Simply because I love riding a bicycle. I feel as if I am flying through the world and truly a part of all the sights, sounds, smells. However, I had never heard of anyone traveling the world by bike. In fact, for several years I thought I was the only one to attempt such a thing. Keep in mind this was back in the early '90s. The internet was still in its infancy, blogs didn't exist and searches never showed any results for something like "how to ride a bike around the world." Also, I lived in the United States, where riding a bike isn't a normal activity, and traveling by bicycle was unheard of to the average person. So, I began because I wanted to do something never done before, and I wanted to contribute something lasting to humanity. It turns out that it has been done, but I estimate that I was in the first 150 people to have accomplished riding around the world. To put that in perspective, it is much rarer than climbing Mt Everest and even less than the number of humans that have been to outer space. Now, this form of travel is often called "bikepacking".