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“All journeys have secret
destinations of which the traveller is unaware.” Martin Buber
30th May, 2008 Why? Why now? Why leave your jobs? Why did you choose that route?
Why not backpack? Why not take a sabbatical? Why, why, why? It seems to be
the first question on most people’s lips once we have told them our plan.
Friends and family were not very shocked that Dave and I had decided to go.
Neither of us have particular conventional outlooks, but to give up our first
secure jobs that we have had in a long time? To rent out our flat that we
have only recently brought? Or say goodbye to our friends that we have worked
so hard to make, upon settling in Dave and I have always had a ‘big cycle adventure’ planted in the
back of our minds since returning five years ago from a five week cycling
trip on the Camino de Santiago and around Spain and Portugal.
Dave and I had met whitewater rafting in
It was October last year, whilst walking down to Chapman’s Pool on
the
Both of us came up with the same answer – to cycle. Cycle the world!
And so it was agreed, we had a one year plan. October 2008 we would go. In
the meantime, we needed to save as much money as we could in order to fund
our adventure, cut our spending and start to think about a route, equipment
and begin to prepare our families for another upheaval. When we arrived home
we delved into the internet world of cycle touring and have been inspired by
people’s journeys, photos and self discovery ever since. After much
deliberation we decided on the Over the past few months, in answer to the questions why? We have discovered
that there are far more overriding reasons why we should pack our panniers
and follow the road rather than stay put. Not only will it be a journey of a
lifetime, but we will be raising money to help two children’s charities with
the aim to raise £20,000 (to donate click onto www.justgiving.com/cyclingnomads).
We want to look back on our lives and think, “Well at least we gave it a go.”
Neither of us are particularly materialistic and with events that have
happened in our lives recently, we realized that you have to grab life and
live it to the full before it passes you by. Money or time should never be
obstacles to achieving your dream. I have been amazed at how many people have
asked, “What are you going to do when you come back?” For us, if all goes to
plan, we will be away for about 18 months to 2 years. We aren’t going to
worry too much what we will do when/if we return – our focus is upon enjoying
the challenge, finding out about the countries that we will be visiting,
learning Spanish (for me) and having the opportunity to meet interesting
people from all over the world. We have five months left to go.
What stage are we at? I have handed my notice in, my class and school have been informed. The website is finally live. With no previous website experience, I
have somehow managed to make this one and get it up and running. I hope that
you have enjoyed visiting the site and will return again soon. I am still
looking for a decent photo gallery site that we can use whilst we are away–
any suggestions? We have just booked our flights and are leaving on the 29th
October 2008, Bike frames have been bought. Both of us have gone for steel framed
Specialized Rockhoppers, that we have purchased cheaply from Ebay. Dave has
taught me how to strip the bike down and has guided me in rebuilding it,
teaching me the names of all the parts of a bike. Although I have to say he
has more patience than I do tweaking all the bits! I am off to take my bike
for a spin for the first time later on today and must learn to use SPD shoes,
which I am not looking forward to as I still have scars from the last time I
tried! If you are like Dave and interested in finding out about bike parts,
then I will tell you a little more, so far we have gone for Hope hubs, Brooks
saddles, Sun Rhyno Lite welded rims, Schwalbe tyres and a BOB Yak trailer
(for Dave). We are yet to purchase the pannier racks and bags. We will let
you know how we get on with the parts once we are on the road. If you are
planning a similar adventure, feel free to contact us if you have any
questions about bike parts once we are on the gravel. You can find more
information about what we are taking on our Equipment
Page. Once we have all the final bits of kit arrive, we will then able to
start approaching the media, schools and organizations. We are hoping to give
talks to schools in September and October before we go and in return, hope
that they will support us en-route and use some of our resources to learn a
little bit more about the world we live in. If you have any media contacts we
would love to hear from you! We have taken a joint decision that we will have plenty of time on
the road to train and build up, and don’t want to injure ourselves
unnecessarily! So to that end we have decided that the training can wait
until September or October and in the meantime we are concentrating our
fitness on kayaking. At the end of July Dave and I, along with our friends
Barbara and Ian will be kayaking 400 km following the
We are now both off to find out about the plethora of injections that
we both require… |
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Kelly
Jordan © 2008