Jim Malusa’s Into Thick Air: Biking to the Belly Button 0f Six Continents chronicles his quest to ride to the lowest point on each continent. He’s a desert boy, living in Tucson, and he prefers the empty spaces of surrounding saline depressions.
Malusa pedals and rolls his bike to each sink hole, but this is not a book about biking. Rather, it’s a quirky travelogue in the best tradition of eccentric Englishmen who keep their ironic outlook while slowly going native. In Djibouti, site of Lac Assal (Africa), he wanders around in Arab dress, eventually falling into the local habit of chewing Khat leaves every afternoon. En route to Europe’s Caspian Sea, he ponders the brute construction methods which produced Russia’s prematurely decaying apartment blocks. And he values the simplicity of the stores along the Volga valley, simply called “Store”, and filled with one or less of any item one might want, but locked away from purchase until the proprietor hauls it out for sale.
In Australia, he fears both croc and mosquito attacks while meandering south past Ayers (Uluru) Rock. This was first venture to the depths of the earth, and he quickly (on day one) shows that is definitely NOT about the bike when he hops on any conveyance (truck, bus, car) which might help him avoid the dust and boredom of his two-wheeled transit.
Half of his journeys were funded by Discovery Channel’s web site, back in the dot com boom era. He hauled along a computer and satellite phone to provide daily updates to the hordes who wanted to follow his “epic” journey. While tackling Asia (Dead Sea), he discovered the need for subterfuge as he tried to get his high tech “spy” from Egypt into the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In Russia, he met equal paranoia.
While his short little Khat Chewing journey in Djibouti seems to have won his heart, his most heroic effort was the long trek across southern Patagonia, dropping from the Andes into the Pampas plains, and on to the Atlantic. Like Africa, this site was just a stone’s throw from the Ocean, protected by an upstart volcano which must have blocked off a previously underwater valley.
The lowest points on dry land are not renowned or protected, or hyped in any way. The scenery is mostly flat and alkaline, the air is hot and thick, and none boast the cosmopolitan delights of mountain towns like St. Moritz, Aspen, or Pucon. The locals are puzzled, his friends and families bemused, and he himself is clueless as to why he presses on to complete this self-created challenge.
But like all dreams, this one took him places he never though he’d visit, and refined his appreciation for the variety and common ground among the people of the world.