I asked someone from the British Cycle Touring Club (CTC) about cycling across the USA - his advice was “The middle bit will be week after week of hard slog across endless farmland - sun, wind, dogs - you’d be better off cycling the good bits and catching a ride for the rest”.

Advice I’d probably apply to riding around the world - no sense torturing yourself for ‘completeness’.

Even driving or taking a train across the middle of the US is a bit of a slog. I can't imagine trying to get up for one's thirteenth consecutive day of corn, followed by corn, followed by more corn, then a small farming town you can cycle past in about a minute, then... corn... more corn.... and you check the map and you've still got several days left to go. You'd better love cycling for the sake of cycling itself.

imagine living here

A permanent opener that was always presented as a joke but that's also eerily close to a rule of life, albeit on the nihilist side.