Four-year trip around the world passes through Riverhead
Cycling through the pounding rain and gusting wind of a nor’easter was just one of the hazards Jason Tang signed up for when he embarked on an unprecedented journey to round the globe on two wheels.
By the time Mr. Tang arrived on the North Fork, he had already logged nearly 10,000 miles on his bicycle. He was one year into a trip that, in many ways, has just begun.
“Still a ways to go,” he said.
If not for that storm on the night of Oct. 22, Mr. Tang might very well have passed through on his journey unnoticed, attracting nothing more than a cursory glance from a motorist whisking by him on Main Road.
At 45 years old, Mr. Tang — whose birth name is Kaiyu — possesses a boyish face and a youthful enthusiasm for the world and its people. One year ago, he boarded a plane with a one-way ticket from his native Taiwan for Australia. He biked for three months, circling the continent before flying to New Zealand. From there, he flew to Vancouver, where he began a sixth-month trip across the Canadian frontier. He recently landed in the United States for the first time after a 10-hour ferry ride from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to Portland, Maine. Now, he’s headed south, having stopped in Boston, where he enjoyed the local lobster, and New York City, where he visited the Statue of Liberty, on his way to Florida.
• Visit his Facebook page to follow along with his journey
He’s done it with essentially no monetary investment. He spends close to nothing on accommodations, relying on a tent packed amid more than 70 pounds of gear piled atop his bike.
“My ceiling is the sky, my bed is the grass,” Mr. Tang said.
Oftentimes, he relies on the hospitality of strangers he meets along the way, such as David Markel of Southold.
Mr. Markel, a longtime North Fork resident, was playing basketball when he received a strange call Oct. 22. A friend had just come across a man bicycling amid a downpour. He could use a place to stay the night, she said to him. Mr. Markel lives in a barn on Youngs Avenue and there was plenty of room. He told her to let the man into his barn and he would see him when he got back.
“I figured he wasn’t going to be any danger,” Mr. Markel said.
Soon after, Mr. Markel and Mr. Tang met for the first time, and another unforeseen friendship formed. They went out for breakfast the next morning and stopped by the local newspaper for an interview.
“It’s my dream,” Mr. Tang said of circling the globe.
He typically bikes around five to six hours a day. In the first two months of the trip, he lost 33 pounds, he said. When he arrives at a destination like New York City, he immerses himself as a tourist. To help pay for the expenses that pop up, he plays the erhu — a two-stringed bowed instrument known to some as a “Chinese violin” — and solicits donations. He pops open the case for the erhu and props up a sign titled “Cycling Around the World,” which briefly describes his journey. His friends back home have raised money for him to purchase his plane tickets.
Mr. Tang travels with an iPhone, one of the few pieces of technology he keeps on him. He maps his route using the iPhone map, but relies mostly on the guidance of local people he meets. He documents his trip on Facebook by posting to his personal page and a public page he created. It’s often the best way for his friends back home to know he’s still alive.
It’s a journey he spent three years preparing for, though he only informed his family of his plans three months before departing. He’s single and has no children.
“If I’m lucky, I could find my princess along the way,” he said.
Mr. Tang speaks English, Mandarin and Taiwanese. Soon enough, he’ll be learning Spanish.
The rest of his trip will take him down the coast of the United States. He plans to hop over to Mexico and continue through Central America and down South America. He’ll eventually fly to South Africa, then make his way up that massive continent to Europe. From there, he’ll head east across Asia on his way back to Taiwan.
He estimates it could take another three years for him to complete his journey.
Mr. Tang seeks neither fame nor fortune from his trip. He rides for no particular cause or fight.
He simply wants to see the world.
As Mr. Tang finished loading his bike Thursday morning in Mattituck, he listened as Mr. Markel explained which roads to take across the North Fork.
He hopped on his bicycle, an American flag waving on the back, said goodbye to Mr. Markel and began peddling west, slowly fading into the horizon.