In the realm of human behavior, it has become increasingly apparent to me that individuals eventually find a way to spend the majority their time on activities that best match their talents, skills, and their inherent personalities and worldviews. Whether that happens intentionally, or by the fall of circumstances, is more difficult to determine. In my case, the avocation that occupied a significant fraction of the days that I have existed on our planet was a definite example of chance and happenstance intervening to form the perfect match. My first bicycle tour began nearly thirty years ago, and at that time, suddenly finding myself with several months of free time to fill, my decision to attempt that endeavor was largely made on a whim. That was not a particularly long tour, only following a route of around seven thousand kilometers in North America, extending from Massachusetts to California. At the time, of course, I was a total novice, and, moreover, I didn’t even realize that people actually did that sort of thing. Nevertheless, by the time I was perhaps two-thirds of the way along that path, my mind was frequently occupied with thoughts of more extensive journeys.

Writing this second-to-last post for the World2 TourWebsite was something that I was definitely not looking forward to. That fact, combined with the typical confusion often encountered when restarting something resembling a normal life after a long hiatus, the pull of a much-needed break in the process of stringing digital letters together and storing them as miniscule clumps of magnetic orientation or electrical charge, and the general physical and mental malaise created by three of the most unusual years I could possibly have imagined, led to the embarrassing six-month gap between these final posts and the preceding entry. The unsurprising cause for my low level of enthusiasm for this particular task arose from the circumstance that essentially none of the most important aspects of this Tour played out as I had envisioned and expected that they would. Nevertheless, a significant event in a person’s life, as any Grand Tour will always be, deserves a full accounting and summary, no matter the participant’s outlook regarding the results. Here, I will do that for what I believe will be the three topics of most interest to readers, Cycling, Equipment, and Health.

In the first months of 2019, just before the World2 Tour was set to begin, I purchased the most expensive visa I had ever heard of. Specifically, one that would permit me to enter the largest country in the World, in terms of land area, and it was not a simple matter. Being extremely large, my Tour in that country, while it would not have been a total crossing by bicycle, was still expected to be fairly lengthy, and because I also planned to visit at least two neighboring countries, I needed to obtain a three-year, multi-entry visa, the most expensive type available. Additionally, since said country did not have an online application process in place, I would need to send my passport to the embassy in Washington for the application, further complicating matters. Furthermore, since I would also need to have my passport available for a shorter, pre-Tour trip in the following weeks, I was forced to use a visa broker service and pay extra for expedited processing, pushing the cost up even more. The result was that, just for the ability to ride a few meters across some imaginary line, I had to expend over five hundred US Dollars.

Years ago, during the last few months preceding the start of my Tour of Gondwana, I killed some time and distracted myself through that often-anxious period, by plotting a potential route, and investigating possible destinations, for another cycling Grand Tour. A special kind of sickness is required for a person to begin imagining a second multi-year tour before their first has even started, and there is no way I can deny that I exhibited all of the symptoms of that particular affliction. Specifically, the tour I envisioned at the time would have been one that took place on all of the lands that were part of the great Mongol Empire, at its maximum extent during the thirteenth century. In the image below, the green area of the mosaic generally represents the area covered by the Empire, which was initiated by Chinggis Khan and expanded further by his sons. As the map reveals, there is quite a large number of places that would be interesting and enjoyable to visit during a lengthy tour of such an extensive area, and one could do so without the inconveniences often imparted by those pesky geographic features known as oceans. Because I had long been fascinated by the history and culture of the Mongols, I then had the seed planted in my mind that I would try to do that tour, at some point in the future after I had completed Gondwana.

Considering the often chaotic nature of the way the third year of the World2 Tour actually unfolded, it came as a distinct surprise to me that the region of the World that was always intended to host its final section eventually turned out to be where I completed the Tour, in reality. Beyond that coincidence, however, the similarities were scant at best. In my original plan, for several reasons, the Western Pacific was intended to be one of the major sections of the Tour and, by taking place in a portion of the globe that I had very limited experience with previously, it was perhaps the section that I had anticipated the most. With a considerable effort put forth over several months, I had devised a challenging, but interesting, route that would take me across most of the fascinating locations within that marine-dominated part of the World, with just a minimal use of air transportation. After that had been completed, I had expected to undertake another trans-Pacific container ship voyage to conclude the Tour, thereby completing another full circumnavigation. Through all of 2020, and into the following year, it seemed increasingly unlikely that any of those plans would ever come to pass. Fortunately, as 2021 moved forward, slight cracks in the closure regimes in that part of the World began to appear, albeit with exceedingly complex and lengthy procedures. The only advantage to the extra delays and cost which those policies entailed, compounded by the extremely long time required for me to recover from injuries, was that, by the time I had progressed through part of the region, some of my highly anticipated destinations had also begun to reopen.

When I originally devised my route through the Western Pacific region—always intended to be the last major section of the World2 Tour—there were a number of locations that I was particularly interested in visiting, as well as a handful that I basically included as bridging sections, intended to make my route more continuous, with a minimal amount of air transfers. With regard to the latter aspect, after considerable study and effort I was eventually able to put together a plan that would allow me to cross that large quadrant of the globe primarily by bicycling and marine transport, a plan that would, of course, need to be tossed in the garbage in 2020, along with all of my other route goals. However, once I was ready, and eventually able, to move on from Fiji, I was pleased to learn that one of the locations from my original list for that section, in fact, one of those that had especially interested me, had recently begun to allow limited numbers of international visitors to enter once again. Though, as I have alluded to elsewhere, while that particular destination lies a reasonable one thousand three hundred kilometers in distance from Fiji, because of limited transport options available at the time my only realistic possibility for moving on to that country required a transit through Sydney, a total flight distance that was four times longer, not to mention considerably more costly and excessively bureaucratically complex.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the months of January and February 2022, the Thirty-Second and Thirty-Third, and also the final, months of the World2 Tour! These months brought the Tour to its close with an unsurprisingly declining pace. The first included two inactive weeks caused by typically annoying paperwork fiascos, while the final month was intentionally allowed to be more relaxing.

In my original route plans for the World2 Tour, the final section was always going to take place around the Western Pacific, and I was expecting to hit that region hard. My reasons for that included the simple fact that there are some famously beautiful places in that part of the World. However, there was also a significant amount of the might-as-well phenomenon in play. Whereby, while planning a long tour, one says to themselves, if I’ve already covered such a great distance, I might as well add those nearby Islands, too, since I probably will never have another opportunity. In my case, that resulted in Fiji being the final country added to my route, but not the actual end of the route, though there was also one additional reason, which I will mention in another post. Of course, like many of its island-nation neighbors, Fiji closed up tight shortly after the outbreak of the 2020 pandemic, with little apparent chance that I would be able to get there, a situation that made me feel seriously disappointed.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of December 2021, month thirty-two of the unexpectedly-long World2 Tour, a month when cycling actually resembled a Tour, beginning again to move from place to place, albeit with relatively few cycling days and a pace that I might have put forth when I was twelve years old.

It should go without saying that the most recent half-year of the World2 Tour had not exactly progressed in a manner that I, or anyone for that matter, would have chosen at the outset. Mishaps ranging in severity from mildly annoying to nearly catastrophic seemed to arise almost sequentially, resulting in significant, and compounding, delays, as well as an extraordinary increase in expenses. Additionally, the continuing presence of various levels of travel restrictions caused by the ongoing health crisis continued apace. By that time, I had almost grown accustomed to those extra complicating procedures, nevertheless, they further increased both my delays and costs during the latter stages of the Tour. At the time of the crash in Guam I had an airline ticket for a flight, two days hence, to the Republic of Palau, where I expected to spend a couple of weeks. Nine weeks later, when I had recovered enough to resume the Tour, albeit in a distinctly limited manner, that country still seemed to be the obvious choice for the next destination. As it turned out, I stayed there for considerably longer than I had initially planned, mostly due to logistical issues. That was not necessarily a bad thing, because Palau provided me several things I really needed, just when I needed them.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of August 2019, the thirty-first month of the World2 Tour, an entire month comprised of rehabilitation rides, a longer period than expected due to changes of flight schedules for next transfer, but in a location that prevented any anxiety.

Here are the Ride Tracks for August and October, 2021. August, the twenty-ninth month of the World2 Tour, started with a few uninspiring short rides in a less-than-ideal location for cycling, and then, soon after, ended abruptly with a devastating crash. Month number thirty, October 2021, saw a return to the primary activity of the Tour in a much more cycling-friendly location, albeit in very limited manner geared towards rehabilitation. September 2021, a period of time devoted entirely to convalescence, is deemed to have existed in a Time Warp and, therefore, has been officially expunged from the World2 Tour.

If all events had unfolded as originally anticipated, the World2 Tour would have reached its conclusion sixteen weeks before now, some time in the middle of June, 2021. Despite my usual predisposition against modifying any publicly-stated plans, there had always been a possibility that the Tour, at some point, would be shortened by an unknown amount, if I felt that its accomplishments up until then had been sufficient. In fact, during the first year of the Tour the likelihood of that actually happening often seemed to be increasing, as I was not always sure that I would continue to be as committed to continuing for the intended duration. However, the now-familiar global disruptions that arrived in March of 2020, which I have already written about on several occasions, suddenly intervened in my decision making process with regards to the immediate future, as they had also done for everyone worldwide. Therefore, almost before I knew what had happened, the Tour was reorganized, and with its ultimate destination being closed for almost two years, and counting, its continuance was significantly extended, by default. While that resulted in a considerable amount of confusion, a certain amount of logistical mishaps, an unwelcome decrease in cycling distance completed, and, most notably, a significant budgetary overrun, there were also some silver linings around that minacious cloud. Primarily, I would then have the opportunity to see certain places that I never expected to visit, see some unanticipated sights and creatures, and in general, experience a number of things for the first time in my life.

It has often been said that great minds think alike. In general, I concur with that postulate, however, I might add a corollary that stipulates that said minds may not always develop their great ideas at the same time. This again became evident to me during the latter stages of the World2 Tour, which was still being severely disrupted by the ongoing global health crisis. Earlier in the year, as I was preparing to leave Africa, the roll-outs of the recently-developed vaccines to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of so much Worldwide trouble over the previous eighteen months, had already been underway for several weeks. As someone who had previously contracted, and then recovered from, Covid-19, it was clear to me that, at the time, most other people would be more deserving recipients, relative to me, and so I had no problem placing myself steadfastly at the back of the line for doses of the vaccine.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of July 2019, month twenty-eight of the World2 Tour, one more month with less cycling than desired, with the first part canceled by a mechanical problem, and another break at the end for sightseeing and the next air transfer.

When last I wrote about the Tour’s late re-addition of a segment in South Korea, I was once again enduring a frustrating period of inactivity, this time caused by another significant mechanical issue with the bike. The timing could not have been less advantageous, coming just as I was finding my form again, ten days after leaving the latest required quarantine. I knew that this period of time was going to provide a considerable amount of anxiety, since the process involved an international parts shipment and, over the last few decades, shipments of packages has been one of very few things that regularly create stress in my life. I requested the fastest delivery possible, no matter the cost, however, the package was sent using the US Postal Service. In theory, their Express service is reasonable, but the ability to track the package once its aircraft has departed a US port is practically nonexistent. Moreover, disruptions in postal services in the covid era have become well known, with some reports found on the Web stating that some International Express packages had recently been taking three to five weeks for delivery. At the time, I had already made my future plans for moving on from Korea, and so there was a possibility that I would already have left the country by the time my replacement part was delivered. I passed a number of unappealing days by mentally coming up with contingency plans for such an eventuality.

For a long time, the only country in East Asia that I had any level of interest in visiting was the Republic of Korea. By this time, I cannot precisely remember exactly why I had originally formed that opinion, but when I initially started devising the route for this section of the World2 Tour it was a foregone conclusion that Korea would be a part of my plans. As I began to develop a more detailed route, however, my enthusiasm for that segment declined noticeably. The reason for that was similar to why I abruptly shortened my unplanned segment in Turkey, earlier in the Tour. Specifically, my attempts to locate pleasurable roads for cycling in Korea frequently fell short. As a recently-industrialized country, the transportation infrastructure appeared characteristically grim, and everywhere I looked I only found multi-lane, high-speed roadways. Nevertheless, I still included a relatively short section in Korea in my original route plans for the Tour.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of June 2021, the twenty-seventh month of the World2 Tour, another month with less cycling than desirable, thanks to its first half being nullified by another quarantine and the remainder involving excessively urban conditions and closely-spaced points of interest. In temporal terms, this month was intended to have been the final month of the Tour, but, with the ultimate destination still closed, the endeavor continues for a while longer.

Once I had been freed from my Bangkok quarantine, I was more than ready to get started with a moderately-lengthy tour in Thailand. That would be both a major relief and often a logistically frustrating experience. Additionally, Thailand would be another duplicate country, one that I had visited on my previous long tour. In most cases that might be a factor that would disqualify a particular place from inclusion in a tour route, but, once again, I mollified those concerns in my mind because my earlier tour in the country had been somewhat truncated. That was not due to any particular problem or deficiency of Thailand itself, but rather because I decided to add a visit to Laos, at the last minute, with the result that I had to bypass a large portion of the country. This time I intended to compensate for that change by spending most of my time in areas that I had skipped previously. Thailand is rather regionally homogeneous, so I was not really expecting to see anything that would be particularly novel to me this time. Instead I focused most of my attention on what might have changed, or not, relative to my first tour, fifteen years earlier.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of May 2021, month twenty-six of the World2 Tour, with a reasonable number of cycling days but a relatively low total distance intended to avoid the spring heat of the tropics.

When the World2 Tour completed its first year, on April 08, 2020, I was uncomfortably inactive during a rather loose Lockdown, in Berlin. Upon its second anniversary, on April 08, 2021, I was similarly inactive, even more so, and even more uncomfortable, during a more strict quarantine in Bangkok. Neither situation, of course, had been included in my original plans for the Tour. There is essentially no possibility that the Tour will still be underway when that date rolls around the next time. However, given the way the past fifteen months have unfolded for all of us, I should probably not be so sure about that. Accordingly, it might be prudent for me to examine the possibility of making advance arrangements to be inactive and uncomfortable next April in another capital city whose name begins with B, perhaps Bandar Seri Begawan, or Bogota.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the months of March and April 2021, the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth months of the World2 Tour, the first of which only included three cycling days, due to cumbersome transfer and border procedures, with the second only getting started halfway through, due to a rather strict quarantine.

It is not really an exaggeration to say that Africa saved the World2 Tour. At the onset of the pandemic of 2020, I had achieved less than half of my original plans for this endeavor and, had there been no workable options to move forward, I would never have been able to consider the Tour to be a success. The relatively short section in Eastern Europe I improvised during the brief summer travel window that opened on that continent was essentially inadequate to counteract that state of affairs. Intentions, or at least hopes, to continue forward, towards the enticing Asia-Pacific region, a very important component of my original plans, had to be abandoned as the rumored reopening of some eastern countries never materialized and the health crisis continued. Then, just as I was feeling like I was at the end of my rope, the countries of Western and Central Africa, where the coronavirus had not taken hold as severely as it had in other parts of the World, began to allow people to enter, though with additional restrictions and requirements that would often prove logistically challenging. Africa was a major Stage during the Tour of Gondwana and so I had no inclinations to return this time around, though I did have some thoughts of making a couple of brief stops on the continent in transit after the Tour was over. However, as I have said before, Africa is the type of place that I find to be very appealing as a touring destination and so, once the decision was finally made to forsake my original plans for the second half of the Tour and divert to there, my personal outlook improved significantly. Half of the countries that I would eventually visit in Africa feature the official colors of World2 as their national colors and in their flags, and I also took that to be a very good omen. An example is shown below, in a fresco depicting Aido Hwedo, the Rainbow Serpent.

Prior to the month of February, 2021, the World2 Tour had brought me to twenty-five countries and, of those, only three were nations where I had previously done any significant amount of touring. Normally, I would prefer to avoid places that I had already visited, in order to maximize the amount of new experiences possible along the route. But in this case those three countries, the USA, Canada, and Brazil, being among the largest found on our planet, all provided ample opportunities for cycling exploration. When the time came for me to move on from Uganda there were only two practical options available, Kenya and Tanzania, both of which were a part of the African Stage of the Tour of Gondwana, many years earlier. While another repeat visit to a relatively small country would not exactly be ideal, I had no realistic alternatives at that point. I decided to visit the former, because I have long felt that I significantly shortchanged Kenya during that earlier Tour. My previous route went from north-to-south through the country, the first half of which involved a very slow, difficult crossing of the Dida Galgalu desert, using one of the worst dirt road that I can remember (I have recently learned that, in a typical manner, that particular road has recently been upgraded and is now a much more pleasant thoroughfare.) Beyond that section, I was very rushed, because I had a pre-booked trek on Kilimanjaro looming, and consequently saw relatively little of the rest of the country. Therefore, I didn’t really mind making another revisit during the improvised second year of World2, especially considering that my west-to-southeast route this time would allow me to complete some unfinished Kenyan business.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of February 2021, month twenty-three of the World2 Tour, a month with a reasonable number of cycling days, but with many of those being uncharacteristically short, one with a relatively modest total distance.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of January 2021, the twenty-second month of the World2 Tour, with a slower, more relaxed pace, several breaks for birding, park visits, and election shut-downs, but, overall, not too bad for a January.

West Africa had been a generally successful and enjoyable last-minute addition to my Tour route, but things there were not always simple. Expenses were significantly higher than I had expected, an erroneous supposition based on my earlier visits to Africa, and the climate was stifling essentially all of the time, something that was not really a surprise. Most of all, however, the additional travel protocols put in place to deal with the ongoing public health issues added a level of complexity that, while usually, though not always, being appropriate for the situation, made continuing forward a constant logistical challenge. For those reasons, by early December I was definitely ready for a new destination, one that would hopefully instill a dose of freshness to the latter portions of the Tour. However, before that could occur another air transfer, one fraught with organizational perils, needed to be arranged and completed.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of December 2020, month twenty-one of the World2 Tour, a month in which only a minimal amount of cycling was expected, but was even less eventful thanks to more transfer hassles.

I have already mentioned that the three major goals for the World2 Tour will likely fall short of their original intentions, and that, barring any radical changes on plans for next year, I will only achieve somewhat more than half of what I had hoped. Of course, this will be in large part due to the extraordinary circumstances of the current year, and most people around the World will certainly not meet their goals for the year either. It now seems that my newly-created short term goals will all suffer the same fate, though not necessarily for the same reasons. After the last few months, which were often more taxing than I would have preferred, what I desired was a destination that would be a little more relaxing, with exceptional natural scenery, a smaller population, and perhaps even things like nice beaches, something I have seen surprisingly infrequently on this Tour. I was pleased to identify such a destination, and was decidedly looking forward to a chance to slack off a little for a couple of weeks. However, unforeseen local complications meant that only half of what I had hoped for would come to pass.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of November 2020, month twenty of the World2 Tour, in which longer birding stops and more complicated border crossings once again resulted in somewhat less cycling.

When last I added words to this section of this site the story was being interrupted by a situation that I recently have, unfortunately, become all too familiar with—being denied boarding for a air flight for which I held a ticket. As I mentioned before, my destination was to be Ghana, and it’s capital, Accra, and I had been advised by that country’s Embassy in Lomé, Togo, that I would be able to apply for a visa upon arrival at the Accra airport. The gate agents, and the Ghanaian officials that they communicated with, held other opinions, however, and after a lengthy period of discussion, I eventually recognized that a visit to Ghana, whose territory began a mere ten kilometers from where I was standing, would not be a part of the World2 Tour.

This post gives another example of one where the title is not what it was originally intended to be. Specifically, at this point I had planned on writing a post labeled Three Rectangles, but, once again, travel bureaucracy twisted its grip around my plans, causing me to eliminate a rectangle, and this time the cause had little to do with the coronavirus. When I cobbled together a revised Tour plan for the end of 2020, one that would take me to West and Central Africa on short notice, the first destinations were to be Ghana, Togo, and Benin, three relatively small countries located on the Gulf of Guinea each shaped, more or less, as a rectangle with a north-south orientation. I selected them because they are located in a part of the continent I had not yet visited, have long been generally stable, are all home to some great birds, and, most importantly, had all recently reopened to tourism.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of October 2020, the nineteenth month of the World2 Tour, a month where the number of days with cycling approached the expected amount, but the total distance was still lacking thanks to heat and health test delays.

This post was supposed to have been titled Eurasia Roundup, since the third section of the World2 Tour was always intended to consist of significant lengths of time on both of those continents, with Asia accounting for the majority of the time and distance. However, as I have already described on more than one occasion, this section of the Tour would better be described as the Lockdown section, and that circumstance has effectively eliminated Asia from my past and future Tour plans. I never came close to crossing the Urals, and my only steps on Asian soil were during the minimal tour of Anatolia I threw together at the last moment in August. Therefore, Europe Roundup it will have to be, and I must say that I have been rather unmotivated to write this post, which will necessarily have to describe many goals that will remain unmet. It is, however, an established tradition for my Tour do a post like this for each section, so, here we go: Europe Roundup.

I had a plan. It was a good plan. I crafted it through weeks of effort and was satisfied. There would be pleasant summer weather. There would be long days of cycling across the steppe. Glorious sights would appear regularly. Unique cultures would be experienced. The birds and I would be in the same place at the same time. I would traverse the World’s largest landmass. No airplanes would be required. A good plan is worth committing to. That was what I intended to do. Honestly, I probably would have similarly committed to a less-worthy version, as that sort of behavior is a distinct part of my character. Add to that the supposition that, if the future plays out as I have envisioned, it is unlikely that I will have another opportunity to experience the best aspects of the aforementioned plan, and my reluctance to abandon its main goals became steadfast. However, this was the year 2020, when no one’s plans proceeded as expected, and as the last days of summer dribbled away the Corona Curtain resolutely refused to lift, not even just enough for me to surreptitiously ride beneath its folds. Despite holding out as long as possible, one more failed attempt to continue east led me to finally, unceremoniously, dump the plan into the wastebasket.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of September 2020, month eighteen of the World2 Tour, a month which unwillingly pushed the Tour to an alternate destination, and which could have involved much more cycling were it not for unfavorable conditions and complicated travel restrictions.

When you are in Eastern Europe, and you want your Tour to lead you eastwards, towards the Pacific Ocean, there are only three general routes available, a northern route, a southern route, and one that is, more or less, in between. Long ago, while in the early stages of planning the World2 Tour, I ruled out using either of the two southerly options for reasons including the oppressive heat expected to be found in that part of the World during the summer months, general challenges resulting from terrain, infrastructure, and politics, and the fact that portions of those routes traverse areas through which I have previously toured. For me, that was fine, since the northern route was much to my liking, with many compelling sights along its path and a relatively relaxed geography. Therefore, I put forth a considerable effort to plot a lengthy Tour route that would let me visit almost all of the places I really wanted to see found in the World’s largest landmass within the time allotted by the boreal change of seasons, and to do so by surface travel only: lots of cycling, a fairly significant amount of rail travel, and a few ferries. I expected to begin that section in Milan around the first of March, and reach the shores of the Western Pacific before the end of September. Of course, this was 2020, and even as the end of summer neared, the Corona Curtain was still effectively blocking eastward movement out of Europe. That particular barrier was not quite as impenetrable as its twentieth-century predecessor, the one fabricated from mythical Iron, had been. But almost.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of August 2020, the seventeenth month of the World2 Tour, a month which unwillingly pushed the Tour to an alternate destination, and which could have involved more cycling were it not for unfavorable conditions.

The possibility of skipping large portions, or almost all, of my planned route through Europe, because of the travel restrictions imposed during the spring, was something that I would probably have accepted without too much complaint. That was especially true since, by then, I had already visited most of the locations I distinctly wanted to see, which were primarily those related to my family history. Most, but not all, of course, and I was definitely unwilling to give up seeing the last of those places. I still needed to make my visit to Boian, probably the most important of the family sites for me, and that meant I needed to stay in Europe until I was able to travel into, and around, Ukraine. I have already written about Boian, but Ukraine is a large and interesting country with much to see. However, in a similar manner to just about everything during the present year I was not completely confident that my visit would actually happen until I was finally standing on its soil.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of July 2020, month sixteen of the World2 Tour, a month when cycling finally began to return to a more regular pattern, though not quite all the way back just yet.

Up to this point, all of the posts in the Origins series have focused entirely on the people from my father’s side of my ancestry. There were simple and practical reasons for that. My father’s heritage was primarily Western European, and essentially Colonial American, while my mother’s ancestry was exclusively Eastern European and her family arrived in North America only one hundred twenty years ago. Consequently, with the four-hundredth anniversary of the first arrival of my father’s ancestors just months away, at the time of this writing, and with the majority of his other ancestors arriving in the decades that followed, there have been ample opportunities for me to scour records that can be found relatively close to home and to develop theories to complete most of his family tree. On the other hand, the story of my mother’s family had been locked behind The Iron Curtain until relatively recently. That particular aspect is especially sad, since it meant that my mother never really had a practical opportunity to visit the land from where her family originated, and, in fact, I had also not been able to learn much about them until later in life. But the most basic reason that I have not mentioned them before now is that the World2 Tour had always been routed in a eastbound direction, and, therefore, Eastern Europe would be, by default, the last of the relevant places I would get to visit.

I was thrilled when Poland opened its borders in the middle of June, 2020, because after a long wait I would finally be able to enter a country that was part of my original plans for the Eastern European section of the World2 Tour. In fact, the freshly-devised route I created for traversing the country would allow me to see much more of the country and more of its interesting sites. In doing so, I discovered that Poland is a surprisingly attractive and a pleasurable country to tour through. I only use the term surprising because no one could deny that Poland had endured a rather rough patch of its history during most of the twentieth century. The country could certainly be forgiven if it still exhibited a certain disheveled appearance today. Instead, like it had done after similar hard times in centuries past, the country endured and seemingly put the last thirty years to good use, creating what is now an appealing destination for part of a long cycling tour.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of June 2020, the fifteenth month of the World2 Tour, and the first month in 2020 with a reasonable amount of cycling. Not enough, but reasonable.

Like essentially everyone else on the planet, at the end of April 2020 I was feeling restless. And generally unhealthy due to a sudden drop in physical activity. And annoyed by an increase in body mass. Five weeks sitting still in Berlin, instead of tallying up two or three thousand kilometers of cycling, has a way of creating those kinds of situations. As mentioned in the previous post, my status as someone already recovered from covid-19 six weeks earlier, and my normal mode of travel, which is almost as isolating as being in lockdown, made it reasonable to conclude that a limited restart of the Tour would not pose a significant risk to anyone. The question was, how and where could that happen. All of the locations that were further along my original route were still behind closed borders, some with rather severe internal restrictions as well. Only one possibility presented itself at the time and, as far as I was concerned, it saved the day: Sweden.

I would hope that most readers will realize that the title of this post is reasonably sarcastic. However, all well-formed sarcasm has some basis in reality, and that is also the case here. An early draft on this topic might have used the alternative adjective Antisocial, but that term possesses a pejorative character that would not be appropriate. Instead, I use a less judgmental phrase that better conveys the strangeness of the last few months.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of May 2020, month fourteen of the World2 Tour, a month that started pleasantly with a return to cycling, until a mechanical failure caused another long and annoying pause.

The title of this post is a little misleading. As far as my family is concerned, my mother’s ancestors were the last to reach North America, arriving around the year 1900. My father’s family, however, was a full three-quarters Colonial. By the middle-to-late seventeenth century, my father’s early grandparents living in America numbered almost four hundred, but the ancestors of his paternal grandmother were still in Europe, and would not arrive for another two centuries, more or less.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the months of March and April 2020. These months were to be the start of the longest section of cycling of the World2 Tour, however, things did not really work out that way.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of February 2020, the eleventh month of the World2 Tour, with the only January ride, on the final day of the month included, a month with only a limited amount of cycling thanks to the dark and cold days of winter.

In the German region of Baden-Württemberg, near the Rhine River, there is a small, otherwise nondescript, neighborhood where the streets have names like Alberta Strasse, Toronto Strasse, Victoria Strasse, and Ontario Strasse. Not far away, but a considerable distance from any major cities, is an airport hosting flights to southern European destinations on discount airlines and numerous small corporate aircraft. How did this come to be? As it turns out I have known the answer to that question for many years, and so desired to include that area on my route during the World2 Tour. If you look at certain maps, you may see this neighborhood labeled as Kleine Kanada.

Like many people who research their family history, I have spent a considerable amount of time working on the branch of my family that belongs to my paternal line, those ancestors who made up the chain of grandfathers on my father’s side of the family, and who all would have had some version of the name Ayers. One reason for that was that, as I have already mentioned, there had been a frustrating gap, now thankfully solved, at my third great-grandfather on that line, a break that I always felt should not have existed. Of course, it is also common for people to place an inordinate amount of importance on the branch of their family that gave them their surname, even though the practice of inheriting that name from one’s father is particularly arbitrary. That is a rather unfortunate, and even a limiting, viewpoint. During the time periods I will present in this post, beginning twelve generations back and drifting vaguely further back for perhaps two hundred more, at any given point in time the number of my grandparents living then would have numbered from a little as four thousand to an unknowable amount in the millions. Each of them has given me an equal contribution to my personal story and should be of equal value to me, even though my name came from only one man.

Undertaking a long tour in the Northern Hemisphere is invariably affected by the simple fact that this half of the World is most definitely a four-season location. Even in my younger days, when I usually set a rather insane touring pace, there would be no realistic route for a circumnavigation along a northern route that would avoid the perils of winter. The Southern Hemisphere, in contrast, with significantly less land area at high latitudes, allows one to more easily avoid cold weather, though many areas there have wet seasons that must also be considered. However, since I had already toured most of the bottom of the planet on the Tour of Gondwana, I desired the route of World2 to be slightly more boreal in nature. That would necessitate some sort of accommodation to the cold northern months.

During the Tour of Gondwana I utilized container ships to cross oceans on five occasions, so I had very good idea what to expect when I chose to do the same for the World2 Tour. As I mentioned in the previous post, in a typical circumstance, I did not know the particular ship or ports I would be able to use for the first ocean crossing, specifically that of the wide Atlantic, until a month, or so, before the Tour began. At that time, I booked the CMA-CGM Saint Laurent for a cruise departing from Natal, on the northeast coast of Brazil, to London, scheduled to sail on January 11th and arrive about fifteen days later. Right away, that voyage became one of my most anticipated features of the first half of my planned route for the Tour. Even though I knew I would enjoy the months of cycling, the interesting sights, and the beautiful nature of the early Tour, I also realized that fifteen days essentially unplugged from the World at large, and with nothing to do but rest, would be just what I would need at that point. Additionally, the previous few years, for me, were filled by a series of numerous tasks of the type that were sometimes surreal, frequently annoying, and usually of the type that kept thoughts of the future unclear, and a long sea voyage seemed like it would be a nice antidote for the mental effects of that period. However, the way the tropical section of the Tour ended caused the actual time on the ship to be less relaxing than I was expecting, at least at first.

For another example of what has become a personal tradition, of sorts, yet another large section of a Grand Tour has ended in a rather anticlimactic manner. It is understandable, I think, to look forward to completing a long segment of a tour, especially one that ends at a port where a sea voyage will subsequently begin, by cycling right up until the very end point. While this is always part of the original plans for my long tours, for various reasons, things change along the way and it is often an unwelcome circumstance that a transfer to the port must be made using alternative transportation. Frequently, that is caused by changes to a ship’s schedule, an unavoidable fact of life where sea travel is concerned, but in some cases these unplanned reroutes are more the fault of the cyclist. Unfortunately, in this case the latter situation was what dampened the mood for the end of this section.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of December 2019, the ninth month of the World2 Tour, the last month with cycling in this part of the World.

Because the first several months of the World2 Tour involved many disparate locations, often involving crossing a body of water, and an unfortunate dependence of non-cycling modes of transport, my schedule during that time was uncharacteristically and unpleasantly scripted in advance. Therefore I was certainly looking forward to my longest planned segment in South America, and the opportunity to return to a set-the-schedule-on-the-go routine that would be more relaxed and more in keeping with my traditional style of touring.

This post will, in all likelihood, not be of interest to anyone who is not a cyclist, or even those cyclists who choose not to travel for long distances that way. That is because its topic is tires. Specifically, bicycle tires. Even more to the point, bicycle tires for long distance travel. Therefore, those who are not personally interested in that subject may want to come back in a week or two, when I should have additional thoughts concerning more general subjects, assuming that I can stay awake long enough to write about them.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of November 2019, the eighth month of the World2 Tour, with more days of cycling, but only slightly more distance covered.

You are in Manaus. You need to reach other parts of Brazil. Options are limited. Of course, there is an airport, but, as has already been established here, that sort of solution is to be avoided at all costs. By road, one could double back along the highway that leads back towards Guyana and Venezuela. I had precisely zero interest in cycling that route for a second time. There is one other road out of Manaus, of the long, lonely, mostly dirt variety, which leads to the remote town of Porto Velho, located in the far southwestern part of the country, not far from the border with Bolivia. That region of the continent was not in my list of places to visit for this Tour, and this time around I had little enthusiasm for the sort of rough cycling expedition that would entail. That left only the method of travel that has been the lifeline for Manaus since it was founded, namely, river travel to the east, or west, along the greatest of all of Earth’s waterways. During my last long tour, I made a short side trip to Iquitos, Peru and briefly experienced the Amazon at that point. However, that encounter was far from adequate, considering the scope and scale of the river system in question. So, I was distinctly looking forward to making a significant voyage along the great river during the World2 Tour, heading east to near its mouth at the Atlantic, a distance of one thousand six hundred forty river kilometers from Manaus.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of October 2019, month seven of the World2 Tour, with a return to continental mainlands and somewhat more cycling, though a birding side-trip and a lengthy river transfer at the end of the month kept the total distance fairly low again.

When one finds themselves at the small border towns at the frontier between Guyana and Brazil, there is really only one place to go next. Technically, there are two, since it is still possible to enter Brazil briefly and then turn north to enter Venezuela. However, as I mentioned in the previous post, visiting that country is significantly problematic for the time being. That leaves just one route heading south along the only road in that region of Brazil, which leads to Manaus, a former rubber-boom town and the only large city in Amazonia, nine hundred twenty-five kilometers from the border. Seeing that part of South America has long been of interest to me, but as the start of that section of the Tour approached, I was feeling less than enthusiastic, and a little apprehensive, about what lay ahead.

Back during the Tour of Gondwana, when I became interested in seeing a Scarlet Ibis, I tentatively extended my route plan for the South American Stage of that Tour such that I would finish in Venezuela, where that beautiful bird can often be seen. However, as I neared the end of that Stage, both my time and money were running short, and I wasn’t able to make that happen. Nevertheless, seeing that country continued to be a goal of mine, for a chance to see the Ibis and also to visit Canaima National Park, the location of the famous Angel Falls and a top-level World Heritage Site. In fact, in my earliest sketches of a route for the World2 Tour Venezuela was intended to be the starting point for the entire Tour. Everywhere that has already been visited during this Tour was added to the route later on, usually in a might-as-well manner.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of September 2019, the sixth month of the World2 Tour, yet another month with a disturbingly small amount of cycling, once again caused by even smaller islands, the time spent moving between them, and the incompetence of one particular airline.

Between Puerto Rico and Trinidad the island chain known as the Lesser Antilles contains at least twenty-five inhabited islands of significant size, divided among around fifteen political units, either independent nations, or remnant overseas territories lingering from the colonial period. In theory, it could be possible to visit most or all of those when traveling between the Greater Antilles and mainland South America. However, for reasons of logistics and practicality, which should be obvious, doing so, especially during a long bicycle tour, would be excessively difficult. Instead, choosing a few of the more interesting islands and bypassing the rest would normally be the most common choice for travelers going that way. My criteria for selecting the islands I would visit included: the possibility of arriving or departing by sea, the presence of World Heritage Sites, and the possibly of observing some cool birds, in keeping with the general themes of the World2 Tour.

Puerto Rico is an island that I have had on my list of places to visit for many years. That was primarily because, under normal, non-touring, circumstances, it is a place that would provide a nice change of scene from my former homes on the mainland, while also being relatively easily, in logistical terms, to visit. Like many such places, however, I had never quite gotten around to making a visit there. Since the Tour route had me in the neighborhood, and especially since I could reach the island by ferry from Hispaniola, it was an easy choice to include a stop there along my way through the Caribbean.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of August 2019, month five of the World2 Tour, another month with less cycling than normal, caused by rail and air tranfers and islands that were smaller than those of the previous month.

Because I was forced to use air travel to leave the Bahamas, I had a few choices as to which island would be next on the Tour route. I decided that the island would be Hispaniola, and the country would be the Dominican Republic. A few factors were important in making that choice, including the shortest flying distance of the available options (though there were no direct flights, requiring a short layover in Turks and Caicos,) a location that would allow me to tally another WHS and potentially some nice birds, and, importantly, the ability to make the next transfer by sea. I also felt that the country should be a relatively pleasant touring destination, since it contains a variety of terrains, has a reputation for controlling deforestation (at least relative to its equi-insular neighbor, Haiti,) and possesses an interesting history.

With the aim of avoiding the fall and early winter seasons of the Northern Hemisphere, I knew that my Tour route should find a way to get me into the Tropics again for much of that time. However, another passage through Central America didn’t hold much appeal for me this time, since by now I have seen just about everything that interests me in that region. Therefore, this time I decided to make my way south via the Greater and Lesser Antilles, which, of course, by definition, necessitates a lengthy section of island hopping. There are definite pros and cons to taking that approach during a long tour. On the positive side, I would be able to see a handful of small, but distinctive countries, pick up a few World Heritage Sites, and potentially tally a nice selection of island endemic birds. On the other hand, such a route must involve numerous transfers between islands, with associated costs and logistical issues, and, given the small geographic area of some of the countries along the way, relatively little cycling would be involved. The latter factor is especially unfortunate at this time because after Greenland and the lengthy transfer down the US east coast, I have been feeling my level of fitness slightly decline recently, and I could really use a nice, long section with nothing but cycling right about now.

The World2 Tour has now moved beyond the mainland of my home continent of North America, and, as is the case with most very long tours, the end of one continent usually involves some form of transfer across a body of water, sometimes small in scale, but other times very large, in order to begin again on a new one. In my case, this first continental change turned out to be somewhat disjointed, taking a little longer than it could have, costing me more money than it should have, and involving less cycling than I would have liked. I will come back to the reason for that in a moment, but a change of continents also provides some time to reflect of the experiences that the land just crossed has provided, and so I will begin with that in mind.

Within the genealogical community, it has long been stated that anyone who has the surname Ayers, or one of its variants, and who also has a family connection to New England, is almost certainly descendant of the founding colonists of that family, namely John Ayer and his wife Hannah, of Haverhill, Massachusetts. For most of my life, including the years I spent as a graduate student in the western part of that state, this circumstance was unknown to me. Had I realized at the time that my paternal line ancestors had lived nearby around 325 years earlier, I certainly would have taken the time to explore some of the places that would have been familiar to them. Now, many years later, when Boston was the most convenient waypoint for my flight back from Iceland, I knew that I needed to spend a few days in that area, even if there was little tangible evidence visible related to their presence.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of July 2019, the fourth month of the World2 Tour, a relatively light month for cycling, thanks to a country without roads, and too much time in airports.

I wanted to see Greenland. I wanted to see the Greenland Ice Sheet. I was interested to see how it is changing. All of these things are reasonable goals. The problem is that to achieve these tasks today essentially requires one to participate in the destruction of the very qualities that made that place interesting in the first place, not to mention the eventual ruination of the natural systems and human societies that have been in place on that large island for hundreds of years or more. Erik the Red and his settlers made their voyages to Greenland using only sail and human power, and, almost certainly, that seamed reasonable to them. In the modern age that we are so proud of, there are now no low-energy modes of transportation connecting Greenland, or most other populated places in the Arctic, for that matter, to the more temperate regions farther south. The only choices available now consist of the most carbon-intensive form of transport around, passenger jet services, and a few large-scale cruise ships, which are not far behind in terms of emissions.

The title of this post sums up the situation nicely. Why would someone on a long bicycle tour include a stop on the massive, but sparely inhabited, island of Greenland? Though I am not trying to sound pretentious, by this point in my life I have been to 60 countries around the World. That is actually not a lot, compared to those people who are really serious travelers, but it is enough that for me there are relatively few places on the Earth left that hold that certain mysterious magnetic pull that makes one desire to visit, even if such a visit would seem to be a remote possibility. Being the largest island on Earth, with the second largest ice sheet, and being a country three times the size of Texas, but with a population less than sixty thousand human inhabitants, and possessing a primarily Inuit culture, but with a strong Danish influence, Greenland is one of the few remaining places that had that sort of attraction for me. So, since I was already going to be in that corner of the globe, I was determined to see as much of that huge land as I could, even though my bicycle would, more often than not, be an expensive piece of luggage, as opposed to a means of conveyance, during that section of the Tour.

The next section of the World2 Tour was one that I was eagerly anticipating, and one that would bring me to my first new country on the route, Iceland. As it turns out, this portion of the Tour got off to a rather rough start. The reason for that involved two circumstances related to one of everyone’s least favorite aspects of modern life: air travel. One of these was out of my control, while the other I must admit to being complicit in its creation.

Some time after my first Tour, but long before the Tour of Gondwana, or even my Tours of Madagascar (v 1.0), Cuba, and New Zealand, the Tour that I wanted to do more than any other was a circuit around the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. I am not sure exactly what piqued my interest in that region, but, in general, I think it seemed like an area with a lot of potential variety in geographic features, and place that would be substantially different from others that I had been, up to that point. Of course, as often happens, other factors of life got in the way of that particular journey, and by the time I had the time and resources available for another long Tour, the destinations mentioned above had risen to the top of my list.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of June 2019, month three of the World2 Tour, annoyingly delayed by the missing tablet debacle. A month that began in the continuing cool, damp spring, and ended in an interesting new part of the World.

As I mentioned in Part 2 of these Origins posts, my great-great-grandparents were Abial Ayers and his wife Hannah. In fact, for many years all we knew about Hannah was just that—her name was Hannah, one of the most common names for women of that era— with no family name known. I did know that she was born in Genesee County, New York around 1841, but that was not much to go on if I was to uncover anything about her family history. Nevertheless, I started searching by employing a brute-force approach. I scoured the census records looking for every girl named Hannah, born in Genesee, and the neighboring counties, between 1840 and 1842. As you might guess, there were quite a few. I then used the process of elimination to whittle down the list, removing those who were known to have married someone else, died young, or were otherwise disqualified. Eventually, I was left with just a handful of possibilities, with one that stood out from the rest. Hannah Ferguson was born in 1841 in the village adjacent to where Abial Ayers lived, and I felt certain that she was my ancestor. I placed her in my family tree, and was quite pleased when I located an official document a few years later that proved I was correct.

Periodically crossing into a new country, with a different culture, is one of the things that makes a long tour fun and interesting. However, most people probably realize already that when crossing between the United States and Canada, no matter which direction one is going, the differences that will be found on the other side are fairly subtle. The money is different, but similar. Shops and restaurants may sometimes have different names, but sell and serve, more or less, the same items. Architecture and urban design may often appeal identical. To make this crossing have the most impact, it is useful to do so by entering Canada in Quebec, a Province I have long wanted to visit.

Here are the Ride Tracks for May 2019, month two of the World2 Tour, another month that spring refused to be spring.

The next destination that was relevant to my family story, was the small town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in Caledonia County, one of three counties near the borders with New Hampshire and Canada, which, mostly for marketing purposes, are together referred to as the Northeast Kingdom. I had only uncovered my connection to that town relatively recently, but I was distinctly looking forward to my visit. Before I expand on my personal link, however, I want to mention some aspects of the route I used to get there, and about the town as it is today.

The next stop of the Tour that was relevant to my personal history was one that corrected an error made long ago. At the beginning of my first long tour, twenty-six years ago, I passed through the attractive region of western New York state. I was younger then, of course, and more interested in successfully reaching a high distance target each day, as opposed to seeing as many interesting things as I could. I knew beforehand that my great grandfather lived in the town of Batavia, today a rather disheveled small city that is the county seat of Genesee County. So I passed through there and thought, So that was it, and kept on riding. What I now know was that, about 30 kilometers farther west, I would also pass though another, smaller town, called Newstead, where two prior generations of my family had lived. In doing so, I would obliviously ride just one kilometer north of the land that they farmed for fifty years, a piece of property located along a road that is named for my family! Clearly, that oversight was something that desperately needed to be corrected during the World2 Tour.

One of the aims of the early part of the Tour route, which I have not mentioned before now, is to bring me to several of the places that my ancestors had lived. I have, off and on, been researching my family history for just over twenty-five years. For most of that time, we really knew very little about our ancestry, as the trail often disappeared into the fog as recently as the late nineteenth century. However, like many people, over the last decade, or so, I have benefited tremendously from the proliferation of online records databases and genetic testing services. Now, I have a picture of my personal history that is close to complete, at least on my father’s side of the family, and I will be able to visit several places that were important to that story, some of which I did not realize were involved until very recently. The first Tour stop where I can learn about that past, however, is one that had always been known to us.

Here are the Ride Tracks for the month of April 2019, the first month of the World2 Tour, and a month of chilly nights and seemingly constant climbing.

The second section of the World2 Tour is now complete, from Grand Junction, Colorado to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like most tours in the United States, parts of this section were very nice, while others were somewhat less so. Additionally, for some reason that I can’t quite remember, the schedule for this section was more aggressive than I should have made it, without any full days off for rest and recovery. I may have done that in order to partly avoid starting too early in the spring, but, as it turned out, I started earlier anyway, so I nullified any advantage that would have created. Another reason was a change of end point that added some additional distance to the route. When I first plotted out this route, a few years ago, there was a staffed Amtrak station near Santa Fe that would have made a nicer final location. However, when I eventually started to book the rail tickets shortly before the beginning of the Tour, I learned that station had been closed, and the only available station that would take checked baggage, specifically my bike, was Albuquerque, which added another 80 km the route, thereby removing a potential half-day off. In the end, however, I managed fairly well, all things considered.

I normally would not bother to write a post about something as mundane as a train journey. When I relocated to the American West Coast 26 years ago, I began using Amtrak extensively for travel around the region, almost always with my bike accompanying me. So, for me, rail travel became ordinary rather quickly, though for many of the other passengers likely to be met on board, the experience was often more novel. However, these days a rail transfer during a bicycle tour in the United States is much more user-friendly experience than it formerly had been, thanks to a new policy introduced in the last few years. Consequently, the first rail transfer of the Tour, at least, is relatively post-worthy.

When a cyclist begins a tour that will eventually encompass much of the World, it is rather uncommon to begin riding right outside their former front door. For example, those traveling the Alaska-to-Cape Horn route will almost always begin near either of those end points, so as to better take advantage of the prime summer riding season. There is also the undeniable pull to find oneself in a land that is culturally and geographically distinct as quickly as possible. However, departing directly from home creates a certain sentimental effect that many would find appealing, and, additionally, may eliminate another expensive transfer that uses other, non-cycling, methods.

I have lived in five of the fifty constituent parts that make up the United States of America during the little over half century that I have been animated and conscious on this beautiful planet. Also added to that time are three years during the Tour of Gondwana when I was, technically, homeless. The first four of those States were, in effect, chosen for me by default, either by circumstance of birth, or to obtain education or employment. As my previous Tour drew to a close, I had no professional or personal commitments that would require me to live in any specific location. In fact, I did have a personal commitment, but it was one that could be satisfied from any location, anywhere. That provided me with the enviable circumstance of being able to choose a place to live solely on the basis that it was someplace that I would distinctly enjoy.