Robert Reynolds with his touring bicycle at the Stony Creek dock near his home in Branford in late May, shortly before departing for another overseas adventure.

The driving force for Robert Reynolds, the inner engine that keeps him pedaling his bike down the beckoning path in front of him, is what he calls “insatiable curiosity.”

“I’ve been drawn my whole life to looking at new stuff continually,” he tells me during our conversation at his home in the Stony Creek section of Branford shortly before he departed for another international adventure. “Sight is important,” he notes.

I point out the irony of what he just said; he has been diagnosed with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, an affliction caused by a rare stroke around the optic nerve which has rendered him blind in his left eye and currently having only about 75 percent use of his other eye. “There is no God,” he replies.

For at least 30 years, Reynolds, now 68, made a good living as a painter. After the shooting massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago, Reynolds was commissioned to create what became an evocative mural in the lobby of the new elementary school. “I made a flock of birds, all flying in the same direction — upwards.”

Looking around his handsome but understated home, I remark that he doesn’t display his own artwork. “It’s too hard to look at,” he says. “It’s like we had a divorce. She left me — ‘she’ being my sight.”

The first sign that something was wrong with his eyesight came five years ago. “I woke up drenched in sweat. It was like there was a blank space in the universe. And it got progressively worse. About 4½ years ago, my left eye was gone.

“I lost my creativity and my artwork. I spent six to eight months standing in front of my easel, trying to paint. I had no depth of field, so I didn’t know where my brush was. I went through an extremely dark period.”

Forever in search of new challenges and experiences, Reynolds asked himself: “What can I do that’s harder than losing my sight?”

Then one day he saw a photo of incredibly dense traffic in Hanoi. “Thousands of mopeds, moving like a school of fish. They knew exactly where everybody was. And I said, ‘That’s where I want to go.’ I traveled to Vietnam, becoming part of the flock. I was there for eight months.”

Reynolds has since then bicycled through many and varied countries, including Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, the Philippines, Colombia and the Netherlands.

“I’ve actually been doing this since 1968,” he notes. (After high school, he traveled throughout Europe and the U.S. for more than 10 years.) “I think most people who don’t travel are afraid of the unknown. I’m a curious guy; I’m an explorer. Everybody who does what I do runs into some kind of challenge — and we all get through it. It’s a great way to put everything you’ve learned in life to good use.”

“The beauty, the people, it overwhelms me every time. I call it ‘Anthropology at 12 miles per hour.’ “

Yes, but, isn’t it now increasingly dangerous for him to ride a bike over unfamiliar terrain with limited vision? “Oh yeah!” he replies. “I have to be on my toes 100 percent of the time. I have to be extremely careful.”

However, he has sustained substantial injuries, including a fractured clavicle and torn rotator cuff last year in France. Later this year, after he returns from the Netherlands, he will undergo hip replacement surgery.

Reynolds also has plenty of scary stories, such as an encounter with armed bandits who robbed him in Colombia, and being set upon by a “crazed” man in Cambodia whom Reynolds had to ward off with a knife. “He ran away. Pulling out that carving knife is something I’d never done before — or wanted to do.”

“Do you have nine lives?” I ask. “Oh, I’m halfway through my second set of nine lives,” he says with an easygoing laugh.

His friends and family are worried about his ongoing travels. They say things like: “What is wrong with you? Why do you do this?”

“I do worry about him,” his sister Cynthia Douglass tells me from her home in Maine. “But he uses his common sense. He’s a big boy and he can take care of himself.”

Recalling her brother’s period of depression as his eyesight began to fade, Douglass says, “It was really tough. For an artist, that’s very hard. But he worked his way through it. Traveling and getting on the bike was wonderful therapy for him. He just loves to live life to the fullest.”

She remembers him telling her about riding one day in Vietnam when “he heard a noise above. It was a forest fire! He had to ride through it, the flames licking on his right side. He gathers stories like people gather recipes.”

Indeed, Reynolds tosses out a bunch of them during our time together. “The people you meet! When I go to the Netherlands in a few weeks I’ll be meeting up with a friend I met in the Amazon. (He pulls out his cellphone and shows me a photo of a beautiful smiling woman with purple skin.) Every two to three weeks she applies wild berries to her body. She’s from the Tucano tribe. She’s running for governor of her section of the Amazon.”

Reynolds shows me a photo of “another interesting person I met in France. She was going on a pilgrimage in her electric wheelchair and camping out. Her body was brittle; she looked like a sack of potatoes with arms. But she wouldn’t accept any help. ‘I’m fine.’ ”

In Vietnam three years ago he was riding past an orphanage and spotted an “Agent Orange” signpost; he stopped and went inside. He discovered the effects of that obscene chemical have been passed down through generations.

“Rows and rows of cribs; three or four young women moving from one crib to the next. The birth defects were horrific. ‘Is there anything I can help with?’ I asked the head nurse. Six hours later I finished helping to tend all the children. Then I went to a nearby store and bought baby formula, the only thing they could eat. I felt I owed it to them as an American.”

Reynolds is so fond of Southeast Asia, Vietnam in particular, that he plans to return there this fall. He’ll find a small village where he can live for six months, photographing daily life.

“I like the social structure in that part of the world. You see tight-knit families, which you don’t see in America anymore. They sit in circles, playing folk songs. It’s like going back in time for me, to the ’60s.”

Several times during our conversation Reynolds harks back to “the immense beauty I’ve experienced. The beauty, the people, it overwhelms me every time. I call it ‘Anthropology at 12 miles per hour.’ The sensory aspect of it is amazing. The sunlight changes, the sounds. Everything’s in constant slow-motion movement. I never get tired of it.”

And yet as Reynolds moves forward he knows his “good” right eye “has a 40 percent chance of giving out too. I’d be blind. I’m running against the clock.”

When asked about his prospects for future exploration, Reynolds answers: “I want to keep going until I can’t.”

Randall Beach is a former columnist and reporter for the New Haven Register. His essays are on substack.com and he can be reached at rbeach8@yahoo.com.

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