This adventure begins as so many stories do: with a boy, a girl, and the crazy things they'll do for love. We lived nine hours apart: Tyler in Minnesota, and Tara in Illinois. With just two months of long-distance dating under our belts, Tyler sent Tara a text message asking if she wanted to sell her belongings and bicycle around Africa with him. Tara, neither a cyclist nor a camper, tentatively agreed to an adventure. We began this website to document our preparations and the eventual journey.
After six months of long-distance dating, during which much of our time was spent planning our route, acquiring bicycle parts, and reading bicycle touring blogs together, Tara moved to Minnesota to live with Tyler and his two cats. There, we settled into life together, which mainly involved planning for our trip, building our bicycles, and riding as often as we could.
A few months later, we sold all of our belongings, rented out Tyler's house, moved in with his mother to save money, and, with butterflies and goosebumps, purchased two tickets to Scotland. During this time we took martial arts classes, practiced camping a few times, designed and built a camping oven, got vaccinated for our trip, and saved as much money as possible, all while dealing with the stresses of packing our lives up for our first big adventure.
Months flew by quickly, and before we knew it, we were saying goodbye to friends, family, and coworkers, and leaping into the unknown, together.
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