Cycling trips take dad, daughter to far away places

Fathers and daughters often plan trips together. Maybe a day trip or a weekend getaway.

Michael and Jocelyn Rice are planning a trip that will be just a bit longer.

"We figure about a year and a half to two years," Michael Rice said from his kitchen table.

The father and daughter from Cape Canaveral are planning to load their bicycles into their truck and drive to Seattle, Washington.

For most that would be the trip.

For the Rice's, the adventure begins

in Seattle.

They will ride from the Washington/Canada border to Mexico, Central and South America. They hope to ride into the southernmost city of Ushuaia, Argentina in June. From there they will fly to Fairbanks, Alaska, get a ride to Deadhorse on Prudhoe Bay and ride through Canada and the Northern United States, east to Maine then south back home to Cape Canaveral.

Andee, the wife and mother, will join the trip and drive behind after she is done with school. Andee is a teacher at Capeview Elementary and not into cycling like those two.

The end of the trip will have the family going down the coast, where they hope to surf and cycle.

This is not the first long bike voyage that Michael and Jocelyn have taken and they are hoping it is not the last. The pair have bicycled through 25 countries so far and have many more on their list.

And it all started with Jocelyn Rice's love of bicycling. She started seriously cycling in the fifth grade when her and her friends started a bike club. The first trip was from Sebastian Inlet to Vero Beach. She was hooked.

Later on, she would bike from her Cape Canaveral home to Cocoa Beach High.

"Everyone would be like, that is so far," Jocelyn said. "My teacher told me about a man who cycled across the country. I said that is my dream."

Her father, Michael, was always a runner, but about the same time her love of cycling was growing, his knees forced him off the roads.

So he grabbed a bike as well. After being laid off from the Space Center in 2011, he began riding more and more.

Then in 2014 the two decided to take a bit longer trip — on the road for almost a year, going from New Zealand to Thailand with stops in Italy, Bosnia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, China and Vietnam. It began Feb. 11 and they were back Dec. 28.

"This past tour was absolutely amazing, I had not been out of the country other than to New Zealand," Jocelyn Rice said. "That was the first time I just left the country."

With Jocelyn finishing her studies at Eastern Florida State College, the pair are back on the road for the next adventure.

It is truly a day-to-day adventure as there is no route. No pre-planned destinations, at least not exactly. Jocelyn is the navigator and if she sees an interesting trail or road on her GPS, they take it.

"It only shows where I am so I can see roads and trails, I put it on my handlebars and try to find the road less traveled," Jocelyn said. "We don't like freeways or big cities."

That is the beauty of their adventure. You never know where you may end up or what you may see. So far it has led them to some beautiful places and met some friendly people in places you might not expect.

"Most people are friendly. We have never had bad times, we tell people we are going to Iran, Mom was crying saying please don't go," Jocelyn remembers. "But from what we read it was safe and we had a huge welcoming, banners and everything. We spent 33 days in Iran, cycled over 1,000 miles and we would be riding and they hand us fruit, water and people invite us in their homes for tea."

It has been those experiences and the love of cycling across country that has brought them to this trip.

"It's difficult, but it is about the adventure," Michael said. "Everyone demands visas and they are difficult to get and expensive. We never know where we are going to be and who we will run in to, good or bad."

It hasn't always been easy. In the Republic of Georgia they both got sick and Jocelyn had to go to a hospital with a major intestine issue.

"There were these fountains being filtered through streams. It was all dirt road and hot, like 130 degrees hot," Michael remembers. "Everyone was drinking out of the fountains so we did not think we had to sterilize it."

They were both sick. Spent three nights at a guest house, trying to get better. They would get back on the road but they would keep getting sick every three or four days.

After a couple of days of Jocelyn getting worse, they decided they had to find a hospital. No easy task.

"That was scary, we were lost. They had like pods all around and we had no idea where to go," Jocelyn said.

We were wandering around and this doctor stopped and asked what we needed. He took them to the doctors they needed to see and even wrote out what she needed to take and how often.

At the end of the long day of seeing doctors, getting the medicine she needed — the final cost?

The equivalent of $5.

They both laughed sitting at the kitchen table. Just another memory from an adventure that neither will ever forget.

Follow the journey

Jocelyn Rice writes updates on their Web site during the journey at fatherdaughter

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