Who Are We?

We are Emmmanuel and Guillaume, both French, spinning our wheels in Strasbourg, France.
As kids, we could ride our bikes all day long, going wherever our bike got us. We could also vanish a whole afternoon, hiding in a garage and working on the bike. We remember those days back with great trepidation. Being on our bikes was about exploring our small neighbourhood, and encountering people. We wanted to imagine an event that would strive for a return to those original and basic values of cycling when every ride was an adventure.
And we were deeply convinced that we had to go towards something wild.

Emmanuel

Emmanuel has been a bike messenger for more than a decade. Needless to say he knows a thing or two about how it feels to spend long hours on the saddle, regardless of the weather.

In 2015, he felt the need to expand his horizons, to do something big, and to push himself to the limits.
But doing it alone wouldn’t suit him. He wanted to share the adventure with fellow, like-minded riders. And so the Japanese Odyssey was born.

Guillaume

At the beginning, Guillaume’s implication on the Japanese Odyssey was supposed to be limited to giving a hand on setting up the website and others technical aspects.
And then, before he knew it, he found himself hastily putting together a bike suited for the adventure, with the mission to take part in the Odyssey as well as shoot pictures during the first edition.

Team Broomwagon

Each year, we take the departure of the Odyssey with the riders, closing the pack, trying to get to the finish on just on time.
Hence the name of our duo: “Team Broomwagon”.

Spoiler alert: Team Broomwagon often doesn’t finish the Odyssey on time. We didn’t want to lower the difficulty just to accomodate our (declining) fitness level. Rest assured, we will suffer just as much as you do.