Lost and Found on the Blood Road: 1,200 Miles that Changed Rebecca Rusch's Life

Jul 19, 2017 at 13:24
by Vernon Felton  


You don’t get handed the nickname “The Queen of Pain” because you're some kind of Scrabble wizard or ping-pong prodigy. Rebecca Rusch came by that title the hard way. Drowning, dehydration, dysentery, frostbite, hypothermia, and heat stroke were all things Rusch actively courted for years—first as one of the world’s preeminent adventure racers and later as one of the toughest competitors to straddle a mountain bike.

And yet the hardest thing Rebecca Rusch ever attempted in her life didn’t involve setting another world record or dismantling the field of competition. It was a long ride, sure—1,200 miles and 380 hours spent slogging through unforgiving jungle. Rusch, however, will tell you the physical toll wasn’t the worst of it. This ride, which took her to the very spot in Laos where her father died more than 40 years earlier, also took Rusch to a place inside herself that neither she nor her sponsor, Red Bull, anticipated.

The movie, Blood Road, chronicles Rusch’s journey through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and if you’re expecting Red Bull Media House's first full-length feature film to brim with corner schralping, cliff hucking and the like, you may walk away surprised. This is the story of how Rebecca Rusch wound up on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and what she found there.


Rebecca Rusch and Huyen Nguyen ride the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00067 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

No Stranger to Pain

Most mountain bikers first became aware of Rusch as the rider who seemed to come out of nowhere in 2006 and quickly established herself as one of the top competitors in solo endurance racing, undoubtedly one of the most grueling disciplines in existence. But while Rebecca Rusch may have been new to professional mountain biking, she was no newcomer to this suffering thing.

Rusch cut her teeth as a rock climber, quickly made it onto the US national whitewater rafting team and soon thereafter become one of the world’s top adventure racers. Events such as the Eco-Challenge and Primal Quest had Rusch and teammates racing camels across the deserts, scaling mountains, hacking their way through malarial jungles in competitions that made for great TV, but were hell on the human body. Moreover, they could also prove downright dangerous. A series of deaths and injuries in high profile adventure races—competitions that Rusch participated in—began to make sponsors and competitors alike question whether victories truly merited the risk.
Rebecca Rusch prepares to attempt the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro Tanzania on 24 February 2016. Pat R. Notaro Red Bull Content Pool P-20160511-00385 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Rusch in 2016, en route to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro

Public interest in (and sponsorship dollars for) adventure racing eventually began to wane and at 38, Rusch was faced with the question—What next? She had long since passed the age at which most professional athletes pack it in. Instead of retiring, however, Rusch decided to try competitive mountain biking instead. The result? Three 24-Hour Solo Mountain Bike World Champion titles, four consecutive Leadville victories, three Dirty Kanza 200 wins and point-to-point course records on trails like the Kokopelli. Somewhere along the line Rusch picked up the title, "Queen of Pain". The moniker stuck because, frankly, Rebecca Rusch is no stranger to pain. Not all pain, however, is of the physical variety.

Captain Stephen Rusch in a photograph used for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00057 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Captain Stephen Rusch, Rebecca's father, in a photograph from the war.

Where It All Began
When Rebecca Rusch would think, over the years, about her father, what she often recalled were the letters he sent home from the Vietnam war. Those letters from Da Nang Air Base were almost all Rebecca had to remember him by. Her father disappeared after being shot down over Laos. Captain Stephen Rusch's F4-E Phantom II fighter-bomber was brought down by anti-aircraft fire while completing a strike mission on the Trường Sơn Strategic Supply Route—what Americans often refer to as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The date was March 7, 1972. Rebecca Rusch was just three years old at the time.

Stephen Rusch's final flight was just one of the 580,000 bombing missions that sought to obliterate traffic on the Trail between 1964 and 1973. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is actually a sprawling network of trails, tunnels and dirt roads, was North Vietnam's primary conduit for resupplying its war effort.

Destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail and you'd destroy the communist Viet Minh and Viet Cong armies—that was the United States' thinking and while it may have made strategic sense, it also proved impossible, despite a devastating bombing campaign that lasted nearly a decade.

From 1964 to 1973, the United States dumped more than two million tons of bombs on the trail, most of which ran through Laos. That's the equivalent of dropping a plane load of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years straight. It also made Laos the most bombed nation on earth, per capita, ever. More than seven bombs were dropped for every man, woman and child living in Laos at the time.

So many people, civilians and soldiers alike, died during the bombing that the Ho Chi Minh trail earned another name—"the Blood Road".

Blood Road
Map of the Ho Chi Minh trail


Rebecca Rusch on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00053 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Rebecca Rusch reflects over her father's dog tags, which were recovered in 2001

Gone but Not Forgotten
No one goes through life having lost a parent without also suffering in some way from that loss. Rebecca Rusch was always aware of the vacuum in her life created by her father’s absence. There were all those extra hours her mother put in every day in order to raise Rebecca and her older sister, Judy. And there was that gaping hole that exists whenever someone is lost to a family and their fate remains a mystery. The Air Force had delivered the news that Stephen Rusch’s jet had been shot down soon after the crash, but the Rusch family could never say for sure what had truly happened to Stephen. Had he died on impact? Been taken prisoner? Was he still alive somewhere out there?

But for Rebecca, there was also this: Her father’s absence was a constant in her life. She never remembered a day in her life when Stephen had been there. Yes, there were a few pictures of the Air Force captain and his young family, but what was Stephen like? What kind of man had he been? Rebecca couldn’t tell you, much less herself.

Rebecca Rusch reflects over her father s dog tags March 8 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170303-00339 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
It wasn’t until Rebecca went to Vietnam in 2003 to compete in the Raid Gauloises adventure race that she really began to grapple with the idea of who her father had been.

“We were there, 10 days in the jungle getting trench foot and dysentery and just dealing with the elements,” recalls Rusch “and that was the first time in my life that I could really begin to contemplate what my dad had been through. To physically be in the place, it had me thinking, ‘Wow, is this the kind of thing the soldiers faced?’ It was brutal.”

After the race, Rebecca and her mother visited Da Nang Air Base where her father had been stationed. They went to the battlefield at Khe San. One day the Rusch's guide pointed off into the distance; over there, he told them, lay the Ho Chi Minh trail. It gripped Rebecca. She knew, that somewhere along that trail her father had, in all likelihood, died. He was here.

“Those two things—physically being there in the jungle and visiting places I knew my dad had been—that’s the first time I really thought about him in a way that went beyond, ‘Yeah, I lost my dad and he’s this guy in this picture, but I didn’t really know him.’ That trip was, I guess, the first time he was really personalized for me.”

Rebecca filed away the experience. Her life has always boiled down to moving fast—the next big climb, the next expedition to a far flung corner of the globe, the next starting line. This adventure racing thing was drawing to a close and she was about to dive headfirst into a new one—professional mountain biking, ironic given that it was the one discipline Rebecca Rusch did not excel at and did not actually enjoy at the time. But in the back of Rebecca's mind a plan involving Vietnam was germinating.

Rebecca Rusch rides the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00063 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

Flash forward ten years and Rebecca Rusch, now world-renowned mountain bike racer and anointed "Queen of Pain", found herself pitching one of her sponsors—Red Bull. Red Bull is ostensibly a purveyor of carbonated beverages. After all, they sold six billion cans of the stuff last year alone. Red Bull, however, has also become a media juggernaut in its own right—nearly as famous for the bizarre stunts and stunning videos it produces as it is for producing a bubbly drink that pairs well with vodka. Each year Red Bull pushes its sponsored athletes to deliver novel ideas for their own stories. Rebecca proposed an expedition of the Ho Chi Minh trail; she'd ride the thing tip to tip and find the place where her father’s plane went down. In the years since her first visit to Vietnam, the United States Air Force had located Stephen Rusch’s dog tags and a few of his teeth. The military had also furnished the Rusch family with maps and coordinates. Most people would have glanced at those topo charts and simply cast them aside.

“Me being an adventure racer?” says Rebecca, “I live to read maps, to explore. When I saw those things, it was like, ‘Hmmmmm… I wonder what’s out there.’

Red Bull eventually bit on the project. They paired Rebecca with filmmaker, Nicholas Schrunk, as well as a Vietnamese riding partner, Huyen Nguyen. In February of 2015, Rusch landed in Vietnam, bike in tow. Her goal was to reach the crash site on the anniversary of the day he died. In between her and that site were hundreds of miles of unmarked roads and trails, water crossings, border crossings, delays, and some of the most beautiful, yet harsh, terrain imagineable.


Huyen Nguyen and Rebecca Rusch ride the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00085 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Huyen Nguyen and Rebecca Rusch

Terra Incognita
Rebecca Rusch is not an anti-social person. She's quick to laugh or fill an awkward gap in any conversation. A misanthrope she is not. And yet there's no denying the fact that a part of Rebecca clearly relishes going it alone. For the past decade Rebecca Rusch has largely made her mark on the world, solo. Riding the length of the Ho Chi Minh with another rider? That wasn't Rusch's idea. Nicholas Schrunk, the director, insisted on it. From a filmmaking perspective, it was a sound idea. A companion would provide another voice, another perspective to the journey. And that perspective was key. Both Rusch and Red Bull were aware that the expedition would benefit from the input of a local who could provide a window into the culture. The production arranged to have Vietnam's most successful mountain biker join the expedition.

Huyen Nguyen, it should be said, is no slouch on a bike. Nguyen rode to victory at the Southeast Asia Games no fewer than four times. However, Nguyen was never an endurance racer. What's more, Nguyen retired from professional competition a decade ago. Rusch couldn't deny the logic of having a partner, but at the time the prospect left her uneasy all the same.

"Having Huyen join us was part of the creative decision, really, to combine the cultures," says Rusch. "But it was, honestly, one of the things I was most nervous about."

"To do this thing—the most important thing I’d done in my life—with a complete stranger who doesn’t speak my language? And who was a cross-country racer ten years ago! I mean, she was a great racer, but she didn’t have expedition experience. She didn’t have ultra-endurance experience. She’d been retired for a while now… I definitely went into this with a bit of trepidation. Like, I don’t know if she can actually do this."
Huyen Nguyen rides the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00073 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Huyen Nguyen


Rebecca Rusch and her riding partner Huyen Nguyen pedal the Ho Chi Minh trail on February 26 2015 Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170303-00331 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

Riding the Ho Chi Minh is no simple matter. While Rusch's team had scouted the most historically accurate route possible months in advance of the trip, the trail is always in a state of flux. Torrential rains wash out bridges. The trails are constantly growing new spurs, reroutes and offshoots that lead to nowhere in particular. Fortunately, if you're going to be lost in the jungle or atop a mountain, there's no better person to be with than Rebecca Rusch. Wayfinding and wilderness survival are skills she honed over the course of years of weeklong, point-to-point adventure races that traversed some of the harshest and least inhabited corners of the planet. Still, the going was rough at times.

Huyen Nguyen and Rebecca Rusch ride the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00089 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Few riders can keep up with Rebecca Rusch. She's not only fast... she's relentless. And as it turns out, Huyen could not match Rebecca's pace. It would have been a miracle if she had. As the two riders reel off their first few days of riding in Blood Road, you can tell that Rusch is chomping at the bit to go faster. She has a deadline to meet.

While there are no melt downs or impatient glares, the delays do begin to rack up. There are days when Rebecca and Huyen make great time, only to be stalled for hours as they navigate government bureaucracy or wait for permission from local chiefs to pass through their lands.

It soon becomes clear that making it to the crash site on time is going to be a challenge. At first, it's frustrating. In retrospect, however, Rebecca Rusch is grateful for all of it.

Rebecca Rusch and Huyen Nguyen pedal the Ho Chi Minh trail through the rice fields of Vietnam February 24 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170303-00359 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

"If it had been me alone or me riding with a faster, more experienced partner, I would have gone into my familiar hammer mode," says Rusch. "But I couldn’t do that. We had to slow down for the film crew. And sometimes we had to slow down for Huyen. And sometimes the place just demanded that we slow down. That border crossing in Laos? It’s just 30 seconds in the film, but it actually took seven hours! That kind of stuff just drives me insane. My normal mode is to just cover the miles as fast as I can, but I had to let go of all that. That’s just not the way it works over there. And once I let go of that, it was actually a lot more fun for me. The whole trip became a much fuller experience because I had to slow down."

"Huyen just blew me away," recalls Rusch "She rode above and beyond, but it was more than that. We’d be riding and she'd be explaining to me about how the rice was harvested, or showing me the bomb craters. The typical racer in me, if I were all alone, I would have put my head down and missed so much of what was actually happening."

"Huyen helped me get out of my own way and really experience it," says Rusch. "I feel like I taught her some things—that she is stronger than she thinks she is, that she can ride farther than she thought. But Huyen taught me something about the worth of slowing down... about opening up and looking around."
A girl rides her bike on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00069 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

My whole life has been about going as fast as possible," says Rusch. "And that racer in me is still very much alive, but now there are two sides of me."

Blood Road

The War That Keeps Killing
One of the things that Rebecca immediately noticed—couldn’t help but notice, really—as she began to take in her surroundings was the legacy of the war. For starters, the landscape of Laos was completely and permanently altered by the conflict. There are parts of Laos where mountain tops were leveled and valleys turned into a moonscape of craters. Those two million tons worth of explosives made their impact. And, sadly, are still making an impact today.

The bulk of the bombs dropped on Laos were cluster bombs. A cluster bomb is a large canister bomb that splinters before hitting the earth, spewing hundreds of smaller, baseball-sized bombs which rain out in a shower over the land. Each one of those craters is what results when a cluster bomb explodes.

Blood Road
Approximately 80 million of these cluster bombs still litter Laos. Cluster bombs have killed more than 20,000 men, women and children since the official end of the war.
Nearly a third of the 270 million cluster bombs that were dropped, however, didn’t explode on first contact and are still strewn across Laos. That’s eighty million bombs that could still go off. Tragically, that payload of unexploded ordnance still takes lives every year. On average 50 people in Laos die each year as they come across a cluster bomb. Some years are worse, with as many as 300 civilians falling to the bombs. About forty percent of the victims are children, who often think they’ve found a toy. Farmers are hit particularly hard. Eighty percent of Laotians still must farm the land in order to eat. They know their pastures and rice paddies are littered with cluster bombs, but it’s either risk death or surely starve.

Rusch saw all this on the ride down the Ho Chi Minh and it shocked her.

“I understood the situation intellectually, but seeing it with my own eyes was totally different. It stunned me… Our trash is still over there killing people. Why haven’t we cleaned it up? We didn’t set out to make an anti-war film,” says Rusch, “but once you’ve witnessed what’s still happening over there, you can’t distance yourself from that. It was really eye opening, but it also gave me a purpose, coming home. It’s time to clean up the mess.”

Since returning from Laos, Rusch has been leading rides in Laos and raising money to help with the clean up effort.

“I’m only one person, but I can still do something about this. I can use this film tour and my bike and hosting rides over there to help clean it up and bring awareness to the problem. I can try and close that circle for my dad.”

Blood Road
Two million tons of ordnance were dropped onto Laos—a country the size of Utah. The signs of the devastation are everywhere. Each of those ponds is a bomb crater.

Was it ever awkward or difficult to meet people along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and have them understand your story—that you were there to find your father—when these are the same people your father was, in essence, fighting against? He dropped some of those bombs….

“I was super sad about it,” says Rusch, “but also amazed at how forgiving and welcoming the people in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam were to us. If someone came to your backyard and their bombs were still there and their parents had been bombing you, we might not welcome them into our homes the way they welcomed us.”

“But as sad as it was to see all that devastation,” continues Rusch, “it was exciting for me to come home feeling like I could do something with this. Instead of coming home just saddened by the tragedy, I came home feeling like, ‘Okay, I know what I need to do now.’ And even though that might be a small thing, I know, it still feels good to try to be at least a part of the solution, part of the healing.”




Rebecca Rusch rides the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00091 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

Lost and Found
As Blood Road unfolds, it becomes clear that while the miles and the delays and the navigation are all trying factors, the biggest toll on Rebecca Rusch appears to be an emotional one. While Rusch muscled through 48 years of her life without her father, his absence seems to grow more poignant, the emotions more raw, as Rusch and Nguyen neared his crash site. I ask her if that was the case.

“Hmmm…,” Rusch pauses to consider the question. “Yeah. Absolutely. The long days in the saddle, the pain cave... that's my comfort zone. It’s a kind of meditation for me. That’s why I had to ride the Trail. I mean, I could have just taken some kind of transportation to the crash site, but I had to combine what I do—my way of processing things—to even go there.”

“The bike riding, the expedition part? Don’t get me wrong—it was super hard,” says Rusch, “but it was also super familiar. It’s what I do. The emotional part? That was new for me.”

“As an athlete, you have to be super tough,” says Rusch. “Never show any weakness. It’s always, ‘Don’t worry—I’ve got this.’ I’ve built my whole career on being that person. Being vulnerable? Being open and being exposed? That’s definitely not what I’ve trained to do."

"In fact, I’ve trained myself to push all those things down," says Rusch. "To lock them away. So the hardest part? It was absolutely the vulnerability—the opening myself up and being okay with feeling emotions around a bunch of people who started this trip with me as strangers and became something else entirely by the end of it all.”
Rebecca Rusch poses for a portrait on February 24 2015 Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170303-00327 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

That’s not an easy thing to do…

“No, it’s super freakin’ hard!" says Rusch. "I mean, I want to be strong and perfect and, you know, never cry and hurt, but there’s something about the hurt that is… necessary or valuable,” says Rusch.

“It’s like with the bike racing,” she explains. “People always ask me, Why do you go so long? What’s with the whole Queen of Pain thing? Do you love suffering? It’s not that I love pain, it’s that I love who I am on the other side of that pain. This emotional kind of hurt that I felt on this trip? It’s helped me heal better. It’s like re-breaking a bone in your arm that didn’t heal right the first time around, so that it can align better.”

“Re-opening this whole thing up for my mom, my sister, for me, for my dad’s side of the family, for other veterans? It friggin’ hurts. It’s super hard. But on the end of it, I’m happier,” says Rusch. “I’m healing. My family is healing. It is an amazing gift. When you’re in the middle of it? Yeah, it hurts. But when you’re done, it was worth it because it all hurts a little bit less.”

A man stands next to his bike on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00087 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

Did Rusch expect that—that this trip would lead to some kind of healing in her own life?

“No, I didn’t expect that. You see, I didn’t know my dad, so it was super hard to have remorse about him. There was always this feeling of, ‘Oh, he sounds like a super cool guy. I wish I’d known him.’ That was always that feeling, but not the sense of loss I think I would have felt if my father had died when I was older and had gotten to know him… So I didn’t expect to feel as much as I did on this journey. But going there, learning more about the country and learning more about my father…yeah, it was a surprise to me that I was so impacted by it all. I expected to be sad, yes, but it went about ten thousand layers deeper than that.”

“I think this trip was a process of getting to know my father. That happened through my mom and sister’s stories, through talking with the people who served with him… and through feeling his presence there in Vietnam and Laos… it changed things for me. I mean I expected this trip to be emotional, but I didn’t expect to come home a completely changed person with absolute clarity on my life. Who I am, what I’ve become, what I’ve been doing with my life this whole time and what comes next. It’s clear now.”

Children on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00075 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Much of what Rusch is describing is obvious in Blood Road, particularly at the point when she reaches her father’s grave. On March 7, 1972 Stephen Rusch’s fighter jet crash landed just outside the village of Ta Oy.

When Rebecca reaches Ta Oy, she meets Ayre, the village’s chief and the son of the man who pulled her father’s body from the wreckage and actually buried him all those years ago. It’s a surreal moment—these two children of those men, coming together again decades later, the war long gone, but still being felt today. Ayre takes Rebecca to the site. It’s a heart wrenching moment.

“I came into this trip with my head bowed, a bit sheepish about my journey,” says Rusch. “We needed peoples’ help when we were over there. We couldn’t have made this film without the help of the Lao and Vietnamese people. And they were consistently like, ‘This is your mission? Okay, I’m going to help you.’ There was no hesitation at all. It was humbling. I mean, Mr. Ayre says it best in the film when he said, ‘I want to help Rebecca. She’s a good daughter and I would do the same thing if it were my father.’ Huyen was the same way—she was so devoted to my mission and, for me, that was a very big lesson in forgiveness and accepting people—despite our histories.”


Rebecca Rusch rests beneath a tree March 1 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170303-00335 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.

Never Too Late to Heal
It’s been more than a year since Rebecca Rusch finally found the place where her father rests. She’s on a whirlwind film tour speaking to audiences about her experience at screenings across the country and the world is taking notice—CNN, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ESPN, Sports Illustrated have all covered the movie. When I catch up with her following a screening, she reflects on it all.

“I look at the arc of my career and it’s clear that I definitely never planned it this way, but all those pieces had to come together in a perfect storm for me to take this expedition,” says Rusch. “If I hadn’t become an adventure racer and gone to Vietnam in the first place and had all those map and compass and expedition skills… If I hadn’t quit adventure racing and started bike racing… If I didn’t have Red Bull as a sponsor... this trip would never have happened.”

It’s, at the very least, a staggering number of coincidences.

“When I look back on it all,” says Rusch, “it makes me think that there really aren’t coincidences any more. There was something leading me here all along. I feel like all those layers of ‘ifs’ are, in a way, my dad guiding me, eventually, to go to that spot… to find him.”

“This is my father’s inheritance to me. His gift to me. I feel like he brought me here to teach me, ‘Hey, this is where you’ve been going with your life. This is where you’re going next. I’m proud of you.’ It’s like all these years of endurance racing he was asking me, ‘What are you searching for? Why do you keep doing this?’ and I strongly believe I had to do all that for him to teach me. For me to get to this place where he could teach me... and he has taught me, even though he’s gone.”
Captain Stephen Rusch in a photograph used for the feature film project Blood Road in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in March 2015. Josh Letchworth Red Bull Content Pool P-20170523-00059 Usage for editorial use only Please go to www.redbullcontentpool.com for further information.
Stephen Rusch

“I guess that’s why this film is important,” says Rusch. “It’s about understanding that people who are gone are still very much a part of who we are. They still can teach us. We can still continue to heal. We have to. But I wasn’t listening. For 45 years I didn’t hear my dad. It took all of this happening for me to open up my ears and listen.”



To find out where Blood Road is playing next or to purchase/download the movie, go to bloodroadfilm.com

Author Info:
vernonfelton avatar

Member since Apr 11, 2014
202 articles

115 Comments
  • 39 1
 No matter what .. aesthetically this is an excellent job from every aspect.
Two different stories are met in a one well executed with impressive photography film.
I have no interest in Red Bull but I have to admit they are the leaders in marketing/events stuff.
  • 50 13
 i am sure america would help vietnam, if there would have been some oil underneath those bombs! i can guarantee you! I mean they would even make a movie with brad pitt or some shit how he is going there to help children Smile
  • 11 1
 There's hardly been any movies about Vietnam. When are they going to get some representation.
  • 14 78
flag hamncheez (Jul 25, 2017 at 10:16) (Below Threshold)
 Are you serious???? 60,000 Americans died trying to save South Vietnam from communism. Billions of dollars were spent. Learn some history before you run your mouth about 'oil' you disgusting piece of crap. Go ride a bike without a helmet and brakes.
  • 4 26
flag hamncheez (Jul 25, 2017 at 13:25) (Below Threshold)
 @allballz: They call it the American War because all schooling and education is controlled by the State, and they push their narrative on their students.
  • 7 2
 @hamncheez: Of course the other side will tell you that America spent a decade and hundreds of thousands of lives propping up a dictator who sparked off the war when he won a 'free' election with 133% of the vote, then started rounding up and executing all who had stood against him. As with all these things, both sides tell the truth (as they remember it), the reality is somewhere in the middle.
  • 11 1
 @hamncheez: Actually they call it 'The American War' because it came after the Second French War, The Japanese War (World War 2) and The First French War, but before the Cambodian War and the Chinese War. They are in the habit of naming their conflicts after the enemy, rather than the place, since they all happened in Vietnam and apparently they don't like sequels.
  • 22 5
 @Fix-the-Spade: Being Vietnamese myself, I think what "they" call the War will have many different answers, depending on who of "them" you ask. Vietnamese are not a monolithic, faceless people; we are as diverse in thought and opinion as anyone else. Most native Vietnamese might call it the "American War" because that is what they were taught in school. Victors write the history books, and they are rarely unbiased.

Survivors of the South, of which I am a descendant, fully acknowledge that Diem was corrupt and mildly tyrannical. However, compared to Ho Chi Minh he was an absolute saint. Its one thing to have your business out-competed by your rival who is artificially supported by the Diem regime; its another thing to starve to death in a concentration camp (like my Uncle), be taken out of med school and told to be a farmer (my other Uncle), or be repeatedly raped by Communist soldiers (my uncles wife) because you went to an American-affiliated school before the South fell.
  • 2 0
 Of course they call it the American war. They aren't going to call it the Vietnam War are they?

The main thing is, it was not and is not America's business if other countries are communist.

Except for those islands in the south China Sea. The Americans should definitely start a war over those.
  • 1 0
 @allballz: technically the french started it...
  • 23 1
 @vernonfelton Vernon, this is quite possibly the most poignant and important piece you've ever written. It literally moved me to tears. The way you've written it is sheer brilliance. You've expressed so many things by just letting Rebecca tell her story, but at the same time letting your own feelings on the topic show through without being "preachy". And once again it speaks volumes about what an amazing thing the mountain bike is and those who ride them. Seriously dude this is one hell of a piece of journalism.
  • 17 0
 Thanks, @fattyheadshok, I appreciate that.

I have my own feelings on the war, particularly as someone who also lost family in that fight, but my opinions on the matter are not the thing that matters here. This piece is, fundamentally, about one person's coming to terms with the impact of the war. No one wins in a war. Regardless of who starts the war or how wise or foolhardy the entire event is, at the end of the day there are victims on both sides of any war.

This story is about one rider recognizing that legacy in her own life and seeing the broader legacy in a country still reeling from the war. We can debate all day whether this was a justifiable war. We can argue about whether or not the United States has learned anything from its experiences...but, again, I think Rebecca and Red Bull are making an important story about the larger personal impact of the war--past and present. I think that is an incredibly worthy story to absorb--regardless of where each of us stands on the issue of the Vietnam war. I'm grateful to @RebeccaRusch for her being so open and candid about her experience. It takes a lot of guts to do that.
  • 97 77
 This is the epitome of first world privilege. Going to the country that your dad bombed the shit out of with your $10,000 bike and a film crew because you're a washed up racer who convinced an energy drink company that it would be good marketing material.
  • 39 1
 On the positive side, it might motivate some people to make donations to clean up this mess.
  • 18 2
 Yeah but think of all that starva KOMs
  • 27 2
 “I came into this trip with my head bowed, a bit sheepish about my journey,” says Rusch. “We needed peoples’ help when we were over there. We couldn’t have made this film with the help of the Lao and Vietnamese people. And they were consistently like, ‘This is your mission? Okay, I’m going to help you.’ There was no hesitation at all. It was humbling. I mean, Mr. Ayre says it best in the film when he said, ‘I want to help Rebecca. She’s a good daughter and I would do the same thing if it were my father.’ Huyen was the same way—she was so devoted to my mission and, for me, that was a very big lesson in forgiveness and accepting people—despite our histories.”
  • 43 12
 @Powderface This comment just doesn't work. It's like you want to stop people travelling. This lady took a bike that was made in that area that has given jobs to the area and is cycling round it using her power.


would you like to list your charity to the area, have you spent any money their?
I aint doing shit i'm c*nt just like the rest of us. So keep your condescending bullshit to your self.

p.s. nice piece
  • 10 1
 @stifford: having spent a couple of months in vietnam it's amazing how little bitterness people there seem to hold. Her father can be argued to have justly paid the ultimate price for being an unquestioning tip of the military industrial spear that inflicted a brutal high tech war on an agrarian nation trying to find it own path in a post colonial era, on an entirely false premise of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. I guess Redbull's more than just an energy drink, it's a healing potion.
  • 7 1
 It's raising awareness for the UXO issue over there, the locals (at least the narrative shown) seemed very accepting of them and some even indicating that they understood her journey. One of the men she encountered commented that he was searching for her father as if it was a duty or responsibility, so it seemed to be something that resonated with their culture.

It's also helping raise money towards cleanup efforts. Maybe the means of getting there was a bit unconventional, but I don't see how that has anything to do with "first world privilege". She didn't seem to walk in waving her citizenship around and making everyone do what she wanted, they worked to get permission from locals and abide by their customs while they were there.

TBH the biggest problem I had with the film is that they seemed intent on making a narrative about the Vietnam War alongside her emotional and physical journey, one that didn't really come together. They made some historically questionable claims in the process. There are a ton of Vietnam War documentaries, books, and commentaries you can watch to get a more complete picture of the historical and social aspects of the war, this documentary trying to paint that picture in a hour and a half alongside her story, the story of the locals, and the UXO was too much. It seemed they tried to inject that narrative into the story after the fact and it didn't fit, along with being incomplete and/or inaccurate.
  • 13 6
 You're a dick.
  • 14 2
 If you think she's a washed up racer you obviously have no idea who she actually is. She is one of the most friendly, open, driven cyclists out there. You seem a little bitter about something, eh?
  • 34 0
 @pandafoo: Thanks..I certainly don't feel washed up! Lots of great adventures, bike rides, records to break still in my future! #BeGood
  • 2 2
 No mate honestly you are wrong about her! I follow her on twitter since kokopelli run. She is amazing person, fire fighter and very humble. Her act was really amazing. And i am sure she is against what happened there but there is not much she can do. But in the other side 20.000 people died and its firsr time i heard it here!!! That is a crime still going on.
  • 4 3
 @RebeccaRusch That D!ck is a Troll! Hope to see you and G in SV this winter! Be well!
  • 3 2
 Epitome of first world privilege? She didn't event stop once for golf.

Washed up racer? She is the GOAT of ultra endurance mtb. Will Minnaar be "washed up" the day after he retires from pro DH?
  • 5 5
 @RebeccaRusch: Please, for the honor of your dad’s service and memory and for the honor of what you did and how you’re trying to honor him, ignore a@#$%#$s like this! Your dad was a hero. Period. Fact. He served honorably and deserves the utmost respect not the ignorant comments of a clueless idiot. He mostly certainly has my respect and my heart genuinely goes out to you.
God bless you and your life having had to live it without your dad.
  • 8 8
 @jeremiahwas: f*ck that! If you want to honor your father, how about standing up for other countries we are actively bombing now? Didn't we just bomb and murder 24 police officers in Afghanistan this week? How about traveling to Washington and asking your congressmen to stop dropping bombs?
  • 8 6
 @jeremiahwas: I do not know her father, but any soldier who voluntarily joins a (offensive) war in which thousands of children are killed by chemical weapons deserves no respect. It's sad and miserable.
  • 5 1
 @Zdochliak: no idea what you are talking about!
  • 2 0
 @RebeccaRusch: First it's an honor to have you commenting/responding at me! Second, I'm looking forward to the suffer at RPI this year! Little potato last year and ended third so I'm hoping to work for a bolo this year! Thank you for all you do in the cycling community especially here in Idaho!! You're an absolute inspiration.
  • 20 3
 Can someone remind me why the US was fighting in Vietman again?
  • 15 13
 Because some farmers were becoming communist. And if you are asking, yes it was/is a valuable reason for war
  • 5 1
 i actually googled it! haha

Why did the US get involved in the Vietnam War?
The USA wanted to prevent areas of the world falling under Communist influence. The Cold War was at its height in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the French appealed to the USA for aid. The US government saw Vietnam as another Korea
  • 23 10
 @zede: There is no single valuable reason for war.
  • 12 3
 @colincolin: funny how people are bad at understanding sarcasm
  • 6 0
 Proxy with USSR. Same for Soviet invasion into Afghanistan.
  • 13 0
 @colincolin: depends if people are invading your village, killing men and boys and taking children and women for slaves. I mean, there is *that* sort of reason that still exists to this day...

Problem is when people have reasons like "angry dude in the sky" and "resources".
  • 4 0
 @zede: more to it than that. Yes communism fear then was much like the Isis fear now. We wanted control of the area better than Hawaii and Guam could do for us. We needed a big land base and we wanted to use the Vietnam war to open up the south east Asia corridor for American agenda. Shortly after Vietnam we went to the Middle East instead, and we all know how well that's panned out...
  • 6 1
 @PaulLehr: you can't compare communism and ISIS. ISIS is a violent organization from its roots, ISIS members hate USA, Jews, christians, atheists, other Muslims, culture, books (...). Communism is a theory of social organization/economy, and although countries applied it in a violent way, it was never a threat in itself. These "communists" farmers didn't even give a crap about USA before they start bombing their fields and families.
  • 8 5
 @colincolin: Google Sept 1st, 1939, Germany invades Poland and kills between 1.5 and 1.9 million Poles. Could also look up ‘concentration camp/Germany’. Maybe try Dachau, Mauthausen or Auschwitz. I’ve been to those places and thought they were pretty good reasons for going to war.
  • 1 7
flag abzillah (Jul 25, 2017 at 9:32) (Below Threshold)
 @jeremiahwas: Are you saying that invading Poland and killing jews is a good reason for Germany to go to war?
  • 4 2
 @abzillah: Are you serious? I was saying that BECAUSE they did that it was a good reason to go to war.
  • 10 9
 @zede: Communism has killed more people than any other ideology in history. 100 million dead in less than a century. Communism killed more people than all the wars in all the history of humanity combined. People flee from it, not run to it.
  • 10 9
 I want everyone to look at this picture of the fall of the South as the US left Vietnam. They are people doing everything they can to get on a helicopter to flee. They are lifting their children up, trying to get them on the last flight out. Why? What are they so afraid of that they will part from their small children, leave all their possessions and homeland behind?

Communism is the most evil idea ever incepted by the human mind. South Vietnam, our ally, was invaded by the North. We were trying to defend them from the toxic wave of communism. Was the War fought poorly by the US? Yes. Were many, many mistakes made? Yes. However, we must remember that it was the Communists who attacked first, who committed the most war crimes, who slaughtered an entire generation in their war for world dominance, not the West.



upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Saigon-hubert-van-es.jpg
  • 13 7
 @hamncheez: you have been nicely brainwashed. Communism doesn't kill, men do (following the logic you guys are using to prove that guns aren't dangerous).

How are the death linked to communism? this thinking make no sense, with the same logic i could say " the two world wars were caused by capitalism". It is dictatorships that kill people, no matter if they pretend to be socialist, communist, capitalist, royalist (...).
  • 7 5
 @zede: Both World Wars were caused by Governments; capitalism is what happens when government doesn't control business.

The Vietnam War was started, perpetuated, and caused by the North Vietnamese Communists invading and attempting to rule the South. The North was funded, supplied, and trained by the Communist Party of China and the former USSR.

The 100 million dead figure is from the killings of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and other Communist leaders. They were the head of the Communist Party in their countries, as well as the Communist countries themselves. Mao, in the "Great Leap Forward", a Communist economic plan conceived, implemented, and enforced by self-identified Communists, killed 40-60 million alone.
  • 5 1
 @hamncheez:correct on all accounts.
  • 5 6
 @hamncheez: "capitalism is what happens when government doesn't control business" lol you're so wrong. Capitalism is the way Economy works everywhere in the world : private companies making profits thanks to economic liberalism. Go back to you economics101 book and read a translation of Der Kapital because you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

"The 100 million dead figure is from the killings of [...] Communist leaders" great argument, it's like saying all death caused by Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet, Kadhafi (...) are due to Capitalism because these leaders were capitalist. Non-sense
  • 1 0
 @zede: I was comparing political fear tactics, not the two groups, they're obviously different.
  • 7 4
 @zede: Das Capital is a work written by someone untrained in economics, and every single one of its predictions has been proven false. None of its descriptions or categorizations of human activity and organization are used by current economists, and are factually incorrect as well as being internally inconsistent. Capitalism, when used by economists (I have a degree in it) is the pattern where people, free of government coercion, self-organize into firms, companies, etc to specialize and produce products/services for consumption. Also called spontaneous order. Any time Government takes any action, this requires force and coercion, and is not part of Capitalism. WWI & WWII were started by European governments fighting each other over resources. This is not Capitalism since it is not free trade and exchange between voluntary, consenting parties.

Hitler was not Capitalist, he was Socialist; Nazi stands for National Workers Party. Mussolini was also Socialist; in fact all State Fascism is Authoritarian Socialism. Fascia means a bundle of sticks tied together, and is meant to mean collectivized or socialism.

The deaths under Communism were direct actions of Communist leaders and their Communist agents/soldiers. For example, the Urkranian Genocide, or Holodomor, was an artificial famine in the 1930s that killed ~10 million people. Stalin confiscated stored grain and seed grain, restricted trade and movement, and then prevented outside aid. Direct action from the Communist USSR caused the death of 10 million ethnic Ukrainians. It was not a peripheral side-effect, or leftovers from Communist warring with other countries.
  • 2 1
 @allballz: I suggest you actually look into the details behind the incident en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/world/asia/15vietnam.html

Aug 4th is the one you're referring to as a false flag. You do realize the first incident happened (aug 2nd), but not what was originally claimed.

Not everything is some false flag lizard people conspiracy. The actual reports state that Aug 4th was the one that was distorted. I suggest you read the full report and try to understand the entirety of it instead of assuming the US even needed this incident to go to war, they didn't. The first one wasn't a false flag, the error was that the US shot warning shots and didn't report it.
  • 3 0
 @zede: You can't be serious. At 25 it's not surprising that you don't understand history and the roles economic/political systems had on it.

@hamncheez While the party had socialist intentions, it veered hard to the right once he got ahold of power. TONS of information on this, debates, etc, but bottom line is the policies and direction he went in was full on fascist. Plenty of other examples to give but that one doesn't stand.
  • 1 1
 @allballz: You mix truth with conjecture. Yes, we left many people behind and broke many promises. Yes, these countries are still communist. Yes, we didn't learn our lesson and still continue to try and nation-build today, a practice that has proven to fail.

However, if you think that South Korea would be better off if it had been conquered by the North, you have not thought critically about it. North Korea has the worst standard of living and human rights abuses in the world; it is a mercy that the Communists only enslaved half of Korea, and not all of it. the same can be said of Viet Nam; it experience an economic decline for 20 years under communism; many millions of unnecessary deaths and much poverty could have been averted in the South if it remained independent. It wasn't until 1984, when the Doi Moi economic (capitalistic) reforms were enacted that Viet Nam turned the corner, and has seen dramatic growth in is standard of living. Its still largely communist and continues with its human rights abuses, but as it moves away from its Communist policies it is becoming richer.
  • 1 0
 @atrokz: Some Hitler quotes on Socialism:

It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism. Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it…. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.

This is Socialism… Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers.

What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish, we shall be in a position to achieve

After all, that’s exactly why we call ourselves National Socialists! We want to start by implementing socialism in our nation among our Volk!

o put it quite clearly: we have an economic programme. Point No. 13 in that programme demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words socialisation, or what is known here as socialism

There are many, many more.
  • 3 2
 @hamncheez: "free of government coercion" nice bs insertion here (If you include this bit in communism definition, it makes it killing free too).
It's funny how you are naive : hitler said he was socialist ? So it must be true. After all China is called people's republic of China, so it means that all Chinese people actually own and like their "republic". Tell that to Liu Xiaobo.

Hitler did nothing socialist, increasing employment by building roads, panzer, and recruiting soldiers to drive these panzer on the roads is not called being socialist. Killing jews, communists, handicapped people, autistic people was not socialist. The socialist thing would be to use taxes to help cripples and autistics.
But I guess you're right and very objective, and you don't live in a capitalist country that was based on mass extermination of native people to allow colonization and to help mining and railway companies to make profits.

The biggest joke is when you say World War I and II were started over resources. That's the biggest joke of the History, and if it's written in your history books I wonder if you also think earth is flat
  • 4 2
 @atrokz: oh you're right master, you're 35, it makes you 100 times smarter then anyone 25, and it gives you 1000more knowledge that anyone under. How stupid can you be to make this comment ?

How would you react if someone 60 tells you "you're 35, you obviously don't know what you're talking about"
  • 2 3
 @allballz: Yes, I've been aware of the incident for a long time. It doesn't prove that at all. Aug 2nd, and Aug 4th. Differentiate between the two. Something happened on Aug 2nd, the Auf 4th one was a bunch of sailors firing into darkness then pretending something was there. It's not a 'false flag'. That means something else.
  • 2 3
 @zede: Youre at an age where you might have just finished post secondary. The generation you sit within also praises socialism without any real experience within it and your stupidity is evident by the beliefs you hold. I've *lived* in 7 countries (not including travels), and was born in the one you reside in. So it's not just age, it's experience, education, and clearly a better understanding of the world. If you don't think communism itself as a system has led to issues, then I have a bridge in the middle of the ocean to sell you. Waterfront views. I'm sure you'll love it.
  • 3 2
 @atrokz: so your point is "I'm older than you, I lived in more countries than you, therefore I can be arrogant and condescending" ? You're a very wise man. Oh and my generation is definitely not praising socialism, they go either far left or far right.

You're probably one of these grey sad guys that realized he is working super hard and did x years of study just to make less money than his neighbor who's working only 40h/w and is stupid like a dead banana. Breaking news : life is unfair and things wouldn't get better whether you live/work in USA, France or China or Cameroon.
"Without experience within it" yeah 23 years in a socialist country is nothing. Db
  • 2 1
 @zede: lol, I'm doing great! Like, really, really well, thankfully in a country and environment that rewards hard workers and business startups. You're clearly barking up the wrong tree, trying to do me in lol

No, my point is nothing you're saying is entirely correct, and your understanding of communism isn't entirely correct, if you aren't able to understand the link between the system itself, and how it's set up dictators to commit atrocity and how the system itself eschews human rights like freedom of expression and speech (even though marx argued that censorship was for the bourgeois elite, it didn't play out in any practice). We even have modern examples, which aren't that great either and your example of China ignores the fact that they censor the internet and expression of speech and religious expression, even though they are slowly coming around (and in the future will prob change more). The thing about your age, is because most people promoting this belief are generally young and inexperienced in world matters. Thats why I find it funny.

I would do very well in the USA. I got offered a job to manage a arms manufacturing factory in China (Norinco) straight out of school and flat out said no. Life would be worse. I've lived in Asia for 7 years, Thailand was awesome, because it's not a communist country....

Austria is not a socialist country, FYI. Predominantly capitalist with multi party democratic system with only some elements of socialism like social aid and health, very similar to Canada.
  • 2 2
 @atrokz: what you fail to see is that I didn't express any belief. I never even praised socialism nor communism. Maybe you should read animal farm from Orwell, it might help you to distinguish communism (a theoretical system) and dictatorship (the way the theoretical system was always applied).
  • 2 2
 @zede: I've already read that book for school. I think everyone here has, it's not a good example as there are real articles on the topic not an allegory to USSR and Stalin. Your talking points betray what your last post says. You are stating that communism isn't responsible for deaths, people are, yet there is a link between the two, because one needs the other in all these examples. It's multifaceted, but not something that can be ignored as being independent of each other. See china's current human rights abuses for example, then see all of histories examples.

On the topic of 'socialist' countries, The USA spends 24% of it's budget on SS, 25% on Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and marketplace subsidies. Does this make the USA a socialist country? it does not. In the same way, Austria is not a socialist country. No actual examples exist in Europe. This type of topic usually devolves into semantics so I don't expect anything less from here on out.
  • 3 1
 @allballz: You have some good points about the failure of trying to police the world, but maybe I wouldn't drink when posting comments to Pinkbike.

@zede a willful denial of history only serves to hurt you in the long run. Please expand your reading circles to not just those who you already agree with.

@atrokz its good to see a level-headed though process in the pb comment section. Getting more rare every day.
  • 2 3
 @atrokz: If you were "experienced" with a high "education" you would know what you call link is a correlation, and you should know correlation doesn't mean causality. Only bad psychology undergraduates do this mistake. Out

@hamncheez yeah sure, denial of history. With no proof or example, you don't go far and im sorry for you
  • 2 1
 @zede: *causation is the word you're looking for. And it's more than a link, it's an underlying, fundamental part of the reasoning used for human right atrocities.

@hamncheez it's indeed rare ain't it. I got called names in this thread already. haha.
  • 2 1
 @zede: The term is "Correlation does not imply causation". That's the term you're referring to.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Richard Pipes states it best, “Marxism, the theoretical foundation of communism, carried within it the seeds of its own destruction.” Worth reading into to see what those seeds are. trying to stymie acquisitiveness leads to economical disaster.
  • 1 0
 @atrokz: can't I use a synonym? I don't think it's changing the meaning of the expression.
  • 2 0
 @zede: true. haven't heard it used much in that context (of correlation does not...) but that seems entirely correct.
  • 1 1
 @atrokz: at this point you can quote McCarthy, it will be as "objective". Quoting the point of view of Soljenitsyne or Sakharov would be more interesting, but hey, who has time to read interesting stuff when we can waste soo much time arguing on Pinkbike.
  • 2 0
 @zede: The US state department and the UN reads PB to determine future policies and actions. At least you'd think so with how elevated these discussions get... haha.
  • 2 0
 @jeremiahwas: right, except the holocaust/concentration camps were not the reason the allies went to war, a pleasant side effect of allied victory was exposing the holocaust but not the outcome planned for
  • 2 0
 @tomgibson: I didn’t say it was the reason went to war only that it was a good reason to go war when responding to someone from Germany saying that there is never a good reason.
  • 7 0
 I'm moving to Laos tomorrow from Ethiopia, from one beautiful place to another. This film looks great and the article is very good. I'm reading an enthralling new history on the once-secret CIA war there called A Great Place to Have a War; if anyone's interested here's the link: www.amazon.com/Great-Place-Have-War-Military-ebook/dp/B01CO34O3Y
  • 2 0
 Also recommend this book. Very good - helps tie a lot of what I saw traveling in Laos/China/Vietnam together. Can I ask what you will be doing in Laos? Have wanted to go back there with a bike.
  • 3 44
flag mhoshal (Jul 25, 2017 at 5:42) (Below Threshold)
 Isnt ethiopia the place where those commercials with the kids with flys on their faces are filmed? You know the ones " for a price of a cup of coffee"
  • 5 29
flag mhoshal (Jul 25, 2017 at 6:54) (Below Threshold)
 Tough crowd lol. Sorry to the idiots that didnt get that its a joke!!!
  • 6 26
flag mhoshal (Jul 25, 2017 at 6:57) (Below Threshold)
 Pinkbike the only place you can make fun of an amazing female rider and get upvotes but make fun of Ethiopia as a joke is a big no go lmao
  • 4 10
flag redbaronmulisha (Jul 25, 2017 at 7:33) (Below Threshold)
 @mhoshal: Don't worry a few of us smiled, hopefully the children get the aid they need though
  • 9 3
 @mhoshal: The idiot is you bud.
  • 7 0
 @mhoshal: your thoughts on pinkbike's women/Ethiopia feelings may or may not be right but sadly, pinkbike is NOT the only place where people come to make lame jokes then whine when people don't like them.
  • 5 1
 @mhoshal: We can make jokes about female riders, we can make jokes about male riders... because this is a biking website. Jokes about famine are not funny anywhere hence why you got slammed. It's sad we have to point this out to you.
  • 2 2
 @karatechris: no the said part is you cant take a joke!!! Im just curious how much youve donated to that famine because i guarantee that answer is zero .
  • 1 2
 @Sardine: i bet if it was Afghanistan i mentioned you war monger Americans would have loved it!! Its not my fault Ethiopia has nothing for you yanks to rape!!!
  • 2 0
 @stephenhoward I work on environment, forest, and agriculture and will be based in Vientiane. My bikes are already there and now I need to find the trails. Ethiopia turned out to be a 10/10 on that front; one day it'll be a winter riding mecca for Euros.
  • 2 0
 @stifford: @stifford: I am keen to see how and what you find in Vietnam. The people are enthralling
  • 1 0
 @mhoshal: You can GUARANTEE I donate zero? Oh dear, your guarantee has just been broken.

FYI I have four monthly bank payments set up to donate to charities, one for each cause I feel strongly about: Famine/Poverty, Child protection, Cancer research and helping the aged. These have been running for the last decade.
  • 2 0
 @stifford: Awesome! I traveled through from China to Cambodia about 7/8 years ago in the winter (dry season). The area in the far north around Luang Namtha looked to have a lot of trails. Still my favorite country in SE Asia. Good luck!
  • 2 0
 @leelau: Laos not Vietnam.... I just went to an amputation museum so I hope I don't find any unexploded bombs.
  • 7 0
 Watched the movie and it was fantastic. We can all learn from the story of forgiveness and healing. I was actually most moved by Huyen Nguyen. She had never met Rebecca, yet sought to serve her and be a great friend throughout the experience. She was truly selfless even though she'd experienced much of her own pain through her country's losses. Such an awesome example of selflessness and forgiveness.
  • 3 1
 Completely agree. I was similarly struck by what an amazing person Huyen proved to be.
  • 2 0
 That's Vietnamese people nature. More generally speaking, it seems that the less you have, the most you are willing to give. Huyen Nguyen being the best example. In the movie and in her real life. Some could argue she has suffered even more in her life but how could you guess seeing such a kind, selfless, joyful person.
  • 3 0
 Vietnam is such a beautiful country. This article just brought back so many memories of my short visit there. I had a similar experience of feeling sheepish and being blown away by the kindness of the people I encountered. Definitely a country I would like to revisit. Awesome stuff, Rebecca!
  • 2 0
 This film was really good and very bad at the same time. The good thing is that everyone can see that every war is a drama. Amazing filming, but the real war is way harder like this super nature film was. She thought that her father was treated and buried with respect - sorry that sounds like a "film element" and like all the other lies in super-hero-hollywood-films. They hated him because he attacked them in their homeland with dead bringing bombs ! A sister is working for the airforce ? Didn´t she read the last letter where her father was questioning himself what he was doing ? The sister would probably do the same shit what her father was doing. At the end of the film they show Obama ? At first i thought they go off with something critical against the president but to end this film with him as peacemaker is just a joke ! All those political phrases are not serious if they don´t stop wars in general. It´s good to do something to find all the blind cluster bombs ! Thanks for that interesting film. Thanks to Huyen Nguyen and Rebecca.
  • 7 4
 Those bombs should be removed, all of them, i know USA is doing something in that direction but it takes way too long. People there are still paying the price, reparations for them?
  • 9 5
 No bomb removal, too busy trying to build a wall.
  • 6 3
 @PaulLehr: You mean we are too busy bombing other countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somolia, ...).
  • 3 1
 @abzillah: The most recent is Syria without a UN mandate, violating international law.
  • 4 1
 @abzillah: either way, head up a bulls ass is what USA is famous for nowadays :/
  • 5 1
 @DuelingBanjos, At the rate at which the bombs are being removed, it's estimated that it will take another 100 years to clear them from Laos. A mere 1 percent have been removed in the 40 plus years since the war ended. No matter where people stand on the issue of the war, that legacy of unexploded ordinance is a horrible thing. People, in a country that was not at war with either side, are dying every year because of the 80 million cluster bombs left in Laos. Hopefully the movie achieves its goal of bringing more attention to the issue.
  • 10 7
 its a testament to human compassion that we can forgive our past mistakes and still embrace all cultures. America please stop bombing the living crap out of other countries. Grow up!
  • 5 0
 Why is there any war in the first place?
Money, the answer is money.
War can drive (or not drive) an economy.
  • 1 2
 War has been waged across time because of hate not JUST money. WW1 an 2 for example, German war machine. And look at the conflicts across Africa even today and in the past. The distinct hate for another group and culture can bring sickening massacres.
  • 4 0
 Nice writing Vernon.
  • 1 0
 Superb editorial. Excellent photography. Thanks for sharing your talent and story.
  • 3 1
 Watched it the day it came out. Killer film.
  • 1 0
 Watched it at snow summit sat night, very well done. Crazy that she found the villager whom buried her father.
  • 1 0
 Felty, thought you'd gotten fired or sump'n.
  • 2 1
 Thanks!
  • 2 4
 Silly white people, thank god you at least ride a bike. Ugggh.
  • 1 0
 thats racist tho
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