“Is this it?”
It started as a small, insistent voice, whispering in my ear when I least expected it. I’d be sitting in an open plan office, working on a presentation and then…
“Is this it?”
Over time, the voice became louder and more specific.
“There’s more than this. More aliveness to be felt. You know it.”
I began to listen, and to allow what I was feeling. It was a call to explore – and it wouldn’t go away. I began to daydream…
***
And so it was, 8 years ago, that I asked my employers for a sabbatical. They didn’t have a policy for this but were amenable and open-minded to the idea. A contract was drafted and quickly signed by me. I was going on an adventure.
An adventure that, more than any other, taught me fundamental lessons in living a fulfilling life, growing as a person and trusting myself.
It was time for a change.
I had an idea in my head. I don’t where it came from but I felt drawn to it: I was going to cycle down the west coast of the USA.
As far as adventures go, it wasn’t exactly going into outer space, although I didn’t own a bike and I hadn’t cycled regularly since I was 13 or 14. And that was on a fairly shabby BMX with wonky handlebars. So for me, this was a vast step into the unknown.
When I shared my idea with my then-girlfriend, she promptly announced she was coming with me. She too, despite enjoying her work and being very good at it, was looking for something more.
I bought myself a touring bike, a heavy, steel-framed machine that weighed twice as much as a standard road bike and could carry bags on the pannier racks. We planned a route using a map someone had given us, booked flights and that was it.
Well, almost.
For some reason, I was unflustered by my lack of cycling fitness, but I realised I’d never used clip-in pedals before. I felt I should probably familiarise myself with my new bike.
And so, with three willing pals, a plan was hatched to ride from London to Brighton, a hilly route of roughly 50 miles.
We picked the 23rd of March 2013 – a day with snow and ice on the ground, blizzards in the air and temperatures of -2C. As only stubborn high-achievers can, we resolutely stuck to our date despite the conditions.
This would be my one and only long ride on my touring bike before we left for the US. I’d never ridden that distance before, let alone a very hilly route.
Let alone on a heavy touring bike with luggage.
Let alone in snow and sub-zero temperatures.
At the end of the route, just before Brighton, there’s a hill that’s well-known to cyclists who have ridden this route. Ditchling Beacon. Roughly 2km of steep, winding hill that tops out with magnificent views of the South Downs. It featured in the Tour de France once.
For me, it was hell on earth.
No sooner did I turn on to the steep climb, than my legs seized up, completely unaccustomed to this sort of punishment.
Cramp took hold. I fell off my bike into a ditch on more than one occasion. At one point, a kind woman stopped her car and came across the road to ask if I was ok.
Somehow, I made it. It took me a couple of hours to thaw out in a house in Brighton.
***
Almost exactly one month later, we packed our bikes into cardboard containers and set off for Seattle.
After a couple of days of exploring the city, we packed and strapped our bags to our bikes and took the ferry across Puget Sound for the start of our ride. From here we’d head south to Portland, head west to the Pacific coast and then follow Route 1 all the way down to San Francisco.
But this first day was when we first truly considered what we’d decided to undertake.
Within a mile of the ferry port, we were pushing our heavily loaded bikes up eye-watering hills. Some friendly police officers kept straight faces as they gave us directions and we eventually found some flat road for a few miles.
And then we needed to turn off the flat, up a smooth and steep hill.
Touring bikes are geared specifically for slow climbing up hills, but this presumes a cyclist who understands how to quickly change gears and find a low cadence. I wasn’t one of these cyclists.
My gears were all over the place. My chain pinged off more than once. At one point, my girlfriend thought she’d snapped her chain from the tension of forcing it uphill.
We stopped and started, swearing and giggling in equal measure, until we eventually topped out, feeling pretty tired already.
And then we burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. We were only an hour into a thousand-mile journey and it felt like we were clueless amateurs – which we were I suppose.
Later, we both admitted that parts of us were wondering what the hell we were doing and whether this was in fact a terrible idea.
And yet, the thing about cycling, like anything that requires practice, is that each day gets easier and easier.
Fitness builds. Knowledge accumulates. The mind finds rhythm. Each challenge conquered gives confidence that future obstacles will be overcome.
We were winging it and it felt amazing.
I was, in those days, an obsessive planner with a high and anxiety-inducing desire for control. And yet I felt increasingly relieved that neither of those things were much use in responding to the unpredictable nature of a trip like this.
We began to find not just fitness and confidence, but ease in slowing down and appreciation of the moment.
Our days settled into natural patterns and habits. Each morning over breakfast, we’d consult the old West Coast guidebook my girlfriend had sourced and scribble some directions on a scrap of paper (we didn’t own a bike GPS and roaming charges were astronomical).
And then the day would unfold however it needed to.
Sometimes we took wrong turnings. Sometimes we took detours. If we passed through somewhere we liked, we stayed for an extra day.
Our plans were loose. We were responding to the moment and listening to ourselves.
***
Just a week or so later, we were covering distances of over 60 miles a day as if we were veterans of long-distance cycling. On one day, I misread our scrawls and took us the wrong way, meaning we covered 77 miles that day. Just a few days after that, we cycled our way up what I would now call a ‘proper climb’, up and over a mountain in northern California.
This was what we did now. We climbed mountains.
No single day felt like we’d grown into our challenge – and yet we had. The incremental was invisible. We were too busy enjoying ourselves.
We found ourselves soaking up mile after mile of classic American countryside. We rode through giant and ancient redwood forests, and along majestic Pacific coastline. We saw migrating whales, bald eagles and seal colonies.
A man in Eureka gave his den to stay in, complete with craft beer on tap. Another guy, living off-grid, let us stay in his disused school bus next to his marijuana plantation. I was chased by a vicious farm dog and I fell off my bike repeatedly while standing still.
We met other touring cyclists, including a retired couple riding a tandem around the whole border of the USA. We saw a man who looked like Gandalf playing tennis in the California sunshine, barefoot and naked apart from his shorts. Just outside Portland, I had to go into a strip joint to fill up our water bottles.
It’s these small, random moments that remain with me. The things we couldn’t possibly have planned or imagined.
***
I returned a different person, imperceptible to everyone including myself, but changed in a way I only appreciated later.
Having experienced the world in that way, I think it’s impossible not to change in some way. Travelling outdoors and carrying everything you need from one place to another for several weeks is a feeling of freedom and liberation that is so intoxicating, it’s hard to put into words. I can only describe it as feeling truly, fully and vividly alive.
Most of all, it was a trip that required flexibility, spontaneity, an appetite for risk and curiosity, and to let go of planning everything.
‘Finding yourself’ might feel like a cliched notion but let me ask you this – how much can you really understand about yourself doing the same things every day?
That’s the question I had asked myself. And the lessons I learned have stayed with me:
Start before you’re ready. Being ready is not the point and it will never arrive. By the time you’re ready, the opportunity will have passed.
Listen to your inner voices – really listen. Call it your soul, intuition, unconscious, whatever. In there are clues, sometimes massive ones, for what you really need right now. My voice said I needed adventure and it was right.
Incremental growth is always underestimated. It’s like compound interest. It looks like no difference at all until one day you realise the huge difference you’ve made. Small, intentional and consistent action ALWAYS pays off.
Trust the process and fall in love with the journey. Destinations miss the point and are never what you expect. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Las Vegas – we visited all of them on our trip but it was the journeys between them that made the trip incredible.
Seek failure and embrace fear. If either of those feel possible, head in that direction because that’s where the growth, magic and beauty of life lie. Redefine what failure, fear and risk really are. They’re opportunities to learn.
Think about what you really need. It’s almost certainly not as much as you already have, I promise you. Apart from the people you love, everything you truly need can fit into a rucksack. Trust me, I’ve done it a lot now.
Adventure is a mindset, not an activity or a place. If you’re willing say yes before you’re ready, be curious, remain open and accept fear, then adventure is inevitable.
Stop planning and set intentions instead. Pick a direction or respond to an urge and then act on it. After a point, planning becomes a way of not getting started. And it sucks the fun out.
In the words of my friend Bobby Dysart: Don’t wait. Start small. Learn as you go.
***
When I came back from my trip and went back to work, I found myself back in an office in Canary Wharf. I had a great job, well respected in a growing consulting firm but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted anymore. I knew I couldn’t do it any longer. I’d tasted something different.
So I quit my job with nothing lined up, something I could never have imagined myself doing just a few months before. I didn’t have a huge amount in savings either.
Something emerged, an old colleague called me up with an opportunity. My freelance career started and the 13 years that followed have been one adventure after another, with new perspectives on fear, risk and listening deeply to myself.
And it all began with a 1,000-mile cycle trip that I hadn’t trained for.
***
Sometimes I look back and wonder where the courage and conviction came from to undertake a trip like this. But most times I look back with contentment and think to myself “I’m the sort of person who cycles 1,000 miles without any preparation.”
You’re that sort of person too. Just get started.
