Benji

In the summer of 2015, I did a cross country bike trip from Jacksonville, Florida, to Monterey, California with a team of some of the most incredible people I know, organized by a non-profit called Bike and Build that runs bike trips to raise money and awareness for affordable housing. As soon as I got home, I was stricken with a terrible case of the Bike and Build blues (nobody wants to leave the Bike and Build lifestyle, and when they do, sadness ensues). I immediately started thinking about what my next adventure would be - on this adventure I challenged myself, met incredible people, saw beautiful places, had life changing experiences, and when it was all over, all I wanted was to do it all over again.

A few months after we hit the Pacific, I was perusing the internet on a tangent from some random research (Wikipedia has a crazy way of making you forget why you even got on the website in the first place) when I stumbled upon the Pan-American Highway. This highway traverses the Western Hemisphere from Deadhorse, Alaska - the northernmost point reached by road in the Western Hemisphere - to Ushuaia, Argentina - the southernmost point reached by road in the Western Hemisphere. My first reaction was “wow I want to bike that!” After some initial research, I realized that this wasn’t the most ideal route on which to ride a bicycle - between massive 18 wheel trucks barreling down the highway, the not-so-scenic route that a massive highway has to take, and the general lack of interesting places to go to along the route made me rethink the idea.

However, I just couldn’t get the idea of Deadhorse to Ushuaia out of my mind. Further research led me to a few blogs and books of people who had done similar trips before, and I was hooked. I was in University, but I packed all of my non-school time with jobs so that I could save up enough money to do this adventure of a lifetime after graduation. Enough people have asked how they can track me and little enough information exists online for this route that building a website seemed like a no-brainer. Thanks so much for visiting the site, and I hope you enjoy following this journey!

-Benji