Joy Ride: A Bike Odyssey from Alaska to Argentina by Kristen Jokinen documented the author and her husband Ville’s two-year bike trek across the Americas from north to south. This was the third cycling memoir that I have read, following Through Siberia by Accident: A Small Slice of Autobiography by Dervla Murphy and Cycling Across the South Atlantic: An Oceanic Odyssey with a Bicycle by Simon Levell. Jokinen kept her book rather short; I raced through its 266 pages and could easily have enjoyed a book twice the length. One reason I found her book such a can’t-put-down read was that the author was so open about her experiences. The reader might find life on the road exposed to the elements to be predictable and boring if all she did was roll her eyes about the rain or the muddy mountain roads she had to climb. What made her memoir different from the others is that Jokinen told everything exactly how it was, holding nothing back, especially when it came to intimate matters. Living next to nature for two years can do this to you. Jokinen told it all: responding to the call of nature when there are no toilet facilities; always feeling horny for her husband (Kristen and Ville must have a wonderful sex life); and dealing with a bladder infection while riding and what that entails with a woman’s anatomy. Jokinen made the bike odyssey more relatable by inserting such intimacies. While most of us will never embark on such a long trek as theirs, the Jokinens still experienced the same pleasures and challenges as those who may have never even ridden a bicycle. Their odyssey could be enjoyed by everyone, not just cycling enthusiasts.
Jokinen also kept my attention by describing the people she met. Throughout the journey, Kristen and Ville met the most generous people, especially in Mexico and Peru. Random encounters on the roadside often led to invitations to dinner and offers to camp on their hosts’ property. People were happy to share what little they had and never accepted anything in return. Jokinen inserted a dig at Trump’s anti-Mexico rhetoric, since she was cycling through the country during the first Trump presidency. She only had the most gracious things to say about Mexico and its people. Many times during their trip through Central America, the Jokinens disguised their nationalities as Canadians or Finns in fear of what an American identity might provoke.
Jokinen recorded several observations and experiences that I found priceless, and I wanted to record them in their entirety instead of summarizing them with a few words. Here are my favourites, told in chronological order.
Heading south of Prince George, British Columbia:
“Since there were multiple, large, lumber mills along this stretch of highway, most of the passing traffic were giant log-loaded semis. If you have been in a car when one of these passed, loaded as high as a two-story building, you know that the vortex nearly blows you off the road. Imagine what it would feel like to be on an itty-bitty bicycle when one of these monsters thundered past about a foot from your body at sixty miles per hour.”
Near Nanaimo, BC:
“We tried to find a place to camp near Nanaimo not realizing until we arrived that it was a sprawling city. We took a few wrong turns off the freeway, down what we assumed were country roads, arriving in thick brush with an abnormal amount of paper and plastic bags and such flittering about. We pitched the tent, cooked some spaghetti, ate, played a mean game of rummy, and went to sleep. In the morning, we discovered the sign we had missed on the way in: Nanaimo Garbage & Recycling. We camped in a real-life garbage dump. Maybe in my next life I will be born a princess who sleeps in castles and rides in chariots, but until then I am a vagabond who lives in a tent, rides a bicycle, and sleeps in garbage dumps.”
Approaching Vancouver, Jokinen had this revelation:
“At the start of the ride, a day in the seat felt like an eternity. I don’t remember the moment I stopped counting the miles, but I know I noticed them less. My internal voice had been silenced. I was able to still my mind. Thoughts would come and go as I passed through ever-changing landscapes. I felt more peaceful, quiet, and calm. The chaos that had existed in my life before the ride felt far away.”
Cycling through Los Angeles:
“Passing through small towns on bicycles had been challenging. When it was sprawling cities, it became a larger brain drain that weighed on our nerves, but when it was a monolithic metropolis, the size of Los Angeles, it was pure hell. After Malibu, according to Google Maps, we would be riding our bikes through the greater Los Angeles area for just under one hundred miles. We needed to endure one hundred miles of continuous urbanization, solid houses, businesses, highways, freeways, pedestrians, drivers, traffic, and chaos before we’d escape at the other end and arrive at Camp Pendleton. My stomach hurt just thinking about it. Navigating through Los Angeles would be a complete nightmare in a car, but on a bicycle it was a death wish.”
Heading towards Puebla, Mexico:
“It had taken over a year, but I had found peace in the quiet places. Being an extrovert who thrived on friends, gatherings, and noise, I was surprised to find that I had grown to crave the quiet. I had traded listening to friends’ stories and opinions for my own thoughts. It felt as if it were the first time I was listening to myself and who I was.
“I realized I was not really listening before, only thinking about what I wanted to say. But with only Ville on the road, I found myself listening to the world opening, living, breathing, growing, and dying around me. I watched time pass with every pedal stroke and inhalation, looking only as far ahead as I could see and rarely looking behind me. Memories flashed into my mind. Before this adventure, I was so busy I didn’t have the opportunity to dive deep. Now, on long stretches of highway, my mind wandered into depths I had not known existed.”
In the Ecuadorian Andes:
“We had lived in a tent, four bags, a bicycle, and $800 a month. We were the epitome of inefficiency at home and yet efficient here in the developing world. That was why the response we received about our adventure varied greatly from people in the U.S. who couldn’t understand how or why someone would choose to do what we were doing to people south of the Mexican border who told us how fortunate we were to experience so much beauty on such a journey.”
Near the end of their journey at the southern end of the Argentine and Chilean mainland:
“But I had never loved anything more than living in a tent and riding on Blue Bullet with Ville. I could do this forever. I wanted to do this forever. I’d never been happier watching the world slowly glide by, my body in a constant state of sweating, climbing, always and forever climbing. I’d grown to love feasting on oatmeal, peeing on the ground, sleeping on an air mattress, washing my clothes in a sink, always having dirt under my fingernails, sleeping in sex motels, and talking with strangers.
“I never wanted to go back to my life before this.”
When they reached the southern end of their journey they were both laughing and crying at the same time. I was so attached to the couple that I too started to tear up. It was a shame Jokinen included no photos as I would have loved to see when they achieved some of their milestones en route, most significantly their arrival at Ushuaia, Argentina, at the end of their odyssey.