I’ve spent much of my adult life riding, racing and travelling. Riding feeds racing, racing feeds travelling, and travelling creates the desire to ride more. This cycle built year on year to the point that I was very much used to putting my life in Australia on hold for months on end, while jamming the essentials to ride, race, eat, sleep and repeat into a backpack and bike box for a few months of travel.
While I can tick off so many epic riding destinations and events through Europe and North America, my travel anywhere like the Middle East, Asia or South America was nearly non-existent. I’d been to the Cape Epic a few times, ventured to Sri Lanka and traipsed across the steppe in Mongolia. In 2018 I noticed the Arabian Epic Series was being created, with stage races and marathons being hosted across Jordan, The United Arab Emirates and Oman. I’ve always had a keen interest in marathons and stage races, and when the offer to visit Jordan for the 4-day Arabian Epic Series Jordan Stage Race came up, I contacted my team mate Justin Morris and we started planning our visit to the Middle East.
UNEXPECTED JORDAN
Fast forward a few months, and I was on a plane to Jordan in early February 2020. The world had started to change, and on the flight to Dubai and then on to Queen Alia International Airport south of Amman, Jordan, I had a whole row of seats to myself.
This was the second year the Arabian Epic Series Jordan Stage Race had run, so I had
