’t get to have because we’re bound south with such haste. There was time to talk just as there is now time to pause and think and write and hope for a day when we can come back. I hope we have enough of our hearts left in Argentina when we gladly leave so much of them behind.

The view from the cabin outside Iskut at Mountain Shadow.

Sep 7

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Away From Alaska

We learned our lessons after Whitehorse. Surging through 100 mile days in the mountains, only to need frequent rest days and battle mental and physical fatigue, was not a sustainable way to move south. We adopted the maxim “slow, smooth, and steady”; we have been covering ~100 kilometers each day since Whitehorse and have just left the Alaska Highway forever. Originally a simple WWII supply route, the Alaska Highway taught us a great deal.

Here I will present a few of our new Rules as we have learned them:

Riding into the storm.

1. The difficulty of a ride will be inverse to the beauty of the scenery. The more spectacular mountains around you, the better. The more endless timber-forested hills around you, the worse. The Alaska Highway brought us consecutive days of bone-chilling cold and steady downpours. The scenery from Teslin to the Continental Divide was relatively unremarkable while the climbs and conditions were miserable. The day after, the spectacular valleys east of the Divide made for beautiful and sunny riding.

The Continental Divide Lodge saved us from the storm and inundated us with borscht, sandwiches, and more.

2. You can only eat so much, and then some more. Sometimes you arrive at dinnertime cold and hungry. Wielding the appetite of a touring cyclist, you know you are capable of devouring 2,000 calories in a sitting like it was a handful of trail mix. Your hosts seem to know this, and because they get some kind of sick satisfaction from this challenge, they do their very best to overfeed you. Tragedy ensues. You find not one, but two or three bowls of delicious Russian borscht in front of you along with sandwiches. And just when you think you’ve vanquished the foe of hunger forever, a surprise attack of cinnamon rolls brings you to your knees. Or perhaps strawberry rhubarb coffee cake; and don’t forget, you have to finish all of the meat loaf and potatoes. Our Wonderful Hosts 1, Bound South 0. Except everyone wins.

Teslin Bridge in the Yukon.

3. The generosity and goodness of people rises in proportion to how wet and cold and pitiable you are, with few exceptions. This rule is connected to #2; if you are ever asked, “How can I show love to a touring cyclist?” you can correctly respond, “By feeding them.” But this is about more than that. In innumerable ways, people rise to the occasion in the smallest ways to help you when you need it. You don’t always get what you want, but you get what you need. Sometimes you’re looking for some shelter to set up your tent out of the rain or perhaps a simple furnace to dry out your boots. The little gestures of kindness make all of the difference in the world, no matter where you are.

Mud Lake in British Columbia before night falls.

4. Avoid riding a bicycle through a dark night in the mountains, but if you must, enjoy the ride. Despite our best efforts we sometimes underestimate the terrain and overestimate our abilities. The result is a dreaded late arrival. When one has been pedaling since 9AM, you don’t want to be pedaling after 9PM. Once darkness falls the headlamps come on and the world compresses to the patches of mountain road illuminated by your lights. At first it is terrifying; one might pass by a bull moose or grizzly bear on the side of the road without either realizing it. We yelled out a few songs to warn the wildlife and to lift our spirits. We hurtled through the darkness of the Cassiar as the drizzle turned to snow.

This present autumn is fleeing the mountains.

One day off the Alaska, one day on the Cassiar. One day is all it takes to be unforgettable. Winter threatens the northern latitudes and we’re Bound South on the Cassiar as fast as our legs can carry us.

Sep 2

Why We Ride

We were given a very special gift before we left for Alaska: Nooks. We have at our fingertips a small and simple gateway into the endless world of literature and ideas. It fits into pockets that books simply cannot. I do miss the pleasantries of an archaic, physical page turn; yet I find myself hopelessly content with this device that eliminates all of the material distractions from reading. Minimalist high technology has let me dive into Tolstoy, Bloom, and Sun Tzu. I’m currently wading through Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, a real intellectual game changer in understanding neuroscience, psychology, human nature, and social science.

Pinker writes about proximate and ultimate causes. Why am I hungry right now? The proximate cause is my active hypothalamus signaling hormones to me that I could demolish a tub of ice cream. The ultimate cause is that the human body is evolved to seek out scarce food resources and enjoy eating them to survive. My need for ice cream isn’t actually life threatening. Yet the ultimate cause is still manifest in the proximate. Proximate ice cream is a wonderful thing but it is not as profound as the ultimate system of which it is a part.

I think of every day on our bicycles like a big tub of ice cream. Except you lose weight, increase your hunger, and regret eating so much ice cream every day. The proximate cause can seem silly. We are going to this campground or that town (why not something closer?). Sometimes it is less silly, like when we must reach a certain water source or escape a very certain grizzly bear. The proximate envelops the breathtaking peaks of Denali and the miserable windy days outside of Haines Junction. Proximate causes have us climb dozens of mountains, capture hundreds of photos, eat thousands of calories, and move with great intention between lonely old places that we might never see again.

There is a greater ultimate cause that we are about. It does not take away from the magnificence of the proximate. It is the raison d’être. We’re riding our bikes to build a home with Habitat for Humanity. Every photo, story, person, and mile between here and Ushuaia is proximate joy. To build a Habitat home in eastern North Dakota is an ultimate necessity.

This is our dream and our vision. We will pedal across these proximate Americas and attempt to capture their stories and blessings. That journey will come to an end in Argentina while the ultimate work will remain at home. If we are successful in our fundraising, we will return home to North Dakota and volunteer to help build a Bound South house. Our Pan-American bicycle expedition can build windows into the manifold wonders of the world and the walls of a single-family Habitat house. Please help us make a difference.

Aug 29

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Nature Sans Nurture

Whitehorse has embraced us with its warmth and graciousness. We are “actively resting” which is not a misnomer when one is extremely tired and hungry, or when one is taken into a retirement home and fed delicious moose stew, rhubarb pie, and saskatoon berry desserts. Nathan made the acquaintance of Father Jim, the priest of the Catholic church in downtown Whitehorse, and before we knew it we had been housed in a home for retired priests and fed like kings.

Lunch stop on top of a lonely old station wagon.

If only Mother Nature was so kind to us. This present splendor dulls the pain from a week of difficult riding. The road from Tok has been challenging. Nathan has struggled with tendonitis in his knee which led to a hitchhike to Whitehorse to rest and recover. We battled five straight days of 20mph headwinds. Unrelenting, unforgiving, unbelievable headwinds. Our “modest” pace of 65 miles per day was made grueling by the uncooperative attitude of Mother Nature. The wind was so fierce that our bikes would roll to a stop on slight downhills if we ceased to pedal. To give you an example of a day in the life of Bound South: the winds with steep mountain climbs near Haines Junction meant that we began to ride at 9:30AM, rode hard all day, completed 70 miles by 7:00PM, and finished just in time to devour 2,000 calories at a generous grocery store.

Bridge across Destruction Bay

Our last day of riding was a 100 mile trek from our campsite in Haines Junction to the city center of Whitehorse. We were so mentally and physically exhausted that the crosswinds seemed like a gift from above. To be taken in by the community here was a gift from above and this rest is much needed.

EKG of a living day in the Yukon

Ten miles outside of Whitehorse, fierce and cold headwinds appeared. Once more we found ourselves yelling and laughing out of exasperation and exhaustion-induced euphoria. I said, “Don’t forget, David, there are thousands of people out there that envy us right now.” There are certain times when you lose sight of the important things; like when you’re hauling a heavy bike up a steep mountain into a headwind with grizzly bears around.

The diet of Bound South: bagels, peanut butter, and honey.

We’re riding bicycles from Alaska to Argentina, building a house for Habitat for Humanity, and capturing the essence of this spectacular adventure as we go. This is not easy, but it is a privilege and a dream and like any difficult and wonderful thing it is worth doing.

Aug 16

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Audioblog

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Every night, the three of us sit down, turn on a voice recorder, and just talk. We discuss what happened that day, how we felt, who we met, what we ate, and share a few laughs. For us, it serves to capture the memories and moments that might become lost in between the intervals of writing and WiFi access. For you, it might be an entertaining look into each day of ours, as well as an opportunity to hear us speak directly about what we are experiencing on the road. When possible, we will include these audioblog files with our future writings. Enjoy!

Future uploads can be found here.

The slideshow above is a view of our travels along the Denali Highway.

Aug 15

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Milestones & Kindness

Since before this trip began, all of us had our milestones to look forward to: the first day of riding, the day we reach the Rockies, the day we reach the ocean, the day we reach Argentina. Add to that the day we build a house with Habitat in North Dakota. Yet I had my own personal milestone that was a little less inspiring: I was waiting for our first healthy dose of misery.

Breaks were short during a tough ride to Cantwell.

This might seem like a strange and negative milestone but it is important. Anyone who has taken a journey with a group knows that nothing binds you together quite like adversity. I remember during the summer of 2008 with Bike and Build when our negative milestone arrived inside Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We went camping for the first time in the great outdoors, unaware that a severe thunderstorm was about to wreak havoc on our ramshackle campsite at 2AM. By the next morning, we had taken refuge inside of a cinder-block latrine and barely slept while a park ranger recovered some of our belongings that had been blown three miles away in the storm winds. We were exhausted, terrified, and sleep-deprived, but Hurricane Teddy became a legendary and happy memory that brought us closer together in retrospect.

On Saturday, we got cozy with misery. We rode our bikes 100 miles from Trapper’s Creek (just above sea level on a flat valley) to Cantwell, AK in the mountains of Denali. We had planned an early start for a long day of riding, but a missed alarm meant that we weren’t on the road till noon. With serious mountain climbing and heavy touring bicycles, it took all of our strength to maintain a 10mph pace when we included rest stops and refueling. We climbed close to 8000 vertical feet over the course of the day. It was raining and in the low 40s. Cold set in if we stopped. My hands were so cold that I could barely open the Snickers bars necessary to my suffering, and I struggled hopelessly while the wrapper mocked me with its “Fun Size” designation. There was nothing fun about those Snickers bars. Pure life-saving necessity was their redemption. We pushed on and on through the mountains with the mile markers passing by far too slowly. There was no civilization between Trappers Creek and Cantwell. We were tired, hungry, wet, and cold. We had no choice but to make it to Cantwell where we heard of a lodge that could hopefully feed us and take us in.

Rest Day = Best Day.

We arrived in Cantwell at 11PM at night, just as daylight was failing. We turned onto the Denali Highway and after a mile and a cruel little climb we arrived at the Cantwell Lodge which had transitioned into a bar with country music and lots of drinking and smoking. We walked inside with our riding spandex and rain gear, chilled to the bone, white as ghosts. We ordered food for six. After we demolished the best double cheese burger, mountain of potato salad, and spicy wing basket in Alaska, we passed out in a discounted double bunk room.

Bound South's best friend.

We woke up for church on Sunday morning. We has passed Cantwell Bible Church on the way to the Lodge and took a guess on start time of the service. We were ten minutes late in keeping with a proud Berg tradition. Within their congregation of twenty we were a spectacle. A couple in the church offered to take us in for the remaining duration of our rest day. Rest was much needed after the century into Cantwell and we were treated to uncommon kindness. Our hosts were superhuman. While we passed out for an afternoon nap, they went for a vigorous mountain hike. They have a team of more than a dozen sled dogs that are full of joy and vigor. Bob, originally a farmkid from Nebraska, has climbed the Seven Summits and is a tremendous role model in is community. His wife Janie is an accomplished veterinarian, spectacular cook, and nonchalantly describes her adventures mushing a dog sled through the Denali Wilderness in -40 degree temperatures for fun.

This journey is as much as about the people we meet as the places we see. We have been so blessed and now we press eastward, leaving behind the challenges and rare comforts of Cantwell to ride the remote gravel passes of the Denali Highway. The most desolate wilderness of our trip lies between us and Whitehorse.

Aug 13

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A Single Step

We recently met a rather gregarious man in the parking lot of a nondescript gas station just outside Houston, AK. After warning us of the dangers of grizzly bears and Mexico, he quoted to us that, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” He asked us where that phrase originated; I hazarded a guess of Confucius. He scoffed at both our educational credentials and our knowledge of history and informed us that it was actually Marco Polo. Now in Trapper Creek, Google tells me that it was actually Laozi, the mystic philosopher of ancient China. Wherever you are, gregarious man with the ice cream and the pickup truck, take note.

Last sunset in Anchorage.

This journey of many thousand miles has begun. We’re on the long road to Argentina and ~~enjoying~~ experiencing all that it offers. Our loaded bicycles weigh over a hundred pounds and we carry every single gulp of water, repair tool, change of clothing, computer, and piece of food that we need to keep going. It is a beautiful, harsh, surprising, and challenging life of transience. We revel in our intimacy with the landscape and the communities we pass through: kind retirees from Texas who share a few camping supplies with us, a man in an RV who stores our bear bags overnight, or another group of continental bicyclists on their way home. Yet every morning is a leavetaking as we must leave to see a new mountain on the horizon.

The first flat tire of the trip.

We are in Trappers Creek staring ahead at miles of austerity. Rain is forecast incessantly and temperatures will fall as we cross the most remote terrain between us and Whitehorse. The anxiety and exhaustion we feel is shot through with boundless hope. At the beginning and the ending of each day, we have one another and a shared vision and the capability to see it come to fruition.

After a duel of wits, Nathan let me take back a move and his charity cost him victory.

I can’t know what mile 1,000 or 10,000 will be like until I get there. I do know that day two feels right and that there is no place else I would rather be. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are, I hope that you feel the same.

Aug 7

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Respite in British Columbia

We thought we could do a 40-hour-driving-marathon to Alaska. It turns out we couldn’t. I’ll accept the blame; many days of limited sleep leading up to our departure caught up with me and I’m now battling a nasty cold as we drive north. We stopped last night at a Super 8 and are all feeling a little better after a night of sleep. We’ve got 27 hours on the road completed. We’ve got 21 to go!

We want to wish a special happy birthday to Donald Boisvert of Grande Prairie, Alberta. A local man with a great wit and a hearty laugh, he found us attempting (unsuccessfully) to take a dignified photo in front of the GIANT statue of a beaver in Beaverlodge, Alberta. He took a photo with us and chatted with us for a good while. He had extensive knowledge of the area, local businesses, and a variety of famous Canadians, of whom Justin Bieber is our personal favorite, of course.

The road beckons, and we haven’t even started riding yet. Time to get to it.

Aug 5

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Bound North

It’s been years since we first dreamed of this journey. It has been a matter of days since our bicycles were built at Paramount Sports, our expedition gear was provided by Scheels All Sports, and our lives were fit into five small bags.

The thing you miss the most in leaving is love. Our family and community has showered us with a powerful kind of love that is hard to leave and impossible to forget. That is why we’ll come home as soon as our work is done.

We’re on the road to Alaska now. Forty hours later, we will sell our car and take our Surly Trolls on the road. Until then, we’re bound north for Anchorage.

Jul 30

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On Leaving

The Fargo Forum greeted us at our send-off last night, and features us today:

At a send-off party for the brothers Friday evening, Shirley Dykshoorn, executive director of Lake Agassiz Habitat for Humanity said she was excited for the brothers. She said that although build sponsorships have been done, the Berg’s trip is one of a kind.

“It’s really pretty awesome,” she said.

So many old and new faces blessed our time at Oak Grove. This two hour celebration and farewell to family and friends passed too quickly. The Trolls are being built and our last arrangements are being made. Sometimes it is important to set aside the anxieties and exultations of what lies ahead in order to appreciate the richness of these last days at home.