EPISODE 43
Tour d'Afrique
“Just Do It” is Henry Gold’s motto for life. (In his mind, at least, he beat all famous athletic footwear companies to this slogan). Henry’s story is a wild ride, starting with a childhood fascination with Africa sparked by a legendary barefoot marathoner. Henry moved from Czechoslovakia (via Israel) to Canada, where he studied engineering in college, which set him up perfectly to… co-found a non-profit organization working in Africa called Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief. During his time in Africa, Henry dreamt of starting a 12,000-kilometer bike race from Cairo to Cape Town as a marketing stunt for a bicycle that didn’t exist. In 2003, his outrageous idea for this trans-continental race became the first Tour d’Afrique, a journey that established a company that Henry, now 73 years old, still leads today… and set the precedent for epic cross-continental supported tours. And just when you thought it couldn’t get crazier, Henry casually recounts being trampled by an elephant in India and living to tell the tale. Tune in for a story so full of twists, turns, dead ends, and triumphs that it makes your wildest adventures look like a trip to the mall to pick up a pair of running shoes.
Episode Transcript
Henry: Africa in general, even to this day, when people think on Africa, what do they think? What kind of people go to Africa? Well, safaris. Do-gooders who are trying to fix Africa. And the third people are exploiters. But there is more to Africa. There is a real joy in Africa, but there is a poverty for sure. But it’s also real people with real stories, with wonderful sites. It’s not only wildlife.
Gabriel: You just heard Henry Gold, whose life has been connected to Africa, from the moment he saw the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila win the marathon in the Gold co-founded the Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief, or CPAR, a non-profit organization working to build healthy communities in Africa. During his time running CPAR, Gold became interested in manufacturing rugged, affordable bikes in Africa. Through a bit of accidental magic, this pursuit would lead Gold and his business partner to recruit 31 additional riders for a four-month, adventure from Cairo to Cape Town. Although Gold imagined the 2003 Tour d’Afrique as a once-in-a-lifetime journey, it would have a profound impact on the rest of his life.
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 cycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to another installment of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. In the previous episode, “The Accidental Origins of Bicycle Touring,” we met author David Houghton, whose new book 33 Cyclists features today’s guest, Henry Gold. As you heard last time, the voting is open for your favorite episodes of the previous season. For those of you who have already voted, thank you very much. For the rest of you, please take a minute to vote and share your general feedback. It would really help me to improve the podcast by getting ideas for topics and finding new guests. There’s a link to the form on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website, on the Instagram bio, and in the show notes. Now, without further ado, here comes a fascinating conversation with Henry Gold, where we’ve delve into some of the many twists and turns that his life has taken, from Czechoslovakia to Israel, Canada, and many countries around the globe.
Gabriel: Let me start by saying, Henry Gold, thank you so much for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Henry: It’s a pleasure to be here.
Gabriel: You are chapter 30 out of 33 in David Houghton’s 33 Cyclists book, so that in itself is an honor. I know a little bit more about you than some of the other guests from reading this chapter, so I wanted to start off all the way back with your childhood in Czechoslovakia and how you got interested in Africa.
Henry: Wow, that is actually a very fascinating story, how I got interested in Africa. I was, like many kids, obsessed with sports, and loved being outside. I grew in a tiny little town, essentially a village, outside at a time where kids were allowed to provide, where you were running around, you know, you were kicked out of the house, and you were told come home for dinner or come home for lunch, and if you didn’t come home in time, you got screamed at. And I remember being a kid, going skating in the winter in Czechoslovakia, and I fell in the river. The ice was thin, I don’t know whether it was, the beginning of the season, the end of the season, I think it was the end of the season, and I remember running home wet. I had a bicycle at a fairly young age, I don’t know, about nine or ten. The old two- wheelers, a single speed. When I was eleven years old, my brother was already studying in a big city, and also loved sports. Košice is the city, which has the oldest European marathon. An Africa, Abebe Bikila – have you ever heard of him, Abebe Bikila – the marathon runner?
Gabriel: The son of a shepherd, Abebe Bikila was born in 1932 in a small village in Ethiopia. As a young man, Bikila joined the Imperial Guard, an elite unit serving Emperor Haile Selassie. He didn’t run his first marathon until he was 27 years old, but only a year later, he shocked the world by winning gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Bikila, who had decided at the last minute not to wear running shoes, completed the marathon in world record time. Four years later, in Tokyo, he defended his gold medal and again set a new world record. In 1969, a car accident left Bikila paraplegic. Still, he went on to compete in archery, table tennis, and even cross-country sled dog racing at the precursor to the Paralympics. Abebe Bikila died in 1973, his life cut short by complications from his car accident. 65,000 people attended his funeral and Emperor Haile Selassie declared an official day of mourning.
Henry: He was the first African who actually won a gold, any medal, in the Olympics and he did it in a shocking fashion in 1960, in Rome Olympics. And I was a kid, as I said, I was obsessed with sports, every sport I knew who won gold medals and silver medals, etc. In any case, this runner came out of nowhere, nobody heard of him, nobody, he ran barefoot and he won by Olympic record in such a beautiful style. He was a sensation. In any case, a year later he was coming to run this marathon in Košice and my brother got tickets for me and him at the stadium. And we went to see it and he put a spectacular show, the marathon runner. He came way ahead of everybody, and after he finished, instead of stopping, he went around and waving his hand.
Gabriel: Waving at the crowd.
Henry: And then went into the middle, and started doing his stretching, and only then the second and third guys showed up, fighting for second place, sprinting. And more of them, as they crossed the line, they were on the ground, they were just out.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Henry: I was hanging around the hotel in Košice where he was staying, and there were lots of kids. Bottom line is I started walking around in the back of the hotel and lo and behold, who walks out of the back door? Abebe Bikila, the olympic runner. There was a journalist there also, and he pushed me towards him and he said, “Go get an autograph, go get an autograph.” And that kind of stayed with me, Africa and that kind of a fascination with Africa. By the way, that meaning lo and behold, believe it or not, years later helped me in Ethiopia getting permits when I was stuck and didn’t know what to do.
Gabriel: Really?
Henry: I was so frustrated during the Ethiopian famine in 1984. I was there to work and I was trying to get permits for the whole team to go up north. I mean, the famine was happening and there was day after day sitting in a hotel and delay and delay and delay. And I came in to see the guy in charge, the deputy minister and I said, “This is terrible, I can’t deal with this. You know, the whole team is wasting money in hotel. I’m just going to go home, you guys don’t need help.” And he said, “Well, there’s nothing I can do, this is just the way it is.” Completely dejected, I said to him, “You know, I’ve been fascinated with Ethiopia ever since I met Abebe Bikila.” And when he heard that, he said, “What? You met Abebe Bikila?”
Gabriel: And you said, “Look, I have his autograph, right here.”
Henry: I have his autograph, exactly. Abebe Bikila was dead by then. It’s a tragic story, too. But he won two gold medals, the second one was in Tokyo. He was the national hero of Ethiopia and when I said this, he wanted to hear the story. And after I finished the story, he picked up the phone and he started yelling, and half an hour later, I had the permit.
Gabriel: So there was something that he could do after all.
Henry: And then, you know, every time I had a problem in Ethiopia, with getting any documentation, any bureaucracy, all I had to said, “When I met Abebe Bikila…” Like I touched God.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Henry: That’s my fascination with Africa. That’s how it started.
Gabriel: Okay. We want to know the next step because at this point, you’re still a child in Czechoslovakia. Sure, you were fascinated with Africa, but then what happened?
Henry: Well, you know, at the age of 13, my family immigrated, first to Israel and then later on to Canada. I ended up being in a boarding school in Israel, which was fascinating to me, because the boarding school had kids from almost every corner of the world. They were Jews from Cochin, India, Black Jews, I’d never heard before, I didn’t even know such people existed. It was fascinating to be in a milieu like that, where you really are dealing at the age of 13, 14, 15 with cultural differences that are striking. You know, you pick up things by osmosis, but more than anything else, you get interested. It’s part of you now. As a 14-year-old, you get a crush on a stunning, beautiful, tall Indian girl. You know, this kind of thing has an impact for you for the rest of your life. Three years later, we immigrated to Canada. I had an uncle here who sponsored us. I went to school, got a degree in engineering, went to work as an engineer for several years. Then later on, I met a doctor who wanted to set up this aid organization to work in Africa. At first, I kind of didn’t think this was for me, even though I had a fascination, but I just didn’t think he was the right individual to work with. But then later on, I convinced myself to give it a shot. And I ended up running this new organization from scratch for nine years and working in several African countries. It still exists to this day.
Gabriel: What’s the name?
Henry: It was called Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief, CPAR. He was a physician. His idea was to create a kind of a version of the Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders. You know, the first project was in Sudan. I went there and I was running the show there for a little while, as kind of a Méde- cins Sans Frontières approach. But I came back and I said well, I’m an engineer. This doesn’t solve the problems. The key is rehabilitation. Make sure you don’t get into the hospital. And so we started changing our directions. And I think we got quite good at it. I had this crazy idea. It started right in 1993 when I was still running the NGO. I saw a lot of women in Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, carrying heavy, heavy loads. Africa needed for development these old, simple bicycles that India and England was producing during World War II. And what do they call them in England? Well, I forget. In India, they call them heroes, hero bikes. It’s basically a heavy two-piece, single-speed bicycle. This idea stuck in my mind. At one point, I actually managed to convince someone who had an MBA. And I got some funding and we started doing a feasibility study of producing bicycles in Africa. And it got to the point where feasibility study was positive. We even found an investor in Kenya and we were going to move ahead. Just then my partner then, he said, “Well, okay. And how are we going to market this thing?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know. We’re going to have to do something really crazy, like running a bicycle race on these bicycles from Cairo to Cape Town.”
Gabriel: On those bicycles? On those heavy, single-speed bicycles?
Henry: On those single bicycles. That was the concept. We were going to do a race.
Gabriel: Oh, wow. Wow.
Henry: And I said, “It’s going to be so crazy that everybody will talk about this.” How do you get media interested in you if you have no money? You got to do something crazy. So the idea was, we’re just going to lower the prices. And then a board member of the organization I was running said, “You know, you’re crazy about bicycles. You got this bicycle thing going.” I wasn’t crazy about bicycles. I thought bicycles were a wonderful tool. He said, “I have someone who just came in from Africa who wants to meet you.” I said, “Sure, let’s meet.” Why not? You know, always interested in meeting people. So we met. He was in a bicycle business. Dutch Canadian. Michael de Jong was his name. Unlike me, he was really seriously into cycling and winter cycling and the racing and, you know, very athletic guy. I love athleticism, but I’m not an athlete. But he was, you know, built like an athlete and all that. And he started talking during his lunch. And he just came back from Kenya and loved Africa. And when I told him my concept, he said, “Forget about setting up a business. Just forget about it.” He said, “The Chinese will eat you up.” He said, “You can’t compete with them. You’re going to lower the prices for a year, two, three. You’re going to force the market down,” because there were Indian and Chinese bicycles in Africa, but they were extremely, extremely expensive. Everybody was profiteering from them. You know, like a bicycle that costs like 35 dollars in India will be costing you 200 dollars in Nairobi. It out of the reach for the farmer. “As long as they can run you dry, they will. Eventually, they just, you can’t compete with the Chinese. There’s no way you’re going to compete. But you know, this idea of doing a race across Africa, I love it.” He said, “I love it.” He loved the concept so much that two or three weeks later, he called me up and he said, “Let’s have a coffee.” And he had a kind of a brochure that he prepared that he was ready to go. Anyway, we started thinking about it seriously. And then there was a terrible terrorism attack in Egypt. About 45 Germans got killed there, tourists. It was a terrible, terrible massacre of tourists. We looked at ourselves as we said, “Well, nobody’s going to go to Cairo next year for the next two, three years.” That was it. Of course, the company never took off because my partner, who was very keen, got an offer from an accounting firm, good money. You know, it was one of these people who was obsessed with biographies of very successful people. And he kept reading and reading. He wanted to be an entrepreneur until he realized entrepreneurs may not eat for a while. But you’re going to work 24 hours a day. So he got cold feet. In the meantime, I was still running the organization. I was also doing some documentary films in Africa. I was busy. So I put this completely aside and I let it go. And so I ran this for nine years and then I resigned. It was by then the multimillion-dollar operation. I resigned. I was burned out. I was tired of… I kind of lost the joy of the work. Once you set up bureaucracy and start dealing with particularly fundraising, you get a raise online. The bigger you get, the more money you raise. And the problem was that the more money you raise, then the donors start telling you what to do, how to do, and the reports they want. I wasn’t made for that. I’m an action person. I want to be in the field. I want to do stuff. When you do things by your own, you have nobody telling you anything. Essentially you do it. But once you become a success, then everybody’s telling you how you should be doing things.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s the curse of success.
Henry: I left, but I had no idea. I didn’t want to go back to engineering. I had no idea what to do. I went back to Israel. Just for a short period, I thought, but I stayed nine years. I got involved there with peace issues and environmental issues and non-for-profit organization. And again, something that I thought I wasn’t going to do, I ended up doing nine years. Banging my head against the world trying to solve Middle East problems.
Gabriel: Yeah, okay.
Henry: And then I came back. In the 2000s, the World Bank had an idea of how to help the poorest of the poorest around the world. And they called it the Marketplace of Ideas, where the guy in charge said, “You know, everywhere I go, I keep being told that, you know, we sit in an ivory tower. We don’t know what we’re doing. And you guys on the ground, you guys know what would help.” So he set up the whole concept, where “I’m going to be financing projects that you guys come up with.” And he created a competition, essentially, where he said, “Ok, pitch me ideas.” It started with one page. And if you go into the second round, three pages. And third round was 10 pages. 150 finalists. I pitched a project as well, trying to help the people in Botswana, the bushmen. Well, they’re the worst off group in Southern Africa. And I came up with this project and it made it to the finals. They were going to choose 35 projects. And we all had to fly and make a presentation in Washington, D.C. And that’s when 9/11 happened. And the project kind of eventually fell apart because of 9/11. And there I was. So what am I going to do now? I’m 50 years old. I’m burned out with making peace and making environmental projects. And I have no money. But I had this crazy idea when I was in Africa. The whole concept of doing Cairo to Cape Town was initially to publicize the bicycle we were going to manufacture that never happened.
Gabriel: That’s what makes you an accidental bicycle tourist.
Henry: Exactly. Exactly. I was going to say right at the beginning of our thing that I’m also accidental cyclist. Yeah, literally it was all kind of one thing led to another. I kept in touch with Michael. You know, every year or two we had a phone call and saying, “Hey, what’s happening? What are you doing? How is life?” And then I came back from Washington at that time. And I said to him, “Michael, I’m 50. I have nothing to do. My project fell apart. We kept talking about all this for years and years. And one day we were going to do this.” I said, “It’s now or never. So are you in or are you out? And he said, “Yeah, let me think about it for a day or two.” And then he said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” And that’s how the Tour d’Afrique was born. Less than a year later we were in Cairo with 33 people at the pyramids, cycling. And by then it became an independent company. It wasn’t to publicize anything. The idea was we’re going to run this thing once and let’s see if we can make money out of it, if it has some sort of value. In 2003, actually, Tour de France was celebrating 100 years.
Gabriel: Yes.
Henry: So we said, “Well, can we create something that will last 100 years? Is there a fantasy or some sort?” But you got to get the first one going. Can we even pull it off? I mean, most people were terribly, terribly skeptical, cynical.
Gabriel: How did you recruit people?
Henry: So we set up a website and I had a friend – I still have a friend, but he’s no longer doing what he used to do – who was working for the Globe and Mail, a very well-known journalist here in Toronto. I called him for a coffee. I said, “Michael, how am I going to get a story out there? What do I do? You know, I need to publicize this. I have no money. I live in a basement. I have no money. I can’t pay for anything.” Michael was a wonderful friend. Many, many times I pitched him ideas for stories and he always humored me. Once in a while he would use my idea for a story or something. But in any case, then I said, “I’m going to do this.” He said, “What’s the problem? I’m going to get you an article in the Globe and Mail.” You know, Globe and Mail, it was the New York Times of Canada. And I started laughing. “Come on, Michael. How are you going to get me an article of something that hasn’t happened?” And he said, “Henry, you don’t understand. This is a great story. I am going to get you on the first page of the Globe and Mail.” I said, “Come on.” Any case, he said, “When you’re ready, call me. I’ll come. I’ll interview you,” et cetera. So a couple of months later, I said, “the website is ready. We are ready to go public.” He came. He brought a photographer. He did the story. And he says, “Henry, you’re going to be in the weekend paper. You know, the big thing. They’re going to be on Saturday morning.” I was skeptical. I had my experience with the press media before, you know. I’m very cynical about it. Any case, I get a phone call about 10 o’clock in the morning and Michael is on the line and he says, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And I figured, you know, the story was cut, as editors do. I mean, that was my expectation. And he says, “You’re not on page one. You’re on page four.”
Gabriel: Nice!
Henry: In 24 hours, we had emails from Sydney, from Tokyo, and people were signing up. As we know, social media, at that time, it didn’t exist. Oh, there were some negative responses. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” “You’re a charlatan.” “You never spent a day in Africa, because if you spent a day in Africa, you would never attempt this.” “You don’t know what you’re doing. You know, you’re going to take people, they’re going to get all killed. They’re going to be kidnapped.” They’re going to be all this. You know, there was, there were lines like this, which, uh, everybody has something to say. But not all of them, because as I said, some people immediately signed up. “I’m in!”
Gabriel: It was this article that got you exposure.
Henry: That’s right. Again, I had some experience with the media in the past, and we realized we had something going here. You know, once it was in the Globe and Mail, what the media does, in those days anyway, it gives you immediate credibility.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Henry: So other media were easy to convince once it was in a known entity. You know, like the Globe and Mail. So we approached English media. Since my partner was half Dutch, we approached the Dutch media. I think we even had a story in the German paper, and that’s basically how it came. Then it actually, I began to understand why, why it was a major story, because nothing like this has been done before. Nobody’s actually managed successfully to cycle from Cairo to Cape Town.
Gabriel: Really?
Henry: Well, there are two or three people who made it, but had to put their bicycles on cars, here and there on trucks. And part of the reason it was not done is just because there were always geopolitical issues. You know, the wars, the famine. And we had the same challenge. We had exactly the same challenge, because there were areas. Egypt, for example. You could only travel in Egypt in convoys. Sudan, you need a special permit. Ethiopia, you need a special permit. Kenya, you can only travel in the northern part in convoys. So the question, how are we going to do this? Because you don’t want to cycle in convoys. And that was a major challenge. And that’s why I think most people were skeptical, who knew this, that you’re not going get permits for this. You know, these are security, vulnerable places. What I had going for me is that I knew most of these places. I knew the issue of security well, and I also had some good contacts in the right places. And when we decided to do this, I thought, you know what, with a little luck, we can pull it off.
Gabriel: You’re always calling it a race and not a ride.
Henry: Right.
Gabriel: Why did you say that it was a race? What were you racing against?
Henry: So this is basically what the partnership was. Michael was interested in creating a race. And so we kind of decided that we’re going to do both. We’re going to create a race for people who want a race, an amateur race, and then we’re going to have other people who are no interested in racing. They’re just going to be, you know, each stage is going to be a stage of so many kilometers. You know, if you don’t want a race, like me, you’re going to take your time and come in whenever you want. So the idea was that we’re never cycling is a group. Two or three or four or five people racing or 10 people racing, they can go as a group and they can do whatever they want. But the rest of us would split and overtake each other and stop for coffee and stop, talking to locals and, you know, fix our bikes and stuff like that. And that’s the concept we kept up to this day, except the race we eventually eliminated, because it was creating all kinds of problems and issues. I approached Guinness, whether they would be interested in creating a world record for the fastest human-powered crossing of Africa, which they did.
Gabriel: The Guinness Book of World Records.
Henry: That’s right. And they gave me certain rules that a person cannot get in a car and it has to be continuous and it has to be as a group. So it doesn’t make any difference you racing, because every day there would be a stage race and you start as a group and you’re going to end up as a group, which was great. This is what I wanted. And we established this and, you know, it took us 120 days, including all the rest days. And, of course, it became a thing to do to break records, for years and years that we, even now, still get an email in, every year or two. Somebody who help me with this, help me with that, because I’m going to go and break the record. I think the record is now 38 days from Cairo.
Gabriel: 38 days.
Henry: Yeah, but that’s the point. You know, now you’re going 18 hours a day. You start hallucinating. What are you seeing of Africa?
Gabriel: Hallucinations only.
Henry: In other words, people who are doing these ultra-difficult challenges and this and that, it’s more about them rather than experiencing the area you’re going to and getting a joy out of it and picking up stuff.
Gabriel: As you mentioned, it’s a huge challenge to be trailblazing your way from Cairo all the way to Cape Town. It may be hard to imagine now, because bikepacking.com has a route that’s published and it’s a classic route, but back then it wasn’t. What are one or two stories that really stand out? Something crazy that you had to overcome to keep moving and to still be able to get that Guinness World Record?
Henry: In retrospect, I think that the craziest thing was just how I managed to get the permits that we could actually cycle without convoys. I recall, I think in Day Four or Five we were in Egypt cycling in a desert. They just built brand new roads, empty roads, no cars, because they were only allowing convoys and the convoys were waiting one in the morning, one in the afternoon. We had the roads to ourselves. We’re going through Egypt, mostly, well not all the way, but certainly through the desert part, it was roads to ourselves, but now all of a sudden you hear noise, you know the convoy’s coming and there’s like thirty buses going by you, filled up the tourists and they’re looking out, and there’s like, every two, three kilometers the cyclists going by. And there is nothing else there. I mean, it was surreal in a way, the whole thing. And I remember laughing inside. I’m laughing. I said, “Look at this, you know, all stuck in and bus, and here we are.” It was a great feeling. It was a similar feeling of course in Northern Kenya, but again the convoy, except there there’s the so-called Trans-Africa Highway in Northern Kenya in those days with volcanic rock, and we were cycling on this for four or five days. We’re doing I don’t know 60, 70 kilometers a day because that’s all you could do.
Gabriel: I hope that your bicycles were more modern machines and not these…
Henry: Oh yeah.
Gabriel: Okay, okay.
Henry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, the whole idea died.
Gabriel: The way you’re telling it, I wouldn’t be surprised if you decided, oh we thought the challenge would be greater if we were on single-speed bicycles.
Henry: No, no. Everybody brought their own bikes.
Gabriel: Oh good, okay.
Henry: Some people brought mountain bikes. There are some people who brought regular bikes and suffered for it. I had a kind of a modified bike that my partner actually suggested, and it worked. It wasn’t a mountain bike, but it was a hybrid of a sort that we put together. It gave me an opportunity to do what I could without being a mountain bike. In other words, I could get through the terrain without being on a mountain bike.
Gabriel: And were you camping in the evening?
Henry: Yes, the whole thing, starting from Cairo till the last day, we camped. Even when we were in a big city, we would either camp in a golf course or wherever we could find a spot where they let us. In Addis Ababa, for example, there was a big Ghion Hotel, used to be the palace of the emperor. The hotel was there, but they let us camp in the grounds. Again, it was so new and so phenomenal and so inviting to many people that they let us do stuff that they no way they would allow today. You know, they allowed to use their bathrooms and stuff like that. 35 tents sitting on the grounds of a four-star, five-star hotel. No way.
Gabriel: Right. Did you have any problems at the border crossings? Because I’m having just trouble imagining that everywhere it would be smooth at the borders.
Henry: What I tell young people about life in general, when people are struggling and don’t know careers. I’m telling, ‘You know, just don’t worry about things. Just do whatever you feel like doing at this particular point. Even things you don’t feel like doing. If you have no choice, do it. Because everything in life, you never know how it’s going to help you. You think this is crazy, you know, you’re washing dishes and the next thing you know, that someone beside you is washing dishes will be a contact for something that you have no idea how it’s going to help you in life. Now, what am I trying to tell you? I worked in Africa and I made contact with people and I learned, being a Jewish kid in an anti-Semitic society in Czechoslovakia, Holocaust survivor parents… You know, you learn how to deal with people, how to learn, how not to antagonize anybody. When I was a kid, both the Catholic and the Protestant priests would meet in our home to play cards. This is when the Catholics still didn’t marry Protestants in a small village. Bottom line is it’s all about people and the people you meet and how you deal with it. And I realized that you always have to do your homework. Why were our projects in Africa successful? Because before we started the project, I befriended all the power structures in the area, from the secret service police to the mayor of the city, to the richest guy in the city. I went around drinking a lot of coffee and a lot of alcohol to befriend all of them and telling them and asking them for their opinion. “What do you guys think? How should we do this? What should we do?” Et cetera, et cetera. So that they knew who I was, they knew the organization. They were not threatened. We didn’t come up with our own ideas. We came up with our ideas, but modified them. You know, they got to say, “If this wouldn’t work, Henry, you got to do it this way.” By becoming a friend, then they start asking you for favor. The guy in charge says, “You know, Henry, my son, I would like him to get a degree in Canada. Help me, or help him. Get him the application form. How do I go about it?” He didn’t ask for money. Bottom line is, how did we get through the borders? I used the contacts. If I didn’t have the contacts, I would basically go and make them. In other words, I flew to Washington, D.C. to meet the Mozambican ambassador. I said, “Listen, we’re planning to do this. I want you to be aware of it. It hasn’t been done before. There’s going to be all kinds of challenges. I want you guys to be aware of this. I’m bringing in 33 people from 12 countries.” “The whole point of this,” I said, “was to show that you can do stuff in Africa. It’s not about war. It’s not about famine. It’s not only about animals. There are other things in Africa to enjoy. And I’m going to show this.” He said, “Henry, don’t worry about security. Don’t worry about borders. We’re going to help you. It’s in our interest. In fact we’re going to compete with each other to make sure that nothing happens to you, because this is in our interest to show that you can actually do this, that you can come and bicycle in Africa. You’re not going to die from starvation.” At the end of this whole little speech that he gave me, he said to me, “But Henry, you know us. We make promises. We can’t always keep.”
Gabriel: Oh, no! It sounded so good.
Henry: And, you know, it’s that human touch that makes the difference in, you know, getting things done. And you’re absolutely right. We hired transport, the trucks that we hired, the company that was doing this overland tours. And, you know, they would have to cross between, let’s say, Nairobi and South Africa. They had to cross four or five borders. And the guy was very experienced doing this part, anyway. And when he saw us crossing the borders, he said to me, “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve been doing this for years. I have never seen anything like this.” As soon as we came to the border, they already had the phone calls. We were going through.
Gabriel: The soldiers were handing you food bags as you cycled past.
Henry: So that’s the thing. We did the homework.
Gabriel: Okay. Yeah, that’s a good answer. Hey, if you’re prepared, everything can run smoothly. That’s a very important point. You reach Table Mountain in Cape Town, and the tour is over. And so I guess this really brings about the question, what now?
Henry: As I said, we sort of had a fantasy that we could do this again. What happened was actually a few days before that, there was a group of us, four or five of us, who called us at the Back Pack. We were never in a hurry. We were always looking for adventure. And we would always come in just before dinner time to camp. So about three or four days to go, four or five days to go, one of them pulls beside me on a bicycle in a dirt road. He said, “Okay, Henry, we’ve done it. It’s just about done. Unless something tragic happens now. We’re in South Africa. You know, this is a fairly developed country now. So what are you going to do next?” And I don’t know. I just kind of spontaneously said, “Well, next is the Silk Route.”
Gabriel: Oh!
Henry: The essence of the company was established right there, as compared to what my partner, who kind of thought we’re going to make this race and we’re going to be competing with Tour de France, et cetera, et cetera. The reason I even said that, me and my partner were two completely different personalities. You know, where I was very much how you have to keep friendly with everybody, he was exactly the opposite. He antagonized people. He just knew how to antagonize. The riders wouldn’t talk to him.
Gabriel: Oh.
Henry: He would just have all sorts of issues. And I said to myself, this is not going to last. I’m not going to be running around apologizing for him all the time.
Gabriel: Right.
Henry: You can’t have a partnership where one guy just think blasting through and then expecting someone else is going to apologize for him.
Gabriel: This Tour d’Afrique set a precedent for cross-continental supported tours. Just like that.
Henry: Exactly. Africa in general, even to this day, when people think on Africa, what do they think? What kind of people go to Africa? Well, safaris. Safari is one thing. Do-gooders who are trying to fix Africa. There was the image of Africa that was wars and famine, wars and famine. Drought. So that’s a second group of people who goes to Africa. And the third people are exploiters. What do I mean by exploiters? Businessmen who come in, I can corrupt whoever I have to corrupt so I can get the diamonds out of there. Or whatever it is. Those were the three type of people that would go to Africa. But there is more to Africa. There is a real joy in Africa, but there is a poverty for sure. But it’s also a real people with real stories with wonderful sites. It’s not only wildlife. There’s a lot of this. wonderful music, culture, etc. Food. My concept was exactly let’s bring people here and show them nothing to be afraid. It’s other images of Africa. So that was part of what I wanted to do. And I think by that we literally established the fact that people, at least some people, stopped freaking out. Thinking, “Yeah, if he can do it, I can do it.” And we did the same thing on the Silk Route, because Silk Route was another challenge like that. And going through all the Stans, people were intimidated. I was told by a journalist, a friend of mine, a foreign journalist who said to me, “Henry, you’re really crazy. Going through the Stans. You’re really crazy.” You know, after I did Africa. I said, “What are you talking about? I just went to scout it.” So, you know, the images people have are not real.
Gabriel: The first tour was in that you were scouting for the Silk Road?
Henry: No. So the next one actually we decided, I was now going a rock and a difficulty with my partner. I was very hesitant to continue. But I convinced myself, you know, maybe I learned some lessons. We’re going to do it again. So we decided to do Tour d’Afrique again. While I was thinking about it, actually, he went home. I took six weeks off. People started registering. We already had like 30 people or so registered, like, well, I thought, okay, maybe he’s learned his lessons. Maybe we can make this work. So I thought, okay, let’s do this again. And then during that year, I realized this is going to be a big problem. And in fact, the idea was that he was going to lead half the tour. And I was going to lead the second half of it. Well, it turned out that he couldn’t do that, and things started falling apart and we had a big fight. And so in the middle of the second year, I said, “You know, I have an obligation to the people we have registered. We’re going to run this tour and then it’s going to be over. I’m going to shut this company. I can’t deal with this anymore with him.” But again, we started the negotiation process and then nothing was happening. In the meantime, I thought we’ll do a European tour that could make us a lot of money. I thought of the Orient Express. I thought this is an easy tour. You know, we’ll do it and we’ll do that one and we’ll make money. Well, we didn’t start marketing that tour at all. And he stopped coming to the office and, you know, I was running the show by myself. It was already Year Three, actually. We had a client who died at a heart attack in Sudan. He wasn’t actually cycling. He was actually in a vehicle and he got a heart attack. He just wasn’t feeling well. He decided to get in the vehicle and he got a heart attack, massive heart attack. The medic was right beside him. Twenty minutes later, we managed to get him to hospital, but he was dead.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Henry: When the Swiss guy got a heart attack in Sudan, my partner always hadn’t realized that if this goes to court, he’s in big trouble.
Gabriel: Oh.
Henry: Because he basically stopped working. He just tried to exploit me. For years, he stopped coming to the office and whenever I asked him, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, I’m trying to sell the company.”
Gabriel: Okay.
Henry: He literally agreed, on the day the guy died, he agreed, “I’ll sell you the company right now.”
Gabriel: Oh my gosh.
Henry: And then, so a week later, we announced the European trip and we got a small group of people doing it. But that’s the origin of the Orient Express. That was the second trip. And then I scouted it. After that, I started scouring the Silk Route. That’s how it went. So it’s a little bit convoluted, this story.
Gabriel: At some point, you expanded to India as well.
Henry: The whole concept of cycling India was not my idea. I was actually very intimidated by India, just because I said, “1.2 billion people? Where you even going to cycle?” Crazy. How can you cycle? Well, of course, I knew nothing with India. I was so surprised that my team scouted such wonderful routes that most of the time there was very little traffic. The whole of India is just such a fabulous experience, adventure.
Gabriel: Now, Henry, the chapter in David’s book that you appear in, it’s called “Under the Elephant’s Foot.” Do you think that’s your craziest experience in bicycling, or just the most famous one?
Henry: Look, it’s one of those things that happens in life, totally unpredictable, unexpected. I’m very, very fortunate to survive, and I think actually it improved my life. Because the injuries I had, I essentially recovered from them. I say “essentially” because you never recover completely. As soon as I went back to my normal life, it put a perspective on your life, what you’re doing, how you’re doing, how you’re treating the people around you. It just makes you realize how precious life is, and how quickly, in two seconds, everything changes.
Gabriel: Yeah. So, can you tell the story? What happened?
Henry: We had this trip that started in Agra at the Taj Mahal, and we were going to Kanyakumari, which is the tip, the southern tip of India. And it was crowded, and this was the first time we were doing it. Now, every time we have a new trip, I like to go just so that I get a sense of what we created. Is it working? If there’s unexpected problems, I’m there. And so, I was on this trip. We were already in the last two weeks, I think, of the trip. We were staying in a lovely, lovely lodge in a forested area, in a forest, very close to a town. I don’t know how big, several thousand people. And the forest was essentially between two national parks. So, the day before, we just went to a national park where we saw elephants. We were told to stay as a group, a small group, because the elephants now are quite, what’s the word? they were not at peace.
Gabriel: They were restless or hostile.
Henry: Yeah, there’s a lot of conflict in India between the elephants and the farmers. You know, the encroachment on wildlife is a very serious problem, not just there, everywhere in the world. Anyway, but we were now not in the national park. There were no signs, “watch for wild animals” or anything at all. And we were going to cycle in the afternoon again. So, we were between two national parks, we were cycling, and we were going to go into a national park where, again, there were elephants. Got up in the morning, I was what we call the sweep, I’m the last rider. And so people get out from the hotel and started cycling. We had an American rider who had some issues with her bicycle. So she was struggling. So, when I was ready to leave, she was still there. So, I went to see what’s happening. Everybody else was gone by then, including the vehicles. So I helped her with whatever she was struggling with. We got on the road. We cycled about five kilometers from the lodge on kind of a paved road. I say, kind of, it’s one lane or lane and a half road in rural India. Very little traffic. Every once in a while, a car would go by. But anyway, we were five or six kilometers into this route going on a little uphill. So she was about, I don’t know, was behind her. And then, another hundred yards or so ahead of her, hard to know because it’s distant, an elephant with two young ones crossed the route. I was actually very excited because this woman was with me in Africa, a few years before that. And we have a section in Africa, in Botswana and Namibia, we called the Elephant Highway. And you call that Elephant Highway simply because there are a lot of elephants there. And just about everybody sees an elephant sooner or later on this particular route for a few days. And that’s not a national park. It’s just a lot of elephants crossing, minding their own business. And so, I’ve seen elephants. I’ve been comfortable with animals in general and I’m not a panicky person. So, we saw an elephant crossing and I was very excited for her because I said, “Well, there you go. You never saw an elephant in Africa, but here you are in India. Now you’re seeing an elephant on a bicycle.” So, that got me all excited. Anyway, she kept going. I kept going, because the elephant didn’t pay any attention to us. But a car came by and kind of honked at the elephant. You know, people want a reaction from wildlife. You can go to a zoo, how they’re trying to get wildlife to do something. Anyway, passed by, didn’t think much about it. But I made a point in my mind, because I was interested to see as I get closer, where I’m going to get the peek of the elephant. And I said to myself, well, this is the spot, roughly. So, the elephant is either way gone, I can’t see anything, or I missed the spot. I just miscalculated. That’s when the elephant came charging. Literally just burst through the trees, coming in at full speed. I don’t know if you’ve seen an elephant running, but they can run. So, I had to make a quick choice. What do I do? I thought, well, because I’m going uphill, I’m not a strong cyclist, period. I can’t escape climbing ahead. So, I thought, well, maybe if I can make a quick, sharp turn, I can go get a momentum and get away from him or her. And so, I tried that. As I said, it’s a very narrow road. And I couldn’t get off the road. I had to make it in the pavement because there was a six-inch rock. And I realized if I get off it, I won’t get on it. So, I made a very sharp turn, which, of course, I fell. When I fell, I had to sort of think, well, you know, your brain takes over it. We all have a different variety of reaction. What to do? Some people freeze. In my case, I said, okay, I got to get into the forest and zigzag into the forest. That way, maybe I can slow down the elephant. The elephant was coming at me in one kind of an angle. And I decided to run almost towards him, but in an angle so he had to slow down to make a sharp turn. And this is the one day that I could outrace Usain Bolt. The adrenaline was obviously flowing very, very much. Anyway, I started running towards the forest. And it kind of worked. My strategy worked, because I heard the elephant behind me crashing the bicycle, stepping on a bicycle. And so, I sort of congratulated myself that I had managed to slow him down. And then I managed to get into the tree line. And I said, okay, now I got to start zigzagging. As soon as I made the turn, I felt something grabbing me by my ankle. It was a trunk of the elephant caught up in me, grabbed me by the ankle. And I was in the air, landed on my side. And then I sort of thought, you know, what they teach us here in Canada, when you come across a bear, I’m going to a fetal position and play dead. And then the next thing, the last thing that I remember was that I hear the helmet cracking as his foot is going on my helmet, stepping on my helmet. From that point, you know, you always hear stories that your life goes and through your head, your pictures, and I don’t know, saying goodbye to everybody, whatever. And I had none of this. I thought, this is very interesting. What happens next? And then I either lost consciousness or the brain simply doesn’t want to deal with the painful stuff. Because by the time I came to, which could have been a minute later, 30 seconds later, two minutes later, I don’t know, I’m flat on my back. I see just the back of the elephant disappearing back in the bush. And I’m literally flat on my back. Now I started kind of moving my eyes around and figure, okay, what do you do next? I just went three months before that in wilderness rescue training. So I kind of had it all in my head trying to measure, to assess, what’s working, what’s not working. So I started going through the same process by myself, trying to figure out how badly I’m hurt. I had an impression that my back was broken. I also figured that’s the case, then, you know, I could be paralyzed. So I slowly started moving my toes. That worked. I was very happy. I moved my other toes. That worked. I lifted my knee. That worked. I lifted the other knee. I said, oh, maybe I’m not so badly hurt.
Gabriel: Oh gosh, crazy.
Henry: Anyway, then I panicked because I knew that if I moved my head, if my neck was broken, you know, I’m paralyzed. So I lay there again, trying to assess what to do. But then I panicked and I convinced myself they’ll never find me here. So I have no choice. I have to move my head. Whatever it is, the consequences, I have no choice. So I moved my head. Of course, it wasn’t broken. So I didn’t feel any pain. I said, oh, let’s see if I can pull myself into a sitting position. And that’s when I realized that nothing was moving here. My arm was open fracture. My shoulder was broken. My wrist was broken.
Gabriel: So your whole left side was crashed?
Henry: Well, it was several. I had literally, I had a fracture here, from the helmet.
Gabriel: Oh, in your eye socket?
Henry: Yeah. So I could hardly see at that point on this side. I in this side, I have problems in general. So my eyesight was quite limited. I had ribs fractured. I had lower back fractures. I wasn’t wrong about the back. It wasn’t, but it was just fractured. And that’s about it. And then I yelled. I yelled for help. And she heard me. So she came. After I yelled several times, I heard her just behind the trees. But her voice broke. She must have known or heard something, anyway. So I basically said, (her name was Stephanie), “Stephanie, I need help. Stay calm, because if you don’t stay calm, you’re not helped to me. And I need help very badly.” She responded, “I’m OK.” So I said, “In my bag, there’s a phone. Call an ambulance right away. Don’t even come here. Just call an ambulance.” And she didn’t call the ambulance. She called the tour leader, one of my staff guys, who was a few kilometers ahead of us. I said that we were behind, me and her. And she just called him. And she said, “Henry needs an ambulance.” So he hijacked the car. He jumped in an Indian car there and he said, “Drive!” Within ten minutes, he was there, and they took me to the hospital and patched me up. I needed a couple of surgeries. But yeah, I had more or less full recovery. You’ll never forget your moments coming out of the hospital. I wrote a blog about it, how the colors and everything seemed so much nicer. For a long time, for a year or two, you just have a different perception of the world.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Henry: You just look around like he were a child, with open eyes. You know, you don’t get excited about something. You don’t care if your coffee is not delivered for five minutes. The irritation of the day-to-day life, you just kind of smile. Part of my life. Look how wonderful. My coffee is late, okay.
Gabriel: All right. No problem.
Henry: Of course, this doesn’t last forever. You have to periodically remind yourself. Like, I’m very fortunate because I had a full recovery. If I had become a quadriplegic, it would have been a different issue. The fact that I had a full recovery made my life significantly, significantly, different, better. Better. I became more generous, you know, with time and with people. But it just also, when you have a major issue, problem is, like right now, for example, we had a big problem in Himalaya. We had to stop the tour in the Himalaya because of the rains. And I think they didn’t have rains like this for 100 years, ever since the sudden recording. And so mudslides and workslides and people got killed. Not my group, but how do you deal with it? Financial losses, huge losses for everybody. Appreciate the fact that nobody got hurt. You got away with it. Shrug your shoulders. Say that’s it. Keep going.
Gabriel: Keep going you are. In a few days’ time, you’re heading to Japan to do the island-hopping tour.
Henry: Brand new tour. So, you know, we had a Japan tour that was canceled three times because of COVID. And then we finally did it. Again, first time for me in Japan, discovered what is it like to be in Japan. And I loved it. I enjoyed it tremendously. And I came back, I said to my operation manager, we got to get another tour in Japan, a different tour, because I just had such a great time. We have to do another tour.
Gabriel: Well, what a unique position to be in, that you get to go on all of these trips as the co-founder. The company is so big now, there must be many tours that you don’t participate in, right? You can’t do all of them.
Henry: No, no, I don’t. Now, as we speak, we have three tours running. I’m not on them.
Gabriel: Right.
Henry: And those tours, many of them have, you know, new routes and new places that you go to. But even if you go to the same place, five years later, it’s different.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Henry: People ask me, “What’s your favorite?” I said, “You know what? I don’t really care. As long as I’m outside, as long as I can discover something that I haven’t seen, I haven’t experienced, gives me the satisfaction. Any country, anywhere.” And in this, I go here in Toronto. Whenever I give myself a goal to go somewhere, I try to go a different route. And when I do that, you always comment on something. It says, I had no idea. Look at the beautiful building. Look at the beautiful little park here. Look at the coffee shop. One of the beauty for me cycling in Toronto is exactly that. You always discover streets you haven’t been on and something unexpected. And if you’re not afraid to get lost, which I always say, you’re not lost, you just don’t know where you are.
Gabriel: Really, that Tour d’Afrique laid the foundation for what the company has become to this day, which is running all these tours on every continent, basically, now.
Henry: Yeah. So that kind of started one by one. We would start thinking, adding one. And then I came up with this idea, that’s why we started going on every continent. I started thinking about, what do you call it, the seven peaks on seven continents?
Gabriel: Right, seven summits.
Henry: The mountain climbers, they have a challenge for themselves. And I kind of liked this idea. I also thought it would be a very interesting way of marketing the company. And so we decided we will try to do, cross each continent, create a tour. That created a challenge of itself because Antarctica cannot be really custom and bicycle, but we actually thought we could.
Gabriel: Really?
Henry: Yeah.
Gabriel: Oh, my goodness.
Henry: We were thinking of doing it with… but not crossing, at least doing part of it on fat bikes. You know, on the fat bikes?
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Henry: There’s even a video you could see. We tried doing it. There’s a video in our channel.
Gabriel: Okay.
Henry: But it fell apart because the idea was unsound. All our tours are basically organized and marketed and implemented by ourselves. You know, we don’t go hiring people. We may hire locals and vehicles and stuff like this. Antarctica, that’s not doable. There’s one company that has a monopoly. And, you know, when we were negotiating, you know, when we were trying to do this thing off the ground, the price kept going up and up and up and up and up. And at some point, I realized the only people who can do this are super, multimillionaires. And I come from a background of dealing with the poorest of the poorest. I have no… frankly, I don’t do well with them. People who know me, know me well, you have a problem, solve it. Don’t ask Henry, solve it. So we didn’t do that. Anyway, bottom line, we had this Seven Epic concept, which is going to be seven, you know, big, big trips. You know, we had the trip crossing Australia, Trans-Oceania, we called it, across Indonesia and Australia. South America, North America and so on. And that was the Seven Epics. It didn’t take off. It didn’t work. But in the meantime, we had all these wonderful trips.
Gabriel: Have you participated in all of these?
Henry: I have done most of it. But even in Africa, you know, there are two or three emergency days where I had to get off the bike and deal with whatever were issues. Some people are crashing in a hospital, you know, stuff like that. Our original South America trip, I did it, but it wasn’t the top to bottom. It was kind of a J. It started in Rio de Janeiro and ended up in Quito. And I had a staff member who thought this was a much better idea than doing it north to south or south to north. That didn’t work very well. People were not interested in that very much. Even though as a bicycle tour, it was great. It’s like the Cairo to Cape Town. There’s a concept that sticks. And there are people who sign up from year to year. And when I tell them, well, we can’t go to Sudan and Ethiopia, they cancel because this is to them. If that became such a concept, I have to do this every inch. I have to do it from the top to bottom. So the J concept in South America didn’t work very well. And then when Colombia started getting, you know, in the peace process, we sort of took a chance and thinking again that they’re going to sign a peace agreement sooner or later. And we set up this Colombia trip. And we were the first group, organized group, to literally cross Colombia on a bicycle and all the way down to Ushuaia. So as I said, I did the J trip. Then the Cartagena to Ushuaia, I did part of it, but not much of it. I was going to do more of it, but a client came who destroyed his bicycled. So I gave him my bicycle. But it was fine because I was at that point, you know, I already done my J and I wasn’t going to do the whole thing anywhere. So anyway, so I didn’t do that. And in the meantime, you know, we keep like the Silk Route, for example, again, it’s not doable right now. Because we were having trouble in China, in the western part of China. So we decided to go to Mongolia and Russia. And that worked out very nicely. People actually love being in Mongolia, more than being in China. And then the Putin started the war. So, you know, now we can’t do that. And now we can’t cross. So we had to now start truncating it. You have to fly over countries now. In fact, maybe the whole concept of crossing continents continuously is over because of geopolitical issues. You know, when I first set up this Cairo to Cape Town, one of my colleagues from former days, who was actually born in Ethiopia, but a Canadian. When I actually finished this thing, she sent me an email and said, “Henry, congratulations. Whoever thought there’d be peace that you could actually cross all of Africa?” And when I did it a second time, she wrote me an email again. “Who thought you could actually do this in two years in a row?” It may not be doable again for a long, long time. You know, Sudan, I can’t see how it’s going to get fixed in the next five years. I can’t see it. Ethiopia is always on the brink. Now you can have a war between Egypt and Ethiopia over the dam. I was reading yesterday about the security issues back in Colombia, kidnapping going on. I mean, it’s becoming again more and more dangerous.
Gabriel: Since your company expanded in scope, you decided to change the name from Tour d’Afrique to TDA Global Cycling. And that was just to reflect the fact that you’d gone global.
Henry: Not only that. It was creating a problem for us. And we knew that it was creating a problem, but it hit the point where we had two vehicles that they were shipping back from the Silk Route, back to Canada. They were registered vehicles in Canada, we were shipping them back from Rotterdam. When they came to Montreal port to unload them, we got an email from them that these vehicles have to be cleaned because they’re coming from Africa. And then it’s special cleaning. Again, talk about perceptions, right? Well, so we got in touch with them and said, “It’s not coming from Africa. It’s the name of the company, it’s Tour d’Afrique. These cars are coming from Rotterdam. They just went through Europe. They’ve been cleaned in Rotterdam. They went through all the standard procedures.” “No, these cars need to be cleaned.” “What’s the cleaning bill?” Some crazy number. Let’s say $8,000. Well, $8,000 after we just paid. I argued with them. I tried it. “No, you have a choice,” they said. “You can send the cars back or you can pay as $8,000.” And this wasn’t the first incident when we realized that people kept, again, the kind of a perception, racism, think whatever you want to call it. When you have an African name to it, people start looking at it. So we started searching for names. I wanted to keep the link to Tour d’Afrique in some fashion. So that’s why we kept TDA.
Gabriel: You have lots and lots of stories. A very full life, for sure.
Henry: My point is the same thing. Bicycle touring or anything. I used to say that, what’s the name of the company? See, getting old. Nike stole my motto, which was “Just Do It.”
Gabriel: You came up with it first.
Henry: Yes, within my own mind. Bottom line is I think whatever you’re thinking of, the cliche, you know, and ask, “What do you regret doing in life?” And people would say, well, I regret things I haven’t done rather than things I have done. You know, there’s plenty of things that, you know, I regret that I should have done, I could have done, et cetera. Nothing too serious, of course, because I follow my own instinct for most of my life.
Gabriel: And how old are you now, Henry?
Henry: I’m 73. Fortunately, again, I’m in good health. I have good habits, I guess. I always had them. I always liked fruits and vegetables as compared to other kids. They couldn’t buy me with sweets. I’m doing well, thank God. I had a wonderful mother, spent three years in Auschwitz. And you would think that she would have been terribly traumatized the way she handled her kids. In fact, she was the original one. Just do it. I’ll tell you a story. This is a wonderful story because it goes back to Tour d’Afrique. So when we announced that we’re going to do this, I have a friend who said to me, “Henry, this time you’ve really lost it. You’ve done some crazy thing in life, but this one is really over the top.” My mom would be told by her friends asking, “Where’s your son? Where’s your other son? Where’s your daughter?” And “I don’t know, they’re all over the place. One is there, one is there.” “When did you hear from them?” This is before the internet. “I haven’t got a letter in three weeks, four weeks, nothing.” And then they would said, “Well, aren’t you worried? And my mother’s answer was, “And that will help me?” And I tell people who get worried all the time, “And that’s helping you? Making you feel better?” It’s a useless thing. And I live that way. I don’t worry, because my mother would say, and she responded, she said, “Bad news will find me anywhere.”
Gabriel: Right.
Henry: “Worrying about it won’t help me. So I think this is my motto in life in general.
Gabriel: Don’t worry, be happy.
Henry: Yeah, sure. When I told my mom, “Mom, I’m doing this thing. I’m going to Africa. I’m taking 33 cyclists, I’m going to cycle across Africa.” My mom’s reaction was, “I’ll see you in Nairobi.” Halfway through. She was 77 years old at that time. She was born in cynic, she wasn’t a skeptic. She said, “I’ll see you in Nairobi.” Guess what? We are cycling into Nairobi, coming into the campsite. At the gate, my mother.
Gabriel: Wow. Amazing.
Henry: So I was very fortunate. Her attitude to life was amazing. I think many of the stuff that I do, it’s simple because my father was exactly opposite, but her spirit always won.
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.
Gabriel: I’ll get the exactly correct version. How does that sound?
Henry: Yeah. Well, at least my version, anyway.
Gabriel: Well, you were there.
Henry: We go through life creating our own stories. Some of them may even be true, right?