My name is Paolo De Pasqual, I was born in 1970, and I live in a small village in the province of Belluno, Arsiè di Ponte nelle Alpi.
I grew up in a family that instilled in me a passion for travel, photography, science, nature, art—in short, to be curious and attentive to everything you can see around you. I started cycling rather late, when my peers were already abandoning their bikes and getting on mopeds, but since then I haven’t stopped. I have a degree in mechanical engineering and worked in the bicycle components sector and other areas of mechanics before deciding to devote myself to teaching. I first became interested in bicycle travel at a trade fair, where I collected information about Denmark.
I started traveling in earnest after graduation, on a fairly short and adventurous trip, improvised with two friends of mine.
My first real trip was with a colleague from work, discovering Holland. Since then, I have chosen to go on vacation preferably by bicycle and almost always alone. These were peaceful trips, tourist trips in the classic sense, until the adventure to North Cape, which introduced me to a different way of seeing “cycling.”
I have tried just about every mode of travel, from the classic setup with bags, which were often overloaded, to the lightweight bikepacking setup, which allowed me to try ultracycling and increase the length of my trips at the tender age of almost fifty.
I use my bike not only for traveling, but also for commuting from home to work, even though I live in the mountains, in the Alps, where the climate is certainly not favorable, with harsh winters and turbulent summers in one of the rainiest places in Italy.