About Our Journey
Our journey to the ends of the earth began on a beautiful spring day in 2006 when John slumped into our house after a particularly rough day in the classroom and collapsed into his favorite chair by the window. His eyes glazed over and I knew he wasn't looking at the lawn which desperately needed mowing, or the barn which needed fixing. He was farther away. Much farther away. "Nancy," he said. "I can't do this. I need to get away. I want to buy a triple bike and take off. Just me and the kids - out exploring the world. We'll be the three musketeers. We'll be Mr. Incredible and his children saving the world from destruction and injustice! We'll be Superman and Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk rolled into one!" He stopped his reverie long enough to look at me. "Oh yeah - and you can tag along too."
"Are you crazy?" I responded. "Have you lost your bloody mind? We are parents, dear husband! We have children! We have to do what every red-blooded American parent does: stay at home and raise our boys the right way - by staying home like everyone else."
But then I started thinking about our life in Boise, Idaho - middle aged parents with two boys comfortably nestled in a large house in a suburb with a couple of cars in the driveway. We got up early and headed off to work, dropping the kids at daycare on the way. We worked all day, and came home late. And then we collapsed into bed, utterly exhausted. Isn't that the American Dream? Isn't that the way it should be?
But the real question was: was it the way I wanted it to be? Was the American Dream the be-all and end-all? Was it the Path to Enlightenment and Roadway to Happiness? Would I, could I, be content with a big house in the suburbs and some cars? Was that really what life was all about?
Two months later we hit the road - John and the boys on a bicycle-built-for-three and me on a single bike. Everything we needed - tent, sleeping bags, stove and cooking pot, clothes, and homeschooling supplies were lashed, strapped, or buckled to the bikes. We spent the next twelve months cycling around the USA and Mexico - it was twelve months of pure magic. By the time we headed back home we had pedaled 9300 miles and knew we wanted more. Much more.
As a family we made the decision to cycle from Alaska to Argentina, and set about preparing for a much longer tour than any of us had ever attempted - three years through extreme conditions. The journey itself would be the easy part - get on the bikes and ride - but the background preparation threatened to overtake us and derail the project before we even got on the road.
The list grew longer by the day - could we pull this off in a year? Remodel the house for renters, dismantle the boys' treehouse, create a website and look for sponsors, research how to manage and access our money from remote corners of the world. Figure out how to ship the bikes and gear to the northern end of the world. Get everything we owned sorted into three piles - "sell," "store," or "take with."
And all the time, try to maintain some sense of normality.
The boys attended classes at a local elementary school and played on soccer teams. They took swim lessons at the YMCA and Daryl joined the swim team. I headed out to a local high school every morning, where I taught Special Education classes. John became our stay-at-home dad, working hard to keep things together as we dismantled our lives.
It was a whirlwind of activity, but each piece of the puzzle was critical. We couldn't - simply couldn't - take our boys up to Alaska and not be prepared. No detail was too small; nothing could be overlooked. Every piece of gear we carried with us was essential.
One evening we took a break. All four of us sat in the living room to just be together. The chaos of the preceding months had taken a toll on all of us and we needed to stop - even if only for a few hours. "You guys will probably be the youngest people ever to cycle all the way from Alaska to Argentina," I mused. "You're pretty special!"
"Maybe we'll get in the Guinness Book of World Records!" Daryl retorted.
"I'm sure you could," John confirmed.
"What do you think?" I asked. "Do you want me to contact Guinness and see what would need to be done?"
Grins broke out simultaneously on both boys' faces. "Yes!" they cried.
A few weeks later we had a response: the record started in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean rather than Fairbanks, where we had intended to begin our journey. If our sons wanted to break the record, they would have to cycle the Dalton Highway. Long known as one of the most challenging cycling routes in North America, the Dalton Highway is little more than a rough track carved into the countryside. Davy and Daryl would be the first children to attempt it - if they did. I wasn't convinced it was worth it. We held another family meeting.
"Here's the deal, guys," I explained. "The record starts way up north in Prudhoe Bay. We're planning to start in Fairbanks 500 miles south of there. If you really, really want to go for the record, we'll go to Prudhoe Bay, but you need to understand how hard it is."
"500 miles? We can do that, Mom," Daryl interrupted.
"You need to know that it's more than 300 miles of dirt road and when it rains the road turns to soup. It'll be much, much tougher than anything else you've ever done. And you need to know we most likely won't make it through - lots of cyclists way stronger than us have been beaten by the Dalton."
"Let's do it!" they both agreed. "We can make it!"
That night as I lay in bed trying to sleep, my mind went wild. All along I had figured the trip wouldn't be all that arduous - we could simply hitch through the difficult parts. But now, if the boys were to make a serious attempt at the world record, that would not be an option. No matter how hard, no matter what kind of obstacles lay in our way, we would be committed to pedal over them.
I wasn't worried about John - he's as strong as a bear. I didn't worry about the kids - they had an unending supply of energy that would power them through.
But me? I didn't trust my own abilities. Could I really cycle all the way from the Arctic Ocean to Tierra del Fuego? Did I want to? I've always been the weak link in our family. I'm the one who tended to give up when things got tough. Rather than having legs of rock-solid muscle like John and the boys, my legs resembled jelly. The extra 40 pounds I was carrying around wouldn't help matters either.
In my mind I played back our conversation of earlier that day. I saw the fierce determination in my sons' faces; I heard the excitement in their voices. How could I take that dream away from them? I'm Mom - I'm supposed to be the one who encourages and supports her children as they reach for their dreams. And here I was considering taking the dream away before it even started. Could I do that to them?
By morning I had made my decision - I would do it. The four of us would pedal every kilometer between Prudhoe Bay and Ushuaia together. I had no idea if it was humanly possible for me, but I was determined I would give it everything I had. If we failed, we would fail trying.
A few months later our lives had been reduced to eight boxes - three bikes, two trailers, and three bins filled with everything we would need for the next three years. We were excited. We were determined. We were unstoppable - until we got to the airport.
"You want to take all this with you?" the agent said as her eyes widened in surprise. "All of it?"
"Yep," John replied. "We do."
"We're going to break the world record," Davy explained. "All this stuff is everything we'll need to ride our bikes from Alaska to Argentina."
The ticket agent began to calculate the excess baggage charges.
"I'm sorry," she said a few minutes later. "You will be flying three different airlines, so I have to charge you for each of them. The total comes to $1800."
Eighteen hundred dollars?!
"We can't do it, Nancy," John said. "There's no way. We can't afford it. $1800 is a lot - too much. Let's just start from here. Throw away the plane tickets and let's ride south from Boise."
"Please," Daryl pleaded. "Please Daddy, let's go to Alaska." Tears slowly rolled down his cheeks.
"I want to go to Alaska," Davy added. "Can't we? Please? Our goal is to ride from Alaska to Argentina - not Boise to Argentina."
John and I looked at each other and knew we couldn't kill their dreams before they even started. I pulled out the credit card.
As I write this now from La Paz, Bolivia we are more than two years into our journey. We've cycled 21,000 kilometers through North, Central, and South America. Our boys are loving their journey and we see the joy in their eyes on a daily basis. They see beauty in their surroundings regardless of where they are - whether in the stark, barren desert of Peru with no trace of any living thing for miles on end or in the Amazon rain forest where the sheer abundance of trees makes getting off the road impossible. They love climbing off their bikes to explore unexpected Mayan ruins hidden off the side of the road or plunge into a waterfall-fed swimming pool. They delight in the magic in riding past bison, big horn sheep, caribou, iguanas, and vicuñas. Every day brings more unexpected surprises and we anxiously await what might be waiting for us around the next bend in the road.
"It's hard to believe we've had bad times on this trip," Davy told me one day. "When I think back about the journey, all I remember are good times."
I am convinced my sons are the luckiest boys on earth. They are learning about their world in a way few children ever have the opportunity to. They live with Mother Nature each and every day and have seen, first-hand, the tremendous power she exerts over us. My boys have learned languages, cultures, currencies, and history. They've been right in the middle of it all and have had the childhood dreams are made of.
We're excited about reaching our destination of Tierra del Fuego around March 2011, but mostly we're excited about living life. We're thrilled to have this chance to grab life by the horns and truly live. That's what life is all about.
The other major part of this journey that our boys aren't all that excited about, but John and I are, is the educational side. One of our frustrations on our last journey was the fact that an incredible educational opportunity was being largely wasted. Sure, there were a few kids who were learning from our experiences, but not many. We kept thinking that, if we could somehow get connected with classrooms, kids around the globe could learn from our adventures. As soon as we arrived into Boise we started searching around trying to figure out how to make that a reality.
Reach the World (RTW) is an educational 501(3)(c) non-profit organization with the mission of linking students in under-funded schools to online, global expeditions that have the power to expand learning beyond the four walls of their classroom. Since 1998, RTW has been linking educators traveling the world directly with classrooms. In addition to gaining essential knowledge about geography and world cultures, children become proficient in the use technology which is becoming a more integral part of our society. In 2006, the National Geographic Education Foundation named RTW a Model Program in Geography Education, one of only six in the nation.
Reach the World is having a very positive effect on children's lives in New York City and Chicago. We are thrilled to be volunteering with them to bring the world to children. At this point we think we will be linked to classrooms in NYC, but that hasn't been finalized yet. We are very excited the possibilities of this expedition - kids who otherwise would have no idea about the world they live in will now have a global perspective. Although small fries by some standards, we will be helping children become caring stewards of the Earth's environments and cultures. Given the geopolitical and environmental crises looming on our horizon, and the global outlook that we all must share, there may be no more important goal than this.
