An Interview With The Crazy Senior Citizen & Hearty Heart Attack Victim Who Rode Their Bikes Around The World

June 23, 2008 by Darren Alff

In 2002, Pat and Cat Patterson (age 62 and 48) left their home in Oxnard, California and spent the next four years riding their bicycles around the world. When they completed their tour in 2006, they had ridden through four continents and 57 different countries.

Pat and Cat met in 1993, later married, and ran a real estate company in Southern California. Then, in 2000, Cat suffered from a heart attack. But rather than play victim, Cat’s heart attack only pushed her more to get out on her bike and ride.

The plan for the big bike tour was born and rather than tell the rest of the story myself, I’ve gone ahead and asked Pat and Cat to share their story with you.

To hear about Pat and Cat’s incredible world tour by bike, just click the play button below.

More information on Pat & Cat’s epic bicycle tour through North America, Europe, Africa, and South America can be found at www.WorldRiders2.com

Darren: Hello! This is Darren Alff from www.BicycleTouringPro.com. Today I’m on the phone with Pat and Cat Patterson from Oxnard, California. Their website is www.WorldRiders2.com. Pat and Cat just recently returned from a 4-year ride by bike around the World, crossing through North America, Europe, Africa, and South America. They’ve been back in Southern California now for about a year, adjusting to normal life, but they’ve got another tour planned. They plan to spend a couple months in Asia coming up and so I’ve put together an interview with them to thank you for being a part of the website at www.BicycleTouringPro.com. So without further ado, here is my interview with Pat and Cat.

Pat: Hi! My name is Pat Patterson.

Cat: And I’m Cat.

Pat: Husband and Wife. We called ourselves the crazy senior citizen and hearty heart attack victim. And prior to heading out on a bike tour around the world we owned a real estate company. We worked it for 10 years. I was the broker and worked with the people selling real estate and…

Cat: I was the administrator and the manager.

Pat: Yeah. And the idea of going around the world came up like this: In 1988, 89, and 90, I rode a bicycle around the world and when Catherine and I first got together, she looked at a big pile of videos that I had and said, “What are you going to do with these?” I had no idea and she said, “ Well, are they in any order?” And I said, “No.” She being the orderly administrative type said…

Cat: “I gotta take this project on an get this in some kind of order.” So we started. And we started with his very first one and watched a video or two every single night for month, because he has 104 hours of videos.

Pat: Yeah, so as we were watching those, and this was way back. I’d say about fifteen years ago now, Catherine said, “I’d like to do that sometime.” And it started evolving. My dream after that first trip around was to cycle through Africa. And actually, I wanted to go from Cairo to the Cape. The old traditional route. And Catherine said, “Wait a minute! Why don’t we go down through South America and then come back up through Africa?” And I thought about that for a minute because I’ve been on the road and I thought that would be disastrous. WE live in Southern California, so it would be about a four or five day ride to get to the border and then we’d be in a foreign country. Foreign language. We understand “comprende peqeito espanol” but you know? Different food. Different water. All the problems that you’re faced with would hit us in the face after about a week. So, we made a little change up. As we began planning we decided, “Why not go across the US?” which is a nice, fairly easy ride… and learning experience for Catherine. Then hop over to Europe, come down through Europe, then do the Africa leg, and come back up through South America. That’s where the dream was born. As in all dreams, making the dream a reality is not the simplest of it, but when you have the dream you begin to find that things fall into place and that’s what was happening for us. We began thinking about selling our real estate company. We owned a real estate company. We had twenty-five really good associates working with us. And we wanted to make sure that they’d be taken care of, so we approached a couple who owned a company similar to ours in a slightly different area, but they owned a house here near us on the beach and they liked the idea. So that became, pretty much, the biggest portion of our income during the time that we were away. All at that time, me Pat, was being the crazy senior citizen. At age 62, I could take the social security. You only get 80%, so it was not bad, so between the social security, my social security checks, and the payments we were going to receive from our friends that bought the business, we had enough to last on the road for three years. WE set the schedule and we said, “Let’s plan on 1000 days.”

Darren: How did you figure out that you had enough funds, or money, to do this? How did you budget that?

Cat: We didn’t. Ha ha!

Pat: Yeah we did.

Cat: I mean, we budgeted 100 dollars a day, but we didn’t know. No! We didn’t know. We just figured, “$100 a day. That’ll get us around pretty comfortably in some places, maybe not in others. And we found out very quickly that, you know, across the United States it didn’t really cut it too well. We’re not the camping type, so we did not want to… we’re not the traditional cycling tourist that camps freely and goes on twenty dollars a day. The 20 and 30 year olds that do that. And I think it’s great that they do that, but we didn’t want to do it that way.

Pat: But we did carry the equipment. We had everything we needed to be able to do it. Our basic philosophy became, “We would camp it we had to or wanted to.” And we didn’t have to that much. I will say that for the 1400 days that we ended up being out in the world, we probably camped about 60 times. 60 nights worth. And that was because, pretty much, we had to.

Cat: I think the hardest part about… after we realized what we were going to do, one of the biggest obstacles for me was telling my parents. They’re in their mid 80’s. Were in the their mid 80’s at the time and I was quite concerned because of their age and I thought, “I’m going to be gone and what if something happens? How will they feel?” So that was a challenge for me, but it was a challenge I didn’t really need to worry about because they were very supportive and very excited. I don’t think they really quite understood the longevity of it and the hugeness of the whole thing. They’re travelers as well, do they loved the idea that we were going to be going out and seeing wonderful places. I don’t think in their wildest imagination did they think that we were going to be gone for four years. However, they were our biggest supporters throughout the whole trip. We emailed all the time and they kept us going.

Pat: That’s a pretty good story in itself. Cat’s father had really never played with a computer and we had a laptop that we’d been using, so we went down to visit them after we told them that we were going to be going and in fact, her mother said, “Oh! Around the world. You’ll probably be gone three or four months!” Not realizing that we weren’t flying. He took a look at it and said, “Take it back. I’ll never touch that thing.” And I said, “Earl, just let me show you a couple of little things.” So I showed him how to get the thing opened up and turned it on and turned it off and how to hook into a program. Then we left, and we live about 80 miles apart, and the next morning at seven he called and said, “Okay, I’ve got it open, now what do I do?” He became a master on that computer. He does things… he sends pictures, writes to people… in fact he and his cousin put together a family tree website. All because of us leaving home.

Cat: I think the biggest hurdle for me, and I ended up doing most of it because as Pat said, I’m sort of the organized one, you have to think, leaving for that period, the things you have to think about as far as your insurance and everything it takes to run a household, because we were going to rent our house out. Luckily we had a friend who helped up. He managed our property for us and helped us collect the rent and pay the bills. That was a huge, huge help for us. But you know, getting your taxes done every year, and your medical appointments, and everything in your life that comes up not necessarily on a monthly basis you have to think about, “How am I going to take care of that from thousands of miles away?” So that was a challenge for me before we left to kind of set that up and get that organized.

Pat: The guy that worked with us in the office – his name was Charlie, but we called him “Base Camp Charlie.” He was a great guy. Retired military. He did a few years down on Antarctica, so he knew what being away was like and how to handle that. As a matter of fact, we rented the house we were living in , and during the ride it became obvious that we were going to run short on money. We just weren’t planning to be out for as long as we were. And we were continuously on the road. We only came home once when our dear friend and partner in the real estate business passed away. And that was only two months after we left. The rest of the time we were just out there. We did, eventually have Charlie sell our house. Long distance! We did all the paperwork and everything over the Internet and he put the money in the bank and we could keep peddling. Pretty cool!

Darren: That’s a pretty big decision to be making out on the road. I think a lot of people would have come back I think a lot of people hesitate when taking these bike trips, part of it because they have so many responsibilities. You know? They say, “Oh, I have kids” or “I have work and I have a house payment” and all this kind of stuff that holds them back and prevents them from doing these sorts of things. So how were you able to decide to just get past all that?

Pat: Well, planning.

Cat: Well, I think also, just wanting to be away. Wanting the adventure and wanting to make it happen. You know, everyone thinks they’re invincible and can’t live without “me.” But that’s not true! There are plenty of ways getting around, paying your bills online, doing things over the Internet. There are so many capabilities in the computer age we’re in that people don’t have to think about that, cause there are ways of getting around that. It’s just a hard thing psychologically to think that “I’m not going to be the one doing it,” but things get done without you.

Pat: And actually, if you’re in love with your house, you’ve got a problem. We’ve been working on doing some home exchanging recently and we’ve had a lot of people saying, “I’d never let someone live in my home. I couldn’t do it.” Well, you have to get beyond that. Don’t fall in love with inanimate objects. That was always my feeling about this.

Darren: Well, you definitely learn that by bicycle touring. You think that there are so many things that you have to have, but once you get out there you realize you can get away with practically nothing.

Cat: Nothing. Yeah. We’re pretty much minimalists. In fact, we have succumbed to a couple of the pleasures that we always said that we weren’t going to do. You know, before we came back we said, “ We’re not going have the flat screen TV and we’re not going to have the cell phones and we’re not going to have…. Well, you have to have cell phones! You just have to. But a couple things like the TVs and stuff, you know, well… we did get back into that.

Pat: We justified that by saying, “It’s going to be important when we do home exchanging.”

Cat: Yeah, when we have other people in our home. If we’re going to demand the rent that we want, the house has to be equipped a certain way.

Darren: Sure.

Cat: Well, you know, we wore the same clothes… Well, you know! You’re a cyclist. You wear the same clothes every day for one week. We had two sets of clothes. We wore the same thing every day for one week, went to the Laundromat, put those in, put the other set on for a week… and just did that for four years. And that’s all we had. That was it! But every day we were in a new place and nobody knew that we looked the same.

Pat: I always used to say that the biggest difference from when we were on the road and when we got home is that in the middle of the night I always knew where the bathroom was once we got home. Sometimes that’s a quandary when you’re out there.

Darren: Hmm. Yeah.

Pat: You know? I’ll go back to camping for just a minute because there were places… I said sixty… sixty days we slept out. We free camped a lot in South America, but there were places where the hotels (or what they would call a hotel) were so bad that we would go in and set the tent up in a room. Especially like in Africa, we just felt safer with walls around us.

Cat: And bugs.

Pat: Yeah, and it would keep the bugs out.

Darren: You said that you were on a budget of $100 dollars a day?

Cat: Mmm Hmm. (Yes)

Darren: In Europe, people might be thinking a hotel costs more than that. I would think at least.

Cat: Well, we didn’t do $100 dollars a day in Europe. We went way over!

Darren: Yeah. But you make it up in other parts.

Cat: Right.

Pat: Yeah, absolutely. You can do hostels and other things. Maybe if we’re talking right now. 2008. The exchange rate isn’t very good so it would be more expensive, but we found places. Especially in Scandinavia. Gosh, we found places. We were snowed in for a while and a guy rented us his condo for $30 dollars a day. That wasn’t a bad deal. Kitchen and everything.

Darren: Wow.

Cat: But there were definitely other places. We never chose the best hotel. We always chose very moderate, but at least it was a room, inside, secure, that out bikes could be inside. We were pretty cautious about the security of our stuff… and us.

Pat: We lost a little bit to theft. We were robbed once, but I always tell everyone, “don’t judge the entire journey by a couple little things like that.” In fact, our basic philosophy is that 98% of all the people in the world are good people. So your job when you’re out there is to just avoid that 2%. It’s simple!

Darren: Mmm Hmm. Yeah. That’s hard for some people to imagine, but maybe it does take time out on the road to realize that? I don’t know?

Pat: You have to have trust in people. You really just have to say, “How would I treat these strangers coming into my town?” And we found that most people were not only ready and willing, but also able to help. In giving directions and finding places and getting food. You know? Things like that.

Cat: And also, a lot of the things that you hear in the news, things that are written in the newspaper, slants on countries that are supposed to be a certain way. And they’re not that way at all! But that’s just the perception, because that’s what’s told in the media… that it’s going to be like this. Like there’s all this talk about Cuba now. Well, we went to Cuba! And some of the commentary that we hear from the media on “what Cuba is supposed to be like.” It’s not that way!

Pat: People are not starving. There are not homeless people in the streets. There are more homeless people her in our country. We didn’t see any homeless people!

Cat: And there’s no violence. What we’re hoping to do is to open people’s minds and say, “you know, be free thinking. Don’t just go by what the US Embassy report says it’s supposed to be like.”

Pat: Oh boy! If you read the US State Department reports on travel, you will never go anywhere. You will lock yourself in your closet and hide, because they are always terrible. It’s almost like they’re expecting some sort of liability if they don’t say the worst of the worst.

Darren: So, for someone planning a tour outside of the United States, let’s say, how do you recommend that they do make sure it is safe for them to travel? Like, I think a lot of people, when they think of Africa especially, think the whole continent is off limits basically.

Cat: Well, we were pretty apprehensive. I remember standing on the top of Gibraltar. You take a little tram up to the top and we were up at the top looking out and you can see Morocco. Well, you can see a lot of Africa there. Oh my gosh! We were petrified. We were like, “Oh my gosh! What are we getting ourselves into?” And we got on that ferry and we went to Spain and got on the ferry and went across and we were pretty nervous. But, the thing is, you just have to have an open mind. You can’t make any plans. You can’t make any predetermined… now don’t be stupid and go into a place without investigating… obviously. But when we got there, not only were they friendly, but they were clapping for us…

Pat: Yeah. We were told to watch out. That there were charlatans and thieves and they will pickpocket you and steal your money and they’ll hover right around because they know that everybody coming here is loaded with money and they want to get a piece of it that they can. You know, I think it’s because when you’re a touring cyclist, you don’t look rich. You don’t have a fancy wrist watch on. You don’t have jewelry and things like some foolish tourists do. You know?

Cat: You have to be smart, you know? And you have to look on the computer… on the Internet… you know, travel warnings. Not necessarily the US Embassy, but other cycle tourists that had been in that area. Their experiences, you know? And places to avoid. So you have to be smart, but you also have to have a little bit of an adventurous spirit in you. You know? Just to say, “We’re here. We’re just going to see what happens.” And really, most of the time, our biggest weapon was our smiles. We decided that if we are friendly to people, and smiling, and not offensive and not threatening looking… coming into a place and arrogant… like a lot of tourists are when they go to foreign countries, that we may be received a little bit better. And how can I tell if that really was the case, but I know a lot of times when we were cycling down the street and there would be very questionable eye contact of, “what are you doing here?” and we would just smile. You know? And try and say hello in their local language and be friendly and do high fives and stuff… and it really helped.

Darren: Yeah. The way you put that was probably the best… “Your weapon was your smile” because I’ve received so many emails from people asking me, “Do you carry a gun while you’re traveling?” and stuff like that. But it’s so true! Your best weapon is your smile. I’ve never heard that before.

Pat: We actually had a tiny little can of mace that a friend gave us before we left… which could have been deadly if we had used it.

Darren: Sure.

Pat: But the top rusted off before we got finished cycling through Europe.

Cat: We didn’t know how to use it anyway.

Pat: We had a Swiss Army knife and we lost that unfortunately. But, you know?

Darren: Can you talk briefly about your website for a little bit, because you’ve documented your whole trip on your website at www.WorldRiders2.com. Did you go into the trip with a laptop, knowing that you were going to be updating the website this whole time?

Pat: We don’t want to scare anybody, but we actually left with two laptops. They were cumbersome and difficult to carry. Catherine was doing some updating and managing our affairs back home and we thought it would be a good idea to have a backup. But in those days they were like 12 – 14 pounds each. And so somebody gratefully unloaded them for us in Portugal. Both of them at the same time. So we ended up in Gibraltar. We bought another, which, by that time they were smaller. It was a year and a half after we left home. Actually, we ran into a guy we liked. He was doing a website for a guy up in the state of Washington and we really liked the way he wrote. He’s a cyclist. He’s a good guy. www.RedArrowGroup.com if anyone is interested. He put the website together for us and then maintained it and I think it was a labor of love for him, because he’s one of the tour guides/riders for Adventure Cycling.

Cat: He leads tours across the country.

Pat: He’s a great family guy. And so what we did… we’re not very technical. In fact, Catherine’s dad may be more technical that we are now, but we arranged it so… Catherine every night kept notes on the daily activities and I typed things into a journal, but I was always a little behind… as is typical I supposed? And also, with digital pictures/digital photography, when you pull the pictures up you get dates on them too. So it made it fairy easy to do. And I could put it all together and email the text, but I didn’t have the technical knowledge (I’m better at this now by the way) to email the photos, so I would put them on a CD and mail them. And you know what? It never failed. It always got to Wally. His name is Wally Werner. And he was always able to put them in. His son did a lot of the work with him. It was really a family affair. His daughter also, before she went to college, spent time working on our website too.

Darren: I had been following your website for I don’t know how long exactly, but I had no idea that you were actually mailing a CD like that. I just assumed you were doing it yourself while out on the road. Because the website is so impressive. There is just so much there as far as stories from the road and pictures and videos and all sorts of stuff.

Pat: Probably too much.

Darren: You could really spend a lot of time on the site, but there’s a lot to learn too I think. I haven’t been over it all myself, but…

Pat: Oh, it’s impossible. Our best readers are retired. I always tell people, “Caution when entering the site.” Today, because it’s completed (at least that portion of it), there are 10,000,000 words and 15,000 pictures. So if you’re looking to sit down and look at it you better bring your (pajamas).

Darren: And I’m guessing that’s not even all the pictures.

Pat: I’d estimate that we took 40,000 pictures. It’s Wally who estimated 15,000 ended up on the site.

Darren: Wow, that’s crazy.

Pat: That’s part of the fun we’re doing right now. We’re putting together our photos and do an exhibition with the bikes and some video and the stuff that we have. Just for fun.

Darren: Just for fun? Are you planning to write a book or anything?

Pat: Oh, I’m struggling with that actually. I’ve got some of the chapters completed. It’s always difficult to know what direction to take with the book. The book can’t be just the journal, because that’s already there. So you’ve got to condense things down, editing things out, make decision. I’m trying not to make it a day to day by day by day routine like a journal. So it’s coming… slowly.

Darren: So, we don’t have a lot of time left, but for someone who is planning a tour… maybe as adventurous as you – around the world… or maybe just a short trip from their home… do you have any words of wisdom or pieces of advice that you could give?

Cat: Keep your mind open. Keep a positive attitude. When you get down, in bad weather or whatever, just know that the next day is probably going to be better. Or maybe it will be worse? But the next day will be better. You just have to go one day at a time. You can’t make too many plans, because things change from day to day. I think the most important thing is to keep a positive attitude and to keep going toward the goal that you want to achieve.

Pat: I think the biggest difficulty in general is weather. From the scorching heat of the Sahara to the freezing snow and ice of Russia. In fact, people ask us, “Isn’t it dangerous?” We were robbed at gunpoint at on point in Peru. Don’t let that slow you down from going to Peru. It’s a fabulous place. Just be a little bit more cautious than we were. But people said, “Well weren’t you afraid?” And we began thinking about the David Letterman list – the top 10 things. The armed robbery is at the very lowest level. We only had that once. The biggest danger faced daily was being out in the sun. No doubt about it. Then comes fumes from busses, trucks, and cars. Then comes busses, which are always more aggressive than trucks and cars. And then it slowly works its way down. And way down at the other end is armed robberies.

Darren: Right. It’s kind of like our normal lives here when we are at home. People are afraid of shark attacks and other things that don’t really pose that big of a threat.

Pat: When we were in Peru and we went through that moment in our lives, Catherine was really worried and I said, “Look. We came more than 2/3 of the way around the world before this happened. So as things go, we’ll probably make it all the way home… and as we get home, someone will do that to us.” That stuff does happen here. Probably as much or more than it happens down there.

Cat: Where do you live?

Darren: I live in Park City, UT now, but I told Pat before that I lived in Camarillo, which is, as you know, right next to you. So that’s where I first heard of you guys. It was in the local paper and I started following you.

Cat: It’s your dad that passed on the paper?

Darren: Yeah

Cat: Unbelievable

Pat: His father is a Chiropractor. And no, my (back) injuries didn’t come from cycling. I believe it came from years of jogging. So, my advice to people in their 40s is to get off the knees, slow down on the jogging, and get on your bike.

Darren: That’s what I also think is so great about bicycle touring is that it’s enjoyed by people of all ages. I’m 24 years old. I did my first tour at age 17. But now I’m riding with people that are all ages. 40… 60… 70… plus! You know?

Pat: Don’t give up on us. Because we haven’t given up on cycle touring. We’re planning a trip in November of this year to go to Southeast Asia.

Darren: And how long will this be? Another four years?

Pat: No, no, no!

Cat: Four months maybe?

Pat: Depending on how much we like it and how well we do. The overall objective is that if I go to eight more countries, I will have been in more than 100 countries. And it will push Cat over 70 counties that she has been in. Our tour that we just ended a year and a half or so ago actually took us through 57 countries.

Darren: Wow, and then like you said, you went through China and Russia and all of those before.

Pat: Yeah. Some of them were doubles for me. And for Catherine too. I just would discuss that we rode bicycles called “Land Riders.” We first saw them on an infomercial and I called the company and I asked if they would make it around the world. The girl that answered said, “Well, the owner is right here.” He happened to be a South African. So he was quite interested. And I said, “How can I figure it out if they are worth while or not?” And he said, “Buy a couple of them.” So they have a process there (and they still do) that if they have any that are returned or reworked, that they sell them at a reasonable price. So we paid about $300 each for their better bike and we like them. And when I called them and told them that I thought they would work, but they needed certain modifications in order to haul the bags and things.

Darren: Were these specific touring bikes? Or no?

Pat: They really look like a beach cruiser. They put the brazens on so that we could put the racks on them. I think we used Blackburn racks and we used Ortlieb bags and that’s about it. We had a North Face tent and sleeping bags and things like that.

Darren: An they worked just fine? The bikes and all the equipment?

Pat: They worked just fine. We’re still riding them.

Cat: We’re taking them to Southeast Asia with us. He won’t let me get a new bike.

Darren: Really?

Pat: Not until we get back. The bikes have about more than 26,000 miles on them and I want them to go to 30,000. Then we’ll retire them.

Darren: There we go. That’s another question I get all the time. People think that they have to spend $4,000 on the newest, best touring bike available to do their tour and… I guess that proves that really, you don’t have to.

Pat: There’s another thing Darren. And that is, if you’re going to places like out of the way places in South America, Mexico, Central America and Africa…. You’re better off with a simple bike. Because if you have the disc brakes and all these other things…

Cat: People want them.

Pat: Yeah. Number one: people might want a $3,000 bike… and number two: they won’t have parts to help you if you break. You’ll have to sit and wait and wait for parts. So, everything on the bike was simple except the shifter. The bike had an automatic shifter on the rear derailleur and they provided extras for us to carry, so it worked out just great. By the way, it was a $600 bike and I think they are $700 now.

Darren: Well, I think we are just about out of time. I’ve taken up a half our here. We’ll have to talk more about the other parts of your trip (in the future). We haven’t gone into a lot of details. Like I said, we could probably talk about your trip for a very long time.

Pat: We talk to clubs and things. We’re going to do a Rotary Club next month and we’ve decided that we’re just going to cut it up into little segments of the trip. We’ll give an overview and then we’ll say, “Today we are going to talk about…”

Darren: Yeah.

Pat: Everyone wants to know everything… and how do you condense four years into thirty minutes.

Darren: Exactly! I get that when I come back from my tours. My friends or family, they say, “Well, how was it?” You know? With one question! “How was it?”

Pat: Yeah. And they expect one answer.

Darren: Yeah. Exactly. What are you supposed to say after that?

Pat: Well, we have so many memories and we have so many good photos and so much about our trip, people say, “How was it?” and you start talking and it’s like…

Cat: They glaze over.

Pat: It’s like you’re talking about your grandkids or something. Their eyes glaze over and they’re kind of looking for the exit and wondering how to get out of this conversation.

Cat: Well, I think it is so incomprehensible for most people. They just don’t get it. I mean, they just have no idea what you are talking about when you’re talking about what you did. They’re like, “Oh, well that was a nice trip, wasn’t it?” Yeah. It was really nice.

Pat: Well, we can end our interview like we usually end our talks. We say, “Now, for us, the world seems a smaller place… and we feel like we’re bigger people.”

Darren: Very good. Well, thank you so much for doing this. That was Pat and Cat Patterson. Once again, their website is www.WorldRiders2.com. This is Darren Alff from BicycleTouringPro.com. Thank you for joining us. Until next time! Bye-bye.

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