Originally Posted by
atnyc
I have no interest in doing multi-week long distance touring. So, I won’t bother touring in those vast emptiness of the midwest. (Grew up in the Midwest, have zero interest in going back, certainly not by bike).
For me, the whole point of bike touring is to be intimate with the towns, villages, and its people. Riding through no man’s land kind of defeats the purpose. I’d rather cover those empty distances by car or bus or train…
I get where you’re coming from. But it’s not the kind of touring I’d like to do.
Different job, different bike.
That’s not the only place I’ve toured. I’ve ridden a bike in every state but Alaska. The same difficulty of food holds in Wisconsin as well as New York state. There’s a whole lot of space between towns all over the nation. Here’s three days of travel on one of my tours…
Johnson City, NY to Gibson, PA (50 miles) and
Gibson, PA to Honesdale, PA (25 miles) and
Honesdale to Port Jervis, NJ (69 miles). A total of 144 miles. There were no towns large enough to support a grocery store over those 3 days of travel. I usually carry 3 days of food just to be sure and I think (can say for sure) that I continued on from Port Jervis to Stroudsburg (another 40 miles) before I found a grocery store.
This is not a one off. I’ve had the same occur everywhere across the nation. I started carrying 3 days of food in 2003 and have continued to do that over 7 multi week tours since.