I really, really wanted to want to watch the Life of Pi.

I read the book when I was fourteen and had some sweet epiphanies. More importantly, I thought that any token gesture of intellectual involvement in The Bygone Bureau would make me less “that grating editor who won’t stop making jokes” and more “that intellectually astute grating editor who won’t stop making jokes.”

The film was a sieve to attention. I watched the first half and promptly fell asleep, and spent the next three weeks staring guiltily at my external hard drive and telling myself that I should finish watching it. I was easy to ignore.

I finally forced myself through it last weekend, and despite all the shiny bits — and there are some very shiny bits — it justified my trepidation. While the attraction of the film should be Pi’s wild story of survival, I found the scene-setting of the film’s first half more engaging; there are at least smidgeons of character development as Pi grows up, discovers religion, and has the most perfunctory romantic interest possible. The second half of the film is a tiger and a boy sitting on a raft in middle of nothing while the viewer waits for them to die. Neither obliges.

Worse than the tedium is the half-assed philosophy shoehorned in at the conclusion. The story-within-a-story film ends with the narrator, an older Pi, asking his audience, a nameless writer we’ll call “Framing Device,” whether he prefers this story — tigers, adventures, CGI merriment — or the unbelievably depressing “real” story, in which the pacifist Pi watches his mother die on the lifeboat and then forces himself to murder her assailant, the chef who previously refused to serve him vegetarian food.

Of course Framing Device says he prefers the story with the tiger, whereupon Pi nods knowingly and says “So it goes with God.”

The moral is that God prefers the story that you can drop $120 million on to fill with incredibly realistic CGI tigers, or maybe that you should worship a $120-million CGI tiger as your God. Regardless, it’s a poor argument. Of course you’re going to choose the fun fiction over the incredibly depressing reality, but that isn’t a direct allegory to choosing between a materialist view of the world and God. The world is pretty awesome sometimes, and — even if you did find it as bleakly horrible as Pi’s real life — you wouldn’t knowingly choose a God that you believed was a fairy-tale alternative, a story divorced from truth and told for its own sake.

Of course, the film’s impression of what you would do is depressingly simplistic, if we’re to take Framing Device’s position as our stand-in seriously. You’re a namelessly polite bearded man in your mid-thirties, content to nod at everything told to you, and — in moments of great import — smile knowingly and shake your head at how crazy life can get,

This clumsy philosophy and pathetic view of the audience’s intellect further soured an already obligatory viewing experience. If the best inquiry a film can offer after contrasting tiger-filled bliss with complete emotional destruction is “Which do you prefer?”, I’m with Bartleby — I’d prefer not to.

Best Pictures is a short series about this year’s Academy Award-nominated films.

Thank you for signing up for Xtroversion Basic!

You’ll receive: Unlimited in-person talk with family, your cat, and one (1) friend, as well as 120 minutes to respond to authority figures and peers. You will feel deeply uncomfortable in every other situation and halfheartedly joke with your one (1) friend that everyone but you must have gotten some kind of manual. They did, and it was sent to them free when they signed up for Xtroversion Silver.

You may not attend social gatherings larger than two people.

Thank you for upgrading to Xtroversion Silver!

You have unlimited talk with close friends and family, sixty (60) minutes to speak awkwardly to acquaintances, and one (1) uncomfortable minute to stammer at an attractive stranger. You are also entitled to unlimited talk with one (1) love interest, but you may only speak in labored metaphors.
You may attend parties, but only to complain about how much you dislike parties.

Thank you for upgrading to Xtroversion Ivory Tower!

Alongside all the talk included in Xtroversion Silver, you now have SmartSpeak™. Conversations may now consist of referencing books and articles you’ve read. This will leave you momentarily happy, but you’ll be haunted by the sense that you’ve abandoned even token attempts at human connection in your scramble to confirm an intellectual identity.
You drink heavily at parties.

Thank you for upgrading to Xtroversion Gold!

You now enjoy unlimited talk with all peoples. You are now allotted one (1) partner for Deep Talk™, which includes up to six (6) years of long, winding conversations followed by up to 50 years of watching full television series in silence. Your winks are taken seriously.

You may feel quietly superior about choosing not to attend parties.

Thank you for upgrading to Xtroversion Platinum!

You cannot stop speaking. You have 45 minutes to hate yourself for this every day. In these brief moments of clarity you realize that if you could be quiet, just for a few minutes, you would be able to connect with others in a lasting, life-affirming manner. You are contractually unable to do this.
You are required to attend every party.

Thank you for upgrading to Xtroversion Ultra!

You have unlimited talk with every creature. A stenographer’s record of your every word wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, repeatedly. Branches of Western philosophy are rewritten to include you as the basis of ontological exploration. You may speak to God; He is contractually obligated to listen.
You are every party.

Illustration by Kathryn Newman

Hi. You’ve been randomly selected from the pool of confused/misguided women who have accidentally failed to respond to my OkCupid messages. If you could take this short survey, it will help me fine-tune my system to better serve you in the future.

1. You did not respond to my message because:

A. It seemed too genuine

B. You’re afraid of letting good things happen to you

C. Thought you should get in shape first

D. You are trapped under something heavy

2. The language in my message was:

A. Refreshing and open

B. Poignant and telling

C. Really, literature is the only word

D. I am illiterate

3. The message made you feel:

A. Desired and attractive

B. Complete for the first time

C. Regal

D. All Margret Thatcher-y

4. How many drafts of your response did you get through before giving up?

A. 2

B. 4

C. Fighting with my copy editor

D. Still illiterate

5. How awful do you feel for not responding?

A. Like a rat is gnawing on my heart

B. I ran out of tears

C. Not very, but I will look back at this decision in my dotage and weep

D. I feel worse about being still trapped under this heavy thing

6. When you clicked through to my profile, you found it:

A. Intimidatingly attractive

B. Intimidatingly intelligent

C. Intimidatingly eloquent

D. Perfect

7. Should I have included anything else in my message?

A. More, more of everything, your touch

B. Your home address

C. Smelling salts

D. Please be here now

8. If you got another message from me, you would:

A. Respond in seconds

B. Devote your life to crafting the perfect response

C. Show up at my doorstop

D. Date me until you got bored, then hook me up with one of your more attractive friends

9. Your perfect OkCupid message is:

A. My original message

B. This followup survey

C. Cannot decide between A & B

D. Cannot decide between A, B & C

Thank you for taking the time to fill out this survey.

-Winner@WinnerTakesBalls69 on OkCupid

Illustration by Brad Jonas

We pause at the top of the pass to eat animal crackers and oranges. Our breaks to chat and snack have become so regular that “20k?” — the distance between breaks and therefore our parting question — has become a mantra. Staring at the 10,000 kilometers behind us, I imagine the trail of fruit we’ve left behind, a line of mango pits and banana peels stretching across the continent. We’re a misguided Hansel and Gretel if there ever were, though headed toward what witch I couldn’t say.

The road behind me demands explanation, some cathartic statement to codify its lessons. I have nothing. I expected this trip to change my life. It has, but I can’t articulate how. It’s a question I’m willing to leave for later; for now, I’m just ready to go home.

Life on the bike is irreconcilably different from the life that came before. I can remember most days with unparalleled clarity. Each one brings new characters and towns in a rush of unrelenting novelty. Even our routines — stopping for lunch or setting up camp — vary wildly from day to day. With this level of detail, and without a mental shorthand to catalogue it as “just another Wednesday”, each day stretches beyond its bracket, seems to fill a week in memory. After months of this, it seems as if my life has been spent on bike. It’s even more distinct because no aspects of my previous life cross over. I left my friends, hobbies, and jobs behind, and from here that past belongs to a different person. I remember names and faces, dates, and places, but I can’t place myself in it. If I can’t say how this trip has changed me because I can’t recall who I was before.

We finish the crackers, mount our bikes, and ride towards Quito.

Our estimates, as usual, are off. Only 20k to Quito, certainly, but it’s a peculiar city. Nestled in a narrow Andean valley, the city — as a fourth grader might put it — is hot-dog shaped. There are obvious benefits to this: a set of street cars running the length of the city get you close to everything, and it’s hard to get too lost. We soon realize that our destination, Parque de la Carolina, is on the far side of the city.

It takes two hours to navigate the labyrinthine roads. When we reach the park, we find a circus of street vendors and screaming children. We didn’t expect fanfare, but this is particularly anticlimactic. We wheel our bikes to an open bench, grab cups of fruit and cream from a stand nearby, and watch families enjoying their Sunday at the park. It comes together then, makes sense that we’ve ended out trip as we lived it: dirty, spandexed, and ignored.

Me and Sam in Plaza de la Independencia in Quito. We're holding a shirt from Hostel Ushuai, which we carried for 6,000 miles.

We find a hostel, clean up, and set about finding food. The hostel owner, an aggressively friendly man in a blue-and-white track suit, points us to the sushi restaurant next door. The restaurant is empty but for two girls in their early twenties. My ears perk when I hear them speaking English. After months of stumbling through my broken Spanish in a quixotic attempt to charm, this seems like a stroke of grand luck, a final chance at a traveling tryst. A quick glance at Sam confirms his shared enthusiasm.

As I fumble with my chopsticks, wondering if I can open a conversation with “so we just biked here from the Southern tip of South America” without sounding like an ass (hint: I can’t), Sam clears his throat, smiles, and loudly asks, “Where are you guys from?”

The girls turn to us, and their faces quickly shift from surprise to disappointment. “Canada,” one replies. “We’re here for school.” We press the issue, but they don’t see the charm of scruffy, fish-guzzling man. They’re exuberant when, after a scant minute, their friends arrive, sit down, and form a wall of disinterested women. Sam and I turn back to our sushi, thwarted. We pay as soon as possible. Sam leaves to wander Quito in the rain while I retired to the hotel room to feel bad about myself.

We wake up early to meet a stranger in the park. His name is Axel. We found him through WarmShowers.org, a couch surfing analog for touring cyclists, and he’s offered to let us camp on his patio until we leave on Wednesday. We’re only in the park for a few minutes before he pulls up on his bike. He’s in his early thirties, with a shaved head and a rakish goatee. We exchange enthusiastic handshakes, talk about our trip for a few minutes, and mount our bikes to follow him home.

As soon as we’re in the gate, we’re introduced to Andrea, Axel’s girlfriend and owner of the apartment. We soon find that Axel himself is a visiting cyclist, though one infinitely more skilled at the traveler’s tryst than we. He met Andrea on the road three months ago, the two fell madly love, and he’s been living here since. We also meet Jeanie, one of Andrea’s friends, who’s sleeping on the couch while her divorce goes through. Sven arrives the next day, which means there will be six people staying in this one-room apartment.

It’s magical. Andrea and Axel are incredibly kind, and their obvious excitement of each other is infectious. Between our sojourns into the city for bike-sized boxes, we enjoy home-cooked Ecuadorian meals, impromptu lessons on Spanish grammar, and a going away party. After three fantastic days, it’s finally time to leave.

It’s almost 2:45 in the morning. I’m lying awake on the floor, listening to the rain, when my watch alarm goes off. Our flight leaves at seven, and we need to be at the airport by three; our taxi will be here in a few minutes. Sam and I try to move quietly, but our rustling soon wakes the sleepers. We’re rushing to get out in time, dragging and re-taping boxes (they’re more tape than cardboard now), juggling snacks, all the while saying goodbye to all of our new friends.

It’s the most difficult to say goodbye is to Sven, our traveling companion of three weeks. Though we little context for each other off the bike, we’ve a shared a strange and transformative experience, and I’m struck again with the need to say something grandiose. This is where the story should hit a dramatic high note, where the flurry of experience is distilled into meaning.

Of course it doesn’t happen. In our fumble to leave the apartment Sam drops a bottle of chocolate milk, and we spend out last minutes with Sven picking glass off the floor. When we hug goodbye we trade goofy grins, not words of wisdom. It’s a reminder that real adventures don’t wrap up a character arc with a tidy emotional catharsis. They just end.

Sam and I climb into the taxi, wave a final goodbye, and drive into the empty streets. We’re home 24 hours later.

Sven, me, Sam, and Axel

Hey kid. You may be huge, but you’ve made a pretty good living at the bottom of the heap: you’ve got an end spot at the hip lunch table and when Jennie Perkins laughs at you you’re laughing at yourself, so in a way she’s laughing with you.

Chicken out now and that all disappears. So buck up, tighten the straps of your hand-me-down backpack, and get ready to follow Grant and his friends on one last trip into the abandoned chemical plant before the city tears it down. Keep these few things in mind and you might even live to whine about it.

Do: Lag behind
No one expects you to keep up. Let Grant and his friends cross the rickety bridge first. Just yell “Hey guys, wait up,” “Come on, guys,” and “My pants!” They’ll keep your dignity, you’ll keep your limbs.

Don’t: Look behind
Because you’ll what? Outrun whatever’s chasing you? And honestly, you’re seventh graders. Who’s stalking you? You’re walking towards your gristly death, not running away from it.

Do: Eat tasty looking things you find
Life’s too short. Especially yours.

Don’t: Do anything on a dare.
Is the slim chance of social acceptance worth walking across the slippery pipe that runs over the toxic river? Of course. Do you have a chance in hell of making it to the other side? No. No you don’t.

Do: Act smart
Don’t just whine, “This isn’t a good idea.” It isn’t. We know. Move on. Wow them with “We can use that potato to power our flashlights” or “We can mix some of these old chemicals together and burn the lock off this ominous, rusted hatch in the Unethical Experiments Lab.”

Don’t: Sound smart.
Make the cool kids feel dumb and they’ll make you feel slow, helpless, and trapped in a well.

Do: Bring a bag lunch
You won’t eat it, but when you’re being chased up a ladder and a half-human blob beast grabs at you, it’ll rip open and give them a facefull of processed meat. Plus it’ll make your mom happy.

Do: Befriend your captors
Outcasts trust outcasts. They were turned into a monster by an experiment gone wrong? Trix cereal made you the boy and a half you are today! They were abandoned when they didn’t sweat high fructose corn syrup? Grant just left you to die!

Do: Give a speech
Everyone stares up at the catwalk in shocked silence, their eyes drawn to the switch in your hand. Push the red button and the room below is flooded with Chemical-X, melting Grant and friends while giving Blobbo the chemicals he needs to survive. Walk away and your only real friend dies. It’s only time in your life people will listen to you monologue.

Tell them how the smallest tragedies accumulate silently, like snow in the night, until your life is blanketed and you cannot see the ground. Tell them how you’ve compromised yourself for a smile, how you’ve worked so hard and been given so little. Tell how right the switch feels in your hand right now. Tell them the sound of rushing Chemical-X.

Don’t: Go back to the real world
They couldn’t understand you before. Will they understand you now, with liquid Grant on your hands? Have Blobbo lead you deeper into the plant, past the skulls and crossbones to the door even he is afraid to open.

Do: Drink the potion
The worst thing that could happen? Nothing changes.

Illustration by Brad Jonas

By the time I shower and leave the hostel, the sun has set and the clouds have settled into a thick fog in the streets. Fluorescent bulbs cast an eerie half-light I associate with ghosts and the London wharves of Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective. Though I raid pastry shops, watch cheery locals play basketball, and fill myself with warm lamb stew, I can’t escape the feeling that something sinister lurks just beyond my view.

Georgie, his wife Eva, a boy we suspect is dating Pilar, and his niece Pilar.

The next day we descend from the cool mountaintops into humid banana plantations. The roads switch from bumpy to muddy, and I have to stop several times to clean a thick layer of clay from my gears. The afternoon drags to a close, I’m glad to catch up to Sam and Sven stopping to rest at a roadside market. They’re chatting with a squat Ecuadorian man. When this stranger sees me he pauses and, with an enthusiastic handshake, introduces himself as Georgie. He’s the owner of the market, and he’s offered to let us stay here for the night.

After Georgie closes up shop, he takes us on a quick tour of his property. Though his market is adjacent to the highway, he owns farmland that stretches further into the valley, where his house sits amidst fields of banana trees and cocoa beans. His wife, Eva, and visiting teenage niece, Pilar, come outside to meet us before we’re brought back our quarters above the market. The building is made of cinderblocks and mortar. We’ll be sleeping on the second floor, which is under construction and accessible from an outdoor staircase. Georgie tell us he’d like to turn it into a hostel, but it still needs a lot of work.

He’s right. We haul our gear upstairs to a nearly empty room with only a small mattress, its mosquito net, and a Disney princess comforter. The windows and doors are unornamented holes leading out to a thin concrete ledge. A large square hole in the middle of the floor opens into the market, and I can’t imagine its purpose beyond terrifying second-story sleepers. It’s perfect.

I set up my tent on the floor and head out to find a shower. Pilar finds me wandering and guides me to a tall concrete basin between the market and the house. A thick plastic pipe arches out of the ground next to it and is suspended at chest-level by a post. I move to aim the pipe into the basin, but Pilar scoffs at me. She turns on the water and angles the pipe even further from the basin. The water pours copiously into the soil. I’ll be washing in the open.

Without the scant protection of the basin’s walls, I’m forced to abandon what few shreds of modesty remain after three months of wearing only spandex. I hover at the edge of the basin, strip down, and edge into the water. I feel lighter as pounds of accumulated grimed fall off of me.

Eva and Pilar chat on the porch nearby. Though they’re ostensibly facing in the other direction, my shower is punctuated by a series of disconcerting giggles. I rinse, wrap myself in a towel, and return to my tent blushing.

Shortly after dark, Georgie comes by and offers to drive us into town for dinner. We agree, excited. We meet the family at their aging pickup truck a few minutes later. Georgie motions for us to get into the back and climbs into the cab with Eva.

The truck has foot-tall wooden walls extending upwards from its bed, and the back is full of cocoa cuttings in small pots and two plastic boxes of trash. There’s no room to sit or stand. I’m baffled until Pilar climbs up a tire to perch on the wooden railing, dangling her legs over the cocoa cuttings and beckoning us to join her. I climb up to my perilous perch, the truck shudders to life, and we jitter forth into the night.

Pots of breakfast meat stew in front of the market the next morning as Sam preps his bike.

Though we never top 20 mph, the ride is exhilarating. From our high vantage point the valley is a sprinkling of lights under a swirl of stars and scattered clouds. Sam and I are at the front of the bed, resting our hands on the roof of the cab. It’s too loud to hear each other speak, but Sam and I share a grin as the truck sways underneath; we both know exactly how much our mothers would disapprove. We look back to check on Sven and Pilar. She’s trying to explain something to him, but her shouting is muffled by the wind, and Sven can only shake his head and smile.

When we reach the very outskirts of town, its few lights visible but still distant, Georgie pulls the car to the side of the road, opens his window, and shouts, “Throw out the garbage!” Sven is sitting closest to the curb, and I can see his sad realization as Pilar chimes, “That’s what I was trying to say.” We’re all against littering, a disposition that’s only been reinforced by months of camping in the impromptu dumps that grow to the side of South American highways, but Sven is militant. Weighing the responsibilities of citizen and guests, he looks to Sam and I for guidance. We shrug.

Sven upends the first box it into the foliage. I expect him to cringe, but he doesn’t even seem upset. He dumps the second box, returns it to it’s perch, and turns back to Sam and me, smiling like he’s gotten away with something. Georgie honks approvingly and we start moving towards town again.

We get a group photo with Georgie and family before we head deeper into the banana plantations.

The town is small but lively. Old men laugh outside the general store, and passersby dot the sidewalks. Georgie parks near one of the few streetlights, and we hop out to eat.

Our dinner spot is a barbecue on the sidewalk. It’s ringed by a few plastic lawn chairs and tended by a smiling old lady. It smells fantastic. Georgie orders us all sausages, which are grilled with plantains, peppers, and grey chunks of something that might be meat. Sam, Sven, and I eat our bowls in seconds, which amazes Georgie and family. Wide-eyed, they encourage us to eat more. We oblige, and after finishing a second round (and a third for Sven) we grab some ice cream at the local market and return to the farm.

We say goodnight to the family and retreat our quarters. I’m woken briefly in the middle of the night by Sven’s curses; his sleeping pad fell through the hole into the market. As I chuckle in my tent, listening to him tiptoe over to steal Sam’s pad, the last of my cartel-inspired distrust melts away. Ecuador seems less a menace than a well-meaning prankster, implicating you in drug crimes one day and offering a room, dinner, and enthusiastic company the next.

It’s not ideal, but it’s beautiful, and I’m willing to suffer a lot for a sausage dinner.

Ben (left) and Sam (right)

Sam and I fume at opposite ends of the terminal. I sneak glances at his smug, punchable face, fantasize about tearing it apart. He turns toward me; I look away.

We’re in Santiago’s International Airport waiting for Sam’s father, Steve. He’s flying down to ride with us through the Atacama Desert. We came early because he doesn’t speak Spanish, and we were afraid he would get lost on public transportation.

We arrived at the airport, got snacks, and sat to wait on a wide staircase overlooking the gate, the only exit for international flights. It was crowded. A tall blond couple stood in front of us, chatting to each other in Dutch. Their heads were a foot above the crowd, and from our vantage point we could see people furtively starting at them at them. It felt good not to be the most obvious outsider.

We exhausted our small talk a month ago, and we don’t have anything to share that the other didn’t directly experience. It was twenty minutes before we struck up a conversation.

Later, we would describe it as our biggest fight. We joked through the question until we found our positions; then the niggling began. Over the next twenty minutes we whisper-yelled and gesticulated wildly, tensing and raising our voices until we were ready to throttle each other.

Only the threat of Steve’s arrival stopped us, sent us slinking to opposite ends of the terminal. Neither of us wanted to explain a black eye.

It was a simple conversation. It didn’t segue into deeper issues, didn’t touch on longstanding feuds, didn’t even veer from the central question: “Would you rather be invisible or have the ability to fly?”

I like telling this story because it makes people laugh. The action are exaggerated, the cause slight. It’s an anecdote that illustrates — but doesn’t delve into — the uncomfortable truth of our trip. I’ve hated Sam more than anyone else I know, and Sam’s hated me just as much.

We’ve been friends for nearly a decade. We’ve gone to high school together, worked together, and even lived together. We don’t always get along, but we’ve always been jovial, always been able to put our squabbles in the context of our friendship. By my simple definition, friends are people who choose to be around each other. So what happens when you take away that choice?

I could hide Sam’s body.

It’s a small body, easy to bury in sand or roll off a cliff. I could fold it into my bike trailer, ride into the desert, and leave it for the vultures. I could be back in time for breakfast alone. These are my thoughts as I fall asleep in my tent.

“You’ve thought about killing me, right?” I ask Sam over coffee a few days later.

“Oh yes,” Sam nods vigorously. “All the time.”

We laugh. We’re past trying to hide our frustration. If it weren’t clear from the occasional days of silence — difficult when your days are spent together — it’s unmistakable when it bursts out in streams of curses.

We understand why we’re upset: we’re adventuring together. We ride together, work on our bikes together, and set up camp together. We eat in the same restaurants and stay at the same hostels. We make every decision together, which means that every decision is a compromise.

Where are we camping? Compromise. Where are we getting lunch? Compromise. What movie are we seeing at the theater? Harry Potter 7. What time are we going? Compromise. I describe this to my mom over Skype, and she chuckles knowingly: “It sounds like you’re married.”

I have to believe this undersells marriage. When I share my mom’s analysis with Sam, I scramble to find a silver lining: “In a real marriage the fighting would probably be mitigated by sex.”

“Really?” Sam asks. “When was the last time you talked to a married person?”

Thanks for killing my optimism, Sam. That really helps our bitter, sexless marriage.

We’re within sight of Torres del Paines, one of Chile’s southernmost national parks. The road winds past beautiful plains and lakes, green from the frequent rain.

It’s growing late; we begin looking for a campsite. We get excited about a lake that follows the road for a stretch, blocked off by an old barbed-wire fence. On the far side is a serene patch of untouched grass. We bike along the fence, looking for a spot where we can hop over, until we find a large sign that reads “Danger: Landmines.”

Ah.

We ride further. We’re tired, hungry, and we don’t want to be outside after sunset; the temperature dips below freezing. Soon we round a knoll and find a shed to the side of the road.

We’ve read about these on the blogs of other cyclists — small roadside sheds built for desperate travelers. This one is made from tin. It’s dirty, but convenient. We roll our bikes off the road, lift them over a ditch, and lean them against the shed.

It’s not roomy, but it has a fireplace (an old oil barrel with a hole cut into it shoddily joined to a stovepipe). The floor is dirt, and squeezed into the tiny space is a wobbly bunk bed made of 2x4s. There are no mattresses, not even a flat place for our sleeping bags —only wooden slats holding up a few pieces of cardboard.

We hesitate — our camp setup is more comfortable — but opt for protection from the wind and the warmth of the fireplace. It’s been a week since we’ve been warm at night.

We move all our things inside and begin to gather firewood. It’s easy; a nearby cow pasture is full of dry branches. We light our kindling ecstatically, huddling close to the meager flames. We continue to add wood, desperate for heat, until we begin to choke.

Despite the grate of ashes — a promise of recent use — the stove is a sieve. We throw the door open, hoping to empty out the smoke, but it’s too late. The stove is filled with kindling; we’re trapped outside until it burns through.

We look at each other, exasperated. We’re too hungry to wait out the smoke. We decided set up our camp stove outside, braving short trips into the smoke to rescue vegetables. The wind picks up, and the sun drops below the mountains to the west.

We finish setting up and squat to watch the food cook. We start to make a plan. I think we ought to give up on the fire and get inside, but Sam disagrees. He says that if we can get through the kindling to the denser logs the smoke will dissipate. We’ll eat in a warm tin shed and watch a clean burning log as we fall asleep.

We explain our positions with relative calm as we grill our vegetables, come to a conclusion, and dine happily together.

Not quite.

Sam strains to make sense of the muffled curses I’m forcing through the towel wrapped around my mouth (I ran out of layers). He tries to reason with me, but I hold my cooking pan as aggressively as I can and gesticulate wildly. I imply that if I’m not inside soon, I will strangle Sam in his sleep.

We move inside at the first opportunity. Our food isn’t ready, so we bring the camp stove in as well. It runs on gasoline, the only fuel we can find this far south, and we’re unsure if the fumes will fill the shed to kill us.

We debate the issue through the door. I close it, Sam opens it. Ten minutes, no speaking.
It’s a study in passive aggression. Finally our rice burns. We split the pot without a word and retire to our slats.

As we fall asleep, Sam complains about strange headaches. I hope they’re debilitating.

I visit Sam in Grants Pass, Oregon, two months before we leave on our bike ride. He manages a river rafting operation in the summer, and I’ve come to raft, hang out, and finalize our trip plans. It’s a week of busy days, but by the end of it we’ve scrambled a loose plan; we’ll train, get matching gear, and take things as they go.

The night before I leave for Portland, Sam drives us down the Rogue River Highway. We park near a bridge to share beers over the river.

We make dumb jokes and toasts, promise not to abandon the other if we’re kidnapped, and speculate wildly about future exploits with South American girls. Sam tells me about his last year of school. I fill him in on my odd year living in Portland. We’ve been on opposite sides of the country for four years, and won’t see each other again until we meet in Colombia’s Bogota airport.

Finally we quiet. I stare at the dark river as it moves to the sea, the murmur of it barely audible. I’m awed by the scope of the trip, so unlike anything I’ve done before. I’m a novice, an idiot when it comes to this, and I’m happy to be in the company of another idiot.

“This is going to be a good thing,” I say to Sam, “It’ll to be nice to finally have some real time together.”

Our plan is to catch a ferry, ride it overnight, and arrive in Puerto Montt on Thanksgiving morning. We’ll find a buffet, eat as much as our touring cyclist’s metabolisms can handle, and most importantly, get away from each other.

Sam and I have been biking together for a month now, and in that month we’ve managed to spend only eight hours apart. Unless we have a hostel where we can safely stow our gear, we’re tied to it, and without cell phones we’re fixed to each other as well. We make every decision together, react to compromises with the same glower, and resist the same impulses to punch the other repeatedly in the face. Though Thanksgiving ideally pulls people together, we want nothing more than a day of solitude in the big city and the chance to talk to those we miss back in the States.

We don’t know the ferry schedule. There is no official website, and every town we pass through provides us with a different date and time. We do know is that the only ferry for the next two days leaves tonight.

Which is why I’m screaming “fuck!” at the top of my lungs on a Chaiten dock, glaring at the outbound ferry not thirty feet from the shore. I saw it docked from the other side of town, couldn’t bike fast enough, and now Thanksgiving is ruined.

Sam pulls up seconds later, and the sight of the ferry sends him into a flurry of curses. We both need to take this out on somebody, and we’re both conveniently close. We say some shitty things to each other, walk our separate ways, and finally reunite in silence thirty minutes later. We’re pissed, cold, and unwilling to pay for a hostel. It’s getting dark, and although the townsfolk said we could find free camping on the beach, the Chilean policemen firmly disagree.

“There is camping down the road,” one suggests, ”near the roundabout.”

The roundabout boasts an abandoned hostel, but no campground. Sam and I duck into a patch of trees, crush a bed of happy-looking plants, and call it good. It’s exactly the kind of spot an environmentally conscious camper avoids, but it’s hidden, and we’re willing to play dumb if we get caught. At this point, we’re willing to be dumb. We probably already are.

We set up our tents in silence, and soon a wild dog wanders into our makeshift camp. This is standard. Our Chilean friends often describe Chile as “el país del perros libres,” or “country of the wild dogs.” Packs of them roam the streets, although they’re more pitiful than threatening.

Moved by the Thanksgiving spirit, Sam offers the dog a piece of bread, rendering it gratingly obsequious for the next 48 hours. We call it Amigo, then Go, then Go-go, and finally, after a quick gender check, Lady Gaga.

Once camp set, we part. Sam explores Chaiten’s abandoned districts while I practice ukulele on the beach. I read dire portents in the heavy clouds on the horizon, and mope up and down the shore until I’m tired enough to sleep. Fittingly, Lady Gaga keeps us awake all night with inexplicable barking.

We break camp early the next morning and head into Chaiten. We both feel better, buoyed by a cocktail of intermittent sleep and holiday spirit. We decide that we can spring for a holiday hostel, and begin to search the town. As we pass the façade of a large of a surfer lodge, a voice booms out in song. It’s “Puerto Montt,” a Chilean classic, and one we’ll hear again and again over the next day and a half. It’s Javier Alahandra, the lodge’s owner, who waves us over and insists that we stay with him.

Though the lodge is furnished with expensive looking tables, a beautiful fire pit, and a well-stocked bar, it’s empty as a ghost town. He gives us a quick tour of the restaurant before taking us upstairs to see the lodging. Though the second floor has at least a dozen beds, it looks as if nobody’s slept there in months.

“Sleep an hour in each one!” he jokes.

We’re charmed, and have our bags up and unpacked in minutes.

We spend the next few hours chatting with Javier and cleaning our bikes, washing 2,000 kilometers’ worth of dirt and accumulated grease into the ashy streets. We go through boxes of napkins and a full container of Q-tips, and, at the end of two hours, we have a pair of beautiful, gleaming bikes ready to be sullied.

Javier is delighted to have us there — we remind him of his son, a whitewater kayaker now living in Canada. We’re increasingly thankful for Javier as well; everybody else we see in Chaiten wears a dour expression, as if the ash grayed them to the core, while Javier is buoyant, often breaking into song. Though we first see this as a perk of living in an abandoned city, we soon realize it’s a benefit of being Javier Alahandra.

After we’ve finished or work, Javier offers to take us to a nearby hot springs if we’ll pay his way in. We gleefully accept, and minutes later we’re stuffed in the cab of Javier’s pickup, his dog Rocky riding along in back.

Perhaps it’s because we have just spent a month going 15 mph, or maybe Javier is a really terrifying driver, but Sam and I have white-knuckle grips as the pickup careers out of Chaiten. When Javier finds out we’re from California, his entire face lights up.

“Hasta la vista, baby,” he growls in a hybrid Austrian-Chilean accent. “The Governator?”

We nod, and he smiles.

Twenty minutes and one bumpy dirt road later we arrive at the hot springs. After a month of freezing our way across Patagonia, it’s one of the first times we’ve felt warm, clean, and happy all at the same time. Javier takes us to see all the different pools — one for bathing, one for smoking, and two small, caged in pools where the boiling water first comes to the surface.

After this tour, Javier heads to the owner’s cabin to share a mug of yerba mate while Sam and I disrobe and sink into the hot springs.

After a few minutes of soaking, Sam and I start to tool around the pool, and at the far end find a pair of pipes bringing boiling and ice cold water in to one side. We take turns drifting between them as they mix, experiencing in quick succession every temperature tolerable and intolerable. We’ve brought our waterproof camera, and after a series of delicate underwater balancing acts, we’re able to photograph of the experience.

A welcome rain feeds the pool, and we enjoy it alongside the only other soakers, a pair of sisters from Argentina and their husbands. We share stories of our trips, though our Spanish and their English are both lacking. When we mention our final destination, Colombia, one of the husbands lights up.

“I’m from Colombia,” he says.

Although the sisters are ready to go, he lingers to describe his country in beautiful detail. His wife tugs on his arm, and he begins to walk away with an apologetic smile. The sisters stop to grab their towels, and he takes this opportunity to sneak back to us and offer a piece of parting advice.

“You know what they say about Colombia,” he smiles, leaning in. “The best behaved women are your wife!”

He winks and walks off.

On the truck ride back home we talk with Javier about Thanksgiving. Once he understands the basic concept — Americans shamelessly eat huge amounts of food in the name of tradition — he gets excited. We stop by a small general store to get some chicken, drive out to the edge of town where a carpenter and his wife serve as the town’s stopgap bakery, and swing by Javier’s sister’s store for a box of wine.

We return to the lodge to prepare dinner. Javier is chef as well as owner, and while we prepare guacamole and set the table, he disappears into the back to do mysterious and amazing things to the chicken. An hour later we open our box of wine, sit down, and eat a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast on the patio. Javier gives us a rundown on American culture over dinner: he likes Westerns and Dolly Parton, although it’s Terminator 2 that he can’t stop quoting. He disliked Bush, saying he has a “¡cabeza de pistola!” (gun for a brain), but seems excited about Obama.

Against all odds, this Thanksgiving has become what so many of our previous Thanksgivings have tried to be: uniting. Defying our admittedly slight expectations, Sam and I are having a fantastic time — and with each other! The food is good, we’re a little drunk, and Javier’s quips and unpredictable speeches on American culture have kept us laughing all night. We’ve built an impromptu family out of the ash, and while it’s not a substitute for our family’s back home, it’s not trying to be: we’re all uncles here.

After another hour of wine and winding conversation — Javier has a lot to say on Hugh Hefner — we retreat to bed. Sam plays Christmas music quietly on our ukulele as I repeatedly mishandle candles into impromptu haircuts, and we’re soon asleep in a very, very quiet Chaiten.

We’re up early the next morning, determined to catch our ferry this time. We say our goodbyes to Javier, laughing too much to allow for any cheerful catharsis, and bike down to the dock. We wait an hour in the rain, watching car after car load on the boat, until they allow us to wheel our bikes onto the deck. Lady Gaga whines from the shore, and I catch Sam looking back with wistful eyes.

The trip so far has been part adventure and part race, though we have no reason to speed. It took being trapped at Chaiten, unable to move forward, for us to realize the value of being here. It’s another part of the world, a lifestyle we may not get to live again, and we get so much more out of living it at a slow pace.

Sam and I don’t talk about our Thanksgiving miracle on the ten-hour ferry ride to Puerto Montt, but we do talk, and enjoy it, which is another miracle all together.

Post-Scipt: I can’t talk about Thanksgiving without mentioning my wonderful family. While I was away in South America, my brother and sister took it upon themselves to make a surrogate Ben out of paper-mache to take my place at the table. OtherBen is pictured below.

It’s a good time to be a gringo. The sun shines down bright and beautiful on the Ecuadorian verdure, and while the past 10K have been relentlessly vertical, the air at 3,000 feet is crisp. The mountains around us are covered in a patchwork of a dozen different crops, each clinging tenaciously to its steep slope.

I ride around the corner to find Sam and Sven, my cycling companions, waiting by the side of the road, bikes propped against the hillside to the right and jerseys drying on the barbed-wire fence across the road. I’m off my bike and topless in seconds, though there’s neither time nor sunlight enough to dry what has become, essentially, a garment of sweat held together by a collection of loose threads.

Snacks are eaten, shit is shot, and we enjoy a small measure of relaxation before the car appears.

It’s a small Ecuadorian-made sedan, and it rolls down the slope at a brisk pace. In front of us it jerks sharply to the right, brakes, and comes to rest against the curb across from us, nosed gently against the barbed wire and our fetid jerseys. I notice the overgrown remains of a road on the other side of the fence, really just two faded tire tracks that run downhill quickly for twenty feet before ducking behind a large boulder.

A small Ecuadorian man in a fedora emerges and promptly begins to uncoil a length of wire that wraps around two adjoining fence poles. Ah, I think, another low-tech gate masquerading as a fence. I don’t associate this with anything suspect, but rather the economic conditions of the continent.

Mr. Fedora successfully unwraps the first fencepost, and I realize that my jersey has a scant few seconds before the fence topples and irreparably ensnares it. We hurry across the road and grab our sopping shirts just in time, and as the fence falls Mr. Fedora turns to us with a worried expression and shouts “help me!” as he begins to push the car.

I can see it’s a bad situation. The sedan is in the downward lane of a hill with a steep grade, and while there hasn’t been much traffic, it’s a precarious position if another car comes along. Plus, it looks like the car had been dead the entire time, possibly broken. It seems like the ideal situation to express the friendly, helpful nature of the American gringo.

We each put our weight against the car — the three cyclists in back and Mr. Fedora standing at the open driver’s side door holding the steering wheel — and, with a mighty heave, the sedan clears the curb and rolls directly onto the fallen barbed wire fence.

The front tires blow out immediately, but Mr. Fedora continues with a businesslike focus, hopping over a fencepost to keep up with the car. His hands jerk on the wheel, and the sedan almost flies off the cliff to the right. He saves it in time, though he continues to run alongside the car rather than jumping in. The pair quickly rounds the large boulder and disappears.

Mr. Fedora’s levelheadedness throughout forces me to evaluate what just happened: Why wasn’t the car running? Why was the road to Mr. Fedora’s farm so overgrown? And why would Mr. Fedora drive alone if he needed help getting his car there?

These musing are cut short by the sound of a car flying off a cliff and exploding.

Sam, Sven, and I immediately reach the same conclusion: we need to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. We scurry toward our bikes and start to put on our damp tops when a chubby, middle-age woman putts down the hill on a moped and stops at the fallen fence.

She looks at us, then at the fence, and then finally turns towards us again with a concerned look and asks, “Where’s the boy?” We mutely raise our fingers and point through the gap in the fence. She eyes the fallen posts again and mutters, in a tone clearly meant to be overheard, “This is a problem.” She remounts on the moped and disappears up the hill.

The air of mystery isn’t just palpable at this point — I am actively palpating it. My brain turns it over, knitting its frontal lobe in consternation, and palpates the hell put of it. No, this is not a mystery we want to solve. in fact, this is a mystery we would rather know nothing about. It is a mystery in another language, beguilingly written, with one too many hats.

I almost trip in my rush to get to the bicycle, but I am on it, trying to snap my shoes into my pedals, when Mr. Fedora emerges from behind his boulder.

Mr. Fedora has lost his fedora. In another situation I might have taken minutes to think of a new nickname, but here he instantly becomes Mr. Drove-His-Car-Off-A-Cliff-And-Has Blood-Running-Down-His-Face. He stumbles across the grass with all the grace his mild concussion allows before pausing at the tangle of barbed wire and wood separating him from the road.

A more altruistic man might have immediately dismounted to help him across this obstacle over the fence, but mired in a miasma of confusion and fear, I pause, giving Mr. Blood time to make eye contact. He locks his eyes to mine with eerie concentration raises a finger to his bleeding face, purses his lips, and makes the “Sshhhhhh” motion.

Sam, Sven, and I say nothing. In five seconds, we are pedaling away at record speed. This is how races should start, I think. This is how lives end. I glance backwards just in time to see Mr. Blood pick his way haphazardly across the fence to spin woozily in the center of the road. The lack of control makes him even scarier. Seconds later we’re around the corner. I can seen Sam and Sven instantly relax, and somehow I share their optimism: We’re safe.

We’re not safe. Less than a kilometer up the road we encounter Lady Moped descending again. We flash her a trio of big, friendly gringo smiles. With a face of cold Ecuadorian stone, she raises her finger in the same terrifying gesture.

“Shhhhh.”

We ride faster. There aren’t cars on the road, but if there were we would be passing them. We make the wind look slow. We cover 3 kilometers in roughly 14 seconds. I’ve almost returned from whatever dark corner my sanity was hiding in when we round the corner.

Two police trucks, two troop transports, and thirty Ecuadorian soldiers with machine guns are performing a drug bust on a house 20 feet from the road.

By some bizarre stroke of luck or survival instinct, my reaction is to continue biking at a steady speed with a blank expression on my face. An outside observer, even one with a machine gun, would not see a man slowly realizing he had participated in the disposal of a car full of drugs, guns, bodies, or some nefarious combination of the three. No, just another gringo in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s the blessed disinterest of the soldiers that lets my attention drift slowly to the other side of the road, where an eerie gaze burns directly towards me.

It’s Mr. Blood. How he had found his way up the hill in his misbegotten state is beyond me, but he locks his eyes to mine and sends a simple message: you live by my grace.

We don’t stop to speak to the military. We don’t stop to drink, eat, or pee. We are all but sure that every passing car is full of cartel hit men, and as the day stretches on we are increasingly befuddled by their failure to murder us.
By mid-afternoon we tell ourselves we’re safe, and turn off the central high mountain road on to a more obscure path headed towards the other side of the country. “It’s more scenic,” one of us says.

Yes, the others nod.

Scenic.

Photo by Patrick Moore