John Vogel and Nancy Sathre-Vogel are school teachers and long time cycling nuts who met on a bike trip through India. Their twin sons, Davy and Daryl, spent their first 7 years in Ethiopa, Malaysia and Thailand, before the family headed back to Boise, Idaho to “settle down” in Nancy’s childhood home. But the wanderlust returned and the Vogels found a way to satisfy their love of adventure as a family of four. When they boys were eight, they loaded up a triple tandem bike for John and the boys and a single bike for Nancy… and biked all over North America, logging over 15, 000 km in a single year. They stayed in cheap motels, crashed with generous strangers, but mostly camped in the family tent.
Last summer, when Davy and Daryl were ten, the family decided to embark on an epic journey from the top of North America to the bottom of South America, a two and a half year road trip. The Vogels are documenting every step of their 30 month journey, on their blog and through video posts, sharing their adventures with Reach the World, a non-profit organization that helps kids in under-funded, urban schools use the web to see parts of the planet that are normally far beyond their reach.
With 41 years of combined classroom teaching under their belts, John and Nancy are “roadschooling” their own kids, who will spend grades 5, 6, and 7 as cycling nomads . Their approach relies on the boys’ natural curiousity coupled with the amazing things they see and do but they also carry math books in their panniers and the boys keep journals. Nancy says, “Our goal is to encourage the boys to learn how to learn – that way they will have the skills to fill in any hole they may find!”
But practically speaking, what does this massive journey mean for Davy and Daryl? They’ve traded in the triple-bike for a standard tandem and a pair of regular bikes. The bikes are loaded down with pound after pound of food and gear. They often log more than fifty miles in a day, and have had over a hundred flat tires. (They’re a part of life on the road.) When folks asks how the boys are holding up with so much cycling at a young age, Nancy’s standard reply is, “The real question is: how am I holding up?? The kids can run circles around me any day.”
Bicycling British Columbia from John Vogel on Vimeo.code>
John is the tandem pilot and the family tech guy, looking after the video posts and computer issues. Nancy does the bulk of the blogging, and recently struck out on her own for an emergency flight from Honduras to Miami to stock up on bike parts they couldn’t source in South America. Judging from the boy’s blog posts and their jubilant appearances in video posts, where they’ve been seen exploring shipwrecks and riding kayaks down sand dunes, the twins are having the time of their lives. As Davy blogged earlier this month, “Today we went to the BIGGEST fort the Spanish ever built!!! It was awesome!”
Caribbean Splash from John Vogel on Vimeo.
In Northern B.C., they’ve seen wild buffalo, big horned sheep, and they’ve sped away from a too-curious bear. As they made their way through Texas in January, they camped in a dry river bed, but battled high winds on the wide open highways.
Bicycling Texas from John Vogel on Vimeo.
They’ve spent time with other journeying families and met kids their own age all over the continent. But it’s not just about logging the miles to get to their destination. Getting there is way more than half the fun, and John & Nancy make sure they take in the local sights and sounds where ever they go.
Bicycling Honduras, Part I from John Vogel on Vimeo.
In June, the Vogels celebrated a full year on the road as they cruised through Nicaragua, and are currently making their way through Columbia. This week one of the highlights was a quartet of tree sloths living in a nearby park.
Believe it or not, the Vogels are not the only family on the road:
Meet a family of five who are biking across Europe.
