Fijapaw Update: Bound for Korea

More than a year ago now, not long after I had moved to California, I had the unique pleasure of playing string quartets with a bicycling violinist in a fencing studio. I blogged about the experience here: The Fiji Quartet. That bicycling violinist is a woman named Jasmine Reese, who is cycling around the world with her dog named Fiji. Her website is called Fijapaw: One Girl. Her Dog. A Violin. On a Bicycle.

I wrote about her again last May for the Good News “We are the World” Blogfest: The Bicycling Violinist. That title is no longer strictly accurate, because pain in her arms, wrists, and elbows caused by long hours on the bike led her to switch to a recumbent tricycle for the next leg of the journey. Having cycled across the USA and Canada, her next step is to go international, and she is leaving for South Korea any day now, as soon as paperwork for Fiji is complete.

I was in South Korea for the first time myself this year, and I can attest it is a beautiful country with a wealth of experiences to see and do. But I never knew until I learned it from Jasmine that South Korea has the longest and most highly engineered network of car-free paths in the world.  This will be an amazing ride!

The Nomad/Adventurer interview site Mighty Goods just featured a remarkable in-depth interview with Jasmine, which can be found here. In this candid piece, Jasmine explains how she first started cycling as an antidote to depression, and how she eventually “kicked depression’s butt.”

“When you embark on an adventure, you get to see the positive and hope that our home (Earth) has left. There is still so much potential, beauty and awe. In reference to how adventuring has changed me — it’s helped me to realize that there are so many paths in life I can take, and I don’t have to be afraid to just try to accomplish what I set out to do. Failure is the least scary thing that could happen to me.”