3: Pack Your Panniers: Traveling the World by Bicycle with Dave Ertel and Nancy Peterson
In this episode…
Our guests today are Dave Ertel and Nancy Peterson. After leaving the states to settle down on the other side of the globe, they set out on a bicycle tour around the perimeter of the Australian continent, through southeast Asia, and across Europe, covering more than 13,000 miles and 26 countries over 19 months. A few years later, they took on another cycling trip, this time conquering almost 17,000 miles and 15 international borders over 20 months from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
Show Notes
Dave and Nancy’s blog: Leave Without Pay.
The book Nancy mentioned is The Borrowers by Mary Norton. Here is a link to it on Amazon.
TakeAways:
“You only have so many breaths in and out. Are you going to spend all of them in an office working for a coorporation or are you going to do something you’re really passionate about?” —Dave Ertel
“Extra has a different meaning when you come back from living out of one or two panniers for two years… it’s odd how many decisions you have to make every day… you realize how much all those options complicate your life.” —Nancy Peterson
“Having that big picture goal helps center you a little bit and helps you get through those days where if you had a choice you’d fly home… having an end point and having a big picture goal for the trip was a good thing.” —Dave Ertel
“It’s not the big things… it’s really the little things.” —Dave Ertel speaking about culture shock
“It makes you really feel sympathy and understanding—empathy—for those people who’ve to travel or have to move from country to country. Just that initial bedding in period is really, really hard.” —Nancy Peterson
“People everywhere are just trying to get by. They’re trying to provide for their families and get ahead in life and generally are hard-working. And that’s so true everywhere, but if you don’t ever go there and experience that… you start seeing those people as foreigners… and that’s the beauty of travel. You experience them as just people.” —Dave Ertel
“It’s easy to demonize people from those places if you’ve never been there… I couldn’t explain that to anyone. You’d have to go sit in that hostel and watch this. And then if you still want to make those comments about where people come from, okay, but at least you’ve seen this and had this experience.” —Dave Ertel