As a young girl, trapped in bed with a life-threatening disease,
Paula Eber dreamed of adventuring across the globe, visiting exotic
places far beyond the suffocating walls of her bedroom. Thirty
years later, now an anthropology professor, cyclist and mother of
two young girls, Paula runs into a quirky ad that sets in motion a
very unconventional idea. Why not bicycle around the world with her
family? Traveling slowly on a bicycle and camping along the way,
the family could meet the local people, intimately experiencing the
culture, history and geography of the world. Plus, the journey
could support an important cause. Each kilometer they pedaled would
raise money for asthma, the disease that had almost killed Paula as
a child. And by cycling, they would choose a sustainable form of
travel, making the world a better place to breathe. Two years
later, supported by six major outdoor sponsors and World Bike for
Breath, www.worldbikeforbreath.org, Paula, her husband, Lorenz, and
their two daughters-eleven year old Yvonne and thirteen year old
Anya-set off with two tandems, two tents, six panniers and one
stuffed elephant. Their audacious plan: to pedal 15,000 kilometers
across Europe, through Asia, Australia and the South Pacific and
across North America in an unbroken, continuous circle around the
globe. As they cycle, the Ebers do indeed plunge deeply into the
local culture. They become guests of honor of an Italian cycling
team; cook dinner with a Mongolian family over a dung fire in their
yurt; participate in an ancient tea ceremony at a Buddhist
monastery in Taiwan and are treated as honored guests at the Dayton
rodeo in the U.S. However, as the family struggles with increasing
hardships and danger, both parents and children are forced to grow
and change both individually and together. Facing a 100 degree heat
wave in Italy, a snowstorm at the Great Wall in China, an
earthquake in Taiwan, and a tornado in North Dakota, the family is
forced to work together-each dependent on the skills of the other,
no matter how young. Dealing with drug smugglers and corrupt border
guards in Russia, a bite by a poisonous molokau in Tonga and a
broken foot in New Zealand, Paula and Lorenz learn hard leadership
and decision-making lessons as parents. Yvonne and Anya come face
to face with poverty and global inequities as they camp on the lawn
of a Lithuanian man whose home has no heat or insulation. And
weaving throughout the story is Paula's own personal challenge:
overcoming her asthma as she struggles to breathe while cycling
over high altitude mountains in the Alps and Rockies and battling
pollution filled air in Asia. On August 28, 2004, the Ebers
finished their 14,931 kilometer journey in Washington D.C. They
raised $65,000 to combat a disease that kills more than 250,000
children and adults around the world every year. The family spoke
about clean air and asthma to over 150 newspapers, magazines and TV
stations across the globe, including features in Time for Kids and
NPR, and PBS's Road Trip Nation. They are the only family on record
to complete a full circumnavigation of the world by bicycle.
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