Leaving it all behind to bike around the world

[pegkerr]

I really admire this couple a lot.

In 2002, at the ages of 62 and 48, Pat and Catherine Patterson decided to leave it all behind. They sold their real-estate business and their cars, gave their furniture to their children, and put their home up for rent. Strapping their remaining possessions to two bicycles, the couple set off to bike around the world. Read more.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Wow, do they have a lot of stuff on their bikes. I'd *love* to see an itemized list of what they carried.

K.

[parsleigh.livejournal.com]

The pictures look pretty impressive...

[archmage45.livejournal.com]

That sounds like such a fantastic adventure.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

You should go up to www.crazyguyonabike.com and check out some of the long distance touring guys. I'm currently following a couple of guys who just decided to take 2 or 3 years out and bike. The main one I'm reading now is a guy who started in northern Canada and is now in Columbia (almost 2 years later). He's taking it easy; he spent 8 days off to take a boat tour of the Galapagos islands, he tries to get to band concerts locally, when he hears of a festival coming up in a day or two he hangs around in town for it. He tries to avoid the "gringo crap" when he's in tourist-oriented cities.

There's another guy who started in New York, got as far as Bryce Canyon where he met a girl that he wound up staying with (she lived in Las Vegas) for 2 months, then went out to San Francisco where he spent 2 weeks around Christmas with his brother, and then set out again; he's planning on going around the world.

What's really interesting is the first guy is meeting a lot of international tourists (especially so when he was on the Galapagos tour, for instance) who had been to pretty much every corner of the world.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

BTW, CrazyGuy has great facilities for travelling tourists to update their blogs and keep in touch with friends. The whole site was written buy a web designer that just up and decided to dump all his stuff in storage and ride across the US one day.

Lots of people follow the blog updates daily, and in fact the second guy I mentioned disappeared from the blog for over a week back in November, right after posting "well, tomorrow I set out to cross the desert, with a lot of water on board." The site manager sent out an APB email to all members asking if any of them knew anything, because he was worried about the guy.

Great site. One of the few that I give money to annually.

[airemay.livejournal.com]

I want to do that!!! Biking is so fantastic. My bike commute to school has finally gotten easier, and I feel very energized afterwards.

What an inspiring story. :D