BASE CULT UR E

from BASE # 03

by BASE magazine

BASE TECH

BASE CULT URE

Lightning in the dark

Artwork | Tessa Lyons Poetry | Ben Silvestre

Waiting

Another day of thunder, thunder; wonderful.

Wooden slats of broken sofas choke, strained fingers stretch. There’s creaking in the eaves, in the wind and the leaves.

And eyes full of hope, sentences of belief, we, arm in arm by the skin of our knuckles grinding our teeth in a fist fight fairy tale.

Still though

there’s gringo sing songs in the evening, another egg breakfast, dancing in the moonlight. We don’t even need to speak about our dreams.

There’s gold in these hills.

Entering the Liminal

It begins again. Leaving the ground is the hardest part, making the first mark on a blank page.

Having made that initial movement towards commitment, all previous expectations become irrelevant. There is no way forward unless we can join the present. It’s hard to fully engage when the mind is somewhere in the future, imagining what lies ahead, or dwelling in the past.

We enter into the liminal for a time, a nowhere space, tracing the edges of the unknown with our fingertips. As we traverse the void of possibility, drawing silent lines across the rock, each fleeting emotion crystallizes and drops to the floor, blended into the paint with each stroke of the brush. Alertness prickles the mind, and if we are lucky, a calm flow drives the heart forward. It’s unclear how much time has passed; just felt moments sliding on top of one another.

Nearing the end, the drawing takes on a sense of completeness, a circle. We look up and see the edge of the land, stark and solid against the sky.

The experience soon evaporates, leaving only impressions. If we have managed not to stray, something of that essence will b e captured on the page before us.

- Tessa Lyons on the creative process behind her artwork

We look up and see the edge of the land, stark and solid against the sky

Ultra-endurance bikepacking ace Lael Wilcox explains her love of long days in the saddle through remote terrain, and reveals her optimal route planning tech for any bike-based adventure

For adventure bikepacking advice, ask Lael Wilcox. From the two thousand plus mile Tour Divide race - an MTB event that follows the US continental divide - to the 1120 mile Silk Road Mountain Race in Kyrgyzstan, she’s at home picking her way off-road through big, remote landscapes on a bike.

Given her propensity for going big on her goals and cycling routes, you might be surprised to read that Lael’s inner compass is not inherently functional. In fact, for the first years of her cycling life, the route planning was always outsourced to someone else. Her initial adventures by bike through Africa and South America were done with her partner, who was in charge of navigation. ‘I have a horrible sense of direction - I even get lost inside buildings’ she claims. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, so when Lael decided that she wanted to give the Holy Land self-supported bikepacking race a go in 2015, she figured it out. She hopped on the GPS navigation bandwagon and hasn’t looked back since. In fact, she’s looked determinedly forward, adding different tech to her kit to ensure her rides are the best they can be. These days Lael uses komoot, a route-planning and navigation app, to configure her rides:

‘I went on my first long, komoot-planned ride over Christmas in 2017. I made a 311 mile route from Tucson, Arizona to Pie Town, New Mexico - a point to point trip. I didn’t look too closely at the route before riding it and was surprised to ride through the Salt River Canyon - which is so beautiful! Komoot has given me the ability and confidence to ride places I’d never expect to find or plan to go. It’s so much fun.’ After five years as a pro ultra-endurance rider, Lael loves riding her bike more than ever.

Her riding CV now includes big races like the Trans Am [a 4200 mile coast to coast road race], the Navad 1000 [a 621 mile ride that includes 100,000 feet of climbing over Swiss passes], and pioneering new routes like the Baja Divide. She has also earned a name for herself as one of very few riders who ride to the start line. In 2019 she recce’d the Silk Road Mountain Race in Central Asia before the event, rode 650 miles to the start of Dirty Kanza XL, and once made the journey from her home in Alaska to the start of the 2100 mile Tour Divide in Banff by bike. To Lael, time on the bike is invaluable to her success. Riding to races allows her to get her head in the game, test her kit, and let her body adapt to long days in the saddle. And when it comes to adventure, her quirk for riding routes before the official race doubles the fun. ‘I love riding a route before a race because I get to know it more intimately. I love experiencing the same terrain multiple times because every time is different - I’ll see a different section at a different time of day or in a different season, and can have a very different experience. For example, my partner Rue and I toured the Silk Road Mountain Race route last summer in July and most days it was 38°C. When I raced it in August, it snowed half of the days and the sub-zero night time temperatures were a totally different experience. But I really enjoyed both.’

Ultra-endurance queen Wilcox explains her passion for distance riding: ‘I love to ride and I love to race, and if I get to do both, I feel like there’s no compromise’. Clearly she’s not letting a poor sense of direction stop her. And if routeplanning and navigation are your own weak points, that shouldn’t stop you either. Go to komoot.com/user/540861567090 to see Lael’s rides on her komoot profile, and get inspired to plan your own. Scan the QR code to view Lael’s komoot profile.