The Big Irish Detour

Jerry Kopack [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Bike Life, a podcast from the Warmshowers Foundation. Here we celebrate our global community of touring cyclists and hosts who make life on the road unforgettable. Through stories, insights, and shared experiences, we explore the connections that fuel every journey. Whether you're pedaling across countries or welcoming travelers into your home, you're part of a movement rooted in generosity and adventure. Discover more and join the community at warmshowers.org. Now let's hit the road together. Hey everyone, this is Jerry Kopack, the host of Bike Life, coming to you from the Rocky Mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado. Today I'm talking with Mark and Ellie, an Irish couple who set off in February 2025 to take a midlife career break..

Jerry Kopack [00:00:53]:
We'll talk about what led them to this decision and why long-distance cycling might be more achievable than you think. Guys, welcome to Bike Life.

Mark Graham [00:01:01]:
Hey, Jerry, how's it going?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:01:03]:
Thanks for having us.

Jerry Kopack [00:01:04]:
Now, I got to tell you, I absolutely love getting to talk to people who are actually on tour. Where am I finding you guys now?

Mark Graham [00:01:12]:
We are just outside the city of Ipoh in Malaysia. We're about 300-400 kilometers south of the border with Thailand that we crossed about a week ago.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:01:23]:
About a week ago, yeah, yeah. And, uh, and so we're probably on the other— the other way of looking at it is that we're getting close to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. So we're about 230 kilometers north of Kuala Lumpur, so we'll be there in a few days' time. And we're at 17,500 kilometers away from our starting point in Ireland where we set off 11 months ago.

Jerry Kopack [00:01:50]:
Wow, that is a huge number and difficult to wrap my head around. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about your trip. First off, I love this idea because, as you probably know, kids take a gap year between primary school and university all the time, but you're taking a midlife gap year to cycle around the world. Now I'm curious, what made you finally say now is the time?

Mark Graham [00:02:17]:
I think we both have different reasons for that. I'd maybe give some of my reasons first. Um, that, like, the very short answer is, you know, life is short and the world is big. And more and more, uh, I'm, I'm seeing people who I grew up with— I'm 51, I just turned 51 a couple of weeks ago on the road— and I'm seeing more and more people my age getting ill And unfortunately, in the last few years, there have been people I know, friends of mine, who have died. And I think the idea of putting off to tomorrow what you can do today— and for some people, there isn't a tomorrow. And that kind of procrastination, maybe if you keep saying to yourself you're going to do something tomorrow and you do something tomorrow, maybe if you keep kicking the can down the road, it's going to be too late to do the thing eventually. So we're kind of seizing the day as it exists. And one of the fears that I have is that if I wait until retirement to do something like this— and this is just speaking for me— maybe I won't be able to do it when I retire.

Mark Graham [00:03:22]:
So by taking 2 years out— and it's a difficult thing to do, you know, that there's family commitments that we both have, and walking away from your life for 2 years is probably the most difficult part of doing this journey. No, it's not the mountains or the deserts. On the journey, it's that part of uprooting yourself from your life and going to do this, which is a really selfish act when you, when you think about it. But maybe that selfishness is rooted in the fact that we're going to die, and we're going to die at this point in my life, you know, in the not too distant future. Hopefully it's far away, but I really want to do this while I can, and What's really poignant about this is we've met a couple of people on the road, most recently in Thailand. We met a guy on an island there, and he was in his 60s, and he was there with his wife, and he really wanted to come and cycle with us. He had his bicycle with us, and he cycled a little part of the journey with us as we left the island. We were on Thailand, and it was only as we were leaving, and he was on the bicycle, that he told us that he has terminal cancer.

Mark Graham [00:04:29]:
And he told us how he wanted to do a journey like the one that we're doing, but he doesn't know whether he's ever going to be able to do that. And if we needed any affirmation about whether what we're doing is the right thing to do or not, he was it. You know, he was telling us, keep doing what you're doing, this is a wonderful thing, and do it now.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:04:50]:
Well, I mean, that's starting off the podcast going very, very heavily deep, right? For me, I think my motivation is slightly different, and it might be more to do with the other end things. I, I, uh, when I was 19, I had my first child from a previous relationship to my relationship with Mark, uh, and then I owned a business. So by the time I was 26, I had 2 kids and was in charge of 17 staff, uh, running a food business in my native city. And so I kind of like did everything way too young, uh, in a lot of ways. And I always said to myself, you know, like, all my friends were still out like going partying and backpacking around the place and all of that kind of journey of discovery stuff. And I was kind of like really nailed to the ground and raising a family and responsible for a business. So I always said to myself, you're going to get some time at the other end. My children are 27 and 21 now, and so they were just— they had just reached the age where I felt that it was okay for me to go break it to them that I was going to be gone for 2 years, which is a big decision to make, and it's a tough thing to do to them as well.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:06:00]:
But they're amazing young people and very, very understanding. So I think for me it was more to do with being able to do some of the self-discovery stuff that I didn't get to do when most people are taking their first gap year. I already had kids, so I'm taking my gap year now. I'm 45 now.

Mark Graham [00:06:18]:
Yeah, I think for both of us, one of the things that we love is learning things and learning new things. And every day that we're on the road on this journey, we're learning new things all the time. And besides the learning aspect of it, it's life-affirming to meet so many wonderful people. And when you listen to the news and you read newspapers and you watch news on television, it's very easy to get sucked into the narrative that the world is a dangerous place and that horrible things are happening all around us, where what we're seeing on the road and what we're learning every day is the world is a wonderful place and it's predominantly populated by people who will help you if they can. And that's, that's a wonderful thing to learn as we go.

Jerry Kopack [00:07:06]:
I could not disagree with anything that both of you just shared. So thank you with that. And I want to back up to something that Mark said, and it's something that hits me very deep into my soul because I had a similar experience I had the opportunity to work with people at the end of life, running a hospice in Colorado for 10 years. And it's one thing to see a person who's maybe 90 or 95 with terminal cancer. And while it's tragic, of course, but at least I can make sense in my mind that I hope they had a great life. They had a long life. But when you see people who are 35 or 40 or right around, you know, our age, right. And they're, they're dying, you think, wow, that kind of makes you pay attention.

Jerry Kopack [00:07:57]:
Right. So I know in America, a lot of people have this mindset where I'm going to work all I can, put my head down and work till I'm 65 and then start living my best life. And to your point, Mark, you might not get that chance. Right.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:08:14]:
Absolutely.

Mark Graham [00:08:17]:
Yeah. Even if you're lucky enough to get that chance, maybe there's some things that will be more difficult to do when you're 65, you know. That— sure, I hope we're still doing this when we're 65. And I know— I hope on my horizon there's an electric bike. I could do this journey maybe, maybe with the aid of an electric bike when I'm 65, but I don't know. So we're doing it now.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:08:38]:
Yeah, I think maybe that pattern, uh, that this kind of, um, you know, this laid-out life plan that has been the kind of norm throughout, like, you know, the westernized world of like, you know, you graduate from some form of education and then you go into a career and then that career takes you through your whole life and then it's a handshake and a gold watch and then you, you know, stumble towards the grave. That was the pattern of our grandparents certainly, but I think that it's been disrupted quite a lot now and I think people are starting to see that actually there's something quite brutalizing about that and that there aren't these spaces for you to kind of take into account that you're moving into different phases of your life and that we should actually be allowed to explore the world in different phases. The idea that after your first gap year when you're a college student that you never go off and do that type of exploring again because you're, you know, just in the workforce and you're just a kind of a, like a worker bee for the rest of your life. I think that's becoming increasingly unpopular and I think that's a great thing. I think that we need a better work-life balance and that we should have these times to go off and explore. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:09:51]:
Now, Ellie, you, uh, your comment there makes me think of a quote that I heard years ago, and maybe you've heard this: nobody on their deathbed ever said, I wish I would have worked more. Have you ever heard that?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:10:04]:
Yeah, Absolutely. yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:10:06]:
True.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:10:07]:
From speaking to loads of different people, we've, we've spoken to a lot of other cyclists. One of them was a nurse, and she's a Polish woman with a Spanish partner. They've been on the road for nearly 3 years, and she also worked in palliative care, and she said exactly the same thing, that it was partly that experience and realizing the types of things that people regret versus don't regret at the end of their life that made her know that she needed to go and do that now. So I think you're very right there.

Jerry Kopack [00:10:33]:
Yeah, yeah. Now I want to talk about your actual route, because the phrase cycling around the world can mean different things to different people. So talk to me about your route. First off, did you, did you pedal out your front door?

Mark Graham [00:10:48]:
Yeah, yeah, we did. Yeah. I come from a seaside town on the south coast of Ireland. We went down to the beach, down to a coffee shop by the beach on our bicycles. We stayed at my mother's house the week before, and we went down, we met some friends outside the coffee shop, and we cycled off. And we hope to cycle back to the exact same spot again next year. So we're going to try and circumnavigate the globe. That's the idea.

Mark Graham [00:11:15]:
And so we left from Ireland, we caught a ferry to France, went across France, then into Germany, and hopped on the Danube and followed the Danube across mainland Europe for a long time, left it for a little while in Romania, and went up into the Carpathian Mountains, which was beautiful.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:11:34]:
Challenging.

Mark Graham [00:11:34]:
But challenging.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:11:35]:
There were bears there, Gerry.

Mark Graham [00:11:37]:
Yeah, we camped with bears.

Jerry Kopack [00:11:39]:
Were there bear encounters?

Mark Graham [00:11:41]:
Yeah, yeah, not fun. And in Romania, people feed bears from their cars, and some people take selfies with them. So bears come down to meet people. And next to the town we camped in, one bear was going into the local zoo at night and helping themselves to the other animals. They were it eating— was like, it was like a carvery for the bears. They just go into the zoo pick what they want and eat it. And so unbeknownst to us, we camped in the middle of bears. But after Romania then, do you want to pick up where we went?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:12:14]:
So from Romania we hit the Danube again. So I don't know if people are familiar with the Eurovelo routes, but Eurovelo 6 is the Donauradweg in German. It's the Danube Cycleway. It's fantastic. It's largely flat. It's very well serviced. So up until Romania, we'd been in this kind of really nice, like, along the riverbank and stuff like that. Through the Carpathian Mountains, and then we came down into Bulgaria.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:12:40]:
From Bulgaria, we crossed into Turkey. We cycled the entire Black Sea coast of Turkey. Most cyclists will choose to go down and go to the south and go maybe to Cappadocia, but we stuck with the Black Sea coast, and it was absolutely beautiful and amazing. Slightly less traveled, I think. It's quite challenging. It's hilly rather than mountainy, but it's like relentlessly hilly. And then from Turkey we crossed over to Georgia. Georgia, we had a very slight issue, which is that Azerbaijan's land border is still closed, so people— you can't cross by foot.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:13:17]:
So we did take a flight at that stage just to skip on to Aktau in Kazakhstan. Hit Kazakhstan, realized we were in the desert, got a big fright when it came to the temperatures at that stage. Uh, we cycled through Kazakhstan into Uzbekistan, from Uzbekistan back into Kazakhstan. The countries are knitted together like this at this stage, so we crossed through Kazakhstan 3 times. Uh, from the second time we were in Kazakhstan, we were in Kyrgyzstan. We went to Lake Issyk-Kul, the highest alpine lake in the world, um, and spent some time in the capital, Bishkek. Very cool place. Back into Kazakhstan to Almaty, the second city, spent some time there.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:14:05]:
And then we crossed over at the, what's called the Khorgos border into Northern China, into Xinjiang Province. From Xinjiang Province, we cycled to Urumqi, the capital. And then we had to make the tough choice and get a train at that stage because China, you just can't, like, it's absolutely vast. We had a 30-day visa-free period and we wanted to try and do it in one 30-day period. So we took a really long 36-hour sleeper train from Urumqi to Wuhan, and then from Wuhan right the way down through 3 provinces of China. We cycled from Wuhan across the border at Dongxi into Vietnam, all the way through Vietnam. Took a 6-week break in Vietnam where we did some volunteering. We just really wanted to learn more about Vietnam.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:15:01]:
We both loved Vietnam so, so much. Like, really, I miss Vietnam. It was the most amazing experience. And then from there, we messed things up, tried to get into Cambodia, couldn't get across the border into Cambodia, went to the border with Laos. So we cycled through Laos and then into Thailand, all the way through Thailand. Now we're in Indonesia.

Mark Graham [00:15:22]:
Wow. And from here, from here We hope to go to Sumatra, down into Indonesia, Sumatra, back to Singapore, and then to cross the Pacific. We're going to stop over in Japan for a while, cycling Japan, then across the Pacific to Canada, up into Vancouver, then down into North America, back up into Canada, and to Newfoundland, which is as close to Ireland as we can get without getting our feet wet. So, uh, And we're looking forward to meeting some flat earthers when we finish this, right? Because we, we headed east and we've been heading east for a year now, and we're going to continue heading east, and it's eventually going to get us back home again. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:16:07]:
Now, Mark, when you say flat earthers, you mean just places where the, the landscape is flat, or people that actually believe that the world is flat?

Mark Graham [00:16:14]:
Oh yeah, people who believe that the world is flat and it's not a globe, because we travel east and we've been travelling in a roughly easterly direction since we started, and that's going to take us from home back home again. And what's kind of nice about that is that I once heard an author talk about— Thoreau wrote that, you know, every journey is just going home, and this one really is, because when we started, we were going home, but we're just going home the really— the longest way possible. That we could go home. That's what we're doing.

Jerry Kopack [00:16:47]:
Well, I'm going to throw this out there right now since you mentioned that you're going to come through North America. If you find your way through Colorado, through Breckenridge, I got space for you, so come see me. I will say though, not a lot of flat earth up here. We have some pretty big mountains, so just, just be ready for that and don't come in the winter.

Mark Graham [00:17:08]:
Okay, I've been in Colorado before. I was up around Boulder. Beautiful, beautiful. Bordeaux.

Jerry Kopack [00:17:12]:
Yeah. Yeah, I went to university down there. It's a wonderful place, very bike-friendly culture down there.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:17:19]:
Yeah, we think in terms of the seasons, we've actually, you know, you mentioned the cycling in winter there. When we set off from Ireland, of course, continental Europe was quite cold at that stage. We left on the 1st of February last, so I think -6 for parts of France, some cold weather cycling there. We woke up one morning and Mark went to make us our morning cup of tea and we were bringing the water bottles into the tent to stop them from freezing outside at night, and we thought we were very clever. But when he poured the water into the, the metal, our metal saucepan, uh, to heat it up, it froze solid straight away. We were like really, really impressed. But the reason why we set off on February 1st is because we knew that we needed to get to the hotter parts in good time to get across them. We did not want to be in late July and August in those deserty parts of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:18:16]:
So we did actually manage cycling because it was kind of June into July when we got through that. And then Southeast Asia, we really hit the seasons very, very well. It's a cooler part of the year here. And then we slowed down in Vietnam partly because we don't want to hit North America too early in the year. So it'll be springtime by the time we're cycling through there. So hopefully we won't be passing through anywhere in the actual winter again. You know, we managed to skip a winter essentially.

Mark Graham [00:18:44]:
Wonderful invitation for spring in Seattle. We're going to be in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Seattle on our bicycles, cycling along through Seattle on St. Patrick's Day, which is a nice target to aim for.

Jerry Kopack [00:18:56]:
I mean, what a cool welcome to America kind of experience, right?

Mark Graham [00:19:01]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:19:03]:
Now I want to make sure I have this right. Did you guys fund a bulk of this trip by selling two double-decker buses that were converted into tiny homes? Is that, is that true?

Mark Graham [00:19:13]:
Yeah, indeed. I mean, you know, we're both working, but, um, to take 2 years out and to pay for a trip like this, um, takes, takes a lot of money, you know. And then to go back to your life, and we don't have that kind of money, you know. We're not rich. We don't have a trust fund. We haven't— we don't— we've met people who've sold internet businesses and are doing something. Yeah, we didn't get to do that. So what we did, it was kind of an ill wind that my neighbor in Ireland is a bus driver, and during COVID He's meant to be a retired bus driver, but during COVID he bought a couple of buses and I asked him what he was doing and he told me that because the schools were closed down during COVID that a lot of the bus companies were selling off some of their stock that they weren't using because they weren't bringing kids to and from school.

Mark Graham [00:19:57]:
And I went online and I saw that buses were incredibly cheap during that period, so we bought two double-decker buses for less than we'd pay for a secondhand car. And we spent the next 3 years converting them, doing all the work ourselves, into tiny homes. Initially, we thought that we'd be able to rent them out on Airbnb and that that money coming in from Airbnb would fund this trip, but we soon found out that Airbnb is a tough job.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:20:24]:
We thought it would make a lovely passive income, you know, and that we could be gone and we could get somebody to run them for us. And then we realized, like, hang on, we're going to be, like, in Kazakhstan and somebody's going to be calling us because there's something wrong with the plumbing, or the bookings are going to get messed and we— it was partly just an ideological thing. We wanted to be able to let go enough, but we also realized that for practical reasons it wasn't quite the investment boon that we had first imagined, and that it would actually be more sensible to sell them. So we sold them both and funded this trip that way.

Mark Graham [00:20:57]:
One of them is next to a castle on the west coast of Ireland, and there's a recording studio in the castle, and people who use the recording studio can stay on the bus. And the other one is not far north of Dublin, and that one is on Airbnb at the moment. So we sold them to two people and they found good homes. So it was hard to let them.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:21:15]:
Go, but— Oh no, it was a huge relief as well, because for 3 years, you know, I mean, so we did everything. Luckily, Mark has a background in electrical, so we could do even the wiring maps and just get an electrician in at the end just to sign off on it. So we learned all of this stuff. We were doing plumbing. We handled so much different stuff that we'd never done before. I actually started the journey with a rotator cuff injury from the amount of sanding that I had to do and the amount of putting in, uh, paneling the ceilings of the buses and stuff like that. So it was a huge amount of work. We were working really long hours for 3 years.

Mark Graham [00:21:52]:
Yeah, and doing our day job, doing our day job. For 3 years to pay for this trip.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:21:59]:
It worth And was it.

Jerry Kopack [00:22:01]:
Now I'm assuming you have photos of these that I would love to see offline, 'cause this just sounds so interesting and so creative.

Mark Graham [00:22:10]:
Well, actually we have a newsletter and it's at www.spokeyokes, and Spokeyokes is spelled S-P-O-K-E-Y-O-K-E-S. So it's www.spokeyokes.substack.com. And we have a newsletter every week from our journey. But at the start of that, we also have documented some of the work that we did on the buses. So the buses are up there as well as this trip that we're on. Some of the bus stuff is up there too.

Jerry Kopack [00:22:35]:
Okay. So I want to check those out for sure once we get offline here and we'll post a link to that site on our, on our show notes at the end of the show here. Today's episode is brought to you by BikeFlights.com. BikeFlights delivers everything you need to ship your bike. Whether you're riding a bucket list tour, selling your bike online, or moving across the country, BikeFlights' easy-to-pack bike boxes, carbon-neutral shipping, and pickup-to-delivery monitoring make it simple and save you up to 40%. Visit bikeflights.com/warmshowers today to book a shipment. Now back to the show. I want to talk more about, about your story.

Jerry Kopack [00:23:20]:
Long-distance bike touring can sound extreme or intimidating to a lot of people, but I know after talking to you guys, you're clear that you're not extreme athletes, and you've said that it's not as hard as people imagine. So what do you think people misunderstand about doing a trip like this?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:23:38]:
I think that people— what people first of all don't realize is just how little mileage you can do. Like a lot of people would be comfortable in their local area to bike, you know, we'll say it in kilometers even though I know in the States it's still miles normally, isn't it? But like 40 kilometers, 50 kilometers in a day. A lot of people who only ever bike maybe on weekends or whatever wouldn't consider that to be too much to do in a day. If you do 50 kilometers a day for 2 years, Okay, you wouldn't be able to take any breaks in the way we've done. You do get around the world on that. So we're up to, our mileage is significantly higher now because we're that little bit fitter than we were when we started. When we started, we probably did about 70 kilometers a day. We've always taken one rest day a week at least, and 70 kilometers a day when we started.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:24:34]:
And now we're easily, we do 100 kilometers just 'cause the fitness is better, and 100, 110, something like that. That's a nice easy day on the bike. We're not doing a huge amount of gravel, we're not doing anything too extreme to ourselves, and I think people don't realize how easy it is. It's just a question of saying that you're going to go, and the next day saying you're going to go, and the next day saying you're going to go. It's, it's, it's physically okay. We're, we're not athletes, you can see that probably just by looking at us here.

Mark Graham [00:25:05]:
Yeah, I think sometimes there might be a temptation to make things sound a little bit more difficult than they are, to make it sound a bit more exciting. And something we talked about when we started this, we considered the idea of doing this for charity, and one of the reasons we decided not to do the whole cycle for charity but rather do some smaller, some smaller actions for charities as we go along is that if we were doing it for the charity, we might have to make it sound more difficult than it is for people to sponsor us. You know, that people aren't going to give you money if you make it sound nice and make it sound easy. But I think to kind of highlight that point, we met two cyclists in particular who showcased that for us, that this is something that is within a lot of people's capability. And the first one was a cyclist from Czechia, from the Czech Republic. They go under the name Chair Riders on Instagram, and he's paralyzed from the waist down. So he doesn't have the use of his legs, and he used his arms to cycle a recumbent bicycle, and they cycled from Czechia to Kyrgyzstan and cycled up the biggest mountains in Kyrgyzstan. And if we're ever having a bad day and we think things are tough, you want to try being a wheelchair user, not even just on the bicycle, you know, when you stop and you have to camp, when you have to go to the toilet, when you have to do the day-to-day stuff and you're paralyzed from the waist down and you're doing a trip like that.

Mark Graham [00:26:26]:
Incredibly inspiring.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:26:27]:
And then And then the other person was Jordi from Spain, and he has a degenerative lung disease. And when he started, his doctors were trying to get him to 30% lung capacity. He managed to get to 50% lung capacity by the time— this is a couple that lives in Ireland and that are on a World Cycle. By the time they set off, he had 50% lung capacity. And the first thing they did was they went to South America and they cycled right the way through South America into those famous salt flats, Salar de Uyuni. So he had to do like climbs and climbs and climbs every single day, and they had to do it by altitude, and his partner had to carry an oxygen tank for him. So if we ever think that we're doing something tough, we remember that there are stories like that of people out on the road. It's so much of it is your mental state and just your desire and ability to persevere, more than anything physical, I think.

Mark Graham [00:27:27]:
Yeah, and just setting off, I think, you know. Yeah, just setting off is the big thing. Like, the big thing is deciding I'm going to do this, and maybe that's the hardest thing to do, because once you're on the road, you just have to keep pedaling.

Jerry Kopack [00:27:40]:
And at the end of the day, you just, you realize that your only job is to just ride your bike, right? So that in some of the trips that I've done, I have this sort of mental shift where it's like Okay, this is hard, but the only thing I have to do today is ride my bike to the next hotel, the next campsite, to the next Warmshowers host, right?

Mark Graham [00:28:02]:
Yeah, it's like that little fish in a— what's that, what's that Disney film?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:28:07]:
Oh, Dory.

Jerry Kopack [00:28:13]:
Yeah, I, I love both of your messages about perspective, right? So if you think you have it hard there's always someone out there who's, who's struggling with something much bigger than what you are. And my dad did a good job when I was growing up as a kid, who just would instill this mindset into me that you don't have it that hard. There are people out there who have it much harder than you do. And I remember traveling through places like maybe rural India and just seeing people and their lifestyles and the work they have to do. But they they always, always seem to have this very upbeat personality and pleasant and positive. And I think to myself, I come home, I think I'm having a bad day, but guess what? I flip a switch and a light comes on, or I go to a faucet and water comes out, and guess what? I can drink that water. Like, I don't have any problems.

Mark Graham [00:29:08]:
Yeah.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:29:09]:
Yeah. But that's partly— I think that those lessons in gratitude are one of the best things, one of the biggest gifts that the long-distance cycling brings to you, like, partly because you have to see how people live. We've seen people living in phenomenally tough ways where you're on your bike and going like, I'm choosing to be here and I'm going to be gone tomorrow.

Mark Graham [00:29:31]:
You know what I mean?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:29:32]:
And I do think that you learn gratitude, a really deep sense of gratitude, from, from that long-distance cycle touring. Like, exactly like what you were just saying there, that, you know, that we have electric light, we have a refrigerator, Ice is my new thing, like, because we've been in hot countries, my gratitude for just an iced drink is through the roof, like, and I never want to lose this after this, this tour is over. I want to have that for the rest of my life.

Mark Graham [00:29:57]:
And the place of privilege that we're coming from, you know, obviously coming from Western culture and from Ireland, that we're privileged in how we live day to day, but where we are at the moment, being given the luxury of time that we have— you know, we don't have to work at the moment, we have some savings, we can decide to stop somewhere, we can decide to keep going, you know, the privilege in relation to the countries that we're in, but also the privilege that we have in relation to the other people we know in our lives, that we're getting to do this for 2 years. How lucky are we to be able to take 2 years out of our lives and just decide to cycle around the world? Like, that's, that's a privilege. And that's something that we're very grateful for.

Jerry Kopack [00:30:40]:
Wow. That gives me goosebumps to hear that. And I love having the opportunity to talk to cyclists who have this, this realization, this, this shift in their mindset to say like, yes, this, this is a gift. This is a privilege. Because as you said, Mark and Ellie, if something happens and goes wrong, you have the privilege of leaving or going home or whatever. Whereas other people, that's their life.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:31:09]:
And we actually try and bring that positivity into— like, we've had a couple of experiences. I remember once, like, ending up just really laughing because we had several punctures in one day, you know, and it was just one of those days it was just kind of starting to grind a little bit and we couldn't find anything inside the tire. There was nothing sticking out and it just got crazy. And then I, I said to Mark, like, um, do you know what, It's not raining on us. Well, you know, like, at least it's not raining today. You can always find like the bright— there's always like some reason to be optimistic about it. And we really try to keep almost as a discipline to keep our heads there and to try and look on the positive side because it's actually a real strength. Because then when the going gets tough and if you're trying to do that, and if it's almost like a practice in your mind to do that, that really, really helps.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:31:59]:
Because there are, of course, you know.

Mark Graham [00:32:00]:
Shit days as really well. Yesterday my broke. I had a Brooks saddle saddle for 8 years old. This saddle knows my ass better than anything else in the world.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:32:12]:
I think that's it for me.

Mark Graham [00:32:15]:
This saddle is part of my body, and it's really nice that some days when we're off the bike for a few days, we both said when you get back on the bike, it feels like home. And part of that is the saddle, but that saddle broke yesterday, and irreparably.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:32:28]:
I had next to a cement works, really not in a nice place, like on a hill next to a cement works in the middle of the countryside.

Mark Graham [00:32:36]:
I had to do 20k without a saddle, and I rigged something on the bike, but the seat post was right up against my spine, and it was a bad 20 kilometers, and I was feeling bad, and I said to Ellie, you know, if anything else went wrong yesterday, I was going to throw the bike into the the beach and go home. But we had a thing called the homometer, and it's, you know, how, how close you are to going home. And yesterday the homometer was up around 80, 85.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:33:03]:
Was it?

Jerry Kopack [00:33:03]:
Yeah, it was.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:33:04]:
Yeah, 8.5. It's a scale of 1 to 10.

Mark Graham [00:33:06]:
High. That's But we got through.

Jerry Kopack [00:33:12]:
Well, hopefully that's the worst thing that's happened to you guys on this trip. And if that's the worst thing That's not fun, but that shouldn't be terrible, right?

Mark Graham [00:33:22]:
We're doing okay.

Jerry Kopack [00:33:23]:
You're doing okay. So I want to finish on a kind of a fun little playful note here. And sometimes on these interviews, I like to do some rapid-fire travel questions. So real short answers, kind of what comes to your mind first. And I'll just ask you a couple of questions and see where we get with this. So let's start with you, Ellie, first. Easy one. Does your bike have a name?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:33:49]:
No.

Jerry Kopack [00:33:51]:
Mark?

Mark Graham [00:33:51]:
Is that true?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:33:52]:
Okay. Oh, actually, no. Can I just add to that? I said to Mark actually a few days ago, because he was giving out to me for not having a name for my bike. And I said, my bike has a name in my soul that I don't have to say. So it's like my connection to my bike goes transcend name. That's my answer.

Mark Graham [00:34:10]:
It's complicated.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:11]:
Mark?

Mark Graham [00:34:14]:
No, but my bike doesn't have a name, but we liberated two Michelin mascots from a kind of a fancy truck in Thailand because the trucks are very well decorated, and he does have a name. He's called Michael. So the bike doesn't have a name, but Michael on the front.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:30]:
Okay, I'll give you a pass on that. Normally I would say it's bad luck to not have a name for your bike, but I'll give you a pass on that one.

Mark Graham [00:34:37]:
Thank you.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:37]:
Uh, let's see, now I realize this is kind of a cliché question, but I'm going to ask because I know you guys get this question a lot. Did you have a favorite place that you've been?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:34:48]:
Oh God, I, I'm going to have to say Vietnam for me.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:51]:
Okay.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:34:51]:
Yeah, I just absolutely— everything about it, the people, the food, the, the history, the whole thing.

Mark Graham [00:34:57]:
Yeah, I'll go with the other one then because I think close to that one was Turkey, so I'd say Turkey.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:35:03]:
But it's to say it's both.

Jerry Kopack [00:35:05]:
Now, when you guys set off, did you have a list of places that you really want to see, or like, what was the top country that you were really looking forward to seeing? And I, Mark, I hope you say Seattle for the, uh, the, the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Mark Graham [00:35:21]:
Definitely America. Definitely, right?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:35:23]:
Right. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:35:24]:
But besides America, besides the real answer.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:35:28]:
Yeah, for me it was Romania, I think, and the Carpathian Mountains and that stretch. It was the thing I envisaged the most, but I think it's just that I hadn't imagined the second year, so I haven't found those places yet, but we're looking forward to seeing all this stuff too.

Mark Graham [00:35:42]:
For me it was China because I had a feeling it would be so other from what we're used to, and because it's you troubling, know, some of the stuff in relation to human rights and politics And, and, you know, I knew there'd be challenges, and I knew that it would be completely other, and it would be difficult, and it went way beyond my expectations. Loved it. Love China. Love to want to go back and cycle there again.

Jerry Kopack [00:36:09]:
I, uh, I agree. I've not been to Romania. I've been to China, and China was like not a different world, it was a different universe, right? So incredible experience. Uh, how about this? Favorite landscape desert, mountain, coastal?

Mark Graham [00:36:25]:
You go first.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:36:27]:
Uh, I particularly love the steppes in Kazakhstan. There's wild hollyhocks, these white flowers growing everywhere. There's cowboys out there. There's— you can see the Tian Shan Mountains in the background. I just— I took more photos there than I have seen anywhere else. And then of course there's, uh, Muslim graveyards and mosques. So it's kind of like the Wild West of America with all of this other iconography in it. It's the most beautiful landscape I've seen?

Mark Graham [00:36:54]:
Yeah, I think it changes. Uh, the Bicas Gorge in Romania springs to mind instantly, up in the Carpathian Mountains. And what's really interesting, we've seen so many limestone karst regions— Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, Guilin, China— that we're almost taking them for granted. Because here in Ipoh, it's another limestone karst region. But I think my favorite is the Andaman Coast in Thailand. Just those crystal clear blue waters, white beaches, palm trees, and just floating in the water looking at my toes. I kind of like that. That suits me.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:37:29]:
I like that we chose with opposites that.

Jerry Kopack [00:37:32]:
How about this? What was your favorite food country, Ellie?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:37:36]:
Oh, oh God, again, like Turkey and Vietnam are both really, really up there, like really up there. I'm gonna go Turkey this time. The Turkish food culture is absolutely incredible. Pastries, amazing coffee, and very, very reasonable prices. Like, lahmacuns, like folded over flatbread pizzas, like €1, uh, you know, for a lunch. A lot of salads, like I really appreciate the fresh veg and stuff like that. Great dairy produce, good bakery. I'm gonna go with Turkey.

Mark Graham [00:38:10]:
Yeah, I have a new entry for that answer: Malaysia. Um, Georgetown in Malaysia on Penang Island. And just the influence of Indian food, Chinese food, Malay food all coming together. And you have Michelin Guide recommended food carts, street food that are Michelin Guide recommended. So you can get a dish, a plate for less than, less than $2. You can get a Michelin recommended dinner from a street vendor in Georgetown, and the food is off the charts. Yeah, so that's my favorite at the Penang moment, Georgetown, Island. Asia off the charts.

Jerry Kopack [00:38:47]:
That just made my list because I had thought initially it was India, but then I went to northern Thailand and the street food there was beyond my dreams. I think I nearly ate myself to death when I got to Thailand because the food was so incredible and I had been subsisting myself. I was in— I'd come across the border in northern India in a very rural place. I've been eating very basic food, instant noodles, etc. And then just, I arrived in Thailand and just the sights, the sounds, the flavor. So good to know that Malaysia even tops Thailand.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:39:23]:
Yeah, it really does.

Mark Graham [00:39:24]:
It has influences from so many. And what's the, the cook? No Reservations?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:39:29]:
Oh, Anthony Bourdain.

Mark Graham [00:39:31]:
Anthony Bourdain did an episode of his food program No Reservations from Georgetown in Malaysia. Watch it, it will give you a good insight into what's happening there in relation to food.

Jerry Kopack [00:39:41]:
All right, how about this one? On the food topic, what's your favorite snack food that you carry with you on your bike?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:39:48]:
Okay, our weirdest favorite was in Georgia, the country Georgia. They have this thing called churchkhela, which is a really ancient marching food. And it's a string of some kind of nuts, normally hazelnuts or walnuts, dipped repeatedly into grape juice over and over again. And it's like a 2,000-year-old power bar. It's what their armies marched on. We bought a load of it there and we would cut it up and have it in a little pouch. And then like on the days in the desert in Kazakhstan, we still had some left. That was the absolute best bike food I've ever encountered in my life.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:40:27]:
Peanut butter is always good. We always have a jar of it because you could put it on crackers, wraps, bread. It makes things palatable. You can mix it into oats in the morning.

Mark Graham [00:40:36]:
I'm going to be controversial and say for American listeners, chips, but for European listeners, crisps. I've been reviewing crisps as we've been traveling around the world, and on our newsletter I have made a deck of top trumps cards. At the moment I have 65 reviews of different types of chips from around the world, and I've added to that already. I, I really like crisps, man. I can't help it.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:41:00]:
Okay, so good, good bike food.

Mark Graham [00:41:02]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:41:02]:
So spoiler then, who has had the best crisps?

Mark Graham [00:41:09]:
Oh, so far the best crisps came from Czechia, but I found them when we were in Tbilisi. Oh no, it wasn't— it was Budapest. Yeah, Budapest. I found, I found the best crisps so far, but they were from Czechia, but they were being sold in Budapest.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:41:26]:
They were mustard flavored. They were pretty amazing.

Jerry Kopack [00:41:29]:
So I was in the UK years ago and they had a type of crisp called Prawn Cocktail, which I thought was very interesting. I don't quite understand why that's a flavor, but it was, and it actually wasn't terrible.

Mark Graham [00:41:43]:
Yeah, that's pretty good.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:41:44]:
But yesterday we tasted the most disgusting crisps, the actually most disgusting crisps of the entire thing, which was a packet of fried egg flavored crisps. And they were absolutely disgusting in how accurately they tasted the fried egg. They were disgusting.

Mark Graham [00:42:01]:
If you could imagine, you know how a fat smells If you could imagine how a parrot tastes, that's what these crisps taste like. They taste like— I.

Jerry Kopack [00:42:13]:
I hope that makes sense. I hope that made it to your review, Mark.

Mark Graham [00:42:18]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:42:19]:
Wow. Okay, that is going to leave me with images for the rest of the evening now, so thank you for leaving me with that. Um, enjoy your dinner. Last question, and I want you guys both answer this individually. Uh, start with you first, Ellie. Why should people do a big trip like this?

Ellie O'Byrne [00:42:40]:
Uh, they should do it if they want to see the world that human beings have made. I think if you want— I think there's a lot of people who want to kind of scale great, great heights and see, uh, places no man has ever set foot before and stuff like that. You can't do that on a bicycle because someone has had to build the trail ahead of you. So if you want to see everything that human beings are doing to the planet, if you want to see everything to do with like our landscapes and how they're changing and that type of stuff, if you want to learn more than you could possibly learn in any other form of travel because you learn with all your senses, you get the smells, you get everything inundating you all of the time, the pace you're going at makes you notice things, you read the signs in different languages. If you want to learn, that's going to be how the— what I'm going to sum up with is if you want to learn about the planet, really learn about the planet, that's why you should do it on a bicycle.

Mark Graham [00:43:37]:
Wow.

Jerry Kopack [00:43:39]:
Follow that up, Mark.

Mark Graham [00:43:40]:
Am I meant to top that? Am I to top Yeah. meant that? That's the same answer I gave you earlier on, you know, that the world is big and life is short, but to kind of expand that out a little bit, I don't think I've ever felt as alive as I felt in the last year, you know, and that the good and the bad of that, you know, that we're living. Like, and, and it feels like, especially through physical exertion, through learning, through the engaging of all those senses, we're alive. And it's really good to feel this alive. And being on your bicycle and being in the places we've been and are going to, both good and bad, we're alive. And we really feel that on the bicycle.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:44:24]:
There's one other thing that's just worth mentioning, which is meeting people. And that's where the Warmshowers community's in, I think, is that You know, like, we have loved using Warmshowers so much because of the kind of like local insight that you get. We stayed with a man who's a renowned host about 20 kilometers north of Bangkok, an absolute gem of a man, and he's very well known. And we got to, you know, got an insight into Thai culture that we hadn't really had up until that stage. Like when you're booking into little like roadside, cheap roadside hotels or staying in campsites, you have very transient transient interactions with people, but Warmshowers gives you this opportunity to like sit with people, share food with people, share stories with people, and I think that that is really, really valuable as well. And that we like— that's another reason, it's also for the people.

Mark Graham [00:45:19]:
Yeah, people like to talk, and the people are fantastic. And that thing that I mentioned, the world is full of wonderful and kind people, and it's through Warmshowers that we've met a lot Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:45:30]:
I love it, guys. Mark, Ellie, thank you so much for taking time out of your trip today. We're going to post a link from Spoke Yolks in our, our show notes for people to come check you out, to follow along, to find out where the best crisps are. Mark, I can't wait to hear how you top that. And you guys are halfway into your trip, so I hope you reach back out to me towards the tail end of your trip and tell me what else you have learned and experienced and loved along the way.

Mark Graham [00:46:04]:
Thanks, Jerry.

Ellie O'Byrne [00:46:05]:
Thank you so much. It's been lovely talking to you, Jerry.

Jerry Kopack [00:46:10]:
Thank you, guys. And I want to thank everyone out there listening to my conversation today with Mark and Ellie. Stories like these hopefully will inspire you to set off on your own bicycle adventure and maybe make the world feel a little bit smaller one pedal stroke at a time. Until then, keep the wheels rolling and the stories coming. Thanks for joining us on Bike Life. I'm Jerry Copac, and I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as we enjoyed sharing it with you. Please leave us a rating and review, or just tell your friends. This helps us reach more cyclists and hosts around the world.

Jerry Kopack [00:46:44]:
To learn more or become part of this amazing community, visit us at warmshowers.org or follow us on Instagram at warmshowers_org. If you'd like to be a guest on the show or have a question you'd like us to explore, email us at podcast@warmshowers.org.