Ed Gillis is a 49-year-old teacher, writer, and bike tourist who, along with his 44-year-old wife Jocelyn, has spent the last 16 years enjoying long cycle trips with their two sons. (yukon4explore.com)
From hiking Patagonia with a newborn to biking 10,000 kilometers across Europe as a family of four, Ed breaks down how they made adventure a non-negotiable part of parenting. He shares how they kept the trips affordable—living without a car, cobbling together gear, and taking full advantage of the generosity of strangers. We discuss the financial trade-offs of choosing time over money, the long nights spent juggling freelance work and childcare, and how their Yukon-based careers as a teacher and naturopath allow them to take summers (and sometimes half-years) off for extended bike tours.
Now that their teenage sons plan the routes and carry most of the gear, Ed jokes that his days of being the strongest rider are over. We also get into the magic of Warmshowers hosts, why New Zealanders love inviting traveling families into their homes, and what happens when your only roadtrip soundtrack is One Direction.
Ed’s books, Bike Touring with Kids: the Oceania Odyssey and Bike Touring with Kids: the Europe Epic, document the family’s adventures.
Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/ed
Recorded in December 2024.
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript. Typos and mistakes exist!
Blake Boles 00:00
Ed Gillis, welcome to Dirtbag Rich.
Ed Gillis 00:03
Thanks so much for having me. I’m very excited.
Blake Boles 00:06
Tell me about some of the adventures you and your family have gone on together that other people think are either crazy or impossible.
Ed Gillis 00:15
I think part of the thing with doing bike touring, and our big thing is bike touring with our kids. And I think people tend to think that that sounds, it sounds impossible, it sounds crazy. But the first thing I really do need to tell people is that you don’t have to be an athlete to do what it is that we’ve been doing.My wife Jocelyn is good at everything, but I’ve always been painfully average athletically. When I was a kid, you know, we couldn’t really afford hockey as a Canadian, which everybody else affords. So I was a bowler when I was growing up. I’m terrible with my feet, so I played softball instead of soccer.Softball is like baseball, but with a larger ball so that all the uncoordinated kids can still hit it. I played volleyball and basketball, but only up till grade seven, and then I stopped being good enough for that. And then I ran a little bit of cross-country in high school.We were a pretty elite school in cross-country running, but my team was always the one who didn’t make it to the next level, and we were always kind of left behind in all the trips.
Blake Boles 01:24
You’re really painting a picture of non-athletic.
Ed Gillis 01:28
And that’s, I guess, because one of the, it has to be said because the, uh, when people say, oh, we’ve done all this stuff with your kids, you must be able to scale all these mountains on your bicycle.Like that is, it is, it is truly, um, it is truly not, uh, truly not the case, but kind of with all times with your, when you’re, when you’re going with kids, um, uh, you kind of grow into it a little bit too, right? So, um, when we started out, uh, my wife and I, I mean, we had biked together a lot. So we had first met, we kind of fell in love on bicycles.Um, but, uh, and we did our honeymoon from Vancouver to Tijuana, uh, and then a bunch of different other bike trips. So we were just happiest while we were on bikes. But, um, when it came, came time for, for kids, uh, a lot of people told us, uh, oh, okay, then that’s the end of that. You guys don’t get to do your adventures anymore.But I clearly remember a friend of mine named Brad who said, uh, you know, kids they’re actually pretty portable. Like what, when they’re babies, you just, you just carry them everywhere and, uh, you don’t need to bring food because probably breastfeeding. And so maybe you can just go and do something else. And it was kind of that that sparked this idea for us.So our very first trip with our son, Heron, he was, uh, six months old or six weeks old, I’m sorry, we went to, uh, uh, to an old family cottage, kind of little old cabin in the woods. And then from there we started plotting. And when he was about two months old, we went on and hiked on the Camino to Santiago.Um, and, uh, that was pretty amazing that he was this, the, the, the French people called him the plu petit pelerin, which is the youngest, the littlest, the littlest pilgrim on this, on this long pilgrimage.And so we hiked that year, um, along the Camino and then Southern Spain and into Italy, and then we, uh, went into South America and hiked along in Patagonia with him, we hiked about 2000 kilometers with him on Jocelyn’s back. And then I had a backpack of about 50 pounds on me, which, um, given my previously stated poor athleticism was pretty a bit of a struggle, but we did it.And, but I think like it just as you, as you grow, as the kids grow, you just meet the challenges with them. So that was our first hike in our first adventure and got us realizing, wow, this is something that, um, not only are we not going to have to miss out on all of our adventures that we’d love doing together, but we get to do more because we’ve got kids.And so since then, every summer, since the kids were babies, uh, our second son Sitka was born two years later. We hiked through through Hawaii for a while with him. And then we just, every summer, we would take two or three weeks when we could from our, our jobs and our schooling, um, to bike all around, uh, BC.
Ed Gillis 04:31
There is a great biking on the sunshine coast, the Kettle Valley rail trail and the Okanagan, uh, we went along through the Rockies post COVID.Um, we’ve also biked through Cuba, but then our biggest trips we kind of reserved for, we kind of saved up and, and found moments in our lives where we could take six months and, uh, when the boys were seven and five years old, we, uh, cycled across Oceania about a 6,000 kilometers total. So we went from North to South and New Zealand.And then, uh, and then just, uh, a few years ago, they were, I guess, uh, 13 and 11, and we went through Europe. So we cycled 10,000 kilometers in Europe through 20 countries over six months, uh, all on our own bikes this time.And, uh, yeah, so that’s a, and now we’ve kind of got to the point, we could get touched on it later, but now we got to the point where, um, they are pretty settled in their high school and we still find little, little way opportunities to get by, but, um, at this point, as we’re kind of coming towards the end of our parenting journey with them, at least them at home, we’re feeling pretty confident that we did a pretty decent job at, uh, showing them how to adventure.
Blake Boles 05:47
You and I almost crossed paths summer 2022 when we were both cycling on the Camino. I believe my friend and I were going East and your family was going West, but we somehow missed each other and I had heard about you on lines. I think someone pointed me your direction. Um, so a real missed opportunity, Ed. But I’ve run into a few other families in my own cycle travels.Uh, one that really stands out was on the carterra Austral in Patagonia. Um, a French family was cycling with four kids and, uh, three of them had their own bikes. One was on one of the parents bikes and what really stands out to me is as we encountered them in one of the most remote stretches, one of the, some of the worst gravel, um, just like really far away from, from assistance.And they all seem to be so chill and relaxed and, and right before they departed this rest stop to continue cycling in the opposite direction. Both of the parents took out like e-cigarettes and took these long drags on their e-cigarettes and I was like, come on, this is a bit too stereotypical.
Ed Gillis 06:54
Wow. That’s hilarious.
Blake Boles 06:57
But I don’t see that many families who are out there doing it and I think that people who are listening and thinking Okay, it kind of makes sense when you have this like three month year old who you can just strap on to your back But what happens when they become mobile when they can start running away from you and getting themselves into trouble and disappearing and so maybe go back and describe how How these adventures progressed and how you managed as a family when you were in that that stage of raising young kids
Ed Gillis 07:28
Yeah, I think you do have to you do have to adapt. I mean, and so, you know, I think a lot of the adventurous life is kind of some of it is doing what you want to do when you want to do it. But there’s a lot of you kind of have to structure things and adapt a little bit with kids. But you find that that’s actually kind of that leads to so many other better things.We started out with them on a chariot. So like one of those things that you tug behind them. And then so then those, you know, I guess after after the hiking part. So the first the first adaptation overall was that when a baby is newborn, you can’t wear a helmet because their skull is still forming. So we’re like, oh, geez, I guess we’ve got a hike. OK, and we loved hiking. It was phenomenal.We never would have thought that we would have enjoyed just walking together, the two of us with the hair and sleeping most of the time in the backpack. But we never would have thought we enjoyed that that much. And so that was a pretty phenomenal experience to just have that awakening moment. But then once they could bike, we got them on the bikes.And so into the chariot, they went when there were the two of them, it would be pretty heavy, but they would be in the back. And then we bought another kind of this contraption that fits on the back of our old mountain bike called an extra cycle.And so the extra cycle, we ended up like rigging it with a couple extra handles and then Joss like fabricated this little padding out of a out of some foam and some like an old rain jacket. And so we just we just made it so that it was super comfortable for them. So we were riding a lot.And I was actually when even when we were in town and Joss was in med school, we would have I would be biking around town with what we called the three seater because it had three seats in it and we would be biking around doing groceries. So that was the second set was the three seater. And it was they were still mobile and they were able to kind of be out there in the air, but they didn’t need to.They didn’t need a pedal or anything as they were really young. And then actually we could you could we Jerry rig this like old like bike seat, like this padded bike seat so that the youngest one could nap and they would switch. Then the next contraption that was cool was called the we who and the we who it was kind of like a reclining bike attached to the back of our bike.And the best thing about that was that they could pedal and it was in no way helpful at all for us to have them pedal in terms of moving forward. But they were also strapped in so like they could pedal and pedal and they felt really engaged and they were getting their exercise and then and then they would just nap when they needed to nap as well. So that was a pretty good setup.And then so there’s early days as they were wanting getting more wandery and they wanted to wander more. We just stopped more. And, you know, again, as I say, like not super athletic.
Ed Gillis 10:16
So we kind of welcomed that that we could go 40 or 50 kilometers in a day and we’d have to stop. And the stopping was probably the best part because we have to look ahead and where we were going and like, here’s a neat park or here’s a neat beach or here’s a neat spot that we can stop. And so we had to kind of really see much more of what we saw around us.Before that, Joss and I would often have a plan of, you know, going 80 kilometers a day or 90 kilometers a day. And and we would kind of miss some things a little bit, too, because we needed to get somewhere. But the kids just make you stop and look around a lot more. As then as they got older, we we got these phenomenal contraptions called Bike Friday Family Tandems.And these were are like tailor made in Oregon. This is one of our biggest splurges because at the time we were living in with like student loans and lines of credit and all this stuff. So we splurged on these bike tandems because we knew we were going to Australia and New Zealand.So the Bike Fridays are these marvelous things that can be taken apart in about an hour and a half, and they can fit inside a Samsonite suitcase. If you can picture just like the ones that the old folks roll onto the plane, you put your bike in the suitcase and then you just roll it onto the plane. There’s no questions. There’s nobody asking you what’s in it.You just roll it on and then you get it to your destination and then you put your bike back together in an hour and a half. And the kids, you know, they’re seven, five at this time. They loved it. They started to get into the mechanics of it and they would help us put them back together and then we could ride wherever we wanted to.And you actually attach the Samsonite suitcases at the back of the bike and you tug those along as well. So that kind of got into that point. And those tandems were great because you could feel them helping you. So we were going up. I remember very vividly in New Zealand on the South Island. There’s a pass called Host Pass. And it’s just just a little bit north of Wanaka. So you’re coming into Wanaka.You just left the West Coast. You’re coming into Wanaka on the South Island. And we just like loaded them up with some with protein bars and all that stuff. And it was a long slog. But I could feel I had the youngest behind me, Sitka. And he’s just singing along. And he’s just like, hoss, pass, because he thought that word was so funny and we’re just laughing.And we kind of just it just kind of flew by because we were it was really terrible on our legs. But like, man, the kids loved it. And when Sitka said, like, I’m going to go into turbo mode. Now, dad, I’m like, all right, let’s go into turbo mode. And then boom, I get this little boost with these little legs for, I don’t know, 30 or 45 seconds at a time until he got exhausted.But man, it was always just the perfect time. So I mean, yeah, you’re right that in that like there are periods where it becomes more awkward, like especially with hiking.
Ed Gillis 13:12
If we were hiking, we’re like, oh, man, they’re a little too young to do too far or whatever. But you also find a lot of neat ways to get kids to motivate them. So a lot of the motivating for us were like math games or spelling games. So we would be they’d be bored on a hike or they’d be like, I don’t want to hike anymore. We’re like, OK, we’re doing a math game. And for some reason, we were lucky.Maybe they just loved it. So they were just, all right, let’s do eight by eight times eight, four times four, three times six, you know. And that would just the time would fly by. And now, I mean, this is they’re probably in grade two and grade three. Like now they know their multiplication tables better than all their all their friends do. So the teachers appreciate that.And then on the bikes, the oh, sorry, just to say quickly about bikes the biking, we found that sometimes even as they got older, we need to distract them even on the bicycles. And so music ended up being the way to do it. And so that was we bought like this is years ago.We bought this kind of this is before now each of us have our own Spotify list that we have to take turns doing playing on our bikes. But this is like an old kind of bike radio and you had to like download the songs onto it. And so we did this and we were biking in on the Cascade Mountains in Washington. We were there for two weeks. We were going up this Cascade Mountains, another really long slog.And somehow we messed up like the downloading. So the problem was that we the only there was only one album of all of the ones we picked were like, you know, I downloaded my, you know, 90s grunge and Jocelyn downloaded her country and the boys downloaded theirs. And the only one that stuck was the best hits of One Direction. And oh, my God, that was that was two weeks of One Direction.And to this day, we still love One Direction. It is like those songs come on and the moments just just come flooding back. But in the moment, we were really pretty tired of those same songs and at all the time. But the kids loved it because they were they was the songs that they picked. So, yes, all those all those ways are ways to get.And over the years, we’ve just found a ton of different like we get to it more. We talk about it lots more in our books and stuff. I like tons and tons of ways to motivate kids that we’ve learned on the way to. And now now they ride their own bikes and they carry their own gear. And and and they carry actually, to be honest, like most of the gear for us, too.So I always used to joke that like eventually I’m going to be the one in the chariot in the back with them boys pulling me. And I think we’re getting close to that.
Blake Boles 15:39
That’s a beautiful vision, Ed, with a total role reversal.
Ed Gillis 15:43
Napping in the back of the chariot, I can’t wait.
Blake Boles 15:45
Yeah, you’ve trained your own porters.
Ed Gillis 15:47
That’s right.
Blake Boles 15:49
So people must, uh, see you and say, how long is your trip? And you’re like, well, we’re out here for two months. We’re out here for six months. They say, have you done this before? You’re like, we do something kind of like this every summer. And they just assume, great. These guys must just come from, from wealth.Uh, no one else could possibly afford to take this much time off to just go cycle or hike around with their kids. Um, and so please, please tell me about the, the illustrious lineage that you come from and the trust funds that you, you withdraw from every month.
Ed Gillis 16:22
Yeah, yeah, I guess a bit about my backstory, I grew up in a pretty traditional family working class city in southern Ontario near Niagara Falls called St. Catharines. And it’s, you know, it’s auto auto workers, although my dad was an architect, and just kind of getting by from thing to thing.My mom was a stay at home mom, my dad had his nine to five job, as I said, like, in Canada, the measure of your of your status, social status is whether you can afford to play hockey. And we were not one of those families. So the bowling aside, it was still a wonderful childhood. It was stable. We had no clue of the world outside of us.We would go on, you know, like one week cheap little camping trips and are like really, really inefficient, canvas tent to go camping back in the days when camping in Ontario didn’t cost like 50 or 60 bucks a night. So we would do a lot of that. But I think what I appreciated most about my childhood anyway, is that I got my best parenting lesson out of that.And that was that my parents structured their life to be present. So my mom was stay at home, because she always wanted to do that. And when she did go back to work, it was just during the school day. When we were well into high school, my dad was always a coach and a scout leader, like, we’re not really big talkers, my family, but he was always there. And so present in his own way.And so I think that like, we didn’t have any money. And we weren’t you know, I remember vividly remember my mom bought me like a new baseball glove, and I was so thankful for it. And she’s like, we just I can remember her saying to me in the car, like, we’re just happy that you’re so thankful for so it’s for the little things, you know.And but family was everything being that those that time together was really, really important. And I think when you have awesome parents, you want to grow up and you want to be an awesome parent. So that’s kind of where we came from. And I also I guess I got to learn how to get by with not a lot of stuff too. And just just appreciate some of those little things. But then we passed on to our kids.So then fast forward, I guess I meet Jocelyn, who also grew up in a family without a lot of money, her parents had split when she was young. But they were also both really dedicated to spending time individually with their kids. So that kind of ethic was passed to her as well.But when I first met Jocelyn, she was starting a cross country bicycle organization called it was called the Atesha project, which has since folded a few years ago. But for many years, they were a bunch of young kind of activists sort of like young people, kids in their 20s, who were all about sustainable consumption.So the idea of like consuming less and more ethically, like fair trade back before fair trade was a big thing, or and riding on your bikes and secondhand clothing, like that was the thing. And so I met her. And I just like fell in love with her with the idea the whole bit. And so we spent a couple of years in a tiny apartment with the entire rest of the people who worked in the organization.
Ed Gillis 19:46
So we were like crammed in this little apartment. And we would go for like the highlight of our week was if we found bananas on the expired rack, the grocery store, because that meant muffins, right? We were so excited. And every once in a while, one of our roommates, Lori would say, you know, guys, I think, you know, can we get a stick of butter this week?That would be the best, you know, like I can make better muffins if I had just a stick of butter, right. And so we would do that. So that was kind of that. That was kind of where we come from, is getting by once we were married, it was the same kind of ethic. Secondhand clothes, no television, we never had a car until we moved to the Yukon here a couple of years ago.Even then, it’s like a $5,000 crap box that I’ve run into a number of different trees. I slid off the road a couple of years ago and ran into a tree and it just kept going. We didn’t have cell phones until just recently.
Ed Gillis 20:45
We used to have my granddad’s old duck phone that quacks when it answers. So I kind of wanted to stay with that as long as I could. Yeah, keep the duck phone.Yeah and so I think like the and I guess the lifestyle we’ve chosen though like doesn’t really need a lot of money like biking and outdoor life is is cheap like we even went Joss was in med school and we were racking up all our our line of credit debt was we prioritized our weekends outside so we would work super hard at the time I was working so but we again we structured our lives around being with the kids so like I was a stay-at-home dad but I also worked so I would get up at four thirty five o’clock in the morning I would be I was a ghostwriter for an organization that my friends had run and so I worked from four thirty five o’clock till about seven thirty when Joss had to go to school and then I was with the boys all day and we would play outside and we’d go to the park and we do the free gymnastics thing and we do all these things play board games and then when Joss got home at five I’d have dinner ready and then I worked till ten and then when the boys went to bed at seven she studied till ten so we just structured our lives to get by financially best we could and to spend the time with them I guess when we did splurge when we do splurge and we do we splurge on groceries we splurge on to be honestly organic produce which I know for some people feels a little out of reach as well but that’s the only thing we splurge on and our bikes so I’m currently sitting in a garage with a lot of bikes because things are a little bit different than they used to be but I can totally remember the first bike I bought one I had for Joss because the last the bike I had before Joss was stolen from the side of my house in grade 11 and I didn’t bike until I met her and then I bought this bike because I was so in love with this woman that I met and I was like I’m buying the best bike I can afford and it was like 200 bucks and and then like it was like years later that we or no every really every time I went into a mechanic the mechanic said you know this is a really kind of crappy bike right like this is like an entry-level bike like all of the parts are crappy and I said I know that but I know so like bit by bit I built this bike which I called Sol for solidarity because I was a hippie at the time we we we bought like every little I would like spend a little bit extra on it on each little part till basically I’d built up a bike that worked pretty well and uh and I got by on that until just recently when I got a new touring bike and uh because this Sol had just run his run his time I felt bad for him and uh yeah this new touring bike is just fantastic so wow a bike can go can run really smoothly like it the brakes don’t have to rub it’s pretty pretty cool so anyway all that to say that um we yeah we found ways to to do things and even still today that now joss has graduated from ed school and I’m teaching like um and I think the ethic we want to pass to the boys is that like you don’t need to spend money on things that aren’t important and um for us it was always about priorities and I think even what you’ve talked about in the past on the podcast which I love is the idea of priorities and finding of time to passion and time but also like finding the financial means to do it and for us our priority with kids especially and most parents will understand this is like it’s time priority is time with your kids so whatever it takes you um you make that happen and so um there’s a lot of sacrificing and a lot of really long nights and a lot of exhaustion um while we were both in school and and I was kind of working that went back to teacher’s college so um yeah we just uh there were some really lean years but we also decided as well and one big cost of of parenting is daycare and um not at all this has to be everybody’s decision but we just decided we didn’t want to do daycare and so that’s what came of it is like hey save a lot of money because you’re with them all the time and you just work all around their their waking hours and we were able to find a way to do it so um we decided to work pretty hard we racked up a large line of credit and while we’re going to school now so we’re slowly slowly paying it off it’s kind of like we’re paying for it now to be honest
Blake Boles 24:58
And let’s dive into the specifics of how you manage your time and then we’ll talk about money. So you mentioned that Jocelyn became a doctor, she’s a naturopath and she had to go back to school for that and took on debt and you were doing some of the ghost writing stuff but now you’re a teacher. How are you able to balance this so that you are still able to spend time with with the boys?Like how do the puzzle pieces actually fit together practically speaking?
Ed Gillis 25:27
Yeah. So for all that time, I guess it took us a while to figure out what it is we wanted to do with our lives. Like when we first met, we just figured we were just gonna be young and love and stuff forever, which we are now old and in love.And but I think so after after we’ve just finished school, and I guess what we decided like, hey, like, what’s gonna what’s gonna work so that we can spend time with the kids. And I mean, I’d always dreamed of being a teacher when I was in my 20s. But then I went off and did international development stuff and worked in federal politics for a long time.And but teaching just kind of kept coming back as like, hey, you want to structure your life around your kids, like this is the career for you, like, and so I chose it. And I do enjoy teaching it is it is a passion of mine.But like, I always kind of wanted to be Prime Minister, you know, and I kind of always wanted to be I wanted to be like, I wanted to be in a like a comedy troupe, like Monty Python, or in Canada, kids in the hall is like this famous comedy track, I kind of wanted to do that, you know, but I’m a teacher, because I, I want to be with my kids that I want to, I don’t want to make make things work.And so yeah, the teaching is now how I structure my time to be around them, they’re actually the same school as I am. So I bike into school with them, they bike home on their own, because they’ve got skiing practice and stuff.But, and then Jocelyn structures her clinic where she works three days a week, she’s in clinic three days a week, she runs her own clinic, which isn’t always the case, but and then also where we chose to live in the Yukon is a place where she was able to own her own clinic.She works on Mondays and Fridays to prepare for her three days a week that she’s in clinic so that she can see the most amount of patients as possible and give them the full attention that they need. And so she’s this beloved naturopathic doctor in town, who works her three days a week and then on the weekends, she’s completely free. And then she can close down the clinic.And the neat thing about the Yukon is like in the summertime, everybody wants to just get out. So nobody, nobody wants a doctor like she wouldn’t have patients if she wanted patients in the summer. And then I’ve got every holiday that the boys have, I have too. So it works out just great. So this summer, we will actually that’s first of all, how that worked out for the Europe.And so in the Yukon also, it’s a little bit of a chiller place, a lot chiller than in Europe, especially where you can just say, hey, I want to take a leave. For me, it was an unpaid leave. And we want to go for six months in Europe. And they around here, like they just shrug their shoulders and say, okay.And then the kids or the teachers are like, all right, well, you know, your kids doing okay, how about you like, talk about this on your bike ride, talk about like space and talk about like verbs and like, all right, let’s do that.
Ed Gillis 28:27
And being a teacher, that helps a lot too, because I can, I can do that. And so that’s how our six month Europe trip happened was, was organizing it that way. But then also every summer, we still and they are now 1614. And Blake, they still want to spend their summers with us like, we gave them the choice last summer, like, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Do you want to stay home?Do you want to have jobs? And they’re like, Nope, we want to go back to Denmark, and we want to go around the Baltic Sea on our bikes. We’re like, with us and they’re like, yeah, let’s go. And we’re like, all right, that’s good. And I can tell you more of the secrets later. But the short story of that one is that they both broke their arms with a within about a week away from our trip.And so like, Heron broke his he came home one day, well, he called me one day, like, I think I broke my wrist and they’re like, Oh, man, okay, so how are we gonna bike? And then so we like within two weeks, we’d replan to make it a hiking trip around France.And, and we had a great summer anyways, and then like a week after Heron broke his arms, it was like, yeah, you know, I think I have my arm hurts a bit and it was a buccal fracture, the same same bone, same side, both kids broke that bone. And so we just we we hiked around Europe instead. I have to ask if they broke at the
Blake Boles 29:47
same way? Were they doing the same thing?
Ed Gillis 29:50
No. Um, I, well, sick is a little bit more, maybe up front in Heron. He, so he just tripped in the forest running around with his friends, which one does in the Yukon and it just happened to fall funny, I guess. And then Heron says that he was just goofing around with soccer, but I’ve heard accounts that he was trying to do a bicycle kick. So I don’t know, but no, different things.But yeah, goofing around with friends basically was just it. And it’s one of those things. It’s always, it’s always like the things that the kids do on their skis or downhill skis, like the tricks that they pull off.I want to have Sausica go off a jump and, uh, and like he’s one ski fell off and he was in the middle of midair and I don’t know how he survived without it, but then like, yeah, he’s walking in the forest with his friends, looking for, for wood or something. And he fell and broke his wrist. So, so things roll here.
Blake Boles 30:38
So you said you had some secrets that you were going to share with us later. Can you just share those secrets now? Which secrets were you referring to?
Ed Gillis 30:49
Oh, yes. The secret to and this is, I guess, probably one of the bigger ones that I like to share with parents, especially parents of kids in their like 12, 13. They’re like, dude, like my kid isn’t going to want to do this. Like they’re busy. They’ve got all these things, you know, like they don’t want to spend time with us or or they’re hooked on their video games or whatever.And I said to my friend John this summer, who was trying to get his kids into it. I said, what we learn is, especially in Europe, is like let the kids plan the trip like they’re old enough. They can figure it out, especially if they’ve been around a little bit. And we thought about it because we did at the one point, like with Europe, we just didn’t have time.Like Joss and I didn’t have time to plan every single day and every single country. And so we’re like, OK, Sitka, you are on which countries you want. He’s like, I’m I’m interested in Portugal and Denmark. And then, OK, Aaron, what do you want? Like, I want France and Norway or something. Right.And so we had a family Google Doc and they just went to work like any spare moment they were planning the trip. For Aaron, it’s surfing. So he’s just really into surfing right now. And so his like entire time up the French coast, we were basically like rushing on our bikes to get from surf spot to surf spot. And so he was entirely engaged in that. For Sitka, it’s hiking.And so sick as we he really had read about the Dolomites in northern Italy. And so he wanted to go on a Via Ferrata. I don’t know if you’d probably done one of these things. It’s so cool. It’s like half mountain scaling and half just regular hike. So you’re in a harness. But there’s also these like iron rods built into the rock.And it’s from World War I, where like between Austria and Italy, they were warring. And so they built these ways for their soldiers to scale into the Alps better. And so now they’re just like these recreational trails or something. So we got a guide. And that was what Sitka absolutely wanted to do. When they were younger, it was a bit different.When Sitka, his when we were in New Zealand, we said, so it was sick as birthday was coming up and we’re like sick. Like, what do you want for your birthday, buddy? And this is another thing about bike tripping that is cool. Is it like kids can just love the simplest things, right? Like this ice cream or I want French fries, you know.But for him, he was like, I want to ride a horse and I want to pet a sheep because in New Zealand, that’s all you see, right? Is she like we counted tens of thousands of sheep on our bikes. And so we like how the heck do we find a pet pet a sheep? But we eventually found a way and he pet a sheep on his birthday. But as they get older, especially teenagers, like they can plan all of it.Like they plan the budgeting. And if they’re invested in what we’re doing, then they don’t mind camping outside almost all the time because they’re like, OK, well, if we can’t oh, if we get groceries instead of having a restaurant, like maybe I can go to that next ropes course or something.
Ed Gillis 33:44
And so there’s so many things that we found that Joss and I would never have thought to do like we never would have said to ourselves, that looks really good. That’s a big cable that you hold on to and then you get on to water skis and it airs you around this like ridiculous lake at this crazy pace. Called a cable park and they’re all across Denmark and we found one.The boys found one and we went and like we all loved it. And then like a ropes course like we found and like let’s climb around up here. Joss is afraid of heights, but she went anyway. Like we just love these zip lines, all these things that like as a couple, we never would have thought to do.But man, the boys figuring it out and the boys planning the trip gets them invested and then gets us doing things that we never would have done. I certainly don’t like surfing like I’m terrible. I’ve got this like I don’t know if you know, there’s that, you know, if you’re like the middle toe is a bit bigger than your big toe.They call it the intelligence toe means it’s a sign of intelligence, which everybody who has one says it’s a sign of intelligence. And nobody who doesn’t have one says it is. But of course, anyway, I always break that surfing like every time without a doubt, you know, and so because I stub my toes, I’m really awkward. But anyway, we go anyway and the boys love it.And yeah, that’s our thing is get the kids to plan because if they plan it, then then they’re in. And so this is the thing. So even this last summer, even though it was hiking and Heron’s lesson to hiking, sick was psyched about the hiking. But Heron said, OK, well, if we’re going to hike, then if we’re going to be in France, I want to see the Tour de France. We’re like, well, are we going to do that?He’s like, don’t worry, I’m going to figure it out. So he planned our whole hiking summer around how we could get to various different stages. And in the end, we saw four stages of the Tour de France, including the last one in Nice. And because that’s what he wanted to do. And so we planned our summer around what he wanted to do.And then spontaneously, we ended up at the Olympics and we went and saw there’s a whole bunch of free things you can see at the Olympics. Like we saw the bike racing and the triathlon and a whole bunch of other stuff. So yeah, the kids plan. That is like the number one. If you want to get your kids to do stuff with you, say, what do you want to do? I’m going to come along with you.And like whether you break your toe or you’re scared of heights, like just do it because now’s the time.
Blake Boles 36:04
I love this earlier you gave advice on like specific things to attach to the bike for younger kids and now you’re giving advice which is more relevant to adolescents and teenagers and you and I are totally aligned in this because when I run my teen trips I am constantly offloading all sorts of details and planning and purchases to the teens and they just love doing this stuff in groups and constraints pre-creativity and yeah it’s like if I try to invest all the energy or when I co-leaders try to plan everything everyone would come out more poor in the end and so yes.
Ed Gillis 36:46
Yeah, the one other thing with planning that I should probably mention that the boys loved, and this is maybe about how getting your kids out into the world to help teach them a lot, is that we were, at the very beginning, they’re like, oh, man, we’re hungry, like, what can we get? And we said, like, we’ll go into a bakery.And we’re like, we’re not going into the bakery, like, you’re the one that say you’re hungry, like, you go in. And they’re like, okay, well, give us a little bit of money. We’re like, well, we don’t have a lot, like, we’ll get you whatever you can get for two euros each, two euros each, and you have to order it in whatever language we’re in.We were in Spain, so we knew a little bit of Spanish, so it was fine. And I’m like, all right. So they came out and they loved it. And then we’re like, we should do this every day. And so throughout Europe, we called it the desserts of Europe challenge. And they had, they got two euros every day to go and like, load up on whatever they got.And but they had to order in the language of the country, which was easy in Spain, Spain and France. We were Canadian, so we speak French, but Portuguese was hard. And then as you start going through Slovenia, Croatia, and Greece, where you can’t even like, it was impossible. But the boys now know like, please, thank you. Can I have one of those? And delicious, like in every language in Europe.So the desserts of Europe were turned up pretty good. In France, we were a bit famished because like two euros buys you very next to nothing. And it’s like really fancy. But like in Germany or in Denmark, it buys you like this gargantuan stang doughy thing that like keeps you going for hours.
Blake Boles 38:16
Uh, that’s a very practical knowledge. There you go. Let’s come back to the money question, Ed, because the, the two places where you did your big trips and where you’ve done some shorter trips to are not exactly cheap places like Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe.I understand you did some Eastern Europe, but it sounds like you spent a lot of time in the more expensive parts of Europe and, um, you know, from the, from the outside, I’m not seeing exactly where this money comes from. Like you’re a school teacher. Jocelyn is a naturopath who’s not working exactly full time.Um, you’re living in the, the Yukon where I imagine costs are a bit lower, but probably income is a bit lower also. And, um, just tell me, is it really just frugality? Is it you guys, you know, cooking black beans instead of going out to restaurants? Uh, do you have any other like sources of, of income or, or help from, from outside help from the outside that is making this kind of life possible?
Ed Gillis 39:20
Um, we, well, the Yukon actually just, uh, and I probably would get in trouble for saying it, but the Yukon, the costs are a little higher than places, but the, the income is also considerably higher. So Canada takes care a little bit of it because, because we’re in the north and we’re remote, there’s a little bit more support, um, and understanding the cost of living is pretty high.Um, honestly, teachers, and maybe this is good because we’re short on teachers here in the Yukon, teachers get paid by far the best of any teacher in Canada.So, um, when I graduated from my, uh, teachers college in British Columbia, um, I had like a, like a, like a small contract before I moved up to the Yukon and I now make twice, like literally double the amount that a BC teacher makes in the Yukon. So we’re lucky on that end. And then also you can’t like Whitehorse being a capital city that folks have, um, decent government jobs and decent benefits.And so those, um, Joss does pretty well as well as an atropathic doctor, even though she’s only working a little bit. So to be honest, like at this point, like we’re like our income is now making up for the fact that we were, I don’t even know, I don’t even remember, but like a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt, probably with line between lines of credit and everything else.Um, for the first time in our lives, we, um, bought a house and we did have some help from, from family. So family lent us some, a little bit of money for the down payment, but we’ve since been able to pay that off to them as well.And we’re, as I say, we’re still paying off like mortgages and, uh, well, mortgage and, um, uh, we’ve, we’ve paid off our family at this point, but yeah, paying off mortgage and still paying off a little bit of line of credit with our, so we’re kind of like back it.We didn’t, we, we did, and we both, because we both came from families with no money, like we had, but we also didn’t have student loans for our university. Like we had to get scholarships. I took longer to finish my undergrad so that I could work and be able to pay it off. And Joss did the same thing. Like it’s just like, we’ve just done things, I think slower.And, but then when we decided like, this is what we want to do, um, we chose, um, careers and I guess places to live where we would know when we didn’t know, we hoped, we hoped with all our might that we would be able to pay off these, this debt, but we did rack up a lot of debt. So that’s where, that’s where Australian New Zealand came from was the debt.And then Europe came from, um, still having like going into a little bit more debt, but like, we’re knowing that we’d be able, we’d be fine paying it off.If you talk to me in about, um, eight or nine years when I want to retire and I can’t yet because we still have all this debt, then I might be like, darn, why did I, was I thinking, but we’re, we’re just, we’re paying for it now, I think is kind of the thing. Is there anything you feel like you had to really sacrifice?
Blake Boles 42:28
or give up or say no to in order to have the amount of time that you have to go on the trips that you’ve gone on. Maybe stuff that your friends have and you’re like, oh, that would be nice, but we prioritize our time in adventure instead.
Ed Gillis 42:45
Yeah, I think for me, it was career, I probably could have done different career that would have been also interesting to me, like I’ve done a whole bunch of different things in my life in my life, but like, at a certain point, we, you know, I had to shift to where what it would be to in order to be able to make our lifestyle with our kids work.We’ve never been interested in having like a television or cell phones or those kinds of things. Like, I think especially when we first met that mentality of really low consumption, that ethic of low consumption, just from like an environmental standpoint and a social standpoint was kind of more our thing. So I don’t really think that we think so much about sacrificing too much stuff.But I should say that like, we, like, frugality is a good chunk of it and kids kind of help a little bit, to be honest, like the biking community and I don’t know, hopefully maybe somebody’s mentioned it on your show before, there’s a great bike community, similar to what the couch surfing is, it’s called Warm Showers.And Warm Showers is this phenomenal bike community that is basically other cycle tourists who host other ones. So like, when we were in Vancouver, especially, we hosted a lot of people coming through Vancouver. And the coolest thing about it is like, you’re also a cycle tourist. So you know what cycle tourists want.So they arrive and you’re like, I’m going to give you a hot shower and I’m not going to talk to you. And I’m going to, here’s my laundry. And it’s like, you know me, you know, and here’s a huge meal, you know, and then when we go, that was what we would get. But also, what’s cool as well is that these are people that know the local scene.So I remember our good friend, still a good friend, Rod, in Australia, he was like, well, I would try an Australian accent, but I would massacre it. So he just said, hey, I’m going to take you surfing. So like seven year old hair and his surfing passion came from Rod and just north of Sydney in Australia.And then we were in Spain, we stayed with a fellow named David, and he helped us navigate this Spanish bureaucracy. It’s a super long story that it’s not worth getting into now, how we ended up getting the visas to get through Europe all that time. But he was like, no, like Spanish bureaucracy is like a sport.Like you have to sweat a lot and you have to train and you have to know the rules and it still, you can beat you down. But anyway, so he like navigated it with us because we have this new ally kind of thing. So warm showers is huge. But also I have to say, if you’re going to bike anywhere with kids, you have to start in Australia and New Zealand because they just attract generosity.So like I would say. maybe a slight exaggeration to say once a day, but at least once every two days, somebody would pull us over in a grocery store or on the middle of the road or once in a library and say like, hey, you’re staying with us tonight.
Ed Gillis 45:49
Like we, that’s so cool. Your kids are so, it’s so neat. Stay with us and tell us all about your trip. And like, if it was nine in the morning, we’d be like, why don’t we kind of get it going? But like most of the time it was like three, four in the afternoon. I remember one time we came out of this like rail trail and we were like really haggardly looking in a place called Angarui.And we saw this dude on an ATV and we’re like, okay, is there a campground nearby? We think there’s one. And he’s like, no, man, come with me. You’re staying with me. And we were on this venison farm and although we’re vegetarian, I was the designated like be polite and eat the venison. So I was sick for a few days afterward, but, and then so it was just lovely.So we would go and stay in these people’s house and we would like have this wonderful dinner and share all these wonderful stuff with them. And then we would, Joss and I woke up in the morning at this one place and the kids were eating ice cream for breakfast. And it was like basically staying with grandparents, right?Everywhere along the way, especially with you’ve got kids, people want to talk to you. They want to ask you questions and then they really want to invite you over. And I remember another time we were, it was amazing. We were like, it was like pouring rain around the Whanganui River in New Zealand along that river there and it was pouring rain.And so we arrived finally at our destination and there’s a pickup truck there. And honestly, it looked like people that were like a little bit sketchy looking and they walked over to us and we’re like, oh no, what have we done? What’s gonna happen?And they gave us this paper bag and they said, we live up the street and I like maybe like, I don’t know, 20 kilometers back and we saw you biking by and we like knew it was gonna rain. So we drove into town, bought you a huge thing of fish and chips and all this stuff, which again, we ate anyway because it was polite. And we went down to our wine cellar.We got the finest Maori wine and this is your supper. And it’s because we knew that you were gonna be miserable by the time you arrived here. And like we said, we just got out the words thank you and they were in their truck again and gone. Like didn’t want a word of it, just that’s what they did. And so it just happened so often in Australia as well.Like people always pulling us over and taking care of us. When our bikes broke down, our warm showers person came pick us up, called her buddy who ran the bike shop and he spent like hours fixing our bike which was completely wrecked. He had to drill a hole in our axle and all this stuff and he fixed it like kids just, they attract generosity.And although like we weren’t looking for it, I think it just always kind of came to us. And so, yeah, we took it. And so that was what saved a lot off of even our budget. Like we ended up having a lot more affordable trip as it was just because we discovered this. It’s a little, it’s a lot less so in Europe and a lot less so when your kids are as tall as you are.
Ed Gillis 48:45
So I think like that’s been, we’re a lot like Europe did cost a little bit more. Like in France, you have to camp because it’s expensive to stay inside but like in Portugal, for example, we were in the Algarve region and it was like, it’s normally very expensive to go and there’s nowhere to camp but we happened to be there in March and there is nobody at the resort.So resorts were like, I think it was like 30 euros for a night for all four of us inside and this like multi-room suite with fuzzy house coats and the whole bit and like for nothing because there was nobody else there, right? They were desperate to sell the rooms.And so, but then in Europe, there’s places like Albania and Croatia where like you can stay for next and like cheaper than a French campground with a huge, huge meal as well because they’re countries that are starting to build their tourism industry. So yeah, there’s lots of ways to figure it out.And we used to have this really good deal going with and there’s I think a lot of even podcasts about how to use credit cards to get free flights and stuff like that. And so we had kind of figured this out. Joss’s uncle pointed it to us. And so we got a lot of flights for a really, really, really next to nothing in terms of flying. So we did this whole thing.We would order credit cards and it seemed like this great thing. And then I think it was about two, three months ago, Blake, that they just like called us on it and they took away all our points. So we’re like, oh, so we’re like, well, too bad. You can’t take away Australia and New Zealand from us. But yeah, so that’s over. No more bad advice now.Don’t try the credit card thing, but like it worked for us for a while. So, but like, it’s one of those things like you just, you find ways.
Blake Boles 50:32
Yeah, I love how you described earlier how children can become your porters. And now you’re describing how children can essentially attract offers of free food and housing, uh, if they’re the appropriate age and cuteness level, of course.
Ed Gillis 50:48
Well, oh my, like hiking in France on the Camino and most like the Camino in France, most of it is retired French folks, right? And we were new parents. So, um, like we would, everybody who would pass us like, Oh baby, you know, and they would grab, just take them out of our hands and, uh, and start, you know, fawning over them.And like we, if we had questions about like, it was the two thing and what was going on, so we could ask them all these questions. And, um, it was pretty awesome because like, you know, even, you know, when you’re a young family, like you almost always have your baby with you and stuff, but like, they would just be passing them around. We’d be eating and Heron would be all over the place.Um, one time we ended up, he wasn’t eating solid food yet. We were in Spain and we were in a grocery store and I was like, where, I was shopping separately and I saw Joss and she didn’t have Heron. I’m like, where’s Heron? She’s like, I don’t know. Somebody took him and, uh, they brought him around. And so we found him and the lady brought him back. He had this big breadstick sticking out of his mouth.We’re like, what the heck? What’s going on? But then other places in Spain, like we just walk, especially these little villages, like I remember one time this like lady comes like bounding out of her house with a fresh thing, a muffin. She’s like, I just bought the, I just baked these and I saw you from my window. And like, I hear, I hear some muffins for you. Like it’s crazy. People just love it.Love it. And because it sticks out a little bit too, right? Like if you’re right, it’s a cuteness level. It’s a, it’s something that’s new. And, uh, but especially in Europe, especially in small villages, man, they love babies.
Blake Boles 52:12
Yeah. And you crowdsourced your childcare too. Parenting advice.
Ed Gillis 52:17
Oh, we got tons, and not the best, because these are grandparents who miss their grandkids and so they just want to fawn over somebody. And yeah, we got a lot of really good advice because we were completely new parents, like he was two months old, so yeah, we benefited a lot from that part too.
Blake Boles 52:35
So Ed, tell me about the books that you’ve written and where they came from, how they originated, and just a little bit about what is inside them.
Ed Gillis 52:46
Cool, yeah, thanks. They originated from mostly I can picture times in New Zealand and Australia, people saying like, oh man, this is awesome. You should write a book. And we’d say, yeah, we should. Like I enjoy writing, like it’s always been something I’ve enjoyed. But then you get home and then you’ve got your schooling or you’ve got my other writing job. So like life just gets in the way.And so we never really were able to get it off the ground. And then finally we said, okay, once I stopped writing as a full-time job and was teaching, I thought, okay, this would be fun just for something to do on the side after the boys go to bed. So we had put some blogs together in Australia and New Zealand.And so I just kind of compiled them and added some more stuff and did some interviews with the boys and yeah, turned it into a book. It’s a long process. It takes a lot of time of, and honestly, most of the time it’s getting up at 6 a.m. and working till about 7 before the boys wake up. And yeah, so they’re both two books now that we did one about Europe as well.We just put that out a little while ago, end of our middle 2024. And they’re called Bike Touring with Kids. First one is Bike Touring with Kids, the Oceania Odyssey. And the second one is called Bike Touring with Kids, Europe Epic.And we’re working on a few, eventually on our website, we’re gonna put up a few more eBooks on like some of the shorter ones, like a lot of ones in North America, Cuba and stuff.Shorter eBooks so that people can get the hang of it and with a lot more like very specific details about like where we went and how you plan a trip and some of those logistical little like gold, nuggets of gold little tips that can help people make bike touring easier. But in the books themselves at the moment are just like our funny stories for the most part.Mostly I like to, I’m a storyteller and I like, as you can tell, I like to ramble a little bit about stuff and tell some of the funny stories that we’ve done. And so I just get a kick out of writing these stories and telling them. In Oceania Odyssey, it’s mostly about like exploding camp stoves and kids stepping in cow crap and all of those little trials and tribulations that we had.And then in Europe, it’s a little bit more about the lesson stuff like going, one chapter about how kids plan and another. One of my favorite ones is about Heron becoming a teenager and how we kind of deal with deal with that on the road because it’s a different mentality to parent to teenager.But also in the way of trying to narrate it in a way that people can be like, okay, this chapter on Albania, that sounds good, like, and then all the, some of the details of what it’s like and then kind of how we did it, that kind of thing. Because again, like people, they’re like, oh man, that just sounds good, but I just don’t think I can do it. But like, I am the least fit person in the Yukon.Everybody’s pretty fit in the Yukon, but like, I am not fit and like, I can bike and that’s fine.
Ed Gillis 55:53
But like, it’s possible. It’s possible for just about anybody to do. You know, you’re camping, you’re just eating regular food. Like you’re just figuring things out as we went along. We’re just normal people who figured it out. And I think that hopefully that comes through in the books is that it’s like, we are goofy and silly. I am far from the, we are both far from the perfect parents.One of my good stories, well, I’m not really proud of it, but being in Norway, we’re just about done our 10,000 kilometers in Norway and Jossen’s change snapped because my maintenance schedule hadn’t gone exactly probably according to what it should have gone. And I was like, no, no, I’ve got this problem fixed. I got it fixed. And so I was trying to fix it, but we were in a rush.We needed to get to a train like 30 minutes away and all the whole family’s like, you know, dad, just let us kill him. We’ll just run with it or we’ll figure something else out. I’m like, no, no, no. And I couldn’t figure it out. And I got, I had this little bit and I just threw the piece way into the woods and I like start stomping and just getting a little angry.And it was like not a model at all of how you are resilient or resolve problems or anything like that. It was pretty terrible, but yeah, we’re not perfect parents. It’s good to know you’re still human beings. And we’re showing, yeah.And you know, like there’s a, in the Oceania book, there’s an awful lot of diarrhea and like problems with poop and things like that, that like, I think, especially younger audiences, like younger families, and one of our family friends read it, like read it out loud at night and the kids just loved it. They’re like, tell the fart story again, you know, that kind of thing, but.Yeah, so we’re not great athletes, we’re not perfect parents, but you learn as you go. I think the main theme that came out of this last book, the Europe book, was that all along this epic trip along Europe, we found that we’d evolved throughout the time we were together as a family.We used to be these two parents who had their two kids and we would bring them along on our bike adventures and now in Europe, we’re a team. We were four experienced bikers who all know how to fix our bikes and all know how to put up the tent and cook the food.We’re now just four best friends out for a ride together and that’s probably the coolest thing that a parent can hope for is to have that feeling. I’m getting a bit emotional about it there, but it is the coolest feeling to have these teenage kids that you feel like you’re best friends and so that’s a pretty cool thing.
Blake Boles 58:45
Yeah, it’s beautiful. If anyone wants to follow your future family adventures or non-family adventures online, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Ed Gillis 58:57
Yeah. Um, thanks. Our, our, we still blog, um, about our summer trips, um, at Yukon for explore. So Yukon, the number four and the word explore.com because we’re four people from the Yukon. Uh, so Yukon for, uh, Yukon for explore.com. And then our, our Instagram, which is, uh, Jocelyn takes phenomenal pictures. I take crummy ones.So I’m not allowed, but the boys are starting to take better pictures now too. And, uh, that’s an Instagram is at Yukon for explore. Um, we’ve got a new ebook about our kayak trip. We did in Baja. We did a couple of kayak trips there as well for fairly affordable.And, uh, yeah, a bunch of different things that are on there to follow our adventures and to figure out the books are available on Amazon straight up, but you can find information about them on the blogs too.
Blake Boles 59:48
Ed Gillis, thanks so much for coming out to Dirtbag Rich.
Ed Gillis 59:52
I had a really good time. Thanks so much for making time.