From Canada to South America by bike

“There’s something about the seeming infinity of such a route,” said Doolaard, a 38-year-old graphic designer with the shaggy blond beard and sunken eyes of a wilderness saint. “The destination was extremely far, and it seemed like a big adventure.” It would take him two years and 12,296 miles of riding to reach the end of the road; Doolaard’s written and photographic account of the journey, “Two Years on a Bike: From Vancouver to Patagonia,” was published by Gestalten in January.

At night, he often slept in ad hoc campsites scouted using satellite images from Google Earth, cooking one-pot meals over a gasoline-burning camp stove. In his book, Doolaard sometimes appears as a tiny speck in sweeping drone images: He’s dwarfed by empty stretches of Nevada desert, or picking his way up a trail to an Ecuadoran mountain pass.

Juxtaposition of tiny bicycle with big landscape underscores the scale of the undertaking, while hinting, too, at its appeal. Every bit of additional weight matters on a bike, rewarding riders who winnow their needs to a state of functional minimalism. An illustrated packing list in the front of the book reveals that, for 816 days on the road, Doolaard ate off a titanium spork and scrubbed dishes with a dedicated toothbrush.

“The simplicity of traveling the world by bike gave me focus. Everything had a purpose,” he wrote of an earlier bike trip across Europe and Asia. (He documented that ride in the book “One Year on a Bike: From Amsterdam to Singapore.”) In contrast with the mess and complication of life at home, riding his bike provided a quite literal sense of direction. “Once I set off, life was very clear to me.”

While cycling across two continents is an extreme feat by any measure, the journey linking North America and South America has become a touchstone in the world of bicycle touring. The now-classic southbound passage across the Western Hemisphere goes from Alaska to Argentina, first completed by Americans June and Greg Siple. Their groundbreaking 18,272-mile ride, a trip they called Hemistour, began 50 years ago.

“We were very intent on using the expedition as a way to promote bicycle touring in the United States, because it really wasn’t a thing at the time,” said June Siple, who was 25 when she set out from Anchorage with fellow Hemistour riders in 1972. In the early ’70s, it wasn’t clear that such a journey could be done at all. The distances were vast, and bicycle touring — particularly through such far-flung places — was an unfamiliar concept to many in the United States, even fellow cyclists. Siple said that disbelief was a common reaction to their plan, but that their group was confident: “I think we were all just ready for the task,” said Siple, who turns 75 in March and is hoping to clock 1,500 miles of riding this year. “I mean, it was a huge adventure!”

In the half-century since the Siples began their groundbreaking ride, bike touring has changed. In part, that’s due to the couple’s own advocacy as co-founders of the nonprofit organization now called Adventure Cycling Association, which has published more than 50,000…