He broke his arm, was abandoned by his travelling partner, had his bike stolen, was chased by thieves, suffered flat tires by the dozen, and diarrhea was his recurring companion.

Yet just days after sailing along the Beach Strip and bunking down at his brother's place, Tomasz Chyzinski yearns again for the open road.

Soon he will be 37. He began his bike ride nearly two years ago. What would make a man do such a thing?

Perhaps it was a need for wide-open spaces. Tomasz was born in Poland and, because his arrival meant there were four children in the family, the government gave them a bigger apartment. It had a bathroom, a bedroom for his parents, another bedroom for Tomasz and his siblings, a kitchen big enough to eat in and nothing more. That could make a guy claustrophobic.

Father was a coal miner. Tomasz didn't want to do that. He started electrician's training and began work at a giant porcelain factory.

"I didn't like it," he says. "You have the clock. You can't go out." The place went bankrupt anyway. He went other places and they went bankrupt too. Poland was in bad shape.

Tomasz decided more schooling would be smart and went to university. Just as he was graduating in 2004, Poland entered the European Union.

Tomasz went off to England, worked as an electrician, studied English at night.

He was in the U.K. two years, mostly renovating houses on the Orkney Islands. He bought a used house trailer for $400 and lived cheaply.

He had already decided that once he saved enough, he would see the world. By the summer of 2006 he had put aside $26,000.

He would leave from his hometown of Walbrzych. Through a cycling website, he found a German woman, a teacher, who was up for the adventure, too.

On a rainy day just a week into the trip, they were descending a steep hill on the loaded bikes. At a curve, Tomasz went down and broke his arm. The doctor told him not to ride for three weeks.

The woman went on ahead and they text-messaged each other. Tomasz was the stronger rider and was catching up.

They were to meet in Italy and carry on. But there was another message on his cellphone: She was backing out.

Tomasz soon got his spirit back, pedalled to Madrid, caught a plane to Argentina. Not long after he checked into a hostel, someone cut the steel cable and made off with his bike. It was hard to find a new one.

Tomasz pushed on, up the west coast of South America. His bicycle computer had broken by then, and he had stopped counting the kilometres. "I was thinking, 'Who needs those numbers? It is more important what I see and who I meet.'"

He has kept track of all that in diaries and on a website -- in Polish -- maintained by his brother at chyzinski.republika.pl.

Tomasz asked people if he could camp in their yards. They always said yes. Often they gave him dinner, too.

His Spanish got better, and he learned how to tell his story fluently -- something he did two or three times a day.

He pedalled through a small village in Peru, well off the tourist track. Everyone gathered around him. He pulled out his digital camera and amazed all with the instant images in the viewfinder.

Also in Peru, five bandits sprang from the bushes and chased him and his laden bike -- 32 kilograms of cargo -- along a road. Tomasz made it to a downhill section and was gone.

Then he encountered an area where thieves had placed large rocks on the road to slow cars down and rob them.

Tomasz made it through by pedalling fast and swinging his security cable to keep the thugs out of reach.

But smiles, kindness and curiosity were what he found most often. He pushed on through the mountains of Mexico and across the United States well-fed and bathed using a cyclists' hospitality website called hotshowers.org. He saw Washington and New York City, too.

All the way, his sister text-messaged every few days with news from home. And his worried parents sent parcels.

Tomasz is now at the Burlington townhouse of brother Krzysztof, who emigrated from Poland 20 years ago. On Thursday they fly home for their parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

There will be more travel for Tomasz, but it will be different.

"I would like a family," he says. "so I know I have to be more stable. I have to compromise."

StreetBeat appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

pwilson@thespec.com

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