2001 England to Singapore Bike Odyssey - Where are We Now (5 years After)?

FIVE YEARS AFTER - 10th April 2007.

Time is an elusive thing - you can’t touch or hold it, you can’t speed it up or slow it down, it deposes kings, it moves mountains, it fades our memories, it strengthens bonds.

Fives years after the England to Singapore bike trip, the five core members of the team have stayed in touch, met up for a reunion, and changed their lives completely. In this blog entry I’d like to briefly tell you what has happed to the other members of the group and to myself - this has been another amazing journey, through life.

SCOTT ZENTACK.

He was the first to leave for home. I knew Scott would make it from the start, he was well prepared and determined. But in Singapore, I had the feeling that Scott still hadn’t found what he was looking for. Once back in the US, he continued his MBA studies and did a bike trip across the States. It was on this trip he met Sarah with whom he fell in love with. When the rest of us got invites to his wedding in July 2006 we couldn’t resist the chance of meeting up again. This was our first reunion as a group of five. Scott got married in New York State and we all witnessed the first of our group to bet hitched. Their honeymoon was in Alaska and now Scott and Sarah live in Dallas, Texas.


RORY JAMES.

Rory stayed in Sigapore and did a short tour of Indonesia. Upon returning home he went back to work part-time for CAT as an engineer, he left his bike at a friends garage in Singapore. Once Rory had saved enough cash he went back to Singapore a year later to pick up his bike shocked at what had become of the dirty washing in one of his panniers. From there he flew to Darwin and cycled to Sydney via Ayers Rock where he was arrested for climbing on it. Back in England, Rory met Jenny and fell in love, they bought a house together last year in Leicester where Rory works full-time for CAT. He has no plans to travel just yet.


TOBY WILSDON.

Toby was the one who changed the most during the trip. The youngest. I saw him change from a boy into a man. I didn’t expect him to make it to Singapore honestly, and was thrilled when he did it. Toby left Singapore to work as an English teacher in Taiwan, and has been there ever since. Rory, Toby and I met up in 2003 once, in Edinburgh. It just happened that we could all be there at the same time - and we did. Toby met Rosie, one of his students, and now he lives in an apartment with her in the capital, Taipei. Tobes has done some cycling for charity in Taiwan, but unfortunately last winter, had his bike stolen. He has the plan to do an overland trip from China via the Central Asian countries back to England next year.


STEPHANE BEAUDIOIN.

Continued to cycle and travel through Malaysia and Thailand after Singapore. He went back to Quebec City after his trip and continued to work as a captain on a Canadian ice-breaker ship in the Arctic. Stephane still lives in Quebec in an apartment in the city, the first time we all saw him after the trip was at Scott’s wedding where I managed to spent some free time with him. I found out that Stephane, despite what I said about him in my blog, I a generous and very sensitive person. Stephane has no plans as I know of for another bike tour anywhere.


NICK PEISSEL.

Nick left the group in Savannakhet, Laos. He travelled intensively throughout SE Asia picking up a Swedish girlfriend, later spending some time in Sweden living with her. Nick then went out to Africa to live and work in aid projects in Kenya and Uganda. Returning to Quebec to try and finish his studies, Nick soon got itchy feet and when the tsunami struck Indonesia in December 2004, he saw this as a call to go out and help. He spent time rebuilding Banda Ache with the UN. Last week I got an email from Nick with his new Thai telephone number - it’s anyones guess what Nick will do next. He’s the free-est one of all of us.


LESLIE HERRING.

Leslie joined us only for 3 weeks from England to Germany, where she left us. She worked in the library of the uni of Lutherstadt-Wittenberg. There, she met her partner, a German guy, I forget the name. She got married and had children quite quickly. Leslie travels back to the US to see her family sometimes, but her home is Germany. I’ve not seen her since the end of the trip.


ANDY GANNER.

Yes, me. What did I do after Singapore. As you know, I got home, it was cold, and I still had a book full of blank pages in my life to write, a future to plan.

I remember waking up the first day after arriving back and feeling so bored. I had no money and everyday life in my village hadn’t changed a bit. Within a week I was pulling my hair out. I faced the truth and saw that I needed to work to get some money, so I went back to my first employer from 1982 and they gave me a job driving coaches on day trips and so on. The pay was crap and I felt I’d made a massive step backwards - I’d left this company in 1986, fifteen years ago!

Phone calls and emails to Kathryn became less and less, and quickly dried up. It was not to be. Kathryn had decided that fate had kept us apart - to this date we have never met.

After two months of working, I got a phone call from my friend in Germany, Urs. He suggested that I should come out to Germany and teach English, I could stay at his place cos his brother, Mark, had moved out. This was the break I needed. I got my bike packed the following morning and left for Dover.

A few days later I was at Urs’s place. He put an ad in the local paper and within a month I’d got several customers that I cycled around to and taught English. During this time I also had mike beloved bike stoled, never to be seen again.

On a positive side, though. I met Mechthild, one of my students, the same age as me. She’d just come back from Canada and wanted to learn English so that she could live there. We had very similar interests, and she loved biking. So, a bike trip together was arranged and a relationship began.

During my first year in Germany I made a lot of good contacts and was able to rent a small room in the city to use as an office and to teach English in. At this time I also moved in with Mechthild.

In 2004, my English teaching enterprise had turned into a real profitable business and I was both able to rent out a newly renovated apartment and an office and classrooms in the city centre. One of my business ideas was going right for a change.

Today, I am the owner/manager of a popular language school. It’s been very hard work and quite stressful at times. But, instead of putting all my energy into doing another massive bike trip that in my mind I know I can do, I am channeling this energy into my business plan. One nice thing is that I’ve been able to employ two backpackers part-time and pay them well. I feel that I can now give something back in repayment for the kindness others have shown me in the past, and that makes me feel happy.

There’s no plan for another big bike trip…yet. Since coming back from Singapore I’ve been to Scotland, Canada and the US with my girlfriend. And I’ve just returned from a crazy bike trip around the island of Mallorca with 5 other bikepackers. I’ve just kinda settled down nicely in Germany.

No plans to get married or to have kids. But, you never know….

Watch This Space!

ANDY


“2001 a Bike Odyssey - Memorablog”. This blog was a memorial blog to the 2001 bikepacking trip which started out from central England on 1st June of that year. …

---

---