Bikepacking the Route of Caravans in Morocco | Kurt Werby

This week I feature listener Kurt Werby who is giving us an update on his upcoming bikepacking adventure on Route of Caravans in Morocco. I first featured Kurt earlier this year when he decided to take on this route. Now just a couple of weeks from beginning the adventure we hear how Kurt has prepared himself for taking this one on. 

Follow Kurt via his instagram account - @kurtwerby 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hello everyone, it's Bella Malloy here, host of Seek Travel Ride. Welcome back to another midweek mini episode where I try my best to stoke your fire for bike adventures. Now, this week we are catching up with adventurer Kurt Werby. Fans of the show will know that I have featured Kurt in a midweek episode before where I interviewed him about his upcoming bikepacking adventure. I interviewed him at the start of the year and that adventure is to take place very, very soon. In fact, coming up in just a couple of weeks here in October. Kurt is going to be taking himself to Morocco to take on the Route of Caravans bikepacking route. And this is sort of really the first huge bikepacking adventure that Kurt will be ever be undertaking. Now, Kurt has magnanimously agreed to giving us updates along the way, and this is his second update, which is all about how he has prepped since we last caught up. And I can reveal that Kurt has taken a couple of bikepacking adventures himself. Figured out his equipment, what he needs to take with him, and I guess he's getting his head around what lays ahead. What I really love about this update from Kurt is the honesty with which he is telling his story. He is laying his anxieties bare for us all to hear. And I can hand on heart say that I think probably most of us can relate to things that Kurt will be talking about. Anyway, enough of me chatting about Kurt and his update. Let's get to it and listen to what he has to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Hi Bella. Well, summer is winding down here on the west coast of Canada, and it's now only a few weeks until I'm heading off to Morocco. Which is just crazy to think. I just cannot believe how fast the time is going by. It's been a super busy summer, and I've had a lot happening since we last chatted. And I feel like I've gained a lot of knowledge and some experience over the last several months. My gears all been sorted out now, and I've been spending heaps of time riding my bike. I've been focusing on getting myself in shape so I can hit the ground running when I head off on my first day, seeing as I only have a few weeks of riding days available. And I can't organically get in shape over months of riding on a long trip. And with getting out on my bike and doing a ton of riding, it's been really great as I'm exploring areas of the city and the North Shore Mountains that I would never see otherwise. And I've seen some really beautiful areas around here that you wouldn't get to see by driving around in a car. So there's more information available now for route caravans. And I reached out to a few people who have ridden the route or even just parts of it. There's some really good info now about sections that actually aren't even rideable now. And they have got some handy detours, which sound really good. Some of the hike bike sections in the first few days sound character building, to say the least. And it definitely sounds like bikepacking.com has sandbagged the route. And it's going to be a proper adventure with some really long, hard days. But in the end, that's what I signed up for, isn't it? And part of my trip preparation has involved a couple of mini-adventures around my area here. I ended up doing two different trips, and both were incredibly helpful in gaining experience while I'm riding a fully loaded bike. My first trip involved riding from home for a couple of hours to the ferry and taking it to an area known as the Sunshine Coast, where I did my first overnight around the bike to an established and unfortunately really busy provincial park campground called Porpoise Bay. As I headed out, my anxiety brain would go in an overdrive when I left the house with thoughts like, what if I get a flat tire? What if I miss the ferry? Oh no, did I remember to lock the front door? And things like that. And after an hour or so, I started to realize that it's okay if those things happen, because if I get a flat tire, I can fix it. If I miss the ferry, no big deal. There's gonna be another one in a few hours. So I tried to just stay in the moment and let all that other noise in my head drift away. And after a while, it it actually did. And it's like you're guessing you let go and trust the universe will provide. Things always have a way of working themselves out. And I tried to follow that while I was out on my trip. Oh yeah, and I had my first like real bike traveler experience. So Vancouver isn't really known as the friendliest city. But while I was sitting and waiting for the ferry in Horseshoe Bay, I was taking some photos. Uh, a stranger walked up to me and was checking my bike out, and he started to ask me about my loaded bike and where I was going. And so he just like out of the blue, started up a conversation, and we ended up chatting for like 20 minutes. And I learned about his brother who does a lot of bikepacking trips around the world, which was actually quite cool. So, and this kind of thing does not normally happen here in Vancouver. It just goes to show how much great of a conversation starter the bike really is. So, and on that return trip, I woke up that next morning. I was really tired. The campground had been really noisy, so I didn't get much sleep. And I didn't have much energy, I didn't have any motivation, but I knew I had to start making my way back home. And a good friend told me something a while back, which I still carry with me. And she said, You're gonna have highs and you're gonna have lows when you're out there. But just try to remember that the lows will eventually pass, but as will the highs. And after reminding myself that my my brain actually switched gears, and I actually had some of the funnest moments on my bike on that trip when I was coming back home. So I just gotta say thanks to Megan Hackinen. And so my second trip was like a completely opposite from the first trip. Um, I pedaled out from our little cabin in the forest and headed straight into the mountains. There's no campsites, no people around for miles. It was just pure wilderness and pure bear country. It was a proper wilderness experience, which involved like a rather long, steep dirt road with a big 1400 meter climb. And it was a brutal hike a bike at the end that I had to get to where I was planning on stopping for the night. And I just picked a spot on the topple map that I had been looking at that was at the end of a supposedly air quote road. And it was actually a really great learning experience having to do such a hard hike a bike with a fully loaded bike up such a steep track for a kilometer or so. And that actually had me um, I was carrying like eight liters of water um included with my weight, and it was super hot out there. So I made sure that I wasn't gonna run out of water for that day and the next day. So I ended up getting up to where I decided to pitch the tent, and it was just one of those magical spots with absolute breathtaking views of the mountains. Sunset was spectacular, and it was just complete silence, other than the mosquitoes that were like buzzing around my head. So I slept like a baby that night, and I was truly content and like snuggled up in my little one-person tent for the night. And I woke up the next morning at sunrise to it was a double layer of inversion clouds, which is really unusual around here. And I was in between the layers of clouds. And so as the sun was rising behind the mountains, it was streaking through the upper layers of clouds, and below me was a sea of clouds down in the valley. And so I was sitting eating my breakfast and drinking my coffee, and I was just thinking how thankful I am to be able to get myself to places like this. It was really, really special. So, and coming out the next day was quite the treat, as I basically coasted downhill for about 20 kilometers to get back to civilization. So that's a trip that I'm gonna remember for a long time. I've been putting my gear to the test, as you can tell, and I'm pretty confident with my setup and what I plan to bring with me to Morocco. And so I'm looking forward to that first night when I get to pitch my little tent out in the Atlas Mountains and make myself a little home for the night and get all comfy and cozy. Probably be nervous being camped out in the wilderness in a foreign country for the first night, but I think that's par for the course. So, and I also know I'll be looking forward to those days when I reach a town or a village and I know that I'm gonna have a hot shower so I can clean myself up and then I can dive into a delicious meal like a tagine or some other freshly cooked meal. And then I always just there's something something special about earning that shower after you've been out sweaty and dirty for a few days at a time. So, but I think the thing that I'm gonna look forward to the most is meeting and interacting with the people that I get to meet. So, in all my travels, my best and most distinct memories are always from people I've met along the way. I've been fortunate to have met some truly amazing people from around the world and they always restore my faith in humanity. I've been putting in a ton of work and preparation for the trip. And I will say that I've had days recently where the fire and motivation for the trip just haven't been there. And it's felt like I've been swimming upstream. But I do know that I'm very privileged to get to do adventures and trips like this, and and I won't forget that. Actually, a good a good friend of mine reminded me the other day we were out having having dinner and and some beer, and and he said it's pretty hard to sustain your psych for such a long period of time, and that actually really helped me put things into perspective. So I gotta say thanks, Scott. And now that this the trip has been in the planning stages for what seems like forever, and now it's here or almost here, it's just really it's quite surreal. Um the psych's definitely back, and I'm I'm ready to get to Morocco now. I'm trying not to plan very much for the trip. Um, aside from my free first few days when I arrive in the country, I have to organize things like SIM card, buy some groceries, get a bus ticket to where I want to start my riding from. Um if I had more time, I would just start pedaling from Casablanca. But I have to give up some sections so that I can spend time in other areas. But I do know that I'll be pedaling out of the small town of Immelchill in the Atlas on my set date. And aside from that, I'm not planning anything. My only plan is to take each day as it comes. Geez, I may even decide to get off route of caravans and go in a completely different different direction at some point. Like, who knows? I've actually been going chatting back and forth with your guest Rebecca Gross, who I've been getting a ton of inf inspiration from. And she actually had a really great quote from me, which is the best plan is no plan. So thanks, Rebecca, for that. Um, I do know the day when the day comes that I'm gonna be getting on the plane, I'm gonna be nervous and I'm gonna absolutely be bricking it. But if I wasn't nervous, then I think that would actually be a pretty bad sign. So on that note, I'll sign off for now and I'll talk to you soon. Bye, Bella.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Thank you so much, Kurt. Oh wow, what an update this has been. So there's a few things that I wanted to discuss once I heard this part of your story. And the first is way to go for getting this far into your prep and for also doing a few practice rides beforehand. I think that's actually a really good way to, I would say, in my own bella words, calm the farm and feel like you have got what it takes to take on what you're about to do. So much of bikepacking is about the unknown, and as a fellow anxiety sufferer, it's also one of those things where there's a million things about the unknown that whiz around your mind. What if this happens? What if that happens? What am I gonna do if this happens? And add in a foreign country, a foreign area, all those things just multiply to potentially making us feel like an anxious mess. But I feel like you doing what you've done, having those couple of practice rides, and actually acknowledging these things are going on for you, you're already putting yourself way ahead here. And you'll be able to reflect back on these rides that you've done, knowing that your equipment's great, knowing that you've gotten through hard stuff, knowing that you can do the thing, and that will just be so powerful for you when you're actually in country in Morocco on that first day, after that first wild camping night, doing the thing yourself. The other thing that I loved about this is that you've searched the route and you've reached out to other people who have actually done it themselves for some recent intel. I think that's a brilliant idea. Because it's one thing to see a route written up on bikepacking.com in a lovely article with beautiful photos, but it's quite another to speak to people who've done it for themselves and have that hands-on experience. And it sounds like this route is getting a lot more popular for good reason, by the way. Anyone who wants to Google route of caravans, you'll see the images that come up on your screen, and you'll probably have a fair bit of wonderlust if you're into off-road bikepacking adventures. But I think it sounds like things have changed a little bit on that route. You've got some great idea about what the physical route challenges are going to be. And you're even talking about the fact that bikepacking.com are a bit sandbaggy that way, and maybe setting you up for an extra little bit of adventure. But by the sounds of it, you're well prepared for that, Kurt. That trip that you were talking about where you took on that monumental hiker bike, I can tell you now, Bella probably would have thrown all the toys out of the cot, so to speak. Because hiker bikes are not my thing. I do them, but I always do them begrudgingly. And listen, I don't know if are you like me? Are you that way? Do you enjoy hiker bikes? Do you not like hiker bikes? Do you just go, yeah, whatever, if I have to do it, I have to do it. Please reach out and let me know. But it sounds like you got the best reward from that in many ways. Firstly, you got the reward of realizing that when the going gets tough, Kurt keeps going. You had so much extra water with you, you had all that time in between resupplies. So not only were you hiking your bike with everything you'd normally have, but then add in all those extra kilos of water weight as well. So it's a heavy haul, right? But you kept going. Then you got rewarded with the most insane gift from Mother Nature itself. The double cloud inversion with the sunshine peering through the middle layer and you just watching that. Wow, absolutely phenomenal. And I wonder, Kurt, because you mentioned things about, you know, visualizing what it's going to be like there in Morocco. I really hope that you're trying to visualize magic moments. We won't know what those magical moments of nature will be, but I do know you're a photographer. So I suspect that as a photographer, you're probably imagining those landscapes, imagining that golden hour light, the blue hour light, the moonlight, the sunlight, the shadows, and all those different things. Not to mention all those phenomenal new experiences and the colours of Morocco from the desert landscapes of the Atlas Mountains to those beautiful wild market streets that you're going to find yourself in as well. And listeners, I wonder how many others out there listen to this and actually do visualize stuff to look forward to because it's the other thing that I've learned in dealing with my own anxieties is this idea of positive psychology where instead of being anxious and going into the spiral of I'm worried about this or I'm worried about that, we sort of flip it a little bit and start using positive framing words to change how our emotions are linked to the experiences we're about to have. And a great example, and I've used this on a fair few episodes before, is you know, thinking about something that's coming ahead and going, oh no, I'm so nervous, or reframing it positively and saying, Oh, I'm not nervous about this. I am so damn excited about it. Bring it on. And Kurt, I hope that you have some excitement ahead of you as well. Not to mention some great hot tips by your friend Megan Hakinen. If anyone is going to be able to give us some good tips on how to endure on a long multi-week bikepacking tour off-road, it's going to be Megan Hakkinen herself, who has completed the full Nelson, I believe. Atlas Mountain Race, Hellenic Mountain Race, or Silk Road Mountain Race, all in the same year. What a phenomenal achievement. What a absolute legend you are as well, Megan. If you're listening to this, I tip my proverbial bikepacking hat to you. Or is that bikepacking helmet, perhaps? But yeah, back to the idea of that positive visualization and positive psychology strategies. I feel, Kurt, that you're probably going to be taking this all on board. And you sound like you're already doing that as well. And the last thing I wanted to say is just how much you getting out and about on these awesome mini micro adventures, even there in Vancouver, has opened up experiences for you and shown you not only what's available to you in your own backyard, accessible for a weekend trip, which you'll be able to do even when Morocco's been and gone. But also just those magical moments that happen to us who travel by bike. The conversation with a complete stranger in the middle of Vancouver, and you start up a friendship almost, you know, 20 minutes with a complete stranger chatting bike travel, how awesome is that. And just think of the stories and experiences that lay ahead of you in Morocco. I cannot wait to watch this trip unfold. And listeners, if you want to watch this trip unfold for Kurt as well, do yourself a favor, give him a follow on Instagram. His handle there is at Kurt Werby, and I've put a link in the show notes. Kurt, I hope that you will be living in the moment during the adventure. Perhaps you'll be posting updates there while you're in country. And if not, I look forward to your audio updates when you're back and your photos and stories from this amazing trip that lays ahead of you. Be super excited. I shall know I am for you. Okay, listeners, it's time for me to do my favorite part of these midweek episodes, and that is to thank you, my absolute super fans, for shouting me some virtual coffees and supporting me and the work I'm doing and putting these podcast episodes together. All these virtual coffees do add up and go towards the running costs of pushing the podcast episodes out there to you all around the world. And this week I would like to thank Joe Brown who has said thank you for the inspiration to get back out touring after a 15 year gap. I've successfully just peddled across Normandy for a week fuelled by Croissance. Oh my goodness. Joe Brown, first and foremost, thank you. You're a dead set legend for supporting the podcast. And secondly, you had my heart both at Normandy and also Croissance. Now, listeners, you may not know this, but Normandy holds a very special near and dear spot in my heart because it was actually in Normandy where I took part in my ultra cycling event called the Normandy Cat 900. So, Joe, you may not know this, but I cycled all around Normandy in this event. And so I know that region of France almost like no other. And I've experienced it in all weather and at all hours of the day. And I've also eaten some darn good croissants there as well. But more importantly, I really want to hear about the touring that you used to do 15 years ago and what adventures lay ahead of you, perhaps. You're tuning into the show, and I know a lot of people do so to get inspiration for their own adventures. Normadi's happened. I wonder what's next. Thank you so much again for supporting me and the podcast. Next I have someone Yes, that's right, listeners, someone who hasn't left their name, although I am a super sleuth and I actually know who you are. I won't reveal it to everyone else in case you want to remain anonymous, but you have said I'm super proud to be able to say I know you when I hear how inspirational listeners find the show. I'm also super happy to be able to hear your voice on demand and be transported to our rides together. And uh I know you and you're awesome, and this message really made me smile. And we have enjoyed many rides together, and you are a dead set super fan, and I love you to bits, and thank you for supporting me and the show, someone. Now, listeners, if you would like to do as Joe Brown and someone has done and support me and the podcast, you can do so simply by heading to buymeacoffee.com forward slash seek travel ride. Buy me a few virtual coffees, please leave me your name. But also, more importantly, let me know what is it that you're loving about tuning into the podcast episodes? Is there a special segment? Is there a special type of bike adventure you like hearing about? And also when you're drawing inspiration from tuning into the podcast, what is that inspiration towards? What is the bike adventure that you are going to be plotting and planning to undertake yourself? Similarly to Kurt, who's tuning into the episodes, to fuel his inspiration for his route of caravans ride to come very soon. Let me know all of that, and until the next episode, I'm Bella Malloy. Thanks for listening.