Most of his final months were spent at the home of close friends in Cranbrook, B.C. He headed to Canada, where he stayed with friends and explored the remote parts of British Columbia and Alberta. Iohan found himself trapped in North America. Since he still needed to pedal 2,500km to reach Ushuaia (the southern tip of Argentina), Iohan decided the best and only option was to fly to the United States to get the specific bicycle parts he needed, and return to Chile five days later.īut then COVID crashed the party, shutting down borders and grounding airplanes. In March 2020, Iohan found himself in Chile, on the Carretera Austral, with a broken-down bicycle. No matter the situation, Iohan seemed to embrace each experience with patience, wit, appreciation, and good humour. When it came time to cross the Darien Gap from Panama to Colombia, Iohan found himself a packraft and set off on a mazy adventure through the islands. In Panama, he spent days pushing his bike through the muddy and mountainous backroads, accompanied by curious locals on horseback. In Episode #1, we watched him cycle through the wind on an ice road on the Arctic sea. With his camera turned outward, he focused on the places, people, and creatures the journey offered up. Follow a map to its edges and keep going. In the first episode, he showed us the message he taped to his handlebars: “I want to see the world.
#Iohan gueorguiev bike wanderer series
Iohan called his video series See the World.
He inspired countless numbers of people to pick up a bicycle and hit the road. We were enthralled by his eagerness to push his comfort boundaries, and moved by the heartfelt connections to the humans and animals he befriended along the way. Along the way, he touched thousands and thousands of viewers. He shared his adventures through gentle, graceful, slow-moving video documentaries, which he narrated with sparse, thoughtful prose. For the next six years, he meandered south through the most beautiful, challenging, remote locations. In April 2014, Iohan flew from Toronto to Whitehorse, hitchhiked up to the Arctic Ocean, and started his solo bike journey to Argentina. Having logged so many hours watching his videos, I felt like I really did know him personally. I can’t remember having been so moved by the death of someone I had never met. The Bike Wanderer was Iohan Gueorguiev, a Bulgarian-Canadian bicycle tourist who died by suicide in August after a years-long battle with insomnia caused by obstructive sleep apnea. Javier smiled, and we began discussing, toasting, and mourning a shared source of inspiration. We got to chatting about bicycle touring, and I asked them if they knew the Bike Wanderer. They had been on the road for about three months, and one of them, Javier, was preparing for an epic ride to Alaska. Three Chilean cyclists pulled in for a break. One night, I was setting up camp on the shores of the Río Barrancos, about 45km south of the town of Cochrane.
0 kommentar(er)
