Rosemary & Chelsea are the Traveling Roses. For more photos of us and to see photos of our bicycle adventures check out our online photo gallery.
Cycling
We are Rosemary Taugher and Chelsea Taugher-Dias – mom and daughter – and we set off in June 2007 for a more than 40,000 mile, self-contained bicycle trip (meaning we are carrying everything we need with us) riding the coastlines of approximately 44 countries and international territories.
We’ll be gone about eight more years, maybe longer.
So far on this trip we have cycled the Atlantic Coast from Key West to Boston and adventured our way up to Bar Harbor, Maine. On the Pacific Coast we visited Seattle and skipped down to central California, where we cycled from Santa Barbara through Los Angeles and beyond.
We are currently cycling the Gulf Coast from New Orleans LA to Brownsville TX, and we are continuing on to ride the coastlines of Mexico, Central America, and South America.
After South America we are cycling the Caribbean islands, including the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba, and the Bahamas.
In 2006, we “warmed up” (though we had no idea at the time that we’d do more than this!) for our current multi-year trip by riding our bikes across the USA, riding from St Augustine FL to San Francisco on a supported ride – my youngest son Alex came with us and met us at the end of every day. We took over three months to do the ride, and added onto the adventure by exploring areas off the route by car.
I cycled extensively in Santa Barbara from 1979 through 1992, and for several years rode 350-500 miles a week. At a mere twenty-two months old, Chelsea rode in her Burley kids trailer on a 350-mile bicycle trip with us, riding from the Oregon border to San Francisco.
Backpacking
In the 80s I backpacked almost every year for nine years or so – my (then) husband and I would do a ten-day, sixty-mile backpacking trip in the High Sierras of California. I learned how to tie up our food so the bears wouldn’t get it (they got it one year anyway – that was a looong hike out!); how to pack ultralight; how to set up a tent fast; how to filter water; how to use a camp stove; and I learned all the challenges and joys of long backcountry hikes.
Unwilling to give up those wonderful trips after having children, I simply brought them along with us.
Chelsea got started really early on her outdoor adventures – we brought her with us at the tender age of six weeks old for a ten-day trip (only about thirty miles though). She was so young we couldn’t even tell what her eye color was going to be, but there she was on my front in a Snugli front pack, miles out in the woods in the Sierras.
She came with us again at fourteen months old on the full sixty-mile trip. One of my favorite memories of that trip is seeing her sleeping by the fire during a snowstorm, bundled up in her Hollofil sleeper, while we got the tent set up. That was the same night the tent collapsed on us at two in the morning from the weight of the snow…
We added Chelsea’s younger brother Alex to the mix when he was ten months old (Chelsea was four by then), for our usual sixty-mile trip. On that trip we finally brought a mule to carry some of the gear, and the kids rode on our backs.
By the end of this trip I was a pro at traveling under difficult conditions with young children. We had a four-year-old and a ten-month-old to care for at camp out in the middle of nowhere, after we had hiked six to ten miles a day. Now there’s a challenge…that, and packing ten day’s worth of clean diapers in, and ten day’s worth of dirty diapers out…
Our faithful collie Wizard was on all the trips with us, adding to the fun.
International
I’ve been to at least thirteen different countries over the years, many of them more than once. I had two trips to Argentina in the early 90s, and brought Chelsea with me for a three-week trip to Argentina when she was only five (within two days she had learned how to say thank you, please, bathroom, and ice cream in Spanish).
When Chelsea was seven and her brother Alex was four, we traveled to Europe for a month, starting in Frankfurt Germany, visiting Budapest, Prague, East Berlin, West Berlin, Krakow, and Warsaw by train.
That was seven cities in four countries in less than a month, with a four and seven-year-old in tow, by train and bus and metro, in countries just barely out of forty years of communism. All my early backpacking-with-kids experience really paid off on that trip.
In 1992 I had the good luck to travel around Spain with my oldest son Paul, and then in 1993 I had several extended business trips to Prague and Germany. By that time I was so good that I could pack for a three-week trip to two or three countries, in winter in Europe, carrying only a roll-aboard suitcase and a briefcase (and that included my laptop and all business files).
In early 1994, we threw over our old life in Santa Barbara and moved to the Czech Republic, where Chelsea and Alex and I lived for six years. I worked as an interim chief financial officer (CFO) for young growing companies while we explored the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, and Austria.
Our last year in the Czech Republic we lived in a thousand-year-old castle in Moravia, down near the Austrian border (we still miss it). I’ve had the opportunity as well of visiting Greece, Scotland and England.
Cycling, Snorkeling, Kayaking, Fencing
When we returned to the USA, we landed in Florida, and that gave us a great chance to explore sub-tropical climates after so many years in cooler climates. Chelsea started riding bicycles in Florida, and began fencing. She fenced for about seven years, traveling all over Florida for tournaments, even attending the Nationals in Sacramento one year.
When we first arrived in Florida, Chelsea, Alex and I rode Trek hybrids, but we didn’t ride much – we confined our rides to short errands and riding to the beach and back, with one thirty-mile group ride. In late 2004 Chelsea and I got beautiful road bikes – Specialized Dolce women-specific bikes. Alex and Chelsea and I joined a three-day bike ride in Sebring, and the day we got back home from it, we started riding twenty-three miles a day, nearly every day.
We were hooked on kayaking the first time out, and we spent every Friday for nearly five years kayaking the Loxahatchee River, a gorgeous primitive river in Jupiter FL. We’ve kayaked in Delray Beach FL, in Alaska, and in Key Largo FL. Kayaking is a sport we’ll do any chance we get.
We fell in love with snorkeling too, the first time we tried it, and again, we go every chance we get. So far we’ve snorkeled in Delray, Key Largo, Key West, and in a half-dozen locations in the Caribbean.
Our goal is to snorkel all the great reefs off Mexico, Central and South America, and off all the islands in the Lesser and Greater Antilles on our way back to Florida.
Virtual Office
I’ve been running a virtual office in one form or another for over twenty years. I’ve had a wide range of experience, everything from working remotely to my own office; working from our apartment in San Francisco faxing and telephoning to Prague in the early 90s; working throughout the Czech Republic; working as a real estate investor in Florida; growing a real estate guru’s business; and living on the road as a cycle tourist.
Living in the castle in Moravia in the Czech Republic, and working in Prague, I worked heavily with faxing, Internet, and cell phones to do all my business. During one particular CFO contract, I had to travel to Warsaw, London, and Budapest, as well as work with offices in offshore banking countries, and that created some great virtual office stories.
Back in Florida, Chelsea and I began working in real estate investment. We’d do our deals on the road, even carrying a printer with us so we could do market and legal research and sign a contract on the spot.
In addition to our own real estate investment activities, we ran the registration for a statewide real estate exchange group for several years, all of it virtual, traveling only for the meetings every other month.
One of our most complex virtual office contracts was developing and running the speaking business for a real estate guru. When we began with him, he made only a few sales per month, and spoke infrequently.
By the end of a year, he was speaking up to eight times or more a month, and often selling hundreds of courses per month. Working with our virtual staff and with companies all over the US, we handled all arrangements for his speaking engagements, bookkeeping, fulfillment, product development, creating PowerPoint slides, and we worked with other companies for booking him to speak, website development, and coaching programs.
In all, we were instrumental in growing his monthly sales from a low four-figure to a low six-figure number (mind you, that’s per month).
Following our contract with the real estate guru, we created our own company to do speaking and sales of products for real estate investors. We were very early users of webinars and teleconferencing, and we worked with programmers to create our own back office system. We worked closely with developers to create our own website, and Chelsea now maintains it herself, writing the html codes for all the posting.
Living on the road as cycle tourists has increased and expanded our virtual office skills. We’ve always had to figure out a way to support ourselves, and we’ve run our own virtual office throughout all of it.
We’ve sat in more Starbucks and other coffee houses than we can list, looking for Internet access and wanting a dry comfortable place to type; and we’ve gone dashing through the rain from our tent to the women’s bathroom in a campground so we can charge the laptop and post our latest blog.
I have written and posted over 250 pages of blogs just in this trip alone, and I am about thirty percent finished with writing our first book about this adventure. While on the road several years ago I wrote a book about the virtual office, and we worked on helping develop a real estate exchange website in the early months of this trip – all of it working virtually.
We’ve also downloaded, culled, sorted, captioned and uploaded thousands of photos in the last several years.
I have extremely strong organizing skills and I have used these skills, along with technology, to develop projects and grow ideas – that’s been my work for over thirty-five years. I’ve never been able to give up adventuring, so the virtual office has been the perfect answer, currently allowing us to live our lives on the road for our ten-year cycling adventure.
Health, nutrition, and good attitudes
Staying healthy, and keeping it simple and natural, has been a big focus of ours for years. Chelsea recovered from a severe brain injury (over a period of years), I recovered from liver damage, and I completely reversed my arthritis, all of it using natural methods.
On the road we use natural sunscreens and natural insect repellants; and we use homeopathy and herbal remedies for sore muscles, wounds, insect bites, and all the other small annoyances of an adventure traveler’s life. We are always on the lookout for new natural products and new ideas to keep ourselves at maximum health with a minimum of fuss.
We are firm believers that a balanced and positive outlook is the most important aspect of our lives, and we practice it daily (sometimes hourly when it’s a tough day…).
Adventuring
All along the way, we’ve learned an incredible amount about adventuring. We’ve learned about equipment and technology and clothing. We’ve learned how to deal with people from many, many different walks of life and different points of view.
We’ve learned to speak Spanish and Czech. We’ve learned how to find places to stay under the most amazing circumstances, and we’ve learned how to travel by bicycle, boat, foot, car, bus, airplane, trains, and public transportation.
We’ve stayed in luxury hotels; we’ve huddled in our tent with fifty mph winds blowing grit right through the rain fly and tent; and we’ve knocked on the doors of perfect strangers asking if we could get a place to stay.
We’ve been on luxurious cruise ships, kayaks, and noisy airboats in the marshes. We’ve been jammed onto local buses, trains and metros in central Europe, and we’ve flown first class in airplanes.
We’ve dealt with time changes and cultural differences and language differences.
We’ve learned a lot of different symbols and names in different countries to represent men’s and women’s bathrooms, and we’ve had to do our business in coed bathrooms. We’ve learned how to balance while using a hole in the floor and we’ve had to reach inside the walls for the plumbing to get a toilet to flush.
On our current trip we’ve learned how to cast net fish and clean shrimp; we’ve had an airboat ride, watched alligator eggs being collected, had a personal tour of an alligator farm that grows up to 60,000 alligators each year from eggs, and we’ve seen 800 lb. alligators being skinned. We’ve ridden on rice combines and seen rice mills in operation. We’ve ridden in ultralight aircraft, and done loops and rolls in an aerobatic airplane.
Why create the website?
We wanted to create this website for several reasons. One is to share our stories of life on the road and life during adventures. We are asked many of the same questions again and again, but we often don’t have the time to give answers, so we decided to write the stories instead.
Our stories are often funny and often heartwarming, and sometimes horrible (at least to us), but we’ve always learned something from each one of them.
And that’s another reason for writing the blogs and articles on the website – to share what we’ve learned. There have been so many times that we learned what we could have done, after the fact, or we learned a great tip, or discovered a great piece of clothing or piece of equipment, well after we first needed it.
We hope you enjoy the website, with its blogs and photo albums, and we love feedback. We’d love to have you share any of your ideas and products with us so we can pass them along to our readers.
Rosemary and Chelsea