Looking back, I think I see the first few months of pedalshift as a beta release… the ideas were all there, but it needed a bit more time in the lab, at least from my perspective. The hiatus was helpful in shaping that, largely because I wasn’t terribly focused on bike touring so much as I was working from the road.

Most of the fall I was out and about with Tranquility Tour. We traveled 11.500 miles over the course of several months traveling to over 20 events related to the launch of Tranquilologie (the latest book authored by my better half, for those who don’t know). We did all of the traveling by RV, which was a wholly different experience than traveling by bike. On one section of the trip, we mirrored portions of my summer bike tour, and it was interesting (or perhaps offputting) to drive several days worth of the bike route in a matter of hours. I realized how much one misses when traveling faster than you can pedal because I knew what we were passing at 55 mph.*

So, in 2014 pedalshift returns with the same basic ideas… bike touring meets lifestyle, particularly in ways that allows for more bike touring. How can we work from the road to enable longer tours? How can we live a more sustainable lifestyle to support more time to be on the road? I’m hoping to have a post per week exploring these ideas, and I’m also hoping to create a community where we can collectively share all facets of the bike touring lifestyle.

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*I did see a handful of bike tourists out on the trip, and I have to say I felt a lot more affinity towards them than the others driving RVs.