EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was authored by Christopher Chartier, a tenured psychology professor at Ashland University. Chartier previously submitted a story for Ashland Source that involved hiking with his son.
ASHLAND — I just completed a very me goal. Allow me to briefly bask.
Out in the sunshine this afternoon, I finished a cycling trip around the circumference of the earth in just under a decade. Well … kinda, sorta, virtually-ish.
If you tally up the cumulative distance I’ve ridden in the last 10 years — March 18, 2014 through Feb. 8, 2024 — it equals 24,901 miles, which is the length of the equator.
My route included a total of 1,542,857 feet of vertical gain and loss. That’s a lot of ups and downs.
“But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?”
— Joshua Slocum
When I first downloaded the running and riding app Strava, I immediately loved how it tracked and collated and amassed all of one’s stats automatically.
Without much thought, and without telling a soul, I set the goal of riding the equivalent of a trip around the world in a decade, mostly as a way to keep my pedals spinning after having hung up my road-racing wheels.
I had just finished my PhD, we’d had our first boy, and I started my first faculty gig in Ashland.
I felt a bit aimless outside of work and family life.
Through all the changes of my previous decade on earth, the bike had been a guiding constant, mooring me to myself as I navigated new responsibilities and experiences.
I wanted to keep it that way for the next 3,650 days too, and thought this silly little goal might help.
I figured that if I didn’t know which direction to head, I should just pedal off in a straight line, follow it for 24,901 miles, and I’d end up right back where I started, but hopefully a little wiser or at least calmer for all the effort.
To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t long until I completely forgot about this arbitrary and imaginary goal. Luckily, other things had caught my attention that kept me moving out of doors, often by bike.
I rode 11 100-mile races on my mountain bike, ran a few hundred milers as well, and became a moderately competent rock climber and mountaineer.
A bunch of regular life stuff happened too, as it always seems to do. We had two more boys, moved houses again, I published some well-received academic articles, and got tenure.
The riding ebbed and flowed depending on the gravitational pull of cycling goals relative to other orbiting interests and the changing tides of daily life.
I rode…
— all over Ashland and the surrounding counties on paved, gravel, and dirt roads, and
— on numerous MTB trails in Ohio, Michigan, and Colorado, and
— with my sons on the tagalong and in their bike chair clipped to my around-town commuter, and
— through virtual landscapes on the Zwift platform, particularly during the 2020 lockdown, and
— with my Dad, especially once he and Mom moved to Ashland, and
— from Cincinnati to Ashland (192 miles) on a tandem bike with my best friend, Jacob Moss — my longest ride of the decade, and
— to the tippy top of the highest paved road in the lower 48 — my biggest climb of the decade at 6,279 vertical feet to the summit of Mount Evans with my wife Kim, and
— in many other settings and states now long forgotten, whether cruelly or mercifully.
Then in late 2023 I finally got around to scratching an itch I’d had for a long time.
I read Captain Joshua Slocum’s “Sailing Alone Around the World.” It was a major missing line on my “outdoor adventure reader” CV.
His account of navigating the first solo sailing lap of earth hooked me quickly.
Slocum’s concise but delicious prose transported me in mental spacetime, suddenly serving as first mate out on the high seas in 1895.
My brain was bubbling with grandiose thoughts of global circumnavigation again. Still, my long-forgotten goal remained under the surface of consciousness.
Then Kim and I were reading by the fire one Saturday evening, perhaps even the Eve of New Year’s Eve actually, but I can’t recall.
She asked a seemingly simple question – “How many miles have you ridden this year?”
I pulled up my Strava profile to see. I found the answer, which I now forget, but the 1-year mileage haul reminded me of the 10-year goal!
I had a few hundred miles to go and several months to close the loop.
I wasn’t quite done, but I knew I had a damned good shot of getting there in under a decade if I got my butt in gear.
Cycling once again took on a more prominent role in my daily routine for the subsequent five weeks.
I feel really lucky and thankful that Kim asked me that little question. I can imagine that it would have been quite painful to remember the goal in, say, April — a month late and a few miles short.
Not that any of this really matters in any grand sense. But I have to admit it matters to me.
Not so much the achievement of the goal, but rather the personal growth, enjoyment, and time for reflection that those miles gave to me.
I owe so much to the bike and its abiding presence in my life. Deep riches await those willing to toil astride these beautiful machines.
This afternoon, my outing was nothing short of sublime. It was delightfully mundane and routine — just a little countryside loop out past Hayesville and back.
I started riding south, into moderate winds, and was rewarded with full sails and easy spinning when I turned North with tailwinds pushing me along.
I was out on a decidedly-not-epic ride, but I did feel a little bit like I was coming back into port after a triumphant quest — from home, to as far from home as you can physically get, to home again.
Ten years of accumulated heartbeats, fun, pain, joy, laughter, tears, conversations, Type 1 fun, Type 2 fun, Type 3 fun, smiles, and miles, came back to the surface.
I found myself tickled by a thought — I’m so similar to the young man that embarked on this decade’s worth of riding. I still enjoy few things more than easy hours spent alone on quiet roads.
But I’m also different in ways I could have never imagined, but am slowly coming to accept and even appreciate. Slower, gentler, calmer, more patient, more enduring, more tolerant, and maybe even happier. Let’s just say content.
“I’ve got sea stories, and they’re all true.”
– Sturgill Simpson
Back home, showering off the Amish exhaust that had coated my shins, I recalled another classic in the maritime canon – “A Voyage for Madmen” by Peter Nichols.
I’ve read it many times, and will probably always be happily haunted by it. Nichols introduced me to a cast of solo-sailing characters, the so called “madmen” of the title, but one stands far above the rest in terms of psychic impact — Bernard Metissier.
For reasons immediately obvious to those who hear even the briefest accounts of Bernard’s exploits and exhortations, brother Bernard began to serve, in my mind, as an idealized, mythic, mentor from afar.
Metissier completed his own circumnavigation of earth in the late 1960’s, only communicating with the outside world via slingshot-launched notes to far-off passing ships.
It was among the first ever non-stop, solo, circumnavigations under wind-power (Joshua Slocum stopped in many ports along his way to resupply and repair his sloop, named the Spray).
Upon reaching his voyage’s terminus aboard his sailboat named Joshua, much to the surprise of his loved ones, Bernard just kept right on sailing, immediately beginning another circumnavigation.
The finish line did not compel him to close his journey.
“There are two terrible things for a man: not to have fulfilled his dream, and to have fulfilled it.
“When a great adventure is launched with a powerful thrust, fatigue in the muscles and doubts in the mind are swept away by a fullness that moves life along like a breath from the depths of the soul.”
— Bernard Metissier
What now for me then?
Bernard hadn’t found everything he desired from his voyage, so he kept right on going, looking for more, and following his internal compass.
Surely this is the righteous path. I’m still learning and savoring myriad things by moving forward on two wheels.
Dare me to go for another lap?
will write more, in 2034, if not before,
Chris