When I was 24, I left New Zealand and cycled across the United States. I then moved to London, met Deb, and we spent 3 months cycling in France and Spain. When we came back to New Zealand, we cycled around the South Island. And… that was it. I had thought my life would involve travel and more cycle touring, but that was it as far as longer-term cycle touring went. Study, and a house and mortgage, and kids and a cough career and I'm about to turn 60 and I haven't travelled like that in nearly 30 years.
It's not that I regret it, and I wouldn't change where I am now, but it's so easy for the years to pass and to make excuses for why you're not doing what you once thought you would. And as you get older, you get scared - scared of what it might cost, scared of making such a big change, scared of mortgaging what you hope is a future for the present. Till you're about to turn 60 and wondering just where that 24 year old who cycled across America went.
There's a moment you reach when cycle touring, maybe two weeks into the trip, when you become fully immersed in the experience. Things outside of the trip fade away and you become focused on the simplicity of the weather, of where you'll sleep that night, of food and of how your body's feeling. I want that experience again, and I want the experience of a seemingly endless path stretching ahead of me that I can travel down.
When Deb suggested walking Te Araroa, I pinched myself. "Does she really want to do this?" "Is it a passing fancy?" For few years now, she's wanted to travel. Sell up, pack up, buy a van, travel somewhere and keep going. I've been too scared to seriously contemplate it. Walking Te Araroa seems a step towards something like that, or at least a break at a stage of life where it's needed.
I want to do this more than I realised, and I want to embrace the geeking out on gear and the getting my body in shape and all of the planning and things we'll need to arrange so I can have that experience again of just moving, carrying everything I need on my back. And I want to do it with Deb.