The Ride of His Life : In 13,000-Mile Odyssey, Garden Grove Man Completes Personal Goal and Pilgrimage

After Eugene Youngho Kim crossed the Canadian Rockies by bicycle, he faced more than 2,000 miles of prairie, largely empty of people and with little variation in landscape to mark his progress: “Just the clouds changing, and the sun rising in front of me and disappearing behind me.”

Riding alone, he camped along the side of the road, or in parks, schools and cemeteries. He hit snowstorms in October and found himself riding through slush, which would get into everything, even the lining of his brake cables. He had to clean his bike thoroughly at the end of each ride segment to keep the cables and components from freezing overnight.

The loneliness of those months was sometimes overwhelming, but Kim found a purpose in it. “In solitude, I was close to the Lord. It changed my perspective,” Kim says now. “It prepared me for the future trip.”

Canada was just a prelude for this “future trip,” which took Kim across Europe and through Greece to Turkey, and then from Nepal to India and Pakistan and, finally, across the breadth of China. Kim’s journey, which started in the parking lot of the Young Nak Church in Garden Grove, took him across about 13,000 miles by bicycle in a little less than two years.

Kim had decided in his freshman year at UC Santa Barbara that he wanted to ride around the world before he was 30, “and I barely made it.” He left on July 15, 1990, four days after his 28th birthday, and returned last month.

He came home somewhat the worse for wear. A head-on collision with a car in northeastern China left him with a concussion, a broken wrist and deep bruises in both legs, ending his quest just short of his planned destination, his native Korea. He is now recovering from the accident and the rigors of the trip at his parents’ home in Garden Grove and contemplating his future now that he has accomplished his goal of more than 10 years.

While adventurers of one sort or another are crawling over just about every corner of the globe, Kim’s motivation for his two-year odyssey sets him somewhat apart. The trip for Kim, who is a Christian, was cast in terms of his beliefs: part pilgrimage, part spiritual quest, part missionary exploration.

Wearing a T-shirt (now riddled with holes) bearing the message, “Urgent: Jesus is coming soon,” Kim headed north along the coast after leaving Garden Grove, turning east at Vancouver, B.C., to face the vast Canadian expanse. He reached New York in six months, staying there for six weeks before flying to London.

He hit Western Europe during one of the coldest winters in recent years. “Because it was so cold, people in villages didn’t come out” of their houses, Kim says. For that reason, and because of the expense of traveling there, he cycled quickly to Eastern Europe.

The difference between East and West was dramatic, Kim says, even though he had been prepared by news accounts. The trains in Czechoslovakia were rusted and antiquated; in Romania, he saw people stand in line at markets for hours, only to go away empty-handed. “I (had seen it before) in a magazine, but to be there and see this was really something,” Kim says. “I didn’t know how poor they were.”

Kim found the people of Eastern Europe hungry for religion after decades of Communist rule. He met with missionaries and gave testimony in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. But he stopped proselytizing once he entered Turkey, which is 98% Islamic. Leaving his bike temporarily, he traveled around the country by bus with some friends he met on the road.

Although he met a few “underground” missionaries in Turkey, mostly he visited religious sites (including the seven churches in the Book of Revelations) and observing life in the country while keeping his beliefs to himself. “Once they know that I am a Christian,” he says, “that’s it. No more conversation.”

Kim continued by bus to Syria, Jordan and Israel. In Jerusalem he took an intensive three-week course at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, which included excursions to religious sites, and then continued by bus to Egypt, following the Nile all the way to the border with Sudan. After returning to Cairo, he flew back to Istanbul, Turkey.

There, in August of last year, he met with his younger brother, Young Su. Their plan was to cycle to Eastern Turkey, where they were told they could obtain a visa to enter Iran. That triggered the first big frustration of the trip: They cycled across Turkey, only to be told they could not get a transit visa for Iran. They returned to Istanbul by boat across the Black Sea.

From there they flew to Nepal, over the route they’d hoped to bike. From Katmandu, the brothers undertook some of the most difficult cycling of the trip, through a region that sees few tourists, especially tourists on bicycles. They cycled west across the top of India, through Delhi, and from there began trending north into Pakistan.

Safe food and water were scarce in the villages, and Eugene Kim encountered his first illness of the trip as he fought stomach ailments for more than two weeks. They continued riding, however, climbing the famed Karakoram Highway, the ancient silk trading route, taking their heavily laden bikes over passes that topped 15,000 feet.

They entered China at a crossing that was opened just a few years ago, but after less than 100 miles they were stopped and told they could no longer ride their bikes because of sensitive military installations nearby. They boarded buses and headed east.

In Urumqi, they met another disaster. In a bus terminal, Eugene Kim had a bag stolen--containing all his money (about $1,800 in traveler’s checks), credit cards, passport and both his cameras. He and Young Su went to Beijing by bus, where Eugene obtained a new passport. There, the brothers parted: Young Su traveling to South Korea before returning to California; Eugene flying to Hong Kong where he replaced his traveler’s checks, credit cards and cameras.

He returned to Beijing, where he met a Chinese-Korean friend, and together they took a train to the city of Lanzhou, where Kim had left his bike. From there he resumed cycling, through Beijing and continuing eastward toward the Sea of Japan.

Although bicycles are a common sight in China, Kim’s bike, with its carrying bags (panniers) and a design far different from very basic Chinese bikes, often drew curious crowds of onlookers. “They wanted to touch it, to change the gears,” Kim says. “I could not stop to take a rest.”

It was outside the city of Jilin, in what was once the province of Manchuria, where Kim had the accident that ended his trip. He was cycling down an unpaved road; a Jeep was driving up the road rapidly and skidded on a curve, hitting Kim head-on. He was unconscious for two hours and woke up in a hospital. Although he was unable to walk for three days, he had survived, amazingly, without major injury.

He traveled to his hometown of Seoul, South Korea, where he visited relatives and a childhood friend before returning to Garden Grove.

In all, the trip had cost him about $30,000, which he had saved while working as an electrical engineer. He rates the trip largely as a success, although he remains disappointed that he was not able to cycle in some areas. “I wanted to cycle every land,” he says. “I wanted the future missionaries to come where I cycled and spread the Gospel.”

Kim plans to assemble a slide show of his trip--he took more than 300 rolls of film--and perhaps write a book, not only to share the spiritual side of his trip but also to “encourage younger minorities that they may have a hope and they have opportunity in this country.”

Despite its difficulties, the trip cemented his belief in Christ, and he says he plans to give up his career in engineering to pursue missionary work, he hopes in South America or Africa--places he didn’t visit.

When he first came to the United States as a boy in 1976, Kim remembers looking out the window and vowing not to “live under the shadow of Westerners” and to “be an example to second-generation Koreans in whom I would plant dreams, courage and national pride.”

He worked out extensively through his high school years, and became an avid cyclist in college, taking major trips across the United States and through Europe, as well as numerous rides up the coast to San Francisco during school vacations.

He also discovered religion: “The reality of God came into my life when I was cycling in my university years.”

Kim’s riding experience and strength were crucial to his success on the “around the world” trip. Whereas most touring cyclists try to keep their loads under 25 pounds, Kim carried as much as 100 pounds, with extra food and water, cameras and film, camping supplies and plenty of spare parts. “I was thinking there are no bicycle shops in all those Middle Eastern countries,” he says.

In addition to the heavy load, there were the problems of weather and poorly maintained roads to contend with, in addition to the frequent challenge of obtaining safe food and water, and the occasional problem of finding a place to sleep in some Chinese villages. The Chinese were sometimes reluctant to take him in, for fear of placing themselves at risk with authorities.

He started out with a bike he had been riding since 1985, but he had a minor accident in Los Angeles--his front wheel jammed in a grate on the road--and the bike began falling apart after that. He replaced it in Portland, Ore. He brought it home with him--the frame heavily taped and banged up from 12,000 miles of rigorous road, the wheels bent from the accident that ended the journey. The bike isn’t ridable, but it’s his biggest souvenir of the trip.