“The ride was strewn with small arroyo’s of loose, and bleached sand. At the water tank I rested a bit and drank, then started to ride on the Arizona Trail. In the first half hour I could still ride somewhat, but then it got very difficult. I had to get off the bike and push, drag and wheel Bomba over a very steep, and essentially, a hiking track. The next thing was to get my panniers off, leave these behind, and work Bomba a few hundred meters up, then return and pick up the bags. Ruthless grit and dirt were sanding my cleats. These too got a serious workout.”

Geert van Keulen

is an experienced traveller and making long solo trips is not unknown to him. In Australia he discovered a love for nature and unspoiled wilderness. Hiking is his passion but tour bike riding, and specifically bikepacking is equally important.

Geert was born in the late fifties of the last century. He completed an apprenticeship as a printer bookbinder in the Netherlands and started working in the printing industry when he was 15 years old. In 1978 he became an infantry soldier in the Dutch army which back then still had a conscript duty. While Geert considers himself a pacifist now, at that time the travel and not having to be inside a factory, opened his eyes and he migrated to Australia in 1981. He was in search for a new start. At first, he again worked as a graphic tradesman, but after travelling through Australia in a Volkswagen Kombi, he stopped in Adelaide and followed a life changing Illustration and Design course.

After becoming an illustrator and graphic designer he kept his love for ink and paper and it is why he puts a lot of energy into designing printed books – in this very digital and modern world.

Black Tea, No Sugar

Geert first embarked on a long trek through the Nepalese Himalaya as a reward for successfully graduating in illustration and design in 1988. His lecturer George had taken a year leave in Geert’s final year and had travelled to Ladakh in North India, where he sketched the temples, the people, and the mountains. After seeing an exhibition of George’s work, Geert never travelled without a sketchbook.

In 1997 he was involved in a hiking accident that changed both the lives of his hiking partner Warren Macdonald and that of himself. It happened on tropical Hinchinbrook Island, in Far North Queensland, Australia, when a boulder broke off a mountain and fell on Warren’s legs. They survived a horrific night and 46 hours later Warren was rescued. It was filmed and released under the title: "I Shouldn't Be Alive, Trapped Under A Boulder", by Discovery Channel, and it led to an invite by Oprah Winfrey in Chicago in 2006, which was quite a hilarious experience.

Geert hiked long routes through New Zealand, Nepal, USA, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and South Australia, the Italian Alps, and Scotland, and twice hiked a near two-month solo journey through respectively the French and Spanish Pyrenees from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean coast. His two Pyrenees hikes were 12 years apart and he named these; ‘Le Grand Sentier’, and ‘El Gran Camino’. He has recently completed an end to end hike on the magnificent Bibbulmun Track in West Australia where he walked from Perth to Albany.

The Geert Escape

When plagued by the back injury he found he could continue his long journeys on the bike. He ‘threw’ his bike Stumpjumper on a plane, flew to Ho Chi Minh City in the South of Vietnam, and after 10 minutes of riding he noticed how the injury didn’t affect his riding and that he could ride pain free. He cycled from Vietnam into Cambodia, North into Laos and back to Vietnam. This ride was baptised ‘The Geert Escape’. After having been admitted for exhaustion and blood tests into a hospital in Kratie, in North Cambodia, Geert was impressed to see the dismal circumstances of sick Cambodian people.

Back home in Adelaide he held a fundraiser and managed to collect funds for the simplest of medical supplies such as syringes, medicine, and blood pressure equipment.

Ride into the Mirror

Riding pain free tasted for more so next – much like George had done 24 years earlier – he took a year off, from his work as an illustration and design lecturer, and embarked on a very long ride through Lombok, Bali, Java, and Sumatra in Indonesia, then Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. From Hanoi he flew to Amsterdam – primarily to reconnect with his dear mother and brothers, and he joined 4 mates from Australia and they rode on road bikes to Paris, and stood by the roadside to watch the Tour de France a few times in Belgium and France. As his mates rode further, and even climbed Mont Ventoux, Geert returned to his mum and packed to get ready for his flight to Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Part 2 of the RITM journey first took him from Boston northwards. Via New Hampshire and Maine he side-tracked into Québec, Canada, and rode down South once more into the States in Vermont. Followed by New York, Pennsylvania – where he stayed with family friends – to Maryland and Virginia, where the route across the States started in earnest. Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, Utah and Arizona followed and the final stretch was from the Mexican border to San Diego in California, and up to Los Angeles.

Dirt, Dust & Granny Gears

In 2019, before Covid started to flog the world, Geert once again took time off work. This time for 6 months, and he bought a new expedition bike ‘Bomba’ and flew to Albuquerque in New Mexico, from where he first rode as a ‘warm-up’ to Sierra Vista in the very South of Arizona. From the Mexican border he embarked on the ‘Western Wildlands Route’. A brand new bike dirt route through the deserts of the South, the high snow capped Rocky Mountains in the centre, and the thick and lush forests of the North. When he finished at the Canadian border in Roosville, Canada, he was the first rider to complete the WWR going northbound. 

In the first part of the journey, somewhere in the desert of North Arizona, Geert was offered a redundancy package by his employer which he accepted. And after he’d signed the paperwork he was indeed a free rider!

Geert is semi retired and works at the University of South Australia where he lectures in the Illustration & Animation program.

Geert finds strengths in the strong mental healing power in these outdoor adventures and believes that all refugees should be helped.