“Love is a bicycle with two pancakes for wheels. You may see love as more of an exercise in hard work, but I see it as more of a breakfast on the go.”
― Jarod Kintz
What is the route planned for this summer?
ToTheRockTour2013 - This tour is all about connecting with friends, family, community and nature from the Great Lake State of Michigan, USA to the Canadian Rocky Mountains of Banff National Park.
What is this - a bike tour, an expedition, a trip back home (Canada)?
This is all the above. A trip back home to Canada (first in 6.5 years while living in East Asia). It's an unsupported tour with the bicycle once I launch from Michigan and ride towards the Mackinac Bridge. Family is first and adventure is second for me. I spend the winter recovering from the experiences in
Mongolia (X journals), so right now I am just making connections to my friends and family - this is vitally important. Pre-tour with family, and on tour there is so much opportunity to live in the outdoor experiences. There will good times and bad times, moments with serendipity and some days with injuries and despair. But there are so many simple joys, happy thoughts, free spirited songs to be sung as I move along. You can Prepare, but don't over prepare. Take each day at a time. Go explore by doing your own thing, enjoy it and share experiences with others. Life is short but beautiful when you begin to notice more, fear less, open yourself and your ideas about the world around you. There is so much to see and so much to do.
Go for it.
- See you out on the road. (:
Why go bicycle touring?
It's a great way to travel and see many parts of the world out of the tourist routes. You can travel over and through international borders, you can meet new cultures in their home environments, you learn languages, you eat delicious and exotic foods, you get exercise, you become more global minded through the process.
How did I get started in mountain bike travel/touring?
I started off with mountain biking in 1988 in and around Windsor, Ontario, Canada and surrounding Essex County of southern Ontario. I explored with my friends Ciro Viviano and Greg Schiller and later as a member of Caboto Velo Club and Maple Leaf Cycling Clubs of Windsor. I started riding BMX, Motocross-styled bikes with suspension, then steel frame Mountain Bikes with rigid forks that worked exceptionally well along the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia and through the XC forest trails of southwestern Ontario and Michigan. I progressed with Road racing and 700c wheeled road race bicycles.
“To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man’s welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm?”
― Angela Carter
Today, I have taken similar machines, both the cheap (aluminum $50 frame in
HimalayasX) and the exotic (
Lynskey titanium $1795 frame used in
Mongolia X) assembled by my friend and professional (AN DAE GI) proprietor of Gangneung Bike Mart, Gangwon Province, South Korea. Today, I have exceeded most of the mental barriers to 26er mountain bike endurance expeditions, but I also see the sport evolving with
Fat Bikes, 29ers,
29er+, and
Bikepacking which substantially lightens loads.
Where did I recently travel?
Across the Korean peninsula 2007-2010, Deserts and Himalayas of western China in 2011, and across the isolated Steppe of Outer Mongolia in 2012, but I am hitting hard pavement and visiting friends and family across North America this summer (:
Who did I support?
I supported the
IDEAS (Intestinal Disease Education & Awareness Society)
led by Mountaineer Explorer Robert Hill.
I supported
ETE (Education Through Expeditions)
led by Polar Explorer Antony Jinman
“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.”
― Ernest Hemingway
MONGOLIA X 2012 STATS:
TOTAL DAYS: 45
TOTAL ALTITUDE: 40,000 meters / 130,234 feet of altitude change on course
TOTAL DISTANCE: 2500 kilometers / 1553 miles
DAYS ON: 38 days pedaling
DAYS OFF: 7 rest and injury days
FOOD CONSUMED: 2000 grams of powdered protein, 45 mega-packs of vitamins/minerals,
12 jars of pickles, 20 liters of grazing Goat, Yak or Horse milk, Wild onions, Fresh water fish, Mutton, Sheeps tongue, 6 bowls of noodles/meat/fat, 5 kilograms of yak/goat cheese, 12 fish.
BODY WEIGHT: Start 95 kilograms. 10 weeks cross-fit 85 kilograms. Completion 72 kilograms.
DAMAGE: cracked and repaired front rack plate, bent/cracked rear carrier rack, 1 replaced, 1 repaired.
PHOTOS TAKEN: 1500
SONGS PLAYED: 0
HIMALAYAS X 2011 STATS:
TOTAL DAYS: 45
DAYS ON: 38 days pedaling
DAYS OFF: 7 rest and injury days
ALTITUDE: N/A meters / feet of altitude change on course
DISTANCE: 3200 kilometers / 1988 miles
FOOD CONSUMED: 20 loaves of Nan bread, 2 kilograms of oatmeal with raisins, apricots and dates, 45 mega-packs of vitamins/minerals, 1.5 kilogram of Gatorade (making 50 liters)
6 jars of pickles, 10 liters of grazing Goat milk, 8 bowls of noodles/meat/fat, 2 kilograms of rice.
WEIGHT: Start 96 kilograms. 10 weeks cross-fit 85 kilograms. Completion 70 kilograms.
EQUIPMENT DAMAGED: Rear wheel split 360 degrees, repaired with block of wood, hammer and electrical PVC tape roll, 1 bicycle tube patch.
PHOTOS TAKEN: 1500
SONGS PLAYED: 14
Sichuan welcomes, mother and daughter, giggles and lunch with their family
This is my life, now or never!!!!
这是我的生命，机不可失，时不再来！！！ — with ONE - Arctic2Argentina - Eco-Expedition of the Americas & Asia Expeditions.
Older brother home from college to help his mother and siblings with the summer planting
Beef bone soup and rice...and a bike wash
牛骨汤和米饭... ...自行车洗
I kept the upper fork stanchions clean (an old cotton tube sock) and the rest of the bike was covered in mud
我一直上叉支柱清洁（旧棉管袜子），其余的自行车在泥覆盖（：
There's a local woman there, hauling her greens!
Friendly families, this young guy is a student on summer vacation returning to help his mother and younger brother and cousin
友好的家庭，这个小伙子是一个暑假的学生回国，以帮助他的母亲和弟弟和表弟
Control center but no petrol engine is required to explore here
lush vegetation that grows exceptionally well in Sichuan along the fertile mountain valleys
Road conditions, very muddy!
And just a little further down the S214 we find the water buffalo in a herd
Peace!
The boys of Sichuan mountains. — at Jiuzhai Valley National Park (九寨沟）
The future generations in Sichuan Province, in the mountains together again
You just never stop moving in the Himalayas
Riding a water buffalo, first I have ever seen in person!
骑水牛，首先，我见过的人！
Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.
- Charles M. Schulz
Last summer, I completed a challenging 2500 km overland expedition across Outer Mongolia between Russia and China. The expedition lasted 45 days, 38 days actively mountain biking across the Steppe grasslands and mountainous deserts and forests of the northern rim.
