Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with bicycle and touring

Escape from rain city

PercussivePaul — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:43:44 -0800

We want to go somewhere sunny and warm in February. We're in Vancouver BC and don't want to fly too far; cost is an issue. We would really like to bring our touring bicycles and do a mini-tour at a relaxed pace - maybe 250 miles over two weeks. So far we're looking at South Baja. Good idea? Other ideas? I have all kinds of questions about South Baja if anyone has been there. Specifically we were thinking of flying to Cabo San Lucas (looks like around $600 round trip plus baggage fees), then biking to La Paz and back in a loop, and we need to know about road conditions, traffic, availability of services, typical price of a hotel, etc etc.

But I'm also interested if any other destination comes to mind. The bike tour is not a requirement but something we would really enjoy. Touristy mega-resorts are not really our thing but we would appreciate a little bit of comfort on this trip I think. Beaches would be nice. Sunny and warm in February is the key.

Should I pedal to the Ph.D?

dr. boludo — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:19:35 -0800

I’m considering biking from Madison, WI to Austin, TX in October. Please help me assess whether this is a good idea. Background: I am currently living in Madison while finishing my dissertation, which I hope to defend in late October/early November in Austin. My committee needs a month of lead time between when I turn in a final draft and the defense date. I know that I will spend that month fretting about the things I ought to have included, worrying about the job (or more specifically, lack thereof) awaiting me when I return, and any number of other incidentals. One of the main things that has kept me sane while I write has been quality time on my bike. As a way to keep the fretting to a minimum and use the intervening month between handing in my final draft and defending, I’m considering doing a self-supported bike tour from Madison to Austin. I love the idea, poetically, of ending this long and grueling academic slog with an appropriately equivalent physical one. Is this feasible? Is it wise? Is it worth it? I’d be grateful for any perspective that can help me make a more educated decision on the following points:

-route and distance: According to adventurecycling.org it looks like there’s a pretty established bike touring route for most of the Mississippi. That’s about all I’ve got. I’d like to plan a route taking into consideration a balance of reasonable distance, route safety, scenery or general interest. What resources should I be consulting? Can anyone with personal experience recommend (or recommend against) any part of this route?

-physical preparation. I currently average about 60-80 miles a week, but never carrying more than about 20 lbs. Longest ride this season has been 65 miles. I’m 31 and in relatively solid aerobic shape (I’ve done 3 sub-4:00 marathons and am just back from a stress fracture to running a few days a week, no more than 5 miles a day yet). How much training would I need to do to be relatively happy undertaking this journey?

-gear. I own, and love, this bike with all stock components. I’ve got a heavy-duty rack on the back. I own one smallish set of panniers. I’m thinking, after having read other AskMe posts, crazyguyonabike.com forums, etc that a front rack and bigger panniers are more my style than a trailer. Are there other necessary/recommendable component upgrades I should do? What about camping gear? Repair tools?

-traveling with a laptop: good idea? Horrible idea? I like the idea of being able to blog the trip, and more importantly review my own writing or do other necessary diss prep on the way. Is this a recipe for disaster? Is it worth the weight? How about recharging batteries on the road?

-how much will this cost? I mentioned the unemployed grad student part above. How can I find cheap and safe places to camp, or couch-surf along the way?

-skill set: I’ve got plenty of experience camping, and biking, but none bike camping. I can change a tire, lube a chain, and that’s about it on a bike. What other essential repair skills should I learn, and how/where can I obtain them?

-finally, what am I forgetting to ask?
Thanks in advance, hivemind!

Soloing Paris-Roubaix

Severian — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:03:38 -0800

What do I need to know and do in order to take a bike and ride a famous cycling route in France? Backstory: Since watching this year's Paris-Roubaix I have a dream to bike that route. The positives: I am an experienced cyclist, I am a professional bicycle mechanic and I could have a liberal budget for this project. The negatives: I don't speak french or flemmish, I have travelled overseas just a few times during my life, never solo, and never with a bicycle.

My intent is to ride this 170 mile route over the space of 3-4 days with 2 days in Paris and 2 days in Roubaix on either end. I want to stay at small hostels or hotels along the route as I don't have extensive camping experience. I may consider sending baggage ahead of me each day via rail package services. I would be flying, most likely, from Chicago O'Hare intl. airport, and I would want to bring my own bike if possible.

My questions; beyond getting advice from the French Consulate, which intend to do before applying for a visa. What advice can AskMe pass along about traveling to Europe? What about bicycling and crossing borders in Europe? What should I pack? When is a good time to travel Europe? Where should I go for travelers insurance? What questions am I forgetting?

Escaping Toronto with a bike in tow?

anthill — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:06:14 -0800

How to escape the Greater Toronto Area for multiday bicycle tours? Difficulty: no car. My girlfriend and I just bought a tandem touring bike, and we're both keen to get out to the Ontario countryside for some summer tours. The catch is we have no car.

I know that the GO Train is one option for downtown cyclists trying to escape, but from what I can tell only the Lakeshore line runs trains that fall outside their rush-hour bicycle ban. The Lakeshore area is pretty nice, but I'd rather get to the Barrie area to access Tobermory, Parry Sound, or Algonquin.

Any tricks for escaping the GTA on a low carbon footprint would be much appreciated.

Mount Shasta or bust!

beerbajay — Thu, 03 May 2007 23:41:46 -0800

What is the best cycling route from the northern part of the central valley north/northeast-ward? Oh, and will I die? I am going on a self-supported cycling tour with a friend starting in a few days. We're planning to plan our exact routes as we go and our initial plan was to go east into the central valley from San Francisco and then head north. Eventually, we'll run into the Cascades (right?) and then we'll have to climb out of the valley... which way should we go? Is this route even a good idea? Will we freeze to death? etc?!

Help us find decent touring bike rentals in Amsterdam or a better plan!

funkiwan — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:05:20 -0800

$700+ to fly with our bicycles? Help us find decent touring bike rentals in Amsterdam or a better plan! My girlfriend and I are planning a bicycle tour of the Netherlands for the month of May (Hooray!). We leave NYC May 1 and arrive in Amsterdam. Our original plan was to buy bikes (neither of us currently have bikes suitable for touring) and check them as baggage on our flights. Unfortunately, Northwest/KLM recently changed their policy for checking bikes and are going to charge us $150 (going) and €150 (returning) apiece if we bring bikes. Yikes! Pleading for mercy via phone and email has gotten us nowhere.

So we're thinking it may make sense to rent bikes in the Netherlands or possibly even buy used bikes and sell them before we return. While it's quite easy to find bike rentals in Amsterdam, almost every site we've found is geared toward the city tourist offering heavy beach cruiser type bikes. We're looking for touring bikes. We're not concerned with brand so much as just wanting sturdy but light reliable bikes that we can gear up with fenders/racks/panniers, etc. We're not doing any camping. We're planning on mostly staying in residences via "Friends of the Bike" (or "Vrienden op de Fiets" in Dutch) an organization that hooks up bikers and people willing to host them for a nominal fee.

We called a couple of bike shops in Amsterdam and have come up dry. Navigating the Dutch websites has proven difficult as AltaVista's Babelfish translation service has only gotten us so far.

Our main questions are:
Does anyone have any idea how we can go about renting touring bikes in Amsterdam?
Does anyone know of a good bike shop in Amsterdam where we can buy new or used touring bikes and won't get ripped off? (We know the dollar is weak.)
Does anyone have any Dutch connections they could ask?
Should we just bite the $300+ bullet and check the bikes?
Is there something we're missing?
Any general advice about bike touring in the Netherlands would be nice, too.

Thanks!

Planning a California Road Bike Trip

salvia — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:55:29 -0800

California or southwest geography buffs -- a great 200 miles of travel, starting within a day's drive of San Francisco? Road bike tourers -- tips on preparing for and planning a bicycle tour? I've never done any sort of touring before, so please excuse the scattershot grouping of questions here. Any kind of feedback or tips you can give me are great.

CHOOSING A ROUTE
I'm taking a week off, so I'll be leaving San Francisco on Day 1 by bus, train, or my own car. I want to get myself somehow out of the Bay Area. From there, I'll road bike for about five days, then get back to San Francisco by Day 7 to return to work the next day. I hear that a good travel estimate is about 40-50 miles a day? So, I'm trying to find around 200 miles of nice travel. Any suggestions you have on a route would be great.

My best idea for the route so far is this, down the eastern side of the Sierras -- start in the South Lake Tahoe area, head south on 395 to Mono Lake, past Lee Vining (just east of Yosemite), to Mammoth, to Bishop, to Lone Pine, then spend a day tooling around Death Valley -- July's the best time to visit, right? ;) What do you think about that? Too far to go in 5 days? Stop earlier and take side trips (like what)?

A better stretch of road? I really like being in sagebrush country, and the open views you get in the desert at night, so I wouldn't want to be nestled in the woods the whole time. (My total dream ride would from Moab to Taos via Shiprock. But I can't pull that off in 7 days -- the nearest airports are in Salt Lake and Albuquerque.) I thought about something in the Mojave, if there were anything high altitude enough to be tolerable (??), or something headed north on the eastern side of the Sierras... but I don't know much about those areas. I don't mind heat, but obviously, there's a certain limit where everything is too baked and glaring to even be tolerable. I'm not really interested in the coast, the Bay Area oak woodlands, the Central Valley, or the Trinity Alps / Mt. Shasta area.

Good sources for non-highway road routes? How have you planned your camping locations for bike trips? The best I've found so far are these journals.

PULLING THIS OFF.....
Route aside, I'm trying to pull together a touring setup and the gear I'll need super quickly. I have a road bike without those eyelets for pannier racks, so I'm choosing between alternative rack setups or a bike trailer. The trailer seems dorky and unwieldy, but the bike store clerk thought they were great.

I'm planning to go as light as I can while still camping out -- no cooking gear (almonds, dried fruit, whatever I find at markets); a sleeping bag, ground pad, and tarp in case of rain; basic clothes; and basic bike repair stuff. I've done a lot of camping, but no bike touring. Any especially helpful bike gear I might otherwise forget?

I don't know much about bike repair and am going alone, so I'm going to learn what I can between now and then, and otherwise stick to roads where I could probably hitch a ride to the next town in the back of a pickup if something else breaks. My bias is that things aren't as hard as they seem -- I completely over-prepared the first time I went camping, so I'm thinking I could pull this off. But I would like to hear cautions or tips on how to keep myself out of hot water.

I've been told that before I go I should practice fixing flats and that the number two priority is to learn to adjust brake and derailleur cables. Anything else? In the way of repair, do you think I need to bring anything besides a patch kit, a few spare tubes, tire levers, and hex wrenches?

Any other thoughts?