Blog

Whimsical Pedicabs and Oppressed Delivery Guys – Oct.2017 Utility Cycling Roundup

A dazzling display of pedicabs, bedazzled the Philadelphia streets in an amazing display by Cai Guo_Qianq.  Deriq Carr tells the story of how he launched Los Angelos Pedicab Company.  Austin pedicab riders make their big paydays when the big events come to town.  And an entrepreneurial teen is discovering opportunity in pedaling people at the…

Tour du Mont Blanc – mini podcast

Time for something a little different this month. Here comes an interview with Owen Williams, about his bikepacking trip around the mega classic Tour de Mont Blanc. It’s the first time trying something like this – so please forgive any of the rough edges! Check out the pics, and dip in to our mini podcasts…

Give Me a Mountain

Give me a mountain. Give me 30 miles of steady grade. Give me 80 pounds of bicycle and gear moved pedal stroke by pedal stroke up thousands of feet of elevation. Give me the Cascades, the Rockies, the Ozarks, the Appalachians. The steep ascents and the switchbacks. Life on a bicycle is not without climbing,…

Beers and Rafts, Sept.2017 Bikepacking Roundup

Its always a good time to go Bikepacking somewhere…  Here are are some very recent epic trips to inspire you. Croatia and the Adriatic Crest Route by Nicholas Carman on September 16, 2017 The Breaking Trail by Logan Watts on September 26, 2017 THE BIG GUIDE TO BIKEPACKING & TOURING IN EAST AFRICA by Logan Watts on August…

Confessions of a Downhill Junkie

That’s me in the Lycra, That’s me on the descent, Losing my abandon. Trying to break my Strava record. And I don’t know if I can do it. Oh no, I’ve said too much. I haven’t said enough. I’ve been chasing descents since I was a kid in the Green Mountains of Vermont. By the…

This Land Is Your Land: bikepacking or bust

[You might enjoy listening to this Woody Guthrie track whilst reading this blog] This week I have been in the forests of Sweden. I’ve been listening for wolves, and following the tracks of moose. I canoed down the Black River valley at sunrise looking for beaver, and saw long-horned roe deer prancing at dusk. This was…

C&O Canal Bike Touring

Finding Balance Through Bicycle Touring

I have a confession: I could probably count the number of days in the past year I’ve ridden a bike–I mean really clicked off some miles–on one hand. Life, as it so often does, has provided its fair share of roadblocks. I bought a fixer-upper first home, started a new job, got engaged. There is…

Bikes of the Klondike Gold Rush

“White Man: He sit down, walk like hell.” That was how one Native Alaskan described Ed Jesson riding a fixed gear bicycle down the frozen Yukon River in the winter of 1900. How a man with practically no supplies and the simplest of bikes could ride over a thousand miles in the dead of an…

Some of My Favorite Things

Gore-tex that doesn’t go damp, Treads that don’t wear flat, Chains that never skip or squeak, These are some of my favorite things. When you ride for long enough, you settle into habits and gear. Maybe it’s a brand of socks that don’t bind, or bib shorts that don’t chafe, or gloves that keep your…

The guilty pleasure of credit card bikepacking

I received a phone call from my youngest sister in England this January. We don’t talk all that much, especially now we live on different continents. But she was calling because she had met someone special. His name was “Pedro.” Pedro, she assured me was handsome, fast, and blue. And she wanted us to go…

The Bike-Friendliest Little Town in America

I’m sitting in Bites on Broadway in Skagway, Alaska, a hundred-year-old saloon-cum-coffee house, watching tourists walk down the wooden boardwalks. For every dozen tourists, there’s a local guide biking past. The guides look lean compared to the typically tubby cruise ship passengers. They ride up to the post office mailbox across Broadway to drop off…

The S24O

Riding The Route of the Condor was one of those reckless bar-talk ideas that wouldn’t normally have got traction beyond the hangover. Like most beer-charged plans, it should have been added quickly to the graveyard of other wonderful yet fantastical ambitions such as unicycling the Pan American Highway, or cycle touring the Kamchatka Peninsula. Yet somehow…

The search for the perfect touring bike

It has taken me thirteen previous posts before I got round to writing this one. So far I’ve mainly described some of the rides I’ve been lucky enough to take through the wilds of Patagonia, the smoking volcanoes of the Atacama Desert or the bear country of the Great Divide. The bike itself has been…