5 ms·
For something more accessible to laypeople: bicycle touring is a thing. Pack a few bags, attach them to your bike and cycle across a province, country, continen
by ronyfadel 7y ago
For something more accessible to laypeople: bicycle touring is a thing.
Pack a few bags, attach them to your bike and cycle across a province, country, continent or around the world.
I biked across Europe in 2017 and it is my most happy and memorable life event to this day.
- reaperducer 7y agoI did this when I was young. Me and a group of friends went from New York to Montreal to Vancouver to Seattle. I took several other long-range trips through a group called the Metropolitan New York Council of American Youth Hostels. It doesn't look like it exists anymore. But I remember we would run into other organizations on the road like one called Outward Bound, which was kind of the yuppy version. They had sag wagons and cooks. We had our wits and Vienna sausage.
- ronyfadel 7y agoThe rougher the better I’ve found!
- monadic2 7y agoAhh I wish this were as easy in North America.
- ronyfadel 7y agoIt is! I spent a week traveling the Pacific Coast Highway in 2018. I brought camping gear, but never used it because I found a warmshowers.org host (sometimes multiple) at every stop.
- egdod 7y agoI did a section of the PCH too (northward starting at San Francisco). As pretty as it was, it was not my favorite place to ride a bike. No shoulder, winding road, zero visibility... it felt like I was taking my life in my hands every time I approached a curve.
- newnewpdro 7y agoIt's a very dangerous road, I love cycling but refuse to ride on the PCH. I've lived in a few PCH-adjacent neighborhoods over the years in the bay area, and I always had neighbors affected by bad accidents on hwy 1.
- egdod 7y agoIt's really not bad. Adventure Cycling Association has some great maps: https://www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/adventure-cycling-route-network/interactive-network-map/ https://www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/adventure-c...
- erkken 7y agoI cycled from NY to SF 2015, with a detour to Chicago. I've done lots of bike touring in other parts of the world, but would say US is one of my top countries for bike touring!
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoIt is just as easy in North America, and the ACA trans-country routes can feel crowded in season. You do meet a lot of retirees or foreigners on them, though, which underscores that the difficulty of bicycle touring for Americans is not something about their country or roads, but the miserably short vacation time that American workers get.
- alistairSH 7y agoHere's a site all about bike-packing. https://bikepacking.com https://bikepacking.com Bike-packing is the lighter-weight, mixed-terrain version of traditional on-road bicycle touring. It's quite accessible. Just need a bike, a map, and a backpack with camping kit. Of course, some of us get crazy with counting grams and trying to mix in gnarly terrain. I do a few trips each year, usually 3-day weekends within a few hours drive of home. Some are mellow on groomed gravel with my wife. Some are more extreme with friends on mountain bikes.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoMost bikepacking communities rightly warn against wearing a backpack. If you want a bikepacking setup, there are frame bags and seatpost bags to hold all your gear without you having to lug all that weight on you, which is such a drag after just a couple of hours in the saddle.
- alistairSH 7y agoAbsolutely, but if that’s what you have (and most will), you can probably manage an overnighter without buying more gear.
- numtel 7y agoIt's not quite as well-supported in NA but there's still a lot of us hosting on https://warmshowers.org https://warmshowers.org