Bicycles are almost as Swiss as Swiss Army knives, and the Swiss Army proudly maintained a front-line bicycle infantry regiment into the 21st Century. While it was disbanded in 2003, The Swiss Army continues to use bicycles for base transportation
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Tandem Bikepacking Expectations
For a long time it seemed that boiled-down living couldn’t get much simpler. Anytime I wanted to travel, all I had to do was clamp those brightly coloured, slightly unwieldy, boxes onto the side of my bicycle and I was away. I bought my shiny red panniers in 201o. Today they have dust and holes…
How the Bicycle Won the Vietnam War
In the wake of World War II, the militaries of the West left bicycles behind for the automobile and the armored personnel carrier. Bicycle infantry units in the German army were disbanded alongside the rest of the defeated forces.
Rolling Recumbent Part 2: Neuroplasticity and You!
“You can laugh at them now, Wesley,” my biking buddy Liz had told me a decade ago on a group ride, “But someday youre going to be one of those old guys on a recumbent.” Well, that day has come. I’m a certifiably older, slightly goofy guy on a recumbent. On my first sandwich delivery…
Riding back to happiness
A few months ago I got into a bit of a rut. Not an all consuming black cloud rut. Just your typical too much work, not enough sleep kind of overcast feeling. Normally when I start to feel like this I self medicate with a long run in the mountains, or put some uplifting energy…
Rolling Recumbent, Part 1: The Utility of Recumbents
Recumbents. You’ve seen those oddball, laid-back bikes being ridden by slightly goofy guys (yeah, it’s usually guys). They’re smiling. They’re waving. And they’re looking suspiciously comfortable. Recumbents are practically the opposite of everything that bicycling is supposed to be about. There’s no crying in baseball, and there’s blessedly little comfort in bicycling. Right? Well, maybe…
Joe Grant Interview: Self Propelled
Joe Grant cycled away from his front door in Gold Hill, Colorado this July with everything needed for a month of mountain travel. He travelled in “self propelled” style by bicycle and foot, linking up and summiting all of Colorado’s 14,000′ peaks along the way. The bikepacking racer set a new record of 31 days…
"Geef me min fiets!" Give me my bike! The Bikes of World War II.
‘Tis a pity that General Patton didn’t lead a column of bicycles into battle, but Field Marshall Montgomery led an army of foot soldiers and “foot cycles” in Normandy. When the British were bottled up in Normandy with their plentiful bicycle
Small Business Tales from BSH and the Launching of LocalBasket.com
Happy Small Business Saturday everyone! As the editor of this cycling blog and the owner of www.CampfireCycling.com, I generally find myself as deep in the weeds of small business as I am in immersed in the world of cycling. And I’m often tempted to write about my various small business trials and tribulations here at…
No Shower, No Problem
Think back to when you were a kid. Did you enjoy getting stuck in a car more than the riding your bike through the neighborhood? Then why do we default to cars as adults? Maybe we shouldn’t and a lot of us are taking that to heart and commuting by bike to work. There are…
Biking beyond the edge of the village
In the weak afternoon sunshine of late September 2014, I fingered my British passport at the top of the Flathead Valley before rolling down towards the US border at Eureka, Montana. After three days alone in the only uninhabited valley of southern Canada, I was looking forward to some human interaction with the border guard….
Playing Jedi Mind Tricks in Traffic
Hey, I think I passed you on my way home last week, my trumpet master told me, You were riding up the bridge on the bike with all the lights on it, right? Boy, you’re trusting! I’d never ride in the city like that. Trusting? Ive been called many things on my bike, but never…
Interested in Blogging about Bikepacking or Commuting by Bike? We're Hiring!
Are you a bikepacking aficionado with a penchant for hair raising story telling? Are you a dedicated bicycle commuter who wants to inspire others to bike to work? If you fit either of these bills, keep reading because we’re looking for two new writers to join the www.CampfireCycling.com blogging team. Around the start of this…
Biking to School: One pedal stroke at a time!
Fall is here! School has begun!!! The weather is cooling off and the mosquitoes are beginning to die off…and finally we can go outside again anytime of the day! But many of us are busier than ever too. Busy with chores, work, life and ready for the election to be over for some sanity. Some…
Cycling the conquistadors' graveyard
In May this year my friend Alan came to visit me in Chile. Our plan was to ride an enormous, ambitious loop through the land of volcanoes and monkey puzzle trees in the south of this long, thin country. The region is known as the Araucania. For over 300 years in this inhospitable terrain of…
Why I haven’t been riding my bike
This will be my last post in this forum, at least for a while. I’ve come to realize that caring for an infant full-time doesn’t leave a lot of extra wiggle room in my day to do much of anything else. The part-time work I’m doing these days from home is squeezed into the often-unpredictable…
The Practical Cargo Bike, or, are Cargo Bikes just the New Black?
Are cargo bikes practical? asked a denizen of Quora.com recently (a more polite version of Reddit). An interesting question, I thought, but whats a cargo bike, and whos to say whats practical? If cargo is defined as anything in excess of the human engine, then any bike that can carry a water bottle is a…
Physical Literacy and Children: Making your kids smarter and happier!
As school begins and we all are thinking about the skills our kids need as the approach adulthood I wanted to take time out of the ‘biking only’ blog. For this blog, I wanted to focus on one aspect of helping your children’s brain development and future that we don’t always focus on. This skill…
5 ways to attract a sexual partner on a bike tour
Bike touring is inherently sexy. It also involves lots of skills and dedication which have been proven by the Lampoon Spoof Scientific Research Group to attract the opposite sex. Minor inconveniences like body odor and food stains on your jersey can be turned to your advantage with a little bit of thought. And the heroism…
Bikes at War Part Two: The Great War
Adolf Hitler was a bike messenger? Yes, indeed. And a decorated one, at that. But more on that later. If the Great War had been fought in accordance with the fantasies of armchair generals, then the bicyclist would have replaced the doughboy as the symbol of gallantry and heroism.
Thoughts on the passing of an icon
A couple Fridays ago, I got a call from a friend in the middle of the day. I thought the timing odd given his busy work schedule, but because I was participating in a webinar, I let the call go to voice mail and sent him a text message asking what was up. The words…
An Ode to Laborers on Two Wheels
Let us now praise Sweaty Men and Women; All hail the Bicycle Courier, Who is fast on feet and two wheels, Bringing us coffee and sandwiches and beer. Three cheers for the bike messengers of the world, the “cyclo-laborers.” While we cower in climate-controlled cubicles, they brave the sun and rain, the light and…
Oh God, I have a flat! And I have a trailer and some angry children staring at me….
I started out with the mindset to write solely about Burley D’Lite trailer maintenance. I kept however returning to the idea that the day to day maintenance of all trailers AND bikes are some common concerns. The basic care, tools and checklist is really what is so important and not enough people discuss this other…
Tandem Living
The deal was quick. Cash in hand. I picked up the second-hand tandem from a carpark on the London ring road in the summer of 2012. It was an oppressively warm afternoon by English standards, the break rubber toasting against the rims as I rolled the machine down to the railway station. Getting a tandem…