Madeline Hryse is a 28-year-old traveler, climber, and cyclist who spent four years moving overland across Latin America and Asiaβsometimes alone, sometimes with friends and strangers she met along the wayβbefore cycling 14,000 kilometers from China to Sweden. (@very__odd)
Madeline grew up in a family that treated adventure as a normal part of life, but her father was the biggest influence. A mountaineer, bicycle tinkerer, and dirtbag before dirtbagging had a name, he spent his youth hitchhiking to the Rockies and disappearing into the mountains for weeks at a time. Although he died when Madeline was sixteen, she reflects on how much of her own wandering life feels connected to his example.
After studying fashion merchandising and selling women’s shoes at Nordstrom, Madeline escaped on what was supposed to be a six-month trip through Central America during the pandemic. Instead, she spent the next four years traveling. She taught English in South Korea, saved $10,000 through extreme frugality, trekked through Nepal, climbed her way across India and Sri Lanka, and continued through Pakistan and Southeast Asia while stretching her savings far beyond what most people would think possible.
Along the way, Madeline became increasingly drawn to overland travel and the freedom of moving through places slowly. Rather than chasing famous sights, she sought out climbing communities, stayed with locals, camped whenever possible, and built friendships that carried her across continents. She explains why having a purpose while traveling made her happier than following the standard backpacker trail and how she often spent less than $500 per month while on the road.
Eventually, a fascination with maps, Central Asia, and the Silk Road inspired her biggest adventure yet: a year-long bicycle journey from China through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus, Turkey, and Europe. We discuss the realities of long-distance bike travel, the experienced Austrian cyclist who helped shape her approach to the road, and why she gradually became more interested in lingering somewhere beautiful than covering huge distances each day.
We also talk about returning home after years abroad, resisting the pressure to pursue graduate school and a conventional career, the modest family support that helped make her travels possible, and her growing desire to spend more time with family and build deeper relationships. Madeline is currently preparing to ride the Continental Divide before relocating to Spain, where she’ll attempt to balance adventure with something that has become increasingly important to her: putting down roots.
Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/madeline
Recorded in June 2026.
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript. Typos and mistakes exist!Β
Blake Boles (00:01)
Madeline Hryse, welcome to Dirtbag Rich.
Madeline (00:05)
Hey, thanks for having me on. It’s great to be here.
Blake Boles (00:09)
You worked for Nordstrom, for those who are not familiar with Nordstrom, it’s a large department store chain in the United States, and you sold women’s shoes in Orange County for a while. What what was it about that job that did not leave you one hundred percent satisfied?
Madeline (00:27)
I would say it was probably the fact that I had to essentially sell my soul every day in order to get my customer to buy something from me. almost everything about that job was not satisfying to me besides the money. working on commission was yeah, just super demoralizing. You really sell a part of you away in order to get that commission and get that sale and just meeting superficial people all day long, it’s really draining emotionally.
Blake Boles (01:03)
Despite all your reservations, did you get good at selling shoes? Were you able to make good commissions?
Madeline (01:10)
Yeah, totally. I mean it’s a very like cutthroat job and you’re in constant competition with your coworkers, but I in a weird way enjoyed that. And the satisfying thing about it is if you want to make more money, you just have to work harder and push yourself harder. And that aspect about working in sales is quite attractive and that’s probably what kept me selling for more than a year. Probably longest job I’ve ever held.
Blake Boles (01:42)
Yeah, if anyone finds you online, they will see a pretty hardcore bicycle traveler. That’s the image that’s presented at least. And I think imagining someone like that working under the fluorescent lights of a department store β is real really produces cognitive dissonance. β do you have an explanation that you give to yourself for like how you you went from
Madeline (02:01)
Yeah.
Blake Boles (02:09)
Point A to point B.
Madeline (02:12)
I mean, I feel like I just have a lot of different sides of myself that come out in any given moment. Actually in college I studied fashion merchandising. So that’s kind of what led me to the position of selling shoes at Nordstrom. β and I I still that’s still a big part of me, fashion, despite the fact that, yeah, I wear the same outfit for maybe sometimes two weeks at a time, I still really love to express myself through my clothes and even on my bicycle I love to have little fun things that yeah, show a little bit more of my personality. β but
At the same time, I grew up in a family that is largely adventurous, that loves to travel, that loves to do crazy things. So there was always a part of me that knew I was going to take a long trip abroad. β at the time I didn’t know that it was going to take the form as like bicycle traveling, but there was always like a little thing in the back of my head that was like, no, you’re gonna do something a lot more amazing than this.
Blake Boles (03:15)
Hmm. That’s great. You can really exist in both these spaces. β what were some of the formative events in your young life, in your family life that that made you so sure that a big trip was in your future?
Madeline (03:29)
well, my family just really likes to travel. β the type of vacations that we would take look a lot different than the kinds of traveling that I do now. It would be much more like a a traditional family vacation for a couple of weeks at a time, but β
Through that, I really learned like how to travel and what kinds of things to do when you’re abroad and how to be smart about traveling. And I feel like that gave me a lot of confidence to go out and do this on my own. And on top of that, my half-sister had done like a pretty long solo travel for a year at a time on a couple different occasions. So that was just kind of normal to me, and my parents were really supportive of her. So when I decided that I wanted to do this, the same thing, it wasn’t this huge conflict that we had to solve and something I had to really convince them to let me do. It was it was kind of natural. I already had saved money to do something like that and they were very supportive.
Blake Boles (04:20)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
What was your first big adventure, and how old were you?
Madeline (04:31)
I was let’s see, would have been about twenty two years old after I graduated college. I took a little year off.
which was supposed to be six months traveling through Latin America. β actually during COVID, I chose to go to Latin America because it was basically the only country that would allow me to go because the rest of the world was closed off. And I didn’t want to just sit at home and like essentially do nothing and collect unemployment since I couldn’t work the job I was working before. β and that turned into a year long travel. I traveled over land from Mexico to Costa Rica.
And that’s I guess where the the love for overland travel began began. I really saw the value of not taking airplanes and how much you see on the way to the borders and crossing the border by foot and how much more of the culture and the little changes that you see as you go along. That became really important to me and I realized that that’s the way that I want to travel.
Blake Boles (05:37)
Hm.
Was that twenty twenty or twenty twenty one?
Madeline (05:40)
That was β yeah, 2021.
Blake Boles (05:44)
And did you travel solo through Central America?
Madeline (05:47)
I started with two friends who accompanied me for three months. For them as well it was only supposed to be like one month and kept convincing them like come on just stay longer it’s so cheap to live like this and they’d keep making excuses for their parents but you know eventually they had to go home and then yeah I went off on my own but it never really felt like I was traveling alone because it was so easy to meet people. I mean Central America is full of backpackers more or less going the same places so I never had trouble finding someone to travel with.
Blake Boles (06:24)
Where did bicycles enter the picture? You’ve painted a good picture of of the kind of the style of travel you learn to love, but β it takes some people a long time to discover bicycles.
Madeline (06:37)
Yeah, β
I guess I feel pretty lucky to have been surrounded by bicycles my whole life, although I wasn’t super crazy about them when I was younger. β my father was bicycle obsessed. He had a shed in his backyard where he would collect bicycle parts from the darnest places. He would bring home frames that he found in the trash can and he would build bicycles. He even made like a fake little bicycle company and business cards and yeah, totally obsessed with all that. β I actually got kind of
traumatized from a bike ride we did together when I was probably ten years old. I fell and I scraped up my knee pretty badly and after that I was really turned off from bicycles like throughout all of my adolescence.
Yeah, but but despite that I I was really surrounded by bikes my whole life. And it wasn’t until my sister bought me a bicycle for Christmas when I was eighteen β that I really started to appreciate bikes again. And it wasn’t in such a deep way that you see a lot of other cyclists like it was basically just my transportation. I didn’t have a car, so I said, you know what? The city I live in is is cyclable and I can get from point
A to point B without a car, and I started to really appreciate the fact that I can get anywhere I need with just my legs. so that was basically my relationship with bikes for a while, basically until I I decided to do my huge cycling tour when the idea kind of popped into my head spontaneously. yeah, I can elaborate that on that if if you’d like.
Blake Boles (08:20)
We’re definitely gonna get to that tour. I I wanna dwell for a moment. You were in Southern California and you chose to be car free.
Madeline (08:28)
Yeah, so at the time I was going to school at Long Beach State. And Long Beach has pretty much everything you need there. I I didn’t go so much outside of Long Beach and yeah, I totally managed to be car free. β especially when I came back home from my from my one year trip through Latin America. β the car that my mom had previously let me use from time to time had made its way up to the Bay Area with my sister, so I kind of lost my car privileges and I was
Blake Boles (08:57)
Mm.
Madeline (08:58)
like you know what I got this awesome road bike and I’m just gonna own it and it yeah it worked out totally fine. I would just push my limits and take longer rides and longer longer every day and I realized that yeah I don’t really need a car.
Blake Boles (09:16)
Although you were not leaving the the safe bubble of Long Beach. Or you Yeah.
Madeline (09:21)
Yeah, not not too much. I I would go back
to my to my parents’ house to my mom’s house in Cyprus, which is like a I don’t know, ten mile ride from my house in Long Beach, but β not too much outside of like Orange County slash LA County.
Blake Boles (09:36)
Yeah, yeah, it’s still very impressive. β and tell me a little bit more about your dad, ’cause I know that this is a really important influence on you, and and and talk about his his origins.
Madeline (09:48)
Yeah, β my dad growing up was heavily influenced by his father who was a mountaineer and β
I don’t know, it’s really easy to throw around that term these days because it seems like everybody, you know, can go into the mountains, get the proper gear and do what they want. But like during my dad’s time and my my grandpa’s time especially, this was when like mountaineering did not have the the ease in which it has today. There was not the kind of support you can find for the things that they were doing. my dad grew up kind of going back and forth between the West Coast and the East Coast too.
to live with each one of his parents and and one summer he decided to hitchhike alone to the Rocky Mountains to climb as many fourteen thousanders as he could without telling his parents, without any gr without any ground support. Nobody knew he was there. He’s sixteen years old. That’s like before hiking is even really a thing in the sixties. So yeah, I I respect him so much for for doing crazy things like that. I mean
Blake Boles (10:39)
Mm-hmm.
Madeline (10:54)
Like I said, he was a dirtbag before dirtbagging was even a thing. β he was an amazing writer and I get to know him a lot more now through his writing. β reading little stories about how
a lot of his friends they didn’t want to come climbing with him or going to the mountains with him because he would convince them to stay in the mountains for so long that by the time they got back they would get in such horrible fights with their spouses that would end up with them sleeping outside or something. So he’s always that guy trying to, yeah, pull his friends away from all of their responsibilities so that they can, yeah, screw off to the mountains.
Blake Boles (11:27)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. β and you keep using the past tense to describe your dad.
Madeline (11:40)
Yeah, my dad passed away ten years ago when I was sixteen years old. β but yeah, still so much of his influence is present in my life today. I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to do any of the big backpacking Sierra trips that he did every summer, but we were camping so much every summer growing up and
Yeah, he he’s really a part of me in so many ways and I think that there is such a big he is such a big motivation as to why I did the trip that I did, even if on the surface I don’t really realize it. The more I reflect on the reasonings behind everything that I did, I think there’s a big part that wanted to make him proud and wanted to, yeah, impress him.
Blake Boles (12:28)
Mm.
Hmm.
All right, let’s let’s get back into the the timeline here. You β went to Long Beach to study fashion design, you worked at Nordstrom’s pandemic, Central America, β and then what happened next?
Madeline (12:49)
Yeah, so
I really was under the impression that I would be able to stay away from the States for as long as I’d like. I actually had the plan to travel overland all the way to Ushuaia in Argentina and yeah, I was fully ready to take on that adventure at the time, but you know, all of a sudden just this intense homesickness came over me. I was actually watching a Yosemite documentary and that just triggered so many feelings of wanting to be home that it was
just a week until I bought my plane ticket and came back to the States.
Super unexpected, but you know, I just listened to myself and I felt ready to go home in that moment. So I came home, I spent some time with my family. β but it was only nine months until I decided I needed to leave again. β so I found a job which I wasn’t really expecting to take on, but in the end it worked out. I became an English teacher in South Korea for a year.
β because I felt that this was a way for me to continue traveling but also I can save some money so I can prepare for my next adventure. So basically my whole time in Korea was focused on saving as much money as I can so that I can get ready and go do the same thing I did before over again.
Blake Boles (14:13)
And you saved ten thousand dollars, is that right?
Madeline (14:16)
Yeah, I saved ten thousand dollars. I deliberately rejected a job offer in the Capitol Seoul, being that it’s so expensive to live in the Capitol and there’s just so many more exciting things to be done. I lived in a very boring city in South Korea. So I was able to save a ton of money. β basically I bought a secondhand bike and just
cycled around during the weekend and all the activities I did during the weekend were basically free or very, very low cost. Never ate out, cooked all my own meals, and just lived as frugally as I can because I knew that there’s gonna be something way more amazing waiting for me in 12 months if I just stick to this for a little bit.
Blake Boles (14:59)
Hmm.
You’re really describing this in like utilitarian terms. Did you enjoy teaching English and living in South Korea? What was it a you know, interesting experience also?
Madeline (15:10)
Π―
Yeah, totally. Maybe I’m making it sound like a little like a drag, but it was an amazing experience. I didn’t have any expectations with Korea. I never thought it was a country that I would be interested in. It had never been on my radar. And it ended up surprising me so much. It’s a beautiful country. The people are wonderful. I had the opportunity to learn Korean, which like brought me closer to a lot of local people. met the local cycling community, which was basically a
Group of like 60 and 70 year old Koreans and they were so awesome. They took me on 200 kilometer rides and they were like way stronger than me and just like, yeah, basically kicked my ass all the time. Every weekend after one century ride, they’d be like, hey, you want to do another next weekend? I’d be like, no, are you guys crazy?
Blake Boles (15:50)
Uh-huh.
Nice.
Okay, so you had a pretty great time in South Korea. You saved up 10,000 bucks, and your mission was to go on some big adventure. Is this where you said I’m gonna be on a bike? Not yet. Okay. Ugh.
Madeline (16:17)
Yeah, actually we’re we’re we’re quite far from that.
It’s a very complicated β travel story and it it’s it’s funny telling it. So yeah, β I finished my year up, β which was yeah, a really nice really nice year in Korea and
Blake Boles (16:25)
This is great. Keep going.
Madeline (16:39)
The plan that I always had was to go to Nepal. That had always been a country that called to me and I wanted to do some trekking there. So after a short family vacation in Japan where I got to see my mom for the first time in a while, I went to
β Nepal and I met a friend from back home who came with me and we ended up traveling together for about six months through South Asia. So from Nepal after trekking for four weeks through the Himalayas, we went to India where we were basically just traveling from like rock climbing location to rock climbing location. We would meet people who were slacklining or rock climbing and talk about interesting places to climb around. And that’s basically how we
how we planned our trip. We never really knew the next destination we were going. We just relied on meeting other like-minded people to give us ideas about where to travel to. And yeah, that led us through all over South India and North India. β we took some time traveling in Sri Lanka and I set off on my own again. β
traveling on and off with people I met on the road, vacations with my mom, β through Pakistan s β Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Blake Boles (18:00)
So we’re at the point where you’ve traveled six months in Nepal and India and now you’re past that point, continuing to travel. β clearly you must have spent all of your ten thousand dollars that you saved up already.
Madeline (18:13)
See, one would think so, but
India is so cheap and Nepal is even cheaper. That you know, truthfully, I I haven’t been tracking every dollar that I’ve spent and managing my savings β very closely. But if I were to take an estimate for the two years that I was traveling, backpacking and cycling, I would say I spent not so much over the ten thousand dollars that I saved. When we were in India and Sri Lanka, there were months that we spent hardly anything. Like in Sri Lanka, we
spent like a hundred and twenty dollars a month. It was so, so cheap to live there. In India you can have breakfast for like twenty cents. So
Blake Boles (18:55)
Were you getting taken in
by people who were housing and feeding you? β w was that part of your equation for hard spending hardly any money?
Madeline (19:02)
β yeah, it was. So we went we were also camping quite a bit, so we would save a lot on accommodation that way. Not not wild camping. We were still paying for campsites, so we had like a a bathroom and a shower, but we met a lot of locals when we were climbing who then said, you know, you should come visit me in Bangalore, you should come visit me in Mumbai. And we ended up staying with locals that we met for like two and a half weeks and they have like in India it’s really common to have maids. So we were living this like super
high Indian life where we would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner cooked for us by our friends who had maids and everything’s cleaned for us and super super kind people always welcoming us into their homes and we still are in contact with a lot of these people, my friend from California and I, and I’m always thankful for the help that they gave us along the way.
Blake Boles (19:53)
Mm.
Mm-hmm. Nice. Informal couch surfing. I I listen, I agree with you. β I think that this is post-pandemic times, and so I consider this the modern era. And I I think there’s a lot of people out there, including a lot of young people, who just think it’s it’s absolutely inconceivable to travel anywhere in the world for less than five hundred dollars a month, which is what you’re describing. And
Madeline (19:57)
Yeah, that’s that’s the best way I think.
Blake Boles (20:23)
pretty much you look online and you see the the price of a dorm bed in a hostel in a major city, so maybe Delhi, and you multiply that out by a month and you’re you’re probably already over that number. And then going out to eat. β and and so maybe just explain a little bit more about how you you had such a satisfying experience with spending really an incredibly
low amount of money. W we’ve talked about the couch surfing part already, but like were you like suffering as a dirtbag traveler? Were you saying no to things you really wanted? Or were you just being extremely creative and social?
Madeline (21:04)
I mean, yeah, for sure there were times when I felt like, you know, we don’t wanna pay so much money to do this tour or that tour because we can’t really justify the cost. And there would be moments where I’d reflect and say, β you know, we’re only here one time. Am I am I missing out on something? But I think what comforts me is
Reflecting on my last trip in Latin America, I was traveling just as your typical backpacker without really any let’s say purpose. I was like kind of just wandering, seeing the popular sites in each country. Sure, I was doing a lot of hiking, but there was a lot of me that was doing the popular tourist trail activities and paying for these tours. And when I finished my trip, I I spent a lot more on that trip than I did on this trip, probably twice as much. And whenever
reflect on all of the things I spent my money on, I I don’t know, I just felt like I was kind of floating from place to place and I was never like deeply, deeply satisfied with the things that I was doing. And
Fast forward to now when I compare it to the way I’m traveling, not just like in a crazy dirtbag sense, more so in the way that I’m like seeking certain communities, at least at the time when I was backpacking, because we were going from like climbing crag to climbing crag. So I didn’t feel like I needed to go like to all of the temples or to all of the go do all the boat tours or whichever popular tourist attraction.
there was in that area because what I really wanted to do is I wanted to climb. And I’m surrounded by all these people who also want to climb. So there was never that like f strong FOMO that one can imagine when you’re yeah, making sacrifices and all that.
Blake Boles (22:55)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
How I interpret what you’re saying is just having a a purpose for your travel, which is β usually a physical activity that’s also social. So for me it’s partner dance, β just connects you with so many people who you become fast friends with, and then they’re like, please come visit me or let’s go do this thing together. And stepping off of that, yeah, that tourist trail.
And checking boxes of what you think you need to see in order to truly experience a country is like really the path to liberation as as a long term traveller who doesn’t want to spend a lot of money. So
Madeline (23:30)
Yeah, absolutely. And I meet people doing it in all sorts of ways. You know, you can scuba dive, you can hike, you can climb, you can highline. yeah, there’s so many different activities. I just feel like when you’re doing the tourist trail, you just have all these people who are like come from so many different backgrounds. And while that’s not a bad thing, it makes it a little bit harder to like find your people and like relate to someone. Whereas like when you’re with a whole group of climbers, at least
Once you have that in common and you know you can relate on like that basic level and for me it just makes it a little bit easier to find my people or the at least the people that I enjoy being around.
Blake Boles (24:12)
All right, you’re in your mid twenties, you’ve spent a couple of years traveling ages, stretching your ten thousand dollars out. Now it’s surely time to go back to Nordstrom’s and and get back to work. Tell me I’ve got it right.
Madeline (24:25)
Ha unfortunately not. So this is the time when my mind starts working in different ways, and I start thinking, you know, what else can I be doing right now? What other strange countries can I be going to? I had been through Southeast Asia, which is quite touristy, and
At this point I started to really get into geography during like my unlimited free time. I was studying maps all the time, becoming map obsessed, and I started looking at countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. And before, like maybe a lot of Americans can relate that this part of the map is kind of just like a part that you gloss over.
It doesn’t really have any strong feelings. We don’t learn so much about it in school. So I mean, I just kind of ignored that part of the map and I started to get a lot more interested. Like what’s happening in those countries? I’m in these like ultra mega tourism hotspots and I wanna go somewhere that’s
The total opposite of this. I want to be able to travel somewhere that’s like not touristy at all. So I started doing more research into these countries, and that led me to researching the Silk Road. And then I started seeing, my gosh, a lot of people actually cycle the Silk Road, and it’s not as uncommon as you would think to do something like this. I recognized the value of like having your own form of transportation in these remote countries. I had also been getting over like hitchhiking and taking long-distance.
buses after some bad experiences and the appeal of having my own transportation and absolute freedom just became more and more attractive to me.
Blake Boles (26:16)
Finally the bike enters the picture.
Madeline (26:18)
Exactly. so at this point I was β like I said in Southeast Asia. I had been tra planning a trip with my mother to come visit me. We were gonna travel through Vietnam and China. And this is where I got the grand plan to cycle through the Silk Road and
The next steps led me to start thinking about what if I just cycle all the way to Europe and I just connect the whole map. Like, how cool would that be? I had been really interested in China. I love China. And then going to Central Asia was obviously the inspiration behind the whole bike thing. And then it’s like, okay, if I make it that far, I might as well just go all the way to Europe. my sister lives in Sweden, and I had promised to visit her in Sweden the year that I finished my bike trip. So this was me kind of connecting.
Connecting that whole line, making this crazy personal challenge for me. And it was a bit of a logistical nightmare to do everything while I was abroad and prep prepare for this whole trip while I was traveling. But in the end, I managed to make it work. My mom brought me my bicycle from California. I managed to order quite a few things in China because China is like the land of convenience. You can find everything you need in China. And
Yeah, from there I set off on my bicycle.
Blake Boles (27:43)
And I’d love to hear a bit about the big bike trip, but I wanna make sure we have time to get into other interesting topics too. So maybe just in broad strokes, first of all, for those who don’t know where the Silk Road goes, just tell us the geography and then maybe a a few I don’t know. It’s probably really hard to do. Tell us a few things about the trip.
Madeline (28:06)
Yeah. β so when a lot of people think about the Silk Road, they think about I guess the Central Asian Chinese exchange of goods that was happening in the past. β the Silk Road really just refers to like any form of trade that was previously happening between like Europe and China. And
And or Asia in general. And actually there’s not like one Silk Road. There are many ways that people were going in between those countries. β so you can see the Silk Road being referred to in many places, and at first it was kind of confusing, like, wait, I thought this was the Silk Road, but β it’s kind of a general term, but one of the most famous routes went through the Pamere Mountains because β the terrain it was necessary for people to take that path when they were connecting, I guess, β Europe and Asia.
β So the Silk Road that I cycled on was stretching from China through Central Asia via Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and then over to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, all the way through Western Europe.
Blake Boles (29:20)
Okay, and you had your bike, you ordered some bags, and was it really as simple as like, Now I’m cycling west?
Madeline (29:28)
mean like yeah, kind of. It it was really weird. Like the day my mom left, she kind of took all my backpacks backpacking stuff. I I kinda like to say I like retired my role as a backpacker and I I really feel that because I don’t think I could ever go back to being a backpacker while traveling abroad. β because I fell in love with
bicycle traveling so much. But yeah, I remember the first day that I started my trip from Kunming, China, like just cycling out, and it’s like, all right, like I’m going to Europe. And it it was kind of weird. And I really doubted myself quite a bit in the beginning of the trip. I remember meeting a huge group of Chinese cyclists. I think it was my fourth day. And they’re like so shocked seeing my setup and they’re like, Where are you going? How long have you been on the road? And it’s like
yeah, I’m going to Sweden and I’ve been on the road for four days. And I felt really like I don’t know, kind of stupid saying that. Like, my gosh, these these people probably don’t even believe I can do it. β But yeah, it’s really nice to reflect on on those those little moments.
Blake Boles (30:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
You told me you met someone while cycling who really represented the dirtbag spirit to you and you learned a lot from him. Talk about this guy.
Madeline (30:48)
Yeah, so I met Felix in Thailand and β we happened to be climbing in the same place and we got chatting and his friends like, yeah, well well this guy cycled all the way from Austria and at this time I had been like working with my working through all the details of my bike tour. Like I already had the bike ready. I was like trying to figure out the gear that I needed. So I was so shocked to actually meet someone in person who had done something like this and I looked at him and I’m like, I’m literally
Doing the same thing basically, except in the opposite way. Like, that’s so awesome. And yeah, we hit it off, we kept in contact for a while, we traveled apart for a while, and in China we met up again, and he made the decision to cycle back home. So at that point, he had already been on the road for like over two years. β his whole trip was 30,000 kilometers, so he had so much experience and
By the time we met up, I had only been on the road for like a month and a half. β so I really like looked up to him.
in so many ways to kind of lead the way and give me confidence to take me on roads that maybe I wouldn’t have been comfortable going on before. I was very much like wanting to stick to pavement for a while because I didn’t have experience cycling off-road, but he was always pushing like, come on, like the the unpaved tracks are way better. There’s no cars, the scenery’s better and yeah, slowly and slowly that also became my preferred way of traveling.
Blake Boles (32:21)
Hm. So long story short, did you cycle the Silk Road and have a great time and achieve all your goals and make it to Sweden?
Madeline (32:32)
I did, yeah. I s didn’t cycle every single kilometer, I’ll say that. β I know there are some purists, I’ve met quite a few of them that are very adamant about cycling every single kilometer on their huge trip. β for me my bike was more just like
It was just a vehicle to allow me to get to more interesting places. It wasn’t like the end-all be-all that I can’t use any other form of transportation besides my bicycle. So if I was having like a really horrible time because of weather or a climb that was super steep, like I didn’t hesitate to hitchhike. If someone offered me a ride, I didn’t hesitate to h to take it. And a lot of those experiences led me to something really awesome too. So I I never wanted to close myself off because I
felt like I had to only stay on the bike. But in the end it ended up being β 14,000 kilometers. So I think it’s it’s still an accomplishment. Yeah it counts.
Blake Boles (33:22)
Mm, mm-hmm.
I think it counts, yeah. Yeah.
I I can really see how your earlier travel experiences in Central America and in Southern Asia played a big role in in the kind of travel you ended up doing. And how long was that the that trip in total?
Madeline (33:50)
mean the bicycle trip.
Blake Boles (33:51)
Yeah, the big bicycle trip.
Madeline (33:53)
Yeah, so it was about just just over a year, like thirteen or fourteen months of cycling, which which definitely could have been done way faster. β I met a guy in China who was cycling from Singapore to the UK and by the time I was in Tajikistan, which is very close to China, he was already in France and this guy was doing like two hundred kilometers a day. β and meanwhile Felix and I some days we’d cycle ten kilometers and we’d be like, You you know
what? This is such a nice place. Like let’s just stop here. And and I feel like that is also what like just kept me going was ha having like really nice company and the company where we could just be like
You know, I don’t feel like pushing myself today and you know, I just wanna chill here. And if every time we got to a city, we would end up staying for like a week and a half when we initially would tell ourselves we’re gonna be here for two days because yeah, we just we just went with the flow and it felt really good to not have this like pressing time schedule that we had to adhere to.
Blake Boles (34:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
An anecdote that I often think of when I was getting into bike touring was of a Brazilian woman who cycled for a full year. And she said at the beginning of my trip, I cycled six days and I rested or explored one day each week. She said, by the end of my year, I was resting or exploring six days a week, and I was cycling one day a week. And I really feel like that’s the appropriate kind of evolution. if you value
Madeline (35:14)
huh.
Blake Boles (35:23)
human connection, if you value spontaneous exploration and serendipity r over just this like hardcore athletic, measurable, Strava friendly achievement. Did did you struggle with with with any of that, β th those two kind of modes of bicycle travel conflicting in your mind?
Madeline (35:35)
Absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, i it wasn’t really like a conflict. I guess just when I started my trip on my own
I felt like a lot of pressure that I guess I put on my own and also just with visa logistics through China. I mean China is enormous and I felt like I really needed to like you said, like cycle six days and rest one day. It’s like, I gotta get to this city and then I can take a rest day. But I also just feel like being with company, especially company who is okay with like taking a chill pace and taking it slow, it really helps you like
Blake Boles (36:00)
Mm.
Madeline (36:21)
step back a little bit and and take your time. When I’m alone I tend to want to push myself a lot more. And also there’s just so much more to do when you’re with another person. You guys stop and take a rest to have some water and it ends up being like 30, 40 minutes of talking about something, this or that. So I really like that aspect of traveling with other people is is yeah, you get to go a little bit slower. It it helps you go a little bit slower.
Blake Boles (36:52)
So I wanna connect this to the present moment. We’re recording this in June twenty twenty six. How long ago did you arrive in Sweden?
Madeline (37:00)
β let’s see. So I over β arrived in Sweden on April Fool’s Day. On April 1st. I played a little prank on my on my niece when I arrived. β so it’s been a little bit of time since I since I’ve gotten off the bike. Just a few months, yeah. It feels longer, honestly, but I guess it hasn’t been so long.
Blake Boles (37:16)
But just a few months.
And at this moment you’re back in Southern California, and and tell me now you feel the pr let me just fast forward to the question I want to ask, Madeline, which is at what point did you feel the pressure, or did you ever feel the pressure to like go back to your country of origin, get a job, start saving more money, β having a life that somewhat resembles what I assume most of your peers are are doing? Like, where was that little voice?
in your head throughout these these many years of adventure through Asia.
Madeline (37:55)
So when you’re on the road, especially when you’re traveling by bicycle, it’s really easy to keep that voice quiet because the people I’m meeting while I’m traveling are people just like me. These are people doing crazy things. These are people who have been cycling for ten years around the world. So
It wasn’t often that I would have those feelings like, my God, what am I doing? I need to start my career. I need to do this, I need to do that. β I guess I I struggle a lot more with those feelings when I come back home is because when I’m surrounded by my peers who are my age who are in their careers, I mean maybe even pretty advanced in their careers, now they’re married, some have kids, then that’s when the comparison gets a little bit yeah, it’s easy
To start comparing myself to those people. But because of the fact that I had already done like a one-year trip, come back and left to go on the road again, I kind of had this like this preparation already done in my head. Last time when I came back home, I had a really hard experience being home.
Blake Boles (39:02)
Mm.
Madeline (39:08)
It was just this constant feeling of like, what am I doing? I mean, I even debated on going back to get my master’s degree. I didn’t even want to get my master’s degree, but I was like, I I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should just go to school and like start pursuing something else or, you know, just to buy myself, I guess, a little bit more time to figure out like what my career is gonna be. and I’m so thankful I instead decided to go to South Korea because there is no way in hell I want to go back.
to school and get my masters. I’ve learned way more on the road these past four years than I did through all of my schooling. And I yeah.
Blake Boles (39:46)
my gosh. I I
just want what you just said to be broadcasted so far and so wide because something like going back to get a master’s is just so socially validated and safe and then you’re investing in yourself and you know the a bachelor’s degree, what’s that even worth these days? You need to have an advanced degree to have real economic security. Like d do these arguments just bounce off you these days?
Madeline (39:51)
Absolutely.
Yeah, seriously, they don’t mean anything to me. And it’s really not impressive when I hear that someone has their masters and blah blah blah. I mean, of course there’s something to be said if like you’re a doctor or whatever, but I feel like there’s a certain amount of like closed mindedness that comes with getting highly educated and like the more the more education you get, the like more like closed off you become in a way to like
Blake Boles (40:27)
Huh.
Madeline (40:34)
new experiences and new perspectives. Like you’re so fed into like one perspective that you’re like that’s being, you know, reinforced throughout all of your schooling that yeah, traveling does the complete opposite of that.
Blake Boles (40:49)
Wow, I I’m loving this. β do you feel like there’s anything that you did miss out on by not being back in the US, back in your home culture for a big chunk of your twenties? A anything you feel like you sacrificed or traded away and maybe have some little, you know, second thoughts about?
Madeline (41:08)
Yeah, I mean, in retrospect, I guess during that time I was I was really wrestling with the idea that I was so far away from my family. β during my first trip in Latin America, I was, you know, twenty three. I wasn’t thinking about my
family relationships. I was just out of college and I was like, you know what? I’m gonna do whatever I want and I’m gonna keep doing that and I don’t care about anyone and I don’t care what my family says. And that’s what felt good for me at that time. But getting older, especially in the last year, I’ve just been thinking about relationships so much more. Like my mom is getting older and I’m recognizing that and I’m seeing that in real time and it’s
It’s really hit me that I have a limited time with especially my mother, but with all the people around me. And the longer I’m away, the more I distance myself from those people. And I want to start, yeah, becoming closer to my family. And that’s not that I’m I have a distant relationship from my family, but just physically being closer to them. β when I travel for such long periods of time continuously, I don’t get that.
Blake Boles (41:59)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Madeline (42:24)
β so yeah, just recognizing the importance of relationships and yeah, even thinking about starting my own family and all those things, it’s it’s come up a lot more as I’ve gotten older, that’s for sure.
Blake Boles (42:37)
Sounds like you did a pretty good job of getting your mom or your sister involved in your travels, finding ways to to share time together while you were out there. I imagine that was more difficult when you were doing the Silk Road on a bicycle though.
Madeline (42:53)
yeah, absolutely. We we didn’t get a chance to to meet my mother and I while I was on the bicycle. β
Yeah, the logistics of that is a little bit difficult, but now that she’s retired, she’s had the opportunity to travel so much, and I’ve convinced her to come to the craziest places. Like at the beginning of my travel, she came to India and Pakistan with me. β and when I suggested going to Pakistan, she was like, Are you crazy? Like, I’m not going to Pakistan. Like, is it safe to go there? And now she’s so obsessed with Pakistan, she like made me promise her that I’ll
take her back for her 70th birthday and she’s like when are we going to Pakistan? She has all these friends in Pakistan that she talks to on WhatsApp like every week. It’s awesome.
Blake Boles (43:31)
huh. β
well, I love that.
β
Remind me like where where’d your your money come from to do the the the Silk Road? Like I I I can’t imagine you’re still stretching the the ten thousand from South Korea. I mean it’s been years at at this point. How were you able to fund that that stretch?
Madeline (43:59)
Yeah, I mean I will say it is probably possible to do what I did with about ten thousand dollars, but I wouldn’t have done all of that if I wasn’t fortunate to have the support that I do from my mother. β my mom is like a financial genius. She’s so good with money, and sh I’ve been lucky that she’s been able to set my sister and I up with β a small inheritance that we receive monthly. β
And this just gives me something that I can fall back on. Like I know if something goes wrong, it’s not just this small, relatively small amount of money I have saved. That is that’s all I have to work with. I have something to keep me give me a peace of mind. I have a home to come back to. She’s supporting me right now while I’m back at home and she’s, you know, ordering food for me and we’re going to dinner together. I have a room to sleep in. β but
Yeah, just having that nice cushion β definitely supports me in a way that is so amazing.
Blake Boles (45:04)
And when we talked before about this, like it’s really a modest cushion. It’s like the it’s like a room rental β in a shared house in in many parts of the US or like what some people spend in f on food β in one month. It’s and inheritance makes it sound so like grand.
Madeline (45:19)
Yeah, I mean it’s
Yeah, I mean in theory it would be like about a thousand dollars a month, which for someone living in Southern California seems like really nothing at all. That’s like hardly enough money to even support you for the month. But for someone in Tajikistan, that’s like you’re living like a king. So it really just felt like the right way to spend my money. And β I don’t even like take all the money into my cash accounts per month. A lot of it I’m putting aside in other accounts to invest or say
because I really β the way I’ve been living these past years I don’t need that much money β in my savings account. So yeah.
Blake Boles (46:05)
So you’re back in Southern California now, you’re feeling more of a draw to be around family and friends. And are are you also feeling that pressure that you described to like somehow reenter normal society? What does your your near term future look like, Madeline?
Madeline (46:25)
Yeah, I mean I must say I do not feel this β pressure to to start my career, to get going, to catch up with the rat race or whatever. And I feel really content just being at home and getting my house together with my mom, sorting through all my possessions, getting ready. β but I do have quite a busy summer and rest of the year planned. I’ve recently been sponsored by Tumbleweed Bikes and
And they’re supporting me on a lot of trips that I’m planning for the next year. β Starting at the end of July, I’ll cycle the continental divide starting from Canada up until the US-Mexico border.
Blake Boles (47:06)
Cool.
Madeline (47:07)
Yeah. So I mean it’s a much smaller trip in comparison to what I’ve just done, but actually for the average person it’s quite a big trip. It it’ll take me about two months. So I’m looking forward to getting back out on the road. β whole new setup, new bags, new bike. It’s gonna be really cool.
Blake Boles (47:26)
So it sounds like you are just r riding this this terrible pun is about to come out here. No. y you’re just making the most of this traveling and bicycle lifestyle for as long as you can and not worrying too much about the future with big capital F.
Madeline (47:46)
Yeah, I mean I’m I’m trying to go with the flow, but you know, like I said, I am really thinking about my relationships and my family and a family of my own in the future. β so I am trying to balance like my relationship with my boyfriends and this whole bicycle traveling thing. I’m moving to Spain at the at
Of September. β So I do plan to do some other small cycling trips throughout Europe, but it’s definitely not gonna be this like super intense around the world cycling that I’ve done before because that doesn’t really leave time for me to build any sort of relationship or foundation in any specific place. And I think I’ve realized this past year that that’s something I want to work towards.
Blake Boles (48:32)
Mm.
Madeline (48:33)
β so it sounds crazy that I have time to be able to do all the things at once, but β let’s see how this next year goes and how I manage all of it.
Blake Boles (48:41)
Yeah, indeed. Yeah. β
congrats on moving to Europe. I’m a big fan of that. And are you still in in any way in the fashion world? Are do you does that still exist for you?
Madeline (48:57)
mean, yeah, on like a personal level for sure, like there is a certain excitement of coming back and seeing all of my old clothes and thinking, yeah, I can wear this with this and express myself in this way. But like on a career level, I haven’t thought so much about it. β but I don’t see I don’t I don’t think it’s an impossibility that I
I will go back into the fashion world. Like after doing my bike trip and being around climbers so much and just the outdoor world in general, I can perhaps see myself
making a company to design, I don’t know, bike bags or outdoor gear or clothes for women when they’re outdoors. Something in this realm is probably what’s more interesting to me fashion-wise these days.
Blake Boles (49:53)
Hmm.
Yeah, you seem pretty perfectly set up for something like that. And and just to to close this out, you’ve talked a lot about your love of adventure and travel and spontaneously meeting people, your relationships, especially your family and and other kinds of relationships too. And maybe a little bit of interest in in design β and fashion. β do you have any other major sources of of
Madeline (49:58)
Yeah.
Blake Boles (50:20)
Purpose in your life, like a reason that you want to continue avoiding having a a normal full-time job, perhaps, β because then it will leave you time to do this or to be this way. Or perhaps by negative example, to to not do this, to not become like these other people. I’m just trying to get at at your your deepest motivations here.
Madeline (50:46)
Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s it’s a combination of so many little motivations and ways I’ve been raised growing up. But yeah, I guess I’ve just been become so jaded with
How normal society functions, especially in the States. And growing up in Los Angeles, I’ve lived, I mean, close to Los Angeles. I’ve I’ve lived in this super busy go, go, go society. And I’ve realized that there’s so much more to life than that. And I’m so young, and especially having the support I do from my mother to be able to just go and leave and have all the things that I need and all the resources I need to do that, it feels really foolish.
For me to not take advantage of the opportunity to live the way I do, especially being that it’s like way cheaper and way better than just staying here in some suburb in Orange County or in the city of Los Angeles. And I can learn so much more about the world, open my mind and open my heart if I choose to take that route.
Blake Boles (51:53)
Hm. Yeah, really well said. Madeline, if people want to learn more about you and your upcoming adventures, where should they go?
Madeline (52:05)
Yeah, they could follow me on Instagram. That’s the platform I’ve been talking about my adventures on lately. β can find me at very underscore underscore odd.
Blake Boles (52:18)
I have to ask β where that handle came from. Do you do you just consider consider yourself very odd? Is it that straightforward?
Madeline (52:27)
I mean, yeah, in a in a way I guess, but β back when I was studying fashion, my friend and I we started like a small business reselling vintage clothing and we called it odd nature. And
Like she changed her handle on Instagram to she’s odd and then my handle was very odd. So we had this like whole oddball get up going on and yeah, since then a lot of things have changed, but the very odd handle has just stuck with me and it. I really like it.
Blake Boles (52:48)
Mm.
Great. Madeline Hryse, thanks for coming on Dirtbag Rich.
Madeline (53:03)
Yeah, thanks for having me, it was great.