Jim from Boston

For my first tour should I take a friend?

My first overnight weekend tour was by myself, and I got hooked, and I subsequently did a few over-nights with a semi-organized group of about five. Eventually I did longer tours with my then-girlfriend-now-wife, with an ultimate epic tour:

On the other hand, though,

Chuckie J.

I've mainly gone with other people and it's been hit and miss. I like people and offered touring opportunities to friends who have been interested. They liked it but but it always involved a certain amount of tactful "teaching" on how to tour. It's different than just camping or biking.

Food has been an issue. Some of the people I rode with wanted to do dinner all together but didn't want to do the organizing of the food beforehand. As a result, dinnertime came and they'd say, "who wants to share food?" The folks who had their dinner all ready to go looked like anti-social jerks. Meanwhile, they're still cooking after dark and I'm done with all my stuff packed for the night. Next someone wants to borrow some pot. It can get... well, touchy.

Leaving in the morning is another tough subject. You can't leave your friends behind but at the same time daylight is finite and biking in the morning is nice and pleasant.

And the couples always fight!

I'd still rather do it with people. I like to talk with folks, share a view, go through the suffering together. I know you can meet people on the road but my tours just aren't that long, 3-10 days.

fietsbob

I went solo, to other countries, made friends while I was traveling There .. that was before the internet ,
so I lost touch since ...same as Ex GF's

hueyhoolihan

good advice.

or you can start alone and latch on to the first person or group that strikes your fancy. if things don't work out, you can always part, well... strangers.

indyfabz

I once sort of did that while touring in the west. One day in WY I caught up to a couple crossing the country on a Bike Friday tandem and sucked their wheel to the town where we both planned to stop that day. While after that we only riode together one additional time, and we did not share things like food, I ended up camping/hosteling with them off and on for neartly a week until, in Fairplay, CO, they continued east and I turned south. It was an interesting experience. They were Menonites who lived in Portland. The husband was a school teacher and the wife a former nurse. One cool thing was that the husband's hobby was bird calls. He was keeping a log of every species of bird he heard. He was also good at idenifying them by appearence. At the end of the day I could described some cool bird I had seen and he could identify it. They also took turns reading a book to each other in their tent, which just happened to be the same make and model as mine. I thought that was such a wonderful way to interact.

But something seemed strange. A couple of times they mentioned having a son who was either in college or had just fiinshed college, I cannot remember which. I thought to myself "They have a college age kid? Did they have him when they were 16 or something?" At one point we stayed in the hostel in Breckenridge, CO and were joined by two guys riding across the country in the other direction. The couple mentioned their college-age son again, and one of the guys got up the nerve to ask them their ages. Turns out the wife as somrething like 48 and the husband 44. We were all shocked. I had pegged them for mid-thirties at the oldest. Must have been all that clean living that kept them looking so young.