Changing Gears - Nancy Sathre-Vogel

[goodreads]

Title: Changing Gears: A Family Odyssey to the End of the World
Author: Nancy Sathre-Vogel
Genre: Memoir, Non-fiction
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 305
Date read: February 2013, January 2014, April 2018

I first 'found' the Vogel-family two years go when they were on the last legs of their journey from Alaska to Argentina. A friend pointed me towards their blog, and I was instantly hooked. Ever since then I've been sitting on teatherhooks waiting for the book chronoling their adventures to be first written and then published.

At long last it is here :)

Changing Gears is the amazing story of a family's 2.5 year adventure. Nancy, John and their twin boys (age 10 at the start of the trip) packed up their lives and moved to the roads to bike all the way from Alaska to Argentina. They took each day as it came, experienced hardships and successes, met Road Angels and friendly people everywhere and generally had the experience of a life time.

I was totally mesmerized from the very start. Even though I was already familiar with their experiences through the blog, it was great to get to read it all in this condensed form (after all, it's not often you have the time to reread blog entries from 700+ days!), and I was equally fascinated to read about the planning and preparation that went ahead, as the actual adventures along the way. Somehow especially the trip through Alaska and Canada appealed to me... probably because those are two places I've always wanted to go myself!

Changing Gears will make you want to go travelling - big time! It is the story of living your dream. I could never do what the Vogel-family did, and I'm grateful to Nancy for letting me live vicariously through their experiences.