Doing Things

Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.

There are easier ways to get from Switzerland to New Zealand than by bike. There is a saying that goes:
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“Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.”

But what is the ‘done’ without the ‘do’? The ‘do’ is the adventure. The place where challenges, memories and experiences create a story that will inspire and entertain. A story that will be told time and time again, long after it is all ‘done’.

Perhaps you could put cycling 18,000 km through 28 countries into a similar, albeit less extreme, category as a float over the world’s biggest waterfall. A test of our physiology and our minds. For Becs, Sarah and I, the ‘doing’ is what excites us the most.

All of us have different motivations for signing up for the trip. Becs didn’t want to pay for her airfare back to New Zealand, I considered 130km a day as a nice way to stay fit, and Sarah wanted to challenge herself to long periods without talking. Uniting us is our friendship, love for adventure and the challenge of pushing our limits. A desire to see the world and ‘do’, in a slightly less conventional way than many would consider.

Where most people have art hanging on their living room wall, Becs has a laminated world map, stuck to the wall with blue tack and still containing dried wads of toilet paper left over from a recent game of ‘where in the world shall we go for holidays’. This map has been her inspiration for many adventures. We stood in front of it, looked at our route and thought - well that’s achievable! Never mind the 1:50,000,000 scale and no concept of what a road or mountain pass looked like in Kyrgyzstan. Perhaps without this naivety, we wouldn’t be packing our lives in to four bags and pedalling off into what to us, is a completely unknown abyss. This is what it is all about though, right? The unknown.

We can’t wait to document our travels, and share our story, the triumphs and tribulations and all the boring bits in between. This trip will no doubt be the biggest adventure any of us have embarked on.  There are certain to be ‘I need to pinch myself’ moments, ‘I want to punch myself’ moments, ‘I want to punch you’ moments and a fair amount of banter in between.

Our website and Instagram is going to be the place to track our 'long way home'. A place to keep you updated while we are doing what we do.
 
#thelongwayhome.nz
​#doingthings