For those of us who really love bicycles, I think what we enjoy most is the sense of freedom we get from travel on the open road under our own power. This mechanical device allows us to engage both our minds and bodies to pedal long distances on just two wheels so that we can explore the landscape of the modern world. But through our journeys over lightly trafficked rural roads, as we roll past obscure old towns and villages, we can also reveal the compelling memories of the not-so-distant past. As a modern-day explorer, there's a man who rides a bike along gravel paths and asphalt highways across time and space and into the pages of history.

Erick Cedeño: My name is Eric Cedeño. Some people know me as the Bicycle Nomad.

JTP: For many years, Eric Cedeño has traveled thousands of miles by bicycle across North America. As a cyclist carrying his own gear from one town to the next, he reimagines the excitement and enthusiasm of human powered transportation toward the end of the 19th century. Back then, even the United States Army thought that the bicycle might change how human beings travel from place to place.

Erick Cedeño: There was a big craze. People were going crazy about the bicycle, the technology, about the bicycle. And the army realized that they needed other methods of transportation to be successful. They only had the cavalry back then, and they knew that bicycles were cheaper than horses. Easier to maintain than a horse. They could go further than a horse could. And also, there were quite in battlefields. So they understood the power of the bikes and they wanted to adapt a bicycle corps.

JTP: In 1896, U.S. Army Lieutenant James Moss came up with the idea to conduct an experiment to see if the bicycle could one day be used to replace the horse. In order to prove the concept, moss recruited a platoon of 20 soldiers.Erick Cedeño: Fort Missoula, Montana, is where that was formed. Lieutenant Moss approached the Army and says, I have the perfect man to do this experiment. And he did. Luckily for him, he had the Buffalo Soldiers out of the 25th Infantry out of Fort Missoula.

Erick Cedeño The Bicycle Nomadphoto by Josh Caffrey

JTP: At the time, more than 30 years after the end of the Civil War, there were stationed there an all-Black unit of enlisted men known collectively as the Buffalo Soldiers. These men who fought the Plains Wars of westward expansion and sadly participated in the displacement of Native people, were given the opportunity for a peacetime mission into the American heartland. Led by Lieutenant Moss, a white officer. Over the next two years, from 1896 to 1897, the Buffalo Soldier Bicycle Corps would make three expeditions across the West. In 2022, Eric Cedeño retraced the route that they traveled from Fort Missoula, Montana, to Saint Louis, Missouri. The distance of more than 1900 miles. In the retelling of their story through physical reenactment, the Bicycle Nomad takes us on a journey back in time. In his travels following the path of the Buffalo Soldiers, Cedeño not only celebrates the accomplishments of black Americans from our past, but also inspires further exploration of our history that is too often overlooked. I'm James Edward Mills, and you're listening to The Joy Trip Project.

Title photo by Josh Caffrey

Erick Cedeño in Missouriphoto by Josh Caffrey

Erick Cedeño's passion for exploration began at a very early age.Erick Cedeño: Since I was a kid, I've always loved history. And I have a story where my mom took me to Mexico to see the pyramids of the Mayan and Aztec civilization. We went to Mexico just for that. She hired a tour guide that took us and told us the history. Now, I'm 12 years old. I have read some of that, those books. And to be walking the steps of ancient civilization just changed ...