Long-distance skateboarding

Rob Thomson's epic skate adventure

Anytime you sit down with an adventurer, the first question is always the obvious one: Why? Is it to push yourself to the limits of endurance, or simply the exhilaration of hitting an unlikely goal?

Meet Rob Thomson. 28 years old and hailing from New Zealand, he’s perhaps not your typical adventurer on the surface. Moving to Japan after graduating from Canterbury University he found himself guilty of becoming too comfortable in his cultural cocoon. As he settled down, became acquainted with the culture and began conversing with the locals in Japanese something kept dawning on him: “These people are no different from me!”

It was here where the seeds for his adventure were planted. Not purely a desire to just see the world, but a belief that no matter how different we all seem or the language barriers, fundamentally we all share a common humanity and common emotions.

Combined with his work at Asia Pacific University’s International Admissions office and the people he encountered there, he decided he wanted to experience these cultures and humanity for himself. Originally, he planned a solo 12,000km bicycle trip from Japan to London. No big deal, until Thomson traded in his bike for a skateboard in Switzerland and skated the rest of the way. And then skated across America. And then China too. With just himself for company.

20,000 kilometres via bicycle and skateboard, numerous visas, some 20 countries, four continents and a world record later, he’s had the journey of a lifetime. WideWorld had a chance to chat to Rob earlier this month to find out more about his incredible story.

To start with, if you had to sum yourself up in one sentence, what would you say?

I am all into experience: what it means to be human, what it means to live, what it means to operate as a ‘co-inhabiter’ within this diverse and beautiful world.

How did you come to decide on doing it by bike?

It was always going to be some sort of journey by bicycle. My mode of transport was simply not a variable that could be tinkered with within the equation, it was to be human powered or nothing. The thing that was negotiable, however, was the destinations and duration of the trip. Indeed, it started out in the beginning with the relatively simple desire to cycle the length of Japan before heading back to New Zealand. This quickly changed as I looked at more and more blogs online of amazing people who had cycled around the world: across vast deserts, through narrow rocky gorges, over massive high-altitude passes. Those blogs oozed adventure. They reeked of pure unadulterated freedom, autonomy, and adventure. And I wanted it.

So it started by bicycle, but not just any bicycle – a recumbent one. It looks like an amazing piece of kit, is it hard to get used to?

Yes that’s right. If you had told me at the beginning of the trip, way back in July 2006, that a year later I would be travelling by skateboard, I would have laughed at you. It was originally purely a cycling adventure. And the recumbent was an awesome piece of engineering that did the job extremely well. It took a few weeks to get used to the balance, and a month or so for my legs to adapt to the different geometry of the bike, but once I was all dialled in it was fantastic. With a very low centre of gravity, the bike handles really well. Even over horrible, horrible roads in Central Asia, the full suspension bike just ate up the miles. The one thing I had to put up with was a slower uphill speed. But hey, the trade off was no sore bum, no sore wrists, and a great sitting position that allowed me to enjoy the view.

In Switzerland you decided to send the bike back and continue on a skateboard. How did that come about? Was it something in the back of your mind for a while?

About 5 months before making the switch, I was in Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan. I was walking around the city, to and from embassies of countries I planned to head to next. I wished I had a little skateboard to skate around cities during the trip, cycling around cities was a little cumbersome, and was a security issue – a fancy full suspension bike is a prime target in third-world cities. From that thought came the idea that if I ditched the bike all together, then I could truly travel ‘ultralight’.
So I jumped on Google, and went to see if I could find others who had done solo skateboard touring before. It was hardly surprising that I came up with nothing. The only thing I could find was reports of an Englishman who was, at that very moment, skateboarding across Australia with a full support team. So at that point in Tashkent I decided to sit on the idea for a while and let it percolate.

Once I got though Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the roads started to get smoother. A full 5 months after the idea was first planted, I finally decided to give it a go. In Switzerland I decided to ditch the bike and carry on to England by skateboard. This was to be my ‘feasibility study’ to see if it was indeed possible to travel solo and unsupported by skateboard. Indeed it was feasible; through Europe I was doing up to 60 miles a day over a 7 hour skating day. I was hooked.

How much different was skateboarding to being on the recumbent bike?

It is definitely more physically demanding on the board. You are essentially balancing on each leg for about 3 hours a day. That is, I switched pushing legs, so for the entire day you’re balancing. So long as the surface is smooth – you get quite good at spotting smooth parts in roads, and scouting out smooth routes – it is a very therapeutic activity. You get into a rhythm and you eventually forget that you’re on a board at all.

Was there a moment where you ever thought of turning back?

Absolutely. On day 60 of the trip, in the highlands of Kyrgyzstan, I had been carrying my loaded bike over a 16,000-foot-high mountain pass on nothing more than a rocky horse track for three days. I had chronic diarrhoea, cramps, fatigue (I had giardia), and I was seriously contemplating turning back and heading to the closest town to catch a bus to the closest airport to fly home. I had been ferrying my bike and luggage separately across the terrain: I walked my bags a mile ahead, walked back and did the same for my bike. It was too rocky to ride, too rocky to push my bike with the panniers attached. At that point, I decided that I would do one more mile of this ferrying, and if the terrain hadn’t improved, then I would turn back. Luckily for me, the terrain did become rideable.

In the end though, during the skateboarding trip, I actually wrote this covenant to myself:
“I will not choose to give up on a headwind day. I will not choose to give up when I am tired. I will only permit myself to choose to give up under the following circumstances: I have rested for two days, it is a beautifully calm sunny day.”

I did allow myself the option of giving up, but only under certain circumstances. The reality was, it was only when the going got tough that I thought of giving up. But it wasn’t always tough going. Especially not if I had had some good rest.

What was your favourite place to travel through on your journey?

The Wakhan Valley and the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan. Tajikistan is an ex-Soviet country in Central Asia, immediately north of Afghanistan. The Wakhan Valley is home to the Gunt River that separates Tajikistan and Afghanistan. When cycling through there, I felt like I had stepped back in time. Intensely remote, the valley is a windswept, dry, inhospitable place. Here and there, though, there are green oases where small villages have sprung up. Apricot trees, pastures, and small but bustling markets are in immense contrast to the harsh areas between the settlements. It is a magical place.

The Pamir Highway is Soviet-built paved highway that traverses a 16,000 foot high plateau – the Pamir Plateau – in the Pamir Mountains. My enduring memory of this barren, isolated place is the silence. A silence so all encompassing that it is deafening; sucking the very air out of my lungs, leaving me gasping. The thin air up that high makes cycling difficult; there is an edge to the challenge way up there that I never experienced anywhere else at lower altitudes.

Where was the strangest place you slept?

A graveyard in Italy. Probably the best night’s sleep I had on the trip. Very peaceful indeed.

What quirky moments stick out in your mind as really defining the trip?

Meeting a jovial, vodka-swigging, pork-kebab gobbling Muslim man in Uzbekistan was quite the highlight. I always got amazing hospitality from the Muslim countries, and this guy was not exception. He literally ran out onto the road when he saw me, and waved me down. He insisted that I stay at his family’s home that night, and we spent the night in his crowded living room; half the neighbourhood had come around to see the foreign cyclist.

Find out more about Rob’s journey at www.14degrees.com