Trevor Ward on a cycle tour in the Sahara. Photograph: Trevor Ward

In the summer of 1988 Crist and I boarded a flight to Missoula, Montana, watching nervously through the window as the luggage that included our bikes and gear was loaded on the plane. We’d been “training” for several months, riding our bikes around New York City, our panniers filled with heavy phone books. Our 900 kilometer journey through the Canadian Rockies from Missoula to Jasper, Alberta – carrying all the requisite gear – was exhilarating, “impossible” and crazy, especially for biking novices such as ourselves. Reading about Trevor Ward’s experiences strikes a chord.

Back in the mid-1980s, I did something that members of my local cycling club found hilarious – I cycled to the Sahara Desert and back.

In their Lycra shorts and replica Peugeot and La Vie Claire racing jerseys, they laughed at my bike which, laden with panniers, tent, cooking stove, sleeping bag, spare tyres and even a small folding deckchair, had been transformed from a sleek blade of steel to something resembling the aftermath of a gas explosion.

My humiliation continued in the remotest parts of Tunisia and Algeria where groups of children would greet my arrival at their villages by throwing lumps of rock at my head. Continue reading →