– March 6th, 2019 by Julie – One of the reasons I left home was to be able to hear myself. My brain often felt like it was in overdrive, but it was in the moments when I wasn’t using it that I felt most alive, happy, and even wise. Those moments were usually when […]
Read More“The thing to remember when traveling is that the trail is the thing. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.”
Louis L’Amour
Read MoreIt’s been a bad day at work. A vision-squeezing stressful kind of day. When the headache persists after a cup of tea, comfort food and some venting, one of us somehow summons the motivation to get out. And then, faster than second thoughts, we are out the door with our bikes. Out to the fields, […]
Read MoreIn contrast to conservation where natural tends to be preferred to synthetic, and control of our environmental destiny seems to be further from reach than we would like, synthetic happiness is within reach. Happiness is very trendy these days. I was just sent a whole playlist of happiness talks and in the last two years have […]
Read MoreOne thing that can be hard about traveling is the loss of your identity. I had the same feeling when I was 14 and my parents moved our family from California to Switzerland. I didn’t speak French, but I was put into a French public school (we lived near the border) and one of my strongest memories is of the frustration of standing around at recess trying to make new friends and not finding the words that would demonstrate my personality, my wittiness.
Read MoreDetour off the Pamir Highway, Tajikistan My friends tease me for being a maximizer, a person who “needs to be assured that their every purchase or decision was the best that could be made”. Now that we’re getting close to home I’m slowly transitioning from bike touring to ‘normal life’. I am spending less time figuring out how […]
Read MoreWe pedalled into China with 30-day visas and over 5,300km of road between us and the exit at the Kazakhstan border. Knowing we could renew our visas twice we applied some simple and, at the time, logical calculations and decided we would need to average just over 70km per day for about three months straight, […]
Read MoreAlone on the bend in the road, legs pedaling, breeze blowing. Adam is a few curves ahead, there are no cars around. Only the whir of my bike and soft squeak of my chain fills the silence. It’s just me. The road and me. I can stop if I want. I can go if I […]
Read MoreMarch 9th, climbing “Take Forever”, graded 5b, 38 meters long… We recently took a break from biking to climb for a week near Thakhek. It had been months since I’d last jammed my feet into my too-tight climbing shoes and tied myself to the end of the rope. I dipped my hands in my chalk […]
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