Originally Posted by
ignant666
No dog in this fight, having never ridden much outside the USA, but don't all "around the world" bike tours involve very substantial amounts of air travel, and also involve skipping "some entire continents"?
You can't ride across the oceans, and the Pacific alone is nearly half your around the world journey, and the Atlantic is rather wide too.
And i suspect that very few "around the world" cyclists figure that, having ridden across North America, that they must also go back and ride across South America, too, or that, having ridden across Europe from Portugal to Turkey, that must now go back and also ride ride across Africa.
How does one cycle across Oceania (assuming one recognizes it as a continent)? What are good sources for tips as to riding across Antarctica?
Of course, all truly round-the-world tours involve travel by plane or boat. Nobody is saying you must somehow cross Oceania or Antarctica on a bike to claim you've toured around the world. But when you're deliberately sticking to a few limited portions of a few wealthy countries and very carefully avoiding 98% of Asia, anywhere in the Middle East, anywhere in Africa, & anywhere in Latin America, I think it's disingenuous to claim that you toured around the world. Moreover, I believe their cycling was even quite limited in the handful of wealthy countries they did visit. Lots of day rides, for example. From what I recall, they were not biking from
"Portugal to Turkey" or anything similar to that.