Category: Bike Touring

Occasionally I'll run across a story that the Chinese are giving up bicycles as a prime source of transportation in favor of cars. Bikes lanes are converted to car lanes, and health problems, like obesity, are on the rise.

Apparently there are still plenty of people riding bicycles to work, but not as many as before. Oh well, such is the price of Westernization, or modernization, or industrialization.

Now there's a new trend in China. The People's Daily reports that people are bicycling for “exercise and entertainment.” The news outlet interviewed some people who bicycled from their faraway hometowns to attend the Tour of Hainan, a six-day …

Continue reading

Some roads “were more like huge stretches of human-sized potholes or a collection of head-sized rocks. Sometimes I thought local transport officials built these “roads” just to play a cruel joke and fool people into believing there was actually a legitimate way to get from one place to another.”

— Patrick Cook-Deegan telling about his 2,800-miles bicycle tour across Southeast Asia this summer to raise funds for a school in Laos. …

Continue reading

Towns in Florida and Arkansas are looking forward to seeing tourism dollars rolling into their communities on bicycles.

The small town of Lake Helen, located southwest of Daytona Beach, hopes to become the state's biking mecca through the newly opened Florida Discovery Bicycle Center.

The center is the first in the state to combine adult bicycle touring and safety training. It's a joint effort by the Florida Bicycle Association, the town of Lake Helen, and the River of Lakes Heritage Corridor …

Continue reading

Before the autumn monsoon hit, I had the opportunity last week to bicycle the Cedar River Trail that runs east from Renton, Washington.

It's a level, low-traffic trail that runs for 16 miles along an old railroad line that used to carry coal out of the Cascade Mountains to consumers in the Seattle area. I always try to incorporate parts of it on any bike rides I take in that area.

Over much of its length, the trail runs within sight of the Cedar River, which rushes out of springs and lakes in the Cascades. During the fall, the river is a highway for bright red sockeye salmon …

Continue reading

Amgen is sponsoring three Breakaway from Cancer bicycle rides, beginning in November, for the runup to the 2nd annual Tour of California.

The first ride is scheduled in just a few days on Nov. 12 in Bethesda, Maryland. Other charity bike rides are scheduled on Dec. 3 in San Francisco and Feb. 11 in Thousand Oaks, California.

The rides aren't gut busters …

Continue reading

When I used to take my bicycle on transcontinental flights every summer, the biggest hassle was finding a bicycle box big enough to hold my 59cm road bike frame.

Bike shops gladly parted with shipping boxes they'd recently emptied, but those boxes usually held smaller-framed mountain bikes. I eventually learned to overlap and tape together two chopped up boxes to hold my bike.

Now some enterprising individuals are selling specially designed cardboard boxes to ship bikes. They feature low prices and little bike disassembly. Here are a few …

Continue reading

Maybe it's a bad time to write about bicycle tours in Colorado just after a blizzard hit the state with up to 25 inches of snow last week.

But all the snow will melt, and the passes will open and hundreds of bicyclists will be taking to the high country this summer in two week-long bicycle tours.

I was reminded about the annual Bicycle Tour of Colorado and The Denver Post Ride the Rockies when I stumbled across a blog written by one of the participants in one of those tours.

The Bicycle Tour of Colorado already has posted its dates and host cities for 2007. …

Continue reading

This picture is too cool to pass up. It's Greg LeMond riding a recumbent at the Dam2Dam “Thumbs Up!” Bicycle Tour last month in Wenatchee, Washington.

The expression of his face makes him look like a little kid on a new bike.

LeMond was known as an innovator in cycling (remember what aero bars did for him in the 1989 Tour de France?), but he looked a little unfamiliar with the 'bent. Notice the helping hand? …

Continue reading