Category: Bike Touring
I have a bad habit of riding the same old routes on my bicycle, so I'm always trying to keep things fresh by looking for new roads. Scenic is good; points of interest or historic landmarks are a bonus.
That's why I was happy to stumble across the recently published Historic and Scenic Corridors Project of King County. Although not a bicycling map book, it contains a treasure trove of new roads to explore by bicycle.
The first ride I set out on did not disappoint. The Issaquah-Fall City Road described in the booklet, also published online, put me on a 5-mile route that has changed little from the early days of settlement when it was used as a wagon road by farmers before the arrival of the railroad to the region.
Originally seen as only a trace on early maps, it was officially established in 1883 ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/01/bicycling-back-in-time-on-old-king-county-wagon-roads/
The TransAmerica Bicycle Route's unforgettable Cookie Lady has been offering traveling cyclists a place to tank up their water bottles, restore their carbs and even spend the night for more than 30 years.
This summer, June Curry is cutting back on some of those activities. Although the Bike House will remain open during the day for touring bicyclists who want a look around, she'll no longer be offering overnight lodging there.
The Adventure Cycling Association blog says a good friend of June's recently told them:
“…the situation (not having cyclists stay at the bike house) may change in the future, but right now, June would prefer not to have overnight visitors ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/31/cookie-ladys-bike-house-reopens-but-not-for-overnight-stays/
The practice of doctors making house calls is a thing of the past, but these medical students think nothing of embarking on a cross-country bicycle tour.
About two dozen future doctors will leave San Diego this week to raise money and awareness for the Heal Africa and World Bicycle Relief organizations.
This is the fifth year that groups of med students have taken a Ride for World Health bicycle tour across the US. Each year they've raised between $60,000 and $80,000 for different non-governmental agencies that provide medical care to developing nations.
The entourage plans to leave San Diego on Thursday. Members will ride 75 to 100 miles a day ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/29/medical-students-use-bikes-to-deliver-message-about-health-care/
Embarking on a Pan-American bicycle tour is by no means commonplace these days, but adventurers are undertaking it more frequently.
That wasn't the case in 1974, when 18-year-old Keith Jackson, at right, left the comforts of his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the rigors of an 18,000-mile bike journey from Alaska to the southernmost tip of Argentina.
Jackson was one of the first and one of the youngest. Recently, that path has become more well-traveled.
Just this past winter, Scotsman Mark Beaumont finished the bike trek, which he blogged about at Cycling the Americas. Shortly before that, three Americans accomplished the feat, reported at their blog Riding the Spine.
There is even a family of four ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/28/remembering-a-teen-agers-panamerican-bike-tour/
The Adventure Cycling Association is throwing parties in Seattle, Portland and Eugene this week and San Francisco and Santa Cruz next week to celebrate the unveiling of its newest bicycle touring route.
The Sierra Cascades Bicycle Route rolls for 2,391 miles between Sumas, Washington, on the Canadian border and Tecate, California, on the Mexican border.
Printed maps of the route are available in mid-April.
Executive director Jim Sayer and cartographer Jenn Milyko will be on hand at the receptions in those three Northwest cities to unveil the routes and bring us up-to-date on other Adventure Cycling projects…
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/27/sierra-cascades-bicycle-route-meetups-in-seattle-portland-eugene-san-francisco-and-santa-cruz/
Yellowstone National Park has opened newly snow-cleared sections of road to bicycles already this spring before reopening the routes to motor vehicles.
Glacier National Park in Montana is clearing snow off roads and expects to open them to cyclists soon.
Meanwhile, snow removal crews, left, from the Washington Department of Transportation on Monday began running snow plows along the North Cascades Highway that cuts through the North Cascades National Park in preparation for opening the road with mile-high passes.
It's one of the rites of spring in the western states where snowfalls bury roads with some of the most spectacular scenery for several months out of the year ..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/24/spring-bicycling-opens-in-some-national-parks/
Editor's note: Every spring a whole new crop of bicycling fans are champing at the bit to take their first bicycle tour. While most have already read the standard “Top 10 tips” of bicycle touring somewhere, here's my personal suggestions gleaned from hard-learned lessons.
This is a reprint of a post buried in the bowels of my blog from several years ago. Most pointers are still true today:
1. Keep clean, especially your most tender parts. Cycling shorts are a heated petri dish for bacteria. Even if you're camping at a spot without showers, find a water spigot or head into a restroom to give yourself a good cleaning down below. A small pimple or rash can become an infection to rival anything found in the trenches of World War I. We talked to a couple who had to stop their tour the previous year because of such an infection ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/17/10-tips-for-bicycle-touring-from-lessons-learned-the-hard-way/
When I first started riding a bicycle as an adult back in the late 1970s in Maryland, one of the first things I did was to buy a guidebook of bicycle rides in the region that encompassed Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Looking back, I think I primarily needed that book because I really didn't know what made a good or bad bicycle route. That sounds funny now, but I didn't have a sixth sense about finding good roads for bicycling.
There's been such a guidebook of bike rides available for western Washington for a few years now. It's written by ardent local bicyclist and author Bill Thorness. He shares his wisdom gleaned from 20 years of bicycling in “Biking Puget Sound: 50 rides from Olympia to the San Juans.”
Although I'm long past needing to know what makes a good bike route, I'll have to admit that my ride choices tend to get stale. …..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/16/bill-thorness-shares-50-great-bike-rides-around-the-puget-sound/
Willie Weir is a name I've associated with bicycle travel for many years, especially through his writings for Adventure Cyclist magazine.
When I moved to western Washington a few years ago, I was happily surprised to learn that the author, lecturer and winner of gold and bronze Lowell Thomas Awards for travel writing had his roots right here in Seattle.
I had about a thousand questions to ask him when we finally met at the Seattle Bicycle Expo this past weekend, but I boiled it down to two: What's your favorite place for bicycle touring, and where would you ride your bike if you only had a week? …..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/15/willie-weirs-favorite-place-for-bike-travel/
The route of my 1984 cross-country bicycle tour is still pretty much imprinted on my brain.
So when Google announced it had created bike directions for Google maps, I was interested to see how its suggested route compared with the route I took 25-some years ago.
The result is at right. It's quite different than our actual route, below.
Google's route from Yorktown, Virginia, to Oceanside, California, is shorter than our meandering route. It bypasses some steep climbs and makes use of rail-to-trails that probably still carried freight trains when we traveled that way on our bikes. …..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/15/our-1984-transamerican-bicycle-trip-googleized/
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