A 45-minute interview with Heinz Stücke is now posted online at TravellingTwo website. He talks about where he's been, how bicycle travel has changed over past 40 years, and what he thinks about bike paths.
At 70 years old, Heinz Stücke is still going strong.
The German bike traveler who holds the Guinness Book of World Records title as “most traveled man in history” is swinging by Canada later this year.
The TravellingTwo blog interviewed Stücke recently for a podcast that will be aired soon. They note that after bicycling in northern Canada, he'll begin visiting island-nations to qualify for the Guinness Book record of stepping foot on every country on Earth.
While Stücke just turned 70 on Jan. 11, he's been traveling by bicycle since 1962. He's logged more than 350,000 miles in nearly a 50-year span, mostly on the same bicycle.
That bike was stolen, but later returned, back in 2006 while Stücke was camped in Portsmouth while he bicycled through the UK.
Custom-made by a German bike company, the three-speed bike weighs 55 pounds with its reinforced frame, thick wheel spokes and solid luggage carriers. (It's shown above in this photo taken in India by Martin Atzenhofer in 1991.)
On a recent trip to visit friends in Hong Kong and Japan, however, Stücke rode a folding Brompton bike to make it easier to make his plane and boat connections. You can read about his visit at the blog of another bicycling world traveler, Daisuke.
As expected, Stücke has plenty of stories to tell. He's been struck by a truck in Chile, chased by a mob in Haiti and singed by a volcano in Central America. I'm looking forward to hearing more stories on the podcast at the TravelingTwo blog.
The former factory worker in Germany explains his urge for bike travel at his Heinz Stücke website. You also can join his fan club on Facebook. He's a great inspiration to anyone who ever wanted to travel by bicycle.
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