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“The spirit of adventure inevitably leads off the beaten track,” says Tim Bailey who makes a habit of choosing the road less traveled. An avid adventurer, Bailey’s exploits are far from typical. In 2000, he designed and built a pedal powered canoe and piloted the one of a kind craft more than a thousand miles down the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories, through some of the most remote wilderness on the continent. His journey ended at Tuktoyaktuk, an Inuit village on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Surprisingly, the makeshift boat functioned flawlessly, with the exception of the propellers which proved to be the Achilles’ heal. “Luckily I had some tools and was able to carve replacements out of driftwood,” says Bailey, who considers setbacks a part of any journey.
One of Bailey’s first adventures was to pedal a mountain bike from Seattle Washington to the Arctic Circle, a 3,300-mile journey through remote parts of British Columbia, the Yukon and Northwest Territories. “That trip had a profound impact on the way I look at life,” he says. “I learned that there’s a great freedom to be found in traveling light. I also learned that when you are moving toward a goal, providence moves too to make things happen in ways you never would have dreamed.” He recounts tales of running out of food in the Yukon and getting by on a gift of fresh fish from a sport fisherman, home-baked bread from an Indian woman and shrimp scooped from a lake with mosquito netting.
Other notable bicycle trips led Bailey 2,000 miles around the perimeter of Iceland and across its barren interior; across Alaska from bottom to top, and from southern Peru to the tip of South America. He had biked through the Atacama Desert, and over some of the highest passes in the Andes, topping out at a breathless 16,000 feet.
Lest one think everything Bailey does involved pedaling in one form or another, he has also scaled the 54 highest peaks in the Colorado Rockies and many notable summits in the western states. He has canoed the Yukon River, hiked the Chilkoot Trail and lead climbs up vertical rock faces of the likes of Devils Tower in Wyoming.
“Many years ago I wrote in my journal that my mission in life is to inspire others to follow their dreams and live more adventurously,” says Bailey. “I have tried to live up to that ideal by seeking out adventure in my own life and sharing my stories with others.” One way Bailey shares his stories is through inspirational slide shows and talks, which he has given at numerous public and private venues. “I am always thrilled by the reactions of people in the audience. They love to hear stories about adventure; they crave it as though it were an ingredient missing from their lives, something they have overlooked in their pursuit of the American Dream. In our culture too much value is placed on material items and not enough on experiences,” says Bailey, “In the end, it’s the experiences that make us who we are.”
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