DAY 103 | Ukraine| How To Move The Stars | A bicycle ride around the world

How To Move The Stars is the day by day retelling of a bicycle ride around the world. Start from the beginning to get the whole story. 

My adventure was a modern day epic, a solo, self-supported bicycle ride spanning 38,000 miles across six continents. There were moments I barely survived, and times I cried tears of joy, but mostly, this is a story about the thousands of people I met along the way.  I moved through their cultures, and dramatic landscapes. I ate their food and slept on their land. I was constantly arriving to the open arms of strangers who were excited to help me achieve a feat that few could imagine. I did this for years, immersing myself in the world and meeting the people who live here. The story I returned with is a snapshot of humanity, captured in a lived experience. Thank you for joining me on my journey.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
May 27th, 2013 Lotta. I seem to have found a corner of
the map few people drive through.
The quiet Rd. was a joy to ride and I relaxed as I took in the
landscape. There were fields of purple
flowers blooming under the sun. I watched swirling wind ripple
across long rows of green wheat.Little Gray birds danced in the

(00:23):
sky. I've been seeing car repair
ramps alongside the road. There are twin concrete
structures sloping upward, leveling off and sloping back
down. The car parked on top.
A person could walk underneath to access to bottom.
Eugene told me the road to crossthe Soviet Union was so bad that
people would carry spare parts in their trunks to make repairs

(00:45):
on the go. The ramps were the compromise
between improving the road and doing nothing.
I still see the ramps being usedand sometimes a car called a
Lotta is parked on top. Many of the cars I've seen
across Eastern Europe are the same model.
They're compact 4 door cars thatcame out in the late 70s and for

(01:07):
three decades they were the bestselling vehicle in Russia.
Eugene told me that they were cheap and easy to work on and so
that they would always be that way.
The car was barely updated even when the Lauder was discontinued
in the mid 2000s. A new car off the lot was
actually a model from the 80s. The whole country is now full of
spare parts to keep them running, and with ramps to do

(01:29):
the work, I expect the lotta will be around for decades more.
In the late afternoon I met a Russian cyclist out on a 10 day
lap around the peninsula. He looked like he was having fun
in Russian. He told me his name was Victor,
but I wasn't able to understand much more than that.
We rode together for a few miles, quietly enjoying each

(01:50):
other's company, before our paths diverged and I was alone
again. I carried on for another hour
before sneaking away from the road to sleep between the farm
fields.