I’m walking up the aisle of a Safeway in Honolulu, searching the shelves for the highest calorie food items. My bikes back at the hostel, a sweaty 25 minute walk along the humid streets. I left Australia yesterday and tomorrow, after months and months of daydreaming, I’ll be in Alaska.

I neatly squeeze 10 days of food into one of my panniers, relax back in my squeaky bunk bed and open my phone to use the weak internet connection to check the 511 Alaska highway website. The flashing red light indicates a warning and no matter how many times I read it in disbelief, my eyes are looking at the words – HIGHWAY CLOSED. Shit. Unseasonably high temperatures on the North Slope had caused the ice to melt at a rapid rate, inevitably flooding the tundra and washing out the first few miles of the Dalton Highway. 

I board my scheduled flight to Anchorage and sit there, nervously twisting a piece of paper in my hands to pieces. Once the plane lands I quickly rush to check into my connection to Deadhorse – the intended start point of my round the world cycle. After a long chat with the airline, I’m encouraged to divert to Fairbanks and stay away from the area. I’m on the next flight to the middle of the State, staring out the window at Denali National Park, mind racing with anxiety and disappointment. I can’t tell you how much extensive research I did on this road and now I wasn’t even going to touch it. Another few pieces of paper twist and fall to pieces at my feet.

I arrive in Fairbanks, Alaska. The bike box looks beaten up however the contents remain intact. I breathe a sigh of relief and spend a slow hour in the arrivals lobby, piecing the bike back together. I’m now riding out the door, across the airports car park and onto the highway into town. I struggle to contain my excitement, the warm spring sun on my back, and I scream out a loud, “Yeeeehaa!” Freedom.

I fly through the first few days, which surprises me as I did no training whatsoever. I mainly enjoyed as much food as possible back in Tassie. Thinking I’ll be camping in the sub zero temperatures of the Arctic, I put on additional fat to keep me warm, and, to be honest, I just love a large Double Whopper with cheese meal. But there I am, overweight and sweating it out on my loaded Long Haul Trucker. After a few days, the excitement I had been running off runs out, and before too long, I’m physically exhausted.

I make camp quite far into the woods one night, down an old hunting track to keep away from the truck noise and wind.  The forest is dense in this area, the birds chirping in the neighbouring trees, a welcome change to the highway racket. Around 2AM I hear something moving through the forest and I freeze in fear. I don’t even have the ability to reach for my bear repellent, a big gnarly red canister, capable of compromising someone or something’s sight and sense of taste forever. There is a bear at the foot of my tent, in between me and my bike. I hear the water bottles in the cage cracking as pressure is forced against them, and then a few deep exhales. I’m so scared that my teeth start to hurt, if I’m eaten right here right now, it would be weeks before someone found me. After a few moments the bear is making its way in the direction of my food that is thrown up in a tree, then its gone. Some hours pass before my heartbeat leaves my ears and in the morning my food stash and myself are quickly back on the road.

This road takes me to the Yukon and turns into dirt. For two days I’m cruising along hard packed gravel and past teams of road workers, resealing. A lot of them ask if I have a gun to protect me from the animals. I say no and laugh it off and they frown at my ignorance. I guess they know the area better than I do but I feel confident in my wild animal contingency plan. Which, as I found out last week, is to lay there in fear as I’m mauled into another life.

The scenery is out of this world. Traffic is almost non-existent, there is a wide valley between two beautiful ridges and the sunset lasts for hours. This is one of the hardest adjustments for me. Sleeping in a tent with almost no night time strings me out. Especially trying to adjust to the opposite side of the world’s time zone. Though, the endless amount of sunlight has allowed for some large mileage days. The biggest clocks up 210km and a midnight arrival in Whitehorse. Here I take a few days “rest” with some wild locals, quickly realising that it’s always 4pm no matter how long you stay at the bar. The summer up there must feel like one really, really long day. The winter: one really, really long hangover.

I regather some focus and head off again, enjoying the desolate stretches of the Yukon and Northern British Columbia. I feel this strange feeling of connectivity to the other motorists out there. I throw out hand gestures of acknowledgement to the holiday makers, as if to validate our position on the planet and somehow relay a message of commendation for making the effort to get out into this glorious landscape. These hand gestures are somewhat reciprocated, quite often with an iPad or iPhone pressed against the windscreen of their car snapping images of what looks like a lonely guy on a bicycle in the middle of nowhere. My favourite interaction is with a Texan couple in a small apartment on wheels. They approach me laying under a tree at a rest stop and inspect my set up. The middle-aged woman, in crisp white shirt and shorts, comments, “Wow, I thought we were roughing it.” They offer me an apple or maybe it was an orange and drive away. Once the sound of their huge Diesel engine is out of ear, there isn’t a sound at all and I feel happier.

Around the 2000km mark I snap a chain. I pushed too hard on the pedals in the highest gear while trying to be a hero and break a top speed. A few kilometres down the road I see a wolf and a few days after that, when I’m collecting water by a river, two bears less than 10 metres away, watching me. I begin to embrace the wildlife and no longer fear it. I ride through herds of bison, with their black soulless eyes, but still, see no moose.

Boom. The front tire explodes and I slink back to Prince George to buy a new one. There are people around now and more traffic on the road. Gone are the days of solitude so I ride with music in my ears to drown out the droning engines. My Spanish vocabulary builder comes on shuffle. I hit skip.

Boom. The other tire explodes. This time nowhere near a bike shop. I’m stressing out and find it hard to think clearly. Then Mario enters. A middle-aged dude that looks like he lives for the outdoors. We chat for a while, I explain my situation and he lends me a wheel he has in the truck. It’s for a road bike, skinny profile and the wrong diameter but it rolls with clearance and I use it to get to Jasper in the Rockies and then leave it at his friend’s house to collect the following day.

Now I have two bulletproof tires under me and a spare on the back. I don’t want anything taking my attention away from the magnificent beauty of Jasper National Park. It’s the longest day of the year and I maximise the daylight, riding alongside snow-capped peaks that are drenched in the golden sunset. I don’t even feel the searing burn in my legs from these heinous climbs. I’m completely mesmerised by the mountains. I turn West and descend in elevation into the Okanagon Valley. Here I meet a hilarious German cyclist who shares similar ideas on life and we endure the summer heat on the bikes together and cool off with swims in the lake and beer. The living is good and gets better when I arrive in Penticton a few days later.

Here I’m reunited with good friends and have my own room, soft bed and full kitchen to prepare food. My camping provisions are comfortable but can hardly compare to a memory foam mattress and a real pillow. We party a bit and then party some more. I hitch a ride in my friend’s car to Vancouver and spend two weeks catching up in the old stomping ground, running around the sea wall and tripping on mushrooms at Wreck Beach. I cash a healthy Canadian tax cheque after a month of down time and return to my bike in Penticton. The bike’s had a service and a few upgrades and I’m ready to cross the border into the States.

It’s flippin’ hot. I’m in Washington State, in a dripping state. I can’t stop sweating each day in the 38 °C heat. Add on top, the Cascade mountain range and I’m at my limit. I roll into Colville and am hosted by a great Warmshowers.org family. We attend the rendezvous festival that evening. There’s a local American band covering American songs. It’s late at night, the crowds are starting to get into the swing as “Sister Golden Hair” belts over the merrymakers. In the following song, the guitarist plays the fiddle. I feel tired so we leave and I watch for deer as we drive home under the blue moon. I cycle in a South Easterly direction for about 10 days until I hit Bozeman Montana. Here I hang with my good friend Jules and prepare for the touristic madness of Yellowstone National Park. It’s a tough slog cycling through there. I ride in the north entrance and have my butt served to me by what feel like endless climbs. I forgot how difficult it was to ride over 2000m above sea level, utilising every pull out on the road to catch my breath and scoff some fruit and nut mix. This park is full of the strangest natural features I’ve ever seen.

I’m catching my breath about a week later at a rest stop on top a mountain pass in Utah. In walks a guy who recommends a music festival a few miles down the road. He mentions there is camping there and that he’ll buy me a beer so I decide to check it out. Once I arrive I’m introduced to this guy’s friends and I’m shown a place to pitch my tent, then fed a big meal and given a cold beer every time I finish the previous. This group is so welcoming I feel as though I’ve know them for years, which inspires me to stay another night. We hike the mountain with the dogs in the morning, relax on the ski slopes to the music of the festival in the day and dance up a storm well into the night. It’s an awesome weekend and I feel sad riding off down the canyon the next morning.

I drop away from the mountains and within a day the landscape has changed to a furnace of red rock. Gone are the days of psyching myself up to dive into an ice-cold lake inside a cool crisp Canadian forest. Now I’m panting like a dog, tongue out on an interstate, picturing an oasis of tropical fruit juice instead of the reality that is slamming down warm water from my sun-exposed drink bottles. I find myself bathing in the Colorado River, after dark in Moab one night. I wake up in the morning to a silty dust through my camp matt and realise the water looks like a caramel milk shake. I camp on the rocks and for some reason thought this massive movement of water was as fresh as those flowing in Alaska. This is when I realise I’ve actually peddled my bike a long way. I spend two very hot days in Arches National Park and enjoy a clean solar hot water shower at my WarmShowers host, Randy’s, the following night.

I get asked the question of why I’m doing this all the time. And each time I give a different answer. I’m not sure what motivates me to do this type of stuff. To the inexperienced, it seems like an extremely uncomfortable struggle. For example, in BC I got on the road first thing in the morning, already soaked in my wet weather gear and pushed off to ride in the third day of rain. I said, “Well, I’ll be dry in ten hours when I set up the tent” and continued with my day as normal. I seem to be content with what’s going on as long as it’s not the lowest point. Even when I’m at my lowest – pushing my bike up a 10% grade mountain, muscles screaming with pain into a valley headwind, I think, “Wow Josh, if you could only see yourself right now. This is ridiculous.” And then I stop, look around and laugh about it. I’m learning to enjoy the struggle because at the end of these moments come the most beautiful scenes or the most beautiful people. And if all that happened at the end of a tough day was an additional 150km towards my goal, then that’s progress and that’s positive. There are times when pedalling in the saddle feels like work, I won’t pretend that doesn’t happen. It’s a mental battle that I fight every so often because the physical fatigue often clouds my thoughts. The tens of thousands of kilometres looming over the horizon are the reason I find myself pushing so hard. It’s an insurmountable goal when I look at it that way. So I roll to a stop, walk away from the bike and return to the moment. Each day, just chip away, chip away. And say to myself, “One day I’ll get there, but for now, this is happening.”

I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what I’ve experienced so far. Cycling 8 days alone through the desert can do that to a person. The details I find myself focusing on have been the interactions I’ve shared with people along the route. Like Mario with the wheel around Jasper, the welcoming group of friends at the music festival in Utah or even the simplest thumbs up or honk from a passing motorist. All these gestures of support, these honest and kind people along the road have truly made this goal all the more attainable. I set out to do this trip unsupported, that was a big deal to me. I wanted to be self-sufficient and stay away from sponsorship because that took my freedom away from this personal adventure. But the truth is, I have been supported in some way or another by the people I’ve met so far and I’m not sure if I could have gotten this far if it wasn’t for them. And in knowing that these potential scenarios could be experienced, again, down the road, I can’t help but feel motivated to continue on. Once I’ve eaten breakfast and my body is reacting to the food, I’m bouncing around my camp, ready to hit the road and see what I can learn and share with the next person I meet. Camping out and living in the natural beauty of the earth is an added bonus.

As of now, I’m in Del Rio, Texas. Tomorrow I’ll cross into Mexico, an entirely different culture and language to learn. I feel a little apprehensive about the great shift in my comfort zone, though I know I’ll feel confident after a week or two. It will be like overcoming my fear of bears in Alaska. In hindsight, I could have been more prepared by listening to those language building tracks on my iPod… 

If you have some down time during your own adventure, or you’re on the bus to work, dreaming of your next trip, then you can follow the Mexican fiesta at the Facebook page ‘Gone Full Circle’. Get in contact if you have any questions or you feel like joining up on the journey. This is when the trip is going to get interesting. Look out for uploads to my VSCO account and stay tuned to AHB for Chapter 2.

Words and images by Josh Bergemann.