Spokes and Shoes

Intro I am writing this from a room positioned directly over a hardware store in La Union, where the smell of oil and galvanized steel drifts up through the floorboards. The morning began in the stark, thin air of the Pastoruri Glacier complex, under a sun that felt more like Read more

Intro The day began with a puzzle of physics: hauling seventy pounds of aluminium and gear up a fifteen-meter embankment of greenery to reach the main road. By 7:45 AM, the sun was already a dominant force in the Cordillera Blanca, turning the gravel track into a pale, reflective ribbon. Read more

Intro I rolled out of Huaraz this morning with the kind of clean-chain motivation that only follows a scheduled pause. The pavement was hot and the air surprisingly dry as I swapped city traffic for the long, steady grades leading toward the glacier, feeling the chalky grit of road dust Read more

Intro Huaraz is quiet tonight, save for the occasional bark of a street dog and the distant rumble of a truck on the main drag. Today was a scheduled pause, a day for the legs to recover while the brain wrestled with logistics under a relentless, bright sun. The pavement Read more

Intro I’m sitting in my room in Huaraz, my quads humming with a different kind of fatigue than the usual chain-grease grind. Today was supposed to be a rest day, but for a cyclist, ‘rest’ usually just means using a different set of muscles to reach a higher altitude. The Read more

Intro The ride from Carhuaz to Huaraz was never meant to be a marathon, but rather a slow drift south through the heart of the valley. Under a sky that had finally committed to a solid, dominant blue, the 34-kilometer stretch of Route 3N offered a rare moment of ease Read more

Intro The morning in Carhuaz felt different the moment I stepped out without my bike, my legs light but my mind set on a different kind of vertical gain. The sky was a wide, dominant blue, promising a rare day of clarity in the Cordillera Blanca, though the gravel and Read more

Intro It is late in Carhuaz, and my legs are twitching with that specific post-climb restlessness that only the Cordillera Blanca can provide. The day began with a slow start in Chacas under a deceptive blue sky, the paved road ahead promising a 1,500-meter vertical tax before I’d be allowed Read more

Intro The usual morning ritual of checking tire pressure and scrubbing grit from my chain was replaced by the low hum of a village waking up for a holiday. Chacas sat under a sky of non-committal grey-blue, its paved streets still holding the chill of the Cordillera Blanca. Today was Read more

Intro I pulled out of Yanama at 08:15 this morning, my legs still heavy from the previous days in the Cordillera Blanca. The sun was engaged in a cold war with the clouds, casting a flickering light over the loose gravel road that pointed straight up into the mountains. Today Read more