What is an Epic Journey?

EuroEpic19

As we pedal epicly onwards, our fast-growing global audience (hello! both of you!!) are doubtless worried by the crucial question:  What makes an Epic Journey Epic?

So here are some thoughts.  Please note that this is the definition of a Bonkers Epic Journey, you are quite free to develop your own definitions, you might even like to post them in the comments below.

1. It has to be driven only by your own determination.

This is quite an important point.  Doing an Exodus holiday or indeed a sponsored trip to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro may be hard work, it may be intensely physically demanding, but we would have the advantage of other agencies to organise things and keep the pace of the trip running.

We can have a final date, say a return flight or a must-be-home-for event to act as a longstop, but each day we need to be able to ask ourselves: Do I really want to keep on doing this or shall I go home now?

By the way, even if we do go home now, we will still have done an Epic Journey, just not such a long one.

2. It needs some degree of physical challenge, but
3. It need not involve 100% hardcore suffering.

So, can a roadtrip in a car be Epic for us?  Yes, if it takes us out of our comfort zone in some way.  At one point on the EuroEpic19 we thought we were going to have to go home and use our Mini instead.  We thought that would have been Epic, because people look at it and laugh with pleasure.
But also it could be simply taking a very comfortable car to somewhere which is not a booking.com hotel.  For the introverts among us, being forced to do more interaction with local people makes a journey feel pretty Epic.
4. It is not competitively Epic
For us, there is no point in trying to be More Epic than everyone else.  As Sid put it, after grinding his way from London to Cape Town in an unreliable Peugeot 504, “It is hard enough to run a marathon, there is no point in trying to do it in a gorilla suit”.  Someone, somewhere will have pogo’d facing backwards from London to Istanbul non-stop in only 18 days.  
And also, remember the Alaskan family with the trailer and camping?  Remember the chap in his arm-powered wheelchair bicycle?  They may not get 1/10th or 1/100th as far as we get, but who is More Epic?  It really has no meaning.
5.  Epic-ness is in the mind of the traveller
Why is a Button Museum Epic, and yet-another-world-famous-art-museum-in-a-capital-city-on-the-Danube not Epic?  Why can a small church in a small village be Epic and a single stained glass window in a cathedral in a large city also be Epic?  We don’t know, but they are.
More later, as we continue to think about this.

One comment

  1. Like it. This write-up of "epic" explains why life should be epic. (And if it isn't, something needs to change.)

    1. It has to be driven only by your own determination.
    Yeah. Freedom is a human right. There's a choice. You're doing it (whatever) because you want to, even if there is a bit of time/money/pleasure compromise. Determination means you might try to fix or change things rather than just bail out of job/relationship/bonkers-journey when level of compromise is beyond a joke.

    2. It needs some degree of physical challenge
    Or another form of challenge, at any rate…

    3. It need not involve 100% hardcore suffering.
    Too right.

    4. It is not competitively Epic, and
    5. Epic-ness is in the mind of the traveller

    Exactly true! At least until we're replaced by AIs, the epicness of the group is just because of the differently dimensioned epicness of its individuals!

    Congrats on epic journey so far S:D

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