美国国家公共电台 NPR--Mexico was my favorite country out of all 14 I went through, teen cyclist says

Mexico was my favorite country out of all 14 I went through, teen cyclist says

Transcript¹

NPR's A Martínez talks to Liam Garner², a teen who's heading home to California after cycling from Alaska to Argentina.

A MART?NEZ, HOST:

Right around this time two years ago, 17-year-old high school senior Liam Garner knew one thing for sure.

LIAM GARNER: I always knew that I wanted to do a crazy adventure.

MART?NEZ: Liam is from Long Beach, Calif., and didn't have much money to plan some luxurious³ trip. He is, though, an experienced cyclist who once rode from LA to San Francisco, so he figured, why not start there?

LIAM: I get the idea for a bike trip, and slowly and slowly, I pieced together more and more pieces, and so I'm like, OK, Alaska to Argentina. That's what it is. Here we go.

MART?NEZ: Yep. Liam started to plan a bike trip from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, the so-called Fin⁴ del Mundo - a 20,000 mile ride. And even though Google can't calculate directions for that bike trip, where there's a will, there's a highway - in Liam's case, the Pan-American Highway, a network of roads connecting Alaska to Argentina. I asked him if there was a moment when he realized this adventure might be more difficult than he imagined.

LIAM: Yeah. There was a single moment on my trip where I considered skipping a large portion just because of the nature of the road and the weather. I had a friend for eight months of my trip, another cyclist that I just happened to meet by chance on the road. And when we were biking through southern Mexico, we had just been robbed a week and a half before, and we didn't have cellphones. We were using internet cafes for everything - no contact, no maps, asking around for directions. And at the same time, it was over 100 degrees every single day in the jungle for the whole time we were there.

And after a week and a half of biking through that, Logan talked to me and said, hey, if it continues like this and it gets any hotter in Central America, let's just agree to take a bus because there's no point in suffering. And so we agreed. We shook on it that if it got any worse in Central America, we would skip it. When we got to Guatemala, it cooled off a lot, and it was way, way more tolerable. And so we never ended up skipping anything, thankfully.

MART?NEZ: Now, when you went through Mexico, that was a bit of an awakening⁵ for you - right? - a chance to reconnect. Tell us about that part of the trip.

LIAM: Yeah. So I'm a first-generation immigrant from my mom. She's from Mexico, and so is my whole family on her side. All of my family on my dad's side is from Panama. And because of that, I have family all over Latin America. Mexico was my favorite country out of all 14 that I went through. And obviously, I'm a little biased⁶. But something that surprised me was just the sheer diversity. When you would ask someone in the U.S. what Mexico is like, they kind of have one idea, and they're going to tell you that the entire country is one thing; it looks like this; people are like this. Mexico has over 20 different distinct states, and all of them are completely unique. I felt like I was practically going through Europe.

Like every state of Mexico was its own country almost. When you're on the bike, you're forced to go through these undiscovered places, and because of that, you really get to see a place in its entirety, like the real version of a place. And I just think that if people got to see the full nature of Mexico or any country in Latin America, it's a whole nother thing that you couldn't imagine.

MART?NEZ: For this interview, I was speaking to Liam while he was in Cali, Colombia, backpacking his way home to Los Angeles. That's also where things on his way to Argentina got seriously real.

LIAM: It's a crazy story - going down a hill, hit a pothole⁷ that I didn't see. And, of course, it's the one day I'm not wearing my helmet, and I landed right on my head, and I blacked out for, like, 10 minutes. I ended up ripping my ear in half. I went into surgery that night to get plastic surgery on my ear to stitch it back together. I got, like, 40 stitches on my ear and my shoulder and my hip⁸ 'cause I rubbed off all the skin.

MART?NEZ: Oh.

LIAM: And because of that, I was basically stuck in Cali for a month and a half. So that was just a huge setback⁹ on the trip.

MART?NEZ: To me, Liam, that sounds like that's the fork in the road in terms of your resolve, 'cause you could have been forgiven by everyone that's been paying attention to this trip and tracking you if you just said, OK, that's it, enough. Did you kind of take it as like, this is, like, a test?

LIAM: I didn't. And that's because I knew no matter what happened, even if I lost an arm, I was still doing it. Like whether I was alive or dead, like, I was going to get to Ushuaia, and I wasn't going home until I did that. And so there was never a test for me. Like, I was dead set.

MART?NEZ: The end of your trip Ushuaia in Argentina, when you finally rolled up to it, what did you do?

LIAM: Oh, man. I mean, the last month, I would just think about the idea of finishing and what it would look like. And I would just start crying on the way. I would get so emotional over it. And then the day I rolled into town, it was pretty anticlimactic¹⁰. It just wasn't what I expected.

MART?NEZ: Oh.

LIAM: It was very touristy. There's a big Ushuaia sign in the front of Ushuaia, and the moment I rolled up there, I dropped the bike, and I, like, stood there, and I was about to cry. And then a group of 20 Brazilians walked up to me and asked me to take their photo for them. And then I was like, OK, I'm done. And then I just kept biking. There was a national park at the very end, and that national park is what actually has the official end of the road, like, where you cannot continue. And so I biked into that national park, reached the real end of the road, and then I camped there for two nights and just kind of dwelled on my trip. I was just happy that I got the closure of seeing the finish and could now, like, reflect on everything that happened.

MART?NEZ: In all, Liam spent 527 days on the road, getting by on a little over $400 a month. He was robbed five times, suffered that really bad accident and endured the pain of sitting on a bike seat for six hours a day. But he says it was definitely worth it.

LIAM: One hundred percent. That's, like, the most sure thing that I could ever say in my life. Like, without a doubt, I am not the person I was when I started this trip. And I think it's an incredibly unique thing. Obviously, everyone's coming of age after high school, whether it's college or working or anything along those lines. But my coming-of-age, not only did I feel it mentally, but I saw it physically¹¹ passed by on the roads and the landscapes that I saw. Every week that passed, I would be in a new place. And I saw transition before me physically, along with how I felt as a person.

MART?NEZ: Yeah. And for people that are listening - right? - that are maybe your age, that are wondering what to do, maybe they don't want to go to college right away and they want to do a crazy adventure but don't know what, how would you advise them to try and distill¹² that and figure it out?

LIAM: I think people's biggest setbacks is not having confidence in themselves. People tend to have crazy ambitions and dreams, but they just don't think that they're the person to do it or that it's feasible. The way I planned my trip, I wanted to pick the most insane, impossible feat¹³ of achievement that I could pick. And I picked the most impossible thing because if I somehow managed to finish the trip - this crazy feat - that I would never be able to doubt myself again because from then on, I would have always done something that I thought was impossible. And so anything in the future that I considered to be impossible was now on the table.

And I think for people that have these dreams or ambitions, don't put it off as an impossibility. Just make a step-by-step list and do the first step. That's how it starts, you know? Just do the first step. And you might find that in a year or however long it takes you, you might actually get to the last step and be done, and it'll be this impossible thing achieved.

MART?NEZ: That's Liam Garner, who is hiking his way back home after completing a trip from Alaska to Argentina on his bike.

Liam, you're an inspiration, man. Thanks for taking the time for me.

LIAM: No. Thank you so much.

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 garner   

v.收藏；取得

参考例句：

• He has garnered extensive support for his proposals.他的提议得到了广泛的支持。
• Squirrels garner nuts for the winter.松鼠为过冬储存松果。

3 luxurious   

adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的

参考例句：

• This is a luxurious car complete with air conditioning and telephone.这是一辆附有空调设备和电话的豪华轿车。
• The rich man lives in luxurious surroundings.这位富人生活在奢侈的环境中。

4 fin   

n.鳍；(飞机的)安定翼

参考例句：

• They swim using a small fin on their back.它们用背上的小鳍游动。
• The aircraft has a long tail fin.那架飞机有一个长长的尾翼。

5 awakening   

n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的

参考例句：

• the awakening of interest in the environment 对环境产生的兴趣
• People are gradually awakening to their rights. 人们正逐渐意识到自己的权利。

6 biased   

a.有偏见的

参考例句：

• a school biased towards music and art 一所偏重音乐和艺术的学校
• The Methods: They employed were heavily biased in the gentry's favour. 他们采用的方法严重偏袒中上阶级。

7 pothole   

n.坑，穴

参考例句：

• As the car sped over a pothole she lurched forward.车子飞驶过一个坑洼时，她身子猛地向前一倾。
• The young teacher knows every pothole in the 10-minute ride to school.这位年轻的老师熟悉这条往学校的10分钟路上的每一个坑洞。

8 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

9 setback   

n.退步，挫折，挫败

参考例句：

• Since that time there has never been any setback in his career.从那时起他在事业上一直没有遇到周折。
• She views every minor setback as a disaster.她把每个较小的挫折都看成重大灾难。

10 anticlimactic   

adj. 渐降法的, 虎头蛇尾的

参考例句：

• Everything after the discovery of the murderer was anticlimactic. 找到谋杀者之后，人们对所有事情的兴趣都突减了。
• The conclusion of the movie was anticlimactic. 电影的结局真没劲。

11 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

12 distill   

vt.蒸馏，用蒸馏法提取，吸取，提炼

参考例句：

• This standard set determine the method of petroleum products distill.本标准规定了测定石油产品蒸馏的方法。
• Distill the crucial points of the book.从书中提炼出关键的几点。

13 feat   

n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的

参考例句：

• Man's first landing on the moon was a feat of great daring.人类首次登月是一个勇敢的壮举。
• He received a medal for his heroic feat.他因其英雄业绩而获得一枚勋章。