Jessica Prinner Cycling

Currently I am reading this book called Off the Map by Mark Jenkins about a group of cyclists who decide to set out on this asinine quest to cross Russia from the Sea of Japan to Leningrad, a distance of about 7,500 miles.  As I read this novel and discover page after page of the horrers and inconviniences (to say the least) of Siberia, the more I want to jump on my bike and ride it myself.  What could possibly be better than travelling in the middle of nowhere where the only useful feature on your cell phone is its force of impact as you hurl it at wild animals?  There is a very good reason why the book is titled “Off the Map”, and that is because most of Russia remains completely uncharted and unknown, even in this modern day.  Jenkins describes a map that he had once seen of Russia, and how there were named cities and towns and roads in the eastern and western portions of Russia, but the middle remained almost completely blank.  Within the first three weeks of his epic ride, he and his team enjoy a moderately decent dirt road leading in and out various towns (all of which the Russain police forbid them from seeing), allowing them to cruise along at the rate of a very fast snail.  That is, until the road simply ends.  He describes the scene of horror that any cyclist would feel if their beloved slab of pavement were to suddenly disappear, as he looks past the abruptly ended  road into a vast swamp.  No, this swamp wasn’t a mere swamp of about a hundred yards or so, but a swamp that lasted for hundreds of miles and made the travellers’ lives quite miserable.  Their speed quickly diminished from the rate of an extremely slow snail to that of a completely dead snail that simply moves along by floating down the swamp.  For several months, they couldn’t even ride their bikes due to the tires getting stuck in the sludge and mud and other various things you find in a swamp.  It’s a great book, I recommend it to all people who are slightly insane.