“Cycling for a year across 20,000 miles of the most beautiful terrain in the world seemed like a dream come true, for riders who could afford the $36,000-dollar around-the-globe adventure.But Bainbridge Islander Len Beil, who has now traveled 7,300 miles with about 250 other cyclists on the Odyssey 2000 bike ride, said, It’s turning out to be much, much more challenging than most of the other people on the ride ever imagined.Pedaling an average of 80 miles a day up frigid mountains, through sweltering rainforests and across endless plains has taken its toll on of many of the Odysseans. About 25 have dropped out due to injuries or dissatisfaction since the ride began in Los Angeles, Calif., at the Rose Parade Jan. 1.There were some days that were harder than I expected, said Beil, who briefly returned to Bainbridge last week before rejoining the group in Washington, D.C. I didn’t realize there would be so many people who would not ride all the miles.Saddle-sore cyclists tired of the two-wheeled routine have increasingly resorted to buses, trains, rental cars and even hitchhiking, Beil said. Others have skipped entire countries and explored on their own.One group of particularly disgruntled participants have purchased what might have been a future web domain for the cycling tour, www.odyssey2003.com, and used it to air their complaints.(Riding) 50 miles a day and then (taking) alternative transportation to fun places seems much more reasonable than riding 90 or 100 miles across mountain ranges, only to camp 10 miles outside a city, said an anonymous posting on the site. …Not that we’re ‘wussies,’ the writer said, most of us are still trying to recover our health and most are frankly tired of …riding and camping in the rain, tired of trying to ride back-to-back long, hard days, tired of unsupportive attitudes.Bicyclists on the tour have polarized into three groups, Beil said – the dedicated riders, those who like cycling but don’t ride all of the miles, and those who complain about everything.There are 250 people, he said, and if you took just two, I don’t think you could get them to agree on what a good route would be. But despite the tensions, Beil said he has enjoyed the journey, which so far has covered 17 countries and four continents.I would say my take was very positive, Beil said. It was challenging and difficult some days, but it has been the trip of a lifetime.Beginning in Los Angeles, the group rode through Baja California, hopped to Costa Rica, crossed the Panama Canal, and then flew to Santiago, Chile.After traversing the Andes, the bikers jetted to Johannesburg, South Africa, rode through Swaziland to Cape Town, and then transferred to Greece. From there they wound their way through Italy, France, and Spain, before returning to the United States, where they will soon ride up the East Coast to Montreal.It’s a grand thing, to see the world on your bike, Beil said, when it’s not raining.The group encountered floods in Africa, and a whole gamut of other inclement weather, including freezing temperatures and a shroud of fog on Costa Rica’s Cerro del Muerte – the Mountain of Death.Named in the early 1900s based on its tendency to claim the lives of people and their oxen, the mountain’s 10,500-foot pass was attempted by the cyclists in a single day. Few of them made it.Cold and stranded, many bikers took matters into their own hands, recalled Odyssey rider Carissa Chappellet in a journal entry.It was heart-warming to see six bikes strapped down to the top of a semi, and riders in the cab, she wrote. Another bike was seen riding in the back of a truck with a Brahma bull.Thus far, the ride has been anything but easy for many of the bikers. One cyclist fell in the Rose Parade. Another, descending a hill in Italy, smacked head-on into a car, fracturing his vertebrae and breaking a leg. Other injuries have waylaid a number of the would-be-circumnavigators.But with a ride named after Homer’s Odyssey, it would be hard to expect a placid jaunt. Beil, a possible protege of the intrepid Odysseus, doesn’t complain about the travails of two-wheeled travel, but does say he thinks about his home.(My wife) is proud that I’m doing this, but she can’t wait ’till it’s over, he said. The hardest part is being separated from my family.Formerly an executive assistant to the president of Seattle University, Beil rode about 5,000 miles last year in preparation for the trans-global trip. He’s using the tour to raise scholarship money to help out minorities and single families who want to attend the school.And to complete his pledge to span the world, he still has a long way to go. This summer, the group will wind through northern Europe, edge into Russia, and then dip down to Australia for the Olympics. From there, they will dabble in Asia and touch on Hawaii before flying back to the United States at the end of the year. In sum, they will have traveled through 45 countries and about a million feet in elevation.So is Beil an epic hero? That depends on the beholder.In the Chilean Andes, a child watched him while he was waylaid on the side of a steep, muddy road with a flat tire.The kid looked at my bicycle and he said to me, ‘You’re my hero,’ Beil recalled. Here I was changing my tire and I could barely feel my hands, he said. So that kind of gave me a lift.”