My first trip by bike took place when I was just 17 years old. It was 2001, I had just graduated from high school and I wanted to do something big before I went off to college and began my professional career. The idea for a bike tour came mainly from my Uncle Tom, who had recently completed a bike tour in Ireland and suggested I do something similar by riding my bike from Oregon to Mexico along the California Coastline.

Being just 17 years old, I had to convince my parents that this was something I was capable of doing. With my Uncle’s help, my parents conceded and said I could take the trip, but they insisted that I find people to travel with.

In order to make this happen, I recruited three of my best friends to join me on various legs of the journey. My friend Jason Weber rode the first left (from Eureka, CA to San Francisco). Jason June rode the second leg (from San Francisco to Camarillo, CA). And Ryan Nakashima rode with me on the final leg of the trip (from Camarillo, CA to the Mexican border).

Ryan and his sister recently came to visit me at my home in Park City, Utah, and while they were here I sat down with Ryan and asked him to talk about the things he remembered from that first trip by bike in the summer of 2001.

During our talk Ryan and I discuss:

• How I was able to convince Ryan to come with me on the trip.
• How we were able to convince Ryan parents to let him join me on my ride.
• How much training Ryan did to prepare for the journey.
• Where we spent our nights in Southern California and how this compared to the rest of the trip.
• An embarrassing moment that I will likely never forget (WARNING: It involves poop!)
• What it felt like to reach the Mexican border on that last day.
• A horrible accident that happened just as the trip came to an end.
• And a whole lot more!

The listen to my interview with Ryan Nakashima, just click play on the video below. I had to split the interview into two parts because we went slightly over the 10-minute YouTube time restriction. Enjoy!

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Gobi Desert, Mongolia, June 2009.

“The Wind. It howls, yells, screams in my face. It grabs me by the shoulders and tries to wrench me back to China. It’s forceful, ferocious, determined. But so am I. I’m further from home than I’ve ever been. I’m out of water and food. I’m scared. It wouldn’t be so bad if not for the wind. It seems intent on stopping me. Each time I press down on a pedal it’s a struggle. My mouth has dried up. Sand works its way around my glasses and into my eyes. I imagine what it would be like to disappear. I could leave a last message on my video camera, like a black box on a plane. Or would that be a bit over dramatic?”

I had been on the road for nearly one year. I had left Brisbane, Australia, on the 10th of August 2008, in my quest to reach Copenhagen, Denmark, by the 6th December 2009. The day before the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the COP15, would begin.

The journey preparations had been hurriedly thrown together from June. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was trying to turn a pipe dream into reality with a tight deadline. Copenhagen, I wanted to get there in time to demand change, to demonstrate the capacity to travel great distances in a sustainable way, to demonstrate the commitment needed to stop climate change. I was a 27 year old social worker from Canberra, who had never cycled more than 3 days in a row, but I was determined to do something about the greatest threat facing the planet and this was my way.

I didn’t even have a bike. I remember asking people who had cycled over continents for advice, but all they would tell me was that I’d work it out along the way. I was frustrated with their lack of specifics ,but I guess that was how it turned out. I must say I don’t share their guidance style. Now if anyone asks I try to tell them all the things that I had wanted to know. But it is true, you work it out along the way.

I didn’t know how it was going to work but I thought that somehow my cycle would do something good. I talked to Greenpeace, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth. A few businesses helped me out with the cost of gear and priceless advice. But I needed to be on the road if I was going to make it to Copenhagen in time. So before I knew it and before I was ready I was crossing Story Bridge Brisbane and entering the world.

It was really once I arrived in China that I felt I wasn’t doing it right. It was March 2009 by then. I mean, I’d made it far enough to think that Copenhagen was possible. I had cycled through the harsh dry expanse of the North Australian Outback, admittedly learning the rules of hydration the hard way after a night in the hospital with heat exhaustion. I had eventually made it to Timor-Leste when I again paid the hospital a visit, this time to receive 7 stitches in my face after collapsing on the road. It seems I hadn’t learned the hydration rules properly after all.

South East Asia had been strange. The cycling had been tough. The heat, the rain, the volcanoes of the Indonesian Archipelago. The tourists. I was shocked by the cultural, ethical void created by the swarms of hedonists who had colonized vast swaths of land up and down the coast lines. Thailand, never formally occupied by an invading foreign force was now totally economically dependent on tourism. Gigantic, red bellies swayed up and down the beaches, searching for a free plastic deck chair.

But I had started to question my endeavor. Was I really having any impact on anything? Was anyone talking any notice of what I was doing? I had received a bit of media attention in Australia ,but so what? That didn’t mean anyone had decided to get out of their car and onto a bike.

I determined to do things differently. I was tired, lonely and about to head into Mongolia. I proposed the Ride Planet Earth Challenge; could people travel in a sustainable way at least 1 tenth of what I was doing on my bike, at least 25km a week? Leave the car in the garage. I began setting up the Ride Planet Earth international day of action for the 6th of December 2009. I had seen the impact long distance adventure cycling had on people. They were usually amazed, excited, inspired. Unless they were fellow long distance cyclists, to whom the whole thing was quite normal. But that was the point, to make it normal. There were so many people I met, cycling from Europe to Asia or back in the other direction, all whose actions could inspire others to change their behavior. Some were making use of the fact, raising money for charities, or doing something similar to me, trying to promote sustainability and environmental protection. But what if we could all work together and encourage people at home, in the cities, to get out on their bikes. Jointly demonstrate the capacity and willingness of ordinary people to fight climate change.

A combination of luck and the hospitality of Mongolian herders kept me alive and on course through the Gobi and on into Russia. Cycling through Mongolia had been the best and hardest 32 days of my life. I will never forget the shimmering glow that covered the Steppe as the sun set and the icy dew glimmered. Alone but for the earth and my bicycle, I felt I had left reality all together and entered Imagination. Reality only returned much, much later in the snow outside the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, chanting along with 99, 999 others, demanding the action from governments that ultimately didn’t materialize.

I was slowly joined by more and more people as we approached Denmark. The first in Georgia, then another in Turkey, then Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia… and those who couldn’t join what became known as the Cycle Change Convoy, who joined us in their city or town by arranging actions that would take place on the day we reached Copenhagen, the 6th of December. More and more people wrote to me saying they were going to ride that day, setting up cycling rallies, demonstrations, critical mass rides and cycling picnics all over the world.

On the 5th of December 2009 we had arrived in Roskilde, 25 kilometres from Copenhagen. I had been joined by cyclists from all over Europe, Spain, England, Holland and Germany. And Ride Planet Earth would include events taking place on every continent. We arrived in the center of Copenhagen the next day with a group of 60. Carrying banners, singing chants, urging “Cycle Change, not Climate Change”. We were joined in action by thousands of other people from around the world, in places like Dar Es Salaam, London, New York, Sydney, Shanghai and Quito. A week later I was meeting with the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, giving him messages from participants from around the world, urging immediate climate action.

The COP15 was a failure. But the inspirational actions by hundreds of thousands of people around the world showed the capacity of the human community to ensure a safe and sustainable future. Cyclists must play a vital part in working towards that goal and will surely continue to do so in the upcoming years.

For more information on Ride Planet Earth and to find out how to participate this year please see www.rideplanetearth.org or email Campaign Manager Kim Nguyen at kim@rideplanetearth.org.

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Packing for a bicycle tour is one thing. Preparing your body and mind for life on the road is another.

This past Thursday, the Adventure Cycling Association published an article I wrote about how to prepare for a long-distance bicycle tour.

In the article I talk about 5 easy things you can do to prepare your body and your mind for life on the road.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the points I make inside my Adventure Cycling guest post:

1. Get In Shape — Ride Your Bike
2. Become A Strongman — Add Some Weight
3. Understand Your Gear — Practice Packing Your Panniers/Trailer
4. Know What It’s Like — Live Off Your Bike
5. Toughen Up — Sleep On The Ground

To read the full article on the Adventure Cycling web blog, just click here.

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During the interview Jerry and I discussed:

• How and why did I got started with bicycle travel.
• How traveling by bike at a young age is different than coming into bike travel when you are older.
• Why I started BicycleTouringPro.com and what I hope to achieve with the site.
• Whether or not bicycle touring is something everyone can do.
• What characteristics or physical traits people need in order to successfully pull off a long-distance bike tour.
• The biggest benefits I have received from my travels by bike.
• The benefits others can expect to receive from their own bicycle touring adventures.
• Where I see bike touring going in the future.
• Why I often times compare bike travel to sports like skateboarding and surfing.
• Highlights from my 9-month bike tour through 16 European countries.
• My favorite travel locations here in the United States and overseas.
• And a whole lot more!

To listen to my interview with “The Bicycle Nut”, simply click the play button on the player below.

Click here to download this interview as an MP3

For more information on Jerry Goodwin and his “Bicycle Nut” radio show, please visit www.thebicyclenut.com.

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This week Florida tourism officials had their first look at a trails website that will launch in October, while two days later the state Office of Greenways and Trails declared a new focus on long-distance destination trails.

Bike Florida has helped lead both initiatives. Both will result in more people than ever touring Florida backroads and trails.

Along with fully finished trails on the new Visit Florida website will be routes-becoming-trails that include the St. Johns River-to-Sea Loop. That’s the northern east-central route that Bike Florida pioneered in November 2008. People loved the inaugural week-long ride. Since then, three more tours have covered all or most of the 260 miles, and next month another 500 or more cyclists will tour the route during Bike Florida’s annual mass mostly camping ride.

Florida has long been a touring treasure. That’s sometimes hard to imagine when Disney, beaches, golf and citrus dominate. Yet counties everywhere north of I-4 and some south, too, remain full of easy-greeting small towns, down-home barbecue and Friday nights when high school football is still about town pride and so are champion quilters and the occasional ballplayer that has made it to the majors.

In urbanizing parts of Florida also, public policy has gotten behind long-distance trails and touring. Seminole County, just east above Orlando, is designating gateway towns to highlight its trails that include trail-only bridges across major highways. The first trail-only bridge in the state, by the way, was planted with trees and shrubs. It’s also a wildlife corridor over I-75 along the Cross-Florida Trail in Marion County. Another such natural trail now also carries humans by day and wildlife by night across I-95 in Flagler County.

Pinellas County first made urban trails popular with its 34-mile Pinellas Trail that connects bayfront St. Petersburg with Florida’s beloved Greek town famous for sponge fisheries, Tarpon Springs.

Centered by Jacksonville, six counties in northeast Florida have revived a trails coalition. Last year, routes of the region drew an inaugural 20 cyclists from coastal Georgia who sampled regional trails. In part, they toured from St. Marys across the state line to Fernandina Beach on board the Cumberland Sound Ferry, formed precisely to accommodate long-distance cyclists sampling portions of the East Coast Greenway.

Bicycle clubs throughout Florida of course offer weekly tours and they typically welcome non-members visiting locally to join their rides. There’s a good listing of Florida cycling clubs at the Florida Bicycle Association website, www.floridabicycle.org.

North in White Springs, the Suwannee Bicycle Association runs special-occasion tours throughout the year. Touring farm-to-market roads in this still rural region up against the Georgia line has been popular for more than 30 years. White Springs is a hub of Florida folklife and, at the Stephen Foster State Cultural Center, home of the annual Florida Folklife Festival. That folklife event takes place each year during Memorial Day Weekend. Soon after bicycle touring began, White Springs also became home of a paddling trail along which tours use park cabins and basic platforms for overnighting.

The college town of DeLand, a county seat that’s also the home of Stetson University with an Amtrak station that can handle bicycles as checked baggage, is also becoming a touring center. It’s not just the start-finish for next month’s mass tour. DeLand centers the River of Lakes Heritage Corridor, which is home of the annual Florida Wildflower Festival and hub of the Spring-to-Spring Trail that’s featured on the current Florida Trails Month poster of the Office of Greenways and Trails.

To learn more about the Florida cycling scene, visit www.bikeflorida.org

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