A New Life – Touring the World Tandem

Contributor: Cycling A Dream, Sylvie & Nicolas

On May 9th, 2022, we left for what we would like to become our World Tour on our tandem bike. But we started planning for it many years ago. In fact, the serious planning process started in January 2018 after an extremely cold Holiday Season spent in Quebec, Canada, with family and friends.

The Summer before that holiday break, Sylvie and I had spent another 2-week holiday cycling on our tandem and had to go back home completely frustrated for not being able to cycle for longer periods due to our professional careers. But during that holiday break, because it was so cold outside, I spent almost all my days searching the web, and I discovered the existence of Warmshowers. A revelation that was!!

I extended my search, visited different profiles, and discovered many different stories, which appeared very appealing and, more importantly, completely feasible. I got in touch with different people to inquire about how they were able to make their dream become a reality, and I started developing plans to build my own story. It has been a long and very painful process. One does not leave a 32-year professional career built upon sacrifices and compromises to go from a full sedentary, well-established life one day to an unknown, day-by-day nomad lifestyle. But all that was tempting. And Warmshowers played quite an important role in our decision as we knew that wherever we would be around the world, there would be a host somewhere, ready to help and support us in our adventure.

Then it was decided that my wife and I would become: CyclingADream

For the first week of our new life, we were a little nervous about the idea of leaving for the unknown. Also, because we were leaving from Sutton, Quebec, in early May, we were not sure how the weather would look. It can still be freezing cold sometimes in the Green Mountains in Vermont, as we planned to cycle Vermont from north to south. So, to reassure us a bit and make sure we would have a roof above our heads at least for a few nights during that week, we contacted a few Warmshowers hosts, and naturally, they kindly invited us and warmly welcomed us when we got to their places.

In Worcester, VT, Phoenix, and Helen were the first to host us on the second night of our new life. They kindly welcomed us and offered us dinner & breakfast. We shared a nice evening, and they even acted, without probably noticing it, as pure motivation as on our second day, we had already started questioning ourselves about the purpose and value of our journey. Helen just said that we would become a good example for people having potentially the same dream and the same doubts we had.

A little further, in Chester, VT, Judith & Bob welcomed us warmly and shared dinner and breakfast with us. We also felt encouraged by their kindness and words of encouragement.

We also stayed with Jimmie in Elmira, NY, not during that first week, but we wanted to mention him in this post as apparently, we were the first travelers he was hosting through Warmshowers. We must say that he did it extremely well and fully deserved this special mention. He even came to ride the first few miles when we left his place after 2 days.

Each time we have stayed with Warmshowers hosts, we always left more motivated and fully energized. It is such a great way to get cheered up and to focus on the nice things we are going through, the chance that we have that we can be: CyclingADream

Thanks, Warmshowers, for your existence and all your hosts worldwide. We are coming!!