Mongolia X Journal 20 // Driving two wheels // Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world //

This place is enormous, who built the tracks and what horses have ran across them centuries ago, the trails of Genghis Khan and the Nomadic way. I can ride for hours endlessly seeing new horizons ahead of me. On mountain ranges that climb from 1300 meters to 2600 meters, it's a challenge and freedom as one. Every day is the same routine for me, but the environment makes it new, fresh and invigorating. Rain and sun, wind and cold, it all changes around me as I ride Northwest. When the conditions are dry, I can stop and rest on my backpack on the Taiga Steppe grass, other times it raining and wet, cold and windy and I am sweaty, tired and dirty and wouldn't even think of stopping right now - I ride and stay warm. White dots, some in pairs and some in a linear line along the mountains, near streams where tributaries flow back and the surface aquifers provide source of local water. Cycling across, up and over. Grades, altitudes, GPS mapping, peering down at the map while I ride or take my camera out of my chest pocket and snap a picture (above). Occasionally, I encounter a Nomad herding his flock of several dozen obedient sheep and goat tracking in lines together, mulching the grassland with pattering tiny hoofs. I set myself a goal everyday, and try to scribble notes in my journal, pin point the map, and get some good sleep when wind whips and moans around mountains, I have only myself in some areas where it's clear and above the dirt track national highway.

I am writing old and new, thoughts of the Himalayas and present X journal in Mongolia. I turn pages and use my whiteboard marker like a paint brush. My thoughts are clear and punctuate the paper with experiences only a few years ago, I dreamed of. Now, I am living the Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world. If one door closed this summer (making it to Alaska), another door opened (booking a flight to Mongolia); so I take any opportunity to the see the world from a mountain bike. I want something challenging and extreme - dropping in, into culture and new languages, into new ways of life (or ancient reflections as I see here), and this requires a great deal of commitment and it is important despite the hardship, to connect in the Element. Land, animals, terrain, weather and climate all seem as vivid as they can get. I am certainly pushing hard, driving two wheels, and have a great deal ahead of me this summer.

Faraway from Asia where I live (and where many readers are reading this in North America), is home. I dream of going home and traveling by mountain bike across Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, British Columbia before sweeping through the Rockies to Banff, Alberta and crossing the Continental Divide. I remember motorcycle touring through Banff, Alberta in the spring of 1996 and riding up from Billings, Livingston, Bozeman and Butte, Montana on Interstate highway 90, and turning North at I-15 towards Helena, then turned out to Highway 89/200, and continued Northwest towards Freezeout Lake and Choteau, through the Rocky Mountains past Lower Saint Mary Lake and past Flathead National Forest onto Highway 89 to Kalispell, and Highway 93 to Highway 3 in British Columbia to Cranbrook...

Memories of marathon journeys stay with me long after the ride was through. Mongolia by mountain bike (where most people I met suggested "machine" which means use a motorcycle) is definitely more challenging and each passing day, gives me more challenge and more freedom that I had the day before, or the weeks before I came here. So, without regrets I ride for the challenge this summer and support two great foundations IDEAS and ETE and Lynskey Performance, USA for supporting. Hope you enjoy reading the X Journals from Mongolia - More adventures are coming soon!!!

On the trails of Genghis Khan.

Made it ahead of the dust storm, Northwest Mongolia 2012

Sandstorms of western Mongolia