Thread by @ElephantEating

Here's a long thread about my history of bike touring, because:
1. I don't feel like working.
2. You might like a distraction.
3. There will be nice pictures.
4. Bike touring is a great vacation that involves lots of social distancing, so maybe you can try it out in summer 2020.

For me, it all started, sort of, in High School. A good friend and I thought up a plan to bike across the US after graduation. We had no idea if that was something that people do (it is), how long it would take (2-3 months), or what we would need (not too much).

But we weren't committed to the idea, which morphed into a plan to *drive* across the US. And then it morphed into us just getting summer jobs and watching movies about killer robots in the evenings. But the idea got planted in my mind.

Next stop: first job out of college in DC. At some point, I figured that adults should get exercise every now and then, and bought a $120 mountain bike at Walmart. I would bike to and along the C&O Canal. It was nice.

I was *not* good at biking. I had my low-quality bike, didn't have equipment to change a tire (one time I had to have my wife pick me up because of a flat), didn't know to bring food with me (which became a problem as I started to go on longer rides).

I really liked the Canal trail and kept going a bit further each time. I'd make it to mile marker 15, then 20, then 25, but always had to turn back. I wanted to get to the end -how far could it go?

Turns out: pretty far.

Look, the internet wasn't as awesome back in 2004, but I did manage to find that the Canal trail went 180 miles to Cumberland, MD and was somewhat connected from there on to Pittsburgh on something called the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP). I started thinking.

I wanted to see the entire C&O Canal trail, but figured that I could add in this other trail to Pittsburgh. And from there, I could make my way to Cleveland (where I recently went to school at @cwru and wife's family is there). Why not?

So I bought stuff at REI, took a week of vacation from work (with warning that I wasn't sure how long it would take), and set off alone along the C&O Canal, then the yet-to-be-connected GAP, and then some roads from Pittsburgh to Cleveland.

I was not very smart about bike touring, though I erred on the side of over-preparedness: I made a front rack for the bike that held two 2-L soda bottles of water (plus 3 on my back) and brought 4 days(!) worth of MREs. I mean, look at this idiot:

It was hard (like when I had to bike 5 miles alone through dark, spooky woods until finding the campsite with - thankfully - people there that had already started a fire). But it was really fun!

The next year, I convinced my wife that she would like it (and she let me!). For some reason, we decided to do the Canal portion in 3 days in October. It was rainy and cold and we didn't have enough warm clothes (it even got slightly dangerous). We have become smarter since then.

We met these two Canadians on the last night who were looking for takeout beer at Bill's Place (Little Orleans, MD). But you can't take beer out on Sunday, which they found baffling. I suggested they camp at the same place as us, then we biked over to WV to buy them some beer.

So then I hatched the big plan: bike across the USA the next summer. But first, another practice on the C&O Canal, but this time I had a bunch of young co-workers who heard me talk it up so much that they wanted to try it. That's how I became a bike tour leader.

We had 7 people that year - only my wife and I had bike toured before. It was so fun to help people along the trail, point things out, tell stories, etc. We had a grand old time and all arrived on time and healthy.

For the cross-country bike trip, I dropped $1000 to buy a proper touring bike (rather than the $120 Walmart special). To try it out, we did a 3 day ride around Pennsylvania Dutch Country. It felt really hilly compared to the Canal, and there was direct sun, which was new.

We planned to buy food along the way, but didn't plan for everything to be closed on Sunday. So dinner one night was beef jerky, marinated in wine that we purchased, served over rice.

The wife's bike also broke in an odd way: the pedal got loose in the crankarm and the pedalling action made the steel pedal axle wear the aluminum crankarm threads smooth. The pedal just fell out. Jason rigged up this "peg" and biked 20 miles using it to "return" the other pedal.

But now it was time to bike across the country. I could only convince one person to join me (Thanks, Jason!) and ended up risking my job to go (another govt office stepped in and "adopted" me mid-trip when my boss threatened to fire me for going AWOL).

We took the @advcyclingassoc Northern Tier route from Seattle to Rhode Island. It stays pretty close to the Northern border of the US the whole way: Washington, Montana, Glacier Park, N. Dakota, Minneapolis, Niagara Falls. Biggest climb I'd ever done was about 100 feet.

We went an average of 78 miles/day across the US. We had headwinds for 12 days straight across Montana and N. Dakota. 90% camping. Pretty fun, and a lot of learning went on while we were going.

Made it into RI after 54 days of riding. A bit more than 4000 miles. The last day we decided to turn two days into one at our lunch break and did 138 miles (100 of it after lunch). That is still my longest biking day ever.

After this trip, I felt like I could do any trip. If I can knock out 138 miles on a bike that weights 100+ pounds, what is gonna stop me? (Please enjoy this picture of us just after finishing that 138 mile day, at 11:30PM).

When people met us while biking across the US, the most common comment was "I could never do that". After a bit, we started disagreeing with them: "You really can, if you want to, and have a little time and money!"

#2 question: What do you do when it rains?
A: We get wet.

I ended up channeling that excitement from the big bike trip into leading groups of people on the 3-day trip along the C&O Canal. Then, when we moved to Pittsburgh to be at @CMU_EPP, the annual trip became a DC to Pittsburgh trip.

Some years I would do the trip several times. We had groups of varying sizes, but they tended to grow. One year we had 25 people total, which we broke into four sub-groups, each with their own team leader. The competition between teams was unexpected and delightful.

I learned that I really enjoy "showing the ropes" to new people and helping them get past obstacles to finishing the trip (we sort them into 3 categories - bike, body, mind - and we have experience with all three).

I've become very good at what you might call emergency repair. I bike at the end of the group and actually enjoy catching up to a few people looking doubtfully at a bike - "Well, what do we have here?" I've pulled some strange fixes out of my bag of tricks.

In the end, I've done the C&O Canal route 18 times total, and the GAP portion afterwards a total of 13 times, and led a total of about 150 people along them. I pretty much have the whole thing memorized, mile-makers and all. I *love* this route and strongly suggest it.

Ok, moving on. Now we're in Pittsburgh. My parents decided to pay for a family trip to Ireland. We decided to sneak away from that for 2 days to bike the Ring of Kerry. It was... impressive. Don't miss the Gap of Dunloe:

But, yeah, Ring of Kerry was great. Biking on the "wrong side of the road" is a bit of an issue when a car comes from the other direction and you suddenly find yourself on the "wrong" (but, in Ireland, actually correct) side of a narrow country road.

Then we decided to do another cross-country bike trip, this time from New Orleans up to Owens Sound, Canada (on Lake Huron). This was the @advcyclingassoc Underground Railroad route. We started with four: me, Rachael, Shira, and Michael (the 14-yr-old entrusted to our care).

This was also where we learned how great @Amtrak is for bike touring. We took the train overnight from DC to New Orleans. Bikes were $10 to take on the train (for airplanes, bringing the bike cost more than the seat for a human).

So, let me level with you: the people in the South are nice, but the biking is hard and less scenic than Northern Tier. Plus, there are dogs everywhere. After Shira got pulled off of her bike by one, we all got pepper spray & anti-dog bamboo sticks. We fought off lots of dogs.

We did end up getting invited to a charity auction in Aberdeen, MS (more on this later) - the most amazing town of the journey. We were also offerd a warehouse (with AC!) to spend the night and a boat ride up the river the next day. Very nice folks.

We also camped behind a smalltown grocery store, so our life wasn't all glamour.

Partway through the trip, Shira found another cyclist on twitter going the same way. We arranged to meet up. This trip was actually when I got a twitter account - the reason was that I could send updates by SMS and family could follow along at home.

Then we met up with another guy (Bill) doing the route along, and we convinced him to camp with us for the night. One night became two, and eventually he joined our group. So we briefly had a group of 6, though the twitter guy peeled off (we were too fast for him).

But we kept Bill, who was amazing. He was used to long-distance biking in Randoneur races (where you go several hunred miles self-supported). He could lay down on a hot road and take a nap (really!). He taught us the greatness of bags of ice.

Overall, the trip was 35 days and about 2000 miles. We had an injury towards the end, and one of our star bikers had to drop out (she was fine and finished the route later on). To this day, I still refer to her as "my sister Shira", which has puzzled many people.

So, at this point, we are pretty good at this. We've done a lot of trips, seen a lot of problems, worked out how we like to bike and camp and eat. Seems like we have this pretty well wrapped up. What could possibly provide a new challenge?

Enter kid1, who was actually named after that super-friendly town Aberdeen, MS (no, she was not born 9 months later). She did her first overnight bike trip around 9 months.

She did the DC to Pittsburgh bike trip the first time at 11 months. We had to learn a whole new way to bike tour. Bike when the baby sleeps - no breaks when she naps. Lots of short breaks - have to keep her happy. And breaks aren't really breaks anymore - they are playtime.

In 2012, we moved to Rochester, NY to be at @RITtigers. So the next summer, we tried something new, the Erie Canal from Albany to Niagara Falls. That route is not very complete. But it should be and would attract a lot of bikers!

We continued to do DC to Pittsburgh every year (that's how I racked up those 18 trips!), but kept looking for new ideas. We settled on the @advcyclingassoc Washington Parks loop - 1000 miles in a giant loop around Seattle. And we took @Amtrak the whole way there and back.

Rachael ended up having to drive the truck, but I biked with kid1 and Justin. Our route went right from the train station out to the ferry terminal to points SW, then around the outside of the Olympic peninsula, across the Cascades at Washington Pass, then around to Mt. Ranier.

This was my 2nd time up Washington Pass. The first time was very hard, but I had been through a lot since then. On the other hand, I would be towing another person now. We ended up hiding from the heat under the same bridge Jason and I had found 8 years earlier.

The Washington Parks route is great and nicely varied. Oceans, rain, giant tress, then dry and dusty country. Plus several National Parks, all within a few hundred miles of Seattle. Would recommend.

In recent years, we realized that everyone we know is getting old, married, or babied. So we started up some "family-friendly" trips, like 30 miles/day from Rochester to Niagara Falls, with what I call luxury camping. That has worked out well.

PS: The American side is better.

In 2018, we (me, kid1, and Alan) biked the California coast from SF to LA. We again took the train all the way out and back. This route is beautiful, but has terrifying traffic (and I'm pretty good at this).

Now that we are in France, we have started to bike European routes, starting with the Loire Valley with all the chateaux.

I also finally biked again with my German buddy Robert. We met him on the C&O Canal one year and I told him to stick with us. He did, all the way back to Rochester. Last year, he took me on a weeklong tour of Brandenburg.

We now have a kid2 to manage, but we recently bought an ebike for the wife, so she can tow the baby. Pandemic-permitting, we have a plan for a big trip this summer from Lille, France to Rome.

A bit of a conclusion about what I've learned. I say a lot of things about bike trips. Some of the more important are:
1. There are many ways to do it and no one should judge. Some people like to go 150 miles/day, some spend only $5 per day, some only stay in hotels. No rules.

2. Anyone can do it. And if you push yourself a bit, you can learn a lot about yourself. You get better at it and that feels good.
3. Bike touring is a great way to explore an area and meet people. Especially if, like me, you don't really like cities all that much.

4. It is also a great way to think. You are forced to be away from your computer and maybe out of cell service. For days! As a PhD student, my rule was that I had to come up with a good research idea for next year while doing the DC to Pittsburgh bike trip. It always worked!

5. It is a good way to get to know other people. On a group ride, everyone is a bit more raw and less guarded. You have to help each other out and you'll come out of it feeling. Like a corporate retreat, but not corporate.

And if you're still here this far downthread: wow! I'll reward you with a link to a (much shorter) earlier thread on the "three" rules for the bike trip. We've basically distilled all our experience bike touring to 3 (+1) rules:

https://twitter.com/ElephantEating/status/1022128503003574272