We’ve always loved riding bikes. It’s honestly been a pretty integral part of our relationship since the very beginning – our first bike tour together was about 8 months after we met. Through ups and downs, literally and metaphorically, we’ve done a lot of riding together. I’ve done some solo touring in downstate Illinois and Indiana, Alyssa’s had her share around Lake Michigan as well. Together, we’ve done bike tours of varying lengths to Milwaukee, Madison, from Portland to Vancouver, and many long rides that for one reason or another we decide not to call ‘tours’.

The thing that drew both of us to cycling, and bike touring specifically, is not the gear, not the speed, not the physical trials of endurance (although they’re fun) – but the weird meditative flow state you get into when you’re traveling that way. It feels like you’re both perfectly in sync with your bike, and with the world around you. Even when the scenery flies by, we both find we remember every last bit. Whether on tour or in the city where we live… at the risk of sounding a little woo, it just feels like when you’re out riding your bike, you’re really existing in the world in a participatory way. So, suffice it to say we both share a deep love for it!

We’ve joked about dropping everything to ride our bikes around the world more than a handful of times. But in 2018, we had our first ‘real’ conversation about the idea. I had finally finished paying off my (stupid, gargantuan, ill-advised…) student loans, and it was while out celebrating that fact that we really asked, “Are we going to do this?”. Both of us were not feeling fulfilled in our careers, in our personal lives, in general, and feeling the need for an upheaval. We began referring to the idea with the term “hard pivot”. Nothing like quitting your jobs, selling most of your possessions, and setting off to ride bikes for a year or two to create a “hard pivot”!

Maybe we’ll find a new passion on this trip, maybe not. Maybe we’ll learn things about ourselves that we didn’t know before. I think for both of us it became important to put some kind of space and time between ourselves and the “past version” of ourselves. What better way than to ride bikes for a really long time, and see as much of the world as we can too? And so, the trip was born!

Although we were sort of (majorly) behind schedule in planning it, we were originally anticipating a Spring 2020 departure date for our trip. We hadn’t notified jobs, just friends and family. Of course, things happen.

After months of kind of spinning out about changing our plans, wondering if we could even still go at all, whether it felt right anymore, et cetera… we developed a plan. In August of 2020, we moved in with two lovely people, Andy and Alayne (Andy is my brother) in order to reduce our budgets and save money. The new departure date moved to a very hopeful August 2021, when our lease expired.

As we get close to that date, it feels more and more real every day. Thankfully nothing catastrophic happened to our household during 2020-21, and the situation in our home country allows for us to make the first leg of the trip from Chicago to LA with relative normalcy. Our plan currently has us traveling to Japan at the very end of the year, which, as it stands, seems perhaps optimistic. We’re both fully vaccinated, so hopefully as we travel, the restrictions on movement for those who are vaccinated lessen and lessen. Fingers crossed!

Either way – the plan is for our “hard pivot” to happen in August 2021. We may go to Japan next, we may not. Bike touring in general requires a certain degree of flexibility with plans not working out the way you expected, and this is no different. We’ll see what happens!