I’ve spent the last month researching the latest touring and bikepacking bikes, calculating various measurements, observing the latest trends, contacting bike manufacturers (for additional information), and updating all the terminology and general advice in my guides.

I’ll be sharing all of my favourite bikes in the coming months – stay tuned for that.

New Bike Category (Bikepacking Guide)

With lots of new gravel bikes coming with suspension forks, I’ve now separated these models into a new category in the Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guide.

Bike-On-Bike Comparison Tool

A large proportion of my time has been spent inputting the latest frame geometry numbers of every bike in my books into the website Bike Insights.

If you haven’t seen this nifty web tool before, it allows you to visualise the size differences between any two bikes found in my guides. It is particularly useful when determining the best bike size for you, as manufacturers do not have a standardised way of sizing them.

For example, use this link to see the 63cm Bianchi Impulso gravel bike overlayed on the 56cm Kona Sutra. Given the sizing name, you’d think they’d be 3 to 4 sizes apart, but they measure up almost identically in terms of frame length and handlebar height.

While the sizing discrepancies aren’t always this stark, Bike Insights is a useful way of checking you’re getting the right-sized bike.

Another useful way to use Bike Insights is to borrow, hire, test, or get professionally fitted to a bike that (1) feels good in terms of size, and (2) is listed in the Bike Insights database. You can then use this bike as a size benchmark for comparing any of the bikes in my guides.

Accessing The Update

Those who have already purchased one of my buyer’s guides will have just received an email with the latest editions attached. If you cannot find the email, there is a chance your email service has filtered it to the ‘junk’ folder. The email was sent on the 30th of January, 2024.

Alternatively, you can search your email system for your original “Gumroad” receipt. That will take you to the portal with the latest book(s), along with the buyer’s guides from previous years.

Failing that, please get in contact with me using a private message on Facebook or Instagram – or via email (please note: I’m currently cycling through South Africa and don’t always have an internet connection).

If you’re a new customer, awesome! My guides will teach you everything about bikepacking or touring bikes, before allowing you to compare over 300 bikes at the back of the books. These guides are updated yearly – for free – so you can always keep on top of the latest bikes and information.

You can get the Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guide HERE.
You can get the Touring Bicycle Buyer’s Guide HERE.

The post The 2024 Touring & Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guides Are Now Available appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

And not only that but over the last decade of travel he has also created one the most successful YouTube channels in the cycling space, as well as the CyclingAbout.com website that’s loaded with information on bikes, gear, setups, and more!

In EP.3 of the Rider’s Saddle, I sit down with Alee Denham at Eurobike to dive into his early life, what got him into bike travel, how he built his career, YouTube channel, and website, and discuss his life lessons in detail.

0:00 – Intro
2:53 – Childhood in Australia
4:47 – Bicycle infrastructure & urbanism
12:35 – Biking as a sport
16:08 – Getting into travel
19:37 – First bicycle touring experience
22:55 – Cycling Europe to Australia
28:51 – Starting CyclingAbout
35:17 – Experimental years
43:01 – Cycling the Americas trip
48:35 – Grounded by COVID
54:56 – The CyclingAbout YouTube channel
1:01:10 – Will Alee ride forever?
1:04:40 – CyclingAbout Africa
1:11:40 – Travelling as a vegan
1:18:05 – Travelling with Laura
1:26:00 – How to travel long-term as a nomad
1:30:33 – Careers in bicycle touring
1:35:11 – What bike tech is Alee excited about?

Tristan Bogaard is the host of the Rider’s Saddle Podcast on YouTube. He can watch his full series HERE.

The post 100 Countries Cycled In 11 Years! The Bicycle Touring Career of Alee Denham (Interview) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

If you’ve followed this website for a while, you’ll know that I have a keen interest in comfort-improving components. I’ve discussed topics ranging from stems, saddles, suspension seatposts, and carbon seatposts to rear suspension. I’ve also made the case that steel frames play very little role in ride comfort.

I’m always looking for ways to optimise my ride experience, and using as much quantitative data as possible seems like the best way to find the best bikes and components.

That’s why my interest was instantly piqued when vibration test expert Krzysztof Wierzbicki asked if there was a possibility to publish his existing vibration tests on CyclingAbout.

He also told me all about his plan to improve his scientific approach to finding bike comfort – and just like that, I was sold on the idea.

What Is The CyclingAbout Comfort Lab Exactly?

The CyclingAbout Comfort Lab is a section of this website that is dedicated to finding comfortable bikes and components.

Here you’ll find scientific vibration tests, product reviews with an emphasis on comfort, and interviews with experts in the field.

So far, the Comfort Lab can tell you:
– A rigid carbon fork can absorb more high-frequency vibration than a suspension fork
– A good suspension seatpost can reduce rear bike vibrations by over 25%
– Cushcore tire inserts are almost too good to be true
– There is no discernable vibration difference between carbon and titanium frames
– You can improve your front comfort by 20 to 30% using a suspension stem

You can see Krzysztof’s library of vibration tests HERE.

About Krzysztof Wierzbicki

Krzysztof is a cycling enthusiast from Poland who established the GravelBikes.cc website, which has now fully merged with CyclingAbout.

Using a vibration-measuring methodology, he has tested dozens of bikes and components over the years. When a bike component tests well, Krzysztof installs it on what he calls his “benchmark bike”. This bike is used as a point of comparison when testing any new bike or components.

This scientific approach to bike testing has allowed Krzysztof to set up a very comfortable and fun-to-ride gravel bike. You can read about his three benchmark bikes HERE.

But his journey towards the ultimate comfort is far from over. That’s why he decided to join forces with me to not only update his existing vibration test articles but to improve on his vibration test methodology too.

And, why does Krzysztof spend so much on vibration-testing bikes and components?

He told me, “I like to ride, feel free, and explore every route that feels interesting. And I want to be comfortable while doing it. I’m hoping my vibration tests, interviews, and reviews can help the CyclingAbout readers in achieving a much more comfortable cycling experience”.

Please give Krzysztof a warm welcome here! You can see over 30 of Krzysztof’s vibration tests HERE.

The post The New CyclingAbout Comfort Lab: A Scientific Approach To Ride Comfort appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

In this article, I will explain how my approach to testing bike vibrations has changed over the years, and how I’m conducting my vibration tests going forward.

Measuring Vibration Outdoors With A Smartphone App

Most of my vibration tests have been conducted using a smartphone and a vibration-measuring app.

For front vibration measurement, the smartphone was mounted on my wrist, and for rear vibration measurement, the smartphone was mounted on my back.

I took the vibrations on two different routes and at two different speeds. One was a bumpy forest trail (pictured above) to see how bikes and components attenuated vibrations coming from bigger hits (15 km/h). The other was a fast gravel road to see how bikes and components attenuated high-frequency vibrations (35 km/h).

Like any outdoor test, it’s really hard to control the variables. My vibration results were never directly comparable because the routes simply yielded different results in hot, cold, dry, or wet conditions.

I also used a long measurement duration of ~10 seconds for the fast gravel road and ~60 seconds for the bumpy forest trail. As a result, the vibration levels were often reduced significantly after I averaged the data.

Additionally, I was measuring vibrations at my wrist and back, and the human body itself dampens a lot of vibration before it hits the accelerometer.

You can read more about my outdoor vibration testing HERE.

Measuring Vibration Indoors With A Treadmill

I wanted to have something more scientific, so I started experimenting with a Woodway treadmill. This allowed me to better control both the environment and speed.

I mounted different slats on the treadmill to simulate both big hits and high-frequency, gravel chatter. I had to experiment with the placement and frequency of these slats to achieve results consistent with my bumpy forest trail and fast gravel road tests.

A big improvement here was using a dedicated accelerometer. With help from the developer of Vibration Analysis, I was able to configure the Arduino Nano BLE 33 exactly for my needs. I could also collect very detailed data, in fact, this was 5 to 10 times more data than my smartphone could collect (the measurement frequency was now 500 Hz).

I took measurements both under the saddle and under the brake hoods. At these locations, I could exclude the damping effect of the body.

But the treadmill was far from perfect. Trying to make a bike ride by itself on the treadmill was a chore. Also, figuring out how to achieve realistic weight distribution for the rider proved to be very tricky. Ultimately, this methodology brought a few too many challenges.

You can read more about my treadmill vibration testing HERE.

Measuring Vibration Outdoors With Consistent Results

Going forward, I will be conducting vibration tests that combine elements from the outdoor and treadmill tests.

I am using the same Arduino Nano BLE 33 accelerometer as my treadmill test. It’s mounted under the brake hoods (front of the bike) and under the saddle (back of the bike).

I will again be using my benchmark bike as a point of comparison between different bikes and components.

My Rene Herse Umtanum Ridge 650B x 55 mm tires will be inflated to a rather high 45 PSI air pressure. This high pressure ensures the tires are not impacting the vibration results too much.

And if I’m using tires of different widths I will calculate the appropriate tire pressure using Laplace’s law. This allows me to maintain the same tire casing tension for all tests. You can read a bit more about how I use Laplace’s Law HERE.

To determine how a bike or component handles bigger hits, I am laying a single wooden block that’s 50mm long and 30mm high on a smooth, flat asphalt road. I run over it at the speed of 25 km/h and then can measure one very clear bump event.

To determine how a bike or component handles fast gravel roads, I am using an obstacle almost 300cm/118″ long with a lot of different wooden slats mounted at random (as gravel is random in terms of bump frequency). I run over this obstacle at a speed of 25 km/h. The bump frequency is high enough to properly simulate the high-frequency chatter of a gravel road.

This 300cm test can also be considered an overall performance test because it also contains two bigger hits – at the beginning and at the end (when riding on and off the obstacle).

I conduct exactly nine test runs in each scenario. I exclude the two highest and two lowest measurements to ensure that slight speed fluctuations are not impacting the results in any significant way. I then calculate the average vibrations of the five remaining test runs.

Summary

My latest approach to vibration testing yields results consistent with my outdoor comfort tests. But this time, the results are repeatable – no matter the weather conditions.

Unlike the treadmill test, I’m actually on the bike and moving at typical gravel cycling speeds (25 km/h) so the vibration measurements are even closer to real-life scenarios.

And with the high-resolution vibration data being measured at the brake hoods and saddle, we take out the damping effect of the human body. This will hopefully highlight bigger comfort differences between bikes and components.

If you have any questions about how I conduct my tests, feel free to ask in the comments section below.

The post Why My Approach To Testing Bike Vibrations Has Changed Over Time appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Most of my vibration tests have been conducted using a smartphone and a vibration-measuring app. For front vibration measurement, the smartphone was mounted on my wrist, and for rear vibration measurement, the smartphone was mounted on my back. I then measured the vibrations of different bikes and components on a bumpy forest trail and a fast gravel road.

This approach was successful but with a few drawbacks that I’ve discussed at length HERE.

I’ve now got a new outdoor vibration measurement procedure, and this time my results are:
– Repeatable in all weather conditions (eg. hot, cold, dry, or wet)
– Comparable between tests conducted on different days (allowing us to better benchmark products)
– Measured on the bike rather than the rider (taking out the damping effect of the rider)
– Taken at typical gravel cycling speeds (20 to 25 km/h)

The best bit is that my new approach to vibration testing yields results consistent with my previous outdoor comfort tests and treadmill tests.

Front and Rear Vibration Measurements

I’m using an Arduino Nano BLE 33 accelerometer that’s powered via USB. With help from the developer of Vibration Analysis, I was able to configure the accelerometer exactly for these comfort tests. I’m able to collect very detailed data – the measurement frequency is 500 Hz.

I measure the vibration under the brake hoods and saddle to remove the damping effect of the human body. This gives us clear a indication of both the front and rear comfort of the bike with a given setup.

Benchmark Bike Setup

I’m using my Open WI.DE benchmark bike as a point of comparison between different bikes and components.

The Rene Herse Umtanum Ridge 650B x 55 mm tires on this bike are inflated to a rather high 35 PSI air pressure (2.5 Bar). This high pressure ensures the tires have a minimal impact on the vibration results.

If I’m using tires of different widths I calculate the appropriate tire pressure using Laplace’s law. This allows me to maintain the same tire casing tension for all tests.

Laplace’s law states that the tire casing tension = internal pressure x tire radius. When you put the different tire dimensions into the equation, you find out that you need to use lower air pressures on wider tires to achieve equal tire casing tension to narrower tires.

Big Hit Test

To determine how a bike or component handles a big hit, I lay a single wooden block that’s 50mm long and 30mm high on a smooth, flat asphalt road.

I ride over this obstacle at a speed of 20 km/h and measure one very clear bump event. I remain seated for the test and do not pedal while recording the vibration data.

Fast Gravel Road Test

To determine how a bike or component attenuates vibrations on fast gravel roads, I’m using an obstacle almost 300cm/118″ long with 34 wooden slats mounted at random intervals. The bump frequency is high enough to properly simulate the high-frequency chatter of a gravel road.

Just like the single wooden block test, I ride over this obstacle at a speed of 25 km/h. I remain seated for the test and do not pedal while recording the vibration data.

This 300cm test can also be considered an overall performance test because it contains a bigger hit too – that’s the one at the beginning when I ride onto the obstacle. I’ve chosen not to use the vibration data recorded when riding off the obstacle as it’s inconsistent between tests.

Multiple Test Runs

I conduct nine test runs in each scenario.

I exclude the two highest and two lowest measurements to ensure that slight speed fluctuations are not impacting the results in any significant way. I then calculate the average vibrations of the five remaining test runs, and these are the results you see.

If you have any questions about my test procedure, feel free to ask in the comment section below.

The post The Vibration Measurement Procedure For My Outdoor Comfort Tests appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

I’ve spent the last month researching the latest touring and bikepacking bikes, calculating various measurements, observing the latest trends, contacting bike manufacturers (for additional information), and updating all the terminology and general advice in my guides.

I’ll be sharing all of my favourite bikes in the coming months – stay tuned for that.

Bike-On-Bike Comparison Tool

A large proportion of my time has actually been spent inputting the latest frame geometry numbers of every bike in my books into the website Bike Insights.

If you haven’t seen this nifty web tool before, it allows you to visualise the size differences between any two bikes found in my guides. It is particularly useful when determining the best bike size for you, as manufacturers do not have a standardised way of sizing them.

For example, use this link to see the 63cm Bianchi Impulso gravel bike overlayed on the 56cm Kona Sutra. Given the sizing name, you’d think they’d be 3-4 sizes apart, but they actually measure up almost identically in terms of frame length and handlebar height.

While the sizing discrepancies aren’t always this stark, Bike Insights is a useful way of checking you’re getting the right-sized bike.

Another useful way to use Bike Insights is to borrow, hire, test or get professionally fitted to a bike that (1) feels good in terms of size, and (2) is listed in the Bike Insights database. You can then use this bike as a size benchmark for comparing any of the bikes in my guides.

Accessing The Update

Those who have already purchased one of my buyer’s guides will have just received an email with the latest editions attached. If you cannot find the email, there is a chance your email service has filtered it to the ‘junk’ folder. The email was sent on the 12th of January, 2023.

Alternatively, you can search your email system for your original “Gumroad” receipt. That will take you to the portal with the latest book(s), along with the buyer’s guides from previous years. Failing that, please get in contact with me using a private message on Facebook or Instagram – or via email (please note: I’m currently cycling through the Middle East and don’t always have an internet connection).

If you’re a new customer, awesome! My guides will teach you everything about bikepacking or touring bikes, before allowing you to compare over 290 bikes at the back of the books. These guides are updated yearly – for free – so you can always keep on top of the latest bikes and information.

You can get the Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guide HERE.
You can get the Touring Bicycle Buyer’s Guide HERE.

The post The 2023 Touring & Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guides Are Now Available appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Starting in November of 1962 at the age of 22, Heinz rode out of his town on a 3-speed bicycle with a general plan to see the world. He would ultimately travel over 600,000km by bicycle in a journey spanning nearly 50 years and covering enough distance to circumnavigate the world 15 times around.

Never giving up on his beloved bike, it had been stolen and recovered five times and welded 16 times. Heinz lives by the motto “Be carefree – Be Mad – Be a little bit bad. It’s the unknown around the corner that turns my wheel.”

By the end of the tour, Heinz had cycled through 196 countries and 86 territories.

The post Heinz Stücke Talks About His 50 Year Bike Tour Through 196 Countries (Podcast) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

I’ve spent almost every day over the last few months researching the latest touring and bikepacking bikes, calculating various measurements, observing the latest trends, contacting bike manufacturers (for additional information), and updating all the terminology and general advice in my guides.

I’ll be sharing all of my favourite bikes in the coming months – stay tuned for that.

Bike-On-Bike Comparison Tool

A large proportion of my time has actually been spent inputting the latest frame geometry numbers of every bike in my books into the website Bike Insights.

If you haven’t seen this nifty web tool before, it allows you to visualise the size differences between any two bikes found in my guides. It is particularly useful when determining the best bike size for you, as manufacturers do not have a standardised way of sizing them.

For example, use this link to see the 63cm Bianchi Impulso gravel bike overlayed on the 56cm Kona Sutra. Given the sizing name, you’d think they’d be 3-4 sizes apart, but they actually measure up almost identically in terms of frame length and handlebar height.

While the sizing discrepancies aren’t always this stark, Bike Insights is a useful way of checking you’re getting the right-sized bike.

Another useful way to use Bike Insights is to borrow, hire, test or get professionally fitted to a bike that (1) feels good in terms of size, and (2) is listed in the Bike Insights database. You can then use this bike as a size benchmark for comparing any of the bikes in my guides!

Gearbox Bike Categories

You’ll have noticed that I write a lot about gearbox drivetrains, namely the Rohloff hub and Pinion gearbox. If your budget allows, I think these are the perfect drivetrains for long-distance bike travel – you can find an in-depth comparison of the two market-leading bicycle gearboxes HERE.

The biggest change for 2022 is that I’ve separated the gearbox and derailleur bikes. I’ve also boosted the number of gearbox bikes significantly – you will find more than 80 gearbox bikes featured in the Touring Bicycle Buyer’s Guide and more than 30 gearbox bikes in the Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guide.

Almost all of these bikes are belt drive compatible too, which helps to create a virtually maintenance-free drivetrain.

Accessing The Update

Those who have already purchased one of my buyer’s guides will have just received an email with the latest editions attached. If you cannot find the email, there is a chance your email service has filtered it to the ‘junk’ folder. The email was sent right on the new year (31 Dec or 1 Jan).

Alternatively, you can search your email system for your original “Gumroad” receipt. That will take you to the portal with the current book(s), along with the buyer’s guides from previous years. Failing that, please get in contact with me using a private message on Facebook or Instagram – or via email.

If you’re a new customer, awesome! My guides will teach you everything about bikepacking or touring bikes, before allowing you to compare 270+ bikes at the back of the books. These guides are updated yearly – for free – so you can always keep on top of the latest bikes and information.

You can get the Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guide HERE.
You can get the Touring Bicycle Buyer’s Guide HERE.

The post The 2022 Touring & Bikepacking Bike Buyer’s Guides Are Now Available appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Iohan’s journey was one of discovery. However, he was not interested in going places where nobody had gone before but more in exploring his inner self. How far he could push himself, and his bike, in some of the most remote places on the planet?

When we first meet Iohan on his journey, he’s conversing with a trucker while both are rolling down a stretch of ‘highway’ plowed onto the ice somewhere in Canada.

“What’s your name” screams the trucker.
“Iohan” he replies.
“Where are you going?” asks the trucker.
– “Argentina”
“On your bike?”
– “Yeah”
“Oh man, I love you!” replies the trucker.

That iconic opening set the stage for an epic journey that played out over seven years, covering two continents and fourteen countries, with detours, twists and turns, good times and bad times.

All throughout, Iohan remained this unflappable force, responding to dire situations with characteristic good humor, willpower, and optimism. We know of his journey through his videos, photos, and writings as he documented his passage through the vast landscapes and his interactions with the animals and the people he met along the way. Always pushing forward, looking for the next route, he moved inexorably toward his goal.

The videos he produced were sparse, but lush at the same time. He eschewed the self-centred introspection and the generated drama seen in many travel logs, opting for more of a documentary approach. The star of his videos was the natural world and all its inhabitants. He just happened to be there, filming it all as it unfolded before him.

Iohan did make it to Argentina, though not to the tip of South America as he had hoped. His journey was cut short by the Covid pandemic, and he was caught in Canada when the borders closed.

During this time, largely unable to travel, a battle with latent insomnia took its toll on his psyche. Angry and frustrated at being unable to sleep, he eventually sought help.

He was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which a person’s airways relax while sleeping, preventing the flow of oxygen to the brain. This lack of oxygen to the brain causes it to react, waking the person in order to deal with the problem.

Any person that has spent a night at a high altitude will recognize these symptoms and will know how debilitating the lack of sleep and lack of oxygen can become. Life becomes a waking dream, the brain processes slowly, and its chemistry changes. People suffering from sleep deprivation and low oxygen levels show a lack of concentration and poor memory, they are irritable and moody.

He later confessed to me that he had been dealing with insomnia since 2018, though it was certainly made worse by his lack of travel. It was also, not surprisingly, aggravated by the time he spent at high altitudes, most recently in February 2020 when he attempted to climb Ojos del Salado. He hoped the cause of his insomnia was this diagnosis of sleep apnea and had acquired a CPAP machine to ensure his brain would get enough oxygen so he could sleep. With help from friends, he started looking forward to the future and making plans – we were hopeful he would work past his struggles.

What the CPAP machine could not treat was the depression that had accompanied his insomnia. After seven years of constantly moving forward, he was trapped by circumstances beyond his control.

His lack of concentration meant he had great difficulty producing the videos he loved. His inability to produce weighed on him and he felt unable to please his fans.

This is a trap that many creators come to face. As they become increasingly famous, the pressure on them grows. It might not even come from external sources – it may spring from an internal drive to be perfect or present a perfect image to their fans. Iohan was no exception to this trap.

Despite his calm and measured exterior, he had a typical internal life, rife with all of the struggles and doubts that people face. However, what caused him to ultimately take his own life (suicide) will forever be a mystery and my musings here remain nothing more than mere speculation.

As tragic and, perhaps, unnecessary as his death was, his legacy will be in his interactions with the people he met along his journey.

Picture yourself as an arriero, a Chilean mountain cowboy, riding along on your horse on some isolated trail high in the Andes mountains, when you come across a foreigner pushing a heavily-loaded bike.

“De dónde viene?” (“Where are you coming from?”)
– “Alaska”
“De dónde? Nunca he escuchado de esa” (“From where? I’ve never heard of that”)

That memory of this stranger with a bike appearing out of nowhere, hailing from far-off lands would remain indelibly etched in your consciousness. Maybe at times, you’d think you imagined it all. But what a memory it would be.

Many of the people Iohan met along the way would help him, and some would become friends that he would return to visit with when he could. Those personal connections ground the story of Iohan’s voyage, offering a hopeful vision of humanity, one not of selfishness and greed, but of altruism and good intentions.

Likewise, his interactions with animals showed Iohan’s true nature. Cows and horses were often protagonists in his story, sometimes as a comic foil (“I’ll call you Big Mac”, he once said to a cow), sometimes as threats of bodily harm (facing down a bull angered by his attempt to pass), and sometimes as traveling companions.

However, the most constant protagonists in the story Iohan told were the dogs. He would gravitate toward them as much as they would toward him. The forgotten street dogs seemed to be his favorites.

I’ve often speculated on the reasons behind this affinity – was it because he recognized them as kindred spirits and identified with them? Was he in need of the unquestioning affection they provided? Did he recognize their freedom and sympathize with their struggles?

Answering these questions would require a deeper understanding of Iohan as a person, and here things become difficult. I don’t know much about his early life. I know from interviews that he immigrated to Canada from Bulgaria to live with his uncle when he was 15. What happened to the rest of his family? He didn’t share and I didn’t ask. Some demons are better left unearthed, I felt, and still feel.

The people who he gravitated towards – those who knew him best – shared common traits. Despite the small age gap, I often remarked to my wife that I felt like he was our adopted son. Later I would find out that many of the people who helped him along the way felt the same.

Was that born in his early life? Were we subconsciously recognizing some inherent need that drove him? Once again, I can merely speculate, as the people he confided in were few – and they had a shared reluctance to ask him those difficult questions.

So now we come full circle, back to the start of his journey, to ask the most difficult of questions. Why? Why did he make this journey? Why did he choose the hard routes? The solitary routes, where people were few and far between?

I said at the start that he was exploring himself. Iohan once talked to me about his admiration for the documentaries of the director Warner Herzog. These documentaries are marked by a common examination of the human spirit in an indifferent and uncaring universe.

One of the more fascinating subjects of Herzog’s lens was Reinhold Messner, the mountain climber who first attempted to climb Everest without oxygen. Messner said, “I’m doing this high altitude climb to know myself. It is not important for me to explore the mountain. What’s important to explore is myself”.

Was that a self-destructive impulse, born from the loss of Messner’s beloved brother earlier in his life? Or did it stem from the primal draw that the unknown holds for humankind and the desire to challenge that unknown? Herzog pondered these questions in his documentary but never presented an answer.

I see echoes of them in Iohan’s videos and story – in the first video of his voyage he asks “Where am I?” “How did I get here?” “Why am I doing this?” as he wrangles his bike through a blizzard. Later he finds his answers – “I’m at the top of a mountain peak somewhere in the Arctic”, “I chose to challenge myself” he says as a response to the first two questions.

He left the last unanswered, unvoiced, instead choosing to show us a pristine landscape of mountains covered in snow.

This is not the end of his voyage. Everyone he touched, through his videos or in person, will carry his light with them. Please spread that light to other people.

“Let us all just be as kind and calm and curious and humorous as he was, so that at least this part of him will stay and grow in this beautiful world he showed us so uniquely.”
– Karin Koch

Matt Bardeen is the writer of this piece and runs the official memorial accounts for Iohan Gueorguiev on Instagram and Facebook.

The post The Hard Road: Insights Into Iohan Gueorguiev (From A Close Friend) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

I, Iohan, want to see the world.
Follow a map to its edges, and keep going.
Forgo the plans. Trust my instincts.
Let curiosity be my guide.
I want to change hemispheres.
Sleep with unfamiliar stars.
And let the journey unfold before me.

This is the printed manifesto that Iohan Gueorguiev carried when he set off on his ride on the ice highways of northern Canada. Whenever things got tough, Iohan would take a peek and remind himself of his dreams, his skills and his flexibility.

Over the years that followed, Iohan would see the world, and then some. He cycled the most remote routes imaginable in the Americas, beginning at the Arctic Circle, and finishing all the way down in Argentina. And he graciously brought us all along on his journey too.

Unfortunately, Iohan’s journey in this world came to end on August 19th, 2021. Iohan had been struggling with insomnia caused by obstructive sleep apnea for several years, and combined with depression, it finally became too much to bear (suicide).

Iohan lived the life that many of us have always dreamed of. He was outside and free, connecting deeply with people, animals and his surroundings. He was out experiencing everything the world had to offer.

Iohan was a friendly, generous and humble guy. He would always share his routes, travel tips and filming tips with other folks in the community. He even supported other YouTube creators financially, despite living on a shoestring.

Iohan showed us that the world is beautiful at a time when the news reports are often so grim. He taught an entire generation of bike travellers how to calculate risk, be calm in adversity, trust themselves, and to find humour in very difficult situations. He is personally responsible for exposing thousands of people to the idea of bike travel, many of whom are now carrying his flag.

Thank you Iohan for the journey so far. We will always be travelling with you in our hearts.

RIP

Some of Iohan’s ashes have been spread at the top of Grey Creek Pass, near Cranbrook in Canada.

Please consider supporting suicide prevention organisations or sleep disorder awareness foundations. And please check in with your friends and family as regularly as possible to see if they need help.

This is a list of suicide crisis phone numbers in every country.
The Sleep Apnea Foundation

Please keep watching and enjoying Iohan’s films.
And reading his blog.
Here is a Spotify playlist with Iohan’s music.

The post A Tribute To Iohan Gueorguiev (1988-2021) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.