I Survived a Suicidal Depression. Then I Rode My Bike to South America.

Somewhere in the middle of Bolivia’s second largest salt flat, the Salar de Coipasa, my rear rack finally gave out. After 14,000 miles and 713 days of riding from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the aluminum apparatus that had held my pannier to my bike had snapped off and was resting uneasily on my cassette. If I couldn’t find a way to secure my rack, it would slowly grind away with every pedal rotation. It didn’t help that I was cycling through roughly 8 inches of very salty water. Everything had been fine the evening before, when I sat in my camp chair sipping chamomile tea and gazing out over the vast salt flat I would cross the following day. White salt gleamed in all directions in the waning hours of daylight before the sun dipped below the Andes mountains, which surround the Salar de Coipasa like a crown. I was lost in thought about my situation and my life. How it had led me here, the choices I’d made that facilitated this moment, the freedom that allowed it. The freedom to just one day leave on a bike and head south for an indeterminate amount of time. I grew up in Minnesota, and since I was a child I’ve found freedom on two wheels: from my first time pedaling my older brother’s two-wheeler unassisted down the sidewalk to my teenage years riding in the Saint Paul Classic Bike Tour. But as a transgender woman, I haven’t always felt free to be myself. For years I hid who I was, not only from the world around me but from myself. I feared that even admitting who I was would lead to coming out and being ostracized; that’s what all the articles I had read on the internet in the late ’90s and early aughts had told me. It was like being on probation: According to the outside world, I was free and living my life, but in reality I felt like I was on a short leash. Any slip-up could lead to accidentally outing myself and dealing with the repercussions. [View in Browser]( [Bicycling]( [SHOP]( [EXCLUSIVE]( [SUBSCRIBE]( [I Survived a Suicidal Depression. Then I Rode My Bike to South America.]( [I Survived a Suicidal Depression. Then I Rode My Bike to South America.]( Somewhere in the middle of Bolivia’s second largest salt flat, the Salar de Coipasa, my rear rack finally gave out. After 14,000 miles and 713 days of riding from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the aluminum apparatus that had held my pannier to my bike had snapped off and was resting uneasily on my cassette. If I couldn’t find a way to secure my rack, it would slowly grind away with every pedal rotation. It didn’t help that I was cycling through roughly 8 inches of very salty water. Everything had been fine the evening before, when I sat in my camp chair sipping chamomile tea and gazing out over the vast salt flat I would cross the following day. White salt gleamed in all directions in the waning hours of daylight before the sun dipped below the Andes mountains, which surround the Salar de Coipasa like a crown. I was lost in thought about my situation and my life. How it had led me here, the choices I’d made that facilitated this moment, the freedom that allowed it. The freedom to just one day leave on a bike and head south for an indeterminate amount of time. I grew up in Minnesota, and since I was a child I’ve found freedom on two wheels: from my first time pedaling my older brother’s two-wheeler unassisted down the sidewalk to my teenage years riding in the Saint Paul Classic Bike Tour. But as a transgender woman, I haven’t always felt free to be myself. For years I hid who I was, not only from the world around me but from myself. I feared that even admitting who I was would lead to coming out and being ostracized; that’s what all the articles I had read on the internet in the late ’90s and early aughts had told me. 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