Challenges for 2022

I did it again but there's no "oops."

Ever since I signed up for my first Conqueror virtual challenge, I've been receiving promotional offers and notifications of new challenge routes. I don't mind getting these offers in my mail box because I'm genuinely interested in continuing the challenges for as long as I can.

When choosing a challenge to join, I only have one criterion: the distance of the route must be at least 300 kilometres. Because I typically cycle the majority of the route (be it on a spin or road bike), I want the journey to last more than a couple of weeks. In a typical week of cycling, I tend to cover about 150 kms.

Since about the middle of 2016, I vowed to never set foot in the United States again and at first I thought I wouldn't join an American virtual challenge. But I realized that this decision was silly (the virtual challenge one) because I'm not really setting foot in the U.S. and there is some beautiful countryside to see (though, for the majority of my virtual Route 66 journey, the view has been boring).

Even though I've only completed just over two-thirds of my virtual Route 66 challenge and I still have an 805.5-km loop around the Scottish Highlands to complete, I've signed up for three more challenges, each of which I won't start until sometime in 2022.

Last week, I received a notification that there is a new Conqueror virtual challenge and I was intrigued. This challenge takes me to China and follows the Great Wall. It's a 3,513.1-km trail that has me fondly remembering when I visited this colossal structure in 1998, while I was living in South Korea, and thus fulfilled a dream that I had had since I was in elementary school and we studied this colossal human achievement (albeit, on the backs of forced labour).

(I wrote about my experience of visiting the Great Wall of China, making it Roland Axam's memory, in my novel Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary.)

On Black Friday, The Conqueror sent out a promotion, where I could join this new challenge at a 30-percent savings, so I signed up. It was my chance to revisit the Great Wall without setting physically being in China.

Ever since China first detained the two Michaels (Kovrig and Spavor) in retaliation for the house arrest of Meng Wanzhou, who was to be extradited to the U.S. for fraud charges, I had vowed to never set foot on Chinese soil. But as with my vow against the U.S., the pledge is physical.

China is a beautiful country and its citizens are wonderful. I just have a problem with its government.

So, I'm looking forward to starting this trek as soon as I've finished the Scottish challenge.

At the online checkout, I was offered more savings. I could earn an additional 20 percent off the purchase of three more challenges or 17 percent off two more. So I joined two more challenges.

When the Great Wall challenge was announced, I already had considered what my next challenges would be. I would love it if The Conqueror would put together a trans-Canada route, but in the meantime, I began eyeing the Appalachian Trail (3,167.6 kms) and decided to add it to my shopping cart. Looking for some Canadian content, I also added the Cabot Trail (299.4 kms).

I know: the Cabot Trail is under 300 kms (barely), but DW and I drove the Cabot Trail, years ago, and I've always wanted to do it again. The starting line is even at the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, a place that we visited in real life. It was hard to say no to it.

To date, I've covered just over 7,266 kms (as of time of writing this blog post) and I still have 1,188 kms left to go on Route 66. With these three new challenges, plus my Scottish trek, I'd say that 2022 is pretty full.

And these challenges have been much cheaper and way more motivating than a gym membership.