An SHP bicycling
trip is many things. Most of all, it is a people experience. You'll be traveling with 8-12 other people, whom you've never met in your life, for 1-9 weeks! You may find yourself traveling with someone who can do a blood-curdling imitation of a dog fight and sometimes uses that talent on dark evenings to put fear into the group. You might have "the giggler" on your trip usually the girl you can send into hysterics by a humorous announcement such as "dinner is ready". Or the girl who stands 4'9" and weighs less than 90 pounds, but absolutely refuses to get off her bike to walk up hills, so you have to put up with finding her, every time you reach the top of a hill, stretched out, straw in mouth, muttering to herself about how the world is full of slowpokes. The camera whiz who views the world as a non-entity if he doesn't have a picture of it, so you find yourself constantly being arranged with the rest of the group around cows and statues, under waterfalls, etc. You will be traveling, living, and sharing with 8-12 PERSONALITIES you've never met in your life! People who could very well turn out to be the greatest and
funniest people you've ever known.
An SHP trip means either camping out or staying at
youth hostels, guest houses, etc. It also means adjusting to
circumstances that dictate the extraordinary. You and your group
may get caught in a storm, making it pretty hard to get to the next campground,
so the farmer whose farm you stopped at for shelter invites the group to sleep
in his hayloft, with perhaps a couple of resident chickens, and the next
morning, his wife invites the entire group to a breakfast of homemade bread and
fresh eggs. You may stay at a community center, sleeping on the stage in the
auditorium (curtain down) and wake up to the local women's club assembled up
front for it's meeting. You may travel on a night train, snuggled under the
blankets, your nose pressed to the cold window, watching a bright moon race
across the Swiss Alps or the Canadian Rockies.
You'll be traveling across or through a
country on a bicycle! Under your own power! Not in an air
conditioned bus or in a station wagon. As a result, you and your group will be
exposed to the many unexpected and extraordinary pleasures and discoveries that
come from traveling by bike. You'll meet other people with different customs and
beliefs; you might get caught in a marvelously cool downpour on a hot, sultry
afternoon, or in headwinds that force you to walk past a field of fragrant
flowers or delicious blueberries; you might travel through terrain which may
necessitate walking your bike up a mountain, with unbelievably beautiful valleys
on either side, or a 5 mile downhill where it won't be necessary to pedal your
bike once!
There's a wonderful word for this type of
experience - "serendipity." The dictionary definition of this word,
"the making of pleasant discoveries by accident", is also a definition of one of
many things that make an SHP bike trip a unique and wonderful
experience.
"The people with whom I spent five weeks, my
fellow cyclists, I hadn't met prior to our meeting at the beginning of
the summer. While spending literally every waking, breathing, and
sweating minute with them, I came to know each of them better than I know
my best friends at home. We had to learn to tolerate each other and when
to give each other some room. There were times when we all wondered what
motivated us to register for the trip, and there were times when we all would
do it again if we had the choice. Overall, we became great
companions."
"Boy, am I glad I did it. I really have a sense of accomplishment. I keep thinking about those thirty one days and how
much I'll miss those eleven people. I try to explain the trip to people
and they just don't understand how great it is·"
