When Darren Matheson headed to Vancouver Island in June 2020 with a $200 bike he had purchased on Craigslist, he planned a two-week tour.
A Langley native, he was living in Vancouver when COVID-19 ground his business — the Ultimate Bike Tour through Airbnb Experiences — to a halt.
He had picked up some old camping stuff along with some gear from Dollar Store and his mom drove him to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal.
“I never considered myself an avid cyclist by any stretch,” said Matheson, now 37.
“I had never even ridden my bike with the gear before. I remember thinking: ‘This is very improv, very spontaneous.’ ”
He was over-prepared, packing cans of beans and bottles of water like he was carrying an earthquake preparedness kit.
“I remember getting on my bike, beginning cycling, and there was this feeling of like: ‘Wow, this is so not what I was expecting. I have everything I need right now.’ “
While he had previously backpacked, bike travel was a “whole new introduction to this way of being free,” he said. “I could just turn my handlebars and go, not limited by anything.
“I thought: ‘I think I’m going to like this.’ ”
He learned survival skills. He made an adventure of finding places to charge his phone and Kindle. He grew fascinated by the lifestyle.
Two weeks turned into four as he reached Port Hardy. From there, he caught B.C. Ferries’ Inside Passage ferry to Prince Rupert.
He gave himself another month to make the trip back to Vancouver.
“But the trip kept unfolding,” he said.
He travelled up to the border with Alaska, looping around northern B.C., into Alberta. He was covering 100 kilometres a day.
They say not to scrimp on your shoes or your bed because you’re always in one or the other, and the same goes with bike seats. Although his bike had been a bargain, he had a really good saddle.
The closer he got to Vancouver, the more detours he started making, putting off the end of what he thought would be a once-in-a-lifetime journey.
“Just kind of delaying because I knew once I’m back, that was going to be the end of it.”
Then a cyclist he met in Lillooet asked him why he was going back to Vancouver. It’s only August, the guy said — you should go across the country.
“I thought: ‘Yeah, why not?’ ”
After reaching New Brunswick, he gave away his bike — “it had been very, very good to me” — flew home to see his parents for a couple of weeks, bought a better bicycle and was off again.
There would be a few more quick trips home between cycling down the west coast of the Americas to Patagonia, biking from Miami to Texas, Scotland to Turkey, through war-torn Ukraine to Norway and — it’s now November 2023 — Kenya to Cape Town.
Each new start he felt the same way he had after getting off that first ferry in Sidney in 2020: the feeling of freedom, of following the wind.
In all, he’s cycled in 40 countries on four continents, covering 70,000 kilometres.
What about danger — was he ever scared?
He lost count of how many times trucks nearly hit him on winding mountain roads. Dozens, if not hundreds.
There were brushes with robbery, including one morning in Colombia when he awoke surrounded by knife-wielding bandits.
“I can’t say I felt too much fear,” Matheson said. “I can’t exactly explain what got me out of these, and many more, situations.
“Some people will call it a divine force in the universe, some people will call it faith in God, some people will even call it a coincidence — being in the right place at the right time.
“In my view, they are all right.”
It goes back to surrendering to the experience, he said, feeling like he was exactly where he needed to be at the time.
“I’ve always felt a sense of peace and acceptance in these situations,” he said.
He avoided tourist trails and bucket-list destinations, preferring to mingle with folk living in tiny out-of-the way villages.
“It can be the most mundane thing, just a casual wave from a local when I’m cycling over the snow peaks of the Andes, or receiving an appreciative head-nod from a local carrying 300 pounds of firewood on the back of his rusted bicycle in rural Africa,” he said.
His next trip, planned for the fall, will be to Asia or the Middle East, where he’ll again follow the wind.
“It’s heartwarming when you see the generosity and goodness of people out there,” Matheson said.
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