An SHP bicycling trip is many things. Most of all, it is a people experience. You'll be traveling with 8-12 other people, whom you've never met in your life, for 1-9 weeks! You may find yourself traveling with someone who can do a blood-curdling imitation of a dog fight and sometimes uses that talent on dark evenings to put fear into the group. You might have "the giggler" on your trip usually the girl you can send into hysterics by a humorous announcement such as "dinner is ready". Or the girl who stands 4'9" and weighs less than 90 pounds, but absolutely refuses to get off her bike to walk up hills, so you have to put up with finding her, every time you reach the top of a hill, stretched out, straw in mouth, muttering to herself about how the world is full of slowpokes. The camera whiz who views the world as a non-entity if he doesn't have a picture of it, so you find yourself constantly being arranged with the rest of the group around cows and statues, under waterfalls, etc. You will be traveling, living, and sharing with 8-12 PERSONALITIES you've never met in your life! People who could very well turn out to be the greatest and funniest people you've ever known.

An SHP trip means either camping out or staying at youth hostels, guest houses, etc. It also means adjusting to circumstances that dictate the extraordinary. You and your group may get caught in a storm, making it pretty hard to get to the next campground, so the farmer whose farm you stopped at for shelter invites the group to sleep in his hayloft, with perhaps a couple of resident chickens, and the next morning, his wife invites the entire group to a breakfast of homemade bread and fresh eggs. You may stay at a community center, sleeping on the stage in the auditorium (curtain down) and wake up to the local women's club assembled up front for it's meeting. You may travel on a night train, snuggled under the blankets, your nose pressed to the cold window, watching a bright moon race across the Swiss Alps or the Canadian Rockies.

You'll be traveling across or through a country on a bicycle! Under your own power! Not in an air conditioned bus or in a station wagon. As a result, you and your group will be exposed to the many unexpected and extraordinary pleasures and discoveries that come from traveling by bike. You'll meet other people with different customs and beliefs; you might get caught in a marvelously cool downpour on a hot, sultry afternoon, or in headwinds that force you to walk past a field of fragrant flowers or delicious blueberries; you might travel through terrain which may necessitate walking your bike up a mountain, with unbelievably beautiful valleys on either side, or a 5 mile downhill where it won't be necessary to pedal your bike once!

There's a wonderful word for this type of experience - "serendipity." The dictionary definition of this word, "the making of pleasant discoveries by accident", is also a definition of one of many things that make an SHP bike trip a unique and wonderful experience.