Here’s some of the images from the Oregon/California border to San Francisco:
Sometimes images tell the tale better than words… click on each image for a closer look:
It’s hard to believe, but this tour crossed the 500 mile mark today, day ten of my travels from Victoria, BC to the California-Mexico border. Each morning I record a short tour journal… Follow along at soundcloud.com/pedalshift or keep an eye open on the @pedalshift Twitter feed. The Pedalshift Project will get a shiny episode of its own in a week or so once I cross the Golden Gate into San Francisco for a few down days. I the interim, check out the Pedalshift Tour Journals!
Quick reminder: the best way to follow the tour is to follow @pedalshift on Twitter. That will be the hub of all the thoughts, pics, tour journal podcasts, etc. Daily or near daily Tour Journal podcasts are on Soundcloud, or you can subscribe to the feed here.
Some quick thoughts from the last few days:
That’s it… more to come tomorrow!
The Heat Stroke Avoidance Alternative Border to Border Bike Tour has begun! I may just refer to it as the Border to Border or B2B tour from now on, largely because I can’t remember the larger name and because it’s so far from warm on the coast that the memories of forecasts in the 107-109 degree range are all but a memory. Take a listen to episode 004 of Pedalshift Project for more on that.
I began my journey with a visit to my cousin in Seattle, which was a nice treat considering my original plans did not take me north of Portland. Since he was planning on rowing the next morning, I got up with him at 5:19am. I felt every bit of that early hour through the day… trust me. A 40 minute ride later and I was boarding the Victoria Clipper to Victoria, BC.
First, I took a dramamine. I. Am. Not. Fit. For. Seafaring. I’m a landlubber. Whatever. But thanks to this wonderful concoction that I used to have to take crushed in applesauce before long car trips (#protip: not recommended) I got through the rough seas to Canada.
I saw a sign that made me happy:
And then I was full and happy. Bless you Canada for poutine.
I spent a leisurely couple of hours winding my way north on a series of regional trails through suburbs and agricultural areas. A stop for blackberries was a welcome layover from the unusual heat and steady sun exposure. After about 20 miles (translation: “aboot 33 kilo-meeters” – I love you Canada. Don’t ever change.) I was at the picturesque McDonald Park, part of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve. Camping was a little pricey at CDN$13.75 (no showers, primitive toilets, but water, so yay for that) but the tree cover was spectacular, reminding me Burlington Campground in the redwoods of CA.
One other thing to note… the smells. I love that hint of salt water as you get near the coast, but around here you also get the cedar-ish smells of the conifers mixed in. It’s a nice balance and one I don’t get very often.
Here’s today’s Tour Diary – a reminder I’ll be doing more of these audio snippets and tweets than posts. The tour diaries will be tweeted but you can also subscribe to them as a podcast or check them out on Soundcloud.
File this under “cautious optimism.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Amtrak will be installing new baggage cars with what may allow roll-on service for unboxed bikes on all of its long haul routes “by the end of the year.”
The bike touring community has long been prodding America’s long distance train transportation provider to consider making such a service available, particularly at stations that serve active touring routes. Amtrak has had roll-on service available on a limited number of lines, but now it appears the country is figuratively opening up for multimodal bike touring adventures.
A few questions remain to be answered:
Amtrak has periodically announced big things for bikes on their trains, but this may be the first time it has announced a timeline with all routes getting a boxless option. From a bike touring perspective the notion that we can now roll up to the stations without having to disassemble and box our bikes is beyond welcome. I believe this will be a huge economic win for Amtrak and the towns with stations near bike touring routes.
Update – A careful read of the Amtrak blog post about its new baggage cars reveals something in what it doesn’t say.
Also, the new cars will be equipped with built-in luggage racks that will be able to secure unboxed bicycles (hooray!).
Hooray indeed! But, notice it doesn’t mention roll-on service? It’s possible this new baggage set-up will allow roll-on service (they are certainly testing it in some locations) but it’s also possible bikes will continue to be treated as checked baggage, without a boxing requirement. More to come!
(The post has been updated to reflect this important distinction.)
My next bike tour will be a quick weekend getaway – nothing too fancy or too far, but a tried and true rout on the C+O Canal towpath from DC to Harpers Ferry, WV and back. As I continue to slim down and tune up for the big cross-country ride this summer, I’m using these smaller rides for setting goals. Here’s some tips on setting goals for your next bike tour…
One of my goals is to try to make better time – I tend to average about 10 mph on the C+O, but I think I can do better. I can certainly average 15 mph on a flat paved surface, but is it realistic to assume I can do the same on the bumpy, knobby, rooty surface of the C+O? No way. Rule number 1 – if you want your goals to mean something, make sure they’re realistic. My goal is to average between 11 and 12 mph while in the saddle on this trip, on this surface.
Some people set goals that are a bit touchy-feely… “I want to have a good time.” I don’t think that’s a terrible goal, but on a bike tour (nod along with me if you’re feeling me here) there are moments of high highs, and sheer, detestable, awful lows. But did ya have fun? From a goal-setting perspective, I like things I can measure and compare to avoid these subjective questions. I’d like to average 11 mph, not just go faster. I’d like to have zero flats. You see, everything has a number in some way.
On a shorter trip, my goal-setting might be less measurable and more about changing my set-up or even techniques. This trip features an entirely new set of tires (thanks GAP!) so I want to see how they feel. Even though it’s a bit more subjective, I can still find a way for measuring and setting goals – what’s the ideal tire pressure on a surface like this? A short ride can help me refine the right answer, and then I can use that towards goal setting for this trip, or maybe help achieve a later goal.
This is still supposed to be fun – if you set goals like achieving a certain distance, but you’re cooked after a long hot ride, it’s more than ok to bail on that goal. It’s something to shoot for, not a measure of success or failure. You’ll get em next time killer…
I mentioned a few months ago that I’m trying to shed some weight before the big ride. I’m happy to say I’m down 30 lbs since that post. Now, I still have more weight to lose before I achieve my overall goal, but I’ve already decided I can reward myself with a “day off” my insanely regimented eating and tracking regime once I get below 10 lbs to go. You better believe that day off reward is a motivator for me, even though it’s well before I achieve the ultimate goal. Do the same… make sure you reward yourself for meeting mileposts (literally, perhaps?) on your tune-up rides!
You may remember the pedalpreneur challenge: I rented my cabin out for a portion of the time I was on tour on the Great Allegheny Passage last week… did that mean this tour made money? To the toteboard!
Total net revenue from rental (after cleaning costs) = $348
50% one-way car rental to Pittsburgh = $108.50
cost of food = $53.16
50% of gas = $32.15
campsites for two nights = $0
50% of hotel in Frostburg = $35
If you count the tour over after I rolled into Cumberland, it’s a total profit of $119.19…. buuuuut, there’s the little issue of transporting myself back to DC and the need to delay one more night because of the train schedule:
hotel in Cumberland = $91
Amtrak to DC = $35
This puts me over by a total of $6.81. So, it’s official… my tour did NOT make money, and is firmly in the red by about 7 bucks.
But was that really the point? Hardly. Consider the alternative… my cabin sits vacant for the time I’m not even there. My trip costs me a ton more than $7 AND let’s not forget the additional equipment costs I’m taking on in new tires. (I don’t include those in the trip costs because I had intended to replace those tires after the ride.) So, by being creative and taking advantage of property I have and don’t intend to use while on tour, I’m supporting my bike touring lifestyle. I very well may have made a few bucks if I avoided hotels, blown out tires and Amtrak tickets… maybe next time!
In this chapter I’ll run down the lessons and takeaways from the spring bike tour: what I think of the GAP, the choices I made and the subjects I intend to learn more about.
I like the GAP, but I don’t love it. It’s picturesque, and has a fun route. It has the challenging climb as a component and the surface is largely quite nice. The camping options are good (amazing in some cases – see the rundown in Chapter 1 on the first night) but not as plentiful as the C+O. For a linear trail it is terribly signed, particularly closer to Pittsburgh. Those sections are newer, so I suspect it’s all a work in progress. I guess I’m a C+O guy since I reside most of the time within a few miles of it in DC and WV.
Given the tire debacle, it’s clear I need to spend more time before the tour checking for possible wear. I believe the tire degradation was something I might have discovered ahead of time, and would have prompted me to replace the tires before the trip. I had intended to make the change after, and that clearly cost me half the tour. In addition to the tire issues, some of my waterproof gear was less than waterproof due to pinholes in panniers and drybags. I’ve invested in Tenacious Tape to seal all of these up. A pre-ride check would have helped keep my gear dryer.
I’m on the continuing trend towards taking less gear and replacing what I have with lighter options. I can continue to reduce my gear bulk and weight. I mentioned my stove experiment, and I had better luck with my Esbit titantium stove than my DIY alcohol stove. I’ll keep tinkering.
I’m largely ok with the choices I made, but I think two areas could have been better:
– I needed to be more patient with repair attempts on the tire. I’m pretty sure if I had sat and just thought about things for a few minutes I would have had more patience to take the tire off again and make a more resistant repair to the tire before it degraded. I’m pretty impressed the wheel handled all the rim riding I did (fully loaded too!) but I bet if I hadn’t been in such a rush to catch up with MJ, I might have been able to boot the tire and inflate the tube. Speaking of, I found these great tire boots I’m intending to ride with from now on – they’re analogous to big tube patch kits.
– This is the second tour I had to quit on because I didn’t have enough time to finish. A half day or zero mile day could have saved this tour, but I couldn’t have reasonably returned to DC in time to afford that. From now on, I hope to be more flexible to avoid the disappointment and cost of a bailout.
I’ve enjoyed learning about emergency trailside repairs lately (see my recent emergency repairs post) and the “dollar bill trick” as I call it definitely helped keep the herniating tube from bursting right away as I pedaled uphill. That said, I think I want to have even more emergency hack techniques at my disposal to solve problems long enough to get me to the next bike shop. I have to say, I’m happy my memory of using zip ties for snow traction helped me come up with a way to keep my tire on my rims as I made the last 9 miles to the next town before sundown. But there’s always more to learn.
Tomorrow… with all the drama and the extra expense, did I still manage to pay for the entire bike tour by renting my place out? The pedalpreneur challenge meets simple arithmetic, revealing the answer!
—
I was pretty happy to see ACA retweeted yesterday’s post, so if you’re new to PedalShift, welcome! Read more about what this is all about here.
In this chapter I’ll give a full overview of what happened on my spring bike tour: the original plan, the weather challenges, and the final equipment fail that led to an involuntary end to the trip.
The Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) begins in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA and winds about 150+ miles to beautiful Cumberland, MD. From there, the Chesapeake + Ohio towpath (part of the National Park Service) winds 184 miles to Washington, DC. It’s an amazing resource for bike touring, and I’m happy to say I’ve now biked every inch of it. Just… not all at once. More on that in a second.
I was joined on this trip with Mysterious James, or MJ as we like to call him around here. The idea was to do a full through tour from Pittsburgh to DC in 5 1/2 days. Day 1 was a short day to account for the drive from DC. We got a one-way car rental which turned out to be an efficient and cost-effective way to get us and the bikes from DC to downtown Pittsburgh, just a short ride from the start of the GAP.
The confluence of the three rivers in Pittsburgh is a heck of a way to kick off a tour. From there, we rolled through an odd assortment of sidewalks, trails, backroads and other connectors to a truly spectacular campsite about 25 miles south of the city.
This was, simply put, the best free privately run campsite either of us had ever stayed at. The adirondack was well-built, and there was abundant, free firewood. The plastic chairs were a really welcome touch too. Amazing resource!
The only complaint from Day 1 was the lack of adequate signage. On more than one occasion we questioned if we were still on the GAP, and the mile markers didn’t correspond well to the official route from the website. The campground, for instance, was 2 miles further than indicated… not ideal when you want to end the day. Of course once we got there, all was forgiven. Did I mention the free firewood?
Day 2 was a 60 miler to Confluence, PA. Once we got out of the industrial outskirts of Pittsburgh into a more rural setting, we found the ride and the trail to be more enjoyable. A lot of the trail towns were as advertised – nice amenities and easy to get to from the path. Confluence was a bit of a disappointment given my expectations from the “word on the street.” It must be great on weekends, but on a Thursday, everything was closed. The Army Corps of Engineers campsite was open, except for the bathrooms… despite being fully lit inside. It was a bit odd, but this is early in the season, so no judgment. We were still basking in the glow of the first campground, after all.
We knew it was going to rain, but we got lucky in the sense that it held off until well after packing up. In fact, it even held off til the moment we started rolling. For the next 8 consecutive hours, however, the skies opened up and a steady hard rain accompanied us up the 1% incline for the next 45 miles. As hills go, this barely registers… but the constant nature of the climb on muddy trail made for tough, slow going. MJ was on fat tires so he had a much easier way of it. I was on touring tires that weren’t skinny by any stretch, however I can now confirm that proper tire inflation makes a big difference… because my rear tire wasn’t retaining much in the way of air.
Long story short, the rear tire had been compromised after a couple of seasons of touring and a fall’s worth of exposure on the bike rack of an RV during Tranquility Tour. I began losing air as a slow leak, but was able to pump it up every 10 miles or so. Around 30 miles into the day, the tire gave with a loud gunshot sound. MJ was well ahead and I discovered when quickly switching out the tube that the sidewall of the tire had a massive tear in it. I used the dollar bill trick I linked to from my emergency repair post, but it didn’t hold. The new tube burst from the tear like a hernia. In retrospect, if I had been a little more patient and less intent on catching up with MJ, I might have been able to successfully boot that tear. However, I chose to remove the brake pad fro the side of the herniation, and drop the pressure down to get rolling.
The long slog on a flat tire was hard on my right knee – I developed patellar tendonitis that has taken a few days to heal up. It feels like sharp stabby pains on the top of the knee cap – the same pain you get when your saddle is a bit low.
An hour behind MJ, I eventually caught up at the top of the hill 7 long miles later – the Eastern Continental Divide. I showed him my issue and we tried plans A-D (“what? I only have 1 inch of duct tape?! WTF!?”). Right before we were about to roll the unmistakable hiss of the last of the tire pressure met our ears. With the sun setting in about 90 minutes and no real option to fix the tube properly with measly patch kits (much less the tire tear), we decided to hotel it 9 miles downhill in Frostburg. MJ rode on as I vowed to push my bike there in about 3 hours.
About an hour into the push, and with the sun rapidly setting I remembered the old trick for better traction on ice… zip ties. When that came to mind I realized I could ride on the flat tire and keep it on the rim, protecting it somewhat, if I ziptied the tire securely on the wheel. Minutes later I was texting MJ as I was coasting down the trail. I made it to the hotel just after sundown.
My knee was causing me a fair amount of pain, and after a bad batch of wings at a pizza place, and the discovery that the college town had no bike shop, I knew I might need to call the tour in nearby Cumberland. Although there’s a good bike shop there, the C+O historically has worse conditions, and my knee was not prepared to slog through more soft trail. So, I booked a train back and left my bike at the bike shop to get some repairs done.
MJ rode on and reported conditions were dry and enjoyable (no more rain for the rest of his ride). My train ride back taunted me with over 60 miles of views of the C+O looking very rideable. My knee would let my head and ego know that the additional 184 miles would not have been pleasant. I’m still not sure which of these anthropomorphized entities won the argument over whether quitting was the right bet.
So, that’s the story.
Tomorrow, the takeaways, including what I think about the GAP.
Friday, did the unanticipated expenses cost more than I made in my pedalpreneur challenge?