Why I Cycled 26,000 Kilometres to Build a New Life in the Belize Jungle

Before the first chapter begins, every story needs a reason for being told.

This preface isn’t about cycling or Belize. It’s about trying to understand a life that rarely followed the path I expected—and why I kept moving forward anyway.

I think I can honestly say that even to this day, I have never understood my path or how I ended up where I did at different stages of life. There was only one brief moment that I thought I finally caught a glimpse of understanding, and then it was gone.

It happened when I was engaged to the person I believed I was meant to spend the rest of my life with. For the first and only time, everything became clear. My life, and even my past, suddenly felt like it made sense. It felt as though every life-changing decision I had ever made had somehow led me to this exact point. All other decisions wouldn’t have brought me within a million miles of this person.

Then that life never happened.

When it ended, the clarity disappeared with it, and my life returned to the mystery it had always been.

Almost everything most people experience or consider normal has always felt foreign to me. Relationships, parenthood, emotional support, traditional living, even the natural flow of society itself – I have spent most of my life mostly observing these things from the outside rather than participating.

I fundamentally think that something is fractured between me and the ability to connect and relate to the rest of the world. There is the world, and then there is me, not fighting against it, but navigating a path just beyond arm’s reach. I have always felt on the outside, feeling most comfortable and safest on the periphery of society.

“Do you ever feel lonely?”
“Only around people.” – The Thin Red Line

Loneliness became so normal that eventually I stopped recognizing it as loneliness. It merged with me so long ago that I seemed to have forgotten she was even with me, to the point of having no recollection of her presence.

I am quite introverted, definitely misunderstood, and was bullied every day from grade 1 to 12. I mention this only because anything to do with learning or understanding any form of academia results in almost an immediate physical response of malaise over my brain, almost like a form of PTSD. While I don’t deny a level of intelligence, my intelligence does not convert the way most successful intelligent people fare out.

Most of my life has been learning the hard way, which I’m sure is far more common than I realize. But for me, I can’t seem to make sense of the mistakes or the results. Living on the outside and watching people get a higher education, have relationships, purchase a house, build a career, have children, raise children, and create stability – I can’t relate to any of it. I accept that I could never live that way, but there is something human about wanting what the rest of the world seems to have naturally.

For myself, survival has become rooted in workaholic tendencies, discipline, sacrifice, and relentless goal orientation. I built life around forward momentum. As long as I was working toward something, enduring something, or sacrificing for something, I never had to sit still long enough to question where my life was going or how far I was drifting from the rest of the world.

What I have learned is that my mother was right: the older you get, the harder life is. She also taught me that who you are follows you wherever you go, whether it’s a new career or a new country.

I learned that the harder roads often teach the deepest lessons. That excuses are your enemy. Nothing great or transformative comes without sacrifice. And it’s accepting that discipline, not motivation, is what carries you forward when everything else collapses.

They say the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.

As cliché as it sounds, we only get one life to live. How about the idea that one’s dream, purpose, or calling doesn’t become fulfilled without a tremendous amount of discipline, sacrifice, repetition, failure, and an almost unreasonable willingness to continue despite uncertainty?

I do not believe it is ever truly too late to begin again. I hope these pages show you that. You can start again – quietly, stubbornly, imperfectly, one step at a time.

My journey just happens to be measured in kilometres.

Yours will look different.

But there is something powerful about continuing to show up each day and giving your best effort to a life that still feels unfinished. If this book helps you to recognize something in yourself that gives you the courage to take your next step, then every kilometre of this story was worth it.

What This Memoir Is About

This memoir isn’t simply about cycling over 26,000 kilometres from Canada to Belize. It’s about rebuilding a life after heartbreak, learning that discipline matters more than motivation, and discovering that sometimes the longest journeys lead you exactly where you were meant to be.

Today I live deep in the Belize jungle, documenting wildlife, nature, and the realities of creating a farm from the ground up. Looking back, every setback, sacrifice, and impossible decision became another step toward that life.

If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s too late to begin again, I hope you’ll see a little of yourself in these pages.

Call to Action

There is still a lot more living to do.

Join my mailing list, and you’ll receive writing updates, reflections, Belize wildlife encounters, jungle living reflections, and lessons learned from a life lived on the road and in the jungle.