{"id":668,"date":"2010-11-17T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wabikes.org\/2010\/11\/17\/channeling-ian-hibell\/"},"modified":"2010-11-17T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-17T16:00:00","slug":"channeling-ian-hibell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wabikes.org\/index.php\/2010\/11\/17\/channeling-ian-hibell\/","title":{"rendered":"Channeling Ian Hibell"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_iflVWcGyJL8\/TNLvCjRFJHI\/AAAAAAAAAUQ\/UPLaOSuoZMY\/s1600\/IanHibellInPeru.jpg\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"260\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_iflVWcGyJL8\/TNLvCjRFJHI\/AAAAAAAAAUQ\/UPLaOSuoZMY\/s400\/IanHibellInPeru.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>If there were a contest for coolest bicyclist ever, Ian Hibell would win, hands-down.<\/p>\n<p>You may be forgiven for asking: Ian who?\u00a0 Hibell remains an obscure figure, especially outside his native England, to all but a few cyclists and adventure-travel buffs who happen to read the right magazines or assiduously surf the Internet.<\/p>\n<div>But to me, he best represents the possibilities for adventure, discovery and serendipity that a bicycle can bring, if you let it.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I first discovered Hibell several years ago when I opened my new issue of <i>Adventure Cycling<\/i> magazine to find an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adventurecycling.org\/resources\/Hibell_watersandice.pdf\">article<\/a> by him about his adventures.\u00a0 The article was accompanied by two-page photo of Hibell on his touring bike, grinding his way up the rocky road to Machu Picchu in Peru. Below him, going on seemingly forever, stretched the route up which he had come.\u00a0 To me that one photo perfectly captures the possibilities that a bicycle can unlock. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Hibell was a true British eccentric in the positive sense of the term. He grew up in mostly rural but decidedly civilized Devonshire, in the Southeast of England. \u00a0His first experience as a cycle tourist was borne of a combination of accident and necessity, when his father could not afford train tickets to send the entire family to the seaside for a vacation. So Hibell and his dad rode their bikes there, sleeping on park benches and wherever else they could. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>As an adult, Hibell worked for a local English telephone company for a time, but soon found that the allure of the open road trumped the comforts of a nine-to-five job. He spent the next 40 years as a nomad on a bike, never really settling down. \u00a0He rode from Bangkok to Vladivostok. He rode from Norway to the Cape of Good Hope.\u00a0 He rode from the tip of Tierra del Fuego to Alaska. He rode across the Sahara Desert, almost dying of thirst before he was rescued by a band of tribesmen. He buried himself in mud to escape hoards of mosquitoes.\u00a0 He was chased by rogue elephants and almost eaten alive by tropical ants.\u00a0 He was shot at and jailed. He crossed the notorious <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dari\u00e9n_Gap\">Darien Gap<\/a> in Panama (an adventure captured in this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3ylhWPCekdM\">vintage film<\/a>). His family knew him fondly as \u201cmad uncle Ian.\u201d<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Ironically, it wasn\u2019t the wilderness that killed Hibell, but civilization. After 40 years on the road, Hibell was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/12202333?story_id=12202333\">killed by a hit-and-run driver<\/a> on the Athens-Salonika Highway in Greece while on a training ride for another adventure.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But I like to remember Hibell for his adventures rather than his end.\u00a0 And I think it\u2019s a good thing for all cyclists to channel Ian Hibell occasionally.\u00a0 If you want to cycle across the Sahara or brave the Darien Gap, great. Long-distance touring is fabulous.\u00a0 But you don\u2019t have to go that far to get a taste of adventure. Just try something new.\u00a0 Go camping on your bike. Explore some local logging roads. Go up a valley that you\u2019ve driven by but have never been to.\u00a0 Sometimes there\u2019s great joy to be had in breaking your routine to discover the simple pleasures of an unexpected mountain view, or eating a cheese sandwich in the fall sun while listening to the wind in the firs, or even getting a little lost. And after you\u2019ve done it, raise a toast to Ian.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If there were a contest for coolest bicyclist ever, Ian Hibell would win, hands-down. You [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[40,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bike-adventure","category-people"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Channeling Ian Hibell - Washington Bikes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wabikes.org\/index.php\/2010\/11\/17\/channeling-ian-hibell\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Channeling Ian Hibell - Washington Bikes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If there were a contest for coolest bicyclist ever, Ian Hibell would win, hands-down. 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