Wisconsin citizen, Bridget McCutchen, is aiming to be the first woman to travel the globe by motorcycle. McCutchen is 22 and grew up in Northern Wisconsin in a family of motorcyclists. Being born into a motorcyclist family gave her interest from a young age. She got her first bike when she was 19 and started traveling to places like Baltimore and New York. She never thought about traveling the world, her brother was the one to point it out to her. He was talking about how she’s still young enough to be the world record holder for the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe. Bridget dismissed this idea because her longest road trip had been from Wisconsin to Washington but said it kept reappearing in her mind. “After a while, I was like, ‘why not?’ The only reason I didn’t think I was going to do it was because I was scared of it,” she told CNN travel. “I was telling myself, ‘no.’ And then I decided to tell myself, ‘Yes.’ So here we are.”

Bridget says it’s typical for people to be surprised when she pulls off her helmet. People seem to think that men are the only motorcyclists out there. While she documents her travels on her Instagram account @bike.will.travel she hopes she can “represent the new generation of riders”. She mentions that traveling the world via car is very different compared to a motorcycle. In a car you’re stuck in a compartment, while when you’re riding a motorcycle you can feel the wind and speed, you can smell the air, and feel the world around you.

Bridget has most of her routes planned out for her ride. She mentions that one of the hardest things she has to figure out is a boat to ship her motorcycle across to Europe, which will take like 2 months. She’s also worried about having to go into Russia, Iran, Ukraine, and China because of the ongoing political issues going on. She mentions that “traveling by motorcycle on unfamiliar roads, comes with its hazards”, and McCutchen has found it tough to navigate some off-road sections of the country at times. She also mentioned that she had fallen off her bike a couple of times when coming around rough corners or blind spots with truck drivers. She said she was struggling with money, but she saved up and has a GoFundMe set up that her followers can donate to.