St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

July 7, 2002

TOUR DE WORLD

Author: Cynthia Billhartz
Of The Post-Dispatch

Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT
Section: EVERYDAY MAGAZINE

Index Terms:
PROFILE
SOPHIE BINDER

Article Text:

* Sophie Binder of St. Louis, aboard her bicycle, Phileas Frog, completed an eye-opening trip around the globe in 14 months, visiting 15 countries. Binder pedaled 13,770 miles and completed seven bound sketchbooks that are filled with her watercolors and notes about the adventure.

Sophie Binder and Phileas Frog had only 50 more miles to go one hot and muggy morning in late June when they hit the Katy Trail in Augusta.

Binder, 38, and a native of France, has lived in the Central West End for eight years. Her loyal companion -- named after Phileas Fogg, the stylish world traveler in Jules Verne's novel "Around the World in 80 Days" -- is a Cannondale touring bike. It had carried Binder more than 13,700 miles around the world, and it would carry her these last 50 home.

Fittingly affixed to Phileas' handlebars was a stuffed, battery-operated frog that had croaked its way through nearly every country, much to the delight of children who were eager to pet it. Bags containing about 70 pounds of equipment hung from every other part of Phileas' frame.

On April 29, 2001, several of Binder's friends, including Chris Marshall, rode with her from St. Louis to Carlyle Lake, where they wished her good luck and watched her pedal east as her amazing odyssey commenced.  Now, 14 months and 15 countries later, Binder's adventure was ending much like it began -- accompanied by those same friends.  Marshall, 39, of University City, made the travel arrangements to Augusta.    Transporting four people and their bicycles was a simple enough task, but it made him marvel all the more at Binder's exploits.

"What an incredible feat when you think of the distance traveled and the logistics she had to do, the planning it all out," said Marshall. "I just think of myself and how I would handle it. Planning this ride just to meet her, trying to get everybody together and figuring out how and where to meet was bad enough. And that was just in my back yard."

He says all this with a sense of awe. There's no other way to talk about a woman who plans a bicycle trip around the world by herself.    And then does it.

"The World, Two Wheels and a Sketchbook"

Binder, the youngest of eight children, grew up in southwest France in the small town of Nerac. She studied at a fine arts school in Paris for three years before moving to the United States in the late 1980s to work as a graphic artist.    Her artistic skills served her well during her trip, as she recorded her journey in vibrant and intricate watercolor renderings and words. The inside covers of those books are marked by a round, red stamp bearing the image of a cyclist and circled by the words "The World, Two Wheels and a Sketchbook." While in Hanoi, Vietnam, Binder found an artisan, who carved the ink stamp to her specifications.

She filled seven bound books along the way. Each time she began a new volume, she moved two photographs -- one of her family in France and one of her friends here -- from the old book to the inside cover of the new one. She would then Federal Express the old one to her parents' home for safekeeping.

Traveling around the world has been a long-time dream for Binder.

"I started really thinking about it seven years ago. I was thinking about it so much it started to itch," she said.

She began working toward that dream by embarking on week-long cycling trips up and down the East and West coasts to see what it would feel like. Two years ago, she decided it was time to go all the way.

A sense of adventure and independence runs in Binder's family.     Her brothers have hiked mountains all over the world, and her uncle, Jean Couzy -- he's related by marriage -- made history in 1955 when he was the first to reach the summit of Mount Makalu in Nepal. At 27,805 feet, Makalu, which is part of the Himalayan range, is the fifth highest mountain in the world.    Five years before that, he had helped scale Mount Annapurna, also part of the Himalayan range. Although he didn't actually summit with other members of that expedition, he did hike above 26,246 feet (8,000 meters), something that had never been done before 1950.   So with a family legacy of high adventure coursing through her, Binder set about planning her trip around the world in August 2000. It took her seven months.

First, she determined which countries she could not enter. Then she made a list of countries she had always wanted to visit. From there, she figured out which ones would require her to have a visa and whether she would need it ahead of time or could obtain it at the border. A travel agent helped her plan some legs of the trip; she planned the rest on her own. The timing of her arrival in two countries was crucial. She needed to get to India after September, which is the end of monsoon season, and to New Zealand during the summer, which is in February and March.

She quit her job as a theme park designer for Suzanne Sessions Inc. in early 2001 and began her trip. The adventure cost about $14,500, of which almost $3,500 was for airfare. After departing St. Louis, Binder spent three weeks cycling to New York. There she caught a flight to France, where she spent three weeks with her parents. She crossed oceans by airplanes and boats. When she flew, Binder would pack Phileas in cardboard boxes from cycling shops. And, she said, "If you are in Cairo and you can't find a bike shop, you go to a guy who comes out of a dark alley with some cardboard and duct tape."

Binder left the lush setting of her family's farmhouse in France in late June. She spent July and August cycling through Italy, Greece and Turkey. She set up her tent and camped while in Europe, New Zealand and America. In the Middle East and Asia, she stayed in guest houses costing between $1 and $10 a night. A $1 room was usually what Binder called a "pit" with suspicious-looking mattresses and a shared bathroom. The worst one was in Nepal, where the shower head was positioned directly over a filthy in-ground toilet bowl. A $10 room was relatively nice with clean sheets and its own bathroom.

Binder rode through rain, snow, blistering heat and blustery cold. But wind was by far the worst element. She had tailwinds in Utah that pushed her at speeds up to 52 mph at times. And no matter which way the road bent, she said, the crosswinds of Kansas always felt as though they were working against her.

Before embarking on her trip, Binder contacted her brother, a doctor in Africa, who gave her a list of basic shots she needed to protect her health -- such as malaria and typhoid inoculations. Binder got sick only twice. She came down with a stomach ailment in Agra, India. In New Zealand, she developed a skin rash so bad that she had to seek treatment in an emergency room. Doctors pumped her full of antihistamines and steroids, and Binder was on her way.

She saw amazing things everywhere she went -- even in the flatlands of Kansas. There, during the final days of her journey, she ran across a convention of Steerman biplane pilots. One of them took her for a ride. Tumbling and diving through the sky, the pilot circled through loops with Binder in the open cockpit behind him.

But when she talks about her journey, Binder zeroes in on the Middle Eastern and Asian countries she crossed. For it was in those countries that she saw things that would change her forever.

"Thank you for you"

As a woman traveling alone on a bicycle, Binder garnered a lot of attention. Her blond hair and Western style of dress were an added draw in the Middle East and in Asia. In India, children surrounded her everywhere she went. Some asked for her autograph. At the Taj Mahal, a family unexpectedly plopped their baby in Binder's lap and snapped a picture. At a mosque in Damascus, Syria, a woman wearing a veil that exposed only her "enlightened eyes" stopped to ask Binder if she was happy. Binder can only guess that the idea of a single woman in her late 30s seemed sad to the veiled woman.

"It seemed like a question I should be asking her," said Binder. "But as I talked to her about it, I started to think, 'Who am I to judge them and tell them that my way is better?'"

Sometimes she would stop and pull out one of her journals and begin to sketch or paint. Before long, people would be sitting practically on top of her, turning her pages so they could see other renderings in the journal. Binder quickly concluded that personal space does not exist in overpopulated countries. But nowhere did she feel more conspicuous than in Syria -- a mostly Muslim country. She was there on Sept. 11 and the days following. She would stop to fill water bottles or paint a mosque and dozens of people would surround her and begin apologizing for the terrorist attacks.

"They were asking questions about the West that reflected an anxiety that they were being judged," she said.

One day, a van pulled up beside her as she was riding Phileas and a plate of pastries appeared through one of the windows.

"Thank you for you," said the Syrians inside. "For us to see you here is amazing, because it feels like the entire world hates us right now."

One family offered to have her stay overnight with them. Binder accepted. They fed her and showed her off to their entire village. "These people have nothing, and they give you everything," she said.

Meanwhile, worried family and friends were sending her e-mails begging her to leave Syria and the region immediately.

"And I was saying, 'You don't understand. These people are apologizing and are so sorry for what happened,'" she said.

Of the countries she visited, Binder doesn't have a favorite.

"I loved every one of them," she said. "But Syria was the most powerful moment. It was pretty intense."

Bombay, Bangkok and back

From Syria, Binder headed southwest through Jordan and then on to Egypt. She saw the pyramids in Cairo, and hiked up Mount Sinai to watch the sunset. She hiked down under a full October moon that was so bright, she barely needed her lamp. From there, she continued on to India. One of her sisters once lived in Bombay and so did a friend. Words could not describe the city, they told her. She'd have to experience it for herself.

"I understood what they meant as soon as I got there," she said. "Your senses are under attack and it hits you in your gut. You will see the most beautiful thing, then the most horrific thing. You will walk in the street and pass beautiful temples and women in beautiful saris, then turn a corner and find people living in the dirt or a child with one leg begging.  The traffic wore me down," she continued. "There are trucks everywhere. Some are for shipping products and some are for taxis. You would see dozens of people hanging from one jeep and think, 'God, please don't let there be an accident.'"

While Binder never felt threatened by crime during her trip, she did feel apprehensive while navigating the streets of Indian cities. The incessant honking of horns confused her, and she quickly realized that "bicycles are the bottom of the food chain." On several occasions, she had to steer Phileas into a ditch to avoid a collision.

From Bombay, she flew up the west coast of India to Ahmadabad, where she witnessed more poverty and heartache. Only nine months before, Ahmadabad was near the center of an earthquake that killed 20,000 people and left more than 300,000 homeless. The city was still reeling when Binder arrived in the middle of October. She had to slalom Phileas through homeless people living in the streets. From there, she moved on to the Indian states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where she stopped in Agra to see the Taj Mahal. In Nepal -- her next stop -- she rode along the Himalayas and stayed in a village beneath the peak of Annapurna, the mountain her uncle had helped conquer 51 years before. From there, it was on to Vietnam by airplane. She didn't know what to expect from the people there.

"Those people should hate me," said Binder. "I am French, and I live in America -- the two countries that have practically destroyed that country. But they were coming to me and opening their arms. Many of them still spoke some French."

Signs of the war were everywhere -- sandy beaches that had been bleached paper-white by napalm, children with missing limbs and signs warning of unexploded land mines. Fields green with grass were pockmarked from bombs dropped more than 25 years ago.

In America, people marveled that Binder could maneuver around the world with so much luggage attached to Phileas. But in Vietnam, she says, she felt like a fool. She saw men hauling several hundred pounds of stuff -- bricks, bushels of bananas, dozens of large clay pots -- over miles and miles of unpaved roads on bicycles. Many of those bikes were war leftovers that had been specially equipped to haul several hundred pounds of weapons up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail. Vietnamese women were just as hardy. They carried sticks across their shoulders with heavy loads hanging from each end. One day, Binder watched as a large, burly tourist tried to pick up one of the loads. He couldn't even budge it. The Vietnamese woman giggled, picked it up as though it were a sack of feathers and continued on her way.

Binder had been planning to stay in Laos only a day or two but decided to skip a visit to Malaysia when she saw the beautiful Laotian landscape. The mountain ranges of Laos, with their pointy, repetitive peaks, look as though they jumped off a Chinese watercolor, says Binder. It was there that she came across a small group of Canadian and Swedish bikers and rode with them for several days. On Christmas Eve, the group found a store in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, that sold French wine. They bought several bottles and watched the sunset on the edge of the Mekong River. On Christmas Day, they headed north to Luang Prapang, which took five days to reach. Two weeks later, in the first week of January, she headed for Thailand and the chaotic and bustling city of Bangkok. She then moved on to New Zealand and back to the United States.

Phileas gets a rest

The trip has changed Binder in many ways. For one thing, her faith in humanity has grown. She saw living proof that there are more good people than bad in the world. Her level of patience has also grown after she witnessed the harsh conditions in which a good portion of the world's people live. The only time her patience is tested now is when she hears others gripe about things such as car problems or bad service in a restaurant.

Since her return on June 22, Binder has been taking it easy. She is looking for a new place to live and a way to publish her journals. A day or two after riding back into St. Louis, she took some time to clean and bond with Phileas. People sometimes ask her what has happened to Phileas, and whether she plans to sell the bike and buy a new one that hasn't seen so many miles. such a thought is appalling to Binder.

"I will go to my grave with that bike," she says. "But it's resting right now. I promised it a rest."