SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan were both 29. For years, they worked desk jobs in Washington, D.C. - Lauren at the admissions office at Georgetown University, Jay at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In their travel blog, they wrote that they wanted to live life on simpler, more deliberate terms and see the globe in an inexpensive, sustainable and gratifying way. They wanted to bike it. Back in 2015, Jay Austin showed an NPR reporter around his house as part of a feature on the tiny house movement.</s>JAY AUSTIN: That's the parlor over there, seating for about seven or so, two couches.</s>SCOTT SIMON, HOST: All 143 square feet of it. Jay Austin believed in tiny homes.</s>JAY AUSTIN: I think it's really been great to have kind of not a very complex, not a very expensive space but to have the ability to have easy access to nature. If I am feeling like I have cabin fever, I open my front door.</s>SCOTT SIMON, HOST: And stepped through it a lot. Jay told The Washington Post that his tiny home gave him the financial freedom to travel. In June of this year, Jay and Lauren posted this Instagram video of them chugging up the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. It was a grueling ride, but there were cows.</s>SCOTT SIMON, HOST: They'd been biking for almost a year, from South Africa all the way up to Tanzania, then a plane ride to Morocco and back on their bikes to Italy, Slovenia to Turkey, Kazakhstan, finally Tajikistan, where they were in July. Sunday, Jay and Lauren were riding their bikes along a popular route when they were killed in an attack. Two other foreign cyclists were also killed. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility. But we'll give the last word to this intrepid couple. Jay wrote this on their blog back in April (reading) badness exists, sure, but even that's quite rare. By and large, humans are kind, self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes but kind, generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.
We remember two cyclists, Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin, killed in Tajikistan Sunday.