For many bicycle travelers, the possibility of individual transformation is key to an adventure. Many people in the bike travel community are very aware of the ability for the bicycle to create social change. That’s the mission of Bikes Not Bombs (BNB) in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: to use the bicycle as a vehicle for social change in order to achieve economic mobility for marginalized people in Boston as well as the Global South.

This summer, Bikes Not Bombs’ On-the-Bike Program and Adventure Cycling’s Bike Overnights are partnering on a project for youth apprentices to adventure by bike and experience bike travel for the first time as they engage with and learn about social justice movements in their own Boston communities.

Joseph Pires is a senior youth apprentice at Bikes Not Bombs. Youth apprentices begin their employment in Bikes Not Bombs’ bike school, where they learn the mechanical skills they need to graduate into work for the organization. Youth Apprentices are then employed in the bike shop, as Bike School instructors, in international shipping and recycling operations, as well as in BNB’s community advocacy group, Bicyclists Organizing for Community Action. Joseph is the youth apprentice responsible for spearheading the project.

“Oftentimes when you live in a city, that sense of discovery is stunted, especially when you live in certain neighborhoods and you don’t have as many outlets for positive engagement,” said Pires. “Whether it be with other people or within the environment you’re in, so oftentimes kids tend to stay within their neighborhood and forget there’s a place outside their neighborhood, there’s a whole world outside their neighborhood. So they lack trying to make new discoveries, or the ability to learn new things.”

Pires, together with Bike School coordinator Tess Stogner, developed the proposal for the project after Bike Overnights reached out to them. Stogner began bikepacking in college and worked leading bikepacking trips for teenagers before working at Bikes Not Bombs.

“It took being in a community in my life [that] said, ‘This is something you can do,’ to help me believe I could do this,” Stogner said. “It profoundly changed how I see the world now, and find community. This can be something that gives them a lot of joy.”

Two main components of the Bike Overnights program are community-created short routes and supporting beginner bike adventurers who are from communities of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, and women. Together, Pires, Stogner, and Bikes Not Bombs have created an experience combining the two — a powerful project with a wide-reaching impact.

In 2021, the first year of the Bike Overnights project at Adventure Cycling, Bikes Not Bombs began the first part of its project: creating a short route. The route will highlight the whole history of the area beyond Paul Revere and the Tea Party. It will ride through residential neighborhoods while showcasing the strength rooted in those streets that’s never talked about. From Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury to Blue Hills Reservation and Wompatuck State Park, On-The-Bike hopes to tell the story of these places through the lens of past and ongoing social justice and resistance movements.

“The more Joseph and I looked, the more we found. There’s just a wealth of resistance movements throughout Boston’s past and present,” said Stogner, describing their research and planning process. “Understanding the hidden histories and legacies of this city has definitely changed the way I see it, and I will continue to learn from this experience, especially as we begin troubleshooting the route and test riding it in the spring.”

For Pires, the intentionality of planning the route for riders, especially young people of color, to engage with how they fit into their community by looking at the past and present is key to the success of the route, the trip, and the youth apprentices.

“I’m trying to get people to think more fondly of history and how they can be a part of their own history and make new steps that others can follow,” said Pires. “They can say to themselves, ‘Hey, this is pretty cool!’ They can begin this line of teaching other people and letting them discover new things and new environments.”

The route kicks off at Bikes Not Bombs’ bike shop in Jamaica Plain and rides through Roxbury, visiting sites such as Saint Mark’s Social Center, a hub for the Freedom Schools during the Civil Rights Movement, and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a pioneering land trust responsible for making affordable homes available to the community since the 1980s. The first day ends at Ponkapoag Campgrounds in the Blue Hills Reservation.

On Day Two, riders head out from Ponkapoag to Wompatuck State Park Campgrounds, through Weymouth, where they will discuss the English colonization and systemic killing of the Massachusett Tribe. The last day starts with departing Wompatuck to pedal back through Mattapan and Dorchester, with visits including the District Courthouse (a gathering place for many anti-Vietnam protests) and the Laura Ann Ewing Home (a focal point of the consequences of Boston’s ongoing red-lining and gentrification). The ride will end at Dorchester Heights to savor the experience and enjoy a skyline view of Boston.

On-the-Bike from the beginning

Getting ready for a bike adventure, whether it’s the first time or the 50th, sometimes comes with preparation or training prepackaged. You can buy a route or find some ideas already traversed online.

After Bikes Not Bombs completes and tests the route, the final piece of the project is a Bike Overnights trip for the 2022 Bikes Not Bombs summer On-The-Bike program participants. On-The-Bike at Bikes Not Bombs offers inexperienced cyclists ages 12 through 18 the opportunity to learn safe riding skills.

“The goal of On-The-Bike is to make cycling through the city safe and accessible despite any potential obstacles,” said Stogner. Alongside learning commuting and riding skills, youth learn basic bike maintenance alongside principles of awareness. These skills will translate into youth finishing their program by riding the Bike Overnight route. They’ll ride two nights, covering about 25 miles a day. No small feat for someone just beginning their love of the bicycle.

“Our roads are made for cars and not cyclists or people who ride bikes,” said Stogner. “For our On-The-Bike students, some people have learned how to drive a car and some haven’t, and explaining the rules of the road can be very abstract and hard to grasp.” Riders on their first Bike Overnight will practice experiential learning through the collective problem-solving that occurs spontaneously en route.

Riders will also be able to train and practice an important skill to bike touring, as well as riding defensively in general: helping lead and keep a ride safe.

“One of the most difficult things to kind of get yourself down from such a long time of doing it and teaching other people how to do it in the correct way is corking and marshalling,” noted Pires. He’s an experienced ride leader and marshal, having taught other riders these skills at Ride for Black Lives Boston. “The more you do it and the more you know what to look for, it kind of becomes like second nature, and you kind of know when to take action when you see something from the slightest turn or the slightest hint of a signal whether it’s from a car or traffic light.”

“Obviously, we have a big responsibility when marshalling. It’s the safety of everyone, whether it’s the ride leader or the last child in the back of the line of us biking,” he added.

Prepping for a lifetime of bike adventure

An experienced adventure cyclist’s preparations might include a shakeout, testing all the gear they own or trying a new energy waffle to see how it fares. But the young riders of On-The-Bike on this Bike Overnight will get to experience bike travel as real beginners in almost every sense of the word.

“Adventure Cycling Association providing this opportunity through overnight trips extends an opportunity to a student or a person that normally wouldn’t do it by themselves,” said Gary Chin, director of community engagement at Bikes Not Bombs. “I know I certainly wouldn’t! Even at my age and as an experienced bicyclist, I wouldn’t go out to an unfamiliar place by myself and I wouldn’t know if I’m necessarily getting a historical tour right or not. I wouldn’t know if I’m doing the whole camping thing right. And I wouldn’t even want to do it by myself. There’s truth to the expression, ‘There’s power in numbers.’”

Collaboratively creating a route upholding the values of Bikes Not Bombs and learning bike skills in a group is precisely the type of beginner-friendly setting the Bike Overnights program wants to encourage, support, and help empower to grow.

Adventure Cycling, as a venerable and large part of the bike travel community, began the Bike Overnights (Short Trips) program in 2021. Bike Overnights wants to increase access and inclusion in adventure cycling, ensuring that beginners are welcomed, especially cyclists from marginalized Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, women, and LGBTQIA+ communities. Focusing on short, accessible trips, Bike Overnights hopes to create more short routes available to anyone who wants to try adventure cycling in their own backyards, as well as share and support community rides over less than four days, with less than 60 miles of riding per day.

Partnerships with groups like Bikes Not Bombs are key to engaging, impacting, and expanding the Adventure Cycling community.  “Bikes Not Bombs is answering a very important question of the 21st century, which is: how do we make transportation sustainable and accessible for all people?” said Stogner. “Having people you trust and a community you trust, that’s essential to being able to step outside of your comfort zone especially in places where, historically, people haven’t been welcome.”

“Bikes Not Bombs extends the view of what a typical cyclist is,” said Chin. “People ride bikes every day in all sorts of weather and all terrain. I think if people start to shift their definition or expectation of what a cyclist is, you’ll start to realize there’s so many people around using bicycles in so many different ways.”

For Stogner, bikepacking in college helped her find confidence and community, which led to a job leading bikepacking for teenagers. “The students on those trips — who were, for the most part, strangers to one another — developed such a strong sense of belonging through the adventures of being out on the road together. When you know how that feels, you can’t lose it; you take it with you wherever you travel next. Even when unexpected obstacles arise (and they always do), you have to face them head on to make it to where you need to go. I’ve learned invaluable lessons in leadership, self-reflection, trust, and teamwork through those experiences.”

As spring arrives, Pires will continue testing the ride to make sure it’s ready to go for On-The-Bike participants. There will still be, of course, much to prepare for. Bike Overnights’ support will help participants succeed on the trip, but as many know, gathering gear is no small task (nor is it an inexpensive one!). Staff will support the ride both on bikes and with support/gear vehicles. Adventure Cycling will be checking in as the weeks go by and release the Bike Overnights route soon for all to enjoy.

“The Bike Overnight and the ride that we planned together is so long and has a lot of distance, and there’s so many things within the route that people can learn,” said Pires. “I think the sense of achievement that will come from that challenge, that will come from biking such a long distance and learning so many things, is really gonna make an impact.”

For Pires, who sees real-time community building, networking, and access to the joy of the bicycle at Bikes Not Bombs from volunteers, staff, and youth alike, Bike Overnights is one more way to discover “new people and new friendships and new bonds.”

“I hope that challenge and sense of achievement will create a space where the people who go on this ride will tell their friends, ‘Me telling you won’t do this any justice, you need to experience this for yourself.’ And I think that’s one of the key things I’m looking to get the kids to do, really just pass on the information and try and pass on that it’s a really important experience and they should experience it for themselves.”

Which is exactly true about any bike adventure — and why Bike Overnights and Bikes Not Bombs are going to get young people experiencing it for themselves.  

Nuts & Bolts

On-the-Bike

About BNB

Bikes Not Bombs’ work started in 1984 with a shipment of two bikes to Nicaragua. They’ve since shipped over 80,000 bicycles and started Youth Pathways employment and training programs, as well as a full-service retail bike shop. For more information or to help, visit bikesnotbombs.org/donate to help cover the costs of helmets, bike refurbishments, and other needs.

Boston

For more information on this historic city, check out A People’s Guide to Greater Boston by Joseph Nevins, Suren Moodliar, and Eleni Macrakis, published by the University of California Press (2020). More information and extended text can be found at bostonbook.org.

Bike Overnights

A key part of Bike Overnights programming is directly supporting beginner bike events for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, gender nonconforming, and women cyclists. Adventure Cycling is committed to ensuring inclusivity and accessibility to inspire, connect, and empower bike travel. Sponsorships and stipends are available for those organizing rides focusing on building community by developing overnight community trips and short routes. Reach out to bike-overnights@adventurecycling.org for more information.

The post The New Freedom Trail appeared first on Adventure Cycling Association.

I first met Kaisa in a Zoom interview for cyclist Annalisa Van Den Berg’s film series, Miles of Portraits. I sat on the floor at a friend’s house in Massachusetts, my laptop propped in front of me on a chair. On the screen, I watched Kaisa lounging in a library in her home country of Finland, her legs crossed prominently in front of her. When your legs are made of carbon, this is what you call a “power move.” We chatted about Kaisa’s life, her legs, and her many books and adventures. At the end of the interview, all I could think was, “Wow. Wow, this person is truly, vibrantly alive.” 

Kaisa was born with a severe malformation of her legs and ankles, which made it difficult and painful for her to walk. One day she read a magazine article about a paralympic athlete with carbon leg prosthetics. She brought the article to her doctor and asked to have her legs amputated. A few months later, Kaisa had a new set of silvery carbon legs. 

Less than six months after her operation, Kaisa learned to ride a bike again. Soon, she was biking across entire countries. 

In the two decades since Kaisa got her prosthetics, she’s cycled thousands of miles around the world. She and her partner Christoffer have pedaled together across the U.S., Canada, Russia, Costa Rica, Japan, and Europe. They’ve also gone on long sea kayaking trips to remote coastal islands. The couple commemorates these adventures in award-winning, illustrated books and interactive art installations.  

I think for most people, the idea of actively choosing to have their legs amputated is beyond the realm of imagination. But imagination is exactly what Kaisa has lots of. Her books and artwork often merge real life adventures with fantastical characters. (She draws herself as a mouse and Christoffer as a duck.) When I look at her artwork, I wonder if this same stream of creativity is what led her to embrace her own physical transformation. It takes a lot of imagination to move through the realities of change.  

This summer, Kaisa and Christoffer set out on another long cycling trip around Canada and the U.S. They started in Montreal, pedaled up to Quebec City, and then turned onto the Labrador Highway. The Labrador Highway is a 714-mile stretch of road that passes through large tracts of remote wilderness and bogs. In 2018 I took a similar (but shorter!) route from Montreal up the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, and I will never forget the beauty of the landscape — or the treacherous hordes of bloodthirsty black flies. To pedal this route on carbon legs is truly an epic feat.  

After the Labrador Highway, Kaisa and Christoffer took a ferry to Newfoundland. Then they cycled and ferried their way across Eastern Canada toward Bar Harbor, Maine, where they started Adventure Cycling’s Atlantic Coast Route. They used the Adventure Cycling app, Bicycle Route Navigator, to navigate along the coast toward their final destination of New York.  

I’d been following Kaisa and Christoffer’s trip on Instagram, and when I saw they were nearing my home in Massachusetts I invited them to visit. A few days later, they pedaled into the front yard. Even though we’d never met in person, it felt like a reunion. They had cycled thousands of miles through sunshine and rain, wind and fair weather, and were finally here in my little corner of the world! 

My “little corner” is beautiful but quite rustic. I live in a sixteen-by-eight-foot tiny house on a farm and education center with a shared kitchen and bathrooms. Getting from place to place can be an obstacle course of construction sites, rocks, stairs, and winding paths. Kaisa and Christoffer accepted the situation with total grace and adaptability. We wandered around by foot and bike, figured out how to navigate the obstacles, and then went back to my tiny house for snacks and story time. 

Christoffer set his laptop on my tiny kitchen table and gave a lively photo presentation about their cycling adventures around the world. We traded tales about where we’d pedaled and what had happened on the road. At one point, Christoffer told a story about Kaisa’s prosthetic leg falling off in the Pacific Ocean. Then Kaisa reached down, unclipped one of the prosthetics, and waved it in the air to demonstrate. It was the coolest magic trick I’d ever seen.  

They spoke more about their trip down the Atlantic Coast from Maine. Kaisa is the planner and navigator, and Christoffer carries more of the gear, to even out their pace. As the navigator, Kaisa said she really appreciated the Adventure Cycling app’s list of campsites, which often had special deals for cyclists. Even when the sites were full, the campground hosts always made room for them. “We always feel you see the nicest sides of people and places when you’re cycling,” she said. They both recommended using the app for route navigation. 

They also talked a lot about the kindness of strangers and described how people always took care of them out on the road. In Labrador, a man drove hours out of his way to help them fix a mechanical problem. Then he invited them to stay at his house. Throughout their trip, people helped them and offered them places to stay along the route 

Kaisa said that on their first trips, they always pedaled at least sixty miles a day, no matter what. If they didn’t reach that mark, she “felt like a failure.” But over time she learned to be more flexible, to account for other factors like weather, or if a stranger invited them to stay over. “It’s really healthy … to learn that we’re very small and we’re not in control at all,” she explained. “It’s just an illusion, really, that we can hold onto better in the city. We’re actually just tiny ants, marching on the earth, thinking we’re in control.” 

Christoffer added that cycling has given him more time to reflect. He described pedaling as an entrance to “a meditative mood” and a continuation of a spiritual practice. Over time, the cycling and the meditation become one. “We follow a spiritual practice and … the scriptures turn into reality on a bike,” he explained. “The things we read about in the Bhagavad Gita, for instance — what we encounter out on the road are these things. It’s like nature is speaking the same things as these scriptures. And that’s really comforting and reassuring.” 

“Emotions are kind of like rain,” added Kaisa, smiling. “It comes and washes over you. But it can be helpful to know this too will pass, like the rain.” 

“On a long trip you become more tolerant in the sense that you know it’s all temporary,” said Christoffer.  

The next day, Kaisa and Christoffer packed up their gear and pedaled south toward New York. I waved goodbye at the front gate. A few days later, I got a package in the mail, wrapped in brown paper and covered in colorful stamps. I opened it to find a metal box inscribed with the title, “Before the Sun Sets: Postcards from a Bicycle Ride.” It was Kaisa and Christoffer’s latest artwork — an essay, a map, and an illustrated set of 119 postcards describing their 2020 cycling trip from Alaska to San Francisco.  

I spent the next few weeks picking up the postcards and reading through them one by one. It reminded me that there is more than one way to ride a bike. There are infinite ways. Every journey is a creative process.  

Excerpt from “Before the Sun Sets” 

“In the end, whether the conditions are favourable or unfavourable, we will continue onward on our chosen path, because for one who has had even a glimpse of what the road may offer, there’s no longer a real alternative. Everything else, however colourful or intriguing, pales in comparison. No position in this world, no amount of prestige, no possession can ever satisfy the cyclist who has even once glimpsed what the world beyond the emaciated confines of what currently passes for reality has to offer. Even when that cyclist might be trapped in conditions that deny her from fully expressing her passion, her heart nonetheless keeps its focus. That cyclist may even be stripped of all the external designations by which she is identified and still remain happy, for this world no longer carries anything of interest to her; her heart belongs to the road alone.” 

Nuts & Bolts of the Atlantic Coast Route

Location: Bar Harbor, ME to Key West, FL 

Distance: 2,655.2 miles 

Riding Season: Late spring to mid-fall in the north; year-round in the south 

Terrain: Paved. Hilly and flat country roads. Some urban areas and bike paths.  

Navigation: Bicycle Route Navigator app, GPX files, or Adventure Cycling paper maps 

Services: Plentiful in most areas. (Food, water, camping, and lodging.) 

Highlights:  Quiet New England towns, historical sites, ocean views, National Parks 

Plan your trip: Atlantic Coast Route 

The post Along the Atlantic Coast on Carbon Legs appeared first on Adventure Cycling Association.

On the Navajo Nation Reservation, there is a convergence of three cities: Kayenta, Dennehotso, and Chilchinbeto. Each town blooms with more than a millennium of history and ancestors of the people living there today. The community of people there have cultural relationships with the sagebrush, the striations in the plateaus, the mountains, the bugs and birds, the coyotes, and even the wind — connections to one another that are far deeper than just living in the same place. These relationships and traditions hold together a Tribal Nation, full of many different families, clans, and thus opinions. It is part of the reason we have survived and will continue to do so — an intricate reliance on one another and our ancestral connection to the soil on which we stand.

The Navajo peoples are no strangers to perseverance, to strength, and to lifting one another up. Stronger together takes a different meaning in a Tribal setting; the Navajo peoples were struck with extreme hardship in the last two years. Due to the exacerbated spread of COVID-19 on their reservation, the Navajo peoples created restrictions and strict guidelines to protect as many people as possible and prevent a continual spread of the virus. For many humans around the world, a deadly virus, and the protective guidelines that came with it, sprung from nowhere. Lives were altered with no warning, and Jon Yazzie was no exception. Just before the virus hit, with no knowledge of how much more important these trips were about to become, Yazzie had begun to create his bikepacking guide service on the Navajo Reservation.

Yazzie lives below the mountains in Kayenta, Arizona, and his relationship with his homelands is intricate. Yazzie’s plan was to create a service that can bring “cultural awareness through bikepacking,” teaching clients to pack bikes, make camping food, manage and filter water, and provide the gear to do so. Bikes have changed Yazzie’s life, and bikepacking has changed his perspective so much that he wanted to make this experience accessible to youth around the Navajo Nation. Even though the passion is there, it has not been a smooth process to begin DzilTa’ah Adventures.

“DzilTa’ah” is a Navajo word meaning “mountain base,” which aligns with the idea of bikepacking. While there’s no mountaineering or mountain climbing involved, it’s a way to explore the gravel paths and plateaus. Despite the community’s deep connection to the land and being present in the natural world, not everyone understands what the idea behind bikepacking is. Yazzie had many hoops to jump through. The tribal council, as well as grazing landowners and managers, didn’t understand cycling and had concerns about the impact bikes would have on the region. The fact is that many Native peoples, who have not had access to bikes, do not understand what it would mean to bring a bikepacking tour company to a rez. It doesn’t mean that Tribal councils and communities will never understand, but that there is an introduction period that is sensitive. As such, Yazzie has had to slowly bring bikes into his community, and thus the only tours he’s led have been with family and friends. He’s seen the impact even within his close relations. “As many times as we’ve been told ‘no’ or have wanted to give up and dissolve our company, I have to remember that we are still serving a purpose,” said Yazzie. “And that is, we are pioneering the process, helping amend tribal laws and cutting red tape that will make it easier for future native-owned outdoor companies to establish businesses on the reservation.”

Cyclists of all colors, shapes, and sizes understand the impact that bikes have had on our lives. The community bikes have brought, the physical health they have allowed, and the happiness they cultivate. There is a special relationship to movement, to self-pursuits and in the simple fact of having something to do and to be motivated for. As modern peoples, we are finding modern ways to connect to the land as our ancestors once did. In many ways, riding a bike reminds me of what it was like to grow up with horses — the relationship with the freedom of movement, the care you must give horses, and even the physicality is similar. A mentee of Yazzie’s, a young girl around 14, has done just this: she comes from a background of horseback riding and is now competing in bike racing. “She was one of our first participants and she’s been on probably five or six trips so far,” said Yazzie. “She never had ridden a bike and she didn’t own one, now she’s racing and competing. She races NICA and MBAA and she’s only 14 years old. This September would have been one year of riding; she took second place in the MBAA AZ XC State Championship after only four months of riding. She grew up riding horses so she really understands the mechanisms of riding.” It’s stories like this that show the impact that cycling can have on Indigenous youth, and DzilTa’ah Adventures is planning to do just that — impact the lives of Native youth and get them on the land.

The impact doesn’t end with learning to ride a bike and getting outside — the mental health of participants is severely affected in a positive way as well. Bikepacking has the ability to help youth feel independent and self-sufficient. Sean Goldooth, another participant and first-time Indigenous bikepacker, said, “Bikepacking is the cycle of life. Reconnecting with the land, animals, and the challenges the weather has to offer. Be strong with a good state of mind and keep moving forward. As long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, everything will be okay. Ride, sleep, and repeat.” There is a simplicity to life on a bike, a simple notion of dark means sleep, light means ride. Go means forward motion and stop means drink water and fuel up. The focus that one gets while riding on a bike, the simple existence, and the literal removal from the stresses of the world is something all youth need.

It is not just youth who benefit from an Indigenous-run bikepacking guide service. Bailey Newbrey, owner of Sincere Cycles in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a respected bikepacker and ultra-endurance athlete. “DzilTa’ah Adventures offers truly unique opportunities and experiences through their guided tours,” Newbrey said. “Jon’s intimate knowledge of the land, its history, and his people’s creation stories make his guided tours an immensely immersive experience, which left me with a desire to learn more about both these amazing landscapes and the people who have called them home, from current Dine to the ancestral Puebloan.” To Newbrey, DzilTa’ah is a way to respect the land from Yazzie’s perspective as an original person, showing the care Native people have for our homelands and our intricate histories on these lands. Bikes can bring people from different cultures and perspectives together, and at the end of the trip someone like Newbrey can walk away from it knowing the history, the current love, and the importance of returning Native people to our homelands. Among Indigenous peoples, there is a term we often use: land back. It quite literally means to give the land that our ancestors have cared for back into our care. It doesn’t mean uproot everyone and kick people out of the U.S.; it means we know and love our homelands and we know how to care for them best. Something as simple as a bikepacking trip with Yazzie can show someone that. His knowledge passed from his grandmother comes through in his love for Navajo lands. If everyone could see that, then I believe everyone would be able to understand a bit more why it is so important to have our land back, to honor the treaties in the U.S. government that have not been honored, and to allow Native people to lead environmentalism, public land projects, and put forth our knowledge on how to help a land that is being impacted by extraction and climate change.

Bikes in all forms — small wheels, wooden, four wheels, mad genius contraptions to accelerate forward human motion — have been a part of human “progress” since the early 1800s. Progress, however, has been a weapon toward Indigenous peoples for a very long time, imposing a “right” way to be, from the Western clothing our ancestors were forced to wear to lifestyle changes to make them worthy of human rights. Indigenous hair was cut, families separated, and traditions shamed all in the name of human progress, and I struggle to celebrate this progress. I do not argue, however, that human invention, innovation, and creation are an undeniable right of our conscious minds, and the ability to invent new things and to add to the human experience is something positive. Bikes are a part of that progress of modern society, and the invention of the bike has brought liberation to many peoples. From women feeling more safe traveling from place to place on a bike, to children getting to school on time, bikes have provided the joy and safety of movement and the ease of doing so without environmental impact. To move on a bike is more than just exercise, it is a reminder of our own personal power, that we can move ourselves forward and that our presence on the land is beautiful and integral.

DzilTa’ah Adventures may be centered on bikepacking, but the ways that it centers Native peoples and Native lands goes beyond bikes — it serves the Navajo peoples and those who are willing to learn Indigenous ways of being on and respecting the land. There is no ownership, no ego, no conquer mentality. There is only history, compassion, and reciprocity. All outdoors people need a dash of that in their lives.

With the knowledge of how important these trips are, there is good news for DzilTa’ah Adventures. “After five years of what seemed like an uphill battle, we were finally granted permits for three routes to offer in 2022,” said Yazzie. “We have a total of nine in mind with six that still need beta-testing, but are excited to offer tours starting this spring and look forward to sharing stories and our homelands.”

The post When in Doubt, Pedal appeared first on Adventure Cycling Association.

It was a sweltering 105°F outside of Tombstone, Arizona, as we headed east toward the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR). After being dropped off, we immediately grabbed our trowels and started digging in the nearby bushes while my childhood best friend froze, having never pooped outside before. “The nervous poops wait for no one,” I said as I quickly taught him the basics. Soon after, we were melting in the unbearable heat as we pedaled off into the Sonoran Desert in search of shade. Every sip of water tasted like hot tea as we took refuge under our umbrellas from the scorching sun.

A few hours later, we were surrounded by heinous cowpies invaded by a torrent of flies as I massaged my friend’s leg, which had seized up from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Later that night as we sent up camp, I found out that I packed the inner bug net and not the tent. Day One, check.

In the summer of 2021, I convinced two brand-new cyclists to join me on the GDMBR. Most adventure cyclists have probably heard of this famous Adventure Cycling route, but my 17-year-old little brother Matthew and my childhood best friend Young had zero context for what they were about to experience. Matthew had gone on a few backpacking trips in the Pacific Northwest with me, and Young is a New York City–trained actor and musician who had never been out in the backcountry or ridden more than 10 miles on a bike. The Great Divide and our film Riding Han were the focal points that brought us together.

We are three Korean Americans, born and raised in the U.S. in a suburb of Maryland where our outdoor access consisted of the neighborhood forests, local parks, and the occasional road trip three hours away to the Atlantic coast. None of us grew up with friends or family that had hobbies involving the outdoors besides school sports.

I am the first in my family to have the privilege of access to the great outdoors and outdoor activities. My immigrant parents grew up in poor rural areas in South Korea after the Korean War. Food was scarce and opportunities were lacking. For my parents, “the outdoors” wasn’t a hobby or choice — it was a way of life.

It wasn’t until I worked at my first job out of college that I was introduced to the outdoors. While sitting in the office, I saw the other employees wearing huge backpacks and taking students out on outdoor trips and thought to myself, “I’d rather be doing that.” A few years later, I found myself guiding outdoor trips out of the Pacific Northwest. It was out of chance that I stumbled upon the fact that one could make a living working outside. Out of my childhood circle of friends, I was the only one who went out West to seek those vast landscapes seen in nature documentaries.

For the first couple of years working in the outdoor industry, my parents didn’t understand what I did for work. My first year as a guide, I told them I would be living with a friend in Seattle when in actuality I was living out of a van out by Lake Washington. In my mind, it was a hard concept for my immigrant parents to understand what I was doing and to save the embarrassment of telling them their eldest son had decided to be a dirtbag.

In my second year of guiding, I invited my little brother out West as a scholarship participant on a backpacking trip I was leading. After the trip was over, Matthew told me that my parents grilled him when he got back home on what I did out there for “work.” The following year, I invited my parents out to Seattle and took them around the place I spent most of my summers, the Olympic Peninsula. After that trip, my parents finally understood; they stopped asking me questions about why I chose this line of work. As my parents retired, I see them spending more time in the outdoors and making it a priority in their lives.

Being able to share the outdoors with my family was something that brought me so much joy. It was only in the past few years that I stumbled upon the term “Intergenerational Outdoor Joy.” I define it as experiencing and sharing the joy of the outdoors with members of different generations. This has become more common within the BIPOC outdoor community, whether it’s sharing a certain outdoor activity or a trip with BIPOC friends and family, as access isn’t something that many communities of color have had.

If we take a look back through history, there are many reasons why there’s an adventure/nature gap with communities of color. There has always been the issue of generational wealth, access, and resources among Black and brown communities, including food deserts, redlining, the Dakota Access Pipeline, or dispossession of Native lands, to name a few. This disparity is systemic and historic, as shown in this article from the Center for American Progress published in 2020, but the pandemic’s movement into the outdoors highlighted an underaddressed problem: a disproportionate distribution of nearby outdoor spaces for low-income and communities of color.

According to a study conducted by the Conservation Science Partners and Center for American Progress, a census conducted in 2017 revealed that “communities of color are three times more likely than white communities to live in nature-deprived places. Seventy-four percent of communities of color in the contiguous United States live in nature-deprived areas, compared with just 23 percent of white communities.” The 11-page report can be read in its entirely on the Conservation Science Partners website at csp-inc.org.

The fear of recent events like the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, murdered while jogging down a coastal town in Georgia, or the harassment Christian Cooper, who had a false police report filed against him while bird-watching in Central Park, or the massive uptick in Asian hate crimes are just some recent examples of pressures keeping people of color from feeling safe to wander through the outdoors. People of color have historically and consistently been made to feel unwelcome or unsafe in the outdoors. With all that being said, now more than ever there are more communities of color with the opportunity to pass along this outdoor joy. This is why I continue to do so to this day, within my family and other diverse communities.

My first shared bicycle experience was working with youth of color with the Major Taylor Project (MTP), named after the Black world champion cyclist Marshall “Major” Taylor. MTP, a part of the Cascade Bicycle Club, empowers youth through bicycling with after-school programs in diverse neighborhoods throughout South Seattle and Tacoma, Washington.

My first memorable bicycle moment was completing the 203-mile Seattle-to-Portland ride in one day with four ambitious students after training for three months well into the summer. It was incredible to see how stoked these students were after 16 hours of continuous riding as we crossed the finish line in Portland. That’s when I knew I needed to share this outdoor joy with those I’m closest with, like my younger brother.

In 2015, I decided to cancel my two-year Europe-to-Asia bicycle tour that I’d been saving up for. It brought more joy to wait until I turned 30 and could share my joy with Matthew, who was by then old enough to embark on such a voyage. Despite all of the challenges of taking new riders on a long bicycle trip while working on a film, it was by far the most impactful outdoor experience I’ve ever been on.

In Jon Krakauer’s biography, Into the Wild, he shares the near-last notes in the journal of Chris McCandless: “ … An unshared happiness is not happiness … Happiness is only real when shared.” It was my honor to take Young and Matthew to share in my outdoor joy. I want my joy of the outdoors to spread through my community like wildflowers, from the younger generation who have the opportunity to spend their lives enjoying the outside world to my elders who are finding an appreciation later in life.

With the gracious support of Adventure Cycling Association, my film Riding Han is set to be released this summer. To learn more about the film go to pakeugene.com/films. You can follow me on Instagram @bikepak.

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When a friend decided to join me on my cross-country trip, my mom cheered up and called him “an angel.” I didn’t feel like he was an angel when he got drunk and threw up in our tent one night, but that’s another story. I think my mom wanted me to have monogrammed towels, china sets, or a house that looks like a magazine. In her eyes, a “normal life.” Instead, I have lived in shacks, trailers, closets, my car, and my tent.

My mom’s Lebanese heritage gave me my wild-as-hell curly hair. I wake up looking like Medusa. Some people have parents who look like them, and others don’t. Some folks have two dads, two moms, a grandparent, or a chosen family of friends and mentors, which I also have. The thing, to me, that really makes a family is not blood or even history — it’s when you know someone’s got your back. They call you whether you are having great successes or if you’re down on your luck and need a $100 loan. That’s family: the people who support each other through good and bad, despite their particular mix of similarities and differences. Families of all shapes and colors are beautiful, but most seem to have the same, or similar, misgivings about those they love flinging themselves into the unknowns of bike travel. 

As a kid, I played all the sports and still do. In contrast, my mother’s main sport is being an incredible chef, cooking food for anyone and everyone, and being a nanny, which requires real muscle. My mom, Teresa, has incredible style, an outfit for every occasion, and bins labeled “blue and green scarves,” not to be confused with the bin of “orange and red scarves.” She is feisty, opinionated, and claims from her five-foot two-inch petite frame, “I am not bossy. I just have the best ideas.” 

Without a car in college, I cycled everywhere, and Teresa told me, “Do not bike at night.” 

“I have lights,” I said. She persisted until I said, “Okay, I’ll try not to?” 

I was 21 and continued to bike everywhere at night, the best time to ride in the eastern Tennessee summers. When I got into mountain bike racing after college, she asked me if it was dangerous. I mentally tallied the friends who had recently broken their collarbones, swallowed my breath and replied, “No, Mom. It’s totally safe. I always wear a helmet.” 

“Oh, good,” she uttered with relief. 

Fast forward 10 years, and my mom has slowly, haltingly, sort of accepted that I am not going to have matching dishware. Her acceptance first took the form of a calm resignation coupled with frequent prayers for my safety, then later it morphed into something more. When I left to cycle around the world in the winter of 2019, the only truly reassuring words I could give my tearful parents were that I would make good decisions. They stared at me with uptight faces that looked like they had just drank lemon juice. Then I blurted out, “You can come visit me somewhere! You can pick the place!” and their faces relaxed. I didn’t think they actually would — the expense and time off work may or may not be possible — but the idea set them at ease. 

The next thing I knew, my mom and sister were meeting me in Costa Rica. Because my mom has nine siblings, she can’t triangulate her position in the world without at least a few of them; Teresa doesn’t do things in normal numbers and still thinks 20 people is a “small group.” She is the eighth of 10, and takes charge in a way that has earned her the title, “Little General.” So she and my sister, three of my aunts, and two of my cousins were all en route to Costa Rica. True to form, they chose an upscale resort where I was utterly out of place with my crisp cycling tan lines and eco-conscious concerns. Couples on their honeymoon drank Mai Tais at the pool bar while our group of eight loud Lebanese women laughed so hard our stomachs hurt and shouted our conversations because the only volume my family operates at is loud and louder. 

Mom had gone from “why can’t you stay put” to one of my biggest cheerleaders. She nearly knocked over a waiter in her rush to hug me tightly and said, “I know you are capable of this, but I missed you, and I prayed a lot.” 

She not only bragged to everyone at the resort about my travels but had apparently directed countless people back home to my blog and convinced others I was doing something sane, maybe even something to be celebrated. She had sent me talismans to protect me on my trip, and I showed her how I kept them in my handlebar bag. She had even started bragging to her book club. “Oh, your daughter has three kids and a good job? Well, mine is cycling in Central America!” Her pride is endearing, borderline embarrassing, and completely normal. At 35, I’m now a stepmom myself, and I perfectly understand her protective tendencies and prideful support. I am so proud of my 20-year-old stepdaughter I could burst. I boast about her endlessly. She really is incredibly awesome. The smartest! Most kind! Most athletic! 

Some families have an easier time than others accepting each other for who they are. I love my mom, and we do not — do not — discuss politics. But when my aunts and uncles told me not to go on my trip and that I was wrong to leave my husband for so long, the Little General stepped in to defend me. Those who love us might not understand why we endure saddle sores and tired legs for the reward of sleeping on the ground and waking up at dawn. But they don’t have to understand. Adventure cycling almost always involves some version of pursuing dreams big or small, and most families can understand that. If they love hearing your stories (pro tip: keep the scary ones to yourself), seeing your photos, and start bragging about you to their gardening club/book club/drinking buddies, you know that they’ve got your back, and that’s what matters.
 

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We have been on journeys before. At 58, my aunt bicycled across the country with my brother and me in the summer of 1999. We set out from Massachusetts on July 5, heading into the prevailing winds despite our aunt’s clear advice to travel with the winds, west to east.

We rode about 55 miles a day and camped most nights. About once a week, we stayed in a motel with a phone line, so my aunt could post updates to her website. Early in the trip, my brother and I chose a cheap, stuffy room with an air conditioning unit whose ineffectiveness in cooling the air was exceeded only by its noise, an angry rattle that couldn’t quite drown out the train horns at the grade crossing an inch outside our window. Thereafter, my aunt gained veto power over our motel choices. 

The Great Lakes looked so much like the Atlantic but lacked the smell of salt. We crossed the rail yard at Ashtabula, Ohio, where hundred-car trains brought coal from the Appalachian Mountains. In western Ohio, cracks opened in the dry dirt, and the bank thermometer read 104°F — but only in the direct sun, I told my father. In the shade it was cooler. 

“But you are biking in the sun,” he pointed out.

In Indiana, we concluded the heat and the wind were too much. We decided to switch directions. But first we had to get to Chicago, through the industrial cities of Gary, Whitefish, and East Chicago. In each, residents greeted us with kindness and warned us of the dangers of the other two cities. On August 5, we flew out of O’Hare. 

Leaving Anacortes, Washington, we traveled up into the Cascade Mountains. Beyond the first pass, the damp green forest gave way unexpectedly to desert. In the Rockies, we laughed about the ability of pikas, small rodent-like mammals, to store a hay bale’s worth of grass in their dens. We emerged into the rolling, flattening hills of the Great Plains, where the railroad magnate James Hill once claimed his iron railroad tracks would bring rain.

The prevailing winds swept us 92 miles to Lakota, North Dakota, in the single longest day of our trip. Slowly, the land dropped beneath us, into the lakes region of Minnesota. From Chicago, in late September, my aunt returned to San Francisco. Eighteen days later, my brother and I reached the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey. 

Other of her journeys I have witnessed from a much greater distance. When she was 41, my aunt sailed with her partner from Seattle to New Zealand. Somehow, via friends in Alaska and Chicago, they relayed messages to my mother consisting of little more than sets of coordinates. The pennies we placed on a map in our dining room circled gingerly around the North Pacific High.

My aunt believed in local knowledge, a concept grounded in the superiority of information gained from people over written sources. It required talking to strangers, a skill at which my aunt excelled. She says very little now. 

This February morning, the conditions are unsuitable for walking outside with an older person with extravagantly terrible balance. Her wonderful aide, Juliet, helps her into her winter coat. My aunt stares fixedly at my heavy biking gloves until I help her put them on. She grips her wheeled walker and we set out. Her conversations these days are as limited as pennies on a map, but on this journey we navigate the slushy crosswalks shoulder to shoulder, together.
 

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Lael Wilcox is one of the world’s best endurance cyclists. She won the Trans Am Bike Race in 2016, set the Tour Divide’s women’s course record as an individual time trial in 2015, and set the overall course record on the Baja Divide Route. In 2022, she set the Fastest Known Time (FKT) on the Arizona Trail. She is known for her prolific wins, as well as her inclusive approach to getting more women and girls riding bikes. I interviewed Lael — also a Gnarly Nutrition athlete —over the phone to chat about nutrition, adventure cycling, and the joy of riding. 

Laura:  Hi Lael! How are you and where have you been riding recently?

Lael: I’m in Spain and I just finished an endurance road race in Catalonia. Nine hundred miles with 80,000 feet of climbing, so I am pretty cooked. But it was all beautiful and I loved it. I’ve been here for about a month. First I had the Women’s Rally, which I wrote about for Adventure Cyclist — super excited to share that. And a couple of weeks later, I did this road race. Such a wonderful group of people puts it on. On Monday, I fly to Italy, and the next step is a race across the Balkans. So just trying to recover so I can give it my all. Summertime is so busy with events; there’s so much fun!

Laura: So this last ride you did was self-supported?

Lael: Yes. And it took four days, ten minutes. But fortunately, there’s delicious food here. It’s a lot different than riding in Alaska! I mostly ate Spanish tortillas: an egg and potato dish. It was really good.

Laura: What was that like, having to resupply on this race? Was it difficult to find food? Was it easy? 

Lael: It was really easy because there are so many small towns. And the hours are different here. They’re not open until late morning, and then they’re open pretty late at night. It’s kind of the schedule here. I never ran into a situation where I couldn’t get food. I was buying stuff in small markets and getting Spanish tortillas, and getting pints of ice cream and letting it melt. It was into the 90s, pretty hot, record-setting heat, and then on the final day, it was flooding. But I had so much fun, it was beautiful riding.

Laura: So you’re picking up food along the way, drinking melted ice cream…what did you eat before and after the race? 

Lael: I mean, you have to eat a lot. Especially afterward, people are pretty calorie deprived. But fortunately, the race ended in this beautiful town with lots of restaurants. There was pizza, Thai food – real food. I try to eat as healthy as I can and get rest. Europe is pretty easy for food. Along the way, I did carry Gnarly protein green shakes, which I’ve been doing since I started working with them a couple of years ago. It makes a lot of difference. For bikepacking you can only carry so much. So I just drink them until they run out and then I’m like okay, I better get some ice cream. 

Laura: Yes! I love your attitude toward this!

Lael: You’re eating on the bike, you’re trying to sleep, you’re just seeing this amazing scenery. And you know: these people are chasing me down. We actually had three women finish in the top eight, it was so cool. We all had so much fun. 

Laura: So, for anyone doing adventure cycling on self-supported rides – racing or recreational – they have to find food along the way. And a lot of times it’s just from gas stations. And in the United States that can be really slim pickings. 

Lael: Yeah, pretty grim. 

Laura: What are your recommendations for someone on that kind of ride? What would you look for?

Lael: You know, anything that looks appealing, just go for it. You need food and you need a lot of food, so you have to buy stuff you actually want to eat. And that’s different at different times for different people. In the past I’d drink a lot of milk and chocolate milk. Any kind of real food — a sandwich or a hot dog or a piece of pizza. Personally, I get pretty tired of sweet stuff early on, because a lot of sports food is sweet. So I’m often just looking for something savory. 

In the U.S. a lot of the food is pretty spread out. And then when you’re riding in Europe every town has a bakery! And you’re like, oh my god this is the good life! But that’s also part of the fun. For adventure riding, you get to try different food all over the world and it really gives you insight into the culture. What’s available, what’s open, what other people are doing. Like the Spanish culture, they all go out to eat at midnight, it’s crazy! But I think it’s fun to be a part of that. And if you’re hungry, you’re happy with whatever you find. 

Laura: And how about beverages and electrolytes? Do you have a plan for replacing electrolytes during a long ride?

Lael: I try to carry some drink powder, but there’s only so much you can bring. So I kind of ration it. And then in between, I supplement it with cokes or anything refreshing. And then really salty food. Amazing how far a bag of potato chips can get you!

Laura: So I’m hearing that you’re listening to your body, you’re adapting to whatever the situation is, and you’re just rolling with it. 

Lael: Yeah! I mean, you walk in and you’re like “What looks good?” And then the other piece of advice is, get more food than you think you need. Pack something to go, something that you’re going to want to eat later. 

Laura: So Lael, you’re one of the best ultra-endurance athletes in the world. And you’ve also spent a lot of energy getting other women and girls cycling. How did that part of cycling become important to you? How did you realize it was important to get more women out there?

Lael: I started dedicating more time to this around 2017. I had scouted this route down the Baja peninsula called the Baja Divide, and then I hosted my first women’s scholarship that fall. They would get all the equipment that they needed to ride Baja Divide, 1700 miles. I had around 200 applicants from all over the world telling me who they are and why they want to do this. And my motivation was that I would have loved to have had an opportunity like that! 

These opportunities are really motivating for people. They see something they can possibly do, they imagine themselves differently, and that gets them doing it. I met Ally Mabry that way, who is the lead designer for Adventure Cyclist — I met all these amazing women! 

And that changed the way I looked at everything. 

And then in addition to the scholarship, we had a group start that year, and I think like thirty other women showed up, just to ride. You know, they were like, “Well, I could still do it.” And that changed the way I looked at everything. 

The following spring I started Anchorage Grit, my girls’ cycling mentorship program. That’s a six-week program for eleven to fourteen-year-olds to build up to a weekend adventure ride. And I really did that because I didn’t start riding until I was 20, and I was like, well, what if I had done this when I was 12, I would have loved it! And kids, they’re just not exposed to that. At that age they really want to take on challenges, they really want to be independent and do their own thing, so it’s the perfect age to do that with them. They work hard, they improve quickly, and it gives them so much confidence. 

I did three years in Anchorage. This year was the fourth year in Anchorage but I was actually in Arizona so I started a program there. So we have two of them going now. And it’s amazing to see them grow up! From the first year I did it, now those girls are like seventeen! And a few of them have come back every year as student mentors. It’s so cool to see. 

So, I do these things because I have a huge passion for it but it’s also for a limited time. I only have, you know, a month and a half to do this and then that’s it. And the girls get to keep the bikes, so they can do their own rides with each other, they can do other bike programs, but I just don’t have the full time to dedicate to it. I just love spending a few weeks every year. And talking about food — it’s all about snacks for them! 

Laura: Yeah!

Lael: It’s a snack break every half hour or 45 minutes! Kids get so mentally out of it when they’re doing something hard. They just kind of lose it! So I’m passing out cookies, or motivating them by saying we’re going to ride to ice cream — that’s what gets them through the ride! It totally works! So it’s like, any time you feel weird, just have a snack. I guarantee you’ll feel better. 

Laura: That’s good advice for any person, actually! 

Lael: It’s for everybody! If you feel like you’re going to have a meltdown, just have a snack. You’re gonna be fine!

Laura: I love that! And it’s interesting because I think in the United States, our culture pushes women to idolize thinness. And in endurance cycling, it’s clear that the top athletes come in a range of sizes. And the best athletes are the strongest, not the thinnest. 

Lael: You have to eat like it’s your job! That’s part of the sport, it’s eating. It’s a huge component. 

Laura: Yeah. And do you feel like the cultural pressure for women to be smaller and thinner might contribute to fewer women competing in the sport in the first place?

Lael: I’ve never really thought about that, but I feel like a lot of women just don’t even know it’s there. And I think that a lot of what I do — by taking videos and sharing stories or having scholarships or women’s rallies — is to show that this is even a possibility. Because I never heard of it growing up! I’d never seen anybody bike touring. I wanted to ride across the country when I was 20 or 21, and I’d never heard of anybody else doing it. I thought I was the first person to ever think of that! (laughs) 

There’s a great culture of biking out there, but if you’re not tapped into that, you’d never hear about it. I feel like a lot of where we’re at right now is just letting other women know they could do this. This is a possibility, this is a chance. It doesn’t have to be competitive or really goal-driven. It’s an adventure, it’s fun! You get to travel and spend time with people and see places. And that really should be for everybody. 

The main message is: what you look like does not indicate what you’re capable of.

But yeah, I feel like the body image stuff does come up over and over, and it’s something we should talk about. The main message is: what you look like does not indicate what you’re capable of. Especially with endurance competitions. Because I show up and people are like oh, who is that? I look totally normal. And I’m standing next to these super jacked dudes and they’re just looking down their noses at me, like, why are you standing there. And then at the end, I beat ‘um! 

Laura:  (yelling into the phone) Yeah! Yeah, you do! (then we both crack up)

Lael: Such a motivating part of the sport to me is to change peoples’ perceptions. And I feel like the more we do that, the more women will try. Because they think, oh, if she could do it, maybe I could do it too. Or even it doesn’t have to be girls, but it could be guys that feel like they’re not strong enough. And anybody who felt like they weren’t capable. They just need role models or examples of other people doing this stuff. So I just want everybody — if they want to — to just give it a go and see what happens. Because I think a lot of people will really surprise themselves. 

Laura: Yeah. And that’s something that you talked about in your TED talk recently. Which was phenomenal, by the way. 

Lael: Thank you, I worked really hard on that. 

Laura: It showed, it was such a good story and so well done! And the way you spoke about getting to that moment and deciding to win. And women don’t always have those role models and don’t always have that perception that they can make that choice. That seems like such an important part of that story. And one of the things that’s so striking to me when I hear your stories and read your writing, and see your videos — I feel like there’s been this narrative in sport, and especially cycling, where you have to “take people down” around you in order to win. And you’re not doing that! You’re doing the opposite and you’re still winning!

Lael: I know, but the thing is I’m not going to win forever. And that’s great, because more people should be trying it! They should come beat me! Of course, I want to do everything I can to keep doing my best and keep winning, but you have to want the best people to be out there getting good results because that’s what’s going to make the sport grow. And I think that’s exciting, and I want more women to do that. Because I feel like having more numbers makes a greater impression too. This past race, having three women instead of one in the top ten, that’s huge! Because if you’ve got just one woman, they could be an outlier. But three? Then it starts becoming really real. I’m a fan of that for the sport. And I don’t always want to race anyway. I just love riding in any capacity. But I am fascinated that women can really do well in these races. 

Laura: And what is your hope for the next generation of cyclists? What is your ideal situation for cycling as a sport, and how do you want women to approach it?

Lael: I just want the sport to grow, for more people to find joy in it. And I want it to become more like we’re relating to each other, we’re all doing the same thing. I feel like cycling can be so divided. Like, “You’re doing that, I’m not doing that, I’m doing this. I’m a mountain biker, you’re just a commuter.” But we’re all just riding bikes! So I hope we can start appreciating that more. Because it’s such a joy to ride! 

And I feel like any reason people get out there is just going to be an awesome part of their lives. That’s something I really want to share, especially with girls. Especially with middle school age because that’s when they stop participating in sports. I feel like cycling is such a great option because it’s generally not competitive. You can do it in groups, you can do it solo. It can actually be transportation. So I hope they can see that this is an opportunity. This is something they can do, that they can find some joy and confidence in. 

And that’s why I love doing the group program so much. Because some of these girls would never be riding bikes otherwise. And they love it — every kid loves to ride a bike. You just have to take the time to take them out there, because they’re probably not going to do it on their own. 

Laura: Absolutely. And what do the next few weeks look like for you? What cycling are you doing, and are you anticipating a lot more women in the rides coming up?

Lael: Yeah, I’m doing the Trans Balkan race starting next Friday. That route was developed by a woman. She and her partner are organizing the race. They’re Italian. The race goes across Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. So I’m going to go to her house — I’ve never met her — and then we’ll go to the start together. And actually, I’ve never done a race organized by a woman before, so this is my first! So it’s super cool! I’m super excited about that. 

The races I’m doing now, I’m really being more selective about races with positive race directors that really care about including more people from different backgrounds, especially more women to be there. Because it’s always less than ten percent of the field. 

So that’s the next race, and then after that, I go to Kenya for a gravel stage race. And then Iceland for another gravel stage race. So a lot of travel in beautiful places. I’m just so grateful I get to do what I love. 

Laura: That’s awesome. Wow. Well Lael, is there anything else you want to share about riding, about nutrition, about joy?

Lael: I guess the thing I would end with is just for people to keep it fun. All of riding and adventure riding can get scary at times or kind of overwhelming, but ultimately it should be fun. Do the thing you want to do, have fun, take breaks, go with friends, get an ice cream at the gas station, keep it light. Just appreciating that we get a chance to ride is huge. 
 

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It felt like another world, crisscrossing Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asian republics just a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was also the pre-digital era, before I reached Japan by winter 1996–1997. I’d been riding already for almost three years, with the deep impression that I could have gone forever. Time had somehow ceased to matter. Handwritten letters would punctuate the journey every three months. I would only discover all my pictures seven years after, once back in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2001, cycling meanwhile from Alaska to Tierre del Fuego, then through Africa, from Cape Town to Tangier.

I took only film, 36 exposures of Kodachrome 64 rolls with a single mechanical camera, the legendary and unbreakable Nikon FM2, equipped with two lenses, 24mm and 85mm. No zoom, no flash, just natural light. Simple and analog, like the bicycle itself. Each picture looks like a kind of matriochka, the Russian nesting doll. Pics of a forgotten world, documents from the Indian subcontinent and from Himalaya, as if the passage of time would improve their taste and intensity, like aged wine.

As I pushed the button of my camera, I felt sometimes that I had already known these people, visited these places. Looking at them today, they appear to me like a dream — Songwheels — reminding me of Bruce Chatwin’s book The Songlines, about the connection between Aboriginal Australian song and nomadic travel. Each day contains a life, each country a world, each person a destiny. The bicycle truly opens doors; it is a poem without breaks.  

 

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Two years later, the 57-year-old embarked on the Tour Divide, a more than 2,700-mile, self-supported race that follows Adventure Cycling’s Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from Banff, Alberta in Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico.

Aside from taking on one of mountain biking’s most challenging races, Ragland hoped the trip would help patch a damaged relationship with her son. But as she prepared to start the race in June 2018, she began to feel ill as another disease — this time cancer — made its presence known. Ragland died in January 2020 from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

A new documentary by Kris Wheeler, “Grace and the Great Divide,” magnifies the indefatigable spirit of Ragland that D’Ambrosio highlighted in 2016. Wheeler chronicles Ragland’s inspiring ride and explores how cycling helped her make sense of a messy, complicated, human life. He’s launched a crowdfunding campaign to help get the word out about Ragland’s story.

Grace in Charge

This story was originally published in the December 2016/January 2017 issue of Adventure Cyclist magazine.

When Grace Ragland was a 10-year-old girl growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, she liked to play with her dolls, even bringing them along on frequent family camping trips. On one of those camping trips, Ragland suddenly lost the sight in her right eye.

She had no idea what was happening to her.

“I’ll never forget playing with my doll, and it was odd, only seeing half of her,” Ragland said. “When you’re 10 and that happens, what do you do? You go tell your mother.”

Fortunately, Ragland’s parents didn’t panic or make her feel that something terrible was afoot. 

“I just happened to have these awesome parents,” Ragland said. “They never worried me for one second.”

Instead Ragland’s parents prepared her for a trip to the hospital by telling her she would get to pick out some new pajamas for the occasion and that she would make friends with the sick children there, making them feel better. It would be eight long years before Ragland would receive a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

“By today’s standards, I probably would have been diagnosed at 10 years old,” Ragland said. “Back then, the technology was so different. The face of MS has changed dramatically, it’s nothing like when I was diagnosed.”

The symptoms of multiple sclerosis, which run the gamut from blurred or double vision to vertigo, numbness, and muscle weakness, and, in severe cases, paralysis, generally appear between the ages of 20 and 40.

“I would be considered a juvenile with MS — it is definitely unusual,” Ragland said. “I don’t know any differently. People are born deaf or blind; they learn to adapt. That’s what I’ve done. It would be kind of odd for me to not have numb feet and numb hands and all the other things I deal with.”

The best time racing

Ragland has done more than adapt; she has thrived as a cyclist who races mountain bikes and is a brand ambassador for Liv, Giant’s line of women’s bikes. She takes her bikes with her wherever she goes.

Ragland also works with the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) to introduce kids to cycling who might not be aware of how bikes can improve their lives and their health. Headquartered in Berkeley, California, and founded in 2009, NICA has involved high-school–age kids in racing mountain bikes, with 19 leagues across the country in 18 states.

The organization has also taken on an environmental mission, teaming up with REI and the International Mountain Biking Association to form the Teen Trail Corps initiative, teaching riders to respect other trail users and help maintain trails.

Ragland has competed in several mountain bike stage races, from the BC Bike Race in British Columbia, billed as “Your Ultimate Singletrack Experience,” to the Breck Epic in Breckenridge, Colorado, six days of riding 35- to 50-mile loops in the mountains beginning and ending within a mile of downtown Breckenridge.

Her claim to fame, she says, is the Leadville 100 in Leadville, Colorado, which she has done four times, despite the fact that it is billed as being created for “only the most determined athletes.” The course involves 100 miles of high-altitude riding in the Colorado Rockies, starting at more than 10,000 feet and climbing to more than 12,000 feet.

Ragland, who is featured in a 2010 documentary about the Leadville 100 called Racing Across the Sky, likes to say she has raced with Lance Armstrong (before his fall from grace).

“I passed him when he was going down the hill and I was still going up,” Ragland said. “He was 20 miles ahead of me.”

She has achieved all of this despite suffering from multiple sclerosis for nearly her entire life.

“I’ve had the best time racing,” Ragland said. “I’ve gone from being really, really fast to now, when to finish is to win.”

Don’t worry, be happy

Ragland’s love affair with bicycles began at a young age. She got her first bike at eight.

“Before that, I rode my brother’s bike,” she said. “Don’t mention that. He would probably beat me up.”

Ragland has a deceptively simple approach to life with multiple sclerosis, which began so many years ago when her parents accentuated the positive even when they were faced with a 10-year-old daughter displaying extremely distressing physical symptoms no one could diagnose.

“Life in general is so much more enjoyable when you’re happy,” Ragland said. “How can you not be happy if you are on a two-wheeler? I believe in the power of positive thinking and I believe in myself every day. Every day I find a way to be happy.”

Ragland said she rides from nine to 15 hours each week, riding six days some weeks. Where does she like to ride?

“On the earth, anywhere,” she answers with a laugh. “For real, I don’t care. I have a minivan with no seats in back. I call it my garage.”

Ragland usually has at least two, if not three, bikes in the back of her seatless minivan, both road and mountain bikes.

“Which bike I’ll ride depends on where I am,” she said. “I don’t care how fast. I’m not at all about, ‘I averaged this speed today.’ I got out, got to pedal my bike, and I saw a bluebird. I saw dragonflies. I saw cows and horses, I saw garbage and trash, I saw people smoking. All of these I’m observing.”

Any country will do

Despite her Zen approach to cycling when she’s not racing or representing Liv, Ragland has never done a proper overnight bike tour. But it’s on her bucket list.

“I want to travel a country, I don’t care where,” she said. “I’m going to make it happen. That’s my motto. I find a way, whether by myself or have people meet me. It intrigues me so much. Think of all the people I haven’t met. I probably haven’t met my best friend yet.”

Maybe not, but Ragland certainly has some pretty good friends already. One of them invited Ragland to accompany her to this year’s Tour de France. Ragland said she navigated around France “like a pro.”

She took the trip even though she is a local mountain bike skills instructor for NICA and gives a lot of clinics in the summer. Ragland already had a “full plate.”

“This girl calls me up two weeks before departing for France and says, ‘I want to take somebody and I can’t think of anybody more deserving than you,’” Ragland remembered. “I said, ‘I need 24 hours.’ I juggled a whole lot of stuff to make it happen.”

The trip to France was “one of the coolest things” Ragland had ever done, she said, describing the country as “super bike friendly.”

She has many friends across the country from past races.

“We try to hook up every summer,” Ragland said. “If we don’t do an event together, we try to be in a location to support each other while one is doing an event and another is waiting to do another event. We stay in contact. It’s my family. It’s my life.”

In charge

When Ragland was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 37 years ago, there were no therapies of any kind for the disease. There were no drugs. Today, she said, there are 13 or 14 therapies out there. None of them reverses the disease, but therapy can slow its progress.

Ragland started on a medication called Copaxone in 2005. Along with diet and exercise, the medicine has been “the perfect recipe” to combat her MS, she said. She injects 40 milligrams of Copaxone three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so she can have the weekend off.
Her advice for anyone facing a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis is to “be your own advocate.”

“I just encourage everybody to do their homework on it,” she said. 

Despite the strides she has made against her disease, Ragland still suffers bouts of numbness, complications with her vision, and fatigue, especially in the heat, which is the enemy of anyone dealing with multiple sclerosis.

“Some days I’m really exhausted,” Ragland said. “The heat plays a hard role. Heat is super hard for me, and of course I live in the South, with its heat and humidity.”

Sometimes Ragland has particular issues with her right leg.

“I have what I call an ‘Elvis leg,’” she said. “It wiggles and flops. I don’t have control walking across the street. It comes and goes. It’s odd.” Despite the challenges of her disease, Ragland has maintained the positive outlook her parents first instilled in her when she was a child dealing with unexplained maladies.

Ragland believes that her mother, who died 15 years ago, would be proud of how far she has come and how she has never let multiple sclerosis define her life.

“I have the bull by the horns, I’m in charge, I’m winning this race,” Ragland said. “I intend to ride my bike until I cannot, and I hope that will be the rest of my life.”

The post Grace and the Great Divide appeared first on Adventure Cycling Association.

Every tour has those moments when all that could be said has been spoken, the laughs have been exhausted, the sights are redundant, and everyone settles into their own rhythm, their own thoughts. In this moment, we touch solitude in the midst of company and we permit ourselves to do what bike rides are great for — processing. It was at this time that I began to contemplate the irony of my current reality. Clad in spandex, I was riding a bicycle loaded with gear to allow me to sleep in the “bush,” as we call it back home where I’m from.

You see, as is typical with many immigrants from Africa to this country, the goal quite simply is: overachieve the American dream! The road to that is also almost always prescribed before setting foot on American soil: get an education, become a prestigious professional (preferably one of the Big Three, a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer), and earn a six-figure income. This makes life very difficult and confusing for someone who falls in love with a life in the outdoors and is forced to contemplate what making a living in the outdoor industry would look like. This usually involves disappointing people, accepting the cost, and embracing the many blessings (and curses) that come from answering the call of the wild. This is further compounded by the shortage of minorities, especially immigrants, in the outdoors.

According to the American Community Survey, in 2016 there were approximately 348,000 Nigerian immigrants living in the U.S., making it the top birthplace among African immigrants. Also, 60 percent of Nigerian immigrants have at least a bachelor’s degree. I happen to fall into both those groups (I have a BS in nuclear medical technology and an MBA). Today, I consider myself an avid outdoorsman: I’m a skier (member of National Ski Patrol), a cyclist (racer and tour leader for Adventure Cycling and REI), backpacker, and photographer. I have managed to transition from a place where the temperature never dipped below 75°F to slaying some deep pow in the backcountry, from riding rickety buffalo bicycles to completing a 125-mile-long gran fondo with 14,000 feet of elevation gain.  

For the past 14 years, I have lived in the mountain town of Cumberland, on the western side of Maryland. We are a stone’s throw from West Virginia and a gem in the Appalachian range. I was accosted by the outdoors one fall day when the kaleidoscope of foliage forced me to pull my car over on the shoulder of I-68 where I marveled at the beauty of the rolling hills that unfolded to the horizon. Cumberland is also located at the end of the 184-mile C&O Canal and the start of the 154-mile Great Allegany Passage (GAP), trails a few friends and I ride on an annual pilgrimage to reacquaint ourselves with the jagged mountains and the Potomac River along which it snakes. Setting off from Cumberland, the goal was to get to Hancock, Maryland, 60 miles away.

Spring was in full swing, with the red buds so vibrant it felt like you could hear flowers popping out of tree stems by the minute. Being locals, this route, though familiar, presents a new face when traveled with loaded bikes and at a slower pace, which brings up a question: how do you get where you’re going without knowing where you’re from? In Nigeria, the race and equal rights conversation was totally alien to me and was something I had to learn after coming to the U.S. The first 18 years of my life were spent in a country where any encounter with a Caucasian was few and far between; practically everyone I saw looked and sounded like me. I can trace my lineage back 10 generations to Nkwerre, my native homeland in Imo state in southeast Nigeria, to the founder whose sons created the hamlet from which I hail. I have always been fully confident of my place in the world; however, in this new space where I find myself and my heart, I feel like I don’t quite belong. As we pedaled past farmhouses, unfurling fields, whispering springs, and running creeks, we were drawn to the beautiful locks that hold the history of life back when commerce flowed along the C&O Canal. What would life have been like back in those days for people who looked like me?

It has been rumored that many enslaved people walked across the Mason-Dixon Line, along the C&O Canal, and into freedom. There are parts of the C&O Canal and places in the town of Cumberland acknowledged for being a part of the Underground Railroad, on which hundreds of enslaved Africans escaped captivity. Was it possible that I was cycling along this same trail into a freedom of my own, freedom from the new type of slavery we all allow society to put us in? This was all so fresh when riding by Canal Place, once known as Shantytown, the location of the boatyards in the canal and site of the first documented lynching of a Black man in Maryland.

Love and Light

About midday, we dropped off the trail and into the wild and wonderful state of West Virginia for lunch. Thanks to the pandemic, our trip was powered by gas station concessions in the towns along the trail. At the only gas station by the only traffic light in Paw Paw, West Virginia, we settled for the less-than-stellar spread of stale hamburgers and a few bottles of brew while gazing upon the remains of a bygone American era, one forgotten by society. Men walk the streets, deep lines in their faces, their eyes filled with stories. I wonder, when weighed, how would these men be found: as successes or failures? Is there room for someone like me in outdoor spaces? What does success in these spaces look like?

The Paw Paw Tunnel is a highlight of the C&O and a point for deep reflection. Using over six million bricks, this approximately half-mile tunnel was hand-built by Irish, German, Dutch, and other immigrants. This must have been a place of immense diversity, a place where varying languages, beliefs, and philosophies were in close quarters. A riot broke out in 1837 between the Irish and everyone else (got to love the Irish). The good news is the job was completed and life carried on, as did we. Touching the bricks, we tried to connect to the lives of people who were trying to find their way and live the best life they could in a simpler time.  

For me, it took some time to see the nuances that exist within the American dream; our natural human desire for fellowship and community almost derailed my eventual foray into the outdoors. In an effort to boost diversity, the university I attended in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, heavily recruited international students, so by my sophomore year, on the campus there were little “colonies” of international communities in the school — the Nigerians, Indians, Chinese, etc. I could hang out with Nigerians all day, eat Nigerian food, watch Nigerian movies, and practically not assimilate into American culture. The lack of disposable income for most in Nigeria made recreational sports, though ubiquitous in American culture, something that was foreign to me growing up. After a certain age in Nigeria, riding a bicycle was mostly utilitarian and not something one did for fun, a sentiment that survived my voyage across the Atlantic. Comments about trying out things like kayaking, skiing, or bicycle trips were met with jest and ridicule. Even thousands of miles from home, collectively we never considered any non-mainstream definition of success, and riding a bicycle as a means of making a living would be considered such a squander of a golden opportunity that it warranted a public flogging.

All these thoughts flowed in and out of my mind as we traveled down the trail. Flanked by the stagnant, pollen-covered canal on the left and the flowing Potomac River on the right, it didn’t take much to feel like we had traveled back in time when a young George Washington recognized the potential of this waterway and the vision to do what had not yet been done: connect Will’s Creek to the Potomac, creating a waterway that led to the Pacific via the Ohio River valley. This was a place built on dreams and by people who dared greatly.

As a result of the pandemic, this section of the trail was largely vacant of humans. We spied a family of beavers busying away on the shore, a blue heron patiently awaiting lunch, a bald eagle riding the updrafts, and the smell of rain coming. Camp was at Hancock, Maryland, another small town being revitalized by the growing popularity of the C&O and the Western Maryland Rail Trail (WMRT). Both trails run side by side, and with the WMRT being paved, many people get off the C&O and onto the WMRT for some much-needed respite from the bumpiness of the towpath.

As we bedded down in our tents that night, I began to evaluate the level of fulfillment I was feeling at that moment. I permitted myself to ponder the sustainability of this state of mind: is this something one could make a living doing? Typically, millennials like myself have been labelled as lazy, entitled, or worse. I wondered why anyone would not want to do what they love for a living. The challenge is always how. A popular saying in Nigeria goes, “Johnny wan go heaven, but him no wan die.”

In my tent on that solemn rainy night, I came to accept that, like this trip, which is on many cyclists’ bucket lists, life is all about daring greatly. For many, adventure is at the front door, yet for many reasons we chose to not embark on it. In my case, abandoning a professional life built over a decade and half, endorsed by those closest to me and applauded by those who look up to me, was going to take a leap of faith.

We arrived at Smithsburg and took the return to visit Antietam National Battlefield. The undulating roads lined with split-rail fences restored to Civil War–era specs took us back to town, miles and miles of rolling terrain and grassy meadows, a hallowed ground that sings of sacrifice and freedom. We took all this in as we pedaled past monuments, churches, and walkers. This indeed is a gem of Appalachia, a worthy reminder of the cost of true freedom.

It’s another winter now, and the snow is late this year. The beautiful leaves that started all this are long gone off the trees, and we await the snow (preferably the fluffy potato chip–sized ones). I’m glad to report that I took the leap. We opened an outdoor adventure shop in Cumberland and found out that we are only the third African American–owned outdoor specialty retail shop in the country. It’s something we are very proud of. When all is said and done, “it” is all an adventure — life, death, joy, sadness, decisions, indecision, they all make up the undulations of this ride we call life. On two wheels, over three days, I believe I was able to find the strength to start to live the best life I want to live. So, for the season you find yourself in, love who you are, accept where you find yourself, and take a leap.

Motherland

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