When I was 14, a pioneer brother (maybe aged 20-ish) took me on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. We stopped at a gas station on the north rim and met a bicyclist who was on his way to Canada. I got to talk with him for a while and asked him all kinds of questions about his bike, gear, massive legs, where do you shower?, how do you support yourself if your home is that bike?, (which it was - he told me). He said he makes a round trip from somewhere in Canada to Panama every year, buying turquois in the south and selling it in the north to support himself.
That's when I became interested in cycling.
Every year my family would travel through Island Park and Yellowstone National Park to camp for a week on our way to the district convention in Billings, Montana. Every year I would watch the cyclist hoofing up those steep mountains, wanting a bike of my own that I could travel with. Oh, I had a bike of my own - a K-Mart dirt bike that got me to school and back. But a real traveling bike, a Schwinn maybe, or a Cannondale. I knew my folks couldn't afford something like that. Not with four other kids to feed, clothe and school.
30 years later I have a Cannondale hybrid now. Not exactly a long distance traveling bike. I consider mine more of a starter kit. But I have been eye-balling the Smokey Mountain range out my back door and the road bike I intend to buy at the cycle shop. I've already mapped out the route I'm going to take, the hotels I'll stay in, and the supply of nitroglycerin for all the anticipated heart attacks.
If I die up there, I'll die happy.