Our Big Adventure: We’re going on a year-long family bike tour!

Posted by Reuben on June 6th, 2010 8 Comments

We’re doing it! In June, 2011 we will bike away from our home in Ontario, Canada on a year long, 20,000km journey meandering around North and Central America. Oh — and we be doing it as a family with our 2 toddlers, Eden and Harper!

Now why on earth would we choose to ride our bikes for a whole year, lugging over a hundred pounds of children, bikes and gear through all sorts of weather and over all types of terrain? Why don’t we just go go on a cruise or go to Disney World like a regular family? Well, for starters, we love our bikes, and we love slow travel. Bicycle touring allows us to experience the landscape and communities we pass through on a very personal level — in a way we’ve never been able to achieve traveling by any other method.

This type of travel also demands simplicity — on a self-supported bike tour, you only have what you can carry with you, and with surprising low daily costs, financial simplicity is possible as well. We know that living with less on the road will be a constant reminder that there are so many in this world who live on so little every day.

We’ve enjoyed bicycle travel for a few years now, both as a couple and a family. Before we had kids, we took a number of short trips together, but never made time for that epic cross-country ‘right of passage’ ride typical of so many cycle tourists. When our daughter Eden was born, we figured we would have to put any long-distance bicycle traveling plans on the back burner — at least until she went off to college, or we retired.

However, in the fall of 2008, when Eden was 16-months old, we got on our bikes again and took off our first week-long tour with a child. After that trip, we realized we didn’t have to conform to the cultural norm that seemed to be telling us we couldn’t adventure with our children. Eden loved bicycle touring as much as we did, and we really enjoyed the family experience. We could find ways for this type of travel right now — we didn’t have to wait until we retired — and we didn’t have to sacrifice our security, our children’s safety, or anyone’s comfort in order to do it!

Route20111 150x150 Our Big Adventure: Were going on a year long family bike tour!

Our rough route plan

An epic ride was calling our name once again — and just doing week-long trips wouldn’t satisfy the urge. Figuring out employment arrangements for only a few months of travel didn’t seem like it was worth it, so a summer-long ride didn’t fit well either. So we decided on a year-long journey. More than just an extended vacation, this length would demand a shift in our lifestyle. A shift towards simplicity, and with all the quality family-time we would share on the road — a move into even stronger relationships with our kids and each other.

So, read more about our plans, and journey with us over the next year as we put the pieces in place to make this adventure happen. The logistics are crazy! We’ll have to figure out what to do about our jobs and our finances on the road. We will need to think about how to raise our toddlers on bikes (who will be 4 years-old and 20-months-old at departure). We’ve already put a lot of though into our route, but there is so much about this adventure that will remain untested and unknown until we actually get out there on our bikes. We can’t wait!

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