Today I am super excited to present another bicycling episode, but instead of enduro mountain biking, we are talking about adventure road riding across the globe with local San Geronimo Valley Residents, Margit Pirche and James Polack, you’ve seen them cruising up White’s Hill and along Sir Francis Drake boulevard and if you are a world traveler you might have caught them winding their way through the Andes in Chile or atop Machu Pichu, perhaps along the dusty roads of the Serengeti in Africa, or weaving between pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain.

Margit grew up in West Berlin and came to the U.S. in the mid-1980s after extensive travels—and she never used her return ticket. She got married here in the US, raised her daughter, and worked with children in various settings including playgroups, preschool, and kindergarten. She also founded Big Rock Sudbury School in West Marin and later worked as a crisis counselor and case manager at Huckleberry Youth Programs.

In 2009, she met James Pollack, who asked if she wanted to ride with him to the end of the world. Two years later, they left Fairfax by bicycle and spent two years pedaling to Ushuaia, Argentina—the last town before Antarctica.

That journey lit a spark. In 2015, they set off on another series of adventures including through Africa and Europe.

They finally returned home in late 2023 to focus on a different kind of journey—navigating some health challenges with care, intention, and the support of our beloved Valley community.

James was born in Indiana and raised in Kentucky. After studying landscape architecture at the University of Kentucky, he moved to Marin County in 1991 and worked as a landscape architect for the next 20 years.

In 2009, he met Margit—and a few years later, together they set off on a life-changing adventure. From 2012 to 2023, with breaks in between, the two of them cycled thousands of miles across the Americas, Europe, and Africa, exploring the world slowly and deeply, one pedal stroke at a time.