EPISODE 53
The Continental Cyclist
At age 70, most people are perfectly happy to take up golf or knitting. Not Canadian Tom Perlmutter. After accidentally agreeing to a weeklong cycling trip in Patagonia because his friend essentially dared him, Tom found himself hopelessly addicted to long-distance bicycle touring. In this episode, hear how Tom went from having zero cycling experience to conquering entire continents on supported tours, including riding the length of Africa and crossing Asia along the Silk Road. Listen as he battles unyielding gravel in Namibia, rogue RVs in Arizona, and the dizzying altitudes of the Altiplano and the Pamir Highway. Bouncing back from any mishap, Tom is rewarded with memorable connections and discovering the meditative beauty of seeing the world from the saddle. If you think you’re past the perfect age to start an epic two-wheeled adventure, this episode is your ultimate inspiration!
Episode Transcript
Tom: I tell you what happens Gabriel. Frankly, it’s an addiction. It becomes something you become addicted to. I mean, literally, it’s not kind of a metaphorical use of the world. I think there’s an actual addiction.
Gabriel: You just heard Tom Perlmutter, who had just happened to become addicted to bicycle touring at the age of statistics, only 12 percent of the recommended 150 minutes of weekly moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. In comparison, Tom has spent somewhere between two and three of the past seven years riding a bicycle for long hours each day, mostly on treks organized by TDA Global Cycling. And that doesn’t include all the time on his indoor trainer during the long Toronto winters. Beginning with zero knowledge, Tom has now overcome a long list of hardships, ranging from suffering multiple accidents requiring stitches to briefly falling asleep at the handlebar. Prior to discovering touring, Tom spent many years as an independent producer working on television documentaries that focused primarily on social issues and history. As was evident during our captivating interview, Tom still looks at the world through this lens, beautifully describing the many wondrous sights on every continent he has cycled across.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello bicycle touring enthusiasts. Welcome to another episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. Like bikepacking and bicycle touring itself, this podcast is about connections. Therefore, I’m always excited to receive referrals from past guests. This time, I was introduced to today’s guest by Henry Gold from the Tour d’Afrique episode. Henry wrote, “His name is Tom Perlmutter and he is another accidental cyclist. I believe he started cycling at the age of 70 after a friend suggested he come on a short cycling tour and has now cycled several long tours: top to bottom of North and South America, Africa, across Asia and across the USA. He is now 76 years old.” Wow, there is a lot to dig into based on just those few sentences. I am fortunate enough to have Tom Perlmutter with me today. I’m saying that in the German way, actually, your last name. How do you say it in the English way?
Tom: In the English way, it would be Perlmutter and in French, it becomes Perlmutter. So it depends on which language. And I personally am originally Hungarian.
Gabriel: You’re kidding.
Tom: No. Magyar vagyok.
Gabriel: My mother was Hungarian.
Tom: Ah.
Gabriel: Born in Budapest.
Tom: Ok.
Gabriel: 1944. It’s not a Hungarian name by any means, though.
Tom: It’s part of the legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire because I come from a Jewish family. And in the late 18th century, the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II decreed that everyone had to have a surname, which Jewish families did not. They were so-and-so the son of so-and-so, and so on and so forth. And because it was the Austrian edict, it tended to involve people taking Germanic surnames. So Perlmutter, just to go quickly off track, normally been related to place names. So there are in my family lots of Danzigers, for example, people originally from Danzig, or Gdańsk now. Perlmutter, as you know, means mother of pearl. And I imagine would have been related to peddlers selling small items made of mother of pearl; you know, combs, buttons, things of that sort.
Gabriel: Wow. Okay, so you’re fine with me saying it more in the German way?
Tom: Yes, absolutely.
Gabriel: Okay, well, very good. Well, then I’ll just say, Tom Perlmutter, thank you for being a guest on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Tom: Delighted to be here and to talk to you. I think the stories you tell have been fascinating.
Gabriel: Thank you very much. You were kind enough to send me a link to your Substack page earlier. And of course, I will put the link in the show notes. I was amazed to find out that you literally have a post from a few years ago that is called, “The Accidental Cyclist: How I Fell into My Cycling Addiction.” In that post, you describe a specific moment. You write, “I didn’t know it then, but I had begun a new life, a life on two wheels that was a life in another key and in another dimension.” That seems like a pretty good place to start. So can you just describe the things that were running through your mind pertaining to this Accidental Cyclist post?
Tom: Yes, it happened this way. I have a friend, he was going through some domestic issues. This is now seven years ago. He was not a cyclist as such. He did spin classes and one day he calls me and he says, “I’ve signed up for a bicycle trip in Patagonia being led by my spin cycling teacher.” And I told him, “Just because you’re having problems at home, you don’t have to run off to South America. And you’re crazy. You don’t do cycling. You haven’t been out on these roads.” He said, “Tom, you’re coming with me.” I said, “No way!” He sent me the profile of the trip. It was about a week of cycling. I called him back and I said, “This is nuts. This is absolutely nuts. You’re going to be doing 60 kilometers a day. Are you crazy? And did you see the climbs? No way!” Anyways, a few months later, I found myself in Buenos Aires on the way to Bariloche, joining this tour and had no idea how I fell for this. And the first day, we’re on ferries and we get off one ferry and I don’t see any road. And I said, “Where are we going? There’s nothing here.” And the tour leader points up the steep mountain pass with gravel and dirt and it’s just a narrow track. And he said, “That’s where we’re going.” I said, “Are you crazy?” Anyhow, I keep thinking, oh my God, how do I get out of this? How do I get back home? This was the stupidest thing. Half riding, half pushing the bike up that track, made it to the top, sat down. We had a break. We had some lunch and then we headed off again. I’m still very nervous about everything. And out of the blue, as I was going downhill, something utterly unexpected and amazing happened. It was one of those lights shining out of the heavens, Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment when things literally, physically, emotionally, mentally, something kind of alters in your whole state of being. And that’s what biking did to me. I suddenly felt freer than I have ever felt in my life. It was like this enormous load had lifted off my shoulders and I had vaulted into a whole other way of being. And at that moment, everything changed for me. I had a wonderful week. And one of the people on the trip was a cyclist, a long-term cyclist. He was around 50. And he was talking about doing the Tour d’Afrique that Henry had launched. I was just mesmerized by this story and I said, “How old were you when you did it?” He said, “Oh, I was and I said, “Man, I missed my chance way too old to do any of this kind of thing.” But as it turned out, six months later, I was in Cairo on the start of this expedition. And that was my first thing. So I went from doing a week of cycling and not knowing what I was doing, having no idea about anything, to landing in Cairo at the start of a four-month, across-the-continent adventure.
Gabriel: Right. So this was through Henry’s TDA Cycling organization. That would have been a few years ago that you did this.
Tom: This was 2019.
Gabriel: In able to go the entire way from Cairo to Cape Town?
Tom: It was. I was lucky in that sense, because it was the year before COVID hit. And I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, to give you the sense of my ignorance, I didn’t know anything about bike shorts, for example. I didn’t know about gear. I didn’t know anything at all. I remember going into a bike store and they had advised me something about buying a chamois. What is this stuff? I have not a clue about any of this.
Gabriel: How did you show up to this one week in Patagonia? Were you just wearing some cargo shorts and a baseball cap?
Tom: Essentially, yes. That’s exactly what I was doing. They provided the bikes, so I didn’t have to worry about that. So it was like, oh, ok, so I here I am. After I came back from that and had signed up for the Africa trip. You had to bring your own bike and I did a bit of research and I went out and I said, oh, I need to get a touring bike. So I got myself a Salsa Marrakesh. It was about $1,000. I thought, I’m spending way too much money. I got some bike shorts. I was trying to say, “Well, what kind of shoes do I need?” And bike store said, “Well, you need to get your clipless.” I said, “What is clipless?” “Well, clipless, you actually clip in.” I said, “What do you mean, you clip in it?” Anyways, I didn’t know. And they said, “Don’t worry. You’ll do this. You’ll get these kind of pedals. You’ll fall off a couple of times and then you won’t fall off.” I said, “I don’t know if I want to do that.” Anyways, I went that route and that’s exactly what happened. The first couple of times, you know, I’d come to a stop and I didn’t have that instinct to immediately unclip and then just fell over.
Gabriel: Right.
Tom: I really learned gradually by doing it on the trip.
Gabriel: With clipless, just as an aside, I think it’s kind of one of those things with odd naming conventions because the old pedals had these, these, they were clips or like…
Tom: Cages, they had.
Gabriel: Cages. Yeah. But they were also considered clips. So I think clipless referred to not having those cages and then it’s like, well, what do you do? You exactly “clip in” because you go click and now you’re in. So it’s a very odd naming convention and you’re not alone in your confusion. Yeah. That’s a rite of passage, I would say, having to fall over when you, you don’t have the instinct.
Tom: Yeah.
Gabriel: One final question about the Patagonia trip. How did your friend experience it and did he go on to further tours or did he just return to his spin class?
Tom: Well, I’ll tell you, we had one day off during this trip. We were at this pensión, it was by a river and they had organized their raft trip. So when we came back, the only thing he talked about, about that trip, was the wonderful day he had on the raft. And that was the extent and he hasn’t gone on any other tours since then.
Gabriel: Classic. I thought that might have been the case.
Tom: Of that group, I was certainly the only one who went on to do the kind of long-distance touring.
Gabriel: Let’s go back to now the tour d’Afrique.
Tom: I arrived in Cairo and I had arranged with TDA and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know if I’ll last a day or two days. Will you take post-dated checks?” Because they do things in sections. And I said, “If I actually manage a section, cash the next one.” Kudos to them. They agreed to this. Doing this trip, I’m 70 years old and one of the things that you have to do is sign all these warranties because you’ve passed a certain age limit. And suddenly I thought, like when you’re a kid, there’s certain things you can’t do because you’re… okay. And suddenly it’s like that again. It’s reversed now because you’ve got the sign saying, okay, you can’t do this. You can’t do that because you’re too old. Oh, geez.
Gabriel: So I assume you were the oldest participant that year.
Tom: I think I was. I can’t exactly remember. The people who go on these tours tend to be older. They’re somewhat costly, so you have to have both time to spend four to six months on these tours and money.
Gabriel: So it is an older demographic. I guess you’re right. Four months is a long time to be off.
Tom: And most of them, I think nearly all of them, were experienced cyclists, been doing it for a long time.
Gabriel: Yeah. But you didn’t feel intimidated. You just took it one segment at a time or what was your approach?
Tom: It wasn’t even one segment at a time. It was, I’d say one kilometer at a time. It was like…
Gabriel: One kilometer at a time. That’s good.
Tom: That’s all I can do is say, okay, I’ll just push the pedal and see where I get to. But that’s the thing about a longer trip. If you’re going for two, three weeks, you can see the end. It’s there. It’s clear. It’s tangible. You know, you’ve got this kind of goal that’s very much within reach. Beyond a couple of months, you cannot think about the endpoint. All you can think about is, you play little tricks with your mind. Oh, I’m going to get to that next tree or that curve. Oh, and then I’ll go to the next one and so on. There’s so many things are happening on a longer trip. And this became more and more evident in different kinds of ways. I mean, it’s partly because of the length of time and because you’re in the saddle each day for hours at a time. It does have a meditative quality. It has that kind of zen feeling to it, where you can kind of disconnect, so all that matters is a particular moment in time and your relationship to that moment. Because you’re attuned to creaks of the bike, the sounds of your body, the road, whatever is going on. It just takes you into a different realm.
Gabriel: You are maybe the third or fourth guest who’s done the Tour d’Afrique. Henry was the one who started it. So he did it, obviously. Previous guests David Houghton and also Mike Vermeulen did it. They all talk about some hardships that are encountered along the way. You can’t possibly bike for four months, in Africa, under these conditions, and not have some challenges. So while you were meditating, there was also some times I’m going to assume you had to be more active. So what were the biggest challenges you faced on that ride?
Tom: One of the challenges which I had to get used to and it had not to do bikes, but it had to do with the fact you’re camping and you’re doing wild camping all along the way. It’s not ending up in a nice little hotel, except occasionally on a rest day you might. And I wasn’t used to camping. Particularly hard was getting up at 4:00 or 4:30, because I was slow at taking down my tent, packing things out, doing all of that, and also getting used to very primitive conditions in a desert or in some barren land or you’re in a soccer field at a remote village school. Getting used to figuring out different ways of washing yourself, using your water bottles for example. Adapting to all of that took me some time. In terms of the biking, there were days when you could feel really good. Other days, you just felt shitty and you didn’t know how you would get to your destination. I mean, I remember one day I just felt kind of worn out. I said, I’m going to have to stop. I’m going to have to figure something out. I made it to lunch. Everyone bikes at their own pace and I’m certainly at the back of the back, Not absolute last. Certainly slower than most of the riders. I arrive at lunch and think, that’s it. I can’t go on. I asked them to pick me up but I got a second wind and then suddenly I found myself doing the whole day and feeling really good so I could never predict how that would work for me. The toughest days were there was a weekend in Tanzania where it was all off-road. It was terrible, terrible roads and there was one day when there was going through deep sand. And remember, I’m a complete novice. I don’t know how to deal with these things. I have no idea and I didn’t know other people get off the bikes and they would just walk them out. And I thought that was a no-no, that you have to bike everything.
Gabriel: Okay.
Tom: There were a lot of things I just didn’t know. Then someone came on and said, “Let some air out of your tires.” And suddenly, oh, that makes a big difference. Lots of things like that and I felt very frustrated. I thought I was failing. I’m just not doing this well. What am I doing here? Then the really toughest part was Namibia. There was a week of the worst gravel roads ever and I was doing really well but there was one day and I knew from the start. I woke up, I wasn’t feeling so well and I knew my judgment was being a little impaired but I just said, you’re just going to go. At one point I have a fall. Okay, get up and keep going. Then I have another fall, but I happened to fall badly and my elbow hitting some rocks and I’m bleeding there about the roadside. I got picked up. There was a medic that’s part of the crew and he said, “Well, you need stitches.” I had the distinction that day, for that whole trip, of having the most stitches of anyone on the ride. I did carry on. I didn’t, in the end, stop me from getting to the finish line.
Gabriel: One of the things you hear about is also the bonds that develop with the other riders on the tour. You’re brought together from all parts of the world and after four months everybody knows each other very well. How was your experience with the others?
Tom: I did form close bonds. There was a guy who came from Quebec, from Montreal, and because I speak French, we became very close and we remained very much in touch. We’re good friends to this day.
Gabriel: And Tom, where in Canada do you live?
Tom: I now live in Toronto. I used to live in Montreal.
Gabriel: Okay, so you learned – I don’t know if you learned French there – but you definitely had a chance to practice your French in Montreal.
Tom: I did learn French. I went there for work and I made enormous efforts and I became, after a number of years, quite fluent.
Gabriel: That’s so funny that you’re in Toronto because, like I mentioned, there’s people from all over the world joining the tour and you happen to be in the same town where Henry Gold and TDA is headquartered.
Tom: Yeah, it ended up that way. In fact, Henry and I have certain kind of interesting connections. And I’ll just mention one of them. He was born in Slovakia. I was born in the northeast corner of Hungary and where we were born, it was actually just literally about 60 kilometres apart.
Gabriel: Oh, wow. Henry also has a Jewish background.
Tom: Yes, and both our mothers are survivors of the camps.
Gabriel: Yeah, that was a poignant moment in the episode with Henry. His mother went to Nairobi and met him in Nairobi. Unbelievable.
Tom: Yeah, there is a story I had about the Africa expedition because I had to leave it for a week in Addis Ababa and the reason was it was my mother’s 100th birthday.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Tom: And I had to go back home and helped celebrate. My mother was just doing really well. This is how intense the cycling had become. In that week that I was back, every night, literally, I dreamt I was in Africa on my bike. So on my way back, because I really joined the group in Nairobi, I had a choice of flights and I decided to go a little earlier than I had even anticipated. I was on an Air Ethiopia flight going to Addis and then getting the shuttle from Addis to Nairobi. And I’m on this beautiful new plane, lovely flight. The exact same plane crashed, killing everyone on board. It was the Boeing Max plane, which is notorious for it.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: And it was the day I could have been on because I had said, will I’ll go Saturday or Sunday. I said, I’ll take Saturday. By chance, I had missed that.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s incredible. There were a couple of Boeing 737 Max…
Tom: Yeah.
Gabriel: Crashes. Crazy and you were one day away from being on that flight.
Tom: And it was just by chance I chose one day rather than the other.
Gabriel: Maybe it was by chance.
Tom: Exactly. Who knows?
Gabriel: That is a close call. I think that’s probably the most dramatic thing that happened to you on the Tour d’Afrique.
Tom: It’s the most dramatic thing that didn’t happen.
Gabriel: Yes, exactly. Obviously, it was a very intense, but ultimately successful ride. And what next?
Tom: Well, I thought, I’ve done this. Now I’ve got to keep going. I want to do more. And I signed up to do TDA South America for 2020. But what happened was March 2020, COVID lockdowns and the world shut down.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Tom: That put kind of a big pause and hiatus on this kind of touring.
Gabriel: One thing I noticed from your Substack page, you actually have a cycling coach, or at least had one for a while. That’s a bit unusual, I would say. When did you get this coach and why did you get this coach?
Tom: You know, I got back from the Africa trip and I thought I needed to do more. I have to prepare for South America. This was like January 2020. And I bought myself a smart trainer and it was a big investment for me. And I thought, oh my God. For a year, I was training with one of the apps that are out there. This one was Trainer Road. It was tough going. And after a year or that, I need more. I need something a little different. And I started to ask around and came across this coach, Andrew. I thought, okay, when we signed up, we hit it off. He’s based in Toronto, but we actually do a lot of our work online. I’m indoors during the wintertime here in Toronto on this smart trainer. And he gets all the metrics. He’s got my power output, my heart rate, cadence, everything. And he sees what’s happening. And the training is kind of adjusted to my specific needs to be able to improve whatever areas need improving. And it allows for a very targeted form of training. I kept training. I learned more. And the first ride I could do was actually again. They did for the first time – and it’s the only time – the cross-America trip from Los Angeles to Savannah, Georgia. And I signed up for that. I convinced my buddy from the Africa trip, the guy from Montreal, to come and join me on that one. It was great to suddenly be back on the bike. It was shorter. It was two months. We started in September, but going through Southern California, there were a lot of fires. The original route had to be adjusted. We’re going through these deserts. And we were initially going through days of enormous heat, 40 degrees Celsius, a 100, 100 plus Fahrenheit. My friend suffered badly. A lot of people suffered. I was lucky, and I didn’t think to be as affected as others by that intense heat. Although we would often stop at garages and buy a big jug of really cold water and then just stand there in the forecourt of the garage, pouring the water over our heads. Part of the challenge on this trip was it’s the only time in all these long trips that I’ve done where we ran into hostility in certain parts of Texas.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: I had one woman driving by with kids in the car and leaning out the window to shout across her kid, window down, to, “Get off the road. These cyclists are a menace. We hate you.” I’d never experienced these things before. Talking about hardships, I had one of the worst things that happened to me was in Arizona, we were off track and we’re coming off a really hard day on gravel. We camped overnight on this mountain coming down. And we were told this is going to be about eight kilometers of two-way Arizona highway. It’s a lot of traffic with very narrow shoulders, and they said, “Just be careful.” And they offered to pick people up if they didn’t want to do the little bit. And I decided it was eight kilometers, whatever. I’d be careful. I’d be okay. And I’m on the shoulder. It was narrow. It was badly rotted. But I’m taking my time and I’m less than two kilometers from the turnoff to the campsite we were going to. And suddenly I’m face planted in the road and I have no idea what happened to me. I’m just kind of smashed. My nose is bleeding. A guy pulls up in his pickup in front of me. He says, “I saw what happened. You were swiped by one of these RVs.” There were so many of these drivers that had no clue. And he probably didn’t even know, he had the swing RV and it just clipped me. And I’m trying to get back on the bike. And the guy says, “No, you’re not getting on your bike. I’ll put you on the pickup and take you.” And I said, “No, no, no, I got to get this.” And finally I let myself be convinced. I got in his pickup, he took me into the campsite. I was really grateful. And I got myself stitched up.
Gabriel: More stitches.
Tom: More stitches. I had these Steri-Strips on my eyebrows and plugs in my nose to stop the bleeding. But the next day I was back on my bike. And two days later, we had a big ride, a century, 160k. And I was doing it. I was back on it.
Gabriel: When you say RV, but it was swaying, do you mean some kind of trailer?
Tom: Yeah, these long trailers. They were so popular. There was an endless number of them out on the road.
Gabriel: So just so that I have the mental image, it was like a big pickup truck with a trailer behind it.
Tom: Yeah, an enormous trailer on it.
Gabriel: Yeah. And the driver didn’t even notice that the trailer…
Tom: No, had no clue. No clue. And frankly, overall, in all the trips I’ve done I found that the most dangerous things on the roads were those kin+d of trailers. But I had to qualify because it was just maybe a handful of these bad moments. The majority of it was actually superb.
Gabriel: Oh, heah.
Tom: I mean, people were really, really open. I countered a lot of that kind of hospitality. People would stop and they’d all have coolers with extra cold drinks and they’d give you that or offer you meals, things of that sort. Absolutely. I loved encountering and talking to people. And I thought there was an openness there, too, across America.
Gabriel: We had the one week trip in Patagonia. The Tour d’Afrique followed from meeting a guy in Patagonia. You then had the cross-US trip. And then?
Tom: There was across the US, but there was North America. I signed up for that in 2022. And this was going from Tuktoyaktuk in Northern Canada, the small, Inuit village right on the Arctic Ocean, down through Canada, through the States, Mexico and Central America to Panama City. This is the longest ride offered by TDA, just short of six months.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Tom: And in fact, it all started off in a way rather badly. I’d asked the local bike store to get me a box. I could box my bike, got it home and realized it was so badly damaged. It wasn’t usable.
Gabriel: Wait, badly damaged before or after the flight?
Tom: Before. I needed a cardboard box to box my bike and somehow I hadn’t noticed, but there were structural weaknesses and it made it unsuitable.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: And by then it’s getting late and I had too many other things to do. And there was a different bike store around the corner. And I went there and I said, “Can you do this for me?” And they said, “OK, we’ll do it. We’re really booked up.” They said, “Come back on a Friday.” I come back on a Friday and the stores aren’t open. It’s a national holiday, July 1st. And I said, oh, Saturday they’ll be open. I go there Saturday and there’s this sign on the store saying “Closed for a long weekend back Tuesday.” My flight is on Monday.
Gabriel: Oh, no.
Tom: My bike is locked up in their store. And I am totally freaking out about this, because it’s a community store. Everybody’s around in that neighborhood knew the store. I was able to eventually get in touch with the owner. Sunday night, I get my bike out, last minute. I fly up to the north, to Inuvik and everything’s going well. And the morning that we’re setting off or up in this Inuit village, it’s midnight sun. It’s the beginning of July. You’re lying in your tent and you can see the sun shining through it. It’s glorious. It’s unseasonably warm. And the morning we start off is delightful. And I’m just reveling in this atmosphere and the beauty. And then around 30 kilometers, my knees start to twinge. I never had this before. And that 40 kilometers, they’re getting quite painful. At 60 they’re… I couldn’t ride anymore. And I thought, what the hell? I haven’t even started and I’m wrecking this whole thing. We’re in Inuvik that night and we’re able to get on the net. And I realized I made a really stupid mistake. I’ve been training through the winter on an indoor trainer and I’ve been training with different shoes. Well, it all turned out to be that I had to shift the cleats literally one millimeter back. And that made all the difference. It was gone. No more knee pain. And I thought, okay. The first thousand kilometers is on the Demster highway, which is all gravel. But the gravel is pretty good. A week later, I’m speeding down a slope and suddenly the gravel becomes really kind of loose. And my bike starts to shake violently. I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know what to do. All I know is I’m not going to brake. And I’m just standing there kind of a little bit petrified and get thrown off the bike.
Gabriel: Oh no! Not more stitches, Tom. Not more stitches.
Tom: No, no, no, I smashed my shoulder, but it was just kind of wrenched. It’s summer up in the northern Arctic. And you’re beset by supernova clouds and mosquitoes. And I’m there and these mosquitoes are starting to converge. I’m not going to wait here. I had to adjust the handlebar. I did that. I get back on the bike. I arrive to camp and there I’m just sore all over. I’m just kind of, ah! And that morning, Henry had announced to the camp, “I’m sorry to tell you, I’ve got COVID.” And I thought, oh, no. And I felt sorry for Henry. But then I thought, oh, I just spent the previous evening, all evening around the campfire, talking to Henry. And I didn’t think anymore. I was feeling okay. I had my accident and banged up. We arrive and arrested a place called the Eagle Creek. This is up on the Arctic. It’s a motel and a garage. And that’s all it is. It was initially built for the workmen who were building the Dempster Highway during the Second World War in the 40s. There’s nothing. There’s no time. There’s nothing. I’m suddenly feeling this rough tickle in my throat. I take a COVID test. I’ve got COVID.
Gabriel: Oh man.
Tom: I have to be isolated for a week.
Gabriel: With Henry.
Tom: Well, with Henry. We’re isolated a week off. And I thought, oh, geez. Happily, I mean, I was lucky. It wasn’t very serious. I mean, I didn’t feel bad after that first day. That was the only hiccup I had on the six months, because after that, it was just brilliant. I started that Substack, Continental Cyclist, writing about the North America trip. I was interested in exploring connections with people and talking to people and engaging with the people on it. And in the North, particularly with First Nations peoples and communities.
Gabriel: Yeah. I did see a little bit about that, as well as, you had mentioned somebody from the Eritrean community who was up there. And I thought, what is an Eritrean person doing in Northern Canada?
Tom: Whole communities had gone there because of economic opportunities. It was interesting to find up in Northern Canada the diversity, not just because of indigenous peoples, but because people from other parts of the world coming, looking for a better life. The North was among my most favorite places ever. The beauty of it, the sheer wildness of it. And also the fact that there’s hardly any, any traffic at all. And you’re in this remote, somewhat pristine wilderness. And it just calls to you. And then you’re going through the Rockies and this incredible kind of scenery. And the wildlife, you see, you know, stags, herds of bison, lots of black bears. I had a couple of encounters with bears, but they were all kind of thrilling rather than frightening. You’re actually on several different kind of journeys in this one trek. There is, what I’ll call the meditative, that internal journey that you’re going on. There’s also the outward journey where you’re encountering the people and engaging with them and discovering other worlds. And being on a bike, open people up to you. kind of want to know, what are you doing? Where are you going? What’s happening? And you can have conversations, and may only last a few minutes, but they become very intense in internet and they open up very quickly into other kinds of ways of seeing things. There are the people, but there’s also the environment that you engage with, the wildlife. And you’re having experiences that you just wouldn’t have. And there’s also called the third journey, which is the physical one where you’re aware of your body in a whole other kind of way, because you’re pushing yourself constantly.
Gabriel: Yeah. And you’re also watching your fitness grow. And that’s an exciting part of that journey, because you realize, hey, this is a lot easier now. It’s really cool to see the transformation in your body as you do this day after day.
Tom: I tell you what happens, Gabriel. Frankly, it’s an addiction. It becomes something you become addicted to. I mean, literally, it’s not a kind of a metaphorical use of the world. I think there’s an actual addiction.
Gabriel: On the trip to Panama City, it seemed like things got better after that rocky start. Is there anything else from that trip that you’d like to point out?
Tom: I could go on and on about Mexico. Went down through Baja California, and then across the mainland to Puerto Vallarta, where they actually had to put us on a bus because the hurricane was coming. Just missed it by a few hours. We were supposed to ride out of there, but they took us a day’s out to get away from the hurricane. We were in a place called Guanajuato, which is near San Miguel de Allende. It’s up in the Central Plateau, Mexico. I was just so taken by all of that, that in fact, the following year, to get ready for my South America thing, I went back to Guanajuato and did a six-week intensive Spanish course, because I loved what had happened to me in Mexico.
Gabriel: Okay, Tom, I’m starting to get a little bit freaked out now, because, it’s crazy. My mother was a professor of Spanish at the Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff for many years, and guess where she took her Spanish students for an intensive Spanish immersion.
Tom: Where was that?
Gabriel: Guanajuato.
Tom: Oh my god, you’re joking.
Gabriel: Amazing, right?
Tom: Oh yes, oh yes.
Gabriel: She would go every year.
Tom: Oh, have you been to Guanajuato?
Gabriel: No, I have not been to Guanajuato.
Tom: It’s an incredible place. San Miguel is better known, because it’s got a massive expat population, but Guanajuato is much more, it’s kind of Mexican. And at one time it was the largest producer – in the 17th, 18th century – the largest producer of silver in the world. Enormous silver deposits that add that history of wealth, but its construction is very peculiar because it’s in a narrow valley, so it’s all built up on these steep hills. So many of the roads are actually tiny laneways, not passable by cars, and up these steep stairs and so on, and they have a global international arts festival every year, in mid-October, it’s called the Cervantino. It’s got theater, music, dance. Companies from all over the world come, and it’s remarkable kind of explosion. And it’s got a major university, so there’s this kind of population of 30,000 students as well.
Gabriel: Yeah, that was probably the university that she was working with. I know she definitely wanted an authentic Mexican experience because there were also the host families and all of that, so yeah, it fits in.
Tom: May I ask, is your mother still around?
Gabriel: No, no, unfortunately not. Yeah, it’s been, oh, it’s been a number of years now. She passed away in 2018. That’s crazy.
Tom: I’m sorry about that. Sounds like I would have loved to have met and had some Hungarian conversation.
Gabriel: Yeah, yeah. I mean, she only lived in Hungary until she was four, and then she was kind of smuggled out. She was born in took over. She was actually smuggled out in, yeah, about ’48, ’49, and she went to live in Vienna with an aunt and uncle that were already there. So remarkably, and I don’t know how she managed this, but I guess partly because they did speak some Hungarian at the house, because it was a Hungarian relative, but she spoke pretty good Hungarian, and I just don’t know… my mother was a language genius.
Tom: Wow. Okay, here’s another similarity, gonna maybe freak you out. And that is that in our family, we snuck out of Hungary around that time, ’49.
Gabriel: Really?
Tom: Again, because of the communists and takeover, and because we had to cross the border illegally into Slovakia and ended up in Vienna as well around that time.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Tom: I was a babe in arms when that happened, so I never grew up in Hungary, and Hungarian has only ever been an oral language. I never went to school in it or anything, but it was always around me, so later I made enormous efforts just to try and speak Hungarian, so I could keep some of it with my mother.
Gabriel: It’s an impossible language.
Tom: Yeah, we cross paths a lot there.
Gabriel: Okay, so that was that was a little interlude, but yeah, super interesting. We went off track in Guanajuato, so then that ended in Panama City, and then the South America leg started in Cartagena?
Tom: In Cartagena, in Colombia, yeah. I took a year off the cycling, and I did South America in 2024.
Gabriel: And that one went all the way down to Ushuaia?
Tom: Ushuaia, yeah. From Cartagena, sort of through the Andes and down to Ushuaia. The hardest part of that, we were for about a month at the Altiplano, at the high level, so hovering around the 4,000-meter mark, and I’d say for about a month I was dizzy every day.
Gabriel: Oh, yeah, you just can’t predict how your body will react to it.
Tom: Yeah, I mean, I was okay. I mean, I wasn’t great, as some people went on the medication and I didn’t.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Tom: There was one day we were pushing along, and it was, you know, hard cycling, and I realized at one point, I was so tired, I’d literally fallen asleep on my bike for about five seconds, ten seconds, something like that.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: I was in automatic mode, and I had just drooped, and I was exhausted to that point.
Gabriel: You had a micro-sleep event.
Tom: Yeah, I did. It was the only time that happened to me, and it frightened me a little bit to think, oh my God.
Gabriel: Yeah, it’s frightening.
Tom: A counter-story to that was, the first day up to the Altiplano, we’re going from Nazca, which is famous for these kind of prehistoric lines etched into this desert landscape, which you need to see from high above to make out these kind of remarkable figurative drawings. We’re leaving from there, 500 meters elevation, and in one day we climbed up to 3,500 meters. Nonstop climbing, 70 kilometers.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: And I had no problem with it. I did it. I mean, it took a while. I was slower on it, but I pushed my way all the way up, and I felt great about doing that, to be able to do that long, long climb.
Gabriel: That was all in one day?
Tom: All in one day. No acclimatizing.
Gabriel: Wow, 3,000 meters. Okay, I got to talk to Henry about this one. 3,000 meters in one day. Ouch.
Tom: Yes. Ouch, indeed.
Gabriel: Obviously, thing, but literally just going straight up to that high altitude. It’s even more crazy.
Tom: It was crazy, and then you arrive and you have to set up your tent, because there was some wild camping at the top there.
Gabriel: Get your oxygen bottle.
Tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Gabriel: Yeah, the Nazca lines are like an unending source of UFO controversy, because you can only see them from high above and so forth.
Tom: Well, actually, I did a little bit of a look into it, and there’s a researcher with the, what’s it called, this skeptical magazine or something, who went there with two non-professional assistants, and was able to replicate it with very primitive, similar kinds of, as there were, tools that they would have had available.
Gabriel: So it’s debunked?
Tom: It’s debunked.
Gabriel: Okay, all right.
Tom: We had a rest there in Nazca, and one of the things they do for tourists, there are these small airplane companies, they take you on a little flight over the lines.
Gabriel: Of course.
Tom: They did that, and it’s very impressive, and you do wonder how the hell can you get that kind of perspective and so on by trying to do this at ground level? But apparently it’s possible.
Gabriel: What else from the South America trip?
Tom: One thing that’s of interest, I think, in terms of cycling is in Bolivia, the extent, well, Colombia too, but much more in Bolivia, is the extent of cycling culture was remarkable. They have the ciclovía, where they take Sundays, major cities, they close major arteries, and it’s for cycling only. Bolivia, it was the leader in the world in doing this, and it was very inspiring to see, because we came in on a Sunday when they do the ciclovía, and to see literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cyclists out on the road, coming out 40 kilometers out of La Paz, and it was like, oh my god, this is incredible.
Gabriel: Yeah, we’ve talked about that. They do that in Colombia as well.
Tom: Yeah, in Colombia and all that, and it was just a remarkable… seeing that level of engagement with cycling, and it affects everyone. It’s not just the people we’re doing long-distance touring or racers, it’s people at every level, kids, families, and just out there and cycling has become such a part of the life and that part of the world.
Gabriel: Right.
Tom: It’s so diverse. I mean, I’ll say South American, but it isn’t homogenous. It’s diverse, it’s rich in terms of cultures, in terms of ethnicities, in terms of food and language, even though Spanish is common all across. I mean, you do have a range of local languages as well. Every day was like a discovery and an explosion of taste and color and feeling. I’ve mentioned I’ve done that intensive Spanish, which makes such a difference to have some modicum of Spanish, not fluent by any means, but to have a limited ability to engage with people and have conversations of a certain sort. Then you come to Patagonia, which is its own magical world. You know, I’ve been through some of that in that initial weeklong trip, but it all come flooding back. The sheer beauty, to a certain extent, paralleled for me that experience I had in Northern Canada, in terms of the wilderness, the beauty, the sparsity of traffic. It was extraordinary to go down to Tierra del Fuego and into this southernmost part of the continent, and to feel you’re here at the end of the world. I mean, in a way, even more so than crossing any of the other continents, there was something about that feeling of reaching the tip of South America, to reach this place that had attracted explorers, adventurers, coming to discover something new. That other worldliness of place was very striking.
Gabriel: And it’s such a iconic destination. You know, if there’s any one destination that we can point to on the podcast over and over again, people are going to Ushuaia. People are going to Cape Town and some people are going to St. Augustine. Every day there’s just a flood of – maybe Santiago. It’s like the Camino de Santiago – every day there’s just another batch of people finishing.
Tom: Yeah, it also has a whole other tourist population, because it’s also one of the ports for the Antarctic vessel. So you have that kind of group going on these ocean tours. And in fact, a few of the people on the South America tour who ended up in Ushuaia had also booked then to go on a 10-day or weeklong cruise through to Antarctica.
Gabriel: Wow, what an experience. Let’s finish off by talking about the Silk Road. It’s a big ride.
Tom: You know, I finished South America in December and I signed up to do Silk Road mid-June, to fly out to Beijing, which is the starting point. And that was a little short. It doesn’t allow time for a complete recovery after a six-month epic trek.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Tom: And the reason was, I didn’t know if I’d ever get another chance at it. I was very keen to do it. If I did that, maybe I could do all the continents except Antarctica before I hit goal. Then I was very much in two minds. At one point I would say, no, no, it’s too soon. I can’t do it. I’ll be too tired. I was ready to pull the plug in the event I didn’t. And I headed out. It goes from Beijing to Istanbul except in the past, I used to do the whole thing on bike. Because of geopolitics, it could no longer do that. Two sections of the route had to be avoided. One was Russia and the other was Iran, which I was sorry about. I would have liked to have done the whole thing. The part in China is short. It’s about a week. And the most exciting part is as you’re going past the Great Wall of China and being able to take a moment there. But you’re very quickly into Mongolia. Now, these are parts of the world in which I had no real clue. It was something that was a little formidable. And there was another aspect that quickly became apparent very early on, right from China, something that was not present in all the other treks. Essentially, it became, to all extents and purposes, and illiterate. I couldn’t read or say anything. I had no means of communication. And suddenly, you’re entering into a certain kind of invisibility, a blindness in terms of language. It does something to you too, in terms of how you have to adjust to that, how you have to kind of reconfigure yourself. And I am so anchored in the world of words. Mongolia, which I knew very little about, turned out to be a wonderful surprise. I loved Mongolia. Once we were out of Ulaanbaatar and around on the wild steps, and it’s these grasslands, there’s herds of horses that roam across, and they belong to people. And you could feel, in that landscape, the nomadic past and still alive. And it was summer. And so a lot of the population would go out and live on the land. They were kind of still connecting to that nomadic past of theirs. And it was wild and free and beautiful and open and thrilling. And from there, we had to do our hop to Kazakhstan, where we had a few days going across the Stans, and suddenly we’re into the Muslim world. And it’s a different, different world altogether. And every morning, you know, you’re welcome to the adhan, the call of the muezzin at 4, 4:30 in the morning. And sometimes it could be very haunting, and sometimes the speakers would be these kind of squeaky speakers. And I’d say the high point and also the most difficult point in Tajikistan, going across the Pamir highway. And just to give a sense, it’s about 2,000 kilometers, maybe less. It’s the main route across Central Asia. It was initially kind of a rough track. Then the Soviets and the ’30s built a road, completely degraded at this point, affected by landslides, earthquakes, flooding, all sorts of things. And it goes across the Pamir mountain range. You’re having to cross passes that are at highest was 4,600 meters. Rough, demanding, challenging roads. It’s also a road that attracts bikepackers from around the world. This is like on the bucket list from bikepackers. So going along this, we’d see more solo or small groups of cyclists on this than anywhere else on any of the other trips I’ve done.
Gabriel: Really? More than the Carretera Austral?
Tom: Yeah, because it was a route that they could do in three weeks or so.
Gabriel: Okay.
Tom: Very cold at night. I remember brushing ice and frost off my tent in the morning to try and pack it up and get going again. And also a lot of people were getting sick at this point in the trip, with a range of things. I just thought, oh, this is tough and this is hard. And then you try and keep pushing along. Something was happening, but I didn’t know what. I just remember there’s one day where we had a lot of climbing to do. And there was a big climb coming up, but leading up to the big climb were a series of rolling hills. They may not have been long, but they were really sharp gradients. You know, they were talking about 10, 12% gradients. And I got to 40, 41 kilometers and I thought, that’s it. I’ve reached my limit. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I said, I’m just going to go to the side of the road here and lie down and expire.
Gabriel: Bonk!
Tom: I was dead, and I never had that particular thing happen to me. It was the first time I experienced that kind of level of complete and utter depletion. And my thoughts then were, I’m too old for this. I’ve reached the limit. I can’t do these things anymore. And I was so disheartened by all of that. I didn’t know what to do with myself. What I hadn’t realized was, like I mentioned, a lot of people were getting sick in various kinds of ways, gastro and other kinds of things. We’d been cycling for a few days at around 4,000 meters. And I hadn’t realized that I actually was suffering from some low-grade bug of some sort that affected me for about two weeks. We reached Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. A couple of days rest. After that, I was like stronger than I’d ever been. And I thought it was just completely bounced back and a total surprise to me. I was suddenly riding with people I could never keep up with before.
Gabriel: Amazing.
Tom: That was a real cycling challenge. And after that, we were into Uzbekistan where it wasn’t about the cycling. It was going through these storied cities at the Silk Route, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva, all extraordinarily beautiful and captivating places where you discover a culture that was both ancient and incredibly rich and was the kind of most great epics and poets and scientific and theological works coming out of Central Asia were coming out of these places. They had great centers of learning. We’d think of these times as sometimes called the Dark Ages, but they were periods of incredible, profound scholarship and learning and creation coming out of the Islamic world. A richness that’s almost indescribable. We’re on the bicycles, we’re connecting to it in some kinds of ways. And from there, we went on to Georgia and through Turkey, and we’re also very distinct and different. They were wonderful.
Gabriel: Sounds like despite the challenges, that was one of the smoother trips, no accidents.
Tom: I had a couple of mishaps, but they were not on the bike.
Gabriel: Okay.
Tom: One morning, this happened in Mongolia. I was kind of struggling along. In Mongolia, they had a cook tent and they had these kind of steel guy wires. Early morning, I’m drowsy, passing this guy wire and I trip over it, and right next to it, there’s this propane tank with a cast iron ring on it. I smashed right into it and I badly bruised my sternum. And that affected me for about three weeks. But you know what? It only bothered me if I was breathing.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s all.
Tom: After that event, I mean, in Kyrgyzstan, something happened and I speculated after. I must have been bitten by a spider or something because my left form came up with this enormous rash all down the arm. It was swollen, really itchy. And that persisted for about two weeks before it finally kind of abated. So that was my second thing. And then the third thing, the final thing that happened to me, and this was in Turkey. And we’re right into a rest day in a town in eastern Turkey called Erzurum. And I’m bombing on and getting towards our rest day in our hotel. And going along this gravel track. You know, after Tajikistan, I’ve been in great form. I’ve been really riding well and strong. And my front tire throws up this enormous rock, which bashes me on my shin, on my left shin. And I think, oh, damn, I don’t worry about it. I go through. I arrive at our hotel. We have a rest day. I look at it. It doesn’t seem to be anything there. A bit of a bruise. We leave Erzurum. We have 130k to do. In Turkey, it’s all about hills. We’re doing an average of 1,600 meters of climbing every single day. And at the end of that day, you know, I’m riding fine, but I start to feel my leg is starting to ache a bit. And I look at it, and it’s swollen up.
Gabriel: Oh, Gosh.
Tom: Turns out I had something called a bone bruise. It had smashed me with my bruised bone. And it could take a while to heal.
Gabriel: A bone bruise. Wow. So your body, besides all of the cycling, which is already strenuous enough, you have described a series of mishaps. Your body has taken such a beating in your 70s. Did you do something in the first 70 years of your life that prepared your body for crashes, bruises, falls? How is it that your body does so well?
Tom: I don’t know. Genetics, maybe. Who knows? I mean, I’m knocking on wood because you never know what’s going to happen. And I’m a bounce back.
Gabriel: Have you ever considered doing a tour or a longer ride that was not with TDA?
Tom: That’s my next thing. Yes. I’m planning on doing a number of rides on my own now. This is where I’m heading. Even though I’m traveling on my own, we’re not riding in a group. The comfort of having support was important to me for these really long rides. Through Africa, which was my first, I had no idea what I was going into. Across Central Asia and so on. But now I’m ready to head out on my own. Yeah. And I’d like to do, as I mentioned, the continents that remain for me is Europe, which I would do on my own, and Australia.
Gabriel: Very cool. Yeah, that’s a good goal. And before you’re 80, too, that’s part of the goal, right? Ideally?
Tom: Yes. I’ve got two-and-a-half years.
Gabriel: This has been just an incredible whirlwind through the world. Well, when you add it up, you’ve spent so many months in the last seven years bicycling.
Tom: I calculated that. Yeah, it was between two and three years on a bike.
Gabriel: And that’s just on the big tours. That doesn’t include the trainer at home.
Tom: No, exactly.
Gabriel: Wow. That’s a lot of time on the bike.
Tom: It was extraordinary. There’s something cumulative about all of this. I think things are happening to one that I suspect I’m not even aware of and what’s truly going on, and probably until much later, to understand the emotional, physical, mental changes that go on from doing these kind of journeys. And it all started because of an accident.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife, Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Tom: I love the solitude of running. I love the way you had a whole other relationship to the world. But I did that one marathon and it was terrific. I did it in three hours, 40 minutes.
Gabriel: Three hours, 40 minutes?
Tom: Yes.
Gabriel: That’s fast!
Tom: Is it?
Show Notes
Tom’s Substack page is called The Continental Cyclist.