They told me that my great-grandfather on my father’s side, a bricklayer, used to travel around Piedmont , Italy, in the 1920s, going from village to village with his cart and tools, looking for works. They also say that in a particularly tough year, he headed south with just a few belongings and an empty stomach. They claim he made it all the way to Rome, though it might just be a local legend.

They told me that my great-grandfather on my mother’s side, around the same time, wore out his shoe soles delivering letters and the occasional newspaper here in Canavese to the village’s notable residents. They called him “Pidun,” the walker. He had a cheerful heart and a horse. At Carnival, he would let the horse climb onto the cart, take its place between the shafts, and parade it through the alleys of the village to honor and thank it for its valuable work in the field.

I knew my paternal grandfather, Ernesto—a miner and a double bass player of dance music in France, and later a factory worker back in his homeland. Though he was illiterate, he was a passionate reader of popular books on history and geography. He was also the author of numerous handwritten notebooks filled with his reflections on both nearby and distant worlds, which I still treasure.

My parents never owned a car. My late father had a passion for cycling but worked in a factory, so he could only train on Thursdays. He proudly called himself a “rouleur-climber” and raced for Covolo di Torino. As a young man, he finished sixteenth at the Saint Vincent race, and they even let him change at the hotel. My mother, meanwhile, still rides her bike to this day, well past her eighties (putting both herself and anyone she encounters on the road in peril…).

My turn now. In third grade, I tried (unsuccessfully) to organize an expedition to follow the course of the “bealera,” the small irrigation canal that winds through our countryside, entirely on foot. By middle school, I publicly declared my ambition to become a cartographer when I grew up. In fact, a friend and I even attempted to draw a 1:1000 topographic map of our town, measuring alleys with a tape measure and a protractor. Though we never finished the project, I still think it was a great idea.

At 21, I set off alone on my first cycling trip: the Alps, from Cadibona to Trieste, using the racing bike my mother had gifted my father when they married in 1958. The following year marked my first trekking adventure—a week on the Grande Traversata Alpina, from Monviso to Val Susa. Along the way, I met occasional travel companions with whom I shared emotions, struggles, moments of rest, and stories of our youth.

In those years, I dreamed of how wonderful it would be to live by walking, observing, telling stories, and writing. But something inside me made me feel deeply unprepared to narrate the world as a mere spectator without first understanding it from within, without having truly lived inside the “system.” Awakened from my dreams, I left my engineering studies and, by chance and luck, entered the world of IT and work. I embraced the rational side of myself and, today, I can say it has brought me great professional satisfaction.

However, I never stopped dreaming of grand journeys around the world or trying to turn those dreams into reality. I’ve never stopped traveling, whether on foot or by bicycle, and I’ve never been able to definitively choose between hiking boots and bike tires. I’ve traveled with my wife, with our daughters, with a dear friend, and alone. Through mountains and plains, along rivers and streams, on abandoned railways, around islands and lakes, along the coasts of our beautiful boot-shaped country, and through the labyrinths of bustling cities. Mostly across Europe, though occasionally in Africa and the Americas. For now, at least!

A geography degree came in later years, at the ripe age of 50. I dedicated my thesis to travel literature, which I’ve always devoured, and its potential value as a documentary source for geographical studies. What do I want to be when I grow up? To live, to travel (on foot or by bike?), and to write. To tell my own truth about things and listen to the truths of the people I meet along the way. Because I can’t resist the curiosity of discovering what’s hidden around the next corner, what’s waiting for me beyond the horizon. Men and women, nature—whether humbled or unspoiled but always sovereign—good and evil, the corridors of power and the streets, orthodoxy and praxis.

Safe travels to all who choose to journey alongside me. May the roads ahead be full of discoveries and meaningful encounters!