Feature: build a community - grant johns
Grant Johnson is the man behind
Horizons Unlimited, with his wife
Susan they have travelled the globe
and it has been their driving
passion to help others achieve their
overland dreams too.
MEM - Tell us a little about
yourself and why you started
Horizons
Unlimited.
Grant
I'd been riding a long time in
Canada and in the USA as well.
Within a year and a half of starting
riding at 16 I was racing, motocross
and then road racing, a couple of
national championships, then rode
two day qualifiers for the six days. I
qualified for the Canadian team,
but we had no money to go! Always
an adrenalin junkie I also raced
sailboats and taught skiing. But
then what do you do? I'd ridden
everywhere within reasonable
reach of home, so as Susan phrases
it, I "hatched the crackpot scheme
of travelling around the world on a
motorcycle."
We eventually spent 11 years
travelling around the world very
slowly, from 1987 to 1998,
eventually reaching over 50
countries, and every continent
including Antarctica. In December
1997, while in Ushuaia, Argentina,
waiting for the boat to take them to
Antarctica, CompuServe told us that
we could have a website (We'd
been sending email s via
CompuServe since we left in 1987)
so we posted the story of our
travels on the then new internet.
The story quickly attracted people
from all over the world, and by the
time we got home a few months
later, there were hundreds of
emails coming in requesting
information about where we had
been and how to do it! We started
the HUBB forum so that people
could answer each other’s
questions, and the newsletter to
keep in touch with where the
travellers were, and within two
years the site was a global
phenomenon, reaching travel-
minded people in over 150
countries. It wasn’t planned, it just