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I've just come back from a short (~400 mile) bicycle tour to visit some friends and have previously travelled by bicycle to conferences or events all over Europ

I've just come back from a short (~400 mile) bicycle tour to visit some friends and have previously travelled by bicycle to conferences or events all over Europe. If you only ever travelled long distances by highway/rail/air it could be hard to appreciate how much richer the world feels travelling by bicycle. Instead of a dreary bubble between generic transportation hubs you are generally travelling along the old routes that connect all the places where life has been for millennia, the amount of history (in Europe at least), scenery and humanity you stumble across just in the course of a typical day covering maybe 50 miles is huge. The typical question people ask is "how long did it take?" but the experience itself is more fulfilling, this is very much not what it's about (and you can speed up with trains etc. if you really need to get somewhere). It's one of the only ways I manage to properly disconnect from the ongoing background stress weight of running a startup. I'll eat 5 meals a day, everything tastes amazing and come back healthier and lighter (in more ways than one). I'll be living cheap (though the large amount of food can start to add up) and free under my own power and direction and carrying everything I need to stay so along with me. I'll be meeting people along the way and connecting with their humanity and kindness in a way that just doesn't seem to happen quite the same when you aren't travelling by bicycle. It may not be for everyone but I want to live in a world where that experience feels accessible to as many as possible.

discordance 4y ago
Love riding but doing that next to high speed cars and trucks sucks. That doesn’t get to you?
- matt7aylor 4y ago
  It may depend a little on where you are but generally on a cycle tour, where speed isn't such a priority, you don't tend to be taking the same bigger roads used by high speed cars or trucks (or may even be on routes largely separate from the roads). It can happen on occasion that you might want/need to go down a slightly busier road, in that case being a bit more of an odd road user (heavily loaded bicycle stands out) often you get a bit more consideration but a bit of road confidence certainly doesn't hurt. I can't speak for everywhere but in Europe (where most of my experience is) I think you would be able to find plenty of routes without much traffic (checkout places like https://www.opencyclemap.org/ https://www.opencyclemap.org/ ) and ironically those routes would probably have much more to see on them than the routes that did have the cars and trucks on.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Sucks as its properly dangerous due to simple statistics (you need just 1 out of 10000 drivers to not pay enough attention, be high, super tired, getting seizure or heart attack, etc.). Riding on roads without dedicated full cycle lane sucks, period. Another point - directly breathing all fumes from thousands of cars every day, lorries, buses and other diesel marvels. More than compensating a healthy activity with equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes. Fanatics always propagate their sports/activity as next coming of jesus, but as with everything there are pros and cons. Biking on standard roads has massive cons.
  - mdpye 4y ago
    I don't know where you live, but the other thing I've noticed people who have never cycle toured really fail to notice is how many thousands of small roads there are, at least in Europe, which link everywhere. Agrigultural roads that you'd never bother (or even want) to take your car down. Residential streets that only the residents would drive on. I'd guess that on the average 5 day cycling tour in the UK and Europe, I'd see less than 1000 cars total, and often go for many hours without seeing any. Its glorious.
    - brudgers 4y ago
      Yes, it does depend on where you live. The Great Salt Lake in Utah is the size of Lichtenstein. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is longer than the Italian boot is wide. England is the size of Alabama.
      - strken 4y ago
        Australia is roughly the size of the continental US with a tenth the population and we still have lots of small roads in the populated coastal green bits, so I'm not sure what your point is. It can be harder to find a safe route somewhere in the country, I'll give you that.
        brudgers 4y ago
        Australia like Western Europe can be traveled near sea level. For example, Bern, Geneva and Zurich are all less than 500m. The US is not like that. There are only a few routes in the west because the west is more than a thousand miles of mountains and deserts nearly all above 1500m and much of it above 2000m. It is hundreds of miles between north south routes in Arizona because of the Grand Canyon. And the eastern route goes from vast remoteness to vast remoteness, Navajo nation to the Great Basin (an internal drainage the size of France). I am not a general fan of American exceptionalism. But for geography, it holds. The average height of the Colorado Plateau is about 2000m…almost as high as the highest point in Australia. And the plateau is larger than Germany. I am glad it works on your machine.
- tpm 4y ago
  But you don't have to do that, if you plan accordingly. There are dedicated long distance cycle paths, see e.g. https://en.eurovelo.com/ https://en.eurovelo.com/
  - ginko 4y ago
    The "dedicated cycle path" along the Atlantic Coast Route near me looks like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@63.3222885,10.1328111,3a,75y,346.2h,77.33t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s_DnDaQRvXt9w1QVGk-fIEA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D_DnDaQRvXt9w1QVGk-fIEA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D78.19244%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@63.3222885,10.1328111,3a,75y,34...
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      Yes, when bicycling in my town in Southern California, I often avoid the marked bicycle routes in favor of less busy streets with no marked bicycle route.
    - tpm 4y ago
      That's sad. Though Slovakia is not much better, we do have some bright spots. This is the Eurovelo along the Danube: https://maps.app.goo.gl/yL3Picyo2ZTuDaZ3A https://maps.app.goo.gl/yL3Picyo2ZTuDaZ3A
    - Lariscus 4y ago
      How much traffic can you expect on that road? I rode on similar roads and it was actually quite nice.
- Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
  In many places there's a network of tiny little roads that are a much more enjoyable alternative to riding next to traffic. This is certainly true of most of Europe, but also large parts of the US as well - I had a great cycling holiday a few years back in New York State and most of the roads were no busier than here in the UK. Ironically the single worst road was one south of Kingston which was a state-designated bike route! I run cycle.travel, a touring-focused bike routeplanner (based on OpenStreetMap data, of course) which aims to find these roads. It generally won't find as direct a cycle route as some of the bigger names, but by and large the route should be quieter and less stressful. https://cycle.travel/map https://cycle.travel/map - always happy to hear comments/suggestions!
  - thunfischbrot 4y ago
    This is a work of art. I check out different cycle routing options every couple of years and have never been satisfied with the high number of intersections with traffic lights and changes from road to bike path to sidewalk... Your routing algorithm taking into account Eurovelo routes is an amazing idea. Will test in the coming days! I suggest you show input validation hints before submitting forms, e.g. for the user name.
  - timed0 4y ago
    Just to say I love cycle.travel. I have used it for several medium-length tours with kids and it suggests good, calm routes.
  - matt7aylor 4y ago
    That is a great looking site, I'll give it a try and be sure to remember it for telling others. I love how you can pick a point and look for nearby campsites. Normally I plan my tour routes offline using downloaded OSM maps (something like velomap.org) in QMapshack. One thing I like doing on there is having POIs I can turn on/off with things like UNESCO World Heritage Sites, National Trust Sites, World Wonders from the Civilization games etc. so I can tweak my route to connect a few of those dots if it goes near them.
  - hermitcrab 4y ago
    Cool resource, but I could see a key that tells me what the different symbols on the maps mean.
- atari800 4y ago
  I don't know about conditions anywhere in the world except the USA. But I've ridden across the USA, on different routes, multiple times. When bicycle touring in this country, you don't usually (almost never, in my case) do bike touring on roads that carry heavy traffic. You ride on mostly empty roads that have very low traffic counts. Every state compiles Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) statistics. There are roads where you might see one or two cars an hour. Those are the roads to ride on.
  - jmspring 4y ago
    I’ve done a couple of tours years back in Europe. I did a few multi-day charity rides here in California. Some of those included stints on a stretch of 101. You realize how shitty our roads can be.
DeathArrow 4y ago
>you are generally travelling along the old routes that connect all the places where life has been for millennia, the amount of history (in Europe at least), scenery and humanity you stumble across just in the course of a typical day covering maybe 50 miles is huge. What stops someone doing the same thing with the car, motorcycle or scooter?
- unculture 4y ago
  You can absolutely travel the same roads, but there is something about the speed you are travelling that opens you up to really noticing the little details of the landscape around you.
- arccy 4y ago
  you're more isolated from the outside in a glass and metal bubble (car) and everything just whizzes by too fast to appreciate anything
- eckmLJE 4y ago
  The faster and heavier you are, the more capacity for harm you have, and the more you must pay attention to just the road in front of you instead of the world around you.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > What stops someone doing the same thing with the car, motorcycle or scooter? For the car: > In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. > On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. * Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values * https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/313360-in-a-car-you-re-always-in-a-compartment-and-because https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/313360-in-a-car-you-re-alwa...
  - mynameisash 4y ago
bambax 4y ago
I did a couple of 2000+ km tours in Europe on a... motorcycle. It's not sports, it has a big carbon footprint and gas can be expensive, but you can experience some of the same benefits: take less traveled roads, stop anywhere, meet people. I ride a bike every day but only on short distances; on a tour I would be afraid of not being able to pack enough things (clothes, shoes...) But it's a neat idea.
- Cockbrand 4y ago
  > on a tour I would be afraid of not being able to pack enough things You can always start small with a weekend trip and see which of the items you packed you actually needed, and you'll find out which items you forgot to pack. If you take good note of these, you'll be a proficient and efficient packer very soon, and you'll go on trips that last for days or weeks with the exact amount of stuff you need. And at least in Europe, the next supermarket is never so far away that you can' t reach it on the next day in case you did forget something essential.
- deebosong 4y ago
  I don't ride mopeds/ scooters/ motorcycles. I've done a couple of cross country road trips. I do cycle pretty much every day for fitness, fun, and challenging myself. But just like you did, I kinda feel like cross country road trips would be excellent on back roads via motorcycles. In a car, it's a bit disconnected and insulated. On a bike, it just seems way too slow and tiresome. Only things I'd want in a cross country motorcycle is: a machine that's under 50 pounds, has a max speed of 50 mph (I'd prefer to keep it at 20-30 mph), goes 300 miles per gallon, and costs under $3000. SO I GUESS I WON'T BE TAKING THAT CROSS COUNTRY MOTORCYCLE TRIP EVER THEN.
  - bambax 4y ago
    You're describing my first moped: https://www.mobylette-mag.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/caracteristiques-techniques-peugeot-103-sp-1.jpg https://www.mobylette-mag.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/cara... They don't make those anymore, but they were incredibly fun to ride (and at the time, it cost 6000FF new, which translates to maybe €1000-1500 today).
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
As someone who deeply agrees with this, and yet just spent most of the day in A&E thanks to a car driver who was not looking, we as a society need to rethink our built infrastructure. Over the next few decades we have to change so much infrastructure to solar / electrification that we have an enormous opportunity to make it not just a question of survival but a better civilisation - more human. Cities where every child can cycle to school on car free paths, every worker can get to work on car free paths. Hell it even makes carbon sense to get rid of petrol cars in favour of diesel buses. The design of our lives environments is a force multiplier for our quality of life
- bojangleslover 4y ago
  I get what you're saying but you ever tried biking in Amsterdam at rush hour? There's just as much congestion. Nobody's going to die in a crash though, I'll give you that. But the experience itself is more crowded. I think what you're looking for is a more rural existence.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    > I think what you're looking for is a more rural existence. People tend to forget that while there are benefits in increasing density, they don't continue ad infinitum.
  - cesnja 4y ago
    Imagine how that would look if everybody was driving their own car.
    - prawn 4y ago
      Standstill?
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    I do / have done the London cycle superhighway at rush hour - it's pretty much the same deal (although i would call any electric bikes "powered" and question if they should be on the same path / as powerful). The point is if there was a dedicated (about a metre wide, cut off from road traffic by a raised kerb) cycle lane not just through Londons busiest roads but ... well everywhere there is a car road. Just say if you want a car there you should also have a bicycle. We seem to think that the industrial revolution chnaged something - like globally there should be some kind of "profit". I think it's just we as a species get to still be at a subsistence level, just a higher subsistence level. NB- re london cycleways - yeah people do die. The cannon street path was opposite the LFB station and they did not have far to go to wash the blood away sadly.
lambic 4y ago
What do you eat on these trips? Do you carry food with your or just stop at shops and restaurants along the way? How heavy is your backpack? I love biking but I don't love lugging tons of stuff around.
- durkie 4y ago
  Yeah, just depends on where you're going. We just finished a 4-day tour along the Neckar river in Germany and didn't carry anything extra (except maybe some leftover pastries from breakfast). But then long days up in the north Georgia mountains will require several hearty sandwiches, lots of small snacks, extra electrolytes and maybe a water filter.
- matt7aylor 4y ago
  Depends a little. Usually you are passing through lots of populated places regularly and so generally I would stop at bakeries (local/different ones if I find them) and supermarkets to get the bulk of the food I would eat in the day, as well as the odd restaurant in the evening. I also tour with camping and simple cooking gear so would mix in some cooking depending on time/budget/availability of other options. On my last tour, for various reasons, I ended up doing more wild camping which this time meant cooking less (more evening time spent in towns before finding somewhere to camp) but in say Scotland, would probably be carrying more food and cooking more when wild camping. Always useful to be carrying at least a little food with you just in case you conk-out and need the energy. An example of a breakfast I was having on my last trip was: 2 croissants, yoghurt with chocolate coated peanuts mixed in, a banana and some fruit smoothie (which seemed on offer a lot this trip) and I might stop for second breakfast/early lunch and get a couple of pasties at the next town with a bakery (handy because you can eat these while cycling). In Italy you might instead be eating things like focaccia from local bakeries (perfect size for my handlebar bag), the landscape of what you eat changes with region, season and mood. You might be surprised though just how good very simple food (bread/cheese) can taste when you are doing exercise all day. One thing I would advise is that it is a lot kinder on the body to attach the bags to the bike if possible rather than carry on your back. I tour relatively heavy and I think my bike/bags together weigh about 40-45kg, just about liftable at a push if I need to, for example, get a small boat for pedestrians (though usually I'd take a couple bags off to make it easier). It's very possible to travel a lot lighter than this though, particularly if not camping, some people just take a change of clothes and a credit card.
em-bee 4y ago
when doing solo-trips i tended to skip lunch, preferring a good breakfast and dinner. at best i might have a snack if i get hungry, that is if i got something to carry from breakfast.
verisimi 4y ago
Yeah - I should get my grannie and her grandkids to come make the 200 mile round trip by bike! I hear what you are saying - if you love bikes long journeys are wonderful. I imagine motorcyclists or long distance runners could get the same buzz. > It may not be for everyone but I want to live in a world where that experience feels accessible to as many as possible. But let's not kid ourselves that this is a viable option for most people. And if you mean that we should get rid of even more roads for bike lanes, you are actually going to restrict people engaging with distant relations and friends.
- fock 4y ago
  Maybe we should reevaluate wether it's actually necessary for a free and democratic society to have these distanced families as a norm. The societal model you describe essentially evolved in lockstep with capitalism (people moving into cities/generally moving for work) and I'm not totally sure that it has to be this way. We could just live more regional and still be free and democratic as well! Indeed, currently it looks like rootlessness proclaimed by you and others as the preferable lifestyle will take away our freedom and democracy with it.
  - verisimi 4y ago
    Of course, we don't have democracy. We don't contribute to the thousands of decisions that are made. We have 'representative democracy' where we choose someone (once every 5 years) to make all those decisions for us. We should re-evaluate what? The reality that the system we find ourselves in, means that families are distributed? Would you force people back together into the same region?
  - brudgers 4y ago
    The freedom of movement is a marker of political liberty. Some people (but by no means everyone) are better off away from their family and the town where they grew up. Imagine that you are the fourth generation to move far away from your patents, as I am. There is not some community in which I have generational roots…and it was the prospect of conscription by the Tsar’s army that started it all. Not capitalism. For me, employment someplace far away was the way out of where we weren’t from and that wasn’t for us. Some people have a reason to stay. Those reasons are sometimes the reasons for other people to leave.
habibur 4y ago
How long does 50 miles of cycling take in a day? As in total hours of cycling.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  On a fully loaded touring bike, you’re not going faster than 15 mph, so you could plan 4-6 hours of riding, depending on your route.
bergenty 4y ago
I agree with everything you said but for walking. Bikes can’t go everywhere, biking in cities is dangerous and uncomfortable (irrespective of good or bad bike infrastructure) and it’s just not as satisfying as putting one foot in front of the other. Yea it’s much slower than biking but at least a magnitude more rewarding in my opinion.
- ksplicer 4y ago
  Good bike infrastructure absolutely makes it safe and comfortable. Separated bike lanes is key. I also love walking, but this kind of rhetoric is just car-centric propaganda.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    Even good bike lanes are packed, sometimes shared with pedestrians and involve crossings where you can intersect with cars. That might be okay for some but it’s very different from biking on a trail. Of course it’s a car centric argument, that’s what I’m advocating for.
wolverine876 4y ago
That conveys my own experience exceptionally well. IME, it's the same bicycling within cities, where you live or as a visitor. I know those places and their people so much better now.

discordance 4y ago

Love riding but doing that next to high speed cars and trucks sucks. That doesn’t get to you?

matt7aylor 4y ago
It may depend a little on where you are but generally on a cycle tour, where speed isn't such a priority, you don't tend to be taking the same bigger roads used by high speed cars or trucks (or may even be on routes largely separate from the roads). It can happen on occasion that you might want/need to go down a slightly busier road, in that case being a bit more of an odd road user (heavily loaded bicycle stands out) often you get a bit more consideration but a bit of road confidence certainly doesn't hurt. I can't speak for everywhere but in Europe (where most of my experience is) I think you would be able to find plenty of routes without much traffic (checkout places like https://www.opencyclemap.org/ https://www.opencyclemap.org/ ) and ironically those routes would probably have much more to see on them than the routes that did have the cars and trucks on.
saiya-jin 4y ago
Sucks as its properly dangerous due to simple statistics (you need just 1 out of 10000 drivers to not pay enough attention, be high, super tired, getting seizure or heart attack, etc.). Riding on roads without dedicated full cycle lane sucks, period. Another point - directly breathing all fumes from thousands of cars every day, lorries, buses and other diesel marvels. More than compensating a healthy activity with equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes. Fanatics always propagate their sports/activity as next coming of jesus, but as with everything there are pros and cons. Biking on standard roads has massive cons.
- mdpye 4y ago
  I don't know where you live, but the other thing I've noticed people who have never cycle toured really fail to notice is how many thousands of small roads there are, at least in Europe, which link everywhere. Agrigultural roads that you'd never bother (or even want) to take your car down. Residential streets that only the residents would drive on. I'd guess that on the average 5 day cycling tour in the UK and Europe, I'd see less than 1000 cars total, and often go for many hours without seeing any. Its glorious.
  - brudgers 4y ago
    Yes, it does depend on where you live. The Great Salt Lake in Utah is the size of Lichtenstein. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is longer than the Italian boot is wide. England is the size of Alabama.
    - strken 4y ago
      Australia is roughly the size of the continental US with a tenth the population and we still have lots of small roads in the populated coastal green bits, so I'm not sure what your point is. It can be harder to find a safe route somewhere in the country, I'll give you that.
      - brudgers 4y ago
        Australia like Western Europe can be traveled near sea level. For example, Bern, Geneva and Zurich are all less than 500m. The US is not like that. There are only a few routes in the west because the west is more than a thousand miles of mountains and deserts nearly all above 1500m and much of it above 2000m. It is hundreds of miles between north south routes in Arizona because of the Grand Canyon. And the eastern route goes from vast remoteness to vast remoteness, Navajo nation to the Great Basin (an internal drainage the size of France). I am not a general fan of American exceptionalism. But for geography, it holds. The average height of the Colorado Plateau is about 2000m…almost as high as the highest point in Australia. And the plateau is larger than Germany. I am glad it works on your machine.
tpm 4y ago
But you don't have to do that, if you plan accordingly. There are dedicated long distance cycle paths, see e.g. https://en.eurovelo.com/ https://en.eurovelo.com/
- ginko 4y ago
  The "dedicated cycle path" along the Atlantic Coast Route near me looks like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@63.3222885,10.1328111,3a,75y,346.2h,77.33t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s_DnDaQRvXt9w1QVGk-fIEA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D_DnDaQRvXt9w1QVGk-fIEA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D78.19244%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@63.3222885,10.1328111,3a,75y,34...
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Yes, when bicycling in my town in Southern California, I often avoid the marked bicycle routes in favor of less busy streets with no marked bicycle route.
  - tpm 4y ago
    That's sad. Though Slovakia is not much better, we do have some bright spots. This is the Eurovelo along the Danube: https://maps.app.goo.gl/yL3Picyo2ZTuDaZ3A https://maps.app.goo.gl/yL3Picyo2ZTuDaZ3A
  - Lariscus 4y ago
    How much traffic can you expect on that road? I rode on similar roads and it was actually quite nice.
Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
In many places there's a network of tiny little roads that are a much more enjoyable alternative to riding next to traffic. This is certainly true of most of Europe, but also large parts of the US as well - I had a great cycling holiday a few years back in New York State and most of the roads were no busier than here in the UK. Ironically the single worst road was one south of Kingston which was a state-designated bike route! I run cycle.travel, a touring-focused bike routeplanner (based on OpenStreetMap data, of course) which aims to find these roads. It generally won't find as direct a cycle route as some of the bigger names, but by and large the route should be quieter and less stressful. https://cycle.travel/map https://cycle.travel/map - always happy to hear comments/suggestions!
- thunfischbrot 4y ago
  This is a work of art. I check out different cycle routing options every couple of years and have never been satisfied with the high number of intersections with traffic lights and changes from road to bike path to sidewalk... Your routing algorithm taking into account Eurovelo routes is an amazing idea. Will test in the coming days! I suggest you show input validation hints before submitting forms, e.g. for the user name.
- timed0 4y ago
  Just to say I love cycle.travel. I have used it for several medium-length tours with kids and it suggests good, calm routes.
- matt7aylor 4y ago
  That is a great looking site, I'll give it a try and be sure to remember it for telling others. I love how you can pick a point and look for nearby campsites. Normally I plan my tour routes offline using downloaded OSM maps (something like velomap.org) in QMapshack. One thing I like doing on there is having POIs I can turn on/off with things like UNESCO World Heritage Sites, National Trust Sites, World Wonders from the Civilization games etc. so I can tweak my route to connect a few of those dots if it goes near them.
- hermitcrab 4y ago
  Cool resource, but I could see a key that tells me what the different symbols on the maps mean.
atari800 4y ago
I don't know about conditions anywhere in the world except the USA. But I've ridden across the USA, on different routes, multiple times. When bicycle touring in this country, you don't usually (almost never, in my case) do bike touring on roads that carry heavy traffic. You ride on mostly empty roads that have very low traffic counts. Every state compiles Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) statistics. There are roads where you might see one or two cars an hour. Those are the roads to ride on.
- jmspring 4y ago
  I’ve done a couple of tours years back in Europe. I did a few multi-day charity rides here in California. Some of those included stints on a stretch of 101. You realize how shitty our roads can be.

DeathArrow 4y ago

>you are generally travelling along the old routes that connect all the places where life has been for millennia, the amount of history (in Europe at least), scenery and humanity you stumble across just in the course of a typical day covering maybe 50 miles is huge. What stops someone doing the same thing with the car, motorcycle or scooter?

unculture 4y ago
You can absolutely travel the same roads, but there is something about the speed you are travelling that opens you up to really noticing the little details of the landscape around you.
arccy 4y ago
you're more isolated from the outside in a glass and metal bubble (car) and everything just whizzes by too fast to appreciate anything
eckmLJE 4y ago
The faster and heavier you are, the more capacity for harm you have, and the more you must pay attention to just the road in front of you instead of the world around you.
throw0101a 4y ago
> What stops someone doing the same thing with the car, motorcycle or scooter? For the car: > In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. > On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. * Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values * https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/313360-in-a-car-you-re-always-in-a-compartment-and-because https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/313360-in-a-car-you-re-alwa...
- mynameisash 4y ago

bambax 4y ago

I did a couple of 2000+ km tours in Europe on a... motorcycle. It's not sports, it has a big carbon footprint and gas can be expensive, but you can experience some of the same benefits: take less traveled roads, stop anywhere, meet people. I ride a bike every day but only on short distances; on a tour I would be afraid of not being able to pack enough things (clothes, shoes...) But it's a neat idea.

Cockbrand 4y ago
> on a tour I would be afraid of not being able to pack enough things You can always start small with a weekend trip and see which of the items you packed you actually needed, and you'll find out which items you forgot to pack. If you take good note of these, you'll be a proficient and efficient packer very soon, and you'll go on trips that last for days or weeks with the exact amount of stuff you need. And at least in Europe, the next supermarket is never so far away that you can' t reach it on the next day in case you did forget something essential.
deebosong 4y ago
I don't ride mopeds/ scooters/ motorcycles. I've done a couple of cross country road trips. I do cycle pretty much every day for fitness, fun, and challenging myself. But just like you did, I kinda feel like cross country road trips would be excellent on back roads via motorcycles. In a car, it's a bit disconnected and insulated. On a bike, it just seems way too slow and tiresome. Only things I'd want in a cross country motorcycle is: a machine that's under 50 pounds, has a max speed of 50 mph (I'd prefer to keep it at 20-30 mph), goes 300 miles per gallon, and costs under $3000. SO I GUESS I WON'T BE TAKING THAT CROSS COUNTRY MOTORCYCLE TRIP EVER THEN.
- bambax 4y ago
  You're describing my first moped: https://www.mobylette-mag.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/caracteristiques-techniques-peugeot-103-sp-1.jpg https://www.mobylette-mag.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/cara... They don't make those anymore, but they were incredibly fun to ride (and at the time, it cost 6000FF new, which translates to maybe €1000-1500 today).

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

As someone who deeply agrees with this, and yet just spent most of the day in A&E thanks to a car driver who was not looking, we as a society need to rethink our built infrastructure. Over the next few decades we have to change so much infrastructure to solar / electrification that we have an enormous opportunity to make it not just a question of survival but a better civilisation - more human. Cities where every child can cycle to school on car free paths, every worker can get to work on car free paths. Hell it even makes carbon sense to get rid of petrol cars in favour of diesel buses. The design of our lives environments is a force multiplier for our quality of life

bojangleslover 4y ago
I get what you're saying but you ever tried biking in Amsterdam at rush hour? There's just as much congestion. Nobody's going to die in a crash though, I'll give you that. But the experience itself is more crowded. I think what you're looking for is a more rural existence.
- Tade0 4y ago
  > I think what you're looking for is a more rural existence. People tend to forget that while there are benefits in increasing density, they don't continue ad infinitum.
- cesnja 4y ago
  Imagine how that would look if everybody was driving their own car.
  - prawn 4y ago
    Standstill?
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  I do / have done the London cycle superhighway at rush hour - it's pretty much the same deal (although i would call any electric bikes "powered" and question if they should be on the same path / as powerful). The point is if there was a dedicated (about a metre wide, cut off from road traffic by a raised kerb) cycle lane not just through Londons busiest roads but ... well everywhere there is a car road. Just say if you want a car there you should also have a bicycle. We seem to think that the industrial revolution chnaged something - like globally there should be some kind of "profit". I think it's just we as a species get to still be at a subsistence level, just a higher subsistence level. NB- re london cycleways - yeah people do die. The cannon street path was opposite the LFB station and they did not have far to go to wash the blood away sadly.

lambic 4y ago

What do you eat on these trips? Do you carry food with your or just stop at shops and restaurants along the way? How heavy is your backpack? I love biking but I don't love lugging tons of stuff around.

durkie 4y ago
Yeah, just depends on where you're going. We just finished a 4-day tour along the Neckar river in Germany and didn't carry anything extra (except maybe some leftover pastries from breakfast). But then long days up in the north Georgia mountains will require several hearty sandwiches, lots of small snacks, extra electrolytes and maybe a water filter.
matt7aylor 4y ago
Depends a little. Usually you are passing through lots of populated places regularly and so generally I would stop at bakeries (local/different ones if I find them) and supermarkets to get the bulk of the food I would eat in the day, as well as the odd restaurant in the evening. I also tour with camping and simple cooking gear so would mix in some cooking depending on time/budget/availability of other options. On my last tour, for various reasons, I ended up doing more wild camping which this time meant cooking less (more evening time spent in towns before finding somewhere to camp) but in say Scotland, would probably be carrying more food and cooking more when wild camping. Always useful to be carrying at least a little food with you just in case you conk-out and need the energy. An example of a breakfast I was having on my last trip was: 2 croissants, yoghurt with chocolate coated peanuts mixed in, a banana and some fruit smoothie (which seemed on offer a lot this trip) and I might stop for second breakfast/early lunch and get a couple of pasties at the next town with a bakery (handy because you can eat these while cycling). In Italy you might instead be eating things like focaccia from local bakeries (perfect size for my handlebar bag), the landscape of what you eat changes with region, season and mood. You might be surprised though just how good very simple food (bread/cheese) can taste when you are doing exercise all day. One thing I would advise is that it is a lot kinder on the body to attach the bags to the bike if possible rather than carry on your back. I tour relatively heavy and I think my bike/bags together weigh about 40-45kg, just about liftable at a push if I need to, for example, get a small boat for pedestrians (though usually I'd take a couple bags off to make it easier). It's very possible to travel a lot lighter than this though, particularly if not camping, some people just take a change of clothes and a credit card.

em-bee 4y ago

when doing solo-trips i tended to skip lunch, preferring a good breakfast and dinner. at best i might have a snack if i get hungry, that is if i got something to carry from breakfast.

verisimi 4y ago

Yeah - I should get my grannie and her grandkids to come make the 200 mile round trip by bike! I hear what you are saying - if you love bikes long journeys are wonderful. I imagine motorcyclists or long distance runners could get the same buzz. > It may not be for everyone but I want to live in a world where that experience feels accessible to as many as possible. But let's not kid ourselves that this is a viable option for most people. And if you mean that we should get rid of even more roads for bike lanes, you are actually going to restrict people engaging with distant relations and friends.

fock 4y ago
Maybe we should reevaluate wether it's actually necessary for a free and democratic society to have these distanced families as a norm. The societal model you describe essentially evolved in lockstep with capitalism (people moving into cities/generally moving for work) and I'm not totally sure that it has to be this way. We could just live more regional and still be free and democratic as well! Indeed, currently it looks like rootlessness proclaimed by you and others as the preferable lifestyle will take away our freedom and democracy with it.
- verisimi 4y ago
  Of course, we don't have democracy. We don't contribute to the thousands of decisions that are made. We have 'representative democracy' where we choose someone (once every 5 years) to make all those decisions for us. We should re-evaluate what? The reality that the system we find ourselves in, means that families are distributed? Would you force people back together into the same region?
- brudgers 4y ago
  The freedom of movement is a marker of political liberty. Some people (but by no means everyone) are better off away from their family and the town where they grew up. Imagine that you are the fourth generation to move far away from your patents, as I am. There is not some community in which I have generational roots…and it was the prospect of conscription by the Tsar’s army that started it all. Not capitalism. For me, employment someplace far away was the way out of where we weren’t from and that wasn’t for us. Some people have a reason to stay. Those reasons are sometimes the reasons for other people to leave.

habibur 4y ago

How long does 50 miles of cycling take in a day? As in total hours of cycling.

Finnucane 4y ago
On a fully loaded touring bike, you’re not going faster than 15 mph, so you could plan 4-6 hours of riding, depending on your route.

bergenty 4y ago

I agree with everything you said but for walking. Bikes can’t go everywhere, biking in cities is dangerous and uncomfortable (irrespective of good or bad bike infrastructure) and it’s just not as satisfying as putting one foot in front of the other. Yea it’s much slower than biking but at least a magnitude more rewarding in my opinion.

ksplicer 4y ago
Good bike infrastructure absolutely makes it safe and comfortable. Separated bike lanes is key. I also love walking, but this kind of rhetoric is just car-centric propaganda.
- bergenty 4y ago
  Even good bike lanes are packed, sometimes shared with pedestrians and involve crossings where you can intersect with cars. That might be okay for some but it’s very different from biking on a trail. Of course it’s a car centric argument, that’s what I’m advocating for.

wolverine876 4y ago

That conveys my own experience exceptionally well. IME, it's the same bicycling within cities, where you live or as a visitor. I know those places and their people so much better now.