I recently had a visit from three international riders, each of them a very different and amazing individual, and each of them on a separate trip. Through their visit I learnt about really long beards, really good punk music, dancing elephants and the truth about Rohloff speedhubs (also known as the Holy Grail of bike touring components).

For the sake of entertainment, I will attempt to elaborate a little more on each one:

![](http://mxclimb.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/three_mates.jpg "Three mates")
From left to right, Rob, Chrigi and Marie

Rob is a 55 year old welsh cyclist, he has almost no earthly things (no TV, no property, no furniture) and whenever he is out of work he is touring or travelling. He has toured to Tibet, (where he met Reinhold Messner no less), Patagonia, Iceland, Europe and a handful of other small (2 to 18 months) tours of the sort. After meeting him, I can’t ever use the proverbial getting older excuse, or any other, really.

On to Chrigi (in his fourth decade), the guy with the epic beard: At the moment (feb/2012), he’s been on the road for 3 years and 42,000 km. Chrigi is the only person I’ve met who has broken a Rohloff, (I’m sticking to my derailleurs and ancient cogs from now on). He quit his job as a chocolatier in Chocolate Country (also known as Switzerland), sold his stuff and embarked on a trip that makes most of my so called tours look like grocery getting or fixed gear urban riding.

And now Marie, a self proclaimed “gringa”, born in california. She started cycling a couple of years ago but has already toured across the US of A and pretty much half of Mexico. At only 24 years old, she is the youngest of the lot, and pretty much the youngest rider I have met doing the panam route. She keeps a nice blog and is probably constantly teaching important lessons to mexican women and machos who think it impossible to travel alone as a young lady.

Here they are sight seeing in the centro:

![](http://mxclimb.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/sightseeing.jpg "Spot the chocolatier")
Rob & Chrigi sightseeing.

Notice the legendary “swiss bulge” under Chrigi’s shirt, one of the many manifestations of swiss superiority as an evolved futuristic race.

We became as close as a group of solo riders can get in a few days of non-riding time (which is what most people could achieve over coffee break were they not distracted by smartphones), and soon discussed the advantages of cycle touring over any other kind of transport, at which point Rob enlightened us with the following video:

Which really says more about bicycle use than most cycling propaganda in the new continent. In ye old continent, bicyclers do not need such interventions, as it is a normal thing and not something bullshitters (ie: me) blog about.