The Doctor Who Cycled Around the World

[Bicycle Belle Ding Ding!]

I was listening to a podcast episode on The Moth. At the end of the show, a bonus story was featured. It was told by Steven Fabes, an ER doc who hailed from London, who had hatched an ill-formed plan to cycle around the world. He quits his job, buys a shiny new bicycle, and waves goodbye to 100 of his closest friends and family on the steps of his old hospital. He makes it as far as his favorite pub before he realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. And that’s all I’ll say. He was so engaging and so hilarious that I tracked him down online and found his website. His book detailing his travels is called Signs of Life, and you can get it on Amazon (ebook for me!). 

If you have a little wanderlust yourself (me!), you love bikes (ooh, me!) and you are interested in medicine (also me!) you might enjoy his book or at least reading an article about his journey.

https://stephenfabes.com/the-journey/

The podcast of his story - begins at the 15 min mark:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-moth/id275699983?i=1000534944747

[dougP]

We saw a presentation at REI several years ago from (probably) that same Dr.  He was raising funds for tropical disease research that Big Pharma wasn't interested in:  no money as the countries where these diseases are a problem are all poor. 

He had lots of great stories.  In one area of Africa, he said when he passed the same dead goat twice he knew he was lost.  When we saw him in SoCal, he was on I believe his 3rd tent, and he had a set of Ortleibs where most of coating had worn off.  He had a new set waiting for him in the Bay Area, & made it sound like "I'll just pop up there & get them". 

I'll have to check out those links.  I always wondered if he made it.  He had some pretty dodgy adventures.

dougP

[dougP]

Yep, that's the guy.  Quite an adventure.  Seems odd to have worn out 5 Rohloff hubs but they were seeing a lot of abuse.  Off to order the book.

Thanks for posting.  I'd wondered what happened to the guy. 

dougP

[Joe Bernard]

"...it was probably going to be quite easy because I'd been on bike rides before." 🤣

Joe "this was my thought before my first century" Bernard

On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 11:53:24 AM UTC-7 Bicycle Belle Ding Ding! wrote:

[Leah Peterson]

Doug, that’s wild! If you (or anyone) reads the book, report back. I’m reading his journal online now. 

Leah, who has never even ridden a century, nor gone on a group ride.

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 12, 2021, at 2:35 PM, dougP <doug...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Joe Bernard]

"Leah, who has never even ridden a century..."

I remember being about 60 miles into it and realizing there were 40 more. I was not pleased with this information! 

[Joe Bernard]

Prologue done, he's an interesting writer. There's a breeziness to his style - a momentum - which is instantly inviting. An example, this refers to his first bike trip with his brother in Chile:

"We chose routes with impulsive pleasure and we ate like escaped prisoners of war. Mountains rose and fell and there was an abiding sensation of being dwarfed by the landscape, as if we were animals filmed from above in a wildlife documentary."

I also learned that hotchpotch is a word (or he invented it) and medical stuff I don't understand is much more interesting than I expected. Oh, there's stuff about riding, too 😬

Thanks for finding this for us, Leah! 

[Peter Adler]

It's been around for three or four centuries, and it's more frequently spelled "hodgepodge".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hodgepodge

Peter Adler

Berkeley, CA

[aeroperf]

While he was cycling, he put out a blog so you could follow the trip.  I stumbled on it in about 2014 and followed him until he got home.  It was fascinating.  I can’t find the blog anymore, and I’m betting that is what became the book.
His journal: https://stephenfabes.com/journal/ contains some stories from the blog, like the rough camping one.
His writing style is excellent.  I just hope he didn’t trim too much.  I still wonder what happened to the girl he cycled Australia with.

[Ryan]

Especially if the homeward leg of a century is into a headwind! I've been in that situation more than once as a prairie dweller

[Joe Bernard]

This is really such an interesting book, and oddly for me as I've never had the faintest interest in travel writing or television. I'm in the middle of Chapter 3 now and one glaring omission lingers: I don't know why he's doing this. I mean I understand his interest in it but there's an overriding sense of "it just had to happen" that's never really explained, like it just became The Thing I Must Do and he went. As I'm stopped here to leave this note Stephen has just met another man on a bike who's been back and forth across Africa three times. Why? There doesn't seem to be an answer, between the two travelers I'm not sure it's even a question. They're out there because they are. 

[Eric Marth]

Does anyone have a link to the episode or the title of the episode? Leah's link bonuces me to the most recent episode of the podcast which is about 9/11. 

[st nick]

Yes, thanks for pointing this fellow out!

I'll be checking it out.

Years ago reading such adventures particularly the' Crazy Guy on a Bike' site

that has hundreds and hundreds of journals of bike travelers led me to attempt 4 loaded up too heavy

bike touring adventures (US only) 3 successfully.

I did find it a bit addictive.

You get into a routine of a rewarding simpler life with

with the definite physical challenges pedaling to your next overnight stop,   packing and unpacking, resupplying,

 trying to take in all the beauty (mostly),

meeting so many great people, 

great conversations,  

an expanded / enlightened view of the world, 

and just the immense satisfaction of looking at a map and seeing that you

pedaled all that way on your own pedal power. 

Gosh, that's a long sentence.

I love reading of other folks bike adventures. It gets into your blood,  I think.

I'll find and share a link of a young couple that cycled all over the world a few years back.

The girl, from Oregon started off on her own after high school at 18 as I recall and cycled for months on her own before her boy friend joined her in India    , I think it was.

I know they rode in Europe,  India, South America and other places I'm forgetting.

They got really good with their photography and journaling.

You felt like you were riding along with them seeing such places and scenes that I did not know existed.

I thought she was some kind of traveling heroine.

Adventures are out there for the fearless and even maybe for the not so fearless.

Paul in Dallas 

[Joe Bernard]

Eric,

That's the one, it's tacked onto the end of the 20 Years Later episode at the 15 minute mark..Fabes' segment I'd about 6 minutes long. 

Following up on my half-asleep post from last night because I can see I didn't come remotely close to explaining myself: What I find fascinating in people who start a thing like this is the invisible, undefinable hand of "it just has to be done" in it. Fabes writes about it - and his first journey across Chile - almost as if it was a foregone conclusion, like OF COURSE you would ride your bicycle across a country and then the whole world! Then he meets someone who seemed to have this same "I did it because I had to" motivation, this is so interesting to me. 

Joe Bernard

[Eric Marth]

Oh! Cool, thanks Joe ✌️😎

[dougP]

To the question of "Why?":  When we saw Fabes, he told us he was a doctor specializing in tropical diseases that impact mostly poor countries.  There was no interest on big pharma in dealing with the problem as there was no money in it.  His ride was therefor to generate awareness of these diseases & donations toward funding research for treatments.  I haven't had a chance to start the book but it seems quite odd that this would not be mentioned in the introduction.  As pointed out above, this is an important question that should be addressed.  Maybe it comes about later in the book.

dougP

[aeroperf]

What I got from the blog was that he was an ER doctor.  He didn't start specializing in tropical diseases until he actually was on the tour.

He got some whiff of it in Africa, but it was the trip up from Indonesia-Maylaysia-India that rubbed his nose in it.

It's been 5 years since I read the blog - somebody read the book and tell me if I'm wrong.

At the start, he was feeling burned out at work, was in a pub with his mates, and after a couple of pints decided to bike around the world.

He went back to the hospital, took a leave of absence, got a bike, made sure his mother was being cared for, and headed out into Europe.
So I think the answer was "Because he said he was going to, that evening at the pub."

NOW he's a doctor specializing in tropical diseases, after actually seeing how medicine worked in some of the places he biked through.  But I do not believe he was when he started.

[Joe Bernard]

I suspect you're both probably right, you've heard the gentleman speak over the years whereas his journey is new to me. I just read the Prolologue again and got the same impression as before, he just NEEDED to go. This is how this section ends: 

[At times, I wondered why leaving home felt like such an obvious decision at all. Now, I think I was simply longing for a less certain future. And uncertainty, whether in life or bike rides, is the heart and soul of any journey.]

Anyway, at this point my interest and excitement about what this is all about iis bordering on a distraction from Leah's reasons for the thread so I'll stop my ruminating. It's a good book! Go read it! 

Joe Bernard

[Leah Peterson]

I think it’s fun to discuss. Carry on, people!

I also got the impression Stephen (whose name I misspelled in the original post, argh) just DID it. I haven’t purchased the book yet, but I listened to his story on the podcast and he seemed to have just come to the conclusion that cycling around the world was something he should do. Of course this was after his 6th pint. In a pub. With his buddies. 🤣

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 14, 2021, at 5:28 PM, Joe Bernard <joer...@gmail.com> wrote:

I suspect you're both probably right, you've heard the gentleman speak over the years whereas his journey is new to me. I just read the Prolologue again and got the same impression as before, he just NEEDED to go. This is how this section ends: 

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[Joe Bernard]

Most people who have a harebrained idea in a pub with their buddies after 6 pints sober up the next day and decide it's a ridiculous idea! 🍻🍻🍻🤣

[Mike Godwin]

He had to leave, his drunken mates said "I double dog dare you" or some equivalent in London-ish.

Mike SLO CA

[Joe Bernard]

He meets up in the pub six years later, "Well boys, I was almost eaten by an alligator and shot by rebels, but I did it."

"We were kidding, mate." 

[dougP]

Seeing the tropical disease problem in Africa sounds credible.  When I saw him, he'd been down Africa & up South America.  Plenty of time to develop an idea.  He had a fairly polished presentation so he may have been drumming up interest in his project as he went. 

dougP

[upyou...@yahoo.com]

I love a good cockamamie idea that takes shape and becomes more than one ever thought it would.  I am off to locate the blog and book now.

Kate (who read an article at 3AM in the middle of her night shift about riding across Iowa and thought that was a good idea and then went and bought a hybrid bike and went and rode the 500 miles with no training or prep...wearing mens bike shorts that she added kotex pads to because 500 miles is a lot of miles in one week)!!!

[Joe Bernard]

Oh Kate 😂 

500 miles with no training or prep is definitely cockamamie! Yet impressive!!!

Joe Bernard

[John Rinker]

Man, I'd really love to listen to this story, but I cannot seem to find it. I've followed the link provided, but it doesn't seem to be attached to another Moth episode, only the one entitled '20 Years Later'. I've scoured the other Moth episodes for Stephen's name, but nothing. A Google search of 'Stephen Fabes, Moth podcast' also does not reveal the episode.

I know Eric asked for the link and Joe provided some assistance, but I still can't seem to pinpoint the interview. 

At this point, I think I'm just going to have to ride to London (from Japan), search Stephen out, buy him a few pints and hear the stories first hand. Maybe I'll even retrace some of his steps. 

Cheers, John

[Joe Bernard]

John, it's 15 minutes into 20 Years Later, it's an extra tacked on the end of that episode. Go to 15 minutes in, soon you'll hear them wrapping up that story, then Fabes starts. His segment is only about 6 minutes. 

Joe Bernard

[John Rinker]

Thanks Joe. Turns out I had to listen to it on the Apple podcast app for the final 6 min. Brilliant story with a fine payoff. 

Cheers.

[Eric Marth]

I still can't find this episode. I've tried in Spotify and Apple podcasts. And the Moth website. The 20 Years Later episode is showing a full runtime of 16 minutes on both platforms, nothing but credits at the 15-minute mark.  

[Joe Bernard]

Well let's try this. The only reason I even sort of know how to play them is Leah recommended (on Instagram) one about a guy who works with wolves and I sort of figured out how to listen to it after much fumbling with my phone like an old fart who'd just discovered digital technology. Here's the link from my Android on the app I use. I don't know what I'm doing, let's see if it helps anyone! 

https://castbox.fm/vb/422198181

Joe Bernard

[Eric Marth]

Thanks, Joe, the link worked. But it seems this episode has been updated or the file has changed. The total runtime on all platforms that host this episode is just over 15 minutes. So when I fast forward to that 15-minute mark it's just credits and the episode ends. No cycling doctor.