Ep. 794: Bicycling Across America with Autistic Son - Revisited - Travis Saunders
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 580 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2021
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Family adventure with autism: Travis and Fiona's journey after their son Patch's autism diagnosis at 21 months, overcoming fears that global adventuring was over, and achieving epic feats like biking 5,600 km across the US through relentless positivity in every situation.
Originally aired July 05, 2019.
Travis said he'll never forget that feeling of sitting in the car with his wife, Fiona, after the pediatricians diagnosed their son, Patch, with autism at 21-months-old. They thought their life of adventuring around the world was over. However, in time, the family has learned to do some pretty epic stuff, like ride a bicycle 5,600 km across the US. Travis contributes their ability to continue adventures to their relentless pursuit of putting every single situation in a positive light.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You know, I've got this massive bike with my son's weight on the front of it. |
| 0:05.1 | We've got four pannas hanging off it and the tent as well. |
| 0:10.5 | It's a lot of weight, you know, it's a few hundred pounds of weight. |
| 0:14.6 | And I had to get off the bike and I had to push the bike. |
| 0:55.5 | Are you like me and you just, you know, say to yourself pretty often, ah, I can't do that. That's impossible. Well, if so, Travis ain't going to accept that, all right? Because Travis doesn't live with limits. He and his partner and their son have done some amazing things and are planning to do even more amazing things. Travis is a career adventure. He's done many different types of adventures. And when he and his wife found out that their son is autistic, |
| 1:00.8 | it was pretty hard news, as you could imagine. It took them some time to accept and just say, |
| 1:05.9 | okay, you know, we got to figure out a way to do the things we love and give patch their son the best life possible. |
| 1:13.1 | And somewhere along there, they decided to ride a bicycle across America. |
| 1:17.6 | They're all from Australia. |
| 1:18.8 | So that's quite a trek to go to the states in the first place, much less to ride 4,000 miles across the country. |
| 1:25.0 | But today we're going to hear about how they did that. And this episode, by the way, is from 2019, so two years ago. But I just thought it was such an inspiring story to listen on the first, on the last day of the year, or the second last day of the year, whatever, last episode of the year for us. Let's put it that way. So it's just a great way to finish the year |
| 1:44.7 | or start the year off strong if you hear it after the first. And kind of set us up for the |
| 1:50.7 | mindset of, hey, don't live this year with limits. See what's possible. Make a difference in this |
| 1:56.5 | world. And, you know, don't make excuses this year. Do something. We've had a lot of really good |
| 2:02.9 | stories on lately. So I want to make sure it's going to the ultimate purpose of getting you |
| 2:07.9 | moving and getting you doing something as well as me. You know, this show gets me moving |
| 2:11.9 | as much as anybody. It's for me as much as it's for you. So anyway, let's go ahead and jump in, and we've got to |
| 2:20.6 | catch up with Travis at some point to see if he was able to do that second adventure he's talking about |
| 2:25.7 | later in the episode. So, all right, happy New Year. And yeah, we'll talk to you next year. |
| 2:43.6 | We have a great episode coming at you today. We have a really a serial adventurer who's been all over the world, Pakistan, India, |
| 2:49.7 | Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, and so many other places, |
| 2:54.8 | as well as an educator. He's been teaching for over 20 years and has an awesome family that he does |
... |
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