Category: Bike Touring
There are charity bike rides, then there are extreme charity bike rides. I would put Down Right Kenya in the latter category.
What makes it so amazing is that the fund-raiser bike ride for the Harambee Schools Kenya starts in the UK and travels along two routes all the way to Kenya, a distance of 6,000 miles.
The 12 touring bicyclists (there's room for 20) are paying their own way and expect it will take them six months to complete the trek. They will carry everything; no sag. They're heading into a country that has been racked by civil strife …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/08/15/down-right-kenya-is-a-downright-amazing-bike-tour/
About 6 years ago, astronaut John B. Herrington was speeding around the Earth at 17,000 mph in the Space Shuttle Endeavor.
Today he's embarking on a cross-country bicycle tour from Washington's Olympic Peninsula aboard his fully loaded Trek 520 on which he'll be lucky to average 12 mph.
Let's just call it one small step for man, one giant pedal stroke for mankind.
The cross-country bike tour is called Rocketrek and it's intended to get kids interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/08/13/astronaut-herringtons-new-adventure-is-by-touring-bike/
I've been clued into two independent cross-country bicycle tours recently that some young men are taking to raise funds and awareness and favorite causes.
Both are blogging about their adventures. One tour, heading east, ends with this weekend Pan Mass Challenge. The other, heading west, is entering its final stretch. It makes for some interesting reading if you're not out on the road yourself.
Pan USA Challenge
The two brothers, Justin and Jamie Merolla, on the Pan USA Challenge last blogged in from Christianburg, Virginia. They were celebrating the last of their hurdles, the huge climb out of Vesuvius that summits at the Blue Ridge Parkway …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/29/pedaling-across-the-us-for-a-purpose/
The Great Allegheny Passage has turned into a gold mine for communities who are watching money roll into their western Maryland and Pennsylvania towns two wheels at a time.
Time and time again it has been shown that rail-to-trail projects are a big draw for bicyclists, and longer networks like this one draw bike tours with people who need food and lodging.
The 150-mile GAP bike trail hooked up with the 186-mile C&O Canal towpath in late 2006, creating an off-road bike tour route all the way from Washington DC to McKeesport (and into Pittsburgh later this year) …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/28/gap-bike-trail-stimulates-local-economies/
Seven bicyclists are rolling out of Seattle on Friday on the Ride Green Build Green bike tour to San Francisco to raise money and awareness for affordable housing.
Each of the bicyclists is raising $2,000 to support LEED certification for a home built by Habitat for Humanity of East King County, Washington state. The seven hosted benefit concerts, T-shirt sales, and donation solicitations before the ride and will continue fund-raising efforts during the ride. All donations are tax deductible through Habitat for Humanity.
They're heading down to Olympia on the first day to visit Habitat for Humanity Olympia and tour the facilities. As they continue to San Francisco, the riders will visit sites and organizations devoted to affordable and green housing …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/24/seattle-to-san-francisco-green-housing-bicycle-tour/
Lance Armstrong joined the 10,000 bicyclists rolling toward Ames on Tuesday in the third day of 2008 RAGBRAI.
It's the 7-time Tour de France winner's third visit to RAGBRAI. He joined up somewhere west of Boone and stopped there for awhile before heading to Ames, reported the Des Moines Register.
His appearance isn't causing the stir as in previous years, when some warned the week-long bike tour across Iowa was in danger of being renamed LAGBRAI. He will be joined by some 200 riders on Team Livestrong at RAGBRAI this year. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/22/armstrong-making-3rd-appearance-at-ragbrai/
I had heard about bicycling the John Wayne Pioneer Trail and the Snoqualmie Tunnel ever since moving here in 2000, but I didn't have the right bike until this spring.
With a day to myself, I threw the knobbies on my Rockhopper mountain bike and drove up to the Cedar Falls (exit 32 on I-90) trailhead to find out about it for myself.
Briefly, it was a great bike ride, and I can't wait to return with my camping gear. I rode the first leg of about 22 miles to the next trailhead at Hyak on the other side of the 2.3-mile long Snoqualmie Tunnel, looked around, and returned. I was shooting photos with my Canon Elph, and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to try a video. It appears at left.
The John Wayne Pioneer Trail is the old Chicago-Milwaukee-St. Paul-Pacific Railroad — aka The Milwaukee Road — that rolls two-thirds of the way across Washington state. About 100 miles of it is a packed gravel rail-to-trail maintained as part of the Iron Horse State Park from Cedar Falls west of the Cascades to the Columbia River to the east …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/21/iron-horse-state-parks-john-wayne-pioneer-trail-in-washington/
Let's get this out of the way: I've never biked RAGBRAI, the grand-daddy of all across-state bicycle tours, and I'm not there this year.
But I like to check in with the biggest week-long bike tour in the US to learn about storms, excessively hot weather, or beer shortages that might be plaguing the 10,000-some bike riders.
That's easier than ever this year, as ride sponsor Des Moines Register is hosting a Twitter, blog and share photos page on its website, in addition to articles and photos taken by its own staff. The newspaper is the main sponsor and owner of the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, now in its 36th year …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/21/doing-the-virtual-ragbrai-bike-tour/
This Seattle-to-Portland cyclist is all smiles as she rides down the chute to the finish line festival on Sunday at Holladay Park in downtown Portland.
I don't know about the other 9,498 riders in the 2008 STP, but what my son and I will remember most about the 204-mile bicycle tour is the unrelenting heat.
Temperatures soared into the 90s on the final day, as cyclists dove for the cover of shade at all the rest stops and along final 50-mile stretch on US Route 30 into Portland. Many roadside households, especially in Washington state, turned out to cheer us on and spray us down with water as we passed. I shot pictures the past two days, which appear on the jump…
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/14/sweltering-seattle-to-portland-bike-ride-draws-to-close/
As I was waiting in line at REI to pick up my Seattle-to-Portland Bicycle Classic ride packet, Cascade Bicycle Club exec director Chuck Ayers explained to us how the club is issuing “traffic tickets” to cyclists who don't follow the rules of the road.
This is the first time the club has tried this approach. Ayers said one of the biggest complaints from motorists, staff and other cyclists during STP has been about participants who don't follow the rules of the road on the 200-mile, one- or two-day bike tour that rolls out Saturday.
So this year, the club's Ride Refs and Goldwing Motorcycle Safety Patrol will be on the lookout for dangerous cycling behavior and issue tickets.
Those tickets don't carry the force of law, of course. They do imply, however, that your peers on the bike ride think you're riding like a jerk and you need to pay attention…
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/07/11/enforcing-rules-of-the-road-at-stp-bike-ride-this-year/
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