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I couldn't wait to leave.
I had dreamed of a trip like this for ages.
Four thousand kilometers by bike, from Canada to New Mexico,
along the spine of the Rocky Mountains.
When I proposed to Linda to do this bike trip...
SILVIA GOTTARDI
...I never thought she would have accepted,
because it's a very long trip.
It's demanding and also dangerous,
but instead we are here. It still feels incredible to me.
I can't wait to be in nature riding my bike.
We're going on an adventure by bike.
LINDA RONZONI
Now, thinking of covering all those miles scares me a bit.
The Great Divide separates the watersheds of the Pacific Ocean
from those of the Atlantic Ocean.
A legendary road that inspired thousands of adventurers and sportsmen.
A road that challenges you, calls to you, and I'm here to answer that call.
TWO GIRLS CYCLING
FROM CANADA TO MEXICO THROUGH THE GREAT DIVIDE
CYCLISTS BY CHANCE
Today we prepared our bikes, we bought the necessary things,
along with bear spray.
Two bear sprays and two bells, so we have one for each couple.
We hope to see bears, but from a great distance.
No, we don't hope to.
For me and Linda, this trip is our honeymoon.
We got married a month ago. It's an unusual honeymoon.
Little relaxation and a lot of effort. There's also four of us.
RAMONA LINZOLA SIMONA PEZZANO
Ramona and Pez will come with us
to help us with filming and planning.
They'll cycle too.
Come on.
Right now, I'm very tired. We had a very long flight.
I'd go down here and camp randomly along the river.
It's all downhill.
-But if we are exhausted… -When you are tired…
One, two, three, four.
On the sixth day, we've got the hotel.
We have to send supplies for six days to Whitefish.
Two, four, six…
13, 14, 15, 16.
Ready, steady, go!
When we get up in the morning, we're astonished by this wild nature,
I'm really happy.
The urban area where I live all year long is too small for me.
I feel good when I travel.
When I discover new spaces and push myself beyond my limits.
There I find myself.
I confront myself with that part of me that was just waiting to be awakened.
The obstacles that I meet in my trips are the things that make them memorable.
Physical effort and the fortitude of the mind
are my guardian angels.
Everybody always thinks that big challenges
and big adventures are reserved for men,
but for endurance and tenacity, we women are not inferior.
Our project Cyclists By Chance was born out of just that.
To be somehow an example for other women
as if to say, "Give it a try, be adventurous, be free."
We have decided to travel without GPS using only maps,
because we think that makes the trip even more special,
that makes the adventure an adventure.
Travelling with maps, it's like going back in time.
Travelling by bike is already anachronistic
because you go slow, you get bored,
so the idea to use maps
seemed to be a natural part of this kind of trip.
In the first part of the trip, we'll have to climb some of the highest peaks
in Alberta and British Columbia…
…before getting to the US, leaving Canada behind.
The third day was very tough.
Honestly, I was afraid of not being able to make it.
I'm happy Silvia is spreading
this driving energy, but I also want to share some of mine,
which is a bit more reflective and slower.
It's a question of how to balance these two elements.
Climbs and dirt roads tested us from day one.
We won some points, but they won the rounds.
One of the hardest things on a trip like this
is to keep yourself hydrated during the day.
And when the water bottles run out, you take action.
There's nothing better to use, so we're using a stick.
It's incredible, we've been so lucky. We desperately searched for a campsite,
but the place is full, and since it's a natural park
you can't camp freely.
We were so disheartened, but then we met this lady,
who is letting us camp in her area and she also set
this beautiful dinner for us. She's our savior.
So far, we've avoided an encounter with a grizzly,
but we are still very afraid,
and the campsite lady seems to know the subject quite well.
So, last night, all our food was not eaten by the bear.
Last night it rained so badly, but luckily we were doing great
in our tents, in our warm sleeping bags.
But now, while packing everything up at 7:30, it's really cold.
A man woke us up, telling us that in the area right behind ours,
around 6:00, 6:30 they saw a grizzly
walking along the direction we are supposed to follow.
So we've decided to go back, and take the main road
because we're still not ready to meet a grizzly.
I hope a grizzly won't attack me while I’m brushing my teeth.
Yes.
So, this bear thing, we may have taken it a bit lightly.
In Banff it was like a game to buy bear spray,
the ringing bells,
but now, everywhere we go, everybody's telling us to be careful.
Tonight we are camping here, in Lower Lake Campground,
and all this area is closed because some grizzlies were spotted.
We are a bit scared at this point.
Is this stuff yours?
So tonight you'll save us and you'll make us eat.
Sure.
I'm also going to warm you up, when it's cold and dark.
That's a Lucullan meal.
The chefs here have got chickpeas with couscous and sausages.
Thanks to Mother Barbecue Chef.
The first part of our trip is coming to an end.
And it was definitely more demanding than we thought.
Now we ride towards the US border,
leaving Canada behind,
who welcomed us in its vast and wild lands,
with the incomparable kindness of its dwellers.
We're almost at the border. We're leaving Canada to get into the US.
We should be here.
-Now we take the Stryker. -Dickey Lake.
Dickey Lake, then we go down here…
Look at all these lakes.
We just got to the US. We passed through the border.
We are in a beautiful campsite next to a highway.
After the amazing campsites in the wilderness
with bears roaming around our tents,
here we have tramps roaming around.
We are finally in Whitefish, Montana.
A dream destination at the foot of Glacier National Park.
The perfect place to take a break.
A nature reserve,
within the reserve, a forest, within the forest, a lake.
After hours of cycling and dust,
plunging into that water was like being born a second time.
The first days were really tough, more than I expected.
Even though we trained a lot, when you are on the road,
on the dirt road, everything is harder.
We have to slowly get reacquainted
with staying on the saddle for so many hours.
Eight, nine hours daily, with heat, cold, dust,
dirt on your face, with staying outdoors 24 hours a day
because we're camping.
At home we tested the bike load.
But now we're here, they are very heavy
because we added food and water,
we have three and a half liters each.
And there are some climbs
so demanding that we have to get off and push.
That is really grueling,
but when you get at the top of a climb, you somehow forget the effort
and the descent is the biggest reward.
The beauty of such a trip is that you keep going forward.
During this first week there were some very hard moments
that have already tested us.
But the Great Divide didn't leave us much time for adjustments
and it immediately started out tough.
There were times when I was feeling really guilty…
because I'm the one who chose this route.
Maybe it's too long, too hard for Linda, I don't know.
I saw her struggling and I felt so sorry.
I think a day of rest
will be good for us to recharge our batteries.
First, you lose your sense of time.
Then the effort and pedaling become…
so repetitive that you enter a hypnotic state.
So you really lose your sense of place and time.
There's a full immersion in the trip.
I also spoke with Silvia
to understand what the point for her was. She always tries to push,
and she has this super competitive attitude towards the challenge.
But for me, enjoying the trip also means being able to stop sometimes,
understand what's happening, and have an hour during which I realize…
that I am here,
I am going along this route, this road, by bike.
I really need little moments, I need downtime.
The effort shouldn't become for its own sake.
And it should still be a pleasure.
The trip should be an enriching experience,
not just a challenge for its own sake.
That doesn't make sense to me.
I like the challenge, but it must be an experience where I am really changing.
We stayed at the Whitefish Bike Retreat.
A beautiful place dedicated to cyclists, and it is owned by a woman, Cricket.
We have to plan.
We're leaving tomorrow and we won't be passing a market for three days.
So eggs, because the important thing is protein.
-No, guys. -Street tacos are good, huh?
The hassle of bikes and camping is this.
Every time you unpack everything,
you have to pack it all up again.
CYCLISTS BY CHANCE
We just have to get here.
E, 23,3.
The 14… It's a nine-kilometer climb.
Climb up until here, then descent, then up and down, but it's doable.
F, J…
Let's start with the mountain. We'll see later on.
-You gotta break it. -Hold on.
-A twig stuck in the chain. -Hold on. Pull this back.
No.
It could have been worse. The chain could have broken.
Instead, we sorted it out quickly.
But even if the chain broke, we would have been
totally able to change it.
Making mistakes.
-Making mistakes. -Making mistakes.
We would have put the quick link in,
three or four minutes and it would have been done.
We went in the wrong direction twice today.
Still, we're not using GPS, we're using maps,
and sometimes getting lost
is part of the adventure. But when you get lost, it's frustrating.
Today I'm a bit disheartened.
I thought it would be an epic trip,
but instead, it seems like an impossible trip.
After less than ten days, everyone is already worn-out.
Often in the afternoon, when fatigue takes over.
We also fight, because it's not easy to cope with the all the work it takes.
It's harder to think with your mind when you're tired.
I forgot that the saddle goes to your head after a while.
I don't know how to sit anymore.
I feel bad because this trip was my idea,
and because often I look like a bitch who doesn't want to stop,
who still wants to do ten, 20 more kilometers.
I'm afraid of falling behind schedule.
Silvia makes me angry because she's got all her enthusiasm,
she's hard to contain and to steer away. She's a sort of whirlwind.
I feel bad about Linda because I'm sure
this is not the trip of her dreams, this is the trip of my dreams.
She's humoring me because she knows
how big my need for adventure, for challenge is.
Sometimes I'm scared. It's a concern about…
as if the trip is more important than me.
As if the trip, the adventure, the challenge
is always at the forefront of her mind.
Also in everyday life if she doesn't have little adventures, she dies.
Maybe deep down, I thought this trip was related to a much wider trip,
that we decided to make,
that very much represents the two of us.
We have seen our first bear, but now we are petrified.
Bear, go away! We're coming!
Bear!
-Make some noise. -Bear, we're coming!
I'd say hi, sir.
Hi, sir.
Cycling for kilometers and kilometers in the Midwest,
sooner or later you'll meet cowboys.
But to our big surprise, there are just cowgirls here.
I love you
And I apologize. I love you
I love you
I love you, descent!
With all this pushing, we're singing '80s hits.
Not even the moon enters
Looking further for something to do
Down, down
-Down, down -Between stars and love
Girls, we will never get to the second place.
This is despair. We can't take this anymore.
-Let's try and descend. -You could see that it was over there.
Let's descend. At some point, we will meet someone.
-Wrong way. We'll just get a ride back. -What ride? We're here.
-Let's descend. -Hold on.
Isn't this a paved road?
If it's paved, it will lead to a bigger paved road.
-Yeah, right. -Where?
A bigger paved road will lead to Helena.
We decided to get a pickup, a little wagon, just for the bicycles.
From Helena we are going to Butte.
Yeah, that's a shame,
because we wanted to cycle the whole time.
But we couldn't take it anymore, we are not heroes,
there is no rush.
So we are getting a lift and cutting out almost seven kilometers,
which we were supposed to cover on the dangerous highway.
There's still a long way to cycle.
Sometimes you have to surrender.
Right?
It's not a surrender. There are slightly different views.
Today we took our bikes to the spa.
After 800 kilometers of mud, dust, climbs and descents,
a nice bath, a check-up, and some lube on the gears
is the least we can do.
And after the beauty treatment, a free evening for everyone.
Well done!
Along with these spaces,
with these lands where man has settled,
large stretches remain primitive.
One of the most exciting things about travelling by bike
are the casual encounters with other cyclists,
explorers, sportsmen. But also men and women
who chose to leave, cycling in nature,
to rediscover themselves.
Sometimes when you cycle, you come across
cyclists like you, and the peculiar thing is that
just for the fact of being cyclists, there's this kind of fraternity
that makes you connect with each other quickly
by telling things, your trip experiences, the effort, the routes you took,
with the idea that other people have the same view of the trip,
the same view of the bike.
Here in Montana people are very proud of having a lot of cows.
These are Black and Red Angus, and we were told
that there are even three times more cows than people.
There are 2,500,000 cows and just 1,000,000 inhabitants.
-Hey. -Good morning.
It's already 6:00. We're freezing.
It's 7:15. We're leaving.
Even if we managed to wake up earlier, we realized that it's too cold.
7:30 is my time limit for leaving.
There are very few people in Montana,
and when we leave so early in the morning we have these prairies,
these endless fields, basically all to ourselves.
Then, when you least expect it, you end up at Montana Hollywood Studios.
It's definitely a beautiful place. Nobody was expecting it.
It looked like a movie set. We were all impressed.
If we find a gold nugget, we'll buy a pickup.
You sift through the bigger pieces, then you put them in the water.
A gold nugget.
It doesn't seem like right the color.
Other peaks to climb await us,
before crossing into Idaho for a short stretch
and then to Wyoming's National Parks.
We came down from Montana's mountains and for the first time today,
it was a long straight ride in these wide plains.
When there are days like these, there's also boredom.
Because boredom is part of a bike trip,
of a slow trip, and you've got to learn to live with it.
Never ending road
There are also times
when your mind goes blank, you feel tired,
you cycle, concentrating on the concrete, on the ground, on the spinning wheel.
For me, adventure is research,
it's discovering something.
On this trip I feel like an explorer.
At home, I always have to make sure to be feminine,
to be like people want me to be, same thing at my job.
Here, instead,
I don't have to worry about being judged
or about pleasing people.
It's fine not to wash my hair for three days,
to have bruises on my legs,
and simply concentrate on feeling,
of feeling this trip, the emotions, the road running.
Okay. This can be opened, right?
-Yes! -Yes!
Hurry up!
See you later when the rain stops.
-It's raining. -We are very hungry.
But since it's raining, we can't eat,
so we're patiently waiting until it stops, in hope.
If not, we will eat each other.
We're out of water.
This time we are camping, so we'll try to take some here.
Anyway, these are fawn tracks.
I'm an impatient person. I try to be as patient as possible,
but there are things about being with four people,
four paces, four minds,
four different ways of living. I get mad in the morning.
We take an hour and a half, sometimes two hours to leave,
and this drives me crazy. I often start…
facing our daily 90, 100 kilometers in a bit of a bad mood.
The thing is, I'm fucking sick of it. She complains all day.
Too much uphill, too many kilometers, too much effort.
What did she think she was doing? The Vento? Turin-Venice?
Or being in the Rocky Mountains?
She's been planning this for months.
If she didn't want to, she could have told me.
I argued with Silvia about the point of going fast, being quick, getting there,
as usual her ideas are different from mine.
I think that, while in the past years it was two of us
and we would find more easily a compromise between our views.
This year is a bit harder, because she seeks allies,
who can keep up with her.
I try to push to have that day…
when I take a little bit of time to write,
to do other things, to rest or just to have a moment of space.
I'm a very competitive person, in life, playing basketball,
sometimes I'd like to grind more miles, but instead we have to stop,
because one lags behind, or because one needs to drink,
because we leave late in the morning, because someone's hungry.
If I were alone, I think I'd be much faster
because for me, while it's true that it's not a race,
I like the idea of having this incentive.
Sometimes, when we do very long climbs, especially on dirt roads,
we struggle so badly.
I see my mates struggling, I see Linda almost suffering.
I wonder what we are doing here, what I am doing,
what the point of this trip is.
I could be on a beach with a mojito in my hand,
relaxing like any other person in summer.
I think I might be a bit of a masochist, as indeed all cyclists are
in the sense that effort and fatigue is part of the sport.
God of climbs, God of plains, why have you abandoned us?
When you reach the top of a pass, I'm almost proud
to have been able to make it with my own legs, by myself.
Then there's the descent.
The descent is pure joy,
freedom, a moment of happiness you can't describe.
Concrete.
I see concrete at the end of the tunnel.
Whoever invented concrete is a genius. More ingenious than penicillin.
No, hold on.
There we go.
Got it. Thanks.
Very tough day today. On a dirt road this morning
from 7:00, 8:00.
From early in the morning. We did many hours.
We then found concrete again,
but we weren't going to manage to get to our goal.
We were desperately searching for help
and finally we managed to get to this place
after finding this amazing woman who shared this beautiful place.
We were really lucky.
I think that it might be the bicycle
that inspires the kindness of people, because it's so tough.
So other people are kind to us, maybe.
If I have to guess, these guys seem to have had an adventure like ours.
Yes.
There's this damn crazy descent.
I understand that they also wanted to go where we're headed.
Yes, this place is located right on the road
between the frenzy of life. You think you can get to the city,
but then it's actually crazy, so… They are from Manchester.
We're going to write something similar. "Thank you for saving our life."
Wow, watermelon.
It's incredible. She's a very kind woman.
-She also brought us some watermelon. -Thank God.
We asked her if she wants to be paid, but she doesn't want anything.
-It's a beautiful place. -She doesn't want to be paid.
We don't have anything for her, but she said,
"There is you."
Yes. I love watermelon. She hates it.
After few days in the Wyoming desert,
we are now in a totally different environment.
We're in Battle Creek Valley.
We're heading towards the high and tough mountains.
I expect it'll take a lot of effort in Colorado,
but also it'll be satisfying.
I hope to gain more satisfaction than fatigue from it. No.
Everyone wants to gain more fatigue than satisfaction.
One of Silvia Gottardi's maxims on life.
First puncture after
something like 1,500 kilometers, so I'd say that we got pretty lucky.
But it's always a pain. We have to take everything apart.
Of course it was the rear wheel. Which is more complicated.
Each of us has an inner tube.
Mine is about to be sacrificed.
We are going to check the tire as well, I heard a weird sound before.
Which one didn't work?
-All right. -There we go.
There you go. Are we repairing or changing it?
There's a little pebble in here.
Just so it sticks, otherwise…
It's good.
No, it's good.
-Where's the valve? -It's there.
Here it's good. There?
-On the small one, maybe. -Here.
Fastest pit stop ever.
Wow!
Look how many snacks and things!
How nice, we are crossing an area
with no water for 60 miles, and here someone left
a cooler box with water and snacks.
CYCLISTS BY CHANCE
We got a lot of people.
Let's go.
Climbs here in Colorado are very long,
but maybe less demanding than those in Montana,
but their length makes them really hard
because at home we weren't trained to constantly climb
for 20 or 30 kilometers, so they are exhausting.
We still aren't suffering from altitude sickness,
but we are definitely short of breath, so it's a different pace,
a harder pace, but the environment
is really spectacular, so it makes the effort worth it.
We cycled more than 1200 miles. We've been on the road for nearly a month,
and I also feel stronger, more trained,
doing things I never thought I would, climbs that I would have deemed impossible
but that we are doing somehow.
But this time, once we got up the hill
we found another mountain to climb, an invisible one,
that hits your heart instead of your legs.
Linda is struggling.
She's having a bad time because of some news she got from Italy,
that her sister-in-law is dying.
Nobody was expecting that,
otherwise we wouldn't have left for such a long trip.
And I feel bad to see her suffer, helpless.
When I texted my brother, my nephews, and they gave me the news.
I spent a day or two in such anguish. I'm having terrible dreams.
This thing reminds me of my mother.
It makes me feel bad because I know what it means
when someone close…
dies so quickly.
I hate to be helpless, I'd like to help Linda.
Maybe we should be more afraid not to live, than to die,
because maybe the big risk we all take is that,
for fear of many things,
we don't really live the life we want.
Maybe this trip is also an escape from reality.
-Where is it? Is it there? -Oh, it's here!
We're dead.
Take my back, rip it in tiny pieces like…
-and dump it. -Marshall Pass, conquered.
I endured a lot mentally.
Today we are celebrating exactly one month of cycling.
As a reward, we found this beautiful, classy cabin,
and we're making an organic Italian pasta with tuna.
We took shelter in here, because we have been in this prairie
for hours, and there isn't even a single tree.
This is the only way to escape the sun.
Outside there's a sign that says it's shaky and dangerous.
But between a log falling on our heads and dying from heat,
we decided that…
the best death would be eating in the shade.
After the lunch break at the isolated five-star lodge,
we start going uphill to the highest pass of the trip,
but the weather didn't promise anything good.
We're on Indiana Pass.
It's raining, hailing, it's fucking cold.
Two lightning bolts came down and I said, "What are we doing?"
Descending, the road was filling up with mud and earth.
I really had a moment of--
Not of panic, because that was definitely not it.
But, fuck, I couldn't find a way. What are we going to do? It was pouring.
The hail really hurt me. It was so big.
We were wearing helmets, but it was painful on skin and legs.
We tried to shelter under the bikes, but we didn't really manage.
Once in the mine, I thought, "I want my trip to end here."
My ears.
My hands hurt so badly.
-See? -A little wet?
I was never caught in so much rain and hail.
It's insane. I'm ragged.
Now I am calling a taxi and I'll wait for you at the end of this shit trip.
-No, honey. -Fuck it.
We did it!
Shut up, I'm fucking sick of it.
That bulldozer…
could lift us and the bikes.
-And we go. -And we go.
This is evidence of the rain and the mud we've been through.
We had all this mud on ourselves too.
We've shaken it off a bit.
To the great delight
of those who will have to clean the mine's restrooms.
After the very high passes of Colorado at over 3,000 meters,
we're about to descend to the deserts of New Mexico,
the final stage of our trip.
Let's celebrate on the tracks of the railroad.
The last pass of Colorado.
Now we go down to New Mexico!
God willing, we go to New Mexico and tonight…
Tortillas! Vamos, vamos, arriba, arriba, arriba!
We got into New Mexico, and how do we celebrate?
-Margarita. -Margarita.
It won't be like this, but I imagine there's going to be deserts,
but instead there will still be a lot of mountain passes, one each day.
These last days are going to be really tough.
There will be no water.
Everyone warned us about the terrible heat of New Mexico.
Water ran out. We're meeting a guy
who is giving us some bottles. How lucky. Really.
We got to Pie Town,
which is well known for its pies. Let's go eat a big slice.
Look at that.
Damn, this is really good.
It's delicious.
Long live Pie Town.
The town of pies.
We got to Pie Town
and we found this hostel, this free house open to all,
which is called Toaster House,
because it's full of toasters,
and I don't get why Linda doesn't want to sleep
in this beautiful place, it's even free.
I'm going to pitch the tent. I don't know about you.
We saw the room. It looks like a place where kidnapped people are kept for months
and thrown on the mattresses, which were stained.
Inside there's a strange guy who looks like someone from Into The Wild.
Who ate magic mushrooms
and never recovered. It doesn't sound so welcoming.
We're in this crazy house, but the atmosphere is very funny.
Tonight we are going to make some nice spaghetti with tomato sauce,
but since we didn't find a thing in this place,
we have American spaghetti and Prego,
Italian traditional sauce. I'm a bit scared.
-What's this drawer? No way. -There's everything in here.
-Here they are. A wooden spoon. -Great.
Look what I'll find for you.
Let's fry a bit more onions. Bring that light.
How do you say "colla"?
Tonight it rained for hours.
And this morning the sky is threatening rain as well.
The sky is so grey, the weather forecast is not the best,
and we would have cycled three days
on dirt a road, in the desert, a bit of a wilder part,
but probably, very likely,
we will take the paved road,
because there's a lot of mud and we don't have the right bikes.
I'm a bit moved because we got to Hachita.
It's around 80 kilometers from the border with Mexico
and to the end of this adventure. It's odd to think that tomorrow will be
the last day on our bikes because we have been cycling for 50 days,
and now it's a routine. Wake up at 6:00, get on the bike,
make sure there's food and water, examine the map
to reach the daily stage,
I think I'll miss that.
It's true, I'm tired and I'm also happy, somehow,
to have gotten to the end of this trip.
We started, we cycled, and 4,000 kilometers have passed.
I'm glad I tried it, but it was too much for me
because the sporting challenge for me is not worth
the pleasure of seeing living things, of stopping.
Linda is very cynical, she often says that she's fed up, that she's tired,
that she can't wait to stop cycling, but I think
that deep down she's very happy as well.
For me it was a lot of effort.
Then at the end you forget that. We are here.
There's just the joy of having made it. It's great.
So you only keep little pieces, like in movies.
You copy and paste all the cool pieces,
the times we made it. Also the effort,
but it becomes a narration in past tense, just like a movie.
Go, go!
-It's so hot. -Give me a kiss.
We made it!
I don't know if we'll survive the heat of this hour of waiting.
But we made it.
It's incredible to think that tomorrow… I don't know,
tomorrow we'll get up and catch a bus to Phoenix airport.
It will be very weird.
This is the longest trip we've made with the Cyclists by Chance project.
It tested us, sometimes also as a couple, I think.
Done, it's over.
I still haven't fully realized it. Maybe I have to write something
in order to fully realize it's finished.
For 24 hours you are
in this thing, this trip, the effort, the dirt,
the kilometers you have to grind, because if not you won't get there.
It gave me a better idea of the parts of the world
that are not so striking,
but it is vast, with these huge empty spaces
and these ghost towns where people still live.
It's something that sticks inside you.
Especially with the bike, because doing it with your own energy,
it's a completely different thing.
Somehow this feeling of being vulnerable to the elements,
to those big trucks that overtook us on the highway.
Being there so tiny, alone,
in the middle of nowhere
is a nice feeling
that I know I'll miss and I'm sure Linda will as well.