written by Gerry Rolfsen for all our friends who asked, ‘how did the bike ride go?’
Odyssey 2000 was an around-the-world bike ride, organized by Tim Kneeland & Associates in Seattle, which began January 1, 2000.
We left Los Angeles at the head of the Rose Parade in Pasadena on January 1, 2000 – 247 people on bicycles, and rode down the coast to San Diego, then into Mexico and down the Baja Peninsula (2 weeks) to La Paz. From there we flew to San Jose, Costa Rica, and rode south for 9 days to the Panama Canal. From Panama City, we flew to Santiago, Chile, and rode south in Chile for a couple of weeks, finally crossing the Andes and riding down into San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. This took another 2 weeks.
A Saudi Arabian Prince from Qatar, flying his own Boeing 747, picked us up in Bariloche and flew us to Johannesburg, South Africa. We then spent a month doing a big circuit of South Africa and Swaziland, finally arriving in Capetown, and flying from there to Athens (with the Saudi Prince again.) The weather had been very unpleasant after Mexico, with a lot of cold and rain. We did not have much time in Greece, and it was still cold there. After a very short week’s ride in Greece (the weather was bad, cold and snowstorms) we took a ferry to the bottom of the boot of Italy, and rode from there all the way to Lisbon, Portugal, across the top of the Mediterranean. This journey through Italy, and the southern parts of France, Spain, and Portugal (including Gibraltar) lasted nearly 2 months.
At that point, on May 12, 2000, the ride went back to the United States and Canada for nearly a month, to go from DC to Quebec City, but I stayed in Europe and my wife, Judith flew over to Lisbon (for a very welcome reunion) and we just hung out for 3 weeks, driving through Portugal, Spain and France, on up to Belgium, Holland and Germany, and finally to Denmark, where we stayed with old friends from Canada, and I rebuilt my bicycle.
Judith left from Paris on June 6 to fly to Canada and back to Lunenburg (she had moved us there in April) and the bicycle tour came back to Paris and we carried on. Two weeks in France– the Loire Valley and then north to Brittany and the Normandy beaches, finally to Calais and across to England on the hovercraft.
We cycled from Dover to Sligo on the far northwest corner of Ireland (ferry included) and then east across the north coast (Giant’s Causeway) to Belfast, and ferried to Scotland. We rode west to east in Scotland, up the Great Glen, past Loch Lomond, and on to Aberdeen. Then we flew to Bergen, and finally began our first long period of really good weather.
We rode up the west coast of Norway, taking many fjord ferries and climbing many mountains, as far north as Forde; and then down through the Sogndal, to Gol, and into Oslo. We were only in Oslo 2 days, I think, and only had time to see the favorite places—Frognerparken, Folkemuseum, City Hall, etc.
We left Oslo and went south through Askim, where my grandmother’s family had been living, and Halden, then down to Goteborg. We then took a ferry to Jylland, the big part of Denmark, landed near Frederikshavn, and rode east to Copenhagen. After that, we rode up the Danish coast and took the ferry back into Sweden, where we rode northeast to Stockholm, and after a few days there, took a ferry to Turku, Finland. A friend and I then took a train 300 km to Jyvaskyla in Northern Finland to look at the architecture designed by Alvar Aalto that I wanted to see, and then we cycled south to Helsinki, 300 km away. I think that the cycling in Norway and Finland (and maybe Asia) were the best experiences of the entire year!
From Helsinki we flew to Berlin, then rode our bicycles across Germany, through Dresden, into the Czech Republic and to Prague (wonderful city.) From there we made our way through the Alps, through Austria and Switzerland, and down to Geneva, where we lived in a bomb shelter for three days. Then we turned back into Germany, went through Strasbourg, France, then Germany again, and down the Mosel to Luxembourg, then up to Belgium and finally to Amsterdam. The tour stopped near Amsterdam for more than a week, so I flew home to Canada and Judith and I had a brief and happy time together in our “new” old house in Lunenburg. Then I went back to Europe. We flew from Koln, Germany, to Australia in time for some of the Olympics, and did most of our riding there in Queensland, ending up in Cairns, where I was able to go scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef.
Then we went to Japan, but the tour organizer could not get our bicycles into Japan, (he pissed off somebody in JAL) so we spent most of our time in Kyoto, and riding on the trains. Japan was fabulous, and I was there for the earthquake! Then we flew to Hong Kong, which was our access point to Southern China. We went on a catamaran up the Pearl River in China, with our bicycles, and then began riding toward Vietnam. We rode across Southern China to Guilin and on to Nanning, where we were picked up by buses and transported to Hanoi. There had been a lot of flooding in Vietnam, and our tour organizer decided that Vietnam was too long to ride the whole thing, so we went south by plane to Nah Trang, then rode south through the rest of Vietnam into Saigon.
From Saigon, we flew to Thailand, and after a few days rest in Patang on the island of Phuket, we rode south to Malaysia, then through Malaysia and finally to Singapore.
Now, the tour, from an organizational point of view, had not really gone well for most of us. The tour organizer, Tim Kneeland, turned out to be kind of an incompetent. It was pretty obvious right from the beginning that he didn’t know much about bike design, the physiology of cycling, or how hard you should push people. And he failed to provide many of the services we had pre-purchased, most of the time. Many riders were quite angry about this, and we had spent a lot of our own money during the year, because of problems with the tour organization and planning. So, almost 11 months and 40 countries after the ride began, some 190 riders bailed out when Kneeland demanded another $4,600 each to offset the “rising cost of air transportation.” This was to cover the cost of the final leg to New Zealand, and the related travel back to California at the end of the year. We felt he was either squirreling away money, or a totally bad planner!
Either way, all but about 60 people left the trip when we got to Singapore. The end of the ride was so close you could really almost taste it, which made it tough for everybody. But the more pervasive idea was: “this guy’s been ripping us off all year; there’s no way we’re giving him any more money.” I got home on November 28, in plenty of time for Christmas, for which I received several points from my very patient wife.
I and 34 of my fellow riders are now bankrolling a class-action lawsuit in Washington State against the organizer, Tim Kneeland, his girlfriend, Karen Ann Sutter, and Kneeland’s company, Tim Kneeland & Associates. For various breeches of contract, and violations of Washington State law with regard to how one handles clients’ money, in the travel services business.
Just the same, it was an amazing journey, really unbelievable experiences, and with a lot of really good people in the community of riders.
Life in a Nova Scotia town of 2700 souls is a lot different from Vancouver, but we love it. Judith has found the fitness club; Gerry has found the hockey rink; the lumber yards are here; all is well. And of course, the cycling is fabulous, although snow tires are rather necessary this winter!
Gerry Rolfsen and Judith Carey
