Well, I haven’t talked a lot about the crew members; everyone has fantastic stories. Most of them are fearless travellers that aren’t scared to bring a baby (that is so mature, though) to the trip.
There is one girl that I believe is fantastic, Jessica. She is from The Bahamas (I was also surprised when I discovered it) and she’s travelled here biking.
Jessica started her trip from Nassau two years ago. She was stuck in a Digital Marketing job that she hated. By the time her ex-boyfriend asked her to go on a trip together biking around the US.
She said “yes.”
They took the ferry to Fort Lauderdale and started biking around the east coast, heading north. One of Jessica’s dreams was visiting Cinderella Castle in Disney, so they detoured and stayed a few days in Orlando. The guy proposed to Jessica in from of the Castle, and she cried in front of everyone. It was her happier day in life so far.
After Orlando, they continued to Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, Charlotte and then Durham and Raleigh.
Jessica’s best friend lived in Durham while doing a master’s degree in Duke University and her ex-fiancé’s “political uncle” in Raleigh. So they decided to split for a couple of weeks to visit their loved ones. Jessica thought it was kind of weird he chose to go solo for a while as he was overprotecting her the whole trip. In addition to that, he never mentioned that uncle in The Bahamas frequently. Maybe a couple of times, but she didn’t think he was too relevant to spend two weeks separated.
Long story short, there wasn’t any uncle in Raleigh, and he was just staying in a hotel where Jessica’s former best friend sneaked to spend the night (and the weekend) with him. When Jessica found out, she was heartbroken and put all her anger into the bike’s pedals, and she biked for hours. When she noticed, she was in the middle of nowhere in Virginia. She spent the night in a cheap B&B and the next day was in DC.
She arrived there shocked. She locked herself in a hotel for a week “only to cry.” She had lost all of her strength biking to DC alone and didn’t have more energy to even take a cab to the airport and flight back home. She ordered room services the whole week. Her enlightenment came after the third day of crying. She determined to take therapy online and received enough energy after a couple of sessions to forgive herself for being in love with such a wicked guy and continue the trip by herself.
Later on, she crossed the Niagara Falls border a few days before the first lockdown and the beginning of the Pandemic. She has been in Canada ever since. How? She has a Canadian passport since her mother was born in Montreal but never lived here or visited before. This trip has let her discover herself in the north. That is why she biked for such a long time, and now she doesn’t want to stop. There are more compelling details in this story, but I am not in position to reveal them.