Originally Posted by
cyccommute
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.
Well, I’m afraid you’re still missing my point. Read my first post (which I elaborated again just above)
If the villages are too small to have a grocery store, there’s probably not much worth stopping. And if a full day’s riding pass through only such villages, it wouldn’t be where I would want to tour.
(Just had a conversation with a riding buddy of mine who is about to retire. It took about 90 seconds for both of us to reach the conclusion for her usage: get a gravel bike!)
There’re many ways people tour. Yours isn’t the kind I will do. (I mean, I appreciate you raised the issue of loaded stability. But it really doesn’t apply in this case. “3 days of food”? I’ll rent a car for that stretch!)