Charles R. Scott, BA’90, and his children—Sho, age 12, and Saya, age 6—are cycling the Lewis and Clark Trail this summer. While they’ll journey the first 1,500 miles by car in order to complete their adventure during the school break, they’ll ride bikes and carry about 100 pounds of gear through the Rocky Mountains for the remaining 1,700 miles. This isn’t the first such trip the New York family has taken.
Scott’s first trip, riding 2,500 miles across Japan with Sho when his son was 8 years old, is chronicled in Rising Son: A Father and Son’s Bike Adventure Across Japan, released in February by Third Wheel Press.
“I just wanted to take a two-month sabbatical from work and do something crazy with my son,” Scott says about the first trip. “I wanted to slow down time. But I kept a journal, and after a few weeks, I was writing more and more and realized I was writing the book I’d always wanted to write.”
Writer and family adventurer is Scott’s new career. “I worked at Intel for 14 years,” he says, “and I could have continued and lived the corporate executive lifestyle, but I wanted to do something more interesting while my children were young. What I realized as I was watching my children grow is how brief that phase is when they need you and want to be with you—that period when you can have a dramatic impact on their lives.”
Since that first cycling trip, Scott has included his daughter, Saya, who rides a trailer bicycle. (A trailer bicycle is not a tandem, but has its own gears and chain to allow the adult to do most of the pedaling). She completed their tour around the circumference of Iceland when she was just 4 years old. Last summer’s bicycle trip took them through Europe. Scott’s wife, Eiko, works for the United Nations and joins them when she can. Each trip also includes a charitable component and scientific projects that engage the children. Afterward, Scott and his children do presentations at schools and for other groups.
“One of the rhetorical questions I’ll ask after presentations is, ‘Can a 6-year-old girl pedal over the Rocky Mountains?’” Scott says. “If a 6-year-old girl can pedal over the Rocky Mountains, then what else can she do?
“Kids can do a lot more than most adults think. They are resilient and remarkable in the things they can do, and even if you’re 6 years old, you can have an impact on the world.”
Follow the Scott family’s blog about their summer journey.
Also follow Charles Scott on National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog.
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