Telegraph Staff Writer
“A bicycle ride around the world begins with a single pedal stroke.”
That quote is attributed to San Francisco’s Scott Stoll, who did indeed ride his bicycle around the world — a four-year journey that began in 2001.
Montreal’s Val Florimond and his family aren’t quite riding around the whole world, but they are in the midst of a two-year journey, with their pedal strokes recently bringing them through Bradford and Union counties.
Val, his wife, Julie, and their two daughters, 11-year-old Emily and 9-year-old Maelle, set up their tents at Starke’s KOA on Dec. 2 at approximately 4 p.m., concluding that day’s ride, which marked almost one month they had been in Florida. The family has traveled more than 2,000 miles, with that first pedal stroke actually began in the U.S. in Portland, Oregon.
With two children already grown at ages 21 and 19, Val and Julie didn’t want to be left wondering where the time went when their two youngest children reached adulthood.
“We saw that time was speeding up. They’re growing fast,” Val said, adding, “We were working very hard. Busy, busy; work, work. We said, ‘Soon, they’re going to be grown and gone. Let’s find something to do together.’”
Inspiration came in the form of a newspaper story about a family that was doing extensive traveling on bikes.
“We found that interesting,” Julie said. “We began to try it with little trips. We loved it very much.”
The family took two- to three-week journeys before setting out on this particular journey, which has them eyeing a return to Montreal in the summer of 2023. Their plan is to continue biking to Orlando and then fly to Turkey. Their bicycle journey will then continue. Val said the hope is to travel to Scandinavia.
“With the new (COVID) variance, we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Val said, “but we’re used to it. Initially, we wanted to go to southern-east Asia for winter and do Thailand and Vietnam, but they all closed down.”
Val and Julie may be taking a break from their jobs to take this journey, but Emily and Maelle are still continuing their education. Call it traveling homeschooling.
“Julie’s a teacher, so that’s very convenient,” Val said.
The children work on their studies when they reach wherever they’re camping for the night and are at it again in the mornings before they embark.
Being on the road doesn’t put a stop to the learning. If the ride’s quiet, Julie will continue working with her daughters, sometimes using their surroundings as learning lessons. For example, address numbers on houses or mailboxes can be used for a lesson on numbers.
Then there was the recent experience in Florida, where the family came across tortoises. Val said the animals would obviously be a focus of his daughters’ next science lesson.
If you want to learn some lessons about what it’s like making a long journey by bicycle, the family is chronicling its adventures on bicloulousse.wordpress.com. Their posts are in French, but you can choose English as a language option.
The website also includes links to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, where the family is also posting.
Montreal to Starke
At the start of their journey, they weren’t able to bike across the U.S.-Canada border due to COVID restrictions, but they could fly to the U.S. The family flew into Portland on July 15. Val said, “It’s much easier for bikers to get out of the airport (there). Portland’s very bike-friendly.”
Some of the most difficult parts of their journey were at the beginning. Val and Julie said the Big Sur region of the California coast was physically demanding. Plus, that part of the ride wasn’t easy for Julie, who admitted she has a fear of heights.
Then, there was the weather they experienced.
“It was actually chilly on the west coast,” Julie said, adding, “For me, that was difficult. I love to be warm.”
Val said it was hard to recover at the end of the day from the cold winds they were experiencing on the west coast.
A day typically consists of covering 30 miles, though the family rode approximately 40 miles the day they arrived in Starke. Val said riding that distance allows the family to arrive to wherever they’re camping for the night around 3-4 p.m.
“That allows us to relax a bit and do homeschooling,” he said, adding, “We go to sleep pretty early.”
The family arrived in Florida on Nov. 8. They spent Thanksgiving in Tallahassee and had plenty to eat. They were invited to one home to each on Thanksgiving Day and received an invitation to another home the following day.
“They day after was supposedly leftovers,” Val said, laughing, explaining that it was still a lot of food.
The generosity of those people who invited them into their homes has been a common experience on the journey. In fact, the family has always received help when needed. For example, Val said he needed the brakes on his bicycle repaired, so the family had to return to a town 20 miles away that they had biked through previously. Public transportation wasn’t available that day, though, due to the Labor Day holiday. The family was eating in a restaurant when a stranger approached and said he heard of their plight and would give them a ride to town.
“This happens all the time,” Julie said, with Val saying, “We call them ‘road angels.’”
Adapting and fully enjoying the journey
Whether or not road angels enter the scene to provide assistance, the journey has shown Val and Julie’s children that sometimes things happen that you don’t plan for. Val said he and Julie started this journey hoping their children would learn to exist outside of their comfort zone and to not “freak out” when unplanned situations arise.
“That’s kind of what we want. What’s really important for us is to build their adaptability,” Val said, adding, “Just take what happens and make the best of it.”
What the family has discovered is that traveling by bicycle is really making the best of a trip. It’s unlike traveling somewhere by automobile.
“Being on a bike, the sense of experience is different,” Val said. “For me, it’s much deeper because all the senses are involved. You feel the wind. You smell everything — good things and bad things.”
You can hear sounds, such as sea lions vocalizing on the west coast.
“We didn’t see them, but we knew they were there,” Julie said.
Val said you tend to take in more of the sights when you’re on a bike as opposed to driving an automobile. He added that you also take routes that maybe you wouldn’t if you were driving an automobile.
“You’re picking roads you wouldn’t normally take, so you see the real country,” he said. “You see the real people, who are super nice.”
That’s one thing that’s been a joy for the children — meeting others, whether they were road angels or just people they met along the way.
“In some places, they were sad to leave because of the people,” Julie said.
Make the decision, take the journey
So many people who’ve learned of the family’s journey have said, “Oh, I wish I could do that.”
The family’s reply is, “Then do it.”
“What we’re doing, anybody can do,” Val said.
Val said though his family enjoys outdoors activities, they never took bike tours until that newspaper story sparked an interest. Then, it’s not like they went through any special training or preparation. They just did it.
Sure, one’s physical condition may affect how long you ride at first, but that’s OK. You’re doing something for the joy of it. It’s not a race.
“It’s not a competition. Nobody’s waiting for you,” Val said. “Quickly — in a few weeks — you’re going to improve a lot. Your body will understand, ‘OK. You want to do this, so I need to change.’ Our bodies changed very quickly. We slimmed down. We’ve got endurance.”
Val said there’s no harm in giving it a try if you’re intrigued about doing it. If you don’t like it, you can stop, he said.
If you find you love it, and you do it, Val believes you’ll have way more good times than bad.
“There are hard days,” Val said, “but they’re not that hard.”
Whether your journey takes you around the world or not, it begins with a single pedal stroke.
