This is how it happened…
Some time ago Pete said to Alice ‘wouldn’t you like to live and work somewhere different?’ Alice said ‘Sure. How about somewhere like New Zealand?’ Pete said ‘cool, but how about we cycle there?’ Alice said ‘O.K.’……and so the trip was born!
Some time later Pete proposed… on the basis that if we were getting married it would either have to be before or after the trip and (as we weren’t sure when after would be) before seemed like a damn good excuse for a leaving party!
(Not, as some friends may suggest, as an ‘insurance policy’…)
So we got married. Then we went to ride our bikes for a while.
Why?
“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu
We were feeling progressively more disillusioned by the established ‘norm’ that has become apparent to us about in life in the UK: Simply put, working not for love but money, living only for the weekend, and being surrounded by things that you don’t really need. This lifestyle is wonderful if it makes you happy. It doesn’t make us happy. Instead we want to have adventures together and this trip, to us, seemed like the only logical choice.
With freedom being the main aim, it seemed detrimental to the trip’s success to have a stringent plan for where we were going and when we were going to be there. We weren’t setting out to break any records; simply to roll with what the road throws at us.
We wanted the first years of married life to be, well, as challenging and as rewarding as possible. We’re prepared to face the condensed highs and lows that the road holds for us and feel both make us stronger as a couple.
McNeilsOnWheels 