Pedaling To Hawaii

I read a lot of travel books. Most of them present their tales in a humorous light and focus on bizzare events that take place along the way. I have just finished Pedaling To Hawaii which, to judge by its cover, looks like any throwaway travel book that I enjoy for a week and then cast aside or give away. It’s the story of two friends from the UK, Stevie Smith and Jason Lewis, who together build a pedal boat, cycle from London to southern Portugal, hop in the pedal boat to cross the Atlantic, arrive in Miami, cycle all the way from Miami to San Francisco, then pedal across the Pacific to Hawaii, all over the course of some 8 years (and still ongoing). It’s unique in that journeys across the ocean don’t give one much to talk about from day to day. So the story focuses on the expectations of fulfilling a dream (to pedal around the globe), the realities of taking on the expedition (high debt, endless work, months out at sea), and the psychological pressures one must endure for such a journey. The detail is quite good. At the outset Smith is bored with the everyday routine of life and is eager to come up with some way to make a change in the world. He accomplishes this through his pedal boat expedition, Expedition360, which only last year completed its circumnavigation of the globe. Smith doesn’t make the complete journey in the end, Lewis does, but the book is worth reading not for the exploits of the journey so much as for its insight into what it takes to do something so extreme and how it changes your perception of everyday life. Smith sums it up nicely towards the end of the book, having lived in Hawaii for some time while Lewis continued the journey across the Pacific:

I returned to England and to Salcombe, where my sister and her family have lived for many years. By this time, my mother Sylvia, who had remarried, was also living there. My stepfather offered me a job as a ferryman, which, strangely enough, was a dream I harboured as a child.

It took me a long time to really settle into it. Where is the achievement, after all, in driving a ferryboat back and forth across the same stretch of water all day long? Then one day it dawned on me that if the expedition taught me anything, it is that you can’t rely on the accomplishment of goals or journeys – however great or small – for your happiness, because the completion of a goal is only a temporary gratification. If you want to be happy then you must enjoy it all, at whatever point you are at, from the beginning to the end, because happiness is the acceptance of the journey as it is now, not the promise of the other shore.

Its up for loan if anybody wants it.