Papa Tom

Hmmm, my apology if I had the wrong idea about the OP's question when I responded several posts ago. I thought he was asking what an "old man" can do after a day in the saddle, and I assumed he was implying that old men can't do (or don't feel comfortable doing) the same types of things everybody else might do.

My experience as a 50+ touring cyclist is that people don't flock to me after a day on the bike the same way they did when I was in my 30's. So going "out" at the end of a cycling day is kind of awkward. For this reason, I don't put a whole lot of emphasis on anything other than the ride itself.

chefisaac

Totally agree!!!!

imi

Hell yeah! After a long day in the saddle I'll stand for hours under a campsite warm shower!

staehpj1

Yeah, that can be fun. I have been able to be the host more often than the guest with warmshowers. The problem I have with it is that I don't like to plan where I will stop very far ahead. I often don't know where I will stop until I am actually there. Most hosts like some notice that you are coming.

I have had a fair number of invites to stay along the way and also do sometimes make more effort to plan ahead if I can meet someone that I consider a friend, online or otherwise. Staying with hosts or hosting for that matter is typically a nice experience. One other thing that can be a bit of a rub is that I am typically ready to turn in really early after a long day in the saddle and feel like a bad guest if I turn in as early as I would like.

ironwood

Tour in Europe; in a region with a lot of historical or cultural sites.

I've ridden across North America, and down both coasts, and sometimes there is just a lot of nothing. In parts of Europe there are lots of interesting places to visit, and they are only a day's ride apart.

schnee

I love that site in theory, but in the Balkans it's been a complete bust. Not a single reply back from any feelers sent out.

Met a bunch of awfully cool people otherwise, but still. The value of WS changes regionally.

mstateglfr 

Wow, that's about 90mi/day every day for an average.
Where all did you go?

bikenh

Left June 22nd and took 3 days to ride the 513.71 miles down to Annapolis. Took 4 days off watching the guys come in from Oceanside, CA, finishing Race Across America. Then headed south, hitting Richmond, VA, Raleigh, NC, Columbia, SC(one day before the KKK rally and a couple days before the vote to take down the Confederate flag), then onto Tallahassee, FL. From there followed the Gulf Coast to New Orleans and hopped up to Baton Rouge(Bad Roads) before heading up to Texarkana, and then started border hopping all the way up to North Dakota, hitting each of the midwest states east of the Rockies, including Topeka and Lincoln. I did the whole stretch with no days off until I hit Mitchell, SD on Friday and woke up Saturday morning and saw the article in the paper that they were planning, weather permitting, to put up the new turrets on the Corn Palace coming up on Monday. I decided to wait it out and watch them put up the new turrets. I left on Tuesday, right before Sturgis Bike Rally and headed on up to North Dakota and then on into Minni/St Paul before dropping down into Madison, WI. With all the bike problems I was having, mostly with the rack at the time I decided to head on into my moms place in NW Ohio instead of immediate going down to Nashville and Frankfort and back up to Lansing. After getting a new rack I took a three day trip up through northern IN and into Lansing. The last of the three days was a 227 miler including the second overnighter of the trip. After spending my mom's birthday at home with her I headed on down to Frankfort and Nashville and then on up to Charleston, spending the night that Kim Davis defied the supreme court right in Morehead, KY. I rode on up into and across southern PA. I didn't want to cross the Susquehanna River on US1 and you can't cross it on US40 so I went for the next bridge north, which is in southern PA. I dropped on down and rode through each of the counties in the Delmarva peninsula grabbing Dover. I headed on up into Philadelphia and Trenton before catching US1 on up into Newark, some of which I don't think is legal to ride. Definitely very questionable as to whether I was riding legal roads or not. Seemed real strange/eerie riding on US1 with a plane flying 500 feet over head heading in for a landing while looking out at the Empire State Building and the skyline of NYC. I finally managed to get onto Truck Route 1 and headed north up to US9W and found a VERY active stretch of road for cyclists. Every minute, Sunday afternoon, I had 3-4 cyclists go past me going the opposite direction and even past a few, had one or two pass me going north bound. I crossed over the Hudson at Bear Mountain and got ready for ???FUN??? I rode on in Hartford, taking MUCH longer than it should have thanks to horrible road signage. Just let me ride the darn interstate would ya!!!!!!! I ended up spending the night in Brooklyn after realizing one of my challenges wasn't going to happen but an even better challenge could possibly happen if I didn't go any further that day. The next day I crossed out of CT into RI, stopped by the state house in Providence before heading up to Joy and Beacon Streets in Boston(state house) and then on up to and across Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, NH into Kittery, ME for the night. 5 states and 2 state houses in one day...only 136.7 miles. The next day I finished in Augusta, ME and then rode across NH into northern VT for the final night out. I did end up skipping Montpelier thanks to not having anywhere I could charge up my headlight battery in St. Johnsbury. I knew I wasn't going to get home before dark and knew it would be better off to play it safe.

8410.82 in 75 days on the road with 8300.8 miles in 67 days(the other 8 days were days off on the road in Annapolis/Mitchell/Salisbury, MD). $1435 with $342 going to the bike. 251,000 feet of climbing.

3 spokes replaces, one wheel replaced, the new rear wheel was already showing cracks in the rim with less than 2000 miles on it and it bit the dust two days after I got home. Replaced the rack in NW Ohio. Looks like I may end up getting the frame warrantied out as well. New bike before I left, only had 400 miles on before I left. It was a 2010 Specialized Sectuer which never made it out of the store until I bought it. Paid $25 over cost for it. Not bad to get it upgraded a couple months later to a 2015 or 2016 frame.

Actually averaged 123 miles per day while on the open road, not including the 8 town days. Biggest day was 227 miles and had 7 days over 150 miles. Had several overnight rides. The first one was very intentional, Shreveport, LA to Broken Bow, OK. Didn't want to battle the heat any longer so I left town at 8PM and rode overnight and got into Ashdown, AR at sunrise and continued on until I got into Broken Bow. Took the rest of the afternoon off and grabbed mid afternoon lunch and hopped online before heading back across the state line for what was going to be another night(not full night though) ride, but ended short after after the rack/bike had it's first bout of rack failure with me at 10PM in front of the Seviere Airport west of Du Queen, AR. I spent the night in Du Queen instead. The 227 mile wasn't planned but happened that way thanks to horrible pavement in Jackson, MI.

Papa Tom

>>>>8410.82 in 75 days on the road with 8300.8 miles in 67 days.<<<<<

OK, I suck.

bikenh

You do have to remember I don't own a car and I ride darn close to 365 days a year and I'm pretty much averaging 20K miles a year. I hit a high on the trip of 23459 miles in 365 days. I ride a lot so I'm use to spending a lot of time in the saddle and I don't tolerate boredom well. I've never had fingernails because I always bite or pick them off. I don't sit still very easy so I ride and keep on riding. I typically average 15-16 mph unless I run into good climbing(7-8000 feet or more during the day). You ride 8-10 hours at 15-16 mph and you ride 150-160 miles pretty easy. That is 8-10 hours on the bike not including any time off filling up water bottles eating or anything like that, just ride time.

Papa Tom

I salute you, sir (or madam), but I do hope you are not running away from something or someone.

spinnaker

You need to take time to stop and smell the flowers. What you do is not touring IMHO just riding. But it is certainly bragging.

Doug64

I've always subscribed to the saying, "If you did it, it isn't bragging." I think he did it!

nun

in Post #7 I mentioned warmshowers. I've stayed with quite a few warmshowers hosts and the experiences have been pretty fantastic. Great conversations and meeting lots of different people. Often fantastic food too. It's a great way to spend time after a day of riding!

Papa Tom

I don't think he's bragging. He IS being very candid about why he rides so much, and it seems it's because he needs to keep his mind off other things. When I returned to riding in the mid-90's, it was to mask the sadness of having left the music business. Those first few years, all I wanted to do was escape on my bicycle every possible chance I had. I almost lost my marriage back then, but I sure did rack up a lot of miles and a lot of muscle on my calves.

To address your "stop and smell the roses" comment, spinnaker, I sure agree with that. In another forum, I started a thread asking local cyclists to post descriptions of the good rides they took that day. I expected posts highlighting the sights they saw, the people they met, the smell of the fresh air, etc., but instead, I got mostly posts about how many miles people rode that day. I don't want to judge anyone for what they consider a "good ride," but I am often saddened when it seems bicyclists miss the moments for the miles.

This is way off the OP's topic, though, so I am going to apologize and exit right here.

imi

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." - Hilary Cooper

... a beautiful thought. Maybe relevant, maybe not

Happy Feet

I have had a similar problem with going from A to Z without much in between in the past. Just the way I am I guess. What has really helped me a lot in the last few years is taking pictures and video with a thought to making small vignettes of my experiences. This really started in diving but has carried over. Now while I am riding I often look at the country side to see how I can tell the story. Sort of like "how will I describe this ride to others later on?" And with video, if you don't have the shot it doesn't really count, so I am forced to stop and document.

As a result I have become much more appreciative of my surroundings and looking for beautiful or interesting sites.

bikenh

Haven't been online the past two days so I'm finally catching up on the board and emails.

Quite frankly I don't call it touring either. I call bike tripping. I think somewhere around 100 miles a day the concept changes from bike touring to bike tripping.

I'm not trying to hit sightseeing spots, sometimes I stumble into spots that make me stop and take pics but it doesn't happen all that often. Granted I was trying to hit state capitols and sometimes was stopping for an hour or more, depending on how bland the state house grounds was, some were quite bland while others were the exact opposite and I would spend quite a bit of time there. I wasn't trying to hit national parks or anything like that though...once you have seen a pine tree you have seen pretty much all of them, and I have seen plenty of them.

To stop and take pics it takes quite a bit to get me to stop. I remember riding through a town down south, no plans on stopping but they had murals painted on the walls of the building basically showing some of the history of the town. I stopped and took numerous photos through town. I'm not one to go into an art museum but I do have a way of getting hooked by murals painted on buildings.

Not knowing where I'm going to actually go through each day makes it hard to do research ahead of time. My route plans changes pretty much each day. I don't follow a fixed route by any means. Sometimes through the day the route changes, yet alone the plan for the route from one day to the next. This year I was doing a pretty good job of hitting the planned town for the next evening, unlike last year. I was even a doing a decent job two or three days out at sticking to the end of day agenda. The route never stayed the same though. Since I don't carry gps or cell phone with me, I numerous times ended up missing a turn and had to change my route by force and make up a new route on the fly...sometimes by force, bumped into a homicide scene and was forced to reroute my way through Cincinnati as a result. I think that one reroute helped me to feel more comfortable about bluffing my way through the bigger cities as I ended up going through cities on the way home that I wouldn't drive through and I didn't mind bluffing my way through Boston or around Newark.

Anymore I have the simple agenda of trying to cover as much territory I haven't been in, aka counties. I've been in all but two counties in NY outside of NYC/Long Island, all counties north of I-70 in Ohio, over half the counties in IL. I always try to route myself so I'm going along much of the same route or even through the same counties I've already been in. You never know what is out there unless you go there, and that is my agenda to cover it all, not just whatever else says there is out there. They aren't me, they don't know what I like and dislike and worse yet my like dislike can change from day to day so how can someone else tell me what I'm going to like at any one point...hence why I go and ride anywhere, not just the national parks like everyone else. Sometimes it can be the things that happen not the things that I see that makes the day for me, like racing trains in MN(having trains coming up from behind you on tracks that sit 50 feet off the highway, you decide to crank the speed up to 25 mph to try to keep up with them as you ride along the highway...of course you're never going to keep up but the fun is the chase...did it with the same train twice as it had to stop in one of the towns and I caught and passed it only to hear the train whistle coming up from behind me 10-15 minutes later...the chase was on again).

Like I said above I call what I do bike tripping not bike touring. I've had a couple days over the past two years where I've played more of the tourist game but generally I'm just trying to cover miles and see what is out there for another trip to take it slower and make more stops.

schnee

You didn't owe him any explanation at all, let alone that.

But I do appreciate your explanation for the way you explore. I like the way you leave yourself open to being surprised.

bikenh

The simple truth is your likes change from day to day/week to week/month to month. What attracts your attention now as you are planning a trip, may not be what attracts your attention when you get out on the trip. What you like one day won't be what you like the next day/week/month. Keeping yourself open and letting yourself stumble into things is what can make the difference between a good day and a not so good day. I've had it happen to me quite a few times this year especially with all the trouble I had this year with the bike. Just the little picker uppers can make a world of difference in changing your attitude when you need it most. I truly pity the people who plan a ridge trip and aren't open to changing the trip because it isn't part of the Trans Am routes/bike paths. What do they miss instead that could brighten up the day??? They'll never know because of their rigidness.