Gunn ends his 25,811-mile trek

SAN FRANCISCO - Rick Gunn finished his odyssey where he began, riding his bicycle onto the Golden Gate Bridge.

The trip began just two months shy of three years ago when Gunn headed east from the bridge with the goal of riding that bicycle around the world. In that time, he pedaled more than 25,000 miles through 33 countries.

"I've ridden the circumference of the earth," said Gunn, who resigned his position as a photographer with the Appeal to do so.

But the trip which ended Saturday with a ride over the famed suspension bridge between San Francisco and Marin County, he said, was much more than a bicycle tour. It became a journey of personal discovery - both of himself and of the nature of all those he met along the way.

He said he has come to see that the similarities between people are far greater than the things that push them apart, in every part of the globe.

"One of the main points of this journey is 'what are the main differences between us,'" he said. "There isn't a lot."

He admitted one of the reasons for the trip was the increased hatred and hostility between nations, between people, since the start of the Iraq war - especially among Americans.

"When you turn on the TV, you get death. You don't get the other 99 percent of the people who are just living and loving their children."

His message for the rest of America: "It's OK; there's nothing to be afraid of right now."

Americans, he said, "are comfortable in their own worlds."

One problem, he said, is that too few Americans travel abroad, which leaves them with "someone else's perceptions about what the world is all about."

"To understand the world is not just to watch the nightly news," he said.

"I didn't go to Iraq and Afghanistan but, everywhere else, I felt safer in some of the Muslim countries than I did in the ghettos of Philadelphia and Baltimore."

In some places such as Bangladesh, Gunn said, just his physical appearance - including his 6'6" height - drew crowds.

"I had 15, 25 to 100 people gather around me because they'd never seen a white person before," he said.

Some of the things he saw, he said were heart-wrenching. One of his journals talked about seeing the body of an infant abandoned in India's Ganges River. He talked about seeing people on the verge of starvation. But he says he never developed immunity to the poverty, the misery he saw.

"There never came a time, not one period of time during that whole trip when I became hardened," he said. "The more poverty I saw, the more it affected me."

And he said he was continually amazed by the generosity of some of the poorest people he met along the way, sharing with him, offering shelter and help they couldn't really afford.

Gunn set out from the Golden Gate July 1, 2005, pedaling east into the Sierra then south to Bridgeport, through Death Valley and east across the U.S. Flying to France, he toured northern Europe before meeting friends in Great Britain. The longest part of the journey followed: Through Europe and Asia, including India, the long climb into the Himalayas through Tibet and Nepal, and into China.

Throughout the trip, he had to carry everything he needed on the bicycle - more than 90 pounds of gear, including camera and laptop computer equipment in four bags hung on his bicycle.

After heading south through Cambodia and Vietnam, he took on Australia. Riding across the Outback, he said, took more than 20 days - often several days at a time without seeing another person.

"Saw a lot of kangaroos, though," he said.

But he said he wasn't lonely in the wilderness.

"The loneliest place for me is the big city. The place I feel most comfortable with myself is the empty places."

Gunn finished with trips to New Zealand, then Hawaii before landing in Vancouver for the final ride down the Pacific Coast, over Mount Tamalpais and into San Francisco.

He finished the ride Saturday, pedaling slowly through tourists and anti-China protesters on the Golden Gate until ending his journey engulfed by hugs of nearly 30 friends and family members who came to see him finish. Longtime friend Tracey Milne traveled the furthest to meet Gunn, traveling from her home in Aberdeen, Scotland, to see him complete the ride.

As he straddled the overloaded, incredibly battered bike at the San Francisco end of the bridge, he pointed with a smile to the electronic odometer on the handlebars: 25,811 miles.

But the journey isn't finished yet, Gunn said.

He's taken thousands of pictures along the way, writing in his journal for the Appeal once a month. Now, he's going to put the whole experience together into a book and slide shows so that others can experience some of what he lived through, from the spiritual to the simply enjoyable, the tragic, disturbing and even the disgusting. For Gunn, it's all important to the story, that will be told in time.

Asked where he was going next, he said, "Home to bed."

• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.