Bike, what a passion! What's simpler than a bicycle? With a single movement, a series of gears are triggered that can make us travel kilometers and kilometers in complete health, giving us the opportunity to enjoy the surrounding landscape and experience each place and country visited in a profound way.
Group trips outside the city, perhaps along some path surrounded by greenery, are routine for many enthusiasts, but it would hardly occur to us to stretch across the border.
Marco and Giovanni
For two simple thirty-year-olds from Ravenna, on the other hand, the idea of going beyond the imaginable to the sound of pedaling came about.
Marco Meini and Giovanni Gondolini are two boys from the Romagna Riviera linked by a ten-year friendship and with a great passion for sport, travel and nature.
Marco, after a first unsatisfactory work experience at a company in the port of Ravenna, decided to take advantage of his agricultural knowledge and passion for the land, plants and flowers by opening his own gardening company.
Even for Giovanni, his first work experiences were not as satisfying as he imagined. Tightened in his work suit as an employee in the marketing department of Barilla, he changed his clothes from a jacket and tie to a bathing suit to manage a bathing establishment in Marina di Ravenna with a friend.
The bike tour
Always in touch, Marco and Giovanni gave themselves a trip by bike from their hometown to Nice years ago, all in seven days. During this experience he developed in them the crazy idea of doing it again, but with the destination not the Côte d'Azur, but a complete tour of the five continents.
So on February 17, 2013, armed with their bikes, the bare essentials and the desire to explore the world, Marco and Giovanni left Ravenna with the intention of touring every single corner of the globe. From the well-known and reassuring Europe, passing through the boundless expanses of Australia to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes mountain range. From east to west, almost as if they wanted to chase the sun every morning.
For the two young people from Ravenna this represented, and still represents, a challenge especially for themselves. The long distance from home and the physical and mental effort they have to endure was a tough test right from the start, but despite the difficulties Marco and Giovanni are successfully conducting their journey, albeit separated.
In fact, at the moment, after an obligatory winter break in Canada, Marco has started another type of trip with his new love Sheena, a girl he met in Vietnam while passing through the Asian continent, while Giovanni's bike is traveling the continent in recent months. American far and wide, determined to end an adventure that began three years ago.
Despite the separation the MaGio Bike Tour (where MaGio stands for Marco and Giovanni) continues to grind ground to end, according to plans, in 2018 in Africa after five years, a hundred countries crossed and approximately eighty thousand kilometers.
The experiences and sensations collected so far are narrated from time to time in the official tour blog (www.magiobiketour.com) with continuous updates by both Marco and Giovanni. Furthermore, here it is possible to discover every detail, curiosity and particularity of one of the longest, craziest and most fascinating journeys of recent years: the MaGio Bike Tour.
