Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific // Adventure Bicycle Touring // RTW – Round the World Travel // Journey film // Passing That Way //

[Photo: Ollie Yeoman]
Adventure cyclists traveling around the world is less uncommon as we look through the lens of the web. For inspiration, it’s easy to see the amazing world through the seat of cycles. They chose Surly Long Haul Truckers in 4130 steel lugged framesets, a great choice to comfort and reliability. Follow Ollie and Anna’s adventures on Passing That Way as they round the world.

Shanghai to Rome by Touring Bicycles // Adventure Cycling with Ollie and Anna Yeoman // Round the World Cyclists // Passing That Way //

Adventure cyclists traveling around the world is less uncommon as we look through the lens of the web. For inspiration, it’s easy to see the amazing world through the seat of cycles. They chose Surly Long Haul Truckers in 4130 steel lugged framesets, a great choice to comfort and reliability.
Follow Ollie and Anna’s adventures on Passing That Way as they round the world.

Cycle Touring Australia // Chris Rishworth guides us in the Outback // Koga-Miyata World Traveller // Bicycle World Travel //

Chris Rishworth cycle touring Outback Australia using Solar and Dyno Power

Read about his adventures at the CGOB journal. 

Race to Cycle to the South Pole 2013 // ICE Trikes race to the South Pole // Maria Leijerstam beats two other male contenders //

British adventurer Maria Leijerstam has braved savage conditions to become the first person to cycle to the South Pole from the edge of the Antarctic continent. Maria, aged 35 from Wales, raced two men for the title and arrived at the pole hundreds of miles ahead of her nearest rival.

After 9 days cycling Maria completed the 400 mile expedition at approximately 1am GMT on the 27th December 2013. Despite starting days later than her competitors Maria made quick progress on a recumbent trike designed specifically for the challenge by Inspired Cycle Engineering. The custom-made trike is stable and aerodynamic, which has allowed Maria to focus her energy on progressing through the gale-force winds and hazardous terrain.

The cycles design is based on a standard ICE Sprint recumbent trike with modifications to ensure it can tackle the rigorous challenge ahead. The frame is made, as standard, from aircraft-grade steel selected for its strength and fatigue resistance. It is fitted with 4.5 inch-wide snow tires for unsurpassed traction and float over snow and ice. The gears are effectively twice as easy as a standard mountain bike, which would allow Maria to climb 1-in-3 gradients.

The ability to climb hills with relative ease meant that Maria could take a shorter route to the pole than her competitors, which required scaling the formidable Transantarctic Mountains; a similar route to that of Scott and Amundsen in their legendary South Pole expeditions. On the recumbent trike Maria was able to ascend the Leverett Glacier, despite strong headwinds and deep snow, to reach the polar plateau.
“The trike is amazing. It’s completely stable, even in extreme winds and I can take on long steep hills that I’d never be able to climb on a bike” said Maria.

With the mountains and glacier behind her Maria then faced over 300 miles of the polar plateau. The snow, wind and sastrugi made progress slow and arduous, but by cycling in 12 hour stints Maria continued to progress 25-35 miles (40-60km) each day.

After a well-deserved celebration, call home and rest, Maria will return to her home in Wales where she will no doubt start planning her next mammoth expedition. Huge congratulations to Maria from everyone at ICE Trikes!

Other South Pole Explorers on bikes:

The South Pole Epic, Daniel Burton

Juan Menendez Granados

Eric Larsen, Cycle South Expedition 2012

Facebook Post by Brian Perić.

Racing over 400 miles from the edge of the Antarctic continent Maria Leijerstam hopes to beat two other male contenders to claim the world record.

HimalayasXTour // Mountain biking through // Sichuan Province // A2A Explore

“Love is a bicycle with two pancakes for wheels. You may see love as more of an exercise in hard work, but I see it as more of a breakfast on the go.” 

― Jarod Kintz

What is the route planned for this summer?

ToTheRockTour2013 – This tour is all about connecting with friends, family, community and nature from the Great Lake State of Michigan, USA to the Canadian Rocky Mountains of Banff National Park.

What is this – a bike tour, an expedition, a trip back home (Canada)?

This is all the above. A trip back home to Canada (first in 6.5 years while living in East Asia). It’s an unsupported tour with the bicycle once I launch from Michigan and ride towards the Mackinac Bridge. Family is first and adventure is second for me. I spend the winter recovering from the experiences in Mongolia (X journals), so right now I am just making connections to my friends and family – this is vitally important.  Pre-tour with family, and on tour there is so much opportunity to live in the outdoor experiences. There will good times and bad times, moments with serendipity and some days with injuries and despair. But there are so many simple joys, happy thoughts, free spirited songs to be sung as I move along. You can Prepare, but don’t over prepare. Take each day at a time. Go explore by doing your own thing, enjoy it and share experiences with others. Life is short but beautiful when you begin to notice more, fear less, open yourself and your ideas about the world around you. There is so much to see and so much to do. Go for it.

– See you out on the road. (:

Why go bicycle touring?

It’s a great way to travel and see many parts of the world out of the tourist routes. You can travel over and through international borders, you can meet new cultures in their home environments, you learn languages, you eat delicious and exotic foods, you get exercise, you become more global minded through the process.

How did I get started in mountain bike travel/touring?

I started off with mountain biking in 1988 in and around Windsor, Ontario, Canada and surrounding Essex County of southern Ontario. I explored with my friends Ciro Viviano and Greg Schiller and later as a member of Caboto Velo Club and Maple Leaf Cycling Clubs of Windsor. I started riding BMX, Motocross-styled bikes with suspension, then steel frame Mountain Bikes with rigid forks that worked exceptionally well along the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia and through the XC forest trails of southwestern Ontario and Michigan. I progressed with Road racing and 700c wheeled road race bicycles.

“To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man’s welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm?” 

― Angela Carter

Today, I have taken similar machines, both the cheap (aluminum $50 frame in HimalayasX) and the exotic (Lynskey titanium $1795 frame used in Mongolia X) assembled by my friend and professional (AN DAE GI) proprietor of Gangneung Bike Mart, Gangwon Province, South Korea.  Today, I have exceeded most of the mental barriers to 26er mountain bike endurance expeditions, but I also see the sport evolving with Fat Bikes, 29ers, 29er+, and Bikepacking which substantially lightens loads.

Where did I recently travel?

Across the Korean peninsula 2007-2010, Deserts and Himalayas of western China in 2011, and across the isolated Steppe of Outer Mongolia in 2012, but I am hitting hard pavement and visiting friends and family across North America this summer (: 

Who did I support?

I supported the IDEAS (Intestinal Disease Education & Awareness Society) 

led by Mountaineer Explorer Robert Hill.

I supported ETE (Education Through Expeditions)

led by Polar Explorer Antony Jinman

I am also a fellow of the Ted Simon Foundation as a Jupiter Traveller

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.” 

― Ernest Hemingway

MONGOLIA X 2012 STATS:

TOTAL DAYS: 45

TOTAL ALTITUDE: 40,000 meters / 130,234 feet of altitude change on course

TOTAL DISTANCE: 2500 kilometers / 1553 miles

DAYS ON: 38 days pedaling

DAYS OFF: 7 rest and injury days

FOOD CONSUMED: 2000 grams of powdered protein, 45 mega-packs of vitamins/minerals,

12 jars of pickles, 20 liters of grazing Goat, Yak or Horse milk, Wild onions, Fresh water fish, Mutton, Sheeps tongue, 6 bowls of noodles/meat/fat, 5 kilograms of yak/goat cheese, 12 fish.

BODY WEIGHT: Start 95 kilograms. 10 weeks cross-fit 85 kilograms. Completion 72 kilograms.

DAMAGE: cracked and repaired front rack plate, bent/cracked rear carrier rack, 1 replaced, 1 repaired. 

PHOTOS TAKEN: 1500

SONGS PLAYED: 0

HIMALAYAS X 2011 STATS:

TOTAL DAYS: 45

DAYS ON: 38 days pedaling

DAYS OFF: 7 rest and injury days

ALTITUDE: N/A meters / feet of altitude change on course

DISTANCE: 3200 kilometers / 1988 miles

FOOD CONSUMED: 20 loaves of Nan bread, 2 kilograms of oatmeal with raisins, apricots and dates, 45 mega-packs of vitamins/minerals, 1.5 kilogram of Gatorade (making 50 liters)

6 jars of pickles, 10 liters of grazing Goat milk, 8 bowls of noodles/meat/fat, 2 kilograms of rice.

WEIGHT: Start 96 kilograms. 10 weeks cross-fit 85 kilograms. Completion 70 kilograms. 

EQUIPMENT DAMAGED: Rear wheel split 360 degrees, repaired with block of wood, hammer and electrical PVC tape roll, 1 bicycle tube patch.

PHOTOS TAKEN: 1500

SONGS PLAYED: 14

Sichuan welcomes, mother and daughter, giggles and lunch with their family 

 This is my life, now or never!!!!

这是我的生命，机不可失，时不再来！！！ — with ONE – Arctic2Argentina – Eco-Expedition of the Americas & Asia Expeditions.

 Older brother home from college to help his mother and siblings with the summer planting

 Beef bone soup and rice…and a bike wash

牛骨汤和米饭… …自行车洗

I kept the upper fork stanchions clean (an old cotton tube sock) and the rest of the bike was covered in mud 

我一直上叉支柱清洁（旧棉管袜子），其余的自行车在泥覆盖（：

There’s a local woman there, hauling her greens! 

 Friendly families, this young guy is a student on summer vacation returning to help his mother and younger brother and cousin

友好的家庭，这个小伙子是一个暑假的学生回国，以帮助他的母亲和弟弟和表弟

 Control center but no petrol engine is required to explore here

 lush vegetation that grows exceptionally well in Sichuan along the fertile mountain valleys

 Road conditions, very muddy!

And just a little further down the S214 we find the water buffalo in a herd 

 Peace!

 The boys of Sichuan mountains. — at Jiuzhai Valley National Park (九寨沟）

 The future generations in Sichuan Province, in the mountains together again

 Nurture to nature. I unloaded from the hitching episode and rested on the mountain for a while to recover from the shake up. — with ONE – Arctic2Argentina – Eco-Expedition of the Americas & Asia Expeditions and Antun Čolig in Mianning County.

You just never stop moving in the Himalayas

Riding a water buffalo, first I have ever seen in person!

骑水牛，首先，我见过的人！

Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.

– Charles M. Schulz

Mongolia X Journal 4 // Desperate Dispatch from Western Mongolia // Deserts // Flies // Attempted Sabotage

Brian Perić

August 9, 2012 

…I have a few photos to try to upload and running on battery. Took a shower, first in 2 weeks, it felt good…I might ride another 200km to Khovd, but officially, I wanted to announce that I am completed today. Layers of skin peeling off with the dirt and grime, tough place getting here…I almost sent SOS from the desert as well a few days ago, I was trapped in the tent after crossing a dangerous river with strong currents (a Toyota SUV was submerged in the middle, I went a little further and began crossing with the school teacher holding a bag. During this whole episode we are both being swarmed by seething mosquitoes and a few horse flies!!!! I made it across the river, the teacher ran for his truck where his wife had been waiting, and I began pushing the cycle to find a path across the desert.

The only plan possible to escape the mosquito swarms were crossing the mountains and I was 10km off-course riding up with a swarm around me. When I finally started swallowing mosquitoes, I began to choke and scream in panic, I left the bike and pitched the tent. Horse flies stung my back, my hands were numb with bites.

I sent MAY-DAY messages to my wife and friend James…it was insane, I made a break 10km south in a truck, and cycled through a mountain pass, washing my clothes along the way, I went towards Tsagaanuur, the border crossing between Kazazh-Mongolia and Russia, and fortunately met locals who wanted to assist me again (like across Mongolia!!! Impossible without them, bless these wonderful souls, the Nomads, the generous people)…

I had a run-in with a motorcycle gang two nights before in the mountains, stayed with an English teacher in Bokmoron (infested with mosquitoes in that area, and all across the desert oh my God), then ran into Kazakh-Mongolians stopping me with their children, at first, good luck and friendly people, later rough people, a father blocking my path, grabbing the bike and demanding something, glasses, gloves…I told him to move, everyone tried to stop me from moving ahead, some people were friendly, others just nagging for something, ahead the mountain pass and Tsagaanuur.

A bad moment this morning, trying to dodge the locals, a tout came up to me along the road and brought me to his family Ger tent, all was well inside, friendly people, had a cup of tea, outside however, he and his brother were plotting something for me. I went out and they insisted I take a trail instead of the main gravel road, I could even see a bridge in the distance north towards the center of the town. They pushed me to take the “better road” and led me to a fast flowing river, it looked deep as well. They suggested I “take a taxi for 10km to get past the river…” All hard to believe, I tried to fjord the river, and dropped waist deep and shaved both of my shins on some sharp wood with nails submersed in the stream. It was like a trap, I swore and made it out to the otherside, bags completely submersed (with computer in another water-proof and camera on my hip also water-proof luckily) and I left them, injured. I rode a few kilometers on a flat rear tire, the nails that cut my shins also punctured the rear tire (almost bullet-proof Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tour 1100g tires).

I wanted to be at a distance from everyone, I never had an experience like this anywhere in Mongolia, I crossed into a cultural divide/new territory where the rules were written differently, people were aggressive (and stupid I might add…) and I made it through and onto the provincial capital Oglii (Bayan-Oglii). It’s unfortunate to see these behaviors in western Mongolia as an introduction, but there is pressure here for this cultural minority, and they direct that frustration, need or greed on foreigners passing through.

I finished the last 2600 meter mountain pass with the Mongol Rally Drivers from Europe ahead of me, it was glorious up there, no people hacking at me, a calm, an Ovoo (Buddhist mound used by Shamen) and I calmed myself down. 40km down the track, I entered Oglii and found the small Tourist Ger Camp where I am now, met Mongol Rally drivers that came from Spain, England and Europe…and all is well right now.

I will ride further, but cautious of the people inhabiting these parts, very aggressive but not necessarily dangerous, yet severely annoying and I will avoid them flagging me down or blocking the road, or their dogs, nasty ones in packs trying to bite at me riding past them (dirt, stones are my friends). Interesting turns in the road, all of Mongolia was awesome, this end of the world is much rougher, tougher and seems at times severe.

In the end, a great experience with demands physically and mentally, the calm of mountain passes (too many to count) and the open doors of Mongolians everywhere, the Nomads, the families that supported my journey, the cultural exchanges, the photos, the body languages, the communication open and free with each encounter.

Now, I am really looking forward to seeing my family in Korea, talking to friends and relatives here (FB), and back home, and relaxing back into my teaching routines.

Adventure is out there, but it takes a great deal of endurance to enjoy it day and night long for an entire summer. Some cycle around the world (RESPECT TO ALL OF THEM…I COULDN’T DO IT!!!), that is amazing from what I have seen in only 42 days. I need some rest, sleep and a plan to cross back across Mongolia to catch a flight to South Korea. Counting down, with more riding ahead. 200km to Khovds where I can find reliable transport to the capital Ulaanbataar.

A little diary update. Namaste. Brian (:

Eric Larsen – Polar Explorer Rides South Expedition with Moonlander Fat Bike 2012

Currently on the ice. Polar Explorer Eric Larsen is using a Fat Bike to ride to the South Pole. This expedition follows up on his triple grand slam in 2010 Save the Poles Expedition, where he skiied to the North Pole with fellow Polar Explorer Antony Jinman (Education Through Expeditions), climbed Mount Everest and skiied to the South Pole in 365 days. Using a Fat Bike as Polar expedition equipment is a first, although, Fat Biking is already popular across the Arctic, especially in northern US States and Alaska, Canada, and sections of Europe. Fat Biking is the next level of adventure cycling. 

HimalayasX2011 – Sino-Tibetan Yak Herders camp, 4028 meters, south of Jolong

                               South bound in Sichuan Kham China

 Maps: the key to communicate.

                                                        Lone cow in the Himalayas.

Narrow trail that solved a huge struggle around
the Himalayas. I would continue south towards
southern Sichuan.

 He slipped on a sheer drop over the river, 

we are walking on the the avalanched 

mountain side where the road was buried 

4 months ago in earth quakes.

  Help came from a rural doctor and friends.

2008 Blackcat Expedition Touring MTB

 

HimalayasX2011 – Sino-Tibetan Yak Herders camp, 4028 meters

 from Brian Perich on Vimeo.

from Brian Perich 10 months ago / 

Creative Commons License:

 

by

South of a landslide, Jolong, Sichuan, China. I met a Sino (grandfather) Tibetan (grandmother) and their daughter and grnadchildren on their yak herd camp. We were situated at 4000 meters above sea level. This was part of my HimalayasX2011 expedition project for western China.

Video is raw, unedited. 20 minutes into the filming, the grandmother is preparing her hand churn, which separates the yak butter milk and the cream, the latter is turned into a sour dough yak yogurt.

I support IDEAS, Intestinal Disease Education & Awareness Sociey, Canada
nogutsknowglory.com

In partnership with, ETE, Education Through Expeditions
etehome.org

Images of Bicycle Travel: Day Trip MTB @ The Mongolia Crossing Project

We won the Lotto! No, we traveled to outer Mongolia!

Natural hues of an amazing sky at sunset in Olgii, Mongolia

Dry bones. Can you name this animal?

My friend rented a mountain bike and we set out for adventure.

Our third amigo, he is new to MTB adventures

North of Olgii, we rode up in the hills past the sheep heads for beers.

Storms were brewing as they always do in Mongolia.

Looking back to Olgii, Bayan-Olgii Province.

Cycle and Motorcycle touring in Mongolia is epic.

There is a sky out there that will take you by surprise.

Clouds, they tell stories of Genghis Khan and the Mongols

Day trips with backpacks are relaxing, easy, and rewarding too.

Gravity helps us float back into Olgii to stay the Gers.

Speed and gravity, the endless pursuit of motion.

Backpacking for a day out in western Mongolia.

Ride on!  Inspiration is in the journey ahead of you.

Support for this expedition came from LYNSKEY USA, Makers of fine titanium frames.

Dream the big rides, face all the fears, live all the dreams.

—

Brian Perich

Adventure Cyclist, Explorer, Father, University Lecturer

Global Ambassador at Education Through Expeditions

Ambassador at IDEAS, Intestinal Disease Education & Awareness Society, Canada

Nandadevi International MTB Expedition

Korean-World Micro Blog

A2A Expedition project

Facebook groups, 1, 2, 3

Facebook profile

Twitter: Cycleagain

Media Sample Media Sample 2

Skype: prof.brian.perich

Ph. 82.10.8075.5121 (South Korea)