Meet Professor Dumpster’s Spiritual Cousin, Mr. Bicycle

A Business Insider profile of a full-time adventurer — yes, he’s a white dude, do you even have to ask — who goes by the name Ultra Romance raises a very important question: Is it possible to find someone annoying and inspiring at the same time? (Also see: our recent discussion of MMM.)

The article is breathlessly titled, “35-year-old American who thinks modern life is too stressful works 6 months a year, then lives on $10 a day adventuring around the world on a bicycle.” It includes lots of lovely Instagram pictures of Mr. Bicycle in media res doing fun adventure-y things, usually shirtless, without photo credits. Who is taking these shots? Is he sponsored by GoPro? Also, how does he pay for his many tattoos?

So many questions. Let’s start from the beginning.

Mr. Bicycle started out his proto-adult life the way many of us did, with college and plans to pay off his loans and buy a house and have a family. Then he swerved, hard. Now he forages! He lives off the land, sometimes literally, because when he gets money he puts it in bags and buries them. And yet his functional interest rates are not that much different from mine. Huh.

Since college, 15 years ago, Ultra Romance, aka Benedict [or Mr. Bicycle — ed], says he hasn’t lived more than six months in any one place. He has never owned a car, and he got a bank account just so he could buy and sell bicycle parts on eBay. (He keeps the cash he earns in little bags that he buries in the ground.) He says he lives on $10 a day.

“We have this preconceived notion of what success is in the modern world,” he recently told Business Insider. “I’m not ashamed that I don’t like to work. It’s just very unnatural.”

Sure! Nothing shameful about not liking to work. Who likes to work? Most of us are really into not working. That’s why weekends are so popular, and alcohol, and video games, and travel. I tend to get a bit squinty when people make a big declarative deal about not liking to work, like the proud father in the current, enthralling documentary The Wolfpack, as though that makes them special. No one enjoys it, pal. That’s why we call it “work” and do it in exchange for money, which makes everything else possible, including weekends, alcohol, video games, and travel.

Mr. Bicycle travels; he works six months a year so that he can spend the rest of his time going lots of places. He spends as little as possible, preferring to sleep rough and graze for his food.

“My degree is in nutrition, and I’ve always taken care of my body and made sure I was eating well. But my fascination is in peasant foods, and generally those are pretty cheap. Yogurt is a staple of my diet, and the rest is foraging. I don’t buy produce or fruit, and I can usually find whatever greens or berries or anything else I’m looking for. If I’m near the coast I can get seaweed and crabs. I don’t necessarily eat for taste. It’s a lot for nutrition.

“But I do eat a lot of chocolate! That’s my biggest food expense. Maybe some day philanthropists will shower me with cacao — what more could I ask for!”

He calls himself a “bum” at one point, which the article is careful not to do. BI also doesn’t locate him as part of a grand American tradition of white dudes rejecting mainstream notions of success and heading out into the wilderness on their own, from Thoreau and Kerouac to rail-riding hobos and the guys in Easy Rider to Christopher McCandless and Timothy Treadwell. These stories don’t usually have happy endings, though they have satisfying middles, and for a lot of people that’s enough.

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