These are my chronicles as I bike around the world.
After biking across the USA from San Francisco to New York City in May 2021, I decided I needed a lot more bike touring in my life. Something deep in me (from my stomach) felt a strong urge to bike around the world and I just couldn’t ignore it.
When the pandemic started, I decided I needed a new hobby to distract myself from all the chaos of 2020. As a lifelong cyclist it seemed like building a new bike would be a great way to learn some bike maintenance. So I built myself a very nice bike that I was proud of. I learned a lot along the way from YouTube and from great bike mechanics (thank you Arthur and Roaring Mouse!). While I was building the bike, I remember stroking the titanium frame, feeling like it’d last forever, thinking “this thing could literally take me around the world.” That was probably the first time I considered doing this, but it was just a fleeting thought. I think that fleeting thought snowballed from the YouTube rabbithole of bike touring channels I put myself in.
The USA tour took months of planning and training; it had taken over my life. It was harder and harder to make my job my top priority; something I had always done since I was a teenager. My passion for my career had been waining for a few years and cycling had steadily been where my energy went (both mentally and physically).
In the final Strava post for the USA tour I said, “The only thing I regret is not doing this sooner. If you’re thinking about doing a big bike tour, I suggest doing it this summer! It’s not as hard is it may seem and the first step is the hardest.”
A week later I decided to take my own advice. I ended my relationship (not just to bike tour, there was more to it than that, but I don’t want to share it here), I quit my “dream job” as a Software Engineer at Google, moved into my friend’s (Jeff and David) apartments, and began prepping for this tour.
I reached out to my bike touring friends Tim and Steve and they helped me out a ton. They’ve already done a world tour and their advice helped me navigate some big questions like: Where should I start?, What about electrolytes in the middle of nowhere?, What about health insurance abroad?
I told all my people about how I was flipping the table on my life. Nobody told me I was crazy or screwing up my life. I’m very grateful to all of my friends that supported my dream and were there for me in every way I needed over the past summer. I love my friends and I know they love me. It was emotionally hard and exhausting to say goodbye to people (and pets) in San Francisco. I will miss the life I built in SF, that’s for sure.
In the meantime please feel free to reach out via email: jonherman at gmail