Touring - Very Short Tours?

Perusing these threads all year 'round, I'm totally envious of some of you for the epic rides you take. I only wish I had the time while I'm still fit enough to go the distance.

Right now, I'm counting the days until my next overnight ride up to Mystic, Connecticut (it'll be sometime in July of '13). If I were planning a trip across the continent or through Europe, I don't think I could concentrate on my day-to-day responsibilities.

So does anybody here ever take 1 or 2-day tours?

I try to take a weekend once or twice a month when possible,in between longer rides.Great fun.

I do a week long tour every summer.

the term Sub24 , is applicable to : out a days ride, camp, and return the next day.

Took a two day ride down the hood canal on Hwy 101. Beautiful weather, but too many trucks, RVs, and a narrow, sometimes nonexistent, shoulder. Seemed much safer 10 years ago.

Not me, they don't appeal to me at all.

There has been a thread going for the past three years on Short Tours. This year's is entitled, "2013 - Your Short Tours", and is found here ...

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/865356-2013-Your-Short-Tours




Have a read through the thread above, and the ones below, and see what kinds of short tours people are taking. :)

Here is 2012's thread ... "2012 - Your Short Tours"
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/795564-2012-Your-Short-Tours

Here is 2011's thread ... "2011 - Our Short Tours"
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/724593-2011-Our-Short-Tours



You can also see a discussion about weekend tours in this fairly recent thread:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/839464-Weekend-camping

And let's not forget your own thread, which you started not so long ago. In that thread, I told you about both the Short Tours thread, and the Weekend Rides threads:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/843887-Am-I-out-of-my-element-here




And incidentally, one of the ideas behind taking a long tour is to step away from those run-of-the-mill day-to-day activities. :D

All I take is short tours. Just can't find time to take long ones. I just ride till dark on Saturday, stealth somewhere and get up and ride back home.

I did a 3 day tour last November during a warm stretch here in SC Nebr. Good to get out, but not much green left in the country then. Kind of a downer. I space my tours around farming in the growing months (or farming around the tours). State rides are 4-7 days. And I take a longer tour between crop irrigation ending and harvest beginning. Last year it was 2 weeks, hoping to get 3 this coming summer/fall. Short tours are ok, but I like to travel places I rarely go. Hard to do that in a couple days.

So does anybody here ever take 1 or 2-day tours?

Sure do, take a few each year. A lot if not most adults just can't take off for a month or two due to family obligations, finances, or careers. I've done a month tour before but the last couple of years it's been 1 or 2 days.

Not me, they don't appeal to me at all.

+1, why bother with messing around with all that equipment for just 2 days of riding. I do take weekend vacations with riding friends, though. Usually 3-4 day weekends. We stay in hotels or VRBO's.

I've lived within a day's ride of the ocean for most of my life. My wife likes to wake up at the beach, so we've done countless two-day tours to the coast. In fact, one of our first dates nearly thirty years ago was a weekend ride from Davis, Ca to Bodega Bay, about 270 miles round-trip. That became a favorite ride when we both had the weekend free.

+1, why bother with messing around with all that equipment for just 2 days of riding. I do take weekend vacations with riding friends, though. Usually 3-4 day weekends. We stay in hotels or VRBO's.

I'm less concerned about "the ride" and more concerned about an excuse to get out of town for a short amount of time and go camping. That's how I look at the many camping overnights by bike I do a year. And I keep all my camping gear together so there's not a lot of prep or planning when it comes to what to bring.

+1, why bother with messing around with all that equipment for just 2 days of riding.

Because it's fun!

1 day: Wait, what's a 1 day cycle tour?
2 day: Uncommon, usually happens if someone really wants to go visit a particular place on a weekend. Ride, camp, come back.
3 day: Very common, when a public holiday falls on a Monday or Friday. Train, ride and camp. Ride and camp. Ride and train.
4 day: Pretty common, when a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday. These are my favourite.

Anything longer than that is much less common, because it's hard to get lots of people committed to taking time off work, and all wanting to do the same thing etc.

Lots. When you get down to it - unless you're on some kind of randonneur or competition - every tour is a one-day-tour. Some people just aren't happy with one or two and feel the need to string 15 to 30 back to back. Personally I've been lucky enough to both travel extensively AND live in areas where there have been countless interesting areas to explore within a day or two of 'home base'.

But if motel accomodation has been available, camping has usually only been on the agenda for excursions of a week or more, and often the destination or objective was more important than the trip - like a few weeks spent beach-combing off-season on some of PEI's best beaches.

And most of my trips weren't done solo. A couple involved 4 people and most involved the GF. So although bicycles were involved intermittently over a period of two to three days, a lot of those trips were more about other activities than just bicycling, and the 'objective' was a little different than bicycling from point 'A' to point 'B'.

So we've managed to pull off a complete restaurant style salad and hot pasta meal at a picnic table beside a secluded waterfall off the Cabot Trail - complete with table cloth, crystal and wine; did something similar with sushi and hot sake on a small island out next to the Lachine Rapids. (the island is also a park and nature reserve with controlled access); and regularly do day trips out to Senneville with no better excuse than trying to decide who had the best fish and chips or smoked meat sandwiches in the area - OK, eating that on the boardwalk down the street while watching the yachts go through the locks was part of the experience too. Ocassionally, without even leaving the city, I can do the 'tour' of some of the specialty shops in Montreal to pick up long ribs, bagels, wine, cheese and fruit - and then take those loaded panniers accross the city and off the island to a friend's place for a BBQ and weekend stay. Which then becomes 'home base' for some of the other attractions in the area.

Life's too short - it might as well be fun. Can't change the first part but I'm in charge of the second part.

Try this for a few ideas

http://www.bikeovernights.org/

http://www.adventurecycling.org/

Absolutely. I have off on Good Friday and have done a long weekend trip every Easter weekend for the last four years. Hoping to do the same this year, although Easter is early so the weather may not cooperate. Took a second three-day last year as well as one overnighter that took me out of the big city and into a forest where I had a great view of the Orionid meteor shower.

Takes me about 1 hr. to grab the assemble all the gear and ready it to be loaded onto the bike. Easy peasy.

Because it's fun!

That is a very good reason if it works for you. To me it is kind of like "camping" in the back yard. It is kind of weird I guess since I do short backpacking tours sometimes. Now that I think about it I have never toured anywhere near home and always toured somewhere far enough away that I flew there. I have never planned a tour shorter than two weeks, but did finish one quicker than I planned and there was one that I had lung problems (HAPE) and aborted the tour. I think those two were each 9 days. I don't consider my day rides to be tours.

Short is the way I roll !! Well, usually. The touring season is mostly about rolling out to Jersey's Pine Barrens and camping out. Usually it's 3 days. Day one roll out the 35 to 60 miles to campground A. Set up, swim etc. Day two travel 15 to 40 miles to campground B. Do same as above. Day three, ride the 35 to 60 miles home. We mix it up with Tours de Shore etc and try to get out at least once a month in season. We also will normally add in at least one longer tour per year. This year we are planning to either ride to the Outer banks or drive there and circumnavigate them on the bikes. Other options include a Florida Springs Tour and An Eastern Shore MD, DE, VA tour. So lots of options to keep the wheels turning. The other weekends/ in summer are filled with either other bikey pursuits like mountain biking, or other fun activites. Everything from kite flying to metal detecting.

I too read these adventure journals of LD touring and say to myself, Well good for you!!!

The kids (9 year old twins) and I are planning out our second overnight tour. Our first tour was a total of 10 miles so yeah, we do short tours. :)

I've only done one weekend tour, and didn't much enjoy it. Too much time was spent on high stress riding through suburbia and then on the side of busy highways near the city. If you can get to a more rural starting point by train or car, and then do a quick tour, that sounds more appealing, and I may try that in the future.

If you can get to a more rural starting point by train or car, and then do a quick tour, that sounds more appealing, and I may try that in the future.

I have done that. Did a three-day last year by renting a car one way and riding home. Did a long weekend trip where we drove about 45 min. to NJ, left the car on the street rode to a campground and then rode back two days later. Also took a 25 mi. train ride to NJ to start and overnighter and rode back to the train the next day.

However, I am pretty lucky considering I live in the 5th largest city in the U.S. Even on a weekday I can take some relatively peaceful routes through the Philly suburbs to get to more lightly travlled areas. In more commericalized areas, timing is key. You hit them just after the morning rush and before the lunch rush, when people have to get into their cars to get food and/or run errands. If I leave at 8 a.m., I can take carless paths and get right to the edge of the city by 9. That gives me 3 full hours to get through any denser suburban sprawl before lunch time drivers get behind the wheel.

From the OP: Being a Long Islander, my weekend "tours" typically involve a ferry to Connecticut and then a ride through as many quiet rural or residential streets as I can find to lead me to Mystic CT, Misquammicut RI, Narragansett RI, etc. By staying away from the main roads (and mapping out as many waterside segments as possible) I can easily turn a pretty short ride into a fairly long one. It doesn't matter a whole lot, though. I can be as content on a scenic 10-mile ride as I can be on any 100-mile ride.

My bewilderment is with those of you who can actually go about your daily business all year long waiting for the next ride to Alaska or something just as huge. I changed a few cues in this year's map to Mystic and I can't even sleep at night thinking about how much better the ride will be THIS year!

From the OP: Being a Long Islander, my weekend "tours" typically involve a ferry to Connecticut and then a ride through as many quiet rural or residential streets as I can find to lead me to Mystic CT, Misquammicut RI, Narragansett RI, etc. By staying away from the main roads (and mapping out as many waterside segments as possible) I can easily turn a pretty short ride into a fairly long one. It doesn't matter a whole lot, though. I can be as content on a scenic 10-mile ride as I can be on any 100-mile ride.

My bewilderment is with those of you who can actually go about your daily business all year long waiting for the next ride to Alaska or something just as huge. I changed a few cues in this year's map to Mystic and I can't even sleep at night thinking about how much better the ride will be THIS year!


Maybe that's because we do rides like what you describe above quite regularly. Just about every weekend for most of the year, for the past 20-ish years now, I have done rides like what you describe.

Some weekends are spontaneous rides in the countryside, seeing whatever there is to see around the next corner. Some weekends are planned rides where I'll check a map and pick an interesting place to go. Some weekends we drive somewhere and ride from there. Some weekends are hub-and-spoke tours where we'll drive to a scenic spot and spend 3 or 4 days cycling in different directions. Some weekends are overnight tours (although these aren't as frequent).

There aren't very many weekends where we don't go for a ride somewhere.



I mentioned this in the other thread you started, but I start a regular Weekend Rides thread in the Road forum each weekend ... go check out the rides people are doing. I just started this weekend's thread ...
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/870555-Weekend-Cycling-Ride-Reports-February-1-2-3

My bewilderment is with those of you who can actually go about your daily business all year long waiting for the next ride to Alaska or something just as huge.


I figure that there are other things to do the rest of the year, many of which do not involve a bicycle.

Maybe that's because we do rides like what you describe above quite regularly. Just about every weekend for most of the year, for the past 20-ish years now, I have done rides like what you describe.

Some weekends are spontaneous rides in the countryside, seeing whatever there is to see around the next corner. Some weekends are planned rides where I'll check a map and pick an interesting place to go. Some weekends we drive somewhere and ride from there. Some weekends are hub-and-spoke tours where we'll drive to a scenic spot and spend 3 or 4 days cycling in different directions. Some weekends are overnight tours (although these aren't as frequent).

There aren't very many weekends where we don't go for a ride somewhere.



I mentioned this in the other thread you started, but I start a regular Weekend Rides thread in the Road forum each weekend ... go check out the rides people are doing. I just started this weekend's thread ...
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/870555-Weekend-Cycling-Ride-Reports-February-1-2-3


For those who can't fit long term Bicycle touring adventures into their current lifestyle Machka has described perfectly what short touring is all about.

If you long for an extended tour but it's not in the cards - well, if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with!!! Making short tours work for you is all between the ears.

I try to take a one week adventure coupled with a 3 or 4 day every season. Every year I also ride a 4 day 340 mile charity ride which is a bit like a tour. I also sneak away for as many overnight trips as I can, packing very lightly and riding to the country to camp.
I am lucky to live on an Amtrak route so getting away from home is not a hassle. (I have used Amtrak to get to The GAPCO and The Erie Canal)

Different strokes for different folks.

In my line of work there are no vacations as one doesn't generally work for the same company all the time.