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"You seem so calm," said the lady at the airline check-in counter. I just shrugged my shoulders and pushed my bottom lip into my top one. "If I were you I'd be so nervous," she said. I felt her imagination pouring over me. I responded casually with a "I don't get nervous until right before," or something to that effect. It's true. I tend not to get very nervous until the very moments before an event. In this case, it was traveling out of the country, something I had never done before. The initial destination was Cartagena, a city in northern part of Colombia. I Minored in Spanish in college, so I was actually excited to try and use what I remembered from the classes I occasionally attended. It hit me when I exited the plane and entered the Colombian airport. There was no more English. I was on my own and there was nobody around to help me. I was explicitly nervous. The trip I was on was a bicycle tour, from Cartagena to Ushuaia, Argentina. This spans the entire length of South America and I was hired as the bicycle mechanic. Once per week we would find ourselves in a hotel, but the remainder of the days were spent outside, in tents. Within the first few days I began to understand that this was going to be a monumental challenge. The days were extremely long. They consisted of waking up around 5am to help the cook prepare breakfast, cleaning up camp, mounting my bicycle, chasing down the last rider, continuing on to the lunch spot, cleaning up lunch, racing ahead of the lead rider in a support vehicle, flagging the route, speeding towards camp, helping to make soup and dinner, and tending client's bicycles that need work. It was chaotic. For the first two weeks I did not stop sweating. The humidity there was something I've never since known. Most nights were spent trying to ignore the droplets dripping down my face, stomach, legs, back, and arms. Others were accompanied by the echoes of music booming through the hills, a tradition I still don't understand. My patience and my desire to continue on were kept alive only by the powerful scenery, my love of the bicycle, and of traveling slowly through a place I've never been. When I'm on a bicycle, I have ample time to soak in the world around me. Saturated by the scenery, I become a part of it as I roll along a lonely road, or through a crowded pueblo. I get to feel the caress of a cool breeze, smell the faint scent of the ocean, or give a "buenos dias" to the local watching in curiosity. I create a relationship with the hill I'm climbing. I learn to appreciate the slow drudgery, because I'll be otherwise miserable. Like a person I love, I learn also to love their flaws. It was like this for 6 months. A constant ballet of work and environment. At times, both were miserable. Making breakfast in the cold, with wet hands, after a night of snow at over 4000 meters in elevation is miserable. Other times were complete bliss. Riding across the Bolivian Salt Flats with Yanez, the cook. Dancing at a club in Cusco with the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Flying over the Nazca lines in a Cessna. Dancing on stage in a circus in Ecuador. Getting a tattoo of a turtle on a bike in Chile. This trip was the greatest and most difficult thing I've ever done. There were times I felt I had achieved true freedom, and others when I felt like I was strapped to a bullet train through paradise. The memories are dear to me, like the adventures had with a best childhood friend. I cherish them and hope we meet again someday.