7,500km across North America

One quarter of a Guinness World Record later, it’s day 86, and I’m in Europe without my bike.

Hey folks,

So, I’ve been quiet with the emails. I have too many platforms. I’ve decided to put my YouTube uploads on hold because as time goes on, I’m finding myself way too time poor to record voiceovers and edit videos while on the road. I’m legit working every minute I’m not sleeping, and it’s not sustainable.

Last Sunday night I arrived in Montreal, Quebec, finishing my first leg of the round the world circumnavigation attempt. That’s 7,515km officially cycled almost non-stop (until Montreal I had five rest days, but most of them included 20-50km cycling around town and often hour long walks - but I can’t count any of that against my total). It’s just over a quarter of the attempt, which means I still need to do this another three times over, phew.

I’ve been posting on Instagram throughout the attempt and on my Youtube too, but I guess I’ll use this post to provide a roundup of the highlights of my North American continental crossing. You can look at the route on Komoot, but with huge caveats! I’m no expert on Canada and the USA, so don’t use my route to plan your tour. I made a lot of wrong calls, I climbed over downed trees on closed roads, I hiked on footpaths next to motorways, dropped off curbs, and went the wrong way down one way streets. I used the trans-Canada trail, the ACA (American cycling association), and the great American rail trail to plan most of the route, and that’s a good place to start.

So, I started in Vancouver, with an immediate mishap - my old iPad I had planned to use for video editing bricked on the way to the airport, and I made the wrong call to take it with me to Canada (I’d later have to send it back to New Zealand to get it warrantied - a huge pain as Canada doesn’t let you send things with lithium batteries internationally). My friend and emergency-north-america-contact Liz ended up taking on that challenge, the first of about four “oh god can you google this for me” calls I’d have to make with her. Having a person with a computer who can occasionally calmly look for things while you pedal furiously is great. I’ll admit I am a little jealous of folks with a proper support team.

Her last task was Thursday, when I realised my Wahoo had routed me to the wrong side of the Montreal airport, meaning I had to panic-pedal another 14km out and around the airport to my flight. I called and said something along the lines of “omg I’m pedalling furiously can you find out where the people who sell bike boxes are in the airport so I can go straight there”.

The logistical help in my times of panic has been a lifesaver.

For a world circumnavigation attempt, you aren’t just pedalling. Unless you’re very sponsored or very independently wealthy, you’re also your own:

• Nutritionist

• Photographer / videographer

• Social media team

• Coach

• Campsite and accommodation finder

• Route planner

• Researcher of local customs, language, and road rules

And in my case, witness gatherer for the Guinness world record witness book as well.

Pretty much all of these things can occupy you almost all day if you’re not careful, so I’m becoming a time management obsessive.

While Guinness makes no differentiation between supported and unsupported records, they do at least appreciate that people without support teams have a hard time obtaining “an unbroken line of witnesses” - and in my case, this is particularly true, due to the politically spicy nature of “first openly transgender person to circumnavigate the world by bicycle”. It can be challenging in places where transphobia is common (rural America).

So, my posts of late have started circling around the topic of my struggle for time management while cycling around the world. I understand why a lot of people have world cycle tours that blow out from one year to two, three, sometimes five years. It’s hard to pedal at brevet pace, see stuff, meet people, do admin, and get enough food and sleep.

The amount of money you’re willing to spend makes it exponentially harder on top of that - as many bikepacking racers will know, “self supported” can be a bit of a misnomer as if you actually look at the price of things, you’re gonna be spending a lot more time doing research than folks who are willing and/or able to rock up anywhere with the credit card. I try to learn my preferred cheap grocery staples for each country to help avoid this. Accomodation and camping can be a bit more tricky, especially in the USA, where private property is king and I make sure to be very certain that I can find some public land before I camp.

My life for the past 85 days has revolved non-stop around navigating, making decisions and answering messages. It’s easy to see how you could end up with a whole team of people supporting you - where I’d usually be averaging 150km a day back home my days now range wildly but lean more towards 100km/day. The 100km feels as tiring as a normal 150km once I started entering month three. The pedaling’s the easy part - it’s not having stop time to do the never-ending pile of admin that I’m finding to be the biggest challenge of a world record circumnavigation.

I pedalled out from Vancouver on June 6th, 2024 and arrived in Montreal on August 25th. After some freezing cold mountain passes in British Columbia, I dropped into the USA at Eureka, Montana (a border crossing I chose as it’s part of the Tour Divide, and therefore would offer me a smoother entry as the border guards would already be dealing with other bikepackers on the regular). From there, I followed pieces of the Tour Divide / GDMBR route towards Wyoming, then got on the Trans-am, America’s cross-continent road cycling route. In the Rockies I hung out with the back of the Tour Divide pack, our favourite topic of conversation usually being the grizzly bears.

The Trans-am was a bit boring, so I rerouted again, tempted by the idea I could cycle over North America’s highest road in Rocky Mountains National park. In the way into Colorado, I stopped to camp in the town of Walden, expecting not to see anyone there. Rolling up to the park there were already bikepackers there, and soon I was hanging out with Queer plus bikes, North Colorado’s queer cycling club.

This would be par for the course in Colorado where I’d end up hanging out with loads of queer cycling friends. But it didn’t last long, the states of the rural Midwest with their long, flat stretches of trump flags and private property signs were waiting for me. The occasional city like Omaha, Chicago and Pittsburgh was a welcome reprieve.

In Iowa City, things took a turn for the worse when a car pulled out in front of me and put me in the hospital. I was lucky to get away with five stitches in my face, but the bike’s rare 1-inch threadless 650b disc fork was totalled.

What would follow was an epic scramble to plan how I’d make the bike roadworthy as quickly as possible. 1-inch threadless disc forks aren’t common, and I couldn’t afford to wait around. I ended up sourcing a Stridsland Barnacle fork from Blue Lug in Japan, sent ahead to Comrade Cycles in Chicago, while I would be pedalling the 500km from Iowa City to Chicago on the fork that the bike shop bent back as much as possible. With the other, smaller jobs on the bike, I’d end up pedalling across 9 state borders before I finally had a fixed bike again.

The shop in Iowa City was busy due to RAGBRAI, so I ended up at the Bike Library fixing my own bike the day after the crash. The bike library is my favourite - a real community space, and they really helped me get back on my feet after the crash.

After Pittsburgh, I decided to reroute and enter Canada early. Originally I was set to ride to Montreal via New York, but I was done with the USA’s rail trails and always having to be on my guard about what I had to say in the more right wing parts of America, in an election year.

From Toronto I rode on to Ottawa, then north around the rural areas to the west of Montreal, and down Le petit train du Nord - “the little train of the north”, a super popular cycleway for Rapha roadies and ebikers.

My last destination on the continent is Montreal, as the furthest international airport that would get me a direct flight on to Europe. And a place with lots of nice friends! I stayed with my friend Julia, from Montreal bike polo, and spent a few days there, though unfortunately most of my city stops end up being dominated by needing to go to a bike shop to fix something, rather than sightseeing.

finally, I went to the airport, which leads me to the clusterfuck than has been my transit leg:

• Prepped the bike for flying (deep clean etc)

• My bike computer sent me to the wrong side of the airport (14km away) and made me late

• My bike computer then failed to save the ride

• I had to unpack and repack my bike for security

• I lost my keys

• Flight got delayed

• I went out through customs and back through security to get my keys

• Flight got cancelled

• Got rebooked and sent to a hotel at 2am

• Hung out in Montreal Airport all day waiting for the air Portugal ticket office to open

• Got on the plane at 10pm, day two

• Land in Portugal at 11am local time

• No bike at 12:45pm

• Luggage office says to wait longer

• No bike at 1:45pm

• Luggage office says to wait longer

• No bike at 2pm

• Luggage office says I’m now allowed to wait in the luggage queue

• Bike, as suspected, is still in Canada, they take my details and say they’ll call me and there’s no timeline

• I try to calm down, go through customs and look for a different person to ask to try expedite the bike

• They say it should be tomorrow

• Day 4, wake up and log into the luggage tracker. The bike isn’t arriving today. Because it was air Canada’s fault, it seems like they decided to put it on the next Air Canada plane, on Sunday evening.

• Day 5, I hope, I wake up, have a long breakfast, and hear at 10am that the bike is here.

And here we are, at the end of day 86. It’s almost midnight. Hanging out with my new pals Jo and Mono in Vancouver on days 1-3 and preparing for British Columbia seems so long ago.

If you want to stay updated more often than almost never, head over to my instagram.

Ka kite ano

Robbie