about a subject I think is fitting given
the environment these talks are that is
knowledge the theory of knowledge is
something acquired learned a fact a
person someone or something either
through education or through experience
and indeed I spent the last vast
majority of my life working with
technology and education how teachers
use technology to impart knowledge to
students and all students demonstrate
the acquisition of knowledge through
technology and I know many of you either
heard from your parents or tell your
kids how important it is to get a good
education in the society it’s a means to
success in a full life but today I like
to talk about the other way to acquire
knowledge and that is through experience
and in particular experience that I had
on various bicycle expeditions traveling
through continents I don’t mean to say
that that form of knowledge is any more
or less important than the knowledge you
get in education but rather it’s the sum
of that knowledge from education from
experience that make us who we are and
what we are and it’s the sum of our life
but a little bit about myself I come
from a family of six and from the
earliest days when I was five years old
I can recall getting into the back of
the Galaxie 500 with my three brothers
as we travel around the United States to
experience the natural beauty and the
wonders of the United States and like
many of you have taken those summer
trips with your parents I’m sure after a
few minutes of being in the back of seat
you’d start jabbing your brother or your
sibling and you’ll be asking are we
there yet and indeed my daughter likes
to call those trips trips about learning
and what I fail to recognize was the
profound impact those experience would
have on Who I am today
it’s those lessons that I learned from
those trips that make me who I am
in 1986 I might join my brother as we
bicycle from the northernmost tip of
Prudhoe Bay through Canada into the
United States and into Central America
it was the first time that I decided to
take experience over education by
dropping out of school to do this
expedition and I learned a lot but in
Central America I turned around and
headed north and the team eventually
would set the Guinness world record for
bicycling from Alaska to Argentina and
on that expedition I learned a valuable
lesson about goals and the importance of
goals like to say goals are important
everything else is logistics and what I
found out as I was traveling north after
saying goodbye to our team members was
this profound loss in this what earnest
feeling that I had in myself as I head
up north you see prior to that every day
from the moment I woke up to the time I
went to bed I was driven by this goal to
bicycle to set a world record in the
moment it was gone it was an incredible
loss and there’s a power behind a goal
to direct your energies so in 1990 my
brother Dan and I decided to bicycle
around the world through the Soviet
Union we partnered up with two Russians
and some people felt on appropriate day
April Fool’s 1990 we bicycle from st.
Paul to Minneapolis the long way 239
days in over 12,000 miles we arrived
back into st. Paul and set the Guinness
World Record for biking across the
Soviet Union but more importantly I
learned on that expedition was the power
of team you see one person has their
strengths their acumen their physical
abilities but when you take two people
together
three and like we did when we took all
four of us together we became
exponentially more powerful to achieve
our goals in 1990 we decided to bicycle
across Africa you see at the time what
we were hearing about Africa was things
of famine of poverty of civil war but we
were convinced that there’s got to be a
different narrative and if we travelled
through Africa on the seat of a bicycle
and met people we’d indeed hear of
different stories of Africa so as we put
our rear wheels in the Mediterranean and
bicycle 262 days in over 11,000 miles to
South Africa to set the Guinness world
record we did indeed learn that people
are more similar than different and
those differences are interesting like
the Touareg who live in clan cultures in
order to survive the Sahara Desert or
the Masai who have a tradition as a
young man to become an adult you have to
kill a lion or the pygmies that live in
the Ituri forest a place I could not
live more than a week but they seemed at
home and to the strengths of one man FW
de Klerk to say that you treat one race
different than another race is wrong and
abolished apartheid and brought in
modern-day South Africa you see I
learned that yes indeed we are all human
beings but what makes us more apart from
our other animals is that if you look at
the differences not as a deficit but as
an asset it’s profound in 1995 we
decided to return back to Central
America to study the Maya civilization
the Maya were incredible people
they built city-states in the middle of
Central America they had a Vance concept
of zero in a calendar much more advanced
than the European counterparts at that
time but for some unknown reason that
civilization collapsed
this was a quest for knowledge pure and
simple what happened to those ancient
Maya to make that civilization collapse
not so much to know what happened but so
that we wouldn’t repeat it three bicycle
expeditions over thirty thousand miles
what other lessons did I learn I learned
that hospitality and friendship are
everywhere and it does not matter on the
status of the person or the gifts that
person is born with but rather they take
a chance to say hello to be stopped in
Siberia and ask a coolie ADA or where do
you come from
and when you tell them America there’s
disbelief which leads to being invited
into their home and fed and given their
bed to sleep in or in environments where
there isn’t that much like in central
Africa where you arrive in a small
village and you ask to stay that night
and you’re given a pot to cook your meal
in and most importantly the most sacred
thing to survive water so that you can
cook that night and fill your water
bottles or it’s simply the wave in the
chance of a Maya woman to say hello to
four strangers it’s that power of
friendship and charity that I try to
mimic to this day in the United States
we have grocery stores we have food
aplenty that’s not the same in all parts
of the world and indeed there are some
odd foods dried fish pork fat fermented
horse milk and there’s different ways to
deliver food like the Kampala meet
cyclists that delivered that meat on the
back of a bicyclist or the ultimate
irony of people from Nazaire who eat the
locust that have decimated their crops
and indeed there’s places where there’s
no food and people are forced to eat
things we would never consider
but at the same time you learn about
appetites and in South Africa when we
were celebrating our dinner of setting
the Guinness world record and eating
lobster our Ugandan partner looked upon
us and discussed see he grew up on the
shores of the Indian Ocean and he told
me Steve lobsters eat the dead feces in
the ocean they’re considered rats when
you bicycle you carry everything on
panniers – in front – and back and you
have to live with what you have and in
many parts of the world they don’t live
in the disposable economy like we have
in the United States where if something
breaks you throw it away buy something
new and instead there’s this ingenuity
of using what you have and taking
advantage of it that was an incredible
lesson so that when my bicycle tire
broke in Siberia this man was able to
find a different rim cut a few inches
out of it welded back together so we
could keep going or indeed when spots
where the road would end altogether it
was the gifts of someone given us a boat
so we could float a few hundred miles
down to the border with China to keep
going it’s that ingenuity that was I
learned and I still use to problem-solve
in my day audacious goals mean toughness
and indeed we spent many of days on
bicycles on roads that look like rock
pits or all day long bicycling through
dirt roads by the end of the day being
covered or spending all day in headwinds
the bicyclists enemy hoping to get a
hundred miles but only to do 40 miles or
throw Central America in the heat and
humidity only to find out at the end of
the day you were covered in ticks yes
there were times that were incredibly
difficult and question why you were
doing it but you learn grit you learn
how to go deep inside you to muscle the
resources and the energy you need to
persevere and keep going
and finally you learn how to to give
thanks and celebrate no matter who you
are where you live or what you come from
you toast with your Russian friends with
vodka well into the evening you meet
incredibly important people like FW de
Klerk the president of South Africa or
the mayor of Milan but you’re also
humbled by being invited into a Romanian
wedding you see the incredible natural
resources like the animals of Africa and
you seek the summit’s of continents to
watch sunrise on top of Mount
Kilimanjaro a moment to celebrate your
existence or to be invited into a
curandero ceremony in the mile an these
are just some of the incredible
experiences that I’ve had in my day and
make me who I am and added to my
personal knowledge again it’s not more
or less important than the education
that I got indeed those are both
important but I believe it is the sum of
that knowledge from education and from
taking risks and from adventure and
being open to new things that make a
person who they are
and make a life full I believe that’s
what Helen Keller meant when she said
life is a daring adventure or it’s
nothing at all
thank you [Applause]