Cary Gray: artist, author, sustainability nut, world record holder, wild man.

Also capable of building semi-functional catapults, and currently works at Prima Bistro in Langley.

If the 26-year-old St. Louis, Mo., native has a resume, it probably looks something like that. In town on a longer-than-expected pit stop, Gray is a free-spirit adventurer who’s been pedaling his way through the Americas since 2013.

He’ll hit the road again in December, bound for the Mississippi River. He’s plans to float its entire length — before making his way to Miami, Colombia and on to Ushuaia in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego, also known as the End of the World.

Of course, he won’t be doing the road miles on an 18-speed, in a car or even on a donkey. Nope, his chosen steed is a unicycle. One wheel, two continents, powered by courage and a sense of adventure.

He didn’t pick the unicycle to turn heads. He wanted to see South America and, having a passion for sustainability, it’s his primary means of transportation and has been since he was a kid. The choice made itself, he says.

“I’m not doing this to make a statement,” he said. “If you see me going to work, I’m just going to work.”

Gray began his trip in July 2013 after getting a bachelor’s in fine art, sculpture. He rode to Los Angeles, arriving in October, then traveled through Mexico and Central America, learning Spanish and crossing the Darién Gap, a hazardous break in the Pan-American Highway that’s home to armed rebels and drug traffickers.

Kayaking the Atrato River with his unicycle aboard, the same thing he’ll do on the Mississippi, he arrived in Colombia only to have his passport stolen.

That segment of the trip was more than 14,000 miles in all — a unicycling world record, if he ever gets around to turning in the paperwork to Guinness.

Beaten but not defeated, Gray flew home, got back on the horse and rode northwest from St. Louis through British Columbia to Juneau, Alaska. Turning south again, he traversed Vancouver Island and landed in Seattle this past December.

He didn’t plan to stay long, but life happened.

“I met a girl,” said Gray.

The romance took him to Whidbey, but its sunset has him looking to the horizon again. He’ll take off before year’s end, riding down the coast a ways then hanging a left and heading to Minnesota and the Great Muddy.

Before he leaves, however, he plans to finish and publish his book, “The Naked Unicyclist.” The 80,000-100,000-word tale is G-rated and isn’t a reference to plans to make his trip any more exceptional than it already is. The title, he said, is about what it’s meant to be on the road, to be vulnerable yet keep pedaling.

What vulnerable is to a guy like Gray, however, is a mystery.

“When he was a toddler, we had a 40-foot rope swing over water and he’d swing high like Tarzan in his diapers,” said his mother, Louise Gray. “I knew then we were in trouble.”

She describes her son as smart, passionate, high energy and, at times, challenging to raise. When he was 14, he built a catapult in the backyard.

Family and friends gathered for a test firing, only to watch the sling arm break and launch a large boulder backwards and onto the hood of a nearby car. Their insurance company said it was an “exotic weapon” and threatened to cancel the family’s homeowners insurance.

Gray was forced to dismantle his creation.

“That was one of his many ‘Caryisms,’ as we’ve come to call them,” she said.

Jenn Jurriaans, owner of Prima Bistro, got to know him over the busy summer. Kind of like an onion with layers, you learn cool things about him slowly. One week you learn he’s a unicyclist, another that he’s a world-record-holding unicyclist, then it’s that’s he’s an author, and so on.

“He’s a super interesting guy,” she said.

For the Bistro, a place that tends to hire eclectic people for the summer, he fit right in, she said. She added that he’s a great employee, reliable and hardworking; he’s pretty popular too.

“The ladies love him,” Jurriaans said.

Gray said he’s grown fond of Langley, and if older could see himself there. Leaving the restaurant crew will be tough, he said.

“They’re a good team and I like them,” Gray said.

But the road is calling and he’s itching to finish what he started. Once he reaches Ushuaia, Gray said he’s not sure where the next trail  willlead.

“After that, I have no idea,” he said.

“Part of me wants to stay and work for a while in Chile or Argentina.”

“We’ll just have to wait and see.”

To follow Gray’s progress, visit his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Unicycling TheWorldCaryOutThere