We May Be A Throuple Now?

Returning to Canada, flying bikes, and a new friend.

Greetings from Vancouver. The Time: Middle of the Gosh Dang Night.

Yup, we’re jet lagging. I thought I could power through, but it’s 3AM and I’m tired of thinking about how stupid it is that my body is craving lunch.

First, a disclaimer, I’m not totally sure what a Throuple is. Avvai doesn’t want me to use this title, but I like it…

Is it something like this?

And after quickly googling the definition, I’m thinking I should change it too.

Throuple: A romantic relationship between three people.

Alright, new title:

We Found A Platonic Third Friend

Even though it’s not as catchy it is more accurate. But why is making a friend (a platonic friend) newsworthy? Because our New Friend is coming to stay with us in Canada.

This is SILAS (he’s in the middle in case you forgot what we looked like or are new here)

We first met Silas on the side of a Turkish highway 250 kilometers from Istanbul. I wasn’t in the greatest mood: the landscape was monotonous, full of deceptively deep valleys, and the road ruled by semi trucks.

Silas was walking on the other side of the highway, a pack on his back; far enough that I couldn’t talk to him, but close enough to see he wasn’t Turkish. We’d heard of people Walking (usually across a country but sometimes around the world), but this was our first time seeing somebody with our own eyes. My immediate thought was “I’m glad I’m not that guy!”, which really cheered me up.

We stopped at the next gas station and took a long lunch as we waited for The Walker to catch up.

The number one highlight of this trip has been meeting fascinating people. The boundaries of what is possible in life have been hugely expanded in this time. The chance to talk to a real life Walker was too good to miss — what would we learn? How would we be inspired? What was wrong with this guy?!

Sure enough, he came plodding up, happy to join our picnic table, and fate was tipped into motion.

Some facts about Silas: He’s on a quest to walk from England to India. He’s been walking for two years and he thinks it’ll take him another three. We also learned he has an interesting relationship to money: his whole multi-year trip is funded by a few thousand dollars. He doesn’t anticipate it being a problem; he sleeps outside 90% of the time and seems to live on bread and tahini. He’s also a writer and programmer; but he doesn’t believe in social media, only sharing his journey with a small group. We got into a wonderful groove about creativity and audience that felt refreshing after a few weeks of flat tires.

As we left, we promised to meet up in Istanbul.

Which we did. And then, when he needed a place to stay, we offered Silas a spot on the floor of our private room, he gratefully accepted (otherwise it’s outside for him!). Ten days later, after hours of fascinating conversations we’d all agreed that Silas should come to Canada and winter with us. In the spring he’ll return to Istanbul and continue The Walk.

If you’d like a glimpse at what these conversations are like, Silas is a prolific documentarian. Here are his notes from just one evening.

Silas and I have already planned a list of projects to work on over the winter (both individual and collaborative) and since we left Istanbul three days ago, he’s published 10 blog posts, including a great story about being arrested while trying to cross the bridge to Asia. Though I haven’t been as prolific (I watched three movies on the airplane), I came away from each conversation feeling inspired and encouraged. One of his goals is to revolutionize University, which sounds cool to me. How lucky we are to be able to spend a few months together!

It’s unrelated, but I really like this picture. One day Silas will walk through here.

In return for accommodation, Silas has agreed to help with cooking and “sourcing” food. We envision creating a little room for him behind our couch. He is fiercely independent and we aren’t concerned about him at all, though it will be interesting to witness how somebody lives who is even more frugal than us, especially in one of the most expensive cities in North America.

So that’s something! He arrives next week.

WE ARE NO LONGER DIGITAL NOMADS

Yup, we are now physical one-placers. Goodbye a life of freedom and cheap living, hello Vancouver.

Or maybe analog stay-stillers is better?

For the first time in four years, we are sitting in an apartment that we intend to STAY IN for at least a year. Or kind of… we are subletting until Christmas and then we’ll find somewhere for a year.

My parents drove out all our stuff and it was… a bit overwhelming. We’ve lived out of a backpack for years (or panniers) and it is shocking to see an entire wall of boxes that supposedly contain our stuff. What do I need that isn’t my 6 shirts and one pair of pants?

Sadly there are even more out of frame.

I haven’t opened the boxes yet, but I presume they’re full of stuff that will make some donation box very happy.

WHAT ABOUT ISTANBUL?

Istanbul was great: the streets are infested with cats, I was always getting lost only to find myself in Constantinople, and the public transport ferry is the best $2 you can spend anywhere in the world.

Beautiful views in the background and foreground!

However, our biggest goal in Istanbul was to find a cardboard box for our bikes. This is the accepted way to fly with a bike — you pack it up nice and neat in the most stable material known to man, cardboard, and then pray that it arrives in one piece.

However, Istanbul is a famously hard place to find bike boxes. First, cardboard can be collected and sold, which means it disappears at first light:

I didn’t take this picture, but that big bag is full of cardboard

Second, so many people do bike trips to Istanbul that the bike box industry has inflated to ridiculous prices. The only place we found willing to sell us a box was charging $50 for two boxes. This is an insult that was only aggravated the more we spoke to the super-frugal Silas. He can live for a month on $50 and this shop wants this much for cardboard??

So we took to the streets and made a box ourselves out of scrap and lots of saran wrap:

Four boxes are better than one!

We ran out of duct tape immediately, but luckily Silas knew the trick to tight saran wrapping. We threw a few hand made signs in there for good luck. We learned that Avvai doesn’t know how to draw a bicycle.

Or maybe she’s designing a bicycle that hasn’t yet been invented.

At the airport we were immediately stopped by the check-in people and told we needed to rewrap or box our bikes. I had been dreading this — I knew we could visit those wrapping services that use a rainforest-killing-amount of plastic for every handbag, but I didn’t want to, especially because I’d have to pay for it.

What do you mean that isn’t wrapped well enough??

The Check-In Guy called over another Burly Fellow, who told me to follow him. As we lugged our stuff I looked at the boxes with an outsider eye… and conceded that another wrap would be a good thing. These bikes are my retirement plan, so I’d like to keep them in good condition. Perhaps I would be grateful for the high standards of British Airway’s baggage department.

The Burly Fellow stopped at the overside luggage zone, grabbed the first bike box and tossed it onto the conveyer. The second bike followed, the plastic immediately ripping as it caught on the side. The Fellow then nodded at us and left.

Goodbye bikes. It’s been nice.

We held our breath as we waited in Vancouver… and amazingly they both appeared. We assembled them yesterday and they seem to be in one piece. Once again I’m impressed by whatever magic allows airports to work. And I can happily endorse the “wrap it yourself” method!

GOALS GOING FORWARD AKA WHAT’S NEXT?

The biggest reason we’ve decided to become non-digital sedentators is to foster Community. Travel is incredible, but it is difficult to create community when you’re constantly leaving.

We have a tremendous amount of friends here in Vancouver, which is why we picked it. The priority is to connect with them and see how life can look like with these stable relationships.

I’m grateful for the skills and adventures from travel — my zone of what’s possible has expanded beyond anything I ever dreamed of — and I look forward to seeing how our lives will look as we share this with other people.

Plus, I know the “fairy chimneys” will wait for me.

However, Vancouver is very expensive. I know my writing will make a lot of money some day (now it makes me a lot of friends) but in the meantime I need to find another job. The remote work is enough for Istanbul prices… but they don’t charge $8 for a handful of broccoli there!

If anyone knows of a good job or money opportunities, I’d be grateful to hear it. The dream is something in film so I can continue meeting people and learning (even better, in animation), but I’m down for anywhere that I can be useful. I’m also looking at working with teenagers, who I seem to have an easy connection with, probably because I haven’t matured too much past them.

THAT’S IT

This is a turning point for us. I feel as excited about this chapter as the first time we left Vancouver. I believe I’ll create my best writing ever within an inspiring community and I’m excited to be sharing it with all of you as it develops!

Thankfully this was not the last time we saw our bikes.

Until next time, love you all!

Kyle & Avvai