Originally Posted by
BikeArkansas
Yes, I know there is a touring forum, but I wonder if many 50+ riders go on self contained tour rides. I have not tried a cross country tour, but I really enjoy 3 day to a week long tour ride.Camping, cooking, sleeping in a tent and riding days in a row. I have a Surly Long Haul Trucker for these events and it serves well. Any other 50+ riders enjoying this type of cycling?...
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
…In Ann Arbor MI in the 70’s I really realized the utility of bicycles for commuting, and began touring on a five-speed Schwinn Suburban, but soon bought a Mercier as did my girlfriend, later my wife. We toured in Michigan and Ontario.
In 1977 we moved to Boston on our bikes, as a bicycling honeymoon from Los Angeles to Washington, DC and then took the train up to Boston. We have toured in New England and the Maritime Provinces, and one trip to the Delmarva peninsula.
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
… So while this [time now] is my pinnacle of bike ownership, I started out in 1972 as a poor college student on a $90 Schwinn five-speed Suburban with wire baskets that on my very first weekend tour imbued me with alove of cycling that has been my lifestyle since….
Unfortunately my last tour, a three-day solo with motel/friend stayovers, was in 1986. Family circumstances currently prevent tours, and my wife has not ridden distances in years, though perhaps the situation is now less encumbering.
FYA, there was a thread on the Fifty-Plus Forum in 2013, “What do you find hardest about cycle touring now we aint spring chickens any more”? I posted,
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
My earliest cycling activities back in the 70s and 80s, were cycle-touring with my girlfriend-then-wife, including a honeymoon cross-country tour. Since then, I've been strictly a cycle-commuter, and sport road cyclist,mainly due to work and family lifestyle. Last year, I avidly read the posts on BF about a perimeter tour of Lake Ontario, and I experienced some surprising mental discomfort that struck me as a sign of getting older.
While I would still enjoy riding about 50 miles a day for an extended trip, the thought of the uncertainty of finding a place to stay for the night was unsettling. (Our previous tours were all self-supported and self-guided. If I/we were to resume touring, it would at least be a credit card style, if not an organized tour.) On that honeymoon though, finding a place to stay was a memorable part of the adventure…I guess 30 years of a stable, predictable cycle-commuting lifestyle erodes that exhilaration of the uncertainty.
Some other frequent complaints on that thread were finding the time, getting in shape, sleeping on the ground, and…
What killed it for me, besides the normal hassles of camping, was having to get up, get semi-dressed, and stumble out of the tent at 2AM trying to find the porta-john because I had to pee….[
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Last edited by Jim from Boston; 02-08-17 at 08:16 AM.