When Tessa Hulls looks at a bicycle, she doesn’t see it as a cool toy she can use for adventures. She sees it as a cool toy she can use for adventures and a tool for social liberation.
In the last eight years, the polymath visual artist/comic/writer/adventurer has biked all over the planet, rolling over approximately 14,000 miles of paved road and donkey trail at 12 miles per hour. She rode solo from Southern California to Maine, and she’s ridden all over Alaska, Ghana, Mexico, and Cuba.
The people she met along the way were extraordinarily generous, but every day, without fail, Hulls would hear the same refrain: “You know, a woman can’t travel alone.” Many wouldn’t believe her when she told them otherwise. Encountering that level of bullshit and disbelief sent her down a three-month research rabbit hole, and she’s since emerged with a new line on her résumé: feminist historian with a focus on little-known turn-of-the-20th-century adventurers.
