Reasons 5099 - 5266

Multiple times a day since we’ve left we get asked why we’re doing this tour. People see us with our loaded bikes and they know that we’re not from town and that we must be travelling a long way. We’re easy to pick out from the local cyclists.

Having been asked hundreds of times, Collin and I have developed a bit of a routine of how to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing. If the person asking only seems casually interested we might say we’re touring simply for adventure. It’s true that’s part of it for us.

If we encounter someone on the inquisitive side that asks lots of questions and then comes out with ‘Why?’ we’ll share the perspective I’ve shared with many of you at home and along the way: Both Collin and I feel called to love the people around us, because of the relationships we have with Jesus Christ. Another way to put it would be to say we both feel the need to love our neighbours. We’re convinced that one of the best ways to love your neighbour is to ask them for help. When you ask someone for help you are likely to get the best they have to offer, because most of us unwittingly do what we’re best at. It has been our privilege to ask for and receive help from others throughout our journey. It has also been our honour to point out the good in people when they’ve helped us. I don’t think most of us receive enough praise for the really good things in us. I believe Collin and I have done a great job at offering what everybody needs, encouragement.

At times it’s become a bit wearisome being asked why so often. It’s become a running joke that the reason we give should be more dramatic, like Collin is dying and this tour is his last wish. We’ve actually told a handful of people that, waited for their reaction and then told them the truth. The dying wish story definitely is a lot more dramatic, but people tend to like the truth a lot more.

Collin and I talked through our reasons for wanting to go before we left. There have been moments for both of us where we may have lost sight of some of those objectives momentarily, but we’ve never strayed too far.

For Collin, the tour has been about different kinds of adventure. He has a desire to challenge the norm in many ways. The tour has been one expression of his desire to do something different. Another theme that Collin has had in mind since the beginning was his desire to meet new and varying kinds of people. We’ve certainly been able to experience encounters with people from all across all sorts of spectrums. A constant adventure that Collin has not taken for granted is all the vast types of terrain and scenery we’ve been able to take in. Cycling forces you to absorb your surroundings in small, intellectually and spiritually digestible chunks. You can only see as much as you’re willing to ride in one day. That fact has been to our benefit, and it’s one that Collin is particularly grateful for.

In order for me to explain my more personally significant reasons for the tour I have to reach into the past. Nearly ten years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with this crazy idea of a bicycle tour across Canada. I started training and planning for the tour. Soon after, I pursued a girl I probably shouldn’t have and ended up working at a summer camp instead of cycling. Over the years, I always kind of regretted not having gone, but the timing never seemed right for me to try again as I had other priorities.

A couple years ago, the idea of the tour started coming up when I would talk to God. After all those years of regret it was nearly miraculous for me to believe in myself enough to revisit the dream. It took a whole lot to overcome the fear to take this tour on. And, with time, the dream even grew into a tour of North America.

I believe that part of the role of any father is to help shape the character of his children by acknowledging their growth and accomplishment. Whether or not one senses it, I believe that everyone experiences a need for this acknowledgment. My relationship with my father has been strained my whole life. I’ve missed out on a lot of that kind of useful acknowledgment. I’ve had to figure out what kind of man I am mostly on my own. I’ve hoped that if I could accomplish something truly fantastic and grand on the scale of human achievement that I could confidently claim it as my own apart from the missing acknowledgment of my father. I’ve wanted to be able to have proof that I can accomplish something great. I’m confident I have that proof now.

A number of years ago, I went through a few years of clinical depression. Most of you that have met me since then might have a hard time believing I could be as down as I was. It was easily the worst time of my life. I went to therapy and was on some strong medication. One of the side effects of the medication was weight gain. In a couple years I gained nearly one hundred pounds. As such, one of my reasons for this tour has been to lose some of that extra weight. I don’t typically get overly critical of my own physical appearance. I’m comfortable with who I am and how I look, but I know my extra weight isn’t healthy. I think for me to lose a significant amount of the weight I gained during that awful period of depression is a way for me to claim my own victory over it. I’m not depressed anymore. I rarely struggle with the tendency. And, now, I’m proud to say that I’ve lost thirty pounds and am well on my way to putting that period fully behind me.

A lot of the time I try to think of myself as a generally kind and thoughtful person. I know I definitely have my own moments of being an asshole like most people, but I sure try to honour others around me. Over the years, something that God has brought up is the idea that the best things that he is able to accomplish in me for others are things that I have no idea about. Essentially, what he means is this: I might have moments of giving thoughtful words or kind actions, but what he uses in my life are the things that I don’t even associate with anyone else. When I just try hard to live my life well with purpose it does something to those around me. It motivates them to do the same. Being aware of this definitely shaped the tour for me. It’s a big part of why I’ve been so motivated to keep up with this blog. I’ve wanted others to participate in the tour in whatever way they can that they might be inspired to live their own dreams. I definitely hope this to have happened in your life, another reader, or anyone we’ve met along the way.

Collin and I set our sights pretty high in claiming Twenty Thousand Reasons. We wanted the whole, huge loop. There are so many amazing things to see and people to meet. I’m quite convinced that travelling by bicycle is one of the best ways to get around, and possibly the easiest way to meet new people. You get to see so much more by bike. It’s ridiculous.

Cycle-touring is a tough business to carry on for long. In all the reading I did of others’ blogs and books before we left the one thing that was consistent was the idea that long-distance cycle-touring is about mind over matter. You have to be able to will yourself to get on your bike and just keep going for miles and miles. At points I’ve compared it to a full-time job. Imagine cycling all day, everyday, forty hours a week.

More than it being a job, it’s a lifestyle. We’re nomads. We’re homeless. We’re wanderers. We end up at the same hangouts as hitchhikers and vagrants. And, we have met some of the most interesting, vibrant, inspirational, generous and lovely people of my whole life. People that have taken us in and shared from their hearts, minds and passions in addition to their pantries. I’m thankful far beyond words, and can honestly say that there are little pieces of so many of you that I want to adopt as part of my own character.

While we’ve met some truly awe-inspiring folks and have been given amazing opportunities to live well, Collin and I have decided to cut our tour short and go home. We realize that this might be a huge disappointment to those of you that have been wholeheartedly rooting for us. We’re disappointed too. There was a whole lot more to see and do. So many more good people to meet and be inspired by. But, we are completely satisfied with having accomplished our original goals.

Allow me to expand on why we’re cutting things short. Before we left, I did a whole lot of research into the climate of many of the places we were certain we would journey through, but our tentative route was far too long for me to be able to research everything, everywhere.

The Motel 6 parking lot in Kingman, Arizona. Yes, that's snow on the truck behind our bicycles.

Since we left, we’ve developed a routine of planning the specific details of where we’ll go and where we’ll stay as far as two weeks in advance. It would be difficult for us to say precisely where we’ll be and when beyond that amount of time. Our system worked well for us until we left Las Vegas, Nevada. Our planned route was to take us near the Hoover Dam, to Kingman, Arizona. We were to head East to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and then South through Flagstaff to Phoenix. We were hoping to make it to Phoenix for Christmas. Over the past seventy-two hours or so a major storm system made it’s way North into Arizona, New Mexico and most of Western Texas. The Grand Canyon, Flagstaff and more than half of Arizona have received over a foot of snow. Our route through Arizona has been completely kiboshed.

You might be wondering why we don’t just go another way. Well, we could continue on. The towns and cities are spread out wide enough that we would be camping more than half the time from here in Kingman, Arizona all the way to Louisiana. That’s like 1,500 miles. The temperature here is around freezing at night and pretty cold during the day, especially when you’re moving on a bike. I’m reasonably tough. Last Winter, I cycled the whole season at home in temperatures as low as minus forty degrees Celsius. But, that was for a half hour at a time, to and from work. I always had somewhere warm and dry to be at the end of the day. Both, Collin and I are physically capable of continuing on, but the joy of the experience would be completely absent. We would just be suffering in order to reach an end line.

Using the National Weather Service, we’ve researched our entire tentative route from Arizona to Florida. We’ve found that in order to bypass the truly unbearable weather we would have to skip ahead at least as far as the middle of Texas. Unfortunately, this would put us more than a month ahead of schedule and place us in even more awful weather once we headed North along the East coast.

So, now we’re headed home. Today, we went to a local bike shop to get some big, cardboard boxes for packing our bikes. On Tuesday, December 18^th we’ll take a rental car from Kingman to Las Vegas. From there we’ll fly through Vancouver and be home in Edmonton that night.

Collin and I would like to ask all of you for your encouragement and support. We’re extremely grateful for all we’ve experienced and all whom we have met. Considering the disappointment of not being able to fully finish the tour it would do our hearts some much needed good to hear any kind thoughts or prayers you might have for us. We are choosing to put aside this disappointment by celebrating our accomplishment instead.

Thank you for sharing in our story.

Please contact us via email: njkwinter@gmail.com and collin.gelderman@gmail.com