EPISODE 32
Touring with Type 1: A Journey of 10,000 Miles
Join Erik Douds, as he shares incredible stories from the road, starting with a spur-of-the-moment decision to join friend Annalisa on a TransAmerica bike tour – a journey that even included a detour for the New York City Triathlon! Discover the unique challenges that Erik, Annalisa, and other Type 1 diabetics face, as they manage blood sugar, insulin, and nutrition during demanding long-distance rides. During three years on the road, Erik logged 10,000 miles, fueled by community support and sheer resilience. From an Alaskan wilderness expedition featured in Adventure Cyclist magazine to navigating India just prior to the pandemic lockdown, Erik reveals how these “accidental” tours became life-changing adventures.
Episode Transcript
Erik: Bike touring for me, like, so often I feel like I’m community-supported, you know. So having Annalisa there, who also has Type 1 Diabetes and having each other as, like, a resiliency system, is kind of amazing because I’m like, yeah, you’re out there by yourself but so often, you have someone close by in one way or the other and that’s something I definitely love about it.
Gabriel: You just heard Erik Douds, who has Type 1 Diabetes, talk about the sense of community he feels during his bicycle travels. Erik’s friend, Annalisa van den Bergh, inspired him to undertake his first tour – across the United States on the TransAmerica Trail, no less – and has also been his cycling partner for some of their most memorable adventures in the continental United States, Alaska, and India. Erik, with his willingness to take things as they come and infectious enthusiasm, proves that 10,000- mile bicycle journeys are possible, even with complex health considerations.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello cycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to another episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. If you’ve been tuning in lately, you’ve heard how Filmed by Bike grew from a grassroots event into a global celebration of all things cycling. For over 20 years, they’ve been showcasing the most thrilling, heartfelt, and inspiring bike films on the planet — and I mean that literally — we’re talking 35 films from 6 different countries. The flagship festival rolls into Portland, Oregon, May 16th through the 18th at the historic Hollywood Theater. But if you can’t make it in person, don’t worry. With a Virtual Pass, you can stream all the films from wherever your pedals happen to take you. Get connected to over six hours of bike movies, covering everything from bike touring and bikepacking to everyday pedal-powered adventures. With the Virtual Pass, you’ll have access from May 16th all the way through the end of 2025. And because you’re a listener of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist, you’ll get 25 percent off your Virtual Pass. Just use the code TOURIST at checkout. So head to filmedbybike.org to grab your pass, and dive into the ride of a lifetime, from wherever you are. Speaking of diving in, those of you who listened to “Diving into the Silk Road Mountain Race” with Filmed by Bike’s Alden Roth, might recall how Alden first heard about his good friend and today’s guest, Erik Douds. In Alden’s own words…
Alden: He wrote an article in Adventure Cyclist that I read. My mom gave me the magazine and said, “I think you would like this article about this guy with Type 1 Diabetes.”
Gabriel: Well, I looked up the article, which turned out to be the April Ups and Downs of Touring with Type 1.” In this eye-opening article, Erik and Annalisa van den Bergh interpret the output from their continuous blood glucose monitoring devices as they bike tour Alaska. Here today to talk about rising and falling blood sugar graphs and much more is Erik Douds. Erik, thank you so much for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Erik: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.
Gabriel: Great! The Adventure Cyclist magazine article touches on several aspects of your life: your enthusiasm for bicycle touring, your life with Type 1 Diabetes, and your love of GORP, which stands for good old raisins and peanuts. So where would you like to begin?
Erik: Really, anywhere. How we ended up in Alaska, which is a motivation. Also, we could back up to either how I know Annalisa, which is through the Type 1 Diabetes world, and she’s also the catalyst for my first bike tour, which kind of took over my life for a while.
Gabriel: Oh, okay. Well then, let’s talk about Annalisa and how she was the catalyst for your first tour. That’s always interesting.
Erik: I’m living out in Denver now, but I’ve been living with Type 1 Diabetes for over 16 years. So I was a teenager when I got it. And it’s interesting, because it’s always this invisible part of your life. And so, fast forward to living in New York City, living in Brooklyn, and being like, oh, so how do I do this big city with Type 1 Diabetes? Whether that means getting your doctors or just how do you navigate it? There’s always so many nuances. And so I met Annalisa through a group that would just get dinners together, all Type 1 diabetics, which was always fun because I always thought it was just, like, such an interesting group of people. We became friends through that, and over the years stayed in touch, especially since we’re both creatives. She’s a graphic designer, I eventually become a filmmaker. Your mid- here, but like, will this be home? And Annalisa was like, “One of the best things I ever did as a teenager was bike, basically, the Northern Tier, with like a teenage group.” And she was like, “Man, I would love to do that again as an adult.”
Gabriel: Northern Tier. Can you explain what the Northern Tier is?
Erik: Yeah, of course. Yeah, so Adventure Cycling, the nonprofit that’s based out of Missoula, Montana, I believe.
Gabriel: Yes.
Erik: So they were responsible, in part, but like designing the TransAmerica Trail, which was the first, like, national bike route from the East Coast to the West Coast. And so those have now expanded, and so there’s a route that covers the northern part of America. So that’s what Adventure Cycling called the Northern Tier. So it’s like a northern route across America. And then there’s a Southern Tier as well.
Gabriel: All right, that makes sense. And of course, Adventure Cycling is responsible for Adventure Cyclist magazine, in which the article appeared. So that’s another connection.
Erik: Right. Fast forward, I had no bike touring experience and was literally sitting in, like, an interview to be like, “Do you want to start on Monday?” And I was like, “I think I have to go bike across America.”
Gabriel: So, “No.”
Erik: So, “no.” Would be like, “Let me get back to you.” So we did the TransAmerica Trail together, you know, ten years later.
Gabriel: TransAmerica, that’s good. So crucially, it’s not this Northern Tier that you just described. It’s a middle tier or something. It goes through the middle of America.
Erik: You see Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri. But yeah, so like the TransAm begins in Yorktown, Virginia, and then goes up to Oregon.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Erik: I literally joined her, like, ten days into the trip because I was like, “Oh, I actually have to like get everything together,” because I was so on the fence about it at the time. And then, just like deeply fell in love with bike touring, seeing America. Yeah, I fall deeply within the accidental bike tourist.
Gabriel: So you’re accidental in the sense that you kind of just heard about these reminiscences from Annalisa, and then, instead of taking your job, which was going to start on Monday, you just, I don’t know, it sounds like with very little preparation or training, set off. She was already underway, you had said? Can you clarify that? And tell a little bit more about what was going through your mind? I mean, when somebody says, “Will you ride cross-country with me?” You don’t just go like, “Oh yeah, like, should we go to the movies together or something?” Can you tell a little bit more about that?
Erik: Yeah, so the beginning of my bike touring experience was the TransAm. Up until that point, I had done some triathlons. I did the Copenhagen Marathon. And I’ve gone on long hike trips before. But I hadn’t done any bike touring. So this idea floated around, say, for the summer. So at some point, Annalisa was like, “I am going to bike across America. You are still invited.” But Adventure Cycling has a place you can kind of post for like, “Hey, here’s a trip I’m doing. Does anyone want to join?” And so this woman, Taylor Gorman, joined Annalisa, and they’re like, “Cool, we’ll start out us to bike across the US.” My bike that I’ve now probably put 10,000 or 15,000 miles on, is literally my childhood best friend’s older brother’s touring bike that I knew was in a garage somewhere, given to me. So I joined kind on the west side of Virginia – in maybe Whitesville, Virginia – because Annalisa was like, “Here’s my start date. I’m going to start going with Taylor.” So my first day meeting them was the first time that bike had ever been fully loaded with all my pannier bags and everything.
Gabriel: Oh!
Erik: And that was for a trip across America.
Gabriel: This is the classic accidental bicycle tourist move. You know, just load it up and go, do not test anything, do not follow best practices, just go. Okay.
Erik: To make things more accidental, or more worse, or to give people a sense of who I am, for like maybe the first week of the bike tour, I didn’t even know the bike had a granny gear. Like I didn’t shift the front gear range down far enough, because I was like, I had never been on a touring bike. So I didn’t even know that was an option. So I was like, wait, what is this? And the East Coast has some, like, pretty tough mountains and they’re very steep, is like what people I think don’t appreciate until you’re literally going over them. So I was starting that basically on just like a normal bike until I was like, oh, wait, I have a whole other range of gears I can be downshifting into.
Gabriel: Right. You were really cranking up those hills like in a very high gear.
Erik: Life was playing out as I was doing it, but it felt like every day I was, like, learning so much or just seeing so much and just found like the bike to be perfect. Moving quick enough, but then just meeting so many people. I loved like the social aspect of it.
Gabriel: Sure.
Erik: You know, you do end up with this trail family, kind of this like yo-yo effect of people bike touring across America, in part because you see another tourist out in Kansas or Missouri, and you know, there’s very few other things they might be doing besides riding across the US. But it’s interesting. Like, we ended up with like a military group that had been set out to kind of just ride together, but just witnessing different groups and, like, times you were alone or times you were together or who finished together. And trying to plan for something that is that long, I think is, one, a challenge for so many people, but also in the actual day-to- day of bike touring, your life just feels so simple. Oh yeah, each day I wake up and my goal is just to ride to the next town. And so often people in the town are like, “Where did you ride from?” And you just say, like a town over, and they’re like, “Why would you do that?” And you’re like, “Well, I started in Virginia.” You know? And that’s where all of a sudden you, like, end up at a birthday party or something because people feel like they just need to, like, celebrate with you.
Gabriel: Yeah. You get asked those questions over and over again as you go, and people are just incredulous all the time.
Erik: It was an interesting year because that was the year, like, the lunar eclipse was happening, or whatever, like I think it was the lunar eclipse.
Gabriel: No, but it was a solar eclipse though, because at least the one I’m thinking of, they had some glasses where you could look at the sun, and the sun was eclipsed there, and I was living in California at the time and that was in the zone of partial eclipse, but further north was the full eclipse. Are you referring to the solar eclipse of…
Erik: 2017. That could be. Yeah, the total solar eclipse.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Erik: But that route like perfectly lined up with the TransAm, so like all these small towns in America were getting booked up for their hotels, and all these people that wanted to see like this huge solar event. And it was just funny because there’s in all these same small towns that we were just biking through.
Gabriel: So that’s an incredible kind of side effect, that all these places were getting booked.
Erik: There’s a lot of energy across America. And then, you tune into the radio station nationally, and hear about all these very very small college towns where like, oh, wow, all these people are booking up our dorms in August. So like Berea College, they hosted the cyclists for that day.
Gabriel: Berea College? Where is that?
Erik: Yeah, so Berea College, it could be on the border of Kentucky and Missouri. The students there have to learn how to swim in order to graduate. It’s one of the requirements. So I was there with a bunch of seniors who were like, “We finished all of our classes but they won’t give us our diplomas until we pass the swim test.” And so I went to their swimming pool and swam that day, because I was trying to get into triathlon shape. For me, it was just fascinating. Like these are some of the examples biking across America, where you’re like, oh, wow. Like there’s actually a college here where students are graduating debt-free and it’s not any type of specific school. They’re just doing something a little bit differently, but it’s based in this region of America and I thought that’s, like, what was so fascinating.
Gabriel: You said you were trying to get into triathlon shape, but why? You were on a cross-country bike tour.
Erik: Like, eventually during the bike tour I shipped my bike ahead, so I could go home to do the New York City Triathlon, because I had signed up for it so much earlier.
Gabriel: You shipped your bike ahead. I mean, couldn’t you just leave your bike where it was? I think this is the first time we’ve ever had a bike tour where there was a bicycle but not a rider.
Erik: So we were in Frisco, Colorado, which is technically on the TransAm, and I had signed up for the New York City Triathlon, and at my time, in my ambitious 20s, I was like, oh, well, now I can bike across America. I’ll be in, like, the best biking shape ever, which just gives me default good running. All I need to do is just swim while I’m biking across America and I’ll be great. Taylor, Annalisa and I were biking across the US, so Taylor and Annalisa were like, “Well, we’re going to keep doing miles.”
Gabriel: I see.
Erik: And so I had to be like, how long do I think I’m going to be gone home, so I can do the New York City Triathlon? And then I shipped my bike, I think, to Butte. The post office held it for a week or something, and then I literally built my bike in the post office and rode off.
Gabriel: Oh my gosh. So, okay, that explains it. Then, when you did this New York City Triathlon, was it true that the running part was no problem, having bicycled?
Erik: So I was in shape and feel like the endurance was there. The swimming was incredibly difficult, but I was also so surprised, because I remember coming back to my childhood home, and I was like, Can’t wait to get on a road bike. I’ll be so fast. And then, I have a huge valley in my town and I remember struggling to go up the hill so much, and I was like, oh, like touring bikes are designed to go up and down mountains. Like, this road bike is so much lighter than my touring bike, but like it actually can’t just like zoom up the hills. Like it actually requires so much effort. And the New York City Triathlon is always held in like August or September, but it’s always so hot in New York City. And there have been years where they’ve even shortened the run through Central Park. Like, that’s the coolest part. you’re like, oh a triathlon where I just get to finish through Central Park? Like, sign me up. But I remember it just being so, so hot, where I’m like, oh, wow. Like I was hoping to be out of this. Probably, like leaving Colorado, where I was like, oh, there’s dry air, I remember during that race I was like, wow, like the East Coast is so humid. Like, I didn’t even like truly realize that.
Gabriel: So it seemed like it was a bit of a struggle, the triathlon.
Erik: Oh, yeah. The biggest struggle was the swim.
Gabriel: Despite your attempts to find swimming pools across America.
Erik: Across America, I was actually surprised how many pools there were. I still love Kansas, because I was like, oh, every small town in Kansas had a public pool. They had a water slide, they have a diving board, and they would like, welcome us in be like, go take a shower and then jump into the pool. And that’s where I thought I would be doing my laps, but I would be so exhausted from bike touring that I definitely felt that during that race.
Gabriel: Yeah, interesting tip. If you want a place to shower and relax, then a public pool is a great spot after a long day of bike touring.
Erik: So, Adventure Cycling will make maps for these national routes that come in segments. You know, they’ll give you route instructions, but then they’ll give you recommendations on where you can stay. So they’ll have tips like, oh, the local fire station will host you, and over the years those partnerships are, you know, strengthened. But I remember the first time it said like, oh, you can sleep in the public park. Coming from New Jersey, I was like, yeah, all of our parks close at dusk. Like, the cops are patrolling them constantly. And then, once getting more out into, like, different parts of America, I was like, oh, here their public park, they’re telling you like, oh, come and sleep here. Like, sometimes the cops would check on you. And I was like, this is so different from where I grew up. You know, You end up sleeping so many different places, which ends up being like an interesting part of the tour.
Gabriel: Definitely. In the end, you and Annalisa and Taylor made it to the end of the trail in Oregon, you said.
Erik: Right. And I then went up to British Columbia to join a group of Canadian Type 1 diabetics to go hike on the northern tip of Vancouver Island. So that’s where I personally ended up.
Gabriel: I see. But then you obviously rejoined Annalisa in Alaska somehow, because that’s what the article was about.
Erik: So we finished the TransAm and kind of from there, that’s where I was like, oh, like I can go meet this hiking group. And I finished the hike and was like, what do I do now? And everyone said, like, biking the West Coast is amazing and awesome, and so I was like, that sounds good. And Annalisa had flown back from Oregon to New York. Yeah, I was still bike touring, and we were just figuring out what are other bike trips we can be doing, how can we get out there. And Annalisa was home, and that’s when she applied for Lael Wilcox’s women’s scholarship.
Gabriel: Lael Wilcox wakes up every morning and wants to ride her bicycle. In 2015, she signed up for the Tour Divide, which runs along the spine of the Rocky Mountains. She got to the start line in Banff, Alberta, by cycling from her hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. She proceeded to break the Tour Divide women’s record by two days, but felt she could have done better, because she lost valuable time at the emergency room in Helena, Montana. So, she turned around and rode right back to Banff, and then she had to get home, so she continued to Anchorage. The next year, she won the very long TransAm bike race, with a time of 18 days and 10 minutes. And in September 2024, Wilcox set a new women’s Guinness World Record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle. She departed from Chicago and returned 108 days, Lael and I do have one thing in common though. We both like to chug liters of milk or chocolate milk during long rides.
Erik: On our bike trip from the East to West Coast, we intersected with the TransAm racers that year, that were going from the West Coast to the East Coast. So that’s how I became familiar with Lael Wilcox, because I was like, oh, I’m on this big national bike route that Lael Wilcox has raced in. So Lael Wilcox, who straight up won the TransAm, let alone is an amazing endurance athlete.
Gabriel: So we have to back up a little bit. There’s a route out there that Adventure Cycling Association has put together, but how does that tie into the TransAmerica Race?
Erik: So the TransAmerica Race follows the TransAm, and so that will overlap with this bike route that people do casually, if that makes sense.
Gabriel: Right. It’s a trail available for everyone but there’s also a race that happens once a year. Okay.
Erik: Exactly.
Gabriel: Interesting.
Erik: Yeah. Lael wasn’t racing that year, but we got to, like, watch the racers, and then we’d see some of them at, like, the random gas stations, and stuff like that. The furthest bike ride I did on the initial, like, bike across America, but was into where Adventure Cycling is based, and I maybe did like 140 miles. But I was like, wow, Lael Wilcox is, one, riding through the night, and she’s also a racer who’s like, “I get two hours of sleep” and I’m like, “What?” You know, like, I understand why you can do like actually just don’t stop, but like in reality it’s just absurd. You know, what took me three months, I think took her like 18 days or less, which is…
Gabriel: It’s totally absurd.
Erik: She put out a call for women to design a route in her home state of Alaska, and Annalisa applied for it. Didn’t get it, but I was like, “Annalisa, you have this whole route. You have everything.” And we were kind of like, what do we do after crossing America? And that’s how we ended up in Alaska. So it’s, like, amazing how the cycling world can catch hold. We took that and turned it into a Kickstarter for a series that was eventually called Miles of Portraits. Annalisa knew on her now second trip across America, which was the TransAm, that she wanted to photograph all the people that she had met, because she’s like, this is the best part of bike touring. It’s photographing the people, it’s meeting the people. Eventually we turned that into like a photo and video series that in part took us to Alaska. You know, we did Miles of Portraits Alaska, we did Miles of Portraits Southwest, and then eventually Miles of Portraits India was our first, like, international trip.
Gabriel: Wait. You and Annalisa also went to India together?
Erik: Yeah. That’s where I struggle, trying to share all of like my life’s… Yeah, so I struggle trying to tie all of it together or, like, simplify things.
Gabriel: Okay. Well, I definitely need to hear more about bike touring in India, because we haven’t had any guests talk about what that’s like yet.
Erik: Yeah.
Gabriel: I do want to ask you a little bit about the Alaska trip.
Erik: So yeah. So Annalisa had designed, I believe a thousand-kilometer looping route for the Lael Wilcox Scholarship that she didn’t get, but had that as the foundation, like the call to action. And so we had flown into Anchorage, went up to Denali, and then basically went due east, came down south, and eventually took the ferry over to, I believe, Valdez. And then explored south of Anchorage to then, eventually, take the train back up to Anchorage. So that was, like, the big loop that we did, which in the context of Alaska, is pretty contained, but also follows, you know, kind of their main roads. Because it’s pretty amazing how quickly Alaska becomes true wilderness. And I think, one, it’s interesting in terms of Type Type 1 diabetics that like hosted us when we arrived, which was cool, but even people while we were bike touring in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, we bumped into people that had Type 1 Diabetes, whether they saw like a continuous glucose monitor or like a headband or something. And so it really is the diabetes community and the cycling community show up everywhere, and something that’s remarkable.
Gabriel: Can you tell a little bit about a day in the life of a bicycle traveler with Type 1 diabetes? I think it would be really interesting to hear about that. And in the episode with Alden, we talked about how he gets the fifteen Snickers a day, and I said, “Well, that’s not going to work with Erik.” So, yeah, if you could just describe, what do you need to keep track of? How do you compensate for your blood sugar getting high or getting low? What does it mean?
Erik: So I live with Type 1 Diabetes, which is insulin-dependent diabetes, and it’s an auto immune disease. So there’s a part of my pancreas that makes it so I have to inject insulin to bring my blood sugar down. It’s diabetes in a nutshell.
Gabriel: Every once in a while you need to get the blood sugar up.
Erik: Right. So diabetes, your blood sugar varies so rapidly, and what’s difficult is if my blood sugar is too high, it one, makes you feel very dehydrated, lethargic, but if it goes extended, you end up passing out and in a coma, which is called DKA for short, but diabetic keto acidosis. And so that’s if your blood sugar is high, it’s dangerous, and you take insulin to bring that down. So you always have to have insulin on you. If I’m managing my disease with just, like, a needle and syringe and a vial of insulin, like, I’ll take 8 to 15 shots in a day. So two long-acting shots, and then for every meal and for every correction I’m taking insulin. And then the other dangerous side is, if you take too much insulin, you have a low blood sugar. And the difference is, with the high blood sugar, it’s very long. Like, we’re talking hours or we’re talking days, where with a low blood sugar, you know, a situation can change in 15 minutes. You can see me looking and feeling normal to all of a sudden it feels like someone takes all the energy out of you, and that’s where you need the sugar to bring you back up. And so on my bike trip across America, a lot of people met me because I had my dad’s handlebar bag that had two, like, cupholders on both sides basically, and I had a jar of jelly and a jar of peanut butter, that like 90 percent of the time was just open. Sometimes I need straight fats to keep me stable and then other times, my blood sugar might be going down, where I need the jelly. And so what’s difficult for, I think, a lot of people to understand is, like, I am still navigating all of my situations, all of my miles, all of what we’re getting exposed to in the same way other people are, but I have this layer of my blood sugar to manage. And to put that into perspective for bike touring, it’s like in Alaska, if I was put in a situation where I ran out of water or if I ran out of food, it would be more dangerous for me, as someone with Type 1 Diabetes, to run out of food because, like, I literally need carbohydrates to move forward, where like I could go a day or two without water. Insulin, which I’m using to manage my disease, becomes very effective with your muscles in your body, which are responsible for, like, a majority of your carbohydrate intake or storage. And so the whole balance that’s difficult for bike tours but also difficult for me to explain to a medical team is like, I am simultaneously hitting my calorie goals for bike touring. So like I would also eat the difference is most likely I would eat those Snicker bars, like have a bar every half an hour or an hour. And what’s hard to explain or see is, like, if I’m bike touring, I most likely would take no insulin, or very little insulin, if I’m actively riding my bike for those Snickers bars, because, like, that’s how much fuel my body needs just to keep my blood sugar up actually. And so that’s the dangerous part of it is. Like, I have danger for my blood sugar being too high, I have danger for my blood sugar being too low. And I love bike touring because overall it’s, like, very consistent exercise but there is a lot of like nuance within there, if that makes sense.
Gabriel: It does, and that’s why I had thought that the 15 Snicker bars wouldn’t work for you, because I just thought it would be so hard to consume them at the rate that they’re getting burned without getting your blood sugar out of whack. I don’t know if that’s something that through experience you would know how often between Snicker bars.
Erik: You know I live with the disease that’s really fascinating, because Type 1 Diabetes is one of the only diseases where the patient truly controls its management, meaning, like, my doctors give me insulin but then my dosage is really up to me. And so one reason, you know, bringing us back to Alaska, where you’re like, oh, I know you love GORP, good old raisins, which is something for my camp days – but you know it’s kind of like Cheerios with M&M’s with raisins – if I ate that Snickers and was expecting myself to keep riding, I would burn it off evenly, but then if I stop and talk to someone, that Snickers in my stomach might then keep digesting and then start raising my blood sugar, because I don’t have that activity. And that’s the very complicated part, where I do have to take either additional risk or additional considerations into wherever I go bike touring and wherever I go in life, with this dynamic of like, what is my food source? How am I managing this? And I still struggle.
Gabriel: Just an incredible additional layer to deal with, as you said, and I think it’s just great that you have not let it slow you down in the least. You know, you have taken on so many challenges, and you’ve just very matter of factly, and Annalisa as well, said, well, this is just one aspect of it that we have to deal, with like other aspects. And you’ve seen so much, experienced so much.
Erik: One of the highlights from the trip was bike touring Denali National Park and one of the really unique parts of that park is public cars cannot enter the park after a certain mileage into it. So basically, after 10 miles into the park, it is only the park’s buses that are operating, and so, as a bike tourist, you end up with camping permits almost, like, literally for an entire mountain range. Like, they’ll be like, you get Zone Five and Zone Five feels like it’s 500 miles of direction. But they say, oh, yeah, you just have to camp half a mile off the road and don’t be visible, you know ideally. And then you have bear protocol, because yeah, we definitely saw bears, and we’d bump into hikers who had seen, you know, up to 13 bears out there, so it was an interesting dynamic. But was nice as a bike tourist, once again, like if there was any concerns with animals or anything, like, the park’s buses would, like, pull over or wait for us and be like, “Hey, can you throw your bike into the bus? We’ll take you past here and then drop you off.” This was the summertime of Alaska and the sun truly never set, and so we had bike touring days where it was just basically Annalisa and I out on empty roads. We’d see a few other bike tourists. And it’s interesting, because you bike into the park. There’s a campsite at the end of the park road, and so every day there’s buses that just turn around there and take people out. And so we just rode into the park and then took a bus out, maybe over four or five days. And it was beautiful. Camping in, like, riverbeds, where you’re looking at Denali and the sun setting on it at, like, three in the morning. And then the sun never truly sets, so, like, you could start your day at 5 a.m., you could start your day at 2 p.m. Like, it truly didn’t matter. Mosquitoes are really bad, and then my bike was probably, you know, up to 100, 110 pounds, because there’d be really long stretches without grocery stores, so getting food and storing everything was different compared to, like, the TransAm or other tours where it’s, like, so easy to stop into a town.
Gabriel: Okay. But now you’ve already teased that after all of this touring, which is in the United States, plus your hiking in Canada, suddenly India comes out. So we have to hear more about that.
Erik: So Annalisa and I were producing a series called Miles of Portraits, which was the photographs of the people that we met, and then I would do the videography, not only of these people sharing a bit of their story but showing to people, oh, like, here’s how we met these people. Like we don’t know them. These are the strangers that end up hosting you and you end up hearing about their life. You end up sharing about your own life. Between Annalisa and I, we ended up literally biking so much of North America, where in all these biking threads, you know, when we would ask, oh, what should we do next? People were like, you have to take an international tour. And eventually it felt like, oh, okay. We’re running out of space to be here. Miles of Portraits India, or my trip to India, happened in part because of a Kickstarter to get there, but Annalisa had a classmate from graphic design school who was having a wedding that was being hosted over the New Year in Southern India. So I ended up having Christmas at my sister’s down in Texas. So I flew my bike down to her, had Christmas, and then I left, I think, the day after Christmas from Dallas to India with my bike box and everything. And we end up in Kerala, which is just like an incredible state. It was amazing, because when we arrived in Kerala, a Warm Showers host from, I think, Germany, but they ended up picking us up from the airport and bringing us to their place for the first maybe three days. And I remember it being like such a relief, because we were like, what’s it gonna be like showing up in India? Like we had so many questions, let alone Annalisa and I both have Type 1 Diabetes, so like there are so many layers of concern, whether that’s food poisoning, whether that’s just food, whether that’s water, whether it’s just, like, how are we gonna interact with the roads in India? Where are we gonna stay? Like, all of that was on our mind in, like, a way that we couldn’t truly answer. But before we set off we had this awesome like week-long wedding celebration that was just so fun to attend. Like, we just guests at this cool, very traditional Indian wedding ceremonies, and all that. And then, after that, we just did the bike trip. But I also started this bike trip by losing my passport and losing my credit card and debit card.
Gabriel: Oh no! Like, when did you lose it?
Erik: It was, like, honestly the first week. I lost my passport and then I lost my debit card, and I went to Annalisa and I was like, “Hey, make sure you don’t lose your debit card,” because this just happened. And then she went down to the ATM, and the ATM machine, like, took her card.
Gabriel: Oh my gosh.
Erik: So yeah. So I started the bike trip without a passport, and was quickly looking up like, okay, how am I gonna resolve this? And I was like, oh, you’ll have to make your way to the embassy. There is one in Southern India.
Gabriel: Yeah, a consulate.
Erik: A consulate. I was like, oh, eventually I’ll get to a consulate and then the pandemic happened and I was like, oh, this is an interesting curveball. Initially, we thought we would end up biking south, and just hit the southern tip of India, just because it’s like there, it seems like it’s so cool, but we ended up biking into the hillsides. So where, like, the teas come, from where the coffee comes from, because there’s so much cooler, like, just every day it was, like, actually the temperature was very cool, but it felt just so beautiful, because we’d look out on these huge, huge, you know, mountains of tea or I’d see water buffalo and all these things. For me, I was so fascinated to go to a country with a billion people, but then the actual state of Kerala and Munar and the tea region, they’ll have national wildlife centers that roads will cut through. But then you also have wild signs, where it’s like, “Watch out for elephants on the road ahead” or be like, “Roll up your windows.” We’re like, “Uh oh! We’re uh, we’re just biking through.”
Gabriel: Yeah, roll up your window. Okay. Well, what was coming up? Why did you have to roll up your window?
Erik: I know they definitely had elephants. I’m trying to think of what the appropriate animal is in southern India. If it’s, you know, a lion or a jaguar or other large cat. You know, and then really for a bike tour, the most difficult animal that we’d see while going around were the monkeys. You know, we wouldn’t see them everywhere, but, like, if you’re there having tea, they would slowly start going and get closer to your bags and they’re definitely like an animal you have to keep an eye on.
Gabriel: Thieves.
Erik: Yeah, and they’ll work in a pack. So we even stumbled upon some type of film production happening and ended up being part of it, but even there there was probably, I don’t know, 50 people all filming something, but there was, like, multiple people who were in charge of just keeping the monkeys away from the film equipment and food.
Gabriel: So wait. Are you saying you’re in a Bollywood film too?
Erik: I hope so. There’s so many moments when you’re bike touring, it’s interesting, I was just reflecting on this. So even on the TransAm, I think one thing people don’t understand about bike touring is like, sometimes you can be completely alone, sometimes you’re with a group. And Annalisa and I were surprised. Like, we thought we’d really have to be cycling, like, everywhere together for various reasons, and quickly when we got to southern India, we’re like, oh, I feel safe. You feel safe. Okay, like and there would be times we don’t see each other till the end of the day or whatever, and I would always be someone, where if something was slightly interesting that came up, I’m like, oh, I’ll detour my whole day for this. And yeah, there’s definitely a commercial or something being filmed and I feel like there’s an equal exchange in southern India, where I was like, “Well, I’m curious what you’re doing.” And they’re like, “We’re curious why you’re out here on a bicycle. How can we involve you in our script right now?” And so I hope I’m in a Bollywood episode somewhere.
Gabriel: You know, I’m just picturing this classic dance scene with everybody synchronized, and it’s really colorful, and everyone’s moving, and then suddenly, in the background, there’s Erik with his fully-loaded bicycle, just slowly scrolling across the screen. It’s a pretty interesting visual.
Erik: It is amazing, because everyone there does love to dance. There are so many cultural things, but there are so many times where I’d see like grandparents, kids, adults, but like everyone dancing. And I was like, yeah, this is definitely different than American culture, you know.
Gabriel: Yeah, and it seems like everything worked out in the end.
Erik: Everything did work out in the end. You know, a phrase there is “to treat guests like god.” The state of Kerala has a very very high English speaking rate, so it’s interesting, one, being able to communicate with everyone, but also, like, everyone was just so friendly and so warm. But that ended up maybe being a three- week trip, and from there I went to Bangalore to meet Type 1 diabetics from all across India. Met them, and then maybe less than a week after that is when India went into a national shutdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. You know, I ended up choosing to stay after this bike trip, staying in Nangalore for an additional four months with a host family through AirBnB.
Gabriel: Four months? Okay. Oh, because of the lockdown, you were kind of stuck there.
Erik: I stayed through the national lockdown, which ended up getting extended, but it was just interesting because I’m like, I’m actually with strangers but they are totally welcoming me into their family, and that was a feeling we got throughout most of southern India that we had had been through.
Gabriel: Amazing.
Erik: You know, one thing I actually haven’t reflected on in a while is, you know we had a lot of concerns going into India, and what’s so hard as a traveler, bike tourist, or anything, is knowing, like, what is an actual concern. So we did have food poisoning once and the lesson there was like, wow, we wish we went to the health clinic immediately, because they gave us IVs. We both felt better and the bill was, like, three dollars or something. But I remember everyone’s like, oh, in India you’re gonna have to barter for everything. It’s all a barter, barter, barter. And we got there and there’s, like, not really a bartering system in southern India, and so there is times where I’d pay for something and get, you know, very exact change back, but also, like, I lost my passport and everyone’s like, did you go to the cops? Did you do this? And I was like, what are the chances my passport ever returns back to me? And lo and behold, someone like eventually with my passport went to the local cops. The cops sent it to the consulate. The consulate eventually contacted me and my friend in New Delhi ended up going to the consulate and picking up my passport and shipping it to me in Bangalore. So I was, like, one, just so relieved, but, two, I was like, wow, someone actually did find my passport and returned it to me. And I didn’t quite know how that adventure was going to resolve itself.
Gabriel: Wow! Yeah, I think in New Delhi it would then be the embassy, because in the capital it’s the embassy, and other cities it’s a consulate.
Erik: Oh, no way! I didn’t know that. So yeah, it probably was the embassy, which is a whole other story but legitimately it was the most casual email of my life. They’re like, “Hey, I think we have your passport.” And I’m guessing I signed up for one of the alert systems, but I called back, and they’re like, “Yeah, you know can you just make your way here to pick up the passport?” And I was like, “No, I’m all the way down in Bangalore.” And my friend who, once again, she has Type 1 Diabetes but is, like, a professional doctor, but yeah, she probably had to show up to the embassy, like at a certain time, but then they just, like, handed her my passport. But I was like, “Yeah, do you want like, my driver’s license number or anything?” They’re like, “No.”
Gabriel: Incredible. Incredible story. And you’re so relaxed about it too. I lost my passport. Yeah, maybe it’ll turn up. And it did turn up.
Erik: Yeah, I’ve always been curious, like, why I love bike touring so much, or why some people, it might not fit them that well. A lot of times, especially if you go on really grand bike trips, you know, like people who’ve been bike touring for eight years. But, like, so often there’s like a way of life where you can try to plan for everything and be prepared, and bike touring so often, I’m like, it does feel like my day-to-day, but I remember like losing my passport and I was like, okay, let me research about the passport. Okay, you only need your passport to leave a country? Cool. I’m planning on being in this country for a while. I had a year-long Indian visa, but you’re supposed to leave the country and then you could re-enter, and so my visa ended up expiring during the pandemic lockdown. That’s where I started to get concerned. Being, like, I don’t have a passport. I’m trying to renew my visa. Like, how is this all gonna work out? And that’s where I feel so grateful to have my host family. They were definitely keeping me calm in the day-to-day life, but it was just a radical shift. I was like, I have to be like less than one percent of international people who are like still around. Like, the city really did transform overnight, and that was interesting to observe.
Gabriel: Yeah, most people traveled back to their home countries as soon as they could, because they didn’t know for how long a lockdown would last. But you were in the one percent. It seems incredible to me that whoever you were staying with was okay with you staying for four months.
Erik: Yeah. Well, that’s the hospitality that you’ll experience around the world, but especially in southern India. Like, I felt like my host mom Jaya, she had always wanted to have international people around, you know, even professionally. My host mom was so happy to have Suniya (you know, her daughter) home, her son home, and then have me visiting.
Gabriel: Right.
Erik: On their rooftop, they had a little bedroom. She’s like, “Oh, I have my American on the rooftop. I have my son, I have my daughter.” You know, we ended up just really having a lot of celebrations together, and I really am, like, eternally grateful to them.
Gabriel: Yeah. Well, you really made the best of a difficult time.
Erik: When I ended up flying home, there were probably 15 other people on one of those airplanes that fit 400 people, because it, you know, ended up being like, I think August. I came home in time where, you know, it was part of the political pact to like re-allow flights, that I eventually ended up on. But there was, you know, no one in the airports. I had never really seen anything like that in my adult life.
Gabriel: I had the same experience, and it’s absolutely surreal to be one of the few people in this massive airport. And then, when they go to load a Boeing 747 or something, and they go, “Okay, we’re going to start boarding. Okay, boarding complete.” You know, there’s like five people on the plane. There’s more flight attendants than people. It’s like I have my own bathroom, thank you. No one will use that bathroom except me on this flight. It is so surreal.
Erik: I came home and, I don’t know exactly what they called it, but I came home wearing like a full body paper suit.
Gabriel: Okay, I don’t know about this.
Erik: But yes, I had like a face shield over me and then, like, a full body… I would call it almost like a painter’s suit. But that’s how I think boarded the plane. So yeah, these are just memories to share.
Gabriel: Oh, wow. Okay. I was just wearing normal clothes.
Erik: Yeah. And so I came home from that and then moved here to Denver, Colorado, where my life has been blessed three and a half years. you know that’s what’s tough, is I truly set off thinking I was gonna go on a three-month bike trip and it really did evolve into, like, three years of bike trips and bike adventures. So I was bike touring from, like, 2017 and then I tell people, yeah, I was bike touring until the pandemic happened. And these last three years I’ve just been putting my home and self together.
Gabriel: Yeah, you’ve seen so much, experienced so much, and I’m sure you will be hitting the road again at some point.
Erik: That is the hope. I’ve been scouting the Empire State Trail on the East Coast, so I’ll still see what’s next, but I’m hopeful.
Gabriel: We’ve already established that you depend on insulin to keep moving. How are you able to get it in all the remote locations where you’ve been?
Erik: You know, Annalisa and I were having our parents ship us insulin while we were bike touring because, you know, it’s very difficult for us to get insulin while traveling outside of our legal home state in America. So that was also, like, a very fascinating part to it all.
Gabriel: That’s how you got it, via the US Postal Service.
Erik: Yeah, postal service, Warm Showers hosts. But then, you know, being in Canada or even in India. You know, in Canada I could just go to the pharmacy and get a vial of insulin, and it was the same thing in India. You know, people are like, “What are you gonna do about insulin?” I was like, during my lockdown in India, like, I had insulin delivered to my door, and I was like, oh, this is easier than it is in America. And that’s another thing you learn about your country, where so often I’m like, I arrived to most of my places literally biking there, and I’m someone that has diabetes, let alone like, I’m relying on my parents to ship me insulin to gas stations and Warm Showers hosts. So you make do, but I do think it’s been a lesson to American life, especially.
Gabriel: Out of the three years, did we cover most of it? You know, TransAmerica, West coast, Alaska, a break here, a break there, India.
Erik: We did cover most. So we did a trip called LA to Santa Fe. So that was like our portion of the Southern Tier.
Gabriel: Who’s “we”?
Erik: That was Annalisa and I. So Annalisa and I did a Miles of Portraits LA to Santa Fe trip, where we left California, went over to Tucson, Arizona, and then from there, kind of biked northeast to eventually end up in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Gabriel: Wow. You and Annalisa have spent massive amounts of time, always bicycling, together.
Erik: Yeah.
Gabriel: Okay.
Erik: Is there a question? Or that’s, yeah. I agree. I mean, so the cover article, this is where I’m like struggling to know what to give you context or what to share, but the cover article is a very cool piece, in part because that was, you know, my photography being on Adventure Cycling, but it was wild because I’m pretty sure that trip about us in Alaska came out while we were touring in the Southwest. And so yeah, we’ve done a lot of miles and trips together, but it was interesting because we’d always trying to figure out how can bike touring be like a more main role in our lives. And so we would go on these speaking tours and put out, you know, I would do the filmmaking and she would make a magazine but so often it’s like, we’d be giving a talk about the past tour, while we were simultaneously on a Southwest bike trip, which was very cool, but a lot of times we’d be like, oh, we’re here to talk about Alaska while we’re currently biking around.
Gabriel: We’ve talked a lot about these different Miles of Portraits. What is the status of those? Are they accessible to the public?
Erik: So yeah. So Miles of Portraits is available on YouTube. You just type in “Miles of Portraits” and the series will pop up. It doesn’t seem like we’re going to continue Miles of Portraits as, like, a series, which I think has evolved into other places in in our lives, or my life as well. But Miles of Portraits Alaska, Southwest, and India are all publicly available.
Gabriel: Okay, cool. And you say you can type it in but whose channel is it on?
Erik: So Miles of Portraits Alaska is on my personal Erik Douds channel, and the Southwest and India might be on the dedicated Miles of Portraits channel.
Gabriel: Alright, so we can definitely put links in the show notes to those.
Erik: Yeah, and so Miles of Portraits India was in the Filmed by Bike festival.
Gabriel: Ah, yes. We haven’t even talked about Filmed by Bike. That’s already been covered extensively, of course, but Alden said that you were a juror for it, but it turns out you also had a movie then that was screened at Filmed by Bike. He didn’t say that.
Erik: Yeah, I was a juror when I was in India, so that’s what’s kind of wild.
Gabriel: You were doing it from the rooftop?
Erik: Yeah! I was literally doing it from the rooftop, yes.
Gabriel: Unbelievable.
Erik: So Ayleen is always like, “Oh yeah. We had this one funky year, where everything happens like online and internationally.” And it wasn’t until recently, I was like, oh, yeah I was in India when I was a juror. And then it was probably the following year that Miles of Portraits India was part of the full film program.
Gabriel: Well, and now you’re a co-owner. There you go. I can see now why Alden said you’re the only person he could call with that idea, to purchase Filmed by Bike. I can see now why you’re the one.
Erik: Well, thank you. An opportunity like Filmed by Bike, one, people are like, yeah, Erik is the person you need to call, because you know the background or he’ll say yes to this, but then they’re so often kind of, you know, even mentioning the Adventure Cycling article, where I was overall still picking up a camera, learning how to film, simultaneously with this whole process. And so there’s so often I like, because I’m self- taught in film, and so often I step back and I’m like, man, in these tours I can see myself learning film and photography, but then also like meeting this whole community where, you know, something like a film festival, I’m like, oh, yeah, these are all these worlds coming together. Sign me up. Bike touring for me, like, so often I feel like I’m community-supported, you know, so having Annalisa there, who also has Type 1 Diabetes, and having each other as, like, a resiliency system, but so often through Instagram or Warm Showers or Adventure Cycling and podcasts and just connecting so much of my learning but also, like, support network has been this, like, loose connection of people that are there to support you. And so there are definitely those moments where I never expected to see myself in southern India, let alone choose to stay there but so often I’m like, oh, I actually had a community that helped inform this decision. And that’s where I feel, like, bike touring is kind of amazing, because I’m like, yeah, you’re out there by yourself, but so often you have someone close by, in one way or the other, and that’s something i definitely love about it.
Gabriel: You’re able to turn the Type because you’ve mentioned so many times on the episode that you met this group with Type group with Type 1 Diabetes, and that’s really an amazing resource that brings people together.
Erik: By far the coolest way I ended a bike trip was, I ended the Southwest trip with a pilot who has Type 1 Diabetes and has two children who now have Type 1 Diabetes, but he flew in and I put my bike on his plane, and then we took off and landed where him and his family stay. But I was like, this is the coolest way I could ever end a bike trip, was just literally loading my bike onto this plane and with the Type cool.
Gabriel: Fly off into the sunset.
Erik: Yeah, exactly. James Bond moment.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife, Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Erik: It could be on the border of Kentucky and Kansas.
Gabriel: I don’t think Kentucky and Kansas have a border.
Erik: Gabriel, I’m giving you lots of potential editing. But I appreciate this.
Show Notes
Erik and Annalisa have completed a series of Miles of Portraits videos available on YouTube.