Colliding Lives
The people we briefly meet and never see again but always wonder, ‘what happened to him?’
On the first day of our ride we crossed into Lithuania, about three miles from our hotel we were cycling along busy roads. Lorries were tearing past at 70 miles an hour, shaking our bodies and bikes. ‘This is NOT safe’ is all I could think, ‘one lapse of concentration by a driver and that would be it’. A car horn blares. Snapped from my thoughts, I turn to look over my shoulder just in time to see a boy wheel his bike across the road 50 feet behind me. The thud of his little body going up and over the windscreen of an oncoming car is drowned out by the noise of the road. His limp body rolls right over the roof of the vehicle and drops to the ground.
I skid to a halt.
I can’t believe my eyes and pivot round to go to him.People gather round the boy’s body and the traffic on this busy road starts to back up as drivers get out of their cars to see better. As I get nearer some people just scoop him up and lumber over to the verge carrying him between them.
No ambulance is coming and they want to get the traffic moving.It’s obvious to me and the team that they’ve risked serious spinal injuries by moving him but it seems that so deep in the countryside no medical help is available for miles around.
There was nothing we could do. We just had to get back on our bikes.
I’ll be honest, I was really shaken up. I keep picturing the lad rolling up the windscreen. He was probably about 14 years old. I’ll never see him again but I’ll also never forget him. He made life seem so fragile. It really brought home how much life for people in this part of Lithuania is more about survival. It’s something I’m reminded of again and again here and something that I can imagine motivated Zoe to take up a job in the UK.
Two days later we’re still in Lithuania but nearing the Polish border when we pull over for our morning tea break. The support van has already arrived and some fold-up chairs are set out for us under a tree so we can get out of the saddle and take on some fluids. It’s pretty hot and we’re cooling off in the shade of the trees. Despite the fact that we are miles from the nearest city, a thin, middle aged man appears almost from nowhere and comes over to investigate what we are doing. The guy has no english bar ‘hello’ and ‘Russia, Russia, me Russia’.
He gives thumbs up to everything we say or mime and with that kind of positivity it’s hard not to like the guy! He’s obviously not having an easy time in life, he’s just skin and bones really and smelling kind of strong. We eventually make out that he’s trying to get to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and wants a seat in our van. Sadly, we’re going in the other direction and we’re on a tight schedule in order cover all 2,700km of our ride in the 20 days we’ve got.
There’s nothing we can do to shorten his long walk.
We give him a cup of tea and the soup we have in the van and when we part ways we give him a bottle of our water for the road. Before we say goodbye we take a picture together and he’s so pleased by the idea that he starts taking off his dirty jumper for the shot. In doing so he reveals the tee-shirt underneath.
You’ll never guess what it said.
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