A year ago I got to thinking about how could I celebrate my 80th birthday. I wanted something on a larger scale than just having a birthday party with my friends.
I started mulling over various ideas such as traveling to West Africa, traveling down the Amazon, doing the Camino de Santiago for the third time but this time on horseback. None of these ideas really attached themselves to me. It was not until I watched three series starring Ewan McGregor and Charly Boorman entitled “The Long Way Around, The Long Way Down, and The Long Way Up,” that I got the idea that I was longing to find.

In The Long Way Up the fellows ride electric Harley Davison Motorcycles from the bottom of Argentina to LA. Watching that is when I said to Gloria “I have my idea, I will ride an e-bike from Alaska to Panama City, Panama. The idea stuck because it was something that I knew I could accomplish as I had ridden from Anchorage Ak to Mexico City a few years ago. That trip covered 4 months and 10400 km. What are an extra month and an additional 3000 km?

I started making plans. My first decisions were all about the route. I decided to start at Fairbanks and travel different roads than when I did my prior Alaskan trip. That meant not going down the middle of British Columbia but staying as close to the coast as possible and then continuing through the USA on the Pacific Coast Highway. Since I had been down the Baja I needed to find a route along the east side of the Sea of Cortez. After Mazatlan Mexico, I will pick up the route used by TDA Global Cycling to Nicaragua.

For those of you that want to do some long adventure cycling please check out the website of TDA, they are an excellent company and they have routes all over the world. I have traveled with them on three different occasions. My riding partner, Wayne, has ridden with TDA at least five times.

It also dawned on me that this was going to be a very expensive adventure. The cost of a support vehicle, accommodation, food, bikes, labor were going to set me back a small fortune. So I started looking for sponsors. The search started slowly as almost everyone I wrote to never bothered to respond. Then after a post on FaceBook, I started to receive some interest from bicycle companies. After some consideration, I selected EVELO BIKES because they have excellent bikes, a great reputation, four-year guarantee, and they were very excited to establish a partnership with me. Once I partnered with EVELO, then ARROWHEAD PRODUCTIONS contacted me for the rights to film the odyssey. Filming the odyssey solved the problems of support vehicles and drivers. Then I secured two more excellent sponsors, Swagman Racks and BMO Wealth Management with Nesbit Burns.

The idea of the Guinness Book of Records came a few months later, maybe six months later. I don’t why I got the idea but it popped into my head and I searched for the oldest guy to ride a long way. Guinness does not do anything with age so I searched biking and up popped The Longest Motorized Bicycle Ride. It was 8029.2 km. I applied and was accepted 12 weeks later. Their acceptance certainly helped with securing sponsorship.

While I was envolved with all the planning details my friends kept telling me I should write a book. Since I am a reluctent writed and a poor writer i never gave it much thought. It was not till some professional writers, friends of mine told me the samething did I start to take the book idea seriously. Finally I pulled the plug and said, “the hell with it I am all in on this trip so lets write a book.”

That ment i had a whole new set of problems: how do I wirte a book, how do l publish, how do I sell, and on and on the problems grew. However over time with the help of my friends, and the internet I feel I have solved most of the problems.

One problem was how am I going to write each night when I am tired form the days ride and dont feel like looking at the computer. My solution was to wear a communication type helmet with blue tooth and dictate to my phone all my thoughts, feeling, scenery and interviews that I will do with the different characters I meet along the way. Each day I will send the voice recording and once a week I will email the rough text to my editor. Problem solved, I hope.

Next I set up a crowdfunding page to see if enough people were interested in purchasing my book. If you are interested you can purchase the book by going to the top of this blog  and clicking on the link for the book or you can click here to go to Indiegogo