spokesNspin

A comment was made in one of my posts last week about using terms related to bicycling without defining them for the non-cyclist.  Today for Friday Foto Fiesta I have decided to define a few terms and talk about bicycle touring. 

There are three types of touring I will mention.

Supported touring: This is where the bulk of your gear is carried in a support vehicle and the cyclist  carries very little on the bike.  Sometimes a group may hire somebody to drive the support vehicle.  A group may take turns driving and riding.  One member will drive one day while the rest ride the bikes.  The next day they switch off.

Credit Card Touring:  In this situation the cyclist carries all of the gear on the bike.  The amount carried is very small because the cyclist will stay in motels or B&Bs and buy all the food already prepared.   Hence the need for the credit card. This can be expensive for a long tour.

Self-Contained Touring: A cyclist carries camping and cooking gear along with everything else they might need on the journey.

Here is a pic of me at the end of a self contained tour along the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive.  I was sitting in Front Royal, VA waiting for a ride home.  No comments on my attire.

Notice that I have panniers(bike bags) on both the front and rear of my bike. I have also tied gear to the rack on the back.  There is also a bag connected to the handlebars.

One of the first things a  bicyclist tourist needs to do when preparing mentally for a ride is to remember that a bicycle tour is about the journey.  It’s not about trying to set or meet a speed goal. This can be a hard adjustment to make for a person who normally does weekend group rides.

When riding a self contained tour you just can’t go fast. The bicycle is loaded with anywhere from 30 to 50 pounds of gear. That makes for slower riding. Then you have all the time spent setting up and breaking camp, cooking, cleaning etc.

In addition you want to see and enjoy the sites. Most of my tours have been solo. When going solo people are more open to talk to you. I get to meet more people and that is a lot of fun.

I met Yuri while I was doing a loop near the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho.

Yuri was a school teacher from Russia who was bicycling across the United States.  He gave me his business card which referenced his web site.   When I went to the site it was of course in Russian and I couldn’t read it. 

Another very interesting fellow I met while touring through Yellowstone Park was Tai Chi.

I am not sure about Tai Chi’s name. He spoke very little English(Same thing with Yuri). He had been touring on his bike for 7 years without going home. That was amazing. I think he must have been a little crazy. He had been all over the world. You can see his gear was well worn and there wasn’t much of it. Tai was dirtbagging. Oh there’s another new term.

Dirtbagging: This refers to camping with minimal gear and just sleeping along any out of the way place you can find. This is of course an inexpensive way to go.

It is also illegal in Yellowstone Park and many other National parks. It is generally legal in National Forests.  I prefer an established camp ground for facility and safety considerations.  But the cost can add up.  I paid as much for a spot to pitch my tent at a KOA near Jackson Hole Wy as I would pay for a motel in other places.

Touring by bicycle gives you the opportunity to meet people and see things that you miss when traveling by car.  In Idaho I came across a field where an artist had gotten creative with bales of straw.

Unfortunately, it has been a couple of years since I have taken a self-contained tour.  It is time to do another one.  I have a few routes in mind.

 There are more posts to follow on other aspects of bicycle touring.   The pics in this post are linked to my journals and photo albums from some of my bike tours.

Tags: Bicycle Touring

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 4:53 am and is filed under Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.