RWBlue01

I use to live where I would start off from home and ride the same trail/route every time.

Now I find myself driving farther and farther looking for a new spot to ride/explore.

How far do you drive to your starting point?

LongIslandTom

The farthest I've driven for a single-day ride was NYC to Cape Cod to ride the opening day of their newly-renovated rail trail back in 2007. 200 miles each way. Fought traffic jams all the way down I-95.

It was one of those things that I just had to do it once to see what it's like. These days I limit myself only to day ride destinations that requires driving less than 100 miles.

abqtj

I generally start my rides from my house and just vary the route to suit me each day. Although I do have a few I want to do nearby that would require a drive to get there. Nothing over about 30 miles though, I just don't want to take on a 60 mile round trip effort to get in a different ride.

StephenH

Daily rides- start from the house.
Bike shop rides- ride from the house to the bike store 1.5 miles away.
Charity rides- have driven up to 150 miles or so- Dallas to Wichita Falls.
Randonneuring rides- have all been "local" so far, meaning maybe 90 miles away maximum.
It's not uncommon for our local rando people to go to Houston or elsewhere for a ride, and on the last 600k the club did, we had people from several states.

Steely Dan

I haven't owned a car in over 10 years so all bicycle trips start and end at the door to my condo building.

for longer weekend rides (as opposed to weekday commuting), i have ridden over to the Metra station (chicagoland commuter rail system) and ridden the train with my bike out to various points in suburbia to explore new trails and terrain. i sometimes even do big triangular routes where i take one Metra line from downtown way out to the boondocks, and then do a 50 or 60 miles bike ride to the end of a different Metra line, and then take the train back downtown.

crazzywolfie

all my bike rides usually start and end on my side deck

surgeonstone

Same, all start and end from my garage.

DataJunkie

Once a month I drive to a ride. I detest driving but these are special group rides that start a fair distance away.
I can ride a century from my front door and back using quite a few different routes. Driving seems moronic to me.

black_box 

most rides are from the front door. More time driving = less time riding and since i don't have enough time to get all the riding i'd like to do... weekends, I'll drive somewhere to get a longer route in or take the mountain bike out (30-50 miles there).

caloso

95% of my rides start either from my house or my office. The other 5% are races and I'm pretty much limited to a 90 mile radius. (Heck, I ride to 2 or 3 races every season) Driving is a hassle.

myrridin

When riding on the road/local MUPS I start/end in my garage. When riding the MTB on off road trails I will travel via car first. About 15-30 miles each way depending upon which trail I go to.

Davey62

drive? ..hmm no thanks

ro-monster

I'm another who doesn't own a car, so my rides start at my front door. I too will take public transit with my bike to explore somewhere new, or to get to a destination that's too distant for riding the whole way to be practical.

mustachiod

N/a

Doohickie

Drive to the starting point? What a silly idea.

Machka 

The furthest I've travelled to the start of an event was about 14,000 km ... from Alberta Canada to near Melbourne Australia. That was by car, plane, bicycle, and car.

More locally, my weekday rides usually start from home. Some of my weekend rides start from home and I drive to some. We generally try to keep the drives under 6 hours. A 3-6 hour drive would be a long weekend away ... leave work early on Friday, drive to destination, cycle Saturday and Sunday, drive home Monday ... that sort of thing. We try to do that at least once a month.

Our last such trip was last weekend, when we drove to from the edge of the mountains where we live to the coast and cycled along the coast.

We live in a beautiful area on the edge of the mountains, but the choice of cycling routes is rather limited, and after we've ridden the same roads over and over, they get a bit boring, so we want to ride some other roads and see some other scenery. Plus, I'm still relatively new to Australia, so travelling to different parts of our state (Victoria) on weekends is a good way to see the variety of scenery, terrain, etc. Victoria has to offer. And we often have audax events in various parts of the state to attend on weekends.

steve0257

The only times I've driven to a ride is when it is an organized ride that is out of town. If you're looking for new roads to ride you can do what I did. Get a wider tire bike and now there are all these gravel roads I've never been down.

RWBlue01

I have probably ridden more gravel in the last 3 years than pavement. I found it more interesting, with more animals and plants and ......and no cars.

cruisintx

I ride to my daily starting point/s as a matter of safety. The roads leading to and from my house are far too narrow with no shoulders to be safe with the inattentive, texting, cell-phone chatters whizzing by at 50 and 60mph in 40mph speed zones. I typically get to one edge of our small town where the hiway shoulders range from 6 to 8 feet wide and have a lot less gravel than the roads in town. I also will drive to a nearby town (37 miles) to ride with a good friend on his "flat-landers' " routes about twice a month just to get a little taste of a ride without hills. For some strange reason he can't seem to make it to my neck of the woods to take on the challenge of all the hills here. OH WELL--his loss on getting in some awesome power training on said hills.

rnorris

90% of my riding is right out my door, but I'll haul the MTB up to 100 miles on occasional weekends to get to the type of singletrack riding I really like. A couple of times a year, I'll take a long weekend and take road & mountain bikes to a new area just to sample the riding.

DTownDave22

Living with limited means and time so a bike rack isn't somthing I've really thought about buying nor using as driving then biking isn't something I do often as is and is time spent that could be spent riding and also factored into that is that I have a road bike and not a mountain bike, so I'm not really limited in that way in desiring access to off-road trails.

I suppose if I did have a bike rack, I may still do it more often as putting my bike in the trunk is a slight hassle and I've recently begun looking into doing something else...I have ridden my bike on more than one occasion to a bus stop about 2 mi. away from my starting piont and used the bus to commute about 15 mi. to a destination with my bike on the bus bike rack but I am now considering trying it for a fitness/recreation ride only (not commuting to a destination) as a way to vary my rides because doing the same route (and I am usually only comfortable on routes that are:

a.) have a combination of the following: two lanes or more, light to moderate traffic, wider, paved shoulders and less importantly but nice,
b.) near edges, which helps with the less traffic (by edges I mean places of georgraphic or population boundaries like rivers or the edges of populated areas like near rural areas or low population

As for when I put my bike in my trunk when commuting to school which is about 17 mi., mostly over freeways. When I was done with my obligations on campus, I'd ride in the central city.

Forza

back when I used to train daily and ride competitively, I would load up and head out...that routine burnt me out...It was too much hassle.

now, I head out the garage and go. Only exceptions are the normal unique rides. Even then if they are close with 10-15 miles, I'll ride to them as a warm-up.

Northwestrider

I start at my house almost all of the time. The only time I start away from our house is for a organized century or similar club ride.

BarracksSi

As little as possible, just like when I was 7.

I suppose you could say I drove to Atlantic City to ride, but it was for work, and the Sunday morning ride was just something to do while I was there.

stapfam

Less than 20 miles and I will ride there.

I am lucky in that from my door I can go any distance in a ride- whether that be on or offroad. Offroad and I have a range of hills 6 miles from my door and only 2 of that will be on road. Once at the hills and and I can do any distance I like over a variety of terrain although there is not much flat stuff. Road and it is from my door again. Choose a town to cycle to and take a different route back.

Only thing I can't get in are mountains. For those I have to travel- normally to the French Alpes and they are 600 miles away.