Ed Ditto’s Ride Across America: The Beyond The Bike Full Interview

Robinson: Ed, you started our conversation by quoting Mark Twain. What does that quote mean to you, especially when you think about travel today?

Ditto: Mark Twain said that, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” When he said travel, if you think about it, he meant seeing the world from paddlewheel steamers and stagecoaches and steam trains, you know? Not from doing eighty on the interstate. So, yeah, slow travel, that is what he was doing.

Robinson: When did slow travel become a part of your life?

Ditto: I got hooked on slow travel when I was a kid. My dad took my brothers and me camping and backpacking and my family went on long car trips and stuff like that. And it took. I was fortunate enough to be able to escape corporate America in my mid-thirties, and I am fifty-five now and slow travel has been a way of life.

Robinson: You have described yourself as a travelling storyteller. What does that mean?
Ditto: I have been bike touring for almost twenty years, and I think it fills a social need that people are hard-wired for, and that is the travelling storyteller. Back in the day, when the old man in the robe with a long grey beard and the funny hat showed up in the village, and at night the villagers gathered around, and he told them news from other places and stories about the gods, and maybe sang a song they had not heard, and they gave him hospitality, a dry place to sleep, food, and so on. And after a day or two he left, and maybe next year he came around again. It was good for everybody.

Robinson: How do you feel that kind of storytelling has changed in modern life?
Ditto: So now it is kinda sad that the stories travel and the people sit still. Like you put your best story in a bottle and throw it into Instagram and hope people find it, but usually they do not. But when you are the bottle and you are out there floating around, it gets a lot easier for people to find you, and for you to find them.

Robinson: In 2024 you took on a major journey. What did you set out to do?
Ditto: In 2024 I floated around a lot. I rode an ebike across the United States.

Robinson: What is it that you love about bike touring, especially the social side of it?
Ditto: Something I love about bike touring is that when a bike tourist shows up in town and people see how their bike is loaded down with camping gear, boom, they found your bottle. Like, a couple would see me at a gas station in Wyoming, say, and the first words out of their mouths are, “Where you comin’ from? Where you goin’?” And when I tell them I rode there from Virginia, it just blows their minds. They want to hear all about it. And I will tell them a story or two, and they are interested, and I am interested in their stories, but man, so often they will say, “Oh, I could never do that.” And it kinda makes me sad.

Robinson: Why does that reaction hit you in that way?
Ditto: Look, I get that people make life choices, and have physical and mental and financial limitations, and so on. That is a natural part of being human. But it seems like many people I meet are clearly selling themselves short. Totally capable of overcoming the limits they have placed on themselves.

Robinson: What do you wish those people knew?
Ditto: “I could never do that.” Well, you might be surprised by what you can do, you know? Because you have gotta remember that nothing is objectively extraordinary. You might think being able to dunk a basketball on Nikola Jokić is extraordinary, and you cannot do that. Well, no. You cannot. Probably never will. But could you get an EMT license, maybe, and volunteer for your local fire department and go out there and save lives? I bet you could, even if you do not think so. And to me that is extraordinary. Equally as impressive as dunking a basketball. You think you are incapable of something, but you take a shot at it anyway. And even if you do not succeed, you have still put yourself out there. In that sense, I met a lot of extraordinary people when I rode across the US.

Robinson: What did the ebike change for you, compared to your past tours?
Ditto: What an ebike allowed me to do that what let’s call an analog bike did not. I straight up could have done this coast to coast ride on a regular bike. But when I have toured on one in the past, after riding sixty or seventy miles, I am toast. I just want to eat and go to bed. But my ebike gave me time during the day to take a two hour break, say, and go do stuff that threw me in with strangers. Soaking in a hot spring, going to a geology museum, finding the best burger in town, whatever.

Robinson: How does spending that kind of time on the road shape your understanding of the world?
Ditto: When you do that for long enough, spending time in places you do not know, doing things you did not anticipate, with people you have never met before, that is when travel becomes fatal to prejudice and bigotry and narrow-mindedness, like Mark Twain said.

Robinson: What did this ride teach you about people, especially given how divided things feel today?
Ditto: There is a lot of division in the world, we know this, but I have found that when you engage with people at ground level, they are not only willing, but eager to set their differences aside. I mean, we have so much in common. You talk to most people, and we all love our kids, we all enjoy a good meal, we think sunsets are wonderful, we are proud of where we live, and all that stuff. And it unites us instead of dividing us.

Robinson: What is the deeper message you hope people take away from your journey?
Ditto: Look, reality is just a bunch of stories we tell ourselves, right? So get out there and make stories. Overcome your limits. Focus on things we all have in common. Slow travel can do that. I think we need a lot more of it.