Our version of reality dating TV
For the last year, my husband and I have periodically marathoned videos from this youtube account while folding laundry. It is about a guy and his girlfriend biking from Alaska to Argentina as a couple.
However, as you watch the videos, you discover that:
- He expected the journey to take 5 years
- They are supported by Patreon, which is financially difficult for them
- The woman in the relationship had never done this kind of extreme long distance journey before
- The trip involved going to her hometown in Mexico halfway through, and then leaving to continue south... for multiple years
- They had only dated for a few months before she joined him on his bike trip
We were fascinated by these videos because the couple seemed pretty functional, but the circumstances surrounding the relationship were so shocking to us. Get a load of THESE people!! They started dating IMMEDIATELY before heading into the LEGIT WILDERNESS together!! They are covered in dirt all day long and have NO other company!! How the fuck can this possibly be working out for them?!
It was a strange thing to watch and talk about, because it seemed like a kind of very physically extreme continuation of Pandemic Couple Trials. We'd just come off several years of 2020 close-quarters living, which we found pretty easy to do... but many people we know did not find the forced time together particularly good for their relationships. There are tons of people out there who found themselves flung into perhaps too-early co-habitation with partners thanks to COVID 19, and tons of pretty public stories to read about this kind of thing going wrong for folks. Seeing two people voluntarily subject themselves to this exact kind of high-stress constant-forced-proximity partnership was fascinating. We were constantly wondering: is this working out for them?!
Go watch the videos now if you don't want any spoilers...
...the two cyclists do eventually break up, mostly due to the strain that the trip is putting on the time she wants to spend with her family. The boy continues his dirty, physically exhausting journey south without the girl - struggling with heartbreak in the desert and, like, quite literally crying in ruined buildings on the side of the road.
We now refer to this person as "the divorced bike guy." Which is tremendously unfair and unkind, but our relationship to his youtube channel is basically the kind of relationship more-normal people have to, like, reality dating shows. This is our The Bachelor.
Anyway, the relationship stuff is not the only thing to find in these videos... there's a lot of interesting stuff here about the trials associated with long-term bike journeys, in particular the difficulty of crossing desert wilderness and finding "allowed" places to camp. The way they manage their time and video editing workload is also fascinating - they would do multiple months on the road recording video, then live in a single location for a month or two relaxing and editing it. It's really interesting stuff.
Highly recommend this if you have a lot of laundry to do.