Let’s see, about us…

We’d like to say: Anna and Dave are two high-performance athletes and legendary outdoorsmen, each with several years of competitive Ironman triathlons and ultra-marathons under their belts.  They have been known to bike for weeks straight without even stopping for a bathroom break, to hunt for food using only their bare hands and a knowledge of whistle-based animal communication gleaned from years of study on the steppe of Mongolia, and to brush their teeth with stinging nettles because they like the taste.

Unfortunately though, that isn’t us…

Instead, how about:

Annabelle Vinois is Belgian, from Brussels, and she links her love of cycling to her Dutch genes, her love of travel to growing up in a country with not nearly enough sunshine for her tastes.  She studied law and even worked as a lawyer, though all the while she has been dreaming of traveling and living abroad.

Dave Meyer is American, from New York, and he broke his wrist in a bicycle accident when he was ten, which he ties to his lack of Dutch genes.  It didn’t really deter him though, and he’s grown the same bug of wanderlust as Anna – even if we grew up on different continents.  Dave studied sociology and even worked in the field, though now he works as a travel and fiction writer (more information on all that here).

We met in Mongolia.  We were on the same plane from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar and we fell in love when, across ten rows of sleeping Mongolians, 35,000 feet above the Gobi desert, we made eye-contact and smiled.  After a week or so traveling together (spread out over the period of a month), Anna invited Dave to follow her to Vienna and well, we’ve been bumping around the world ever since, all the while planning “a big trip” somewhere in the future.

In 2008, we met these lovely people: www.mundubicyclette.be at a bike fair, and the plan to turn that big trip into a big bike trip was born.  In the summer of 2008, we took our honeymoon biking from Vienna to Istanbul via Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, and it was only with great reluctance that we returned to Brussels at the end.  After 2,500 kilometers the legs were willing, the hearts were willing, and the whole Asian continent was right there before us…  but no, the timing just wasn’t right.

Fall 2009 became our official departure date; Africa became our first destination.  We’ve blocked out about three years to complete the whole tour – well aware of course of the cycling adage that “Those who leave for more than one year never come back.”  We hope to come back.  We also hope to use the trip to learn more about other issues which intrigue us, notably the environment and ecologically sustainable agriculture (permaculture in particular) – issues which hopefully will be useful to us when we eventually do come back.

In the mean time, welcome to our site, and we hope you’ll follow the trip with us.  Feel free to sign up for the Google Group to get an e-mail notice whenever we post an update and feel free to write to us as well if you have any questions, comments, concerns…

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