Mapped your 30-year-ago Rides?
 

I knew I had done some long rides back in highschool, but this was way before the days of cyclocomputers, or even before I was smart enough to know I needed bike shorts and bike shoes, and the only helmets were those leather deals that were more cosmetic than functional.

It occurred to me to map a ride I had done in highschool, around 1974 or so, and sure enough I had done over 100 miles and didn't know it:

http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united...a/906692140162

(This is just the out leg, and doesn't count all the in-town riding we did.)

A friend and I did the ride to visit a girlfriend he at met at summer church camp. I rode in BLUE JEANS as I recall, and we didn't have water bottles even, I don't think. Did it in the middle of summer in Idaho, which definitely gets hot.

I can't believe I lived :)

I'd love to ride this again some time, but now I live on the other side of the country.

Have you ever gone back and recreated a "historical" ride from your youth?

No way- I can remember some of the Youth Club rides I used to do and One was to Rochester and back. From the Village I lived in to Rochester was 50 miles as the Crow flies and I was only 15. I may have been fit but a 3 speed sturmey archer touring bike was not the ideal bike to do it on. Only thing was that I had youth on my side. I no longer have that- I have maturity- or is it cowardice.

With a very few exceptions, I couldn't even remember the rides I did 30 (or 40) years ago!

But even back then we had crude odometers, so we knew how far it was. 30 years ago we had those Huret Cyclometers that were belt drive off the front hub (remember those?).

What we didn't have was elevation gain. That would be good to know! Although, I suspect that some of those "big hills" we climbed as kids won't look too challenging now.

Rick / OCRR

I did the up Tuna Canyon / down Topanga Canyon loop 8 times in the early 1970s when I lived in west Los Angeles. Looking at the map and satellite images brings back lots of memories ...

Map them? I still ride them.

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30 years ago, I didn't ride at all.

25 years ago, I rode a cheap, heavy road-looking bike with about 20 gears from my apartment on the far north side of Chicago to the north lake shore path to downtown area and back. Quite a few times. Until a large roller blader practically dumped into Lake Michigan. Scared me bleepless, and I pretty much stopped riding until a few years ago.

My mother still lives in the NW Illinois town which we lived six miles outside of when I was a kid 40 years ago. Balloon tires on gravel or what people now refer to as chip-seal, through flat corn fields. I don't have to map the rides I did then, because I still can include them in a longer ride when I'm visiting family.

However, it is sad riding the roads from my childhood. All the fences have been ripped out. All the shrubs which used to provide habitat for pheasant, etc. are gone. The shrubs along the section where I learned about milkweek have all been ripped out. Most of the barns have been abandoned because there is almost no livestock farming on the farms any more. Quite a few houses have been abandoned. Some homestead site are completely gone: I mean the trees and everything are now plowed under and planted. So, sometimes, I loop beyond the roads I rode when I was a kid.

Earlier this year I was able to ride my bike in my old home town. I retraced the ride I rode to elementary school every day. It seemed like a long way, way back then.

In 1977, my wife and I cycled from Los Angeles to Washington. DC, and I think I could remap the route still, in particular because my wife kept a journal, but even if I couldn't find it, the trip was so memorable that I can still envision the routes. In 1982 we were in LA and drove to Phoenix, and retraced the California and part of the Arizona routes.

Here is mine from 30 years ago, and it is still one of the most beautiful rides I've done. It starts and finishes southwest of Colorado Springs in Penrose Colo. It is about 110 miles from Penrose, but an even 100 if you start/finish in Florence. Ride south from Florence and up Hardscrabble Pass, from the pass the views of the Sangre de Christo range will take your breath away (so will the 10,000 ft elevation), have lunch in the town of Westcliffe. This is a classic Colorado ride, I rode it many times, always enjoyed it!
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2406758

There is a hot springs in Florence, that was always nice after this ride!

Interesting idea. I usually headed out with no plan, no map, and went down whatever roads looked unfamiliar. No way could I reproduce those rides.

to be young and senseless again :)

All my interesting rides from 30 years ago were on motorcycles.

A little over 30 yrs ago I was newly married and going to grad school. We lived in a new apartment in the Cuyahoga River Valley, just north of Akron, OH. I used to ride up the river valley to Peninsula and back. Today, the valley is even prettier, having been turned into a national recreation area in the intervening years.

We moved to the east coast in '91, but we still get back to Ohio fairly often. I now take my bike with me, and either ride by myself in the valley, or hook up with a local club ride. I can tell you that me in my late 50's could destroy me in my early twenties on those same roads. :)