BigBlueToe

At the end of June I'll start my summer tour south from Portland, through Salem, Eugene, over MacKenzie Pass, Sisters, Bend, Crater Lake, and Klamath Falls. I've been doing weekly rides on my road bike, but yesterday I broke out the LHT, loaded it up, and went for a ride. I started assembling all my touring gear; I don't want to be frantically trying to find everything at the last minute. I put all the cooking gear in the front Ortliebs, added my rain gear, put my mattress on the front platform, and my tent and sleeping bag on the back. I didn't want to try and assemble all my clothes and miscellaneous stuff in the rear, so I went to the feed store and bought two 10-lb. bags of bird seed.

It was fun to get out in touring mode on my touring bike. My average speed was much lower than on my road bike. Slow and steady, and in no hurry. Getting used to the bar-end shifters was difficult. I kept trying to shift with the brake levers, which didn't move. I tried to pull up on the pedal from a traffic light, forgetting I wasn't clipped in. I found myself looking at the familiar scenery differently - through the eyes of a tourer seeing everything for the first time from the seat of a bike - which is a big part of why we tour, right? Seeing everything at slow speeds, without the frame of a car window?

Nature threw in a howling headwind on my return home, just to simulate a tour where you have no choice but to push through adverse conditions. My legs were tired when I got home, just like a tour, and I felt good the rest of the day, just like a tour.

I'm getting excited! Anyone else getting excited about an upcoming summer tour? (Probably lots of folks.)

BigAura

+1. Doing and feeling much the same as you. I start in two weeks on my NJ-Maine-Newfoundland-Quebec tour.

staehpj1

Yeah, mine isn't until August though. This one will be a bit shorter than my recent tours at 3 weeks in length. I plan to train a little more on the bike than I did for the last few tours but mostly just keep trail running. That said any on bike training would be more. I expect to maybe do some mountain biking and road biking in preparation, but never train with a loaded bike and don't plan to start. My "Getting High" tour is dubbed as "a tour into the thin air of the Colorado Rockies to raise awareness of awareness and to promote oxygen deprivation". I plan to do more hiking on this tour than I usually do. I plan to see the Colorado state high point and ride over some of the higher passes. I may also do some other peak bagging. I hope I can handle the elevation. I plan to keep the route and schedule both pretty flexible, so if I am suffering too much I'll head for lower ground.

The Pro Tour will be happening at that time so I plan to see at least one stage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge.

Cheyou

June 1 start Great Divide mtb tour for 30 days

Thom

BigBlueToe

Awesome! I did 11 days on the GDMBR last summer. It was amazing, but tough. My knee started to hurt too much and my riding mates didn't want to take a rest day, so I stopped in Helena where I could rent a car to get back to my truck in Whitefish. I recommend a light load. How is the snow this year?

Cheyou

This is my 60th birthday tour . Light ! Well not as light as some on this forum ha ha but light for the weather conditions ,repiar stuff , cooking gear . It has bin fun getting ready for this trip. Learned I lot of new stuff.
Thom