This story originally appeared in the 2024 Nov/Dec issue of Adventure Cyclist magazine’s Final Mile essay anthology.
On the outskirts of Shanghai, the buildings began to grow skyward. Factories morphed into apartment complexes. Apartments stretched into office towers. It felt like I was cycling into a man-made canyon, its glass and steel walls a potent reminder of China’s booming economy. It was December 12, 2013, and I was as anxious as I was excited. I knew my buddy Morgan was, too.
We were on the cusp of finishing a nearly two-year ride. Its origins can be traced to a hazy evening at a Chicago dive bar. Morgan and I had been friends since junior high, and as we were about to graduate college, neither of us felt particularly inspired by the idea of an office job. After a few cheap beers floated to our heads, a round-the-world bicycle trip seemed like a perfectly irresponsible solution. To our surprise, we actually followed through on the idea. We pushed off from Paris on March 1, 2012, and rode east across Europe and Turkey. We flew to India and spent five months pedaling the subcontinent, explored Myanmar during a brief window of political stability, and crisscrossed the jungles of Southeast Asia. Then we returned to Turkey and traversed Central Asia, cycling the ’Stans and summiting 15,000-foot mountain passes before descending into China, the 16th and final country of our journey.
As we neared our arbitrary finish line, I looked forward to all the things you might expect: seeing friends and family again, beds, taking more than one shower a week, and maybe having some semblance of a dating life. But this day also marked a farewell of sorts. I was 24 years old and recognized that a significant chapter of my life was ending. Twenty months on the road is long enough to transform bicycle touring into a lifestyle, and I was going to miss the simplicity of vagabonding — waking up with nothing to accomplish except pedaling 80 miles before sunset and finding a good campsite.
As the city closed around us, though, I forced myself to be present. I owed it to the three other riders with us: our fathers and Greg, a college buddy of Morgan’s who ran a startup in Shanghai. Both of our dads had flown in and procured bikes so they could ride the final day beside us, a sweet and meaningful gesture. Morgan’s dad was channeling enough anticipation for all of us as he weaved in and out of traffic on a borrowed fixie like a madman. I had no idea what was ahead, but Greg was insistent that we get somewhere at 4:15 PM.
“Somewhere” turned out to be the Bund, Shanghai’s historic waterfront district. “This is it!” Greg yelled as we wheeled past its colonial buildings. I looked ahead and was amazed to see a crowd of perhaps 60 people moving onto the street, many of them Greg’s friends and coworkers. They held a banner across our lane, the kind high school football teams break through when they run onto the field. Morgan and I grinned and gave each other a fist bump. Our adrenaline was coursing. We kicked up out of our seats and mashed on our pedals as our temporary wingmen dropped back. Cheers erupted. Greg’s words echoed in my ears: This is it!
I was first to hit the banner.
I fully expected that, with its 50 pounds of luggage dispersed between four panniers, my bike would easily slice through it. That’s not what happened. The banner was made out of plastic rather than paper, and it held firm as it wrapped itself around the front of my bike. I supermanned over the handlebar, and after completing a parabolic arc, my first point of contact with the pavement was my palms, which slid for a couple of feet.
Out of instinct, I immediately assessed the damage to my Trek 520. One of its panniers, which had survived 16,000 miles in some of the worst road and weather conditions imaginable, had partially ripped open. But I was mostly okay. I bounced up and raised both arms in triumph with a stupid smile, closing my fingers around my cheese-grated hands and trying to ignore the dripping blood.
What followed was surreal. A celebration exploded around me. People I didn’t know doused me with champagne. A flash mob organized by one of Greg’s friends began a choreographed breakdance and waved little flags representing all the countries we’d cycled through. Dragon dancers weaved and bobbed through the crowd to the beat of drums. A local journalist asked me how I felt at the end of our trip. “I dunno … over- whelmed?” I responded.
Then the police were there, and they looked pissed. They yelled and got a little physical with some of the locals. Then they grabbed Morgan’s bike and started wheeling it away. A couple of Greg’s friends wrenched it back from them. Apparently, our crowd constituted an illegal assembly. Just as it seemed like handcuffs could come out, someone yelled, “To the party!” and the dancing dragon, which had been temporarily silenced by the cops, started gyrating again. The crowd conga-lined its way to a nearby hotel, where more revelry ensued.
Grateful and gobsmacked, I was just trying to keep it together during this display of excess that was about the exact opposite of the simple, often solitary, life I’d been living. I also had to laugh. If there’s any moral to the story, it’s that you can never plan on things turning out exactly as you expect them on a long-distance bicycle tour. This was the thousandth curveball I faced on a nearly two- year trip. Of course it made sense there’d be a few more surprises at the finish line.
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