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Cyclist completes quest
After starting in Jackson 23 years ago, Williams claims the first crossing of six inhabited continents.

By Angus M. Thuermer Jr.

Steven Williams spent 23 years riding his bicycle around the world, pedaling 68,633 miles and claiming the first crossing of all six inhabited continents when he rolled into Jackson on Sunday.

The 50-year-old Boulder, Colo., resident, who began his odyssey in front of Teton Cyclery on Oct. 25, 1980, pedaled over a 17,250-foot pass in Tibet, went more than 200 feet below sea level crossing Death Valley, slept out among Asian vipers and Canadian grizzlies, crossed territories controlled by rogue armies and drug lords, and met people of every imaginable culture. He bushwhacked, pushed, pedaled and coasted.

Waking up Sunday at Signal Mountain Campground on the shores of Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park, Williams packed up his custom Moots bicycle as he had done so many mornings before. Flanked by Jackson Hole residents Tim Young and Peter Wuerslin, companions who rode around the world with Williams between 1980 and 1987 on their Too Tyred Tour, he clipped into his pedals and began to grind out the last 32 miles of his epic traverse.

In a peloton of spinning wheels and colorful jerseys, Williams picked up speed, fans and followers, riding with nine friends before the day was done. Under an azure sky, he led the group up hills in front of the soaring Tetons, banked around turns on the scenic Jenny Lake Loop, cruised down the dip below Windy Point, then powered along the busy highway into Jackson to roll past the bike store (now called Teton Cycleworks) just after 5 p.m.

Twenty-three years, 68,633 miles, six continents, countless sunsets, mountain passes and vistas, yet Williams said the most beautiful moment came a few hours' pedal from where he started his journey of a lifetime. In his travels around the planet, Sunday's ride through Grand Teton National Park with friends was tops, he said.

Williams embarked on his Six Continents Quest only in 1999 after realizing his around-the-world journey put him within striking distance of that new goal. Becoming the first person to cross all the continents by bicycle gnawed at him ever since; riding past the Tetons was a vision that danced elusively in his head.

"I'd been looking at that day since 1999," Williams said. "For Tim and Peter to come up [made] the last days of this trip very special. To have those guys recognize it's a pretty big project," was fulfilling. It was moving, he said, "to be surrounded by the cadre of supporters at a crucial time."

As Williams rolled into the town limits, Wuerslin patted him on the back. Young gave him a high-five as they coasted North Cache Drive. Williams gave them credit for helping him discover how to tour by bicycle, carrying everything he needed.

"I couldn't have done it without you," he said again and again as he pulled up to the bike shop, opened a bottle of champagne, sprayed some bubbly and toasted his comrades.

Williams began his cycling career in Indianapolis, Ind., as an elbow-knocking criterium racer, training with former Jackson resident Wendell Brown who ran a cycle shop there. They would train by riding up and down the ramps of parking garages, sprinting back and forth in an interval workout, jockeying for position on the corners. The two followed fellow cycle shop worker Keith Benefiel to Jackson in the 1970s. Williams tried to make it as a pro, but it didn't quite work. He also was rejected as a cycle frame-building apprentice in Europe and was told he was unfit to be a guide for the Bikecentennial.

It was the late 1970s and the Too Tyred Tour began to evolve.

"At that time I had pretty much given up on being a professional cyclist," Williams said. "I've always had wanderlust. At 27 [riding round the world] sounded like a really cool thing to do."

Pretty cool, but also pretty difficult, even though many of the challenges were unknown at the outset.

"You have no idea of what it's going to take or how dangerous it would be ­ having guns pointed at you in Peru, getting lost in the Darian," Williams said.

The Darian is the forested province in Panama and Columbia and the Darian Gap ­ the unroaded portion of the continent ­ remains the most difficult cycling Williams has ever done. From Jackson Hole, Too Tyred Tour headed south and encountered the gap relatively quickly. They bushwhacked, with cycles, for three weeks. Williams called the crossing "the defining moment of the first tour." The three decided "if we can do this, we can do anything."

The Too Tyred Tour continued into South America, down Chile and the Andes Mountains across to Mendosa, Argentina, and to the coast of the southern Atlantic. The trio crossed to Capetown, South Africa, rode up the western edge of the continent and crossed the desert in the Sudan by riding train tracks. The innovative cyclists built from scrap the guiding frames that held their cycles on the narrow steel. For 18 days they constantly checked their rear-view mirrors to ensure they wouldn't be run down by a locomotive.

During this time they supported themselves with meager savings and by working odd jobs in places like Capetown and Chamonix, France, towns where they settled for months at a time before pushing on. Williams said today it costs him about $1,200 a month to be on the road, though much of the Too Tyred Tour was less expensive.

They crossed Europe starting at Gibraltar. Their route went through the Mideast via Saudi Arabia and Oman, where they reached the port of Muscat for a boat ride to Karachi, Pakistan. Babusar Pass, not quite 14,000 feet, was the second most difficult leg.

"The road hadn't been used since the British were in India," Williams said. "It was in disrepair and we were on road bikes."

They cycled into Tibet and began a grueling ordeal. For two and a half months the three subsisted on rice, flour and sugar bought from soldiers in the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army. They cycled at an elevation higher than 12,500 feet the whole time.

"There was no real food and just slogging and slogging," Williams said. "We did only 600 miles a month," a paltry average of 20 miles a day. "It was incredibly demanding and it never relented. But you just couldn't give up."

The group went from village to village without any real authorization, just a few letters from a Chinese official that begged passage until visas could be renewed, travel documents secured. The scheme fell apart in Kunming, China. Authorities deported them to Bangkok. In an act of defiance, the three refused to be trucked to the airport, riding their cycles there instead.

Too Tyred Tour went on to Singapore, by boat to Perth, across Australia and over the Pacific to Los Angeles. The three rode from there to Jackson to complete their circumnavigation in 47,225 miles.

But ever since 1987 the "missing link" between Kunming and Bangkok gnawed at Williams. By 1998 he had vowed to complete it. "Tim and Peter sort of talked about coming with me," he said. But they were no longer starry-eyed 20-somethings. Both had careers. Wuerslin suffered a knee injury the winter before the planned trip; Young's bike bucked him off and broke his shoulder.

Williams faced his test alone.

"When I was forced for the first time to travel by myself, I was terrified," he said. "There's seven different types of vipers that live in that part of the world, drug lords, a kaleidoscope of cultures. What language would I speak?"

Williams discovered he could plan a 15,038-mile trip by himself. He set out from the heart of China, traversed Laos and Thailand and arrived in Bangkok, across the river from where he stood more than a decade before.

"I sat there and just cried," he said.

For most people, that would have been more than enough. For a while, it was for Williams, too. But his satisfaction lasted only long enough for him to draw in his latest accomplishment on his world map.

Back in Boulder, Williams connected the dots on his map and stepped back to gaze at the world that had passed beneath his wheels.

"As I backed away from the map, I said 'Oh my God.'" There were lines across all of the continents, save two blank spots. One was at the tip of South America, the other at the top of North America. That night he took his girlfriend out to dinner and said "I've got a new plan ..."

Williams said he contacted all the major cycling clubs in Europe and South America asking whether they had any record of a person cycling the length or width of all six inhabited continents. None did.

Williams made it his goal to ride across each continent, calling his challenge the Six Continents Quest. It was, he said, "a professional responsibility." If one chooses to lead an adventure lifestyle, he said "You almost have a responsibility to excel. It's a code of honor." To leave unfinished something so big and so close would relegate him to the world of two-wheeled mediocrity, he said.

Since Too Tyred Tour, Williams worked as a bicycle mechanic, as a lecturer, and as an organizer of bicycle tours. He rode the Silk route, rediscovered the Burma Road. His Web site is stevendwilliams.com.

To launch his Quest, in 2000 Williams traveled to Mendosa, Argentina, supported by a $4,000 grant from the National Geographic Expeditions Council. The grant was his first and last. He rode 2,384 miles to Tierra del Fuego, the end of the road beyond Ushuaia.

In 2002, Williams went north to Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada, the end of the road above the Arctic Circle, just shy of the Beaufort Sea. He rode from there to Whitehorse in the Yukon, enduring 430 miles of dirt on the Dempster Highway. Northern Lights crackled so loud they kept him awake. Grizzly bears looked to be the size of Volkswagen vans. Mosquitoes swarmed during the nine-day crossing of uninhabited tundra. Rain fell for five days and a three-day snowstorm pinned him down.

Williams said he thought "If someone pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride, I don't know what I'd say." The psychology of long-distance travel wore heavy. "How bad do you really want to do this?" Williams said he thought. "I could get killed out here and nobody would know it."

He persevered and this summer all that was left was the 2,500 miles from Whitehorse to Jackson. Williams set out on Aug. 3. At Watson Lake, Canada, he ran into a 69-year-old Basque cyclist. Williams was uncertain whether he could complete his ride to Jackson. Why not come back next year? he asked Augstin Egurrola.

"You can't do that!" Egurrola exclaimed. "You're committed to the plan! You don't know if you will be alive next year!"

So on Williams rode, spending 52 out of 61 days pedaling. He hooked up with Waterton Lakes National Park warden Edwin Knox, who was packed for a trip headed north before spotting Williams in Pincher Creek. Craig Moffet, a 49-year-old Modesto, Ill., native, whom Williams met in Kathmandu years before, joined the gang at Three Forks, Mont.

Bicycle touring has been an educational experience and an athletic challenge for Williams. "Culture has always been the key motivating interest ­ culture and geography," he said. "How people live, what their cultures look like, what side of the hill they live on."

Williams said 99.99 percent of the population of the globe is "pretty well-intentioned." Landscape, too, was endlessly fascinating he said. But on his journeys, "Cycling is still the fulcrum."

Williams just purchased a trailer in Boulder where he will return, he said, to start life anew. He will do so knowing he has taken care of himself as no other person ever has.

"The Quest for me was: 'Was I up to the challenge?'" Williams said. "Once I defined the challenge, could I deliver to myself?

"I like hatching a good scheme. I think humans have to have something intangible in the future ­ a dream," he said.

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