Travelling fascinated me from a very early age, if stranded with a broken car in Kenya decades ago, flat tires in China biking along rice fields, locked up inside a Jordanian nature reserve or hitchhiking in winter freezing Bolivian Andes. I have also cycled in Cuba, mountains in Nepal and Southern Chile. The trouble was that I could only ride a bike on weekends, vacations overseas and any free time available, usually before sunrise