What does it take to cycle the world? In this episode, adventurer Chris McCaffrey shares the untold highs and brutal lows of his 16-month, 21-country global cycle expedition. From rowing two-thirds of the North Atlantic without ever having rowed before, to battling hurricanes, illness, aggressive dogs, food poisoning, and typhus on the road, Chris’s story is raw, gripping, and deeply human. We hear how he grew up sailing in Atlanta, found freedom in the mountains of Colorado, and why he believes adventure is as much about gratitude for small moments as it is about big feats. Keywords: global cycle expedition, round-the-world cycling, Pamir Highway, Silk Road, bikepacking, Atlantic rowing, survival stories, resilience, travel cultures, wilderness endurance, adventure storytelling.
Chapters
00:00 – Chris McCaffrey Global Cycle Introduction
02:00 – Growing Up Sailing in Atlanta & Early Adventures
06:00 – From Football to Skiing: Choosing Mountains Over Sport
09:00 – University in Colorado & Environmental Studies
10:20 – First Attempt: Rowing the North Atlantic with No Experience
17:00 – Surviving a Hurricane at Sea (capsize & rescue)
22:00 – Oil Tanker Rescue & Life with Indian Crew
34:00 – Why Cycling Around the World Became the Next Goal
41:00 – Planning the Route: Boulder to Newfoundland to Asia
47:00 – Bike Repairs, Spares & Mechanical Challenges
49:00 – Heat Stroke in Italy & Surviving Extreme Temperatures
53:00 – Aggressive Dogs & Crashes in Thailand
54:00 – Hospitalised in Hanoi: Misdiagnosis & Typhus Battle
1:06:00 – Hit by a Car in Uzbekistan & Carrying On
1:08:00 – Riding the Silk Road: Culture, Camels & Eagle Hunters
1:15:00 – Sharing Gummy Bears with Kids in Central Asia
1:18:00 – Birthday Party in Dushanbe & Hospitality in Tajikistan
1:21:00 – Food Journeys: 10/10 Butter Chicken & Vinegar Mix-Up
1:26:00 – Returning to Boulder: What It Feels Like to Finish
1:31:00 – How the Journey Changed His Outlook on Life
1:35:00 – Future Adventures: Kyrgyzstan Maps & What’s Next
1:37:00 – Pay It Forward: Supporting Local Conservation & Parks
1:41:00 – Call to Adventure: Do Something You Normally Do—Differently
Episode Summary
Chris McCaffrey’s story begins in Atlanta, far from mountains or oceans, where his parents introduced him to sailing and skiing. That early love of water and wilderness evolved into competitive dinghy racing, kite surfing, and mountaineering. After a near-miss attempt to row the North Atlantic — where his boat survived a hurricane, a capsize scare, and a dramatic rescue by an oil tanker — Chris turned to two wheels for his next challenge: cycling the globe.
His 16-month world ride took him through 21 countries, across deserts, Silk Road cities, Himalayan passes, and tropical coastlines. The hardships were relentless: heat stroke in Italy, dengue misdiagnosis in Vietnam, a typhus relapse in Thailand, crashes, aggressive dogs, and even being hit by a car in Uzbekistan. Yet he also encountered extraordinary kindness: a Tajik family who threw him a birthday party, children who joined him for miles on their bikes, and strangers who shared food, shelter, and laughter.
Chris describes the Pamir Highway, the Silk Road’s golden cities, and the cultural contrasts between deserts with camels and bustling ancient squares where cafés have been open since 4 AD. Food punctuated the journey too, from a New Delhi butter chicken hailed as the best in India to comical moments like accidentally chugging vinegar from a mislabeled bottle.
By the time he returned to Boulder, Colorado, Chris found the ending less emotional than expected. For him, the joy was in the journey — in the daily rhythm of pedaling, the quiet gratitude for small comforts, and the unexpected human connections. His outlook has shifted: the “little things” now matter more than ever, and he challenges all of us to find adventure not just in epic expeditions but in everyday choices — like walking, cycling, or camping in new ways close to home.
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#GlobalCycle #WorldTravelByBike #AdventureStories #PamirHighway #SilkRoadCycling #AtlanticRowing #Resilience #TyphusSurvival #BikepackingAdventure #SilkRoad
Chris Watson (00:00.962)
So that’s us live now. So Chris McCaffrey, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you?
Chris McCaffrey (00:06.701)
I’m doing lovely. Thank you for having me.
Chris Watson (00:08.948)
No, it’s a pleasure. Yeah, I’ve been following your journey for a while and yeah, reached out. So really keen to get into your global cycle, Chris. So that really is the frame for today. So your epic expedition 16 months, I think, 20 plus, 21 countries or so. But before we get into that, I’d like to…
just as we usually do on the shows is kind of step back and understand a little bit more about Chris, you know, your early life, some scene setting and your formative experience. So I believe you were brought up in Atlanta, Georgia, but now you’ve found your way to Colorado. So what was it like growing up in Atlanta?
Chris McCaffrey (00:53.742)
Yeah, growing up in Atlanta is interesting. Definitely pretty far from the mountains and most things adventurous, if you will. yeah, I grew up sailing would really be kind of the beginning of it all. My dad was a big sailor and my granddad growing up on Long Island Sound. And so it was important to him that I got out on the ocean and learned to sail. I remember he bought a little Walker Bay dinghy when I was like six.
We’d go out to the lake and putz around and that was the beginning. My mom’s the same way. She’s a big waterskier, like competitive waterskier. so a lot of time on the water growing up and that eventually turned into racing, dinghies, opties if any, sailors are out there. And my parents are super supportive of my racing. They loved going to the coast, I think.
It’s great community. yeah, so I started racing Optis. And then that kind of got progressively more serious. I’m not sure if they ever intended it to lead where it did, but I got to travel all over North America, racing dinghies. And that was fantastic and a really cool way to grow up.
Chris Watson (02:18.98)
Yeah, wow, didn’t know that at all. that’s cool. So I was someone was messaging me on Instagram today and asked why I didn’t have as many sailors on on the show, which is which is quite quite a coincidence. So did you see you done that competitive then? Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (02:37.856)
Yeah, that became quite competitive for me. Going to these regattas and racing the single-handed dinghies and then getting into lasers, which is like a more evolved dinghy than an Opti. And my dad bought a Snipe, which is like a two-person boat. And there’s a yacht club on the little lake near Atlanta. And we’d go every weekend. And I’d either sail with him or…
One of the older guys was looking for crew. I’d be running around the yard, like trying to get on boats to race. And that was really the beginning. And that was really cool because you’ve got like the lake sailing. But then obviously in summer times, when you go to these bigger events on the coast, it’s not just about the racing, but about like the whole experience. And it was so lovely because you get to meet so many different people, but also…
Chris Watson (03:08.786)
that.
Chris McCaffrey (03:29.12)
like 14, 15, finish up the day sailing and then there’s it’s still beautiful out and so everyone’s grabbing surfboards and going surfing and bodyboarding and a bunch of folks got really into kite surfing and so I got a bit into that and and it became really about becoming proficient at everything at the whole lifestyle and I feel like that yeah that that was definitely the the stepping stones to where we are now.
Chris Watson (03:56.066)
Yeah, is pretty adventurous. What’s Atlanta in that like then? So besides the coast in terms of lakes and stuff, what kind of access to water do you have?
Chris McCaffrey (04:05.31)
It’s pretty minimal. So Atlanta, for those who may not be familiar, is the capital city of state of Georgia, which is in the American South. Kind of what you’d picture, like the American South, that’s kind of like what Georgia is. Atlanta is different in that it’s super diverse and really quite large and very just what you’d think of as a city. And so you’re driving.
probably an hour or two to get out to a lake to go sailing or skiing on the water.
That said, there is pretty good mountain biking and things and I got super into that as well later on in high school. Once I had, you know, could learn how to drive and stuff and my friends would drive up to the trail centers and go ride bikes and stuff and that was always, yeah, I loved that as well. I really just loved love sport in general. I grew up playing American football and that’s pretty indistinguishable from my time growing up too because that was most of my experience in high school. went to, how should we say?
A school that valued that, for sure.
Chris Watson (05:17.052)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (05:21.998)
playing American football is pretty dominant of my time in high school as well. And so it’s a lot more about the team sports and stuff, but there is access to nature for sure.
Chris Watson (05:22.3)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris Watson (05:32.648)
Yeah, you seem to have quite a repertoire of kind of adventure sports type skills as well because you’ve done a bit of like skiing, mountaineering, cycling and all that stuff. has that been a gradual progression or is it stuff you just kind of try in your hand at most things? What is that like?
Chris McCaffrey (05:51.606)
Yeah, I think we can blame my parents for that, actually. They were, they loved, they’re, depends on your term, adventurous, but I would say they’re both quite adventurous people. And so it mattered to them that I grew up traveling and things, and I was just super privileged to have that opportunity. And so most years we would take a trip out to Colorado to go to a ski resort, go to Keystone primarily.
Chris Watson (05:53.32)
you
Chris McCaffrey (06:18.446)
And so that was where the skiing got, I got interested in the skiing and it’s quite different going on a four or five day holiday every year, every other year than skiing like hundred days a year, which I do currently because.
Chris Watson (06:33.208)
I’ve never skied at all but in two weeks time I’ve booked all of my family and there’s about 10 of us, 8, 9, 10 maybe, going for our skiing lesson as a family to see if we… because we’re trying to convince everyone to go on a skiing holiday rather than going to the sun because it’s cold in Scotland so we go to the sun most times but I want to go and do a skiing holiday and a few of us do so we’re looking forward to doing that for the first time in a few weeks.
Chris McCaffrey (07:01.218)
Where are you going?
Chris Watson (07:02.608)
It’s just in Glasgow that in Scotland so it’s in a dry slope unfortunately but we have a ski resort in Scotland but the weather’s a bit… it has been pretty good in terms of snowfall this winter but yeah I think it will be the dry slopes first to see if people like it and then hopefully we can get up north maybe into the Nordics and stuff as well hopefully yeah
Chris McCaffrey (07:04.078)
Chris McCaffrey (07:26.452)
Yeah, super cool. I’m excited to hear how that goes. I’m really, yeah, that’ll be really cool.
Chris Watson (07:30.792)
So Chris, coming back to your story then, quite adventurous upbringing, then lot of positive influences, which is great. Did you have a plan in terms of what you wanted to do when you started to grow up? Did you have a view on competitive sports and what was your plan?
Chris McCaffrey (07:51.15)
Yeah, so the plan through kind of high school, is 14, 15 through 18 here in America, was American football. It was pretty competitive, going to college camps, going to play, well, we call it college, you guys call it university, which is kind of the primary stepping stone in terms of elite team sports in the United States.
Chris Watson (08:11.174)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (08:21.006)
and I kind of fell out of love with football as I got on in high school a bit. I liked the team and I liked the environment, but I felt more called to the adventure stuff and the water and the mountains. And so the plan definitely shifted around 17, 18. I decided I wasn’t going to try and play.
football at a higher level. so then I was looking at going to university outside of Atlanta or outside of Georgia. So I was looking at a bunch of different universities, but I ended up coming to college here in Boulder, Colorado, where I live now.
Chris McCaffrey (09:05.1)
And a primary drive of that is, I’ve got my window shade closed right now, but if I didn’t, can see the canyon which defined American climbing for the past 50 years. And I can go skiing 30 minutes up that canyon as well. And so that then became kind of the plan in terms of…
Chris Watson (09:27.047)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (09:31.564)
what I was looking, what brought me here. then terms of work and a life plan, I came to college to study environmental sciences and I was looking to get into environmental consulting or working in sustainability or like climate nonprofits and things like that, which has somewhat been the direction, but it’s taken a few turns for sure.
Chris Watson (09:53.788)
Yeah. how did the expedition come to be then? Were you drawn to do that? Because we’re going to talk about the global cycle for sure, but I believe you had an attempt at rowing from New York to Ireland.
Chris McCaffrey (10:17.632)
Yeah, so I guess stepping a bit back, so this is actually why I brought up the sailing thing because I think there’s this thing in sailing, competitive dinghy racing, day cruisers, anything.
Chris Watson (10:20.06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (10:31.532)
where the idea of circumnavigating or going on these long sailing trips is somewhat normalized. Obviously these are like intense long trips, not everyone’s doing them, but when you grow up sailing and you read…
books of Robin Knox Johnston and these iconic sailors going on these adventures. The idea of the like long adventure I think kind of seeped into my psyche, if you will. And so I’ve always wanted to do something like that. I remember talking to my dad growing up being like 14, 15 saying I wanted to sail around the world. And my parents always been supportive of that type of thing, which has been really nice. And so I think that’s where the expedition stuff.
the interest came in. I’d done a little bit of, I did a through hike, I walked across Vermont in 2018, took like three weeks, and I really enjoyed the, doing that day in, day out, pursuing a goal.
And I wanted to kind of take that to the next level. I was working as a mountain guide, going down kind of the guiding track in 2018, 2019. And then COVID happened and kind of disrupted that. I was actually supposed to be going back up to Alaska to work as a mountain guide again that like kind of COVID summer. And then I didn’t have any work. was living by myself in Colorado and I just needed something to do.
And so I decided I was gonna start bikepacking, because then I could be away from people and be safe and still have bit of adventure. So I got really psyched on bikepacking then. And that kind of started this downward spiral into the long expeditions. And so I started keeping an eye out for opportunities I may have. And so I found this guy, Ray, on a Facebook group actually.
Chris Watson (12:25.34)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (12:34.698)
and he had been trying to row the North Atlantic. He’s Irish and he was trying to row from his current home in New York City back to Dungarvan where he grew up in Ireland. And I thought the story was super compelling and I kind of recognized that he’d been pursuing this and think he’d sort of tried twice and things had fallen apart logistically or with crew and things like that beforehand.
So I just thought of a message and he’s told me that he had other people already lined up to join him on the boat, but that he already owned the boat. And that was my, that was my main thing. Cause ocean rowing boats are really expensive. And he told me he had other people lined up and that we’d stay in touch. We had a good phone call and he called me a couple of days later and he was like, look, if you can, if you’re committed to coming on this adventure with me, then I’ll, I’ll, I’ll have you.
And so then my only requirement for him was that I could bring like one of my best buddies I’ve been adventuring with for a while. I actually met guiding up in Alaska. And then the three of us got on board and decided to take a rowboat from New York City to Ireland.
Chris McCaffrey (13:48.82)
No, no, Just talked to him on the phone. Met him on Facebook. And he had a nice accent, so I figured he must be trustworthy.
Chris Watson (13:56.52)
Wow. So how did that unfold then?
Chris McCaffrey (14:03.436)
Yeah, so without spending the next seven hours talking about this row, we spent a few months in Rockaway in Queens in New York City working on this boat, getting it ready and getting to Novre. And it was one of those things where within a few days, the team was, it was perfect. It was ideal.
Chris Watson (14:06.716)
Ha ha.
Chris McCaffrey (14:30.158)
for this type of project where it had been Ray’s project for years and Ryan and I came in with our own different expertise because Ray hadn’t done, well, that’s not true. Ray like was an ultra marathoner but he hadn’t done a multi-week or month long expedition before.
And the team gelled really well. And we got to have that month or two of getting to know each other, which is really nice and really important, I think. And then, yeah, so we set off from Rockaway in New York City in this rowboat. It’s 24 feet long, or what is that? Seven meters-ish. It has a small cabin in the back, just kind of big enough to sit up in. And the three of us can fit, like, squeeze shoulder to shoulder in it.
and a storage cabin in the front and two open rowing seats. And so we set off. We had not the worst storm, but not a great storm after a couple of days. And we realized our electronic system wasn’t substantial enough for what we needed. So we were quite close to Cape Cod at that point. So we’d rode up north toward Cape Cod and just got like a local tugboat to pull us in so we could work on our electronic system.
had an amazing experience in Cape Cod. This lovely couple that had been following our row on Instagram and on our Garmin inReach and stuff reached out saying they lived there and they hosted us and it was an amazing experience there. Fixed the boat, got a new system, set off again from Cape Cod and spent the next couple months rowing east day in day out. Crazy fog, crazy storms. Just the most…
the most incredible experience you could possibly have asked for.
Chris Watson (16:20.154)
How far did you get then? In fact, had any of you rowing experience before?
Chris McCaffrey (16:29.91)
Nah, none of us had ever rode a boat before.
Chris Watson (16:33.192)
Wow.
Chris McCaffrey (16:39.19)
Rowing’s like, we figured we’d get a lot of practice when we were out there. So really, you should keep your rowing as minimal as possible. Therefore, you’re most psyched on rowing.
Chris Watson (16:42.376)
I
Chris Watson (16:46.888)
Yeah, I can just admit it’s like the rotator cuffs and the yeah, I mean because I’ve spoken to a couple of people that have actually done this before and including one guy who had a couple of really horrendous experiences trying to roll across the Atlantic from east to west. So how did you get on then Chris? How far did you get across?
Chris McCaffrey (17:15.01)
Yeah, I think the total distance we were looking at was like 2,700 miles from New York City to Ireland. And we’d made it probably like two thirds of the way across. It’s difficult to judge distances because it’s not exactly a straight line because you’re rowing between the current systems. But yeah, a bit of foreshadowing. ultimately were unsuccessful. We got hit by a hurricane and had this pretty full on experience.
Chris Watson (17:26.279)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (17:44.588)
We’d had like all these incredible experiences beforehand. And so this was, we were quite prepared for it emotionally and all those things, which was good. But yeah, so we knew this hurricane was coming, not really anything you can do about it. we just, we were just gonna ride it out. You can use this thing called a drogue, which is like a chain.
Chris Watson (18:07.464)
See you again.
Chris McCaffrey (18:10.538)
Yeah, so you’ve got a sea anchor which goes off the bow and a drogue which goes off the stern. In ocean rowing you’re really relying on the currents and the winds and then you’re kind of rowing with them to carry you because it’s so hard to row against strong winds and current in a boat like this and so the winds were really favorable with this hurricane so we were kind of psyched.
Chris Watson (18:30.557)
you
Chris McCaffrey (18:32.098)
But yeah, drogue you hang off the stern and it just keeps the back straight and slows you down a bit, but it allows you to still make forward progress. And so we were using a drogue and for the first like 12 hours, things were pretty good. It was, you know, big seas, five, seven meter swell, a couple bigger on occasion from what I remember. But it’s really tough to judge wave height when you’re in the boat.
So none of us were rowing, we were all like locked down in the cabin.
And I, when the meat of the storm hit, I remember I was asleep. I was asleep on the port side of the cabin. Ryan was awake and he was like on watch just monitoring the situation. And I think Ray was asleep or at least pretending to be asleep. He wasn’t the best at sleeping in a hairy situations. I was out like a rock. But I just remember, are we allowed to curse on this podcast?
Chris Watson (19:22.088)
You
Chris Watson (19:26.152)
Ha
Chris Watson (19:32.26)
Yeah, go for it.
Chris McCaffrey (19:32.822)
Yeah, yeah, well, the actual quote was, I remember waking up out of this, my slumber to Ryan being like, fuck. And I had this few seconds where I was like, he’s probably overreacting. Like, it’s fine. What could it be? It’s been gnarly for so long. It’s not gonna be a big deal. And then after having that thought, I was just immediately airborne.
Chris Watson (19:59.528)
Ugh.
Chris McCaffrey (20:00.678)
And what had happened was a wave came on a different angle and the drogue is holding a square on to the primary wind and wave direction. But when a wave comes from a different angle, it hit us on the side and like just threw the boat over. We didn’t fully capsize, like we rotated back the way we went over, but it was so violent that me being on the port side, which became the high side, the ocean was so strong.
that it flung me across, up into the air, and I hit the ceiling of the cabin. And so I went from being sound asleep to being on top of Rey, on the ceiling of our boat. And then we ride it back, and I was like, my god, that was so scary, we’re all freaking, you know, I was not freaking out, but it was an engaging experience for sure. And.
What actually ended up being the scariest was we had a auxiliary battery in the cabin so we could use the boat’s battery system to charge that up so then we could charge phones and things off of that. That had gotten flung as well at a similar force and had missed Ryan’s head by like a foot. It hit the wall next to him like right here.
And that was pretty scary actually because it weighs like 10 kilos and I’d be bad to get hit like square in the face a thousand miles from the nearest land by something like that. But yeah, so the rest of that day was pretty exciting for sure. We had a big wave came and it ripped the whole steering system off the boat.
broke the shackle that the drogue was chained onto, just snapped it steel, snapped it straight in half. The rudder system, which had been bolted metal onto the back of the boat, just totally gone. So we switched to a sea anchor, we ride it out for the next.
Chris McCaffrey (22:04.238)
think it was like 12 to 24 hours. But with no rudder, there’s nothing stabilizing the back of the boat. So we’re just swinging wildly like a trebuchet or a catapult, this back and forth. But we made it through, which was quite nice. And then we got about rebuilding. And Ryan is just a wizard. He’s a carpenter and contractor and…
Chris Watson (22:10.726)
Yeah, Christ. Yeah, Christ.
Chris McCaffrey (22:30.572)
just amazing the way that he can see a problem or something that needs to be built and then also see how to fix it is just like totally next level. And so we had a spare piece of wood that we could use to repair various things. It could replace a broken centerboard. It could replace a broken rudder. We never considered a wave would be strong enough to actually rip like the entire steering system off the boat.
And so Ryan takes like the scraps of this thing and this spare piece of wood and like builds an entire new rudder and steering system. Like with Ray and I like hanging him off the back of the boat, like in the water, it was nuts. And he built it and it worked. We kept rowing and we made it another, I think it was another like a week and change and had another stormy night. All of us were in the cabin.
Chris Watson (23:15.816)
.
Chris McCaffrey (23:26.094)
and we caught a wave at a weird angle and some water got in the boat and it damaged the electronic system which had already been pretty badly damaged during that hurricane by water as well and that it fried it and it was done. So we lost our ability to charge anything, we lost our ability to run the radio off off off charge so we had this remaining battery in a radio and we had the remaining battery in a sat phone.
And we knew we had another probably month at sea to go and going into August and or going into September in the North Atlantic during hurricane season. And.
We made a call to the Canadian Coast Guard just letting them know the situation, but that we would like to continue, but could they advise? And they said, actually, there’s another big storm coming. You guys need to get out of there. We were like, OK, great. Come pick us up. And they’re like, nah, you’re like, it’s too dangerous. You’re too far out. You need to figure it out. And so we debated continuing. We debated what we should do. But really, at the end of the day, it’s better to come home alive and.
get to chat with people on podcast about it. we contacted the Coast Guard again and got put in touch with an oil tanker, the Magnolia Express out of India. And they came and picked us up, like plucked us off the rowboat with a rope basket and then took us back to North America. And that was a lovely experience getting to hang out on a oil tanker for a couple of weeks.
Chris Watson (24:38.16)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Watson (25:04.328)
That’s incredible, Krista. mean, yeah, that’s just, it’s just bad fortune really. It’s not through the want of really trying or, you know, that’s just really, really unfortunate. I mean, the sea is, you know, holds no mercy, unfortunately. But that sounds like an epic experience. And yeah, I mean, I…
Chris McCaffrey (25:27.351)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (25:29.96)
I actually capsized in a sea kayak in the middle of the North Atlantic getting hit side on and not paying attention. was struggling with it. The swell was just, yeah, about three, four meters. And yeah, I just lost my faculties and went upside down. And it wasn’t the best experience. wasn’t the best experience trying to self-rescue when you’ve got swell and all sorts. So.
Chris McCaffrey (25:52.044)
Yeah, that’s…
Chris Watson (25:57.717)
The thought of being in a cab, I my mind goes back to that and the thought of being a cabin being thrown about is quite terrifying to think about that.
Chris McCaffrey (26:07.136)
Yeah, Barney. Barney our boat, is named after Ray’s dad who had recently passed away. Barney cared for us for sure, which was good.
Chris Watson (26:16.954)
Yeah.
Would you attempt that again?
Chris Watson (26:25.744)
Or does it past?
Chris McCaffrey (26:25.964)
Yes, it’s an interesting thing because I remember chatting with Ray about this. In many ways we had the full experience that we set out there to have. The only part of the experience we didn’t get to have is finishing. And in some ways finishing is finishing for other people anyway. Like finishing is for the people who care about it and support you and finishing is for…
Chris Watson (26:45.254)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (26:49.199)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (26:55.414)
the ego and the temporary joy, but…
Chris Watson (26:56.56)
Yep. That’s a fantastic outlook on it. It’s a fantastic outlook. Because imagine you went through without any of that experience and you completed it. I mean, would it be as good as a type two reflection? Maybe not.
Chris McCaffrey (27:07.629)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (27:12.972)
Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s one of those things like you’d, I would, I’d choose the experience we had and not finishing over not having as meaningful an experience in finishing for sure.
Chris Watson (27:25.456)
Yeah, yeah. you dealing with any of that in the dark at points? Because you’re talking about you were kind of at 12, 24 hours at points, anchored potentially. Were you dealing with that in the dark?
Chris McCaffrey (27:36.558)
yeah, I mean we were in the hurricane for like a day and a half. But we had a lot of, the storms always seem to hit like one in the morning. Which is maybe just a psychological thing because when the waves are big and the wind’s ripping in the middle of the day then you can just have a bit of a party about it and enjoy it. Where at night we were usually, we were often alone on the oars so that.
Chris Watson (27:40.156)
Yeah, shit.
Chris Watson (27:56.879)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (28:03.362)
people could try and get more sleep because we would row in shifts and two hour shifts and then at night we would do a three hour shift so that each person could get a six hour block and that would be, and then you know, you gotta eat, you gotta take care of yourself. So realistically you’re maybe getting like four hours of sleep in that window and that’d be like your sleep for the day pretty much.
Chris Watson (28:20.808)
How did you deal with the actual physical side of it? Because if you hadn’t really done that road before, that’s mentally tough but physically that must have been tough. How did you get on with that? It seemed like you were…
Chris McCaffrey (28:39.052)
We were training beforehand for sure. listeners can’t see. I have the ideal build for this type of thing. I’m like pretty big muscular. Like I’m not a runner, let’s say that. And so that was, I mean, that’s an advantage. And we all tried to like put on weight beforehand and get in the gym, get on the rowing machine beforehand and.
Chris Watson (28:42.47)
Okay.
Chris Watson (28:49.455)
Eh.
Chris Watson (29:00.36)
Mm-hmm.
Chris McCaffrey (29:06.102)
It’s really, it’s not even the muscles that were the biggest issue. It’s salt sores and blisters on your hands that can, people have had to bail on ocean rowing trips because of those. Because a salt sore from sitting on the seat, moving back and forth can go from an annoying pain to
Chris Watson (29:13.224)
Mm.
Chris McCaffrey (29:33.11)
like seriously, like a serious issue by becoming infected and developing, know, sepsis can kill you and managing that is really critical. We used, had a, we’re fortunate, we had a great sponsor, Allgood. They make like really, really high end skincare products, all natural, all that type of stuff. And we were putting their product, it’s called Goop.
We were putting goop on our hands and friction points. And it seemed to work fantastic. I think I still have calluses from like four years ago, but yeah. Now the physical side was cool. It’s definitely more of a mental experience, that type of trip in many ways. Like we were in the fog off the banks of Nova Scotia and the Grand Banks for like weeks.
where you can’t see more than like 100 feet and there’s just like fog horns in the night and you can see how the old sailors tales of sirens and crackens and things come about.
Chris Watson (30:32.988)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (30:37.48)
What was it like when the tanker picked you up? What was that experience like?
Chris McCaffrey (30:46.246)
was so gnarly. was very, it was, risk is an interesting thing because as humans we’re not always the best at identifying it.
How sketchy getting from a like 20 something foot robo onto a massive like chemical tanker that is just lowered to like literal rope basket off the side in swell. It’s so sketchy. And I remember Ryan went first and the basket like.
Chris Watson (31:07.288)
Yeah, I know just the thought of that.
Chris Watson (31:17.786)
Chris McCaffrey (31:24.638)
swung if I’m it’s one of those things that memory is kind of a blur but I have a memory of the basket swinging and Ryan kind of like catches it and then just jumps and we’re like banging up against the side of this tanker I’m like not I can’t do that like there’s no way and then of course like you figure it out and you just jump in and it and it worked out it they have like a winch system like it’s it’s actually how they how they carry
Chris Watson (31:46.802)
Was a bunch of guys pulling it up then? How did that? a winch, yeah, okay.
Chris McCaffrey (31:54.466)
like baskets I think, like food and stuff into the tanker, if I’m not mistaken. But they also train, these are super, super highly skilled mariners. And they train this type of stuff. But it was pretty engaging for sure. And then we’re in this tanker and it’s, we’re in the basket on the side of the tanker and the tanker’s rocking, you like swing out away from the tanker and it’s like, and you come smashing back in. But.
Chris Watson (31:58.374)
okay.
Chris Watson (32:04.655)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (32:18.856)
Wow.
Chris Watson (32:24.368)
Yeah, that would have been epic if you had a GoPro or something on that, that have been pretty epic footage.
Chris McCaffrey (32:24.578)
Yeah, and then, yeah.
Yeah, totally Yeah, I should I should have done I was I was technically in charge of the filming stuff But we were a bit distracted trying not to perish
Chris Watson (32:37.704)
What was the reception like when you got on? Did you get booed or applauded or put into the…
Chris McCaffrey (32:46.206)
everyone is super nice and bringing his jackets. And then we had to take a, we had to do like COVID testing stuff. Despite the fact we’ve been at sea for like two months, which I mean, makes sense. They need it for their paperwork. But we had to do that. And then we went down to the mess hall and it’s all Indian crew, except one guy from Georgia who’s the security officer.
Chris Watson (32:53.178)
Alright, shit. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (33:11.424)
It was a pretty funny experience because they all had these incredible smelling… We’d been eating these Expedition foods, dehydrated stuff, and now all of a sudden there’s these smells of tikka masalas and saag and chana masala, like the chickpeas. And they’d bring us our dinner and the chef had really generously prepared us what he thought Americans ate, which was like…
Chris Watson (33:17.8)
Yeah
Chris Watson (33:25.402)
wow.
Chris McCaffrey (33:39.138)
boiled, unseasoned, like carrots, broccoli, and chicken. And like we were very hungry and so it was very delicious. So we finished our meal and then we saw there was like, you know, still some of the Indian food going around and we were like, could we maybe like have some like sog? And they were so excited that we knew what sog was, which is like a spinach dish from India. And then we gorged ourselves on Indian food for the next like week. It was amazing.
Chris Watson (33:49.885)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (33:57.224)
you
Chris Watson (34:02.138)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (34:06.921)
wow, wow.
Chris McCaffrey (34:08.322)
And they threw, they don’t have alcohol on board and they threw us a party. And I don’t think anyone has ever gone harder off of a non-alcoholic beer than those guys do for sure. But yeah, it was a lovely experience and yeah, really thankful for them, of course.
Chris Watson (34:20.07)
Yeah. that’s excellent. Excellent. Excellent. So that’s the, that’s a perfect baseline before we get into the kind of crux of today. So the global cycle. what was the time? Cause you finished, when you finished? When did you finish the cycle? Chris? Cause you were 16? November. Yeah. So, yeah. So, and that was about 16 months. that, so what?
Chris McCaffrey (34:40.843)
I finished the cycle in November and it’s February, so like three months ago.
Chris McCaffrey (34:48.322)
Yep, I left in June of 2023.
Chris Watson (34:50.586)
Yeah, so a few years between both those expeditions. Yeah. So how did that come about then? Where did the seed of that come from and had you done much bike packing or cycling?
Chris McCaffrey (34:53.045)
Yeah, with the Rose in 2021, so I had a couple years.
Chris McCaffrey (35:04.738)
Well, I went back to uni and finished and graduated and had a pretty…
That was important, I mean important for myself as well, but really important for my parents. And so I wanted to go back and do that. And they’ve just supported me so much with education my whole life. So it felt important that I went back and finished that. Particularly given all the opportunities I had to do so. And.
That said, I am not very good at… The environment of school doesn’t really play to my strengths, particularly from a mental health standpoint. And so I got through it, but I knew I needed a carrot at the end. And I actually left on my ride around the world. So I left at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, and I turned in my final paper.
for university at 8 p.m. on that Friday before. And so that was the time in between. Yeah, I was working in the outdoor industry and fortunate to do some other sailing stuff up in the Arctic and lot of ski touring, ski mountaineering and things in the in-between, but the bike ride was definitely on the mind. I’d made this list a few years ago of what I thought were the hardest.
Chris Watson (36:12.68)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (36:32.732)
things that.
I guess phrase it slightly differently. There’s, like in rugby for example, it’s like my favorite sport to watch, it’s kind of clear what the pinnacle is. Like, if you’re growing up in the UK or in Scotland and you’re a rugby player and you want to feel the pinnacle of rugby, like you’re going to play in the Six Nations for Scotland, or…
Growing up in Ireland or England, maybe making the British and Irish lions and getting to go on tour with them. That feels like the pinnacle. It’s less obvious what the pinnacle is in the adventure stuff. And so for whatever reason, maybe it because I’d gone through a challenging breakup, but I made this list of what I thought the absolute hardest things that…
someone could do in the adventure space where, and it was like, okay, row an ocean. Then it was like, okay, but other people row oceans. What’s the hardest ocean to row? And it’s either the full Pacific or the North Atlantic. And the full Pacific takes too long, so North Atlantic it was. And then there’s a few 8,000 meter peaks that…
Chris Watson (37:43.548)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (37:51.182)
The ski descents are quite technical. There’s some aid climbing routes and, or I should say like big wall routes that made that list. And then riding a bicycle around the world was on there. And so I had the opportunity in particular, like with graduate university and my parents were willing to help support with some stuff after university.
And I knew I had this opportunity and the opportunity cost was relatively low given that I didn’t really have much of a career outside of dieting and working on ski boots and working for ski companies and stuff, but I wasn’t stepping away from a track that was going to significantly impact my career. And I’d just finished university. I was going to just finish university.
And it seemed like the riding a bicycle around the world was, if I was ever gonna do it, the time was then. And,
Chris Watson (38:54.066)
What did your parents say when you said, were they quite supportive of your plan to do that?
Chris McCaffrey (39:01.239)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (39:02.28)
You hesitated there, must have been a…
Chris McCaffrey (39:05.76)
I think there’s other things they’re psyched that I don’t do, if that makes sense. Like, I don’t know, I don’t really drink, well, I don’t drink at all. I don’t party or anything like that. I just ride bikes and ski and there’s lots of, and I think that they, particularly with this, with the Around the World, both of them felt like…
Chris Watson (39:09.032)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (39:20.807)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (39:29.538)
Well, A, looks pretty sweet on a resume in general, but also it’s just such a cultural experience that I think they thought would be important for me to have like throughout later in life.
Chris Watson (39:43.248)
Yeah, I’m going to come to that actually in terms of like if you think about, so if you think about, I won’t ask it now, but if you think about your baseline as a character, mental wellbeing, outlook in life, pre and post that and we’ll come back to that because I think that’s, to see how much you think it might have changed you for better or worse or whatever because it’s got minutes of mammoth undertaking.
and some of the countries that you’ve gone through and the cultural experiences and we’ll touch on some of that in a minute. I’m just keen to know what your outlook has been like since you’ve come back. So let’s touch on the route itself because I think you started in US and you came back full circle didn’t you? You came back to where you started but was it into Canada, France, Italy, Croatia, Turkey, through the stands, India and then…
Asia, Thailand and Australia. So what was your, how did you plan it out then? Because there’s countries you could have, other countries you could have went to and things that you missed. So just keen to understand how you planned that out, Chris.
Chris McCaffrey (40:56.298)
Yeah, so one of the things that my dad was going to help me with the financial side of it and one of the things we agreed on was that I was going to give him a plan. And so I was going to try and stick to it. In hindsight, it was way too ambitious. It’s one of those things that if everything went perfect every day, it was the ideal plan. However, nothing went perfect on almost any day.
Chris Watson (41:23.42)
Yeah
Chris McCaffrey (41:23.662)
And so, which was foreseeable of course, but yeah, so actually my original plan was to take seven less months, ride 3000 less miles, and I was gonna go like a totally different route through Asia. More or less totally different route. But yeah, so the route I ended up riding, well, we can start with, I started in Boulder, Colorado from this bike shop called Full Cycle. It’s one of the kind of premier.
bike shops in Colorado, which is the premier cycling state. And they were supporting me beforehand, helping me with, with parts and resources and things, which is super helpful because otherwise it’d be so hard building a bike up and figuring all that out on my own, not being a bike mechanic. And so full cycle has this awesome cafe bar, hangout, cycling space. So I left from there.
Chris Watson (42:14.258)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (42:22.866)
and headed east with the goal of cycling to St. John’s Newfoundland. I’ve been going to Newfoundland and I’ve been to Newfoundland for I guess work slash expedition somewhere in the middle doing like some sailboat delivery stuff and going up to Greenland in the past and so I really valued going to St. John’s and St. John’s is also the easternmost point in North America and so it looks
In my opinion, looks like aesthetically pleasing on a map to ride there. And so I set off East Road from Boulder through the Midwest, pretty spicy, crazy like tornadoes and weather and stuff through New England and crazy rains and into Nova Scotia and Canada. I went past Niagara Falls and that was a really cool experience.
Riding in Nova Scotia, there just these crazy rains and the roads was like, I found, came upon roads that were just totally washed away and that was pretty intense. And then took the ferry to Newfoundland, rode this epic route called the Newfoundland Trailway, which is this removed, they pulled this old logging railroad out and then that was just this dirt trail that goes to St. John’s. And that was just epic. I love Newfoundland so much and I love the people there and I got to hang out with folks I’d met before and
was lovely and then I flew to Paris now the original plan was to ride from Paris to Hong Kong well I had two original plans one was to ride from Paris to the south of India and then fly to Australia from there
and then I realized I was going to ride 15,000 miles and I was like, yeah, let’s go for 18 because 15,000 miles is the original definition of riding a bicycle around the world. But in recent years, they’ve upped that to 18 for the Guinness record. And so I just wanted to sit somewhere in between 15 and 18.
Chris McCaffrey (44:20.236)
And so the original plan was ride through Europe, through Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, take the ferry across the Caspian Sea, through the Stans, up around through Kazakhstan, Almaty, and then through China.
Europe worked out relatively well. Super hot. Some things didn’t go great. I broke a wheel like just before Bulgaria and had to like fly over Bulgaria, which is a bummer. I’m gonna go back and ride that section someday. But I flew to Istanbul.
and then continued east from there. That was incredible. Turkey is just such an amazing country. Met so many amazing people. Beautiful mountains there. Going along the Black Sea was cool. Into Georgia, Georgia’s epic. And then the Azerbaijani border was closed and that kind of set the precedent for the next chunk of the trip because…
Border issues are a real challenge. They’re a challenge for the people that live there, and obviously. But for my trip, they presented a conundrum for sure, because there’s a lot of time where you can push things, but you just don’t know how far you can push things.
And there wasn’t really anywhere to push with Azerbaijan to be honest. So I flew from Tbilisi, well I flew from Tbilisi back to Istanbul because I needed to have a layover because there’s no direct flights to where I wanted to go. Like the closest city in Kazakhstan to where I had to get on a plane. So then I ended up spending a couple weeks in Istanbul on that layover which was really lovely. Flew to Aktau in Kazakhstan on the Caspian Sea.
Chris McCaffrey (46:02.23)
And that was really the meat of the trip, if you will. But yes, I rode… Oktau to Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Couldn’t get a visa for Tajikistan, which meant I couldn’t get a…
permit to cross the full Pamir Highway, the Tajik Chinese border was closed, the Tajik Kyrgyz border was closed, the Kyrgyz Chinese border was closed, and I couldn’t get a Kazakhstan visa to go back into Kazakhstan, so I couldn’t get into China that way. I then also, I was gonna fly to China, but then I found out that I wasn’t gonna be allowed to ride through large sections of China, like thousand mile chunks.
two 600 mile chunks and like a thousand mile chunk but like you know what I mean. Was gonna be very difficult. So I ended up rerouting flying down to India riding through India and Nepal and then down through Southeast Asia to Singapore. Yeah and then I did Australia, flew to LA and rode back to Boulder. Is the mid-length version of the route I rode.
Chris Watson (47:05.35)
Yeah, I mean it’s epic. mean there’s a few things I want to kind of roll back and touch into to Chris but coming back to what was the name of the bike shop? Was it Full Cycle Bikes and Full Cycle? Yeah, because I’ve seen the pre and post photos and the welcome party when you came back and stuff. So what experience did you have with bike repairs?
Chris McCaffrey (47:17.9)
Yeah, it’s called Full Cycle.
Chris Watson (47:32.428)
you’re not a bike mechanic or anything like that and I’ve seen from various stories you know the amount of bike shops and repairs and all that stuff that you had to contend to so what did you leave with in terms of spare parts and how practical are your skills in terms of repairing?
Chris McCaffrey (47:49.934)
Cooper, mechanic, he’s a mechanic at Full Cycle, helped because we built my bike frame up together and he was showing me how he was doing everything and he would generally show me the bike mechanic way of doing things and then the Chris who is not very good at working on bikes way of fixing things, which to be honest, worked great. But I mean, I grew up riding bikes and then riding mountain bikes in particular and…
Chris Watson (47:53.085)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (48:08.008)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (48:19.542)
So I can fix like the most basic things. I can fix a broken chain. I can change a tire, stuff like that.
And yeah, I brought basically the minimal spares. I thought I could get away with a couple spokes, a bunch of spare tubes if I got a flat and needed to change a tube, and one spare tire in case I cooked a tire and needed to put it on. And overall, the bike looked worked quite well. We chose components based on durability and that worked. Yeah, that worked great.
Chris Watson (48:56.722)
Did you have to consider like, because I know you were in a few very, very hot places, did that become a factor in terms of like the spares or the tires or anything like that at all? Because I know you’d have quite a few punctures and stuff like that as well and that’s just to be expected naturally.
Chris McCaffrey (49:17.096)
Yeah, I am the only place it did that like… The heat was mostly a personal thing because I’m just horrible at dealing with the heat. My Instagram handle is chrisinthecold for a reason.
Chris Watson (49:29.512)
Yeah, I know, and I think you had heat stroke or something didn’t you at some point as well? Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (49:34.958)
Yeah, I got pretty heat stroke-y in Italy. It was like pretty, pretty heinous. I was like, yeah, we can get in that stirrup in life. Yeah, I was in Italy and I just got so hot. It so hot. It was like 43 Celsius, which is like 106 Fahrenheit or something. And it was like 38 at night or something crazy. And I was just not cooling down in between days.
for a couple days and I just had this one day where, yeah, I’ll spare people the graphic details for sure, but things were not right in my body. And yeah, I was just like riding like 10 minutes and I’d like pull over and just like throw up all over some bush. It was horrible. And I ended up having to take a bit of time there for sure to recover. yeah, the body didn’t do well with the heat. The only time…
The bike didn’t do well with the heat. I tried to ride on like the interstate in America briefly, because I was trying to get around this like narrow country road that had a bit of traffic. I was kind of nervous about it. Interstate has a wide shoulder. I was like, oh, it’ll be fine. Didn’t consider that. So many cars driving on the interstate. The rubber of the tires embeds into the road. And it was like 39 Celsius and sunny.
And so my tires started picking up like the chunks of car tire that were like melting out of the pavement. And it got to the point where like I couldn’t ride my bike because my tires had become so like thick with a rubber goop that they were melting with. Other than that, it was fine. And the bike did. I chose this bike because it was super versatile.
Chris Watson (51:16.324)
you
Chris Watson (51:27.536)
Yeah, what type of eight was it? And is it Chris?
Chris McCaffrey (51:29.76)
It’s a brand called Ozzo. They’re a smaller frame manufacturer. It’s a steel, kind of gravel-ish touring bike. lighter end of touring, but durable end of gravel.
Chris Watson (51:45.8)
Yeah, I was going to say it was durable enough to go off road-ish in areas, yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (51:50.444)
Yeah, totally. It’s designed to be able to ride it on trails and stuff. I don’t know if it’s designed to be able to ride it on trails with like a 220 pound person and it’s like 100 kilos and a bunch of luggage and stuff, but the bike did great. It’s sitting next to me now. And that’s, yeah.
Chris Watson (52:00.624)
Yeah.
Yeah, is it? right. Excellent. A couple of quick, actually, before I forget, because where you were in, can’t remember if it was maybe Thailand or somewhere, but you were you were somewhere where you had to you were in a bike lane that was also used by motorbikes as well, I’m pretty sure. So did you have to cycle alongside motorbikes in amongst?
Chris McCaffrey (52:30.188)
yeah, yeah, yeah. That was actually kind of a net positive. That was both in Thailand and in Vietnam where the roads that kind of go places are these kind of main artery roads, but the way it works is you have a shoulder and then you have kind of a slow moving vehicle lane, which is the motorbike, scooters, and me. And then you’ve got the cars, and then you’ve got like tuk tuks, and then you’ve got cars. And that actually felt super safe because the like heavy vehicles that will like…
Chris Watson (52:49.32)
All right, yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (52:58.808)
crush you if they hit you. We’re kinda separated. Although it did get a bit engaging, cause you’re like riding along, going relatively slowly, and there’s just a stream of scooters like flying past. But, yeah.
Chris Watson (53:00.155)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (53:12.1)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had some experiences with the local wildlife in Thailand, aggressive dogs. What was that, all of it?
Chris McCaffrey (53:21.332)
Yeah, I had some rather spicy encounters with dogs. In particular, I had one encounter where I thought this dog was on a leash because it was standing with a person, but the owner had un-clipped the leash already. They were like in their yard. And as I rode past, the dog saw me and just like bolted. And it bit like my pannier and I tried to like sprint away.
it pulled me a little bit and then caused me to crash pretty hard. And so I went down and I just saw this dog still coming. So I grabbed the bike and pulled the bike over me as this dog was going to jump on me. And as soon as I grabbed the bike, it kind of backed off. But that was pretty engaging for sure. I didn’t do too much damage to the bike, but scraped myself up and scraped the bike up a bit.
Chris Watson (54:17.595)
Yeah, you had a few kind of… You were pretty ill weren’t you at one point as well? I think you had food poisoning from what I recall but you also contracted typhus as well? Was that an issue?
Chris McCaffrey (54:28.246)
Yeah, so that was a that’s kind of the other major thing of the ride that’s been pretty defining. I was on pace for that like year-ish time, 13-month time that I wanted until I got really sick. So I ended up in the hospital in Hanoi and
Like the most vivid memory I have of that is I’d gone to the hospital, I had this fever, they gave me medication for the fever. I go back to this like, my dad had got me this nice hotel so I wasn’t in like some hostel, which is way, way better for recovering in the hotel obviously. And I, yeah, so I’d been to the hospital, go back to the hotel, like a day later I’m feeling way sicker. So I talked to the hotel, I was like,
you know, there any concierge? I like, there anything like, what should I do? Is there like a international hospital? And they were like, yes, this is the one you should go to. So I went to hospital again and they admitted me, did a bunch of tests. I had some weird stuff, swollen liver, swollen spleen, like weird blood work. And I was diagnosed with dengue fever. Go back to the hotel.
And like three days later, I’m just not getting better. I felt really sick. Like I’m, I like felt like I was dying. Go to the, go back to the hospital. I’m sitting in, it’s kind of waiting room and I cough and it’s just this like dark red, like clotted blood type thing. And I just like dribble, like I just like cough blood onto myself. And this like Vietnamese nurse who didn’t speak any English, eyes are just like saucers.
And then they like actually admitted me then did a bunch of tests. Still thought it was dengue. I recovered a bit, but they gave me like an IV and stuff to like really properly regulate this fever I had. So had a fever for a couple of weeks, recovered more or less, and then eased my way back onto the bike. but yeah, I was, then just like really sick. And after about a month of on the bike, I think I kind of just like, my body sort of broke.
Chris McCaffrey (56:39.598)
I did just a whole bunch of weird stuff. started gaining weight like crazy. Even riding the bike was gaining weight. Couldn’t really eat. was nauseous all the time. The worst thing was was really dizzy and brain foggy. I was in near Shenzhen, Thailand and staying with this local family.
And I had gone to like the 7-Eleven to get a sandwich. I was walking back and I walked into my room and the whole place felt like it was just swimming. And then I got this like black spot that started like crawling up from the bottom of my vision. And I was like, this is really not good. I actually thought I had, I was going into shock from a lack of salt. So I’d had a bad sunburn and I was riding a long way. was hot.
So through my like rescue insurance, I have access to a doctor. I talked to a doctor and they kind of noted that I was just devolving as we were talking. And so then they spoke to the family as well as for me. The mom of this family takes me to what I thought was going to be like the large regional hospital. Cause I thought I was dying for sure. And it turned out to be this like open air clinic.
And I have this pretty distinct memory of getting put on this rolling bed and looking at the wall and there’s just lizards and stuff on the wall. And I was like, all right, well, this is it. That’s really unfortunate. And then I woke up and I was out. And I woke up the next morning and the mom was still standing beside the bed. She’d been there the whole night.
just standing there. Didn’t really speak English, couldn’t communicate with me, but it spent the whole night with me in this hospital. And apparently they’d done blood work and stuff and given me an IV and coaxed me through it. And at that point I kinda had this decision of do I go home and just end this trip or do I continue? And the family took care of me for another couple days, bringing me breakfast, lunch, and dinner and…
Chris McCaffrey (58:52.088)
caring for me which was just fantastic obviously and you know the world over people were just super generous and
Yeah, so I stayed with them for a couple days and I improved a lot, like a lot, but I was still just really out of it mentally. And I came to this place where I realized that I’d gone through the rural parts. There was no more extremely rural other than like these two spots. And I was so close to Singapore and I’d been on this adventure for so long and I’d put so much into it and I’d had so much risk elsewhere.
We could talk about it later if you’d like, but like I was hit by a car in Uzbekistan. I had, it felt like, it felt like I’d been through so much that the possibility of like not finishing, like for better or worse, mean, to be honest, like totally worse. I remember feeling like really like disappointed in myself for like having this thoughts, but like the thought of like going home and like not finishing felt like worse than like dying.
Like it felt like the worst thing I could possibly imagine. And if there was any chance that I could finish this ride, then I was going to take it. And that was a pretty, it was a really heavy experience. There was three or four days of just like really heavy and
So I stayed with the family, stayed in this place where knew I could generally get care and got better enough where I realized like, okay, like if I’m like, if this is gonna get worse, I’m probably gonna experience it getting worse. And if I continue on the ride, I’m only going towards more opportunities to like go home to bail to get healthcare. And so I kind of talked myself into it and continue towards Singapore.
Chris McCaffrey (01:00:53.806)
which was, yeah, brutal. It was like 1,000 or 1,200 miles, I think, from Chimpanzee.
Chris Watson (01:00:58.662)
Wow, did they give you medication or anything? Even if they misdiagnosed it, did they give you like antibiotics or what was it? was the?
Chris McCaffrey (01:01:06.188)
They gave me some medication, but it wasn’t the correct one, unfortunately, which is kind of where we’re at now. I feel, I’d say like, yeah, so I got much worse, but I made it to Singapore. Flew to Australia, went to GP, because I got worse again when I got to Australia. I think I’d like worked myself into this head space where, I mean, it’s like mind over matter. I’d like, convinced myself the only thing that mattered was getting to Singapore.
Chris Watson (01:01:09.137)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:01:17.329)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:01:25.352)
Yeah
Chris McCaffrey (01:01:35.244)
and finishing riding bicycle across Asia, which I did. And that felt like incredible. But then when I didn’t have that immediate nugget, I just collapsed. So I went to doctor in Australia. Australia has great healthcare. And props to this doctor. He was like, that doesn’t sound like dengue. And he looked through their notes. He looked through the testing and stuff.
And he was right. He ran a bunch of general screens that can kind of tell you the general, generic type of disease that someone might have.
I tested positive for like a rickettsial disease and he sent me to an infectious disease specialist who over a number of visits were able to lock in what I’d actually had and found the site where like a tick had bitten me on my leg and we were able to figure it out. And then the issue with typhus is you’ll kind of just keep relapsing and each one will get worse. If you don’t.
Chris Watson (01:02:31.624)
Hmm.
Chris McCaffrey (01:02:36.59)
Each one will get worse to a point. Then you can, eventually you can clear it. then they gave me like a 21 day course of this specific antibiotic and that really helped because then I stopped having the fevers and all that stuff. Still had the kind of neurological symptoms though. Started working with actually a concussion specialist doing like physical therapy for my eyes and stuff. And that improved, I’d say probably 50%.
I remember I was supposed to have a follow-up appointment with this doctor one week and I just decided like screw it like I’m gonna alter my plans for Australia we’re not gonna ride across the outback we’re ride at the East Coast I’ve been coming south from Hanoi anyway let’s like meet those two lines riding up the East Coast of Australia it’ll get me the same it’s shorter but you know a good enough distance and it’ll be maybe even better experience because Australian coast is lovely
And I called the doctor and I was like, hey, like, I think I’m just going to get back on the bike. Like, do you think, like, what do you think about that? And this doctor was great. He was like, I think that’s a really, a really good idea. And, and so on I went. It was pretty brutal. Definitely still pretty sick, but it wasn’t nearly as sick as I had been.
finish and then yeah, was able to get it done. My dad came out and helped me across the American West because I was just really weak. I could ride the bike, but doing things that weren’t riding the bike were pretty hard. Even like holding a glass of water was becoming difficult for me.
Chris Watson (01:04:17.628)
Have you recovered from that Chris? Are there any lingering effects from that?
Chris McCaffrey (01:04:22.016)
Yeah, I do have some like lingering effects. I actually got a call yesterday that I’ve got like some they found like some damage to my liver and some stuff like that but I ended up working with this great, great neurologist and he really like did all this testing, dialed in exactly what he felt was causing it and gave me medication in
December, like late December I started taking it early January and it takes like a couple weeks to take effect and I’m 90 % better since then. And so it’s one of those things where it’s like, should I have just like flown home from Hanoi, gotten the treatment, gotten this medication then, gone back? Like sure that would have been an option. But I feel, yeah, super thankful that it’s worked out quite well and I was amusing on that yesterday. It’s like.
Chris Watson (01:04:52.728)
great, yeah.
Chris Watson (01:05:12.518)
Yeah, well… Yeah…
Chris McCaffrey (01:05:13.366)
just incredible how much better I feel now that I’ve gotten, you know, good treatment stuff. So yeah, it’s nice.
Chris Watson (01:05:18.114)
Excellent, you know, best of luck. Wish you good health and a speedy recovery then, now that you’ve got that targeted and you’ve got the right healthcare and medication for it. You mentioned being hit by a car in Uzbekistan. What was that?
Chris McCaffrey (01:05:36.782)
Yeah, yeah, that’s another exciting story. I was riding, I mean, Central Asia is just incredible. I guess the kind of long answer to this is, yeah, Central Asia is incredible. It’s really like the meat and potatoes of the ride, if you will. Remember leaving Oktau and you just headed off into the desert and there’s just camels and scorpions and…
Chris Watson (01:05:41.746)
Trace TV.
Chris Watson (01:05:47.568)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:05:52.924)
Yeah, yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:06:01.076)
It feels otherworldly. I took this dirt, this dirt sand-ish road and it had all been washed away years ago. So I carried my bike over this wash and then the dirt road was still there because it used to access this power line, but no cars could get down it anymore. So for like 200K, I was like, maybe even longer. Yeah, I think it a little bit longer than that, but I was just by myself on this road that was totally inaccessible to anyone else that wasn’t on a bike.
Chris Watson (01:06:27.24)
you
Chris McCaffrey (01:06:32.054)
It felt so surreal and then I go to the, ride to the border with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, go into Uzbekistan and Western Uzbekistan doesn’t actually have like a paved road to get through it. It’s just this like dirt track through the sand. And so I just like to set off on this like, it’s so difficult to describe that feeling. It felt.
so ethereal. I felt like a part of me.
Chris Watson (01:07:03.816)
It must have been, I was going say it must have what was that like? Because you must have been going through like, know, coming from the West, going through places that are quite populous, quite well developed to places that are probably, dare I say, third world or otherworldly, know, lack of infrastructure and stuff like that. What was that like mentally and culturally even? What was your interactions like?
Chris McCaffrey (01:07:28.214)
Amen.
Chris McCaffrey (01:07:32.418)
To be honest, that part of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan isn’t third world, it’s no world. There’s no one there. And so, actually I did have one really cool cultural experience, which was I had seen off in the distance a couple times folks on horseback and I’d seen one of them, know, traditional Kazakh garb.
Chris Watson (01:07:38.598)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:08:00.994)
with eagles and falcons on their hands and shoulders. And one of them had raised his hand and waved to me and he’s got this, I think it was a falcon. I was like, wow, this is cool. And so at that point I was riding along, it’s like this two lane paved road that goes to the Uzbek border on the Kazakh side. And this really nice, I think it was a white Range Rover, like new fancy Range Rover.
Chris Watson (01:08:14.952)
Okay.
Chris McCaffrey (01:08:30.104)
pulls over and it was the Eagle Hunters and in like perfect like slightly British English they were like yeah like we live in we live in Dubai and like sell I forget what it was like tech software but our grandparent like our lineage is from here so we come out once a year to go eagle hunting and that was pretty cool culturally because it’s it’s cool that both can exist you know
Chris Watson (01:08:55.986)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:08:58.606)
But other than that, it’s tough to have cultural experiences when like, mean, culture is tied to people. But it was a pretty cool part of me.
Chris Watson (01:09:03.976)
Yeah. Did you stay in places? Yeah, did you stay much? Did you stay in some, like when you were just travelling through, were there many places that you stayed for maybe days or weeks or a time to try and immerse yourself in the area?
Chris McCaffrey (01:09:21.486)
Overall, yes. In Central Asia now, was just in the tent every day, ride the next day, just crossing, because it’s so long. It’s like a couple thousand miles of desert. Maybe less, like 1,800 miles. Anyway, it’s long way of just desert on that side of it. And then…
Chris Watson (01:09:28.007)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:09:43.168)
It kind of becomes more developed. Hit the city called Nukus. And this was actually there is where I was hit by the car. You get like these, then it becomes, you know, paved roads and stuff. And I was riding along the shoulder of this road and this guy kind of like drifted over and drifted off into the dirt and on the side of the road and clipped me. I like going highway speed.
and it was pretty scary. I bounced off the car and then bounced back into him, which kind of kept me upright. His car kept me upright. I, yeah, overall I was pretty okay. I was pretty shook up for maybe 20 minutes. And then I realized I was gonna call the police. And it’s like, what’s that gonna do? I couldn’t feel my hand and I’d bent my bars. I was a little nervous about that.
Chris Watson (01:10:26.696)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:10:36.402)
Did he stop to help you? Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:10:36.622)
But I realized like, yeah they did and I feel kind of bad about it. I was pretty up in the guy’s face but I was just really shook up and he was just very apologetic but it all evened out in the end and we shook hands and he went on his way. But then I realized like, what am gonna do, like quit? Like even if I’m gonna quit I’m gonna have to ride a bike like 400 miles like to Bukhara.
Chris Watson (01:10:44.37)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:11:04.238)
And so I just got back on the bike and kept going.
Chris Watson (01:11:07.88)
Did you foresee it? Did you foresee when you were planning this way back at the beginning did you for Were you expecting that you were going to have some bumps and scrapes and? Hospital visits and stuff. What was your outlook on it?
Chris McCaffrey (01:11:21.134)
To be honest, no. I thought, I was pretty naive, I think. I thought that I would better be able to control risks. That’s the thing I love about the mountains, particularly the ski mountaineering and things.
Chris Watson (01:11:26.792)
Mm.
Chris Watson (01:11:31.496)
Mm-hmm.
Chris McCaffrey (01:11:36.886)
It feels like risk is so in your hands in many ways. Obviously there’s dangers that exist that aren’t obvious. There’s avalanches, things like that. But you can always choose to back off. You can always choose to make different decisions. You can choose to have a plan B, a plan C, a plan D that’s still exciting enough to want to go ski it or climb it or whatever it may be. But I realized that…
Chris Watson (01:11:45.126)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:11:53.436)
Thank
Chris McCaffrey (01:12:03.842)
Plan B and Plan C and Plan D on this trip were still like just so scary in many ways. But it felt overall scary and intense, but it felt day to day manageable. And so I just focused on that and yeah.
Chris Watson (01:12:19.164)
What do you see in terms of like, yeah, see in terms of your planning and then what was your comms situation like? you have like, you know, just your cell phone and an in-reach or something? How did you plan all that in terms of, cause you must have been in very remote places at times.
Chris McCaffrey (01:12:38.868)
Yeah, that’s a good question. To be honest, my cell phone worked like pretty much the whole way. I got one of like the phones with the eSims. So then you can just get like the international plan. So it just changes each country. And it worked great. Like I’d say almost every day it worked. Even in pretty wild places, which is interesting.
Chris Watson (01:12:43.716)
Alright, alright, okay, excellent. Yeah, Yeah.
Yeah, amazing.
Chris Watson (01:12:57.583)
It’s funny because I did so I’m thinking probably like 2008 maybe or as far back when I was in Vietnam with my wife and I think it was at time we did like 5G or whatever it was when it first came out and we had like perfect reception and it was all blackberries at the time I think it was before the iPhone actually and I remember perfect reception out in the jungle and stuff like that.
Chris McCaffrey (01:13:06.882)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Watson (01:13:25.158)
which is preconceptions getting away sometimes.
Chris McCaffrey (01:13:30.666)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, but yeah, and then on the cultural point, that was very cool as I moved further east along the Silk Road. There’s this great poem, I think it’s Marco Polo, about the golden road to Summercond, because Summercond is really the spiritual heart of the Silk Road. Many roads go, the Silk Road, many paths go many different ways connecting east and west, but pretty much all of them go through the Registan of Summercond.
and I was just like on this aesthetic voyage there and it felt pretty unreal and you’re coming upon these cities like Bucara and I stayed in this little guest house in Bucara and the house is like 600 years old and like made of clay and you like walk around the corner and there’s like some square and there’s like a little plaque and it’s this cafe was opened in 4 AD type of thing
Chris Watson (01:14:18.79)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:14:30.608)
It’s crazy isn’t it? It’s absolutely crazy. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:14:30.894)
And that was magical from a cultural standpoint. And I had a really lovely experience actually riding out of one of those cities. I it was Nukus. One of the draws to wanting to ride a bike around the world is bikes themselves. I love bikes because I like riding bikes, but also this is great Susan B. Anthony quote, bikes are the greatest tool for women’s emancipation.
And she goes on to explain why, I mean, bikes are such a tool the world over for people to escape poverty, to find work, to go to school. And I was hoping that bike would be a cultural component for me as well. And it just totally was. I remember I riding out of New Coots and I would always try and carry like a few bags of gummy bears. Mostly because I like gummy bears, but also I’d always have a few sparrows because if I ever saw like kids or kids waved at me.
Chris Watson (01:15:06.725)
Yep.
Chris Watson (01:15:18.085)
Yeah,
Chris McCaffrey (01:15:24.16)
I often, we couldn’t communicate, but I could open a bag of gummy bears and we could share some Haribo or something. And this kid, I think he was on his way home from school or something. riding out of Nukus and he rides up next to me. Yeah, he comes on the road I’m on and he’s waving and then we ride together probably like five or six miles. Just this kid and I that have such different lives.
Chris Watson (01:15:26.182)
Yeah, yeah, amazing. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:15:51.65)
that our lives are different then and our lives will be different in the future and the opportunities we have are so different but we both got this experience of riding bikes together along this beautiful road out in this beautiful desert and I was like open to this bag of gummy bears and like eating gummy bears like riding down this road and yeah I got to have a lot of really incredible experiences like that and that was kind of the distinction between
Chris Watson (01:16:12.689)
I mean.
Chris McCaffrey (01:16:20.386)
the western or the eastern side of the Silk Road and the cities and the culture and the western side of the Silk Road and the desert and the camels and yeah to get to to get to watch that transition was magical.
Chris Watson (01:16:27.749)
Yeah.
Yeah, that must have been something. Just kind of rolling back there, what you said about the bikes and in history and the emancipation, the bike and females in general are kind of credited with helping the British code break through the Second World War because no, they would ever have suspected a woman riding a bike could have any sort of influence and they were responsible for helping transmit
between the code breakers in the UK in the Second World War so there’s lots of little anecdotes and history being punctuated by the bicycle over time so but yeah I mean I must admit Chris a bit of envy when I hear you talking about the Silk Road I think it would be a phenomenal experience to go and see.
yeah
Chris McCaffrey (01:17:29.42)
Yeah, I feel super privileged for sure. It’s just phenomenal.
Chris Watson (01:17:33.924)
Yeah, what, so did you get into Tajikistan actually and into like the premieres as well or did you, was that restricted?
Chris McCaffrey (01:17:44.428)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. I realized I phrased that poorly earlier. I did not get the visa, but what I did get was like a 14 day transit permit, which allowed me to ride up to the Pamirs over the Fon Mountains, which are a subsection of the Pamir Mountains, up onto the Pamir Highway and then down into Dushanbe, which is actually my hometown of Boulder’s sister city. Yeah, and so that was important to me.
Chris Watson (01:17:52.04)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Watson (01:17:55.846)
Okay
Chris Watson (01:18:04.626)
Yep.
Chris Watson (01:18:09.16)
That’s it. wow.
Chris McCaffrey (01:18:14.014)
And had an amazing experience there. There’s an exchange program for people from Dushanbe to come to Boulder and get like job placement and visa help and stuff to study and work. And Dushanbe and Tajikistan built like a tea house in Boulder. They built it in Dushanbe, disassembled it and then shifted here and then assembled it here. And so for my birthday, I turned 24 and my
Chris Watson (01:18:22.278)
Wow.
Chris Watson (01:18:30.344)
off.
Wow.
Chris McCaffrey (01:18:43.054)
A connection through actually the owner full cycle connected me with a woman who runs that exchange program She connected me with the kit with a guy that had come over to boulder is this big climber, but he lives in Dushanbe from Tajikistan and He just tells me he’s gonna like pick me up at whatever time from my hostel in Dushanbe and
I get in the car and there’s like five people in it. I have no idea where we’re going. It was one of those where it’s like, all right, we’re just gonna, we’re just gonna see what happens here. He seems like a nice enough guy. And we end up at his mom’s house and they were throwing me a party. And in Tajikistan, like the cultural festivity there is plov. It’s like this cultural dish where they cook in this giant like ceramic dish over a fire.
Chris Watson (01:19:12.162)
with it. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:19:34.382)
and they make like a ton of food and they bring it to all their neighbors and they’d invited like 12 or 15 people to come to like my birthday party in Deschambé and it was so lovely and yeah he spoke a bunch of the a bunch of them spoke you know fantastic English but this mom was like cooking as cooking as plov and didn’t speak any English but uh it was it was a lovely experience
Chris Watson (01:19:59.79)
It’s human, I mean there is so much bad that gets publicised in the world but there are some wonderful humans the world over. These experiences is what I love about doing this show and hearing these stories because it’s, yeah.
people are just so welcoming at times and you just want to share their culture and their heritage and make you feel looked after and stuff, it’s lovely, it really is.
Chris McCaffrey (01:20:32.672)
Yeah, it’s funny to say that. Maybe a touch of like a fourth wall break or something. whenever I needed like reminding of the experience and you know, to kind of revel with it, I’d always turn on a podcast of like turning on the adventure diaries and listening to you guys chat about whatever it may be to both pull me somewhere else but also like help me appreciate the experience I was having in the moment.
Chris Watson (01:20:38.375)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:20:49.415)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:20:56.711)
Yeah.
Yeah, because sometimes it can be when you’re in these types of situations, it’s like, know, you can have breeze through it and you’re not really as immersed in the moment at times sometimes and it becomes a bit of a yeah, yeah, I get it. But yeah, I mean, that’s why people do these adventures. It’s all part of the part of the experience and the journey. actually, what you mentioned food, actually, because I
I did follow your food journey stories. You captured quite a bit about food across different parts of it and you had a 10 out of 10 butter chicken dish which apparently is some sort of famous restaurant in India. Was it India?
Chris McCaffrey (01:21:44.142)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was in Delhi and I’d gotten this like driver for the day, because I had all these errands to run. But you pay for it for like the certain, you the whole day or whatever. But I didn’t need him for the whole day. So I was like, like thank you. And he’s like, he was like, I’m around my family. So I’m going to go visit my family, like go back home. I think he’s in Dharamshala. Like the next day, but he’s like, we can go do other stuff. Like I’d love to show you Delhi.
And of course I was excited. So he took me to some temples and stuff, it was lovely. And then he took me to this restaurant, which the New York Times had written a review about saying it was the best restaurant in India in like 1960 or something. And this restaurant’s been open for like a century more, because it was pre-World War I, think, that this restaurant opened in Delhi.
They were one of the places first selling butter chicken, which was a home dish as a like established restaurant. And this is a restaurant that it’s right near the Indian parliament. So when the parliament members come from all the different places in India to vote and convene in Delhi, a lot of them will go to this restaurant because it’s considered like one of the best Indian restaurants in all of India. And
In my head, because of the experience I’ve had elsewhere, I figured the best Indian food is going to be the mom and pop shop, the local corner that has a line out the door of locals, which is my experience and ended up being my experience in a lot of other places.
Totally wrong. This place like blew everything I thought I knew about how food could taste out of the water. It was like, yeah, there’s an argument to be made that it was like the highlight of my whole trip. I’m just like sitting with this, yeah, this driver at this restaurant and it was just totally nuts. Yeah, actually.
Chris McCaffrey (01:23:56.502)
I said I was sitting with him. sat with him for a minute and then he like saw one of his friends and then he just like left. I was just at this like restaurant by myself like no one spoke English and I remember thinking like, huh, how am gonna get home? And then I decided I would just wait and like hope he came back. He came back like an hour later. It was good. But yeah, I that a lot of good food, a lot of good food.
Chris Watson (01:24:19.144)
If that was a highlight, I did see something about you. You bought a bottle of water with a funky bottle and it turned out not to be water.
Chris McCaffrey (01:24:29.038)
This did happen once I knew it. It’s a somewhat not, I think we’re talking about the same thing. It’s somewhat not uncommon scam in some parts of the world where people will just collect the plastic water bottles and then just fill it with tap water and then reseal it, or not reseal it, but just close the tap. And I bought one and then, yeah, I realized it was…
Chris Watson (01:24:37.64)
you
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:24:46.652)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:24:57.742)
Yeah, I saw stuff floating in it and I realized it was just from the stream next to this store and I was really thirsty and it was terrible. Oh, the other store related to that, which is pretty funny, was I was wrecked in, I think I was in Thailand. I think, yeah, I’m pretty sure. No, yeah, I was in Northeast Thailand. I go into this big grocery store and I was so thirsty, super hot, and I went to buy a gallon jug of water.
Chris Watson (01:25:10.141)
You
Chris McCaffrey (01:25:27.242)
But what I actually bought, well, so I buy the gallon jug of water, I check out, I go sit down at like a KFC, I think it was, and I go to like chug this water. And what I’d actually bought was distilled white vinegar. But the label was in Thai. And so, hey, the person checking me out didn’t seem to think it was weird that I bought.
Chris Watson (01:25:44.635)
god…
Chris McCaffrey (01:25:55.948)
like four Snickers bars and a gallon of vinegar. But also then I like, I mean, I was thirsty, I like chugged. And so then I just like spewed vinegar all over this table in KFC. And then I had to go back and like find the gallon of water and like check out again. I like sheepishly went to like a different counter. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Watson (01:26:07.494)
my god.
Chris Watson (01:26:12.296)
You
Chris Watson (01:26:24.104)
Excellent, excellent. Well, it sounds epic. Chris, could probably talk for days on it. What was it like coming back to Boulder, coming back to the Full Cycle store?
Chris McCaffrey (01:26:41.644)
That’s an interesting one. And kind of a challenging one to answer in some ways. I had these experiences of like riding to Newfoundland, arriving, I cycled to this dock that I’d set sail from the year, like a year and change before.
And I just had this vision in my mind and I came upon this, like rode up to the dock and I just like, I raised my arms and like screamed and spent like 10 minutes like sitting on this dock, just like crying. And it was like, just like one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. And I had similar, know, just profound, riding into Singapore was just this profound experience of, of relief’s the wrong word, but just this like wave of, of emotion.
and like pride and all those things. And I didn’t really have that when I rode into Boulder. Partially I think it was because I’d done this whole trip pretty much by myself and everything had been for me. Like to be honest, can like quite like selfish way potentially like I didn’t ride to Newfoundland.
because anyone else was ever gonna get anything out of me riding to Newfoundland. I rode into Newfoundland because it meant something to me. therefore that experience is just so profound. And when I rode into Boulder, like all these people, to be honest, I thought like four people were gonna come see me in. And like, I don’t know, it like 20 or 30 people of my friends and people who’d been following me came. And that was really lovely.
Chris Watson (01:28:01.116)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:28:22.402)
But rather than having this very internal experience, it was kind of an external one. And I didn’t really have that like wave of emotion or acceptance when I finished. think partially that’s because, I mean partially that’s because I was just wrecked. I didn’t, yeah I was just cooked. Didn’t feel well at all, super tired.
but also partially because I just didn’t really want the trip to end. So there was more mixed emotions. And then…
Chris Watson (01:28:51.76)
Yeah, was going to say, was there an element of that? Did it feel like numb or flattering?
Chris McCaffrey (01:28:58.792)
Yeah, I don’t know if, it felt like loss almost. Like I remember if you would have been, I think it was the week after I finished, I like went, I was like out riding my bike again, because it’s what I wanted to do. And it’s like, I don’t get to do this like every day now? That’s such a bummer. But also like there’s just so many other people there that I felt I, I don’t know.
Chris Watson (01:29:14.001)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:29:26.412)
It was an interesting experience. I’m still working through that. But also, I think that… Yeah?
Chris Watson (01:29:28.712)
Yeah, I was gonna say you kinda lose yourself in that kinda adventure, in that head space a little bit and then when it’s that binary, but that’s not happening anymore, it’s now back to reality. It’s quite a thing, isn’t it?
Chris McCaffrey (01:29:44.33)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, that was a bit tough for sure. I think that coming home from all these things, it’s one of those, we talk about like journey and not the destination.
Chris Watson (01:29:55.208)
It’s all true. It’s all true because it’s… yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:30:01.582)
Yeah, but also like if I wanted to go to Boulder, I would have just stayed. Like…
Chris Watson (01:30:05.053)
Yeah, exactly. That’s very true.
Chris McCaffrey (01:30:11.126)
And so was like the most journey, not the destination. And so, yeah, it was a really interesting experience. think there’s also, mean, anyone that does adventures of any kind, could be, it could be anything. It doesn’t need to be riding a bike around the world. Your motivation and your why, the why that you set out with and the why that like keeps you going and the why that causes you to finish.
Chris Watson (01:30:13.562)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:30:39.754)
inevitably different. And I mean, that’s true for like anyone going to university, let alone it could be anything. And so navigating that is really interesting, but I think that there’s this trope that you’re going to set out on a great quest. You’re going to have this like hero’s journey and then you’re going to be forever changed and you’re going to return victorious. And
and then you ride back into this exact same place you left from and it’s like, I don’t know. I feel surprisingly similar. You’re still the same person.
Chris Watson (01:31:16.727)
Meh.
Yeah.
Yeah, well that leads me to the question I teed up earlier. Are you the same person? you have any, mentally, perspective, culturally, have your views changed in the world on yourself, how you view people? Without getting too deep and philosophical about it, but how do you feel since you’ve returned?
Chris McCaffrey (01:31:56.972)
That’s an interesting, yeah, I don’t know. It’s difficult to pinpoint because I think that change happens so slowly that you don’t…
Chris Watson (01:32:00.669)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:32:08.94)
you don’t necessarily notice it. And so it’s difficult to know how much you’ve changed without a gap of time to look back on. I could think all of us looking, I mean, I’m only 25, so I don’t have that many years to look back on as an adult, but I feel like the way I was at 18, I feel so different now, but you don’t necessarily see the change. And so I think I’ll see more change. I’ll be able to reflect on more change with more time, I think.
Chris Watson (01:32:15.61)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:32:36.296)
Yeah, I mean at 25, mean you’ve achieved significant amounts of life, experience and adventure at 25. I I’m 47 and haven’t managed to cycle around the world so yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:32:38.882)
But I do think…
Chris McCaffrey (01:32:57.12)
Yeah, no, feel, I just feel super lucky for like the opportunities I’ve had for sure. Which I think also makes me want to try and make the most of them. But I think the biggest change has been in prioritizations and in values. Values may be the wrong word, but it’s…
Chris Watson (01:33:04.157)
Yep.
Chris McCaffrey (01:33:17.922)
There’s this kind of trope in the adventure world of you’re go do something hard and scary and then you realize like the little things don’t matter. But I kind of disagree. Like, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that like the little things like matter the most.
When I get to wake up in the morning and make myself a cup of coffee in my Chemex and it tastes lovely and I get to sit there and read the story of the farmer who grew it, that feels so significant.
Chris Watson (01:33:53.414)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:33:57.916)
Well you’re probably light years ahead of a lot of people being that grateful and that aware of things at that age I think is great, yeah, that’s great.
Chris McCaffrey (01:34:12.17)
Yeah, we’ll see how it changes when I’m 47.
Chris Watson (01:34:16.392)
Well I mean I do quite a lot of self-reflection and I do gratitude journaling and things and one of the things that regularly appears in my journal is my morning coffee as simple as it is and that’s it’s taken a long time to dial in the specific blend of coffee beans and the specific way that it’s made that only I can make and that is just this
simplest things it doesn’t and I don’t need to be drinking that in Himalayas you know it could be sitting in the house in Glasgow so yeah yeah I agree with the simpler things and but that’s a maturity thing as I’ve got older so it’s quite it’s quite warming to hear you speak like that at your age so yeah so maybe yeah your experiences are shaping that so
Chris McCaffrey (01:34:52.172)
Yeah, totally.
Chris McCaffrey (01:35:03.266)
Yeah, thank you.
Chris Watson (01:35:11.122)
Can you switch in lanes a little bit, Chris? So thank you firstly for coming through. That’s been quite the adventure.
Chris McCaffrey (01:35:19.808)
Yeah, thanks. Hope I haven’t kept you too long.
Chris Watson (01:35:21.69)
No, not. No, no, I’m loving this. I’m loving this. But yeah, because we’ve got some stuff to step through into in terms of closing traditions. But now that you have, I know you’re probably still processing the aftermath of the journey. It’s been concluded fairly recently. Are you thinking ahead about any future adventures, any other grand plans? you planning to, you know…
ski tour somewhere or descend an 8000m peak somewhere or what’s your future looking like?
Chris McCaffrey (01:35:56.302)
I’ve got a couple things in mind.
Chris Watson (01:35:58.576)
Yeah, excellent. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:36:01.504)
I bought a map for Kyrgyzstan yesterday, so… Yeah, there’s definitely things, I think that…
Chris Watson (01:36:04.232)
wow, excellent,
Chris McCaffrey (01:36:12.524)
It’s so funny.
Change is always, I think, appealing as a human in many ways and scary in others.
Chris Watson (01:36:19.655)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Chris McCaffrey (01:36:23.532)
Like, I’m so psyched for making a bit of a touch of a career change and I’m working at a new job now and I find it so fun. Like, I get to sit down and email people. That’s so cool. And so…
Chris Watson (01:36:35.997)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:36:45.422)
Just enjoying the ebbs and flows of that draw for sure. And I’ve got a friend staying with me now, you know, I haven’t been able to see since I finished because they don’t live in Boulder anymore. And those types of things are the top of the mind for sure.
Chris Watson (01:37:01.508)
Yeah, excellent. Well, I’ll be following along to see what comes from Kyrgyzstan potentially. right, so let’s switch into the closing traditions. Kristy, I close out the… Of which there are three, a pay it forward section, a call to adventure and then finally to end on a bit of fun, a quick fire 10 questions that you don’t know, which we’re coming to.
Chris McCaffrey (01:37:08.397)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:37:30.972)
to kind of close out with a bit of a fun note. So starting with the Pay It Forward, that can be a charity, a project, a cause, something that’s maybe important for you. So what would you recommend that people check out or pay it forward?
Chris McCaffrey (01:37:46.518)
Yeah, so right now, know you have a very international audience, but as people probably have seen, there’s been huge budget cuts from the current administration to the national forest and the national parks. Sweeping cuts where parks that had 4,000 rangers now have four. And that’s going to inevitably…
It strain on the people. My friend Niko is staying with me right now. Lost her job in the Forest Service up in Alaska, so of course it hits home for me seeing someone who I care about so much, who cares about the land so much, not being able to do what she wants to spend her life doing, which is protecting places.
And obviously that will change with time and things. But my call to action here, or pay it forward here, be for people to think about both like in America with the current changes, but also wherever you may be.
think about ways that you can pick up the slack for what may have been changing in the environment around you because in the world we live in, all these places are managed and need management. And so if you’re an American and you’re going out to, say, Joshua Tree, and it used to be lots of rangers that helped keep the park clean and regulated, maybe taking that extra time to…
to fill in for them. Yeah, that would be my pay it forward right now. And also there’s lots of cool individual local organizations. I’ve got my Boulder Climbing Community shirt on right now. The BCC manages all the crags and trails and,
Chris Watson (01:39:38.778)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Chris Watson (01:39:46.874)
Yeah. That’s Excellent. Yeah, we can’t have got an editor. good. Yeah, the board. Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:39:51.084)
My friend just walked in I think. You’re good, we can edit the audio. We were just talking about you, Nick. Anyway, you can edit with Riverside I think, Yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect, perfect, cool. Let me know if the audio’s all good. Anyway, what was I saying? Or we can leave it in, I don’t know.
Yeah, organizations like Boulder Climbing Community manage the trails that we use every day and they also do lots of really cool things like Raptor management. The volunteers with BCC go up and…
and make note of raptor nests all around Boulder and ensure that climbers and the public are staying away from nests so that the raptors have the best chances of fledgling and whatever that word is. And there’s lots of cool organizations like that. So it’s cool to be involved with your local community once.
Chris Watson (01:40:42.819)
Yeah, yeah, excellent. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, great. We’ll get all this. We’ll get these organisations actually hyperlinked and stuff in the show notes. Excellent. So, secondly, a call to adventure. your opportunity to, you know…
Chris McCaffrey (01:40:57.016)
cool.
Chris Watson (01:41:06.596)
raise a call to or suggest a call to adventure to listeners it could be a people it could be a place an activity or just you whatever just something to get people thinking to go and actively participate in something maybe this weekend or whatever so what would you say is a call to adventure Chris?
Chris McCaffrey (01:41:25.814)
Yeah, so… My call to adventure…
would be that adventure doesn’t need to be taking 16 months to ride a bicycle around the world and that I’ve had similarly fulfilling feelings of completion, spending a day out in the mountains. And so my call to adventure would be to do something you do regularly, differently. Like if you’ve got a favorite calf near you that you normally drive to, maybe ride your bike.
And that could go up. You can take that to any level you really want in terms of fitness and…
in terms of the human powered side of it. So my following my own advice here is going to be, I’ve got this poster on my wall of all the local cycling climbs here in Boulder. And I’m so used to start down in town where I live, you ride up to the top and then you descend back down. And so what I’m going to do here in a bit is I’m going to inverse it. And so I’m going to ride up to the top and then camp up at the top and then ride back down in the morning.
get the bikepacking experience and riding into town to get a coffee and maybe we’ll make that a couple day trip and spend a couple nights up top and drop into town each day. But I think doing something you do regularly differently is really fun.
Chris Watson (01:42:46.088)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:42:51.398)
That’s amazing.
That’s incredible. That’s really amazing to tell you why because I’m planning to do something exactly the same. But I do lot of kayaking. I’m kind of stealing your thunder a little bit here. But there’s a route that I do quite regularly. So the plan is to paddle across, climb camp, climb back down and paddle back across the next day.
Chris McCaffrey (01:43:06.03)
Mm.
Chris Watson (01:43:20.264)
just to try and do it a little bit differently so to combine the three activities into one so I like the idea of doing that bikepacking as well so excellent so do it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because I’ve never really done a summit camp anywhere so you know done quite a bit of camping obviously but never really camped on a peak anywhere so
Chris McCaffrey (01:43:32.022)
Yeah, that’s super cool. That’ll be really fun for sure. I wish I kayaked more. Maybe I should.
Chris Watson (01:43:49.384)
So I’m quite excited about that. So and it’s good to hear you say something similar as well. And we haven’t even rehearsed that so that is Excellent excellent excellent and that’s what it’s about is you know for people listening and watching it’s it’s you know These stories are fantastic these grand expeditions are amazing, but yet it’s making it accessible people can do all this stuff locally as well Which is great Right, so finally
Chris McCaffrey (01:43:56.91)
Nah, that was nice. We nailed it.
Chris Watson (01:44:18.14)
the quick fire round. So this is just 10 questions Chris, just whatever comes to mind and we’ll see how it goes. So question one, you can have a dinner party with two guests, dead or alive, who would they be?
Chris McCaffrey (01:44:24.054)
Alright. Alright, sounds good.
Chris McCaffrey (01:44:39.418)
that’s so hard to answer quickly. no. I’m gonna go with.
Chris Watson (01:44:40.559)
You
Chris McCaffrey (01:44:49.258)
Brad Gobright, local climber from Boulder, or not from Boulder, but spent a lot of time here, passed away a few years ago. And I would be curious in his perspective on adventure sports, having, you know, eventually like, you know, passed away in a not serious adventure sport accident. Did it make it feel like the serious and the scary stuff was even more worth it? And because that’s a question we can never know an answer to.
Chris Watson (01:44:56.744)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:45:21.478)
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:45:22.406)
and maybe you Chris, because you’re good at asking questions and we’ll get a good answer out of them.
Chris Watson (01:45:26.108)
You
Excellent, thank you very much. What’s the craziest experience you’ve ever had on the road? I think we’ve probably covered some of that but… As Becca’s done aside, what’s the craziest experience you’ve had on the road?
Chris McCaffrey (01:45:49.55)
I almost hit a monitor lizard on my bike once. I didn’t see it. It was in the grass and they’re kind of green and I wasn’t paying attention. I think I was listening to like, actually no, I was listening to like a Katy Perry album. Just like had some like pop music blasting and I spooked this thing and it like stuck its head out into the like road and I almost hit it.
Chris Watson (01:46:03.576)
I know.
Yeah.
Chris McCaffrey (01:46:12.322)
this like six or seven foot long like dragon. It really stuck with me. It was nuts. One of those where you just reflect on your life. You’re like, how’s, how’s this happened? How’s this specific scenario ever occurred? Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:46:14.6)
Yeah, yeah, Christ. Amazing. Yeah.
Huge those things as well. Number three, do you have a hidden talent?
Chris McCaffrey (01:46:35.798)
I can play the jaw harp.
Chris Watson (01:46:38.024)
Was that your harp?
Chris McCaffrey (01:46:40.034)
He was like, boing, doing, doing, doing, doing. Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:46:42.312)
I’m going to have a look at that What’s your favourite movie? Question four.
Chris McCaffrey (01:46:51.342)
rush hour.
Chris Watson (01:46:53.608)
Favorite book?
Chris McCaffrey (01:47:01.826)
the night circus.
Chris McCaffrey (01:47:06.592)
Actually my friend Nikky who’s staying with me recommended it to me while I was on my ride. It’s very good, highly recommend.
Chris Watson (01:47:10.438)
Yeah? Yeah? The last music gig that you went to. Don’t say Katy Perry or it’ll be getting edited out.
Chris McCaffrey (01:47:20.558)
We went to an open mic night at this art house in Boulder last night actually, which has a bunch of artists that live together making and producing music. And there was lots of like Gregory Allen Isaacov covers and things. It was fantastic.
Chris Watson (01:47:28.807)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:47:37.724)
Whereabouts in Boulder, is there a place that you would recommend?
Chris McCaffrey (01:47:41.55)
It’s not really like a venue. It’s just like someone’s house, but there’s lots of good music at a place called the Gold Hill Inn and the Gold Hill General Store for bluegrass music in the summertime outside of Boulder.
Chris Watson (01:47:57.09)
Excellent. Question seven, if you could snap your fingers and be anywhere doing anything, where would you be?
Chris McCaffrey (01:48:07.502)
I think I’d be right here chatting about adventure. It’s my favorite thing to do. Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:48:09.48)
Excellent! Question 8, what scares you?
Chris McCaffrey (01:48:26.84)
people being apathetic. I think that…
Chris Watson (01:48:28.775)
Chris McCaffrey (01:48:32.526)
Caring and having strong beliefs is easier to address than having no beliefs.
Chris Watson (01:48:41.192)
Excellent and not everyone has to have the same beliefs and it doesn’t mean you need to be enemy you don’t need to be enemies as well. Excellent I love it. Question nine if you could relive any moment of your life what would it be and why?
Chris McCaffrey (01:48:46.658)
Totally, strongly agree. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Watson (01:49:04.014)
Not the butter chicken.
Chris McCaffrey (01:49:07.598)
Tough to say this in like a very short one, but I went on a pretty wild ski mountaineering trip up in Greenland and I was with my buddy Mango and we skied like the greatest line of my life. This like big shoulder of this peak that we like skied out to from town and Nuuk and the top of it was kind of windy. There was like wind swept so it was kind of firm.
and the first turn after the firmness ended, could just relive that like four seconds over and over and over again for the rest of time and I’d be quite pleased.
Chris Watson (01:49:48.102)
That’s incredible. It’s great that you have that in your memory bank because not everyone has an experience like that which is partly why this question is to seed this into other people that you need to have. Make your life extraordinary and do hard things, do fun things. Question 10, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Chris McCaffrey (01:50:28.084)
struggling to phrase it as I don’t remember like the specific phrasing of the advice but the advice originally was there’s like the general advice like there’s more than one way to do something but specifically what this person was talking about was like how to accomplish like difficult things and my takeaway has been that I am just not like the hardest grittiest person in the world
and I rely way more on finding joy and pursuing like a love for the experience. Like if I tell myself I have to get out of bed at whatever time in the morning to go ride my bike a really long way, I’m just not gonna do it. But when I’m able to appreciate the possibilities the day holds, then I find it much easier.
Chris Watson (01:51:23.726)
Excellent, excellent. There’s a little bit about visualization I think in there, you know, as well. Excellent. That’s it. This has been epic, Chris. Absolutely epic. has been excellent. I mean there’s probably stuff we could go down the rabbit hole on for hours. We’ve budgeted an hour and we’re nearly at two. So it’s flown by. Yeah, it’s flown by.
Chris McCaffrey (01:51:37.708)
Yeah, thank you.
Chris McCaffrey (01:51:43.918)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (01:51:52.978)
Thank you. Where can everyone, after they’ve listened and watched this, catch up with you and keep tabs on what you are doing adventure wise?
Chris McCaffrey (01:52:04.726)
Yeah, so I’m on Instagram at Chris in the cold. I’ve taken a little break from it following the ride, but gonna start getting back on there. I’m not the best at the social media stuff, but I do enjoy it and I appreciate the opportunities it holds. Thank you for messaging me on Instagram one day. It’s been a pleasure.
Chris Watson (01:52:22.842)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some captivating short stories and stuff on that, which is what I liked. It was very raw. A lot of it unfiltered, not overproduced, not trying to be anything other than just capturing the adventure, which is why I reached out. It’s great. So I thank you for your time, Chris, today, and we will look forward to seeing what the future brings. Thank you.
Chris McCaffrey (01:52:53.196)
Yeah, thank you, Chris. Yeah, thank you for having me on.
Chris Watson (01:52:55.66)
Alright, I know that, I’ll bring it to a close.
1 Comment
I wish you good luck for your Journey