Adventure Cycling

Exploring Ancient Xinchang Village

Fall weather is an excellent time to ride. The overcast skies and cooler temperatures typical for Mid-Autumn Festival make for pleasant cycling. It’s a great time to get out and it the road and spin those pedals, especially in China.

For Mid-Autumn Festival, our family celebrated the holiday with a family lunch and dinner. In the evening there was an all-nighter playing mahjong for those who could hang. I wasn’t one of them. Besides, I would be playing on scared money anyway. Always wanting to work a bit of adventure cycling in wherever possible, decided to make a couple days of it by riding out to the ancient water town village of Xinchang near where we would be staying.

Follow Your Dreams

by Johnny Isaak ·

When it comes down to it, there is nothing between you and your dreams but thin air and opportunity. And more times than not, it’s about working up the guts to go and just doing it.

As a child, I never thought it possible to have the opportunity to travel the world in search of adventure in exotic faraway lands. As with most kids in small town America, I grew up believing my life was about getting a job, paying a mortgage, and living a “normal” life that eventually led to a quiet retirement and old age.

[Read more…] about Follow Your Dreams

Going Local: Exploring the Watertown of Qibao

by Johnny Isaak ·

Adventure Close to Home

With commitments and obligations keeping me in the city for a few months before the next long adventure, I’d been yearning to get out on the bike again.

The milder and warmer spring weather around Shanghai was beginning to provide excellent opportunities to get out on the bike for local adventures.

It was time to get out the bike and explore some of the sights in around the city to “see what could be seen.” After all, in China, a country with over five thousand years of written history, surely there was something to be discovered and explored.

Practically anywhere you go in China, the Chinese people have a rich, robust culture foreign to Westerners, which makes for interesting places to see and experience. [Read more…] about Going Local: Exploring the Watertown of Qibao

What’s on the Bike? Setup for an Australian Bike Adventure

by Johnny Isaak ·

My bags are packed. The Divide is ready to roll. Distant horizons of the burnt red sun of the Australian Outback call.

Setting up a bike and kit for a long journey is an ongoing ever evolving process of tweaking and changing, deleting this and adding that. For me, it’s just the nature of the beast.

Setting up my rig and kit for Australia was a pretty casual affair. In the Land Down Under, I’m rolling fairly light and not over thinking the gear. Other than protection from the elements, a few items to keep the bike rolling, and a camera and notebook to document the journey, not much more is needed.

Go Your Own Way: Be Your Own Explorer

by Johnny Isaak ·

Just about wherever you go nowadays chances are someone’s already been there. You’d be challenged to find many places on this planet where humans haven’t already been. Virtually everywhere you go, someone’s been there before you. And worse yet, if it’s a really cool place, somebody’s probably put up a fence around it and is charging admission.

The world is changing. Adventure travel isn’t what it used to be a hundred, even fifty years ago. But that’s no reason you shouldn’t go. If you travel to where you never been, it will be your first time. The journey will still be a rewarding adventure if you approach it right. And in a sense, we are all explorers in our own right.

Mia’s Cycling Adventure

by Johnny Isaak ·

The Girl Wants to Ride

“Dad, I want to ride with you tomorrow,” Mia declared to me as I pumped up the tires on my Divide and readied it for the following day’s cruise out to Chongming Island. Now at the last minute, Mia suddenly expressed an interest in going.

South Korea: Notes from a Winter Journey

by Johnny Isaak ·

Exploring South Korea by bike in late winter was a different journey of sorts. Bicycle travel through a land deep in hibernation was filled with crisp foggy mornings, temperatures sucking the mercury down to well below zero Celsius that until midday, and minimal precipitation. Most days, the sun was bright, the air was cold, and there was no snow or rain to speak of — thank goodness. Being off-season, following the Four Rivers bikeways, I usually had the bike paths to myself. It was pure solitary cycling bliss.

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