Cedeño, also known as the Bicycle Nomad, in Marina del Rey, California

As I was approaching 40, working too hard in marketing jobs, driving because I had to, I felt that sense of freedom slipping. I needed something just for me, a way to quiet the noise of events and demands, but I also wanted a challenge. So I biked from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Tijuana, Mexico, 35 days with just my thoughts as company. No music, no distractions—only the hum of the road. The next year, I rode from Miami to New York City, through plantations and swamps in the Deep South. As a person of color alone in that landscape, I couldn’t escape the layers of history around me. Freedom took on a different kind of weight; it was hanging in the air, stitched into the roads I traveled.

In 2014 and 2020, I retraced the path of the Underground Railroad from New Orleans to Niagara Falls. Every mile felt like I was stepping into a story greater than mine. And in 2022, I rode 1,900 miles from Fort Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis to re-create the 1897 ride of 20 Black infantrymen—a unit of Buffalo Soldiers—who, with their commanding officer, were testing whether bikes could serve as troop transport through brutal heat and snow. I fought through 105-degree stretches in the Nebraska Sandhills, trudged up Montana’s steepest inclines. If I thought about quitting, my wife’s voice was in my ear: “You have to do this. You’re bringing history to life.”

Now, in my 50s, these rides feel just as essential. My wife and I have a 3-year-old son, and with that comes a deeper need to understand where we came from. As a husband and father now, my trips are much shorter. I won’t ride at night. I need to protect myself for my family. But there are still so many roads calling. Last summer, I spent a few days riding the Black Belt of historic sites around Selma, Alabama. Riding is freedom. —As told to David Hochman

With brand-partnership marketing jobs and modeling funding his adventures, Erick Cedeño, 51, lives with his family in Santa Monica, California.