Friedel and Andrew (Photo courtesy Travelling Two)
This article is one in a series of interviews with long-term international bike tourists. This time I talked with Friedel from Travelling Two to get her take on things. You can also find Friedel's writing at the Nova Scotia Travel Guide.
World Bike Touring Examiner (WBTE): How long have you been/were you on the road?
Friedel: We started our trip in September 2006. We plan to continue until about October 2009, when we will take a break over the winter and decide what to do next.
WBTE: What prompted such an extended journey? Had you done a lot of touring before?
Friedel: We had never bike toured before when we decided on this trip. A lot of things prompted it. We were both ready for a change in our jobs. We'd been dreaming of (and saving for) a big trip for a long time and we felt that we were in a place in our lives where we had the money, the time, and the opportunity to just take off. That doesn't happen so often - maybe only once in a lifetime - so we decided to take advantage of it and just go!
As for why we chose to go by bicycle, we'd already done a lot of travel through North America, Europe and Japan so we were looking for a new challenge beyond the standard backpacking and car trips. We did some searches online and found the website of Alistair Humphreys, who spent 4 years going around the world by bike. We were inspired and decided to follow his lead, particularly tempted by the promise of seeing places that other tourists skip and getting in touch with local people. The style of travel that bike touring offers was our main attraction, not the physical side of cycling.
WBTE: I know there are plenty of wonderful days when the sun is shining and you’ve got the wind at your back. But there are also days when it’s raining or you face a headwind or you’re climbing a hill that just won’t end. How do you get through those days? What keeps you going?
Friedel: Being together is a huge help for getting through those days. When one of us is feeling down, the other does their best to lift the mood. It's very rare that we're both under the weather. We take the view that the worst day on the bike is still better than the best day in the office so you have to keep it all in perspective. Also, we try not to push ourselves too much or set arbitrary goals that just compound our frustrations. Do we really need to cycle 100km today or get to that town down the road? Usually not. If we stop at lunchtime because we don't feel like going any further, that's fine.
WBTE: As hard as it is to pick out one or two highlights – would you, could you? Tell us about a couple of those incredibly wow-ing, drop-your-jaw experiences you’ve had.
Friedel: This is a really hard one to answer because there are so many! When we think of incredibly beautiful places, Kyrgyzstan and the high mountain lakes like Song-Kol come to mind, where we camped on the water's edge at
WBTE: What about those days you wish you could forget (but you know you never will)? Those days when everything goes wrong and then even more goes wrong? Tell us about a couple of those.
Friedel: There are happily very few of those days but the day we cycled into Istanbul will stick in our minds for a long time. In hindsight we should have just taken the bus but we were still set on cycling every mile so on this day we were about 40km out of Istanbul when we stopped in an outlying city to ask about a hotel room. It was too expensive and a hunt around the town failed to turn up anything cheaper so since it was only 3pm and we had lots of energy we decided to carry on. We were sure we'd be in central Istanbul by dusk, having supper in a nice restaurant to celebrate.
It all went quite wrong from that point onward. We got lost, taking the wrong roads several times and having to backtrack. The sun sank below the horizon sooner than we anticipated and by dark we were wandering around some strange suburb of Istanbul. It was entirely local and every time we asked about a hotel we were pointed down the motorway but there was no way we were going to risk the Turkish motorways after dark. They were dangerous enough during the day! We kept on thinking that there must be a smaller road into the city but we couldn't find it and we kept coming back to this one suburb.
It was a busy little place, with people getting groceries and running other errands but no place for us to sleep. We wandered around until 9pm and we were really getting worried. We could see a mosque up on a hill and we had just made up our mind to go sleep by the mosque – reasoning that if we had to sleep outside that area would be the most respected in the community and the area where we would be the least likely to find trouble in the wee hours of the morning.
Just as we were going to the mosque, a man came running out of what seemed like nowhere. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked. I was never so happy to have taken German lessons in university! He was a factory owner who had worked in Germany and soon he was offering us a place on his factory floor for the night. He even returned the next morning with hot tea and breakfast sweets for us. In over 1,000 days on the road, we've never failed to find a place for the night but that was the time we came the closest to being without a roof over our heads.
WBTE: You’ve toured through many countries and I know they each are unique and have their advantages and disadvantages. But, if you were to talk with someone relatively new to cycle touring, where would you recommend they go? Why?
Friedel: The South Island of New Zealand is very well set up for bike tourists. Really, you can have it all there. Whether you want to take a tent and ride your bike in the wilderness or spend each night after riding in a hotel with a nice meal, you can do it in New Zealand, and all to the backdrop of some of the world's best scenery. Mountains. Fjords. Open plains. Glaciers. The diversity of landscape is quite something. We also enjoyed Portugal. It's one of the best value countries in Europe so even cyclists on a budget can enjoy meals out or the occasional hotel and once you get away from the overcrowded beach resorts on the coast there is no end to the character filled towns and villages that you can explore. Many country roads make for quiet cycling so you don't have to worry much about traffic.
WBTE: Any special tips or advice to wannabe tourers?
Friedel: Go with a relaxed attitude and remember that you're touring, not racing. Just ride the distance that you're comfortable with each day and enjoy the experiences you have along the way. As long as you do that, instead of holding yourself to fixed destinations, you don't have to worry too much about training. Your fitness will come with time. Also, don't underestimate how many calories you're burning when you start touring. We've met many newbie bike tourers who are used to smaller meals and a few days into their tour they have an energy crash because they're just not eating enough. One glass of orange juice does not constitute breakfast! If you can't handle huge doses of food all at once, keep some snacks like trail mix on the bike and eat a little bit at least every two hours.
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If you enjoyed this interview, you might enjoy these other interviews with world cyclists:
Goat from Riding the Spine - Alaska to Argentina on dirt roads
Sean from Riding the Spine - Alaska to Argentina on dirt roads
Jacob from Riding the Spine - Alaska to Argentina on dirt roads
Friedel from Travelling Two - 3 years around the world
Sonya and Aaldrik from Tour.TK - 3 years on the road, currently in South America
Alastair Humphreys - 4 years on 3 continents - Africa, Asia, America
Peter Gostelow - pedaled from Japan to England; now headed toward Africa
Tim & Cindie from Down the Road - 7 years on the road and no plans to stop
Jaime Bianchini of Peace Pedalers - nearly 8 years through 77 countries on tandem picking up strangers
Andrew Morgan of Teacher on Two Wheels - Looking for students to teach and to learn from
Amaya Williams of World Biking - Around the world a time or two
Harry and Ivana of World on a Bike - Cycling the Pan American Highway
There are also a number of families who have adopted a life on the road with their children:
The Williams family is on a open-ended tour on a triple bike with their 9-year-old son.
Rebekka and Florian traveled the Pan American Highway to Tierra del Fuego with their small son in a trailer.
The Verhage family with sons aged 11 & 13 have cycled south from LA. They are now in Peru.
The Miller family Spent one year cycling Europe and North Africa with 4 kids.
My family is currently cycling the Pan American Highway - we've cycled 16,000 km from Alaska to Colombia so far. You can find us at Family on Bikes.
Contact me via email at familyonbikes@gmail.com
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