Image caption: Michael stops for a selfie along the 500-mile Camino de Santiago trail.
Homeschooling is renowned for empowering students to follow their passions, even when these interests take them in unexpected directions. For four brothers and their cousin, the legacy of homeschooling is sending them wheeling 500 miles across northern Spain—on unicycles.
Robert, Dominic, George, Martin, and their cousin Michael were about two-thirds of the way into their trip when HSLDA caught up with them July 2 (via the internet) for a quick interview. The five homeschool graduates in their teens to mid-20s are following a route along the ancient pilgrim’s path known as the Camino de Santiago.
The five cousins on their unicycling trip in Spain
“We wanted something adventurous to do this summer,” said Michael, who characterized the scheme as something he and his cousins planned in a couple of weeks based on an off-hand suggestion.
The history of the graduates’ two families and their own commitment to leading flexible and self-reliant lifestyles suggests the trip has roots in something much deeper.
Togetherness
Michael and Robert’s fathers are brothers. Their families of 7 and 10 children, respectively, have homeschooled since the oldest in each reached kindergarten age. Michael’s mother, Amie, said there was never a question about how she and her husband would educate their children.
“We knew we were going to homeschool from the beginning,” she said.
They saw homeschooling as the best way to focus on what mattered most to them: faith, togetherness and empowering their children to pursue special interests.
She added that their commitment to homeschooling prompted them to become lifetime members of HSLDA, in part to ensure they had continual access to legal advocacy should their rights as parents and educators ever be challenged. She also highlighted what she considers an additional perk of HSLDA membership. “I’ve been an avid reader of the Court Report,” she said.
Her approach to homeschooling focused on core academics while ensuring her children had scope for extracurriculars.
“Michael was really active in church choir,” she recounted. Along with his cousin Becca, Michael was a stalwart member of the choir, singing in Latin. “Sometimes they were the only two up in the choir loft, holding things together,” Amie recalled.
As a teen, Michael developed a keen interest in physical fitness and joined several of his cousins in becoming a practitioner of Brazilian jujitsu.
He and his siblings often interacted with their cousins growing up, thanks in part to proximity. The two families live fairly close to each other in the Kansas City area. The flexibility provided by homeschooling also helped accommodate many get-togethers.
After graduating from high school, Michael earned an associate’s degree in welding and worked in the trade for four years in Colorado. Robert and his brothers followed a similar career path, landing jobs that provided a good deal of flexibility in their schedules and finances.
“We all ended up developing a skill set from something we liked doing,” Robert explained, recounting how he taught himself software engineering. “We don’t have debt,” he added, something he attributes to an ethos instilled in them due to their homeschool upbringing.
These factors made the difference in turning a suggestion into the reality of planning for a five-week jaunt across Spain.
Set of Wheels
In certain ways, the groundwork for their Spanish adventure was laid some time ago. Michael’s father rode a unicycle when he was a boy. But Michael and his nearby relatives didn’t board the single-wheeled bandwagon until yet another clutch of cousins introduced them to the conveyance several years ago.
After that, “It became sort of a family thing,” said Robert.
He added that mastering the unicycle requires more perseverance than skill.
Robert's unicycle features a modification to mount a water bottle beneath the seat.
“You keep trying until you stop falling off,” he quipped. It took about a month of on-and-off practice before he felt comfortable aboard the device. After about three months, he added, “I could ride wherever I wanted.”
The concept of just where he and his brothers might be able to go expanded a couple of years ago, after other relatives rode unicycles around the island of Okinawa. “They just went on their way quietly,” Amie recalled, but added that by the time the trip ended the adventurers had been profiled by the Okinawa media.
That episode served as a model for the Spain trip for Robert and his brothers.
Over the Mountains and onto the Plains
Michael, Robert, Dominic, George, and Martin arrived in the French town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in late June. Their first leg along the Camino took them south across the Pyrenees Mountains, where they had to carry their unicycles on the steeper slopes.
Past the mountains, “It’s flat and hot,” Robert said. “It looks a lot like Kansas.”
Each of the riders wore a backpack containing similar gear: a hammock, a poncho, and a change of clothing. The travelers also welded custom rigs on their unicycles for carrying water bottles. Robert estimated they each carry about 13 pounds of dry weight.
Travelers along the Camino can collect stamps to verify they have visited certain landmarks.
Otherwise, the Camino is very accommodating to their unique mode of travel. The trail is well-maintained, and nearly every town along the route features hostels and eateries aimed at serving pilgrims.
They’ve been averaging about 20 miles a day, though one ride took them 27 miles.
“It was pretty exhausting,” said Michael.
Amazing Encounters
When they have time and energy at the end of the day, they explore the town they’re in. Michael said he’s been especially impressed by the many old and beautiful churches they’ve encountered. But the best part about their trip has been interacting with fellow travelers.
The five homeschooled cousins pause outside a church for a photo with another unicyclist they met along the way.
“You meet the most interesting people along the Camino,” Michael said.
Robert agreed: “Everybody has a crazy story.”
They spoke with people from the Netherlands and Sweden who rode bicycles all the way to Spain, and another hiker who started the Camino after walking from Poland.
The quintet have attracted attention themselves. Fellow travelers regularly ask them to pose for photos and describe just what it is they’re riding. They were even filmed by a crew working on a documentary about the Camino.
“We do our best to explain what they are,” Michael said about their unicycles. “But they do turn a lot of heads.”
After receiving regular reports from her son and his cousins for several weeks, Amy is now familiar with this phenomenon. “They tell me, ‘Mom, anywhere we go on a unicycle we become a bit of a celebrity!’” she explained.