I like to hike and bike long-distances, but I have run into problems on occasion and needed a ride. I don't like bothering people in this way, so this is a deterrent to taking the risk on a long car-free journey. I have heard that AAA will pick you up with your bike, so I might consider getting a AAA membership for this reason. I like the idea of ride-sharing as a backup plan option, but at this point I don't really trust it and it would very expensive for the long distances I would depend on it for. As such, I am looking forward to autonomous vehicles making ride-sharing much less expensive, but that doesn't seem to be close on the horizon at this point with the two high-profile fatal crashes in the news.

What are the best options for having a ride-backup plan if you don't have a spouse, family member, or close friend you can burden or want to burden for such a ride? Do you just plan to walk home and beg for food, shelter, and/or maybe hitchhike along the way? Generally, how do you deal with the prospect of getting stranded far from home without a ride?

Train/bus to get you close enough to use Uber?

Visa, Master Card.

In the GTA (greater Toronto area) there is a network of commuter trains and buses serving suburbs and outlying rural communities, so if you were planning to stay within 50 miles of the city, you could probably adjust your route to parallel or repeatedly intersect with some of the rail or bus routes, so you would always be within manageable walking distance of a station. I took the train out several stops last summer and biked home, for a total bike ride of about 80 km, and my back-up plan was that if I had a problem coming home, I could always hop on the train at a midway point. This train allows bikes inside except during rush hour. I have a folding bike and I believe the buses would allow me to stow it underneath. Worst case scenario, I lock my bike at a station and get it later.

A pocket full of filthy, evil lucre is also useful. Living like a beggar or destitute hobo is not necessarily a requirement for traveling while living car free.

I ride in rural areas, am the only licensed driver in my home, and we do not have a car, so I have certainly thought about this (and, on rare occasions, used a backup plan.)

Most of my rides take me out of the Uber/Lyft service area and out of cell range. Once, I straight up hitched a ride; once, I was offered (and accepted) a ride from a friendly farmer; and once, I received some assistance from a couple of cyclists (one of my tools had broken!) Another option, which I have not used, would be stopping at a farmhouse and asking to use the landline to try and dial a cab - though hitching would probably be faster and easier.

My best backup plan is to prevent getting stranded in the first place. Making sure that my bike is in good shape, packing appropriate tools, and learning simple skills like how to boot a tire, change a brake cable, or rig a broken derailleur/cable/chain all go a long way to making it home without assistance.

Plan A. I never stray too far off the beaten path.Plan B.Plan C.

True. Nevertheless, even the "best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

Backup plan rides

Quote:

Originally Posted by tandempower

I like to hike and bike long-distances, but I have run into problems on occasion and needed a ride. I don't like bothering people in this way, so this is a deterrent to taking the risk on a long car-free journey.

I have heard that AAA will pick you up with your bike, so I might consider getting a AAA membership for this reason.

I have touted Boston as an iconic Car Free “Sanctuary City”, and here are the amenities that are available as a back-up:The most serious need for back-up that I recall was:Other dire emergencies would be medical, but we live near Boston’s teaching hospitals. I have been advised to not take a cab, but call an ambulance in a serious emergency. When my wife was about to go into labor, she preferred to walk about a mile to the hospital.

BTW, I think the AAA allows only two bike pick-ups a year.

My Brompton folder sees the most use these days, including touring, and it would definitely be choice for LCF. The thing was designed for multi-modal commuting so piece of cake with any type of public transport option nearby, and no problem wheeling it like a baby stroller (folded up) for a few miles to get there. Rurally I'd hitchhike, the folded package seems so intriguing to rural folks that I think it'll make for a very fast ride. I'm actually itching to incorporate hitchhiking into my multi-modal touring to bypass boring or dangerous ride sections - my entire rig can fit on my lap in the front passenger seat.

For a full sized bike, my thought would be to either stash/lock the bike in woods and fetch it later with a car, or remove wheels and tie-up to the frame to make as small a package as possible (at least trunk capable), then hitch or find public transport.

While I get the not-bothering your friends and family thing, if I was going out where I was knowingly going to be away from civilization, I would have a conversation with a few folks beforehand. Yes, it is a favor to come get you. But you can pay for gas, wear-and-tear and time if they will let you. And, you can be there for them in an emergency. I assume you are not planning on making this a habit, so a one-off situation isn't that big a deal. Talk to your friends/family before you go and let them know your ability to do something you love depends on having a fall back plan. I bet you will find they willingly step up (once, at least).

Yes, actually, I would like to make it a habit. I would like to hike long distance trails year round, get food delivered to the trail, have solar powered washing machines here and there along the trail to do laundry, outdoor showers, etc. so I could live for months carrying nothing but a tent and a couple extra pairs of clothes and a couple days of food.

Lol, I meant not making a habit of needing a bail out, lol.

Well, think about it. If you get bailed out once, you can show profuse gratitude, but if you keep taking the risk and it happens again, the question is why you continued if you didn't want to set up another bail-out situation. So my goal is to figure out a method to take long-trips car-free and have a solid backup plan that could be used as much as needed without bothering anyone or breaking the bank.

I think self-driving vehicles would be the ideal solution for getting a ride when you need one and then not having to worry about leaving a car parked at a trail head and/or getting back to it any time soon. Plus, they could deliver groceries, pick you up wherever and bring you wherever whenever you needed them to, etc. But judging from the recent deaths that occurred so near to a legislative vote on self-driving car testing, I'm guessing it's going to be slow going getting these things deployed to the point they're available for LCF convenience. So in the meantime I'm trying to think of other kinds of backup plans.

You need to connection with someone else who likes to do the same kind of thing and cover each other as needed. If you're out in the boonies, away from civilization, I'd be surprised if even self-driving vehicles will support you (once available).

Having self driving vehicles deliver food out on "the trail" and pick you up if you run into trouble, may be a way of not bothering people, but it's going to be awfully expensive. Why not work with what's already available? Plan your hikes to pass by existing resources like towns, resorts and truckstops (where they're accessible by foot), and to cross bus and rail lines. If you're too far off road a self driving vehicle won't be able to get to you anyway, so follow established trails where other hikers or cyclists can stop and help you and you can reciprocate as needed.

That would require driving.

Why wouldn't an automatic car want to go out there? There's no driver time to pay. An automatic car can drive through the night and pick you up at 3am. It's an ideal solution.

Why? What do you think the per-mile cost would be for a car that gets 30mpg? Wouldn't it charge less for rural miles driven at 50mph without stops?

Hiking trails usually cross roads several miles from stores, and some of the stores they pass don't have great options.

How would that help?

When I go hiking, I usually don't run into more than a couple people, so if I carried extra food to give them, they might have done the same and then we'd all be carrying too much food/weight. Plus, it's hard to carry fresh bread, vegetables, and fruit for more than a couple days without spoilage, so it would be great to have, say, a small electrically-powered drone to bring a few pounds of groceries via the shoulder/bike-lane of a rural road.

The gas cost, the ownership costs, the cost of somebody to select and load the food, the profit cost, the lost opportunity cost of sending an empty vehicle back from your location. Plus it's not really car free if a car brings you stuff every couple of days. Car free is when you do the legwork.

Maybe call ahead and preorder. They're getting stuff delivered all the time so it might be attractive to them to have stuff delivered for you, knowing you might also buy stuff. When my daughter's suitcase wasn't on the plane and we had to head out to the lake, we arranged for it to be delivered the next day to a local gas station and they were happy to receive it. It was delivered by a parcel van that was heading that way anyway.

If you needed to cut your trip short and head home, or skip an unwanted trail segment, you could take a bus or train.

Obviously everybody is not going to carry extra food for the convenience of others. I meant they would be your emergency back up if you got injured or otherwise stranded in the back country.

If and when miniature drones are available, that might be a viable choice, but years away. I thought we were brainstorming what to do in the meanwhile.

Of course I'd rather just walk/bike to the store and pick up the groceries, but the problem is that if you hike all the way into town to shop, you might not make it back to someplace you can pitch a tent free and unharassed, so that leaves the question of what is the most economical way to hike long distance while having enough healthy food, clean clothes, etc. My thought with the driverless cars was that they would be cheaper than Uber because with Uber you have to pay the driver (both ways), but a better solution would be to just camp somewhere near the store if it's allowed, but if that costs you an additional $10-$30, it might be worth it to send a driverless car/robot for $5 to meet you at a road crossing with a loaf of bread and some fresh fruit/veggies. I didn't think about the personnel costs, though, since many stores and fast-food restaurants provide such services for free by handing loads of food through a drive-thru window, bringing your groceries out to people's cars for them, etc.

Yes, it's a pretty renowned thing that you can use USPS to ship packages to pick-up points along the appalachian trail, but I find it difficult to plan hikes that accurately, and it's nice to just be able to set out on a journey and resupply as needed.

If bus or train service is convenient to your departure and arrival points. Often I'll look up a bus stop and find it's 10-15 miles from the trail, so that is a good day's hike (or more with a heavy pack), and the bus usually arrives pretty late in the day, which doesn't give you much time to get to a camping spot before dark.

Yes, I always carry more food than necessary as backup, but it's heavy. It would be nice to hike light because you aren't worried about summoning extra food easily.

True, but I'm not sure there's a solution without things like drones and free camping areas near stores. There is too much nomadophobia to allow free camping near populated areas, and even on hiking trails, there are often designated camping areas to steer people away from sleeping wherever they end up night. Why can't we be totally free to hike and camp?. . . see Rambo, maybe:

You're asking for a technology that's still well into the future. But you may be on that Steve Jobs time. Maybe I should get in on the action?

Maybe the key isn't the future but the past, i.e. the time of Rambo. If I ate meat, like Rambo, I could just carry a hunting knife and get free rides through towns from police. I could go without the hostilities and pressure-washing, though; but maybe a shower and getting my laundry done would be a compromise; oh, and I'd take the haircut just because too much hair is annoying in the wind.

I am not sure how people feel about hiking trails in Canada but even in California hiking is designed to be pretty primitive. The PC 2000 trail runs through most of the state. They aren't likely to take kindly to installing washing machines and showers in such an area nor the service roads needed to service them. https://www.fs.usda.gov/pct/

The Florida Trail system seems somewhat the same even if it is a bit smaller with 1400 miles.

I used to hike a lot when I was still in college and I learned that dry food was lighter and easier to get the necessary calories. I go pack a weeks worth of food something like MREs and make arrangements to be resupplied at trail heads along the way. A light weight back packing tent was a must. We didn't have cell phones but even today reception can be spotty. In my case it did require the help of friends, family and fellow hikers looking for a favor sometime in the future.

My biggest question would be who would fund putting washing machines on hiking trails and showers for that matter. Plumbing would pretty much be prohibitive so water delivery would seem to be the only option left open. Getting funding for the maintenance workers and service people might be hard. Camping is already allowed in camping areas and they are cleared for that specific purpose. In my state you need a permit and the Forest service checks.

I was hoping you would foot the bill

Hand pumps are installed along trails in some places. A washing machine is a pretty tall order, I admit, but it may be feasible to install a few here and there with a dry well to drain the greywater. I use phosphate-free detergent and it works great, so it wouldn't be too bad environmentally if there weren't too many laundry loads done. Another option might be to use sonic cleaners, which were sold at Best Buy a couple years ago. idk how well they work, though. Maybe trail filth would be too much for them to handle.

You always post some heavily restrictive language to irritate me. You will claim it's not for that purpose, but you've done it regarding tree-planting as well. It's like you enjoy telling someone you dislike, "here you're allowed to stay within this small circle" in order to provoke them into rebelling against the restriction so you can justify aggression against them. I think this was the same tactic used to provoke people into wars during the Indian Wars period. It's also sort of what happened in that scene from Rambo I posted above. Did you watch that, by any chance?

There must be laundry facilities at some sites along these trails.

Sometimes there is water but the national trails mostly are designated as primitive. And do to budget cuts many that used to have voluntary permits are now requiring permits that the rangers check to help find lost campers. But here is an example of our trails system. Most services are a few miles from trail heads.

https://www.appalachiantrail.org/home/explore-the-trail/thru-hiking/faqs