Ron Hughes interviews the intrepid Nick McIntosh
Is he mad? 24 year old gay man Nick McIntosh is pedalling his trusty treadly – appropriately named Sputnik – all the way from Hobart to Helsinki.
With only a few belongings packed in panniers, the New Zealand born lad who now calls Hobart home is making the journey alone and unaided.
The second question that comes to mind is: Why Helsinki? Simply for the alliteration?
‘I was thinking of going there to do a guiding course. I’ve been working as a bushwalking guide for the last five or six years. Trouble was, it was like a university course and I didn’t want to go back to university,’ he freely confesses. ‘Then when I came up with the idea of a long cycle tour, the two ideas just melded together. It was the longest biking trip I could think of.’
Indeed at 20,000km he’s cycling half the world’s circumference.
‘It’s very tempting to go on and do the other 20,000,’ he jokes.
This is not a charity run. Nick is doing it for his own project; he’s going to interview gay men all along the route and publish both his travel journal and his subject’s stories on the internet as he goes.
‘It’s all happened very quickly. I decided I wanted to travel. Then I decided I wanted to go by bike. All three or four months before I left, so there wasn’t much time to organise anything, let alone sponsorship of a charity.’
The preparations for his journey didn’t quite go off without a hitch. His front panniers were being sent from England. Instead of going to Tasmania, naturally they ended up in Tanzania. That aside, the trip so far has been relatively easy going, except for lack of company.
‘I like going by bike, but being by yourself is actually quite isolating. You go through a lot of populated areas but because you’re always moving you don’t get that contact with people. I last about five days before I go slightly nuts. Then I have a day off, stop at a hostel, have a conversation with someone.’
Having friends to meet up with and rest along the way helps alleviate the isolation.
‘I’ve got a boy in every port,’ he quips. ‘It’s actually a global dating program!’
And the idea of interviewing people along the way?
‘I’ve always had a secret desire to be a journalist. This is a way of doing it in my own way,’ he replies.
And he’s never done a cycle tour in his life. The question has to be asked: Is he mad?
He laughs, ‘Quite possibly, yes! I do love giving things a jolly good try. I have been working a long time in bushwalking, I love bushwalking, camping and stuff is second nature. And the bike? I’ve always had a bike, never had a car. So it’s just like a marriage of the two.’
Relying entirely on cyber-cafes to upload his entries as he goes, Nick estimates it will take some fifteen months to reach his destination. So what does he expect to get out of it personally?
‘I think it’s one of those trips that can pull you completely apart and somehow you’ve got to put those pieces back together. I may be completely barking mad by the end,’ he jokes.
It seems motivation is the key.
‘When I started out I had no idea how much of the challenge of this kind of travelling would be mental. I knew I could physically do it, but the hardest thing is the mental thing. Especially when you spend so much time by yourself and realising how far it is to Helsinki.’
So what is Nick going to do when he gets to Helsinki?
‘Get a job. I’m going to be broke!’ he chuckles.
If you want to follow Nick’s odyssey, go to http://storytransect.net/ and read the story so far. By the time this paper hits the street, he’ll be well on his way to the Alice.
While wishing Nick luck and farewell, he says he is staying up in Blackwood [in the Adelaide Hills]. Surely he’s not cycling up to Blackwood on his ‘day off’?
‘Oh no!’ he grins ‘I’m taking the train!’
This article appears courtesy of Blaze, South Australia’s queer newspaper.
