As Will mentioned, I’m the instigator of this harebrained
scheme of ours to bike across Europe… at least as far as Will and Zach are
concerned.
Let me explain the REAL reason why we’re doing this.
I’m finishing up two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in
Armenia. For those of you who don’t know
where that is (trust me, I didn’t either until I found out I was going to be
living there for two years), Armenia is located in the Caucuses region of
Europe—meaning that it lies with one foot in Europe and one foot in Asia. It’s a landlocked country and shares a border
with Iran in the south (don’t worry, that’s actually one of our safe borders!),
Georgia in the north, Turkey to the west (our first closed border), and
Azerbaijan to the east (our second closed border). For the last two years I’ve been teaching
English at a high school in a small town, training teachers in new
methodologies, learning how to speak Armenian, making Armenian friends, and
just generally bumming about.
I came over here with 58 of the most awesome people I have
ever met—my fellow Volunteers, the 18th group of PCVs to come to
Armenia. One of these wonderful people
is my friend Meag. Meag and I lived in
the same village during our two months of training when we first got here, and
quickly became friends when we realized that we both enjoyed being slightly
crazy in the outdoors (she’s a biker who has climbed, I’m a climber who has
biked). Meag was placed in a town about
three hours away from me—which is actually really close, in Peace Corps terms. One day last winter Meag mentioned that she
was planning a trip with a friend of hers from back home—a trip that would
include biking across Europe after we had finished our work in Armenia. I must have wistfully mentioned that taking a
long-distance bike trip was a lifetime goal of mine, because she got very
excited and invited me along. I said
yes.
However, as is wont to happen when one starts to plan two
years in advance, things have changed.
First Meag’s friend dropped out, than my friend who was going to join
us. Somewhere in all this, Zach jumped
on board. Then the unbelievable happened:
Meag got a kick-ass job in Costa Rica…
starting immediately.
Like any sane person, she took it.
So while Will credits (and, I’m sure, will blame when we’re
in our third day of thundershowers or lost in the wilderness of Croatia) me
with this trip… it’s not actually me.
But I’ll take the credit, as long as it’s awesome. Meag can be sure that I’ll be blaming her
when we’re in our third day of thundershowers or lost in the wilderness of
Croatia. But, as far as I’m concerned,
that’s only fair.
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