By: MJ
After months of planning in the year 2000, I started a 100 day solo cycling journey. I started optimistic that I would get to see and experience my home country from a different perspective, and on a trail less traveled. I ended with a plan forged towards living in the US and seeing what came next. The last 15 years is what came next!
I had not looked back at this record for a few years, but it helped me to orient how we could approach aspects of this trip. When I thought about how much I had going on back then (and yet survived and then prospered), it helped to put our current planning into perspective. It was a wonderful time on the bike and I have very fond memories of the good and the bad and the in between that happened. I look forward to this adventure with a family – being able to share it all in the moment with two other special people.
Having a purpose is an important thing. And a valuable thing to do is have people engage in a purpose. Hence what we are doing with this website, and what I did back then – All I can really remember of this newspaper interview near the end of that trip was that I got a leech from sitting around in the ground leaf matter trying to get the photo right! Where’s the salt?!
At the end of that trip I concluded that I would do just fine in life with the mantra “Wallet and keys are all I need”. Reflecting on that mantra at this point in time: That saying has been dug a bit deeper to become more accurately “A means and an opportunity are all I need”. Which is why and how I came to the US in the first place – I didn’t need any particular item… although a passport can be particularly useful!
Most people have some item that they retain to help connect them with the past or with someone. Strangely enough to this day when camping I still have and still use the same MSR WhisperLite International camp stove from my bike trip. It is one of very few camping items I still use from that trip! (The only other items are my down sleeping bag, stuffsacks, compass and bike… but bike is now sold!) The reason the stove appears in so many photos on my solo bike ride website is that it kept me alive and fed, and I stared at it for hours. It is a beat up old stove, but it does the job and I know it back to front. A new stove may have some luster, but no reminder of the places I’d been and seen.
I really can’t wait to start using that stove again on a more regular basis, and to add to the long list of adventures it has already had. My son will probably bring his toy lion.
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