Want more adventure in your life? Hear real adventure travel stories and practical insights from people who explore the world in bold and meaningful ways by bike, on foot, and close to home.
Seek Travel Ride is an adventure travel podcast for anyone curious about travel and looking to bring more adventure into their everyday.
Host Bella Molloy chats with adventurers and everyday people about bicycle touring, cycle touring, bikepacking, long-distance cycling, and other human-powered adventures. You’ll also hear slow travel, cultural discovery and micro-adventure stories that show adventure can happen anywhere.
Expect travel stories, helpful advice and practical tips you can use to shape your own adventures, whether you’re dreaming of world travel, planning your first bike travel journey, or starting small with something close to home.
Remember it doesn't need to be epic to be an Adventure!
Cycle Shorts: 1 Day of Your Trip: Laura Killingbeck- USA
•Laura Killingbeck•Season 2
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Join guest Laura Killingbeck share one day of her trip, cycling through the vast desert landscapes in the U.S as she ponders - 'where do you get courage to take solo bike journeys?'
Hello everybody, it's Bella Malloy here, host of Seek Travel Ride. Welcome back to another episode in our Cycle Shorts series. These are our midweek mini episodes where I share what it was like for one of our listeners during one day of their trip. Now, if you would like to be featured and share the story of one day on your very own bike adventure, the easiest way to do so is to send me an email. My email address is podcast at seektravelride.com. Get in touch and let's see whether we can share what it was like for one day on your trip. Before we get into today's feature, I just want to give a real big shout out to listener Josephine Anselin. Josephine, you left me an amazing five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and when I saw it, it really gave me pause and I knew that I wanted to share it with the rest of our listeners as well. You said, this podcast made me start gravel riding. This is my absolute favorite adventure cycling podcast. I discovered the podcast only a few weeks ago, and I've been binge listening ever since. I also just bought a gravel bike as a result of being so inspired by the stories on the podcast, and I'm planning to ride the Great Divide Mountain Bike Trail next summer. I've been through some tough times recently, and this is the first time in ages that I am truly excited by a project again. So thank you so so much. My goodness, Josephine, I am so happy and thrilled to read that message from you, and I am so glad that you found the show and that it's inspired you to take on the sport and to seek out your own future bike adventures to come. I love that you're drawing inspiration from our guest stories and that it's given you a new sense of purpose and a goal as well, drawing you out of those tough times. Do me a favor, get in touch with me. I want to hear more about your story, and who knows, perhaps once you take that bike adventure, we may even feature you as a guest. I'm super excited for what's to come for you. Okay, listeners, now into the episode. This week I am featuring the story of Laura Killingbeck, who's going to transport us to one day of her trip cycling through the desert in the US. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's because Laura isn't just a listener, she's also been a previous guest of the show. For those of you who are new to the podcast, I've provided a link in the show notes to Laura's episode so that you can listen to her backstory and amazing adventures that she's taken as well. But in the meantime, let's listen to Laura sharing one day of her trip.
SPEAKER_01
So there was this one day I was on this long multi-month trip in the US, and I just biked out into the desert. And I camped that night out in some hills, and in the morning, I was walking out with my bike and my gear, and this beautiful older woman appeared out of nowhere on a trail. I hadn't even known was there, and she walked right up to me and asked, Did you camp there that night? And I said, Yeah, I did. And then she said, Can I ask you a question? And I said, Yes. And she looked at me and she said, Where do you get your courage? And it was such a Socratic question for a beautiful older woman to ask out in the middle of the desert the first thing in the morning. And I hadn't had a lot of coffee yet, and I was just like, wow. Um, I babbled something, I don't even remember what it was. And we chit-chatted for a few more minutes and then we went our separate ways. But that question just stayed with me. It was such a unique moment. And I was biking later that day through the desert, and desert landscapes are very beautiful and expansive, and also very rugged and difficult, and it was really windy. And I was thinking about that question, where do you get your courage? And I figured I should probably try to answer it because I had a long way to go and I didn't really know how long the trip was gonna be. There were all of these different factors to it. I was like, all right, I need to like think about this now. And one of the advantages I think of going out on these long bike trips is that over time I a lot of people develop sort of an additional sensitivity, I think, to the body and to the emotional self. And you can start to s like sort of see and feel the way the way emotions sort of rest in your body and move through your body and and change and shape shift. And so I was feeling that kind of level of sensitivity by that point in the trip. So I was biking along windy desert, cactus, rocks, everything, and thinking where do I get my courage and trying to find it. Kind of like trying to find that sort of point in my body, or I was hoping to find like this well of courage that I could just like, aha, you know, like there it is, I've got it. But I didn't. I really didn't, and it was starting to become upsetting because I just couldn't like pinpoint, like I just couldn't pinpoint anything in there, and it was starting to really upset me because I had a long way to go, and like I needed that, and if I didn't have it, then that was gonna be a big problem. But I continued biking along and then I was looking out into the desert, and you know, there were these just incredible cactuses that were sort of rising out of the totally dry earth, you know, in brilliantly green, and then there were these rocks that were just like windswept, but just stayed there and just had this power to them. And then there were the clouds and the sky and all of these things that just felt like it just felt like there was courage everywhere, like all of life. And I was thinking about my own life and the moments when I felt like I didn't have courage and how people always stepped in with a story or a conversation or something. And I just felt like in that moment that courage was maybe something that we don't really have to hold on to, but we can kind of borrow all the time whenever we need it from people, from stories, from images, from the entire landscape and the world around us. And so I was biking along and I was thinking about this question this woman had asked, and I was just coming to this place of like, wow, I can just borrow this from anywhere at any time. And it was so helpful to kind of have that feeling of like, I can just borrow this whenever I need it. And I ended up actually seeing that woman multiple times after that. We were both cruising around the same desert. Uh, she was in a camper van, I was on the bike, and we developed a friendship. We had a bunch of conversations, and it turned out that she had left her job in like accounting or finance or something in her early 40s and spent the next 30 years traveling around the world, a lot of it on her own. And so she was someone who had a lot of courage, a ton of courage. And I feel like when she asked me that question so randomly out in the desert, not only did she gift me the question, but also a lot of answers. And I just felt like that was one of those really special days on the bike that you just never forget.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so, so much, Laura, for sharing one day of your trip. I really loved the strong message that came out of this, that idea. Where do you get your courage from? And what it really struck me with was how seeking out bike adventures, we often can find ourselves in a new type of headspace with this different type of clarity where we can solve problems, think about problems, think about questions, figure out answers. It's definitely something that's occurred on my own trips. And I really got the sense when you were reflecting on that question all day in the desert, where do I get my courage from? And then sharing the insights that taking on things in whatever state of life doesn't require us to be the most courageous every moment of the day, and we can actually take courage from others. And I've definitely thought about that as well when I've thought about my own bike adventures and since being the host of the show, drawing on the inspiration from my own guest stories, taking some of their experiences on board to sort of give me that own little sack full of courage as well to take on that new thing. Thank you for sharing your story. I absolutely love it. Now, listeners, I want to give a special shout out to those super fans who have bought me a coffee recently. I absolutely love reading your messages. Now, I have had a few donations from anonymous people, and you're all just called someone. So, firstly, to someone who bought me a coffee, a massive thank you. Thanks for taking time out to support the show. One of you, someone, did leave me a message and you said, This podcast has inspired me to go bikepacking next year, probably in Romania. Today I'm training, going out, cycling in the rain, and headwind. Thank you for the podcast. It's given birth to a new dream. Well, thank you, someone. I'm so glad to hear that you're drawing inspiration from listening to the guest stories that I feature each and every week on the podcast. And I'm excited to think that you're about to take your own adventure. Bikepacking in Romania sounds absolutely amazing. There's some stunning mountain passes there. No doubt you will find yourself in jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring scenery. Thank you for supporting the show. Now, if you too would like to support what I'm doing here, producing these episodes for you for Seek Travel Ride, you can do so by buying me a virtual coffee. Just hit the link in the show notes to my Buy Me a Coffee page. I really appreciate all of your support. Until the next episode, my name's Bella Malloy. Thanks for listening.
