Despite never having met each other before, the summer of 2015 saw two students embark on two separate endeavours to cycle across their respective countries.

Dean Shaff, class of 2016, began his solo ride in San Francisco, California, and biked some 4500 kilometers across the U.S. to the small historical town of Yorktown, Virginia on the East Coast. Similarly, after letting the Pacific Ocean lap at his back tire, Alexander MacKay, class of 2019, set off in the direction of his home on the Atlantic Coast of Canada, a ride that would take him two-months to complete.

Every day in the saddle led to a new, foreign location for the two cyclists and a need to find shelter for the night. The process of perpetual movement and continuous exploration led to greater challenges beyond physical exhaustion. In particular, Shaff faced an abiding loneliness throughout his trip, while MacKay had to overcome an ever-present sense of uncertainty during his ride. It would only be in the fall semester of 2015 that their journeys would finally collide.

Alex

I set off on my trip with the intention of exploring Canada’s many natural landscapes, and quickly learned that constant change is exhausting.

Most mornings I would pack up and pedal away from a place that had quickly but briefly become familiar. I did so with no idea of what would come ahead: what the day would entail, whom I would encounter and where I would set my tent that night. The only constants in my life during those two months were the long hours on the saddle, the inside of my tent and many cans of cold tuna.

I relished the adventure, the independence and the freedom that traveling under my own power enabled me; however, the cost of these qualities was the relinquishment of control. The whims of the road and the wills of the natural world decided my daily trials or salvations, whether it was mounting the Rockies, flying across the flatlands with a tailwind or seeking shelter from thunderstorms.

My unawareness of what was to come and my inability to see further than the road ahead led me to depend instead on the faith I had in myself to overcome any obstacles I encountered. As I progressed, I learned that my abilities or resources, on their own, were not enough. Individuals across my country offered me incredible support throughout my journey, and the journey would’ve been impossible to complete without them. From being hosted by families in their homes to simply enjoying a connection with someone, the generosity of others was what really powered me on.

Dean

Sitting in the outdoor patio of a Starbucks café in Fallon, Nevada, I felt as if I was sitting on the frontier of the comfortable, civilized U.S. America I know, and looking towards the brutal wild of the West. This was the last Starbucks I would encounter for many hundreds of kilometers. I was starting my ride along US highway 50 in Nevada, a roughly 600 kilometer stretch of a two lane highway that crosses a massive section of largely uninhabited land in the western U.S.. Coming from the verdant rolling hills of Eastern Iowa and the upper Mississippi river valley, I felt exposed and uneasy in this seemingly barren landscape. The indicators of rich flora had always been rows of green plants so dense one can’t tell individual plants apart. In Nevada, even by mid June, the sparse vegetation on either side of the highway was already burned out by the sun, taking on yellow and brown hues. The sky, with its constant sprinkling of puffy clouds, felt wider and deeper than the Midwest.

By the second day of my ride across Nevada, I had fallen into an unpleasant rhythm, governed by the landscape’s geographic undulations. Ride 70 to 100 kilometers across a windy, hot valley with craggy red mountains to my front and back, climb 1000 or so meters to the top of the mountains, descend and repeat. From the top of one of these mountain ranges, I encountered an unusual optical illusion in which the highway looked disconnected from the landscape it traversed. Highway 50, stretched out in front of me, was so straight across the upcoming valley that it looked as if someone had stuck a shepherd's crook in the ground in front of me, only twisting at the end as it made its way up the next set of mountains. For a brief, delirious moment, I expected the highway to fully decouple from the ground and continue on into the sky.

It was during these early days in Nevada that I encountered loneliness for the first time. I felt as if the unfamiliar landscape surrounding me was hostile, with its long, uninterrupted stretches of wilderness and extreme heat. Anxiety and fear were my main companions during the day as the sun scorched over head. The same questions cycled through my head while riding: What if I run out of water? What if I broke down? What if I couldn’t physically make it? With no one to talk to I found myself dwelling on these hypothetical questions and long chains of possible outcomes, few of which were positive. My interactions with strangers exacerbated my feelings of loneliness instead of soothing them. Realizing that any interaction I had with people was inherently ephemeral made me realize how far I was from the understanding, loving comfort of my parents and friends. Being stuck in the Nevada desert, pedaling through endless mountain ranges while the sun never sets is still a recurring nightmare, even a year and a half after completing my bike trip.

If daytime in Nevada played host to my anxieties and loneliness, dawn and nighttime were the backdrop for moments of intense happiness and introspection. Watching the sun rise over the mountains in the east, bathing those in the West in red light became one of my great pleasures in the desert. As with any place with little light pollution, the nighttime skies were so full of stars that I could spot the dense band of the Milky Way. Looking at this sky at night, filled with wonder, lines from poems even floated into my head!

My nighttime or early morning exhilaration made me realize slowly that I could be alone without being lonely. It took the rest of my bike trip to finally feel comfortable in solitude outside of these brief moments.

Our adventures were constant movements, exploring uncertain territories and new parts of our countries. These experiences changed the way we allowed ourselves to perceive the world and accept the help of others. Our bike trips marked a series of monumental moments in our lives where we were able to watch the landscape of our countries change as we rolled through them and sought shelter along the way.