gerv 

Now that the heat's turned down, I've been able to get out on more recreational rides and have done more bike camping this year than previous ones. I think if I lived in the mountains, I'd do some backpacking, but in Iowa a bike trip in the country is a close second.

Touring? Bike rentals on your exotic getaway? Recreational rides on your staycation?

Anyone?

Artkansas 

Well, my vacation day was a couple of weeks ago. I had a day between Siggraph and when my plane went out. I had plans to rent a bike from the Santa Monica Bike Center and use it to ride around L.A. and visit some museums and stuff.

However, the hostel I was in goofed up my reservation and I ended up having to change rooms and when they moved my stuff they didn't get it all. So I ended up having to hope there was an empty bed and waiting for it, thus getting to sleep much later and when I woke up, it was still too early to go barging into a room, so I ended up taking a stroll in the Pacific Ocean that was a block from the hostel. Then I got into the room, got my stuff back and then my luggage stored in a locker. It was hours later than I had planned for, so I had to cut back my travels for the day to just going to the L.A. County Art Museum.

When I got to LACMA, I had been planning on finding something to eat, but I didn't count on there being a catering truck convention outside of the museum. So I had a smorgasbord to choose from, and ended up noshing happily, leaning against a bit of the Berlin Wall.

It was nice looking at all the bicycles in Santa Monica though. Things have changed so much from when I used to roll there in the '70s.

Slowhead

There isn't going to be a vacation. But, this Fall I will be visiting towns in the area that have some kind of bicycle path. Treat myself to a better cup of coffee and just poke around a bit.

Roody

With my work schedule, I can take one vacation day every two weeks and have 5 or 6 days off in a row. This year I mostly stayed at home, but since my 13 year old grandson is living with me, we go on lots of long bike rides and he is at the point now where he can definitely outride me. There have been a lot of trips to the park, zoo, library and beach, all of which are located right on the bike trail system.

I sometimes go to northern Michigan, where I have my second home--and of course another bike. This is in a resort area, so the riding is great--and a very nice change from the transportation riding I usually do.

wahoonc

I have a lot of vacation time to burn up. We spent a long weekend in the Savannah, GA area due to work dumping me there for most of week. So I just extended the stay and my lovely bride flew in to join me. I had my little Dahon folder in the car trunk, and we were able to rent her a Huffy Cruiser with 24" wheels. Spent the first part of the day sort of crisscrossing the city finding things we wanted to see. Then spent the afternoon mostly in the shady areas. Best couple of days we have had in a long time. Going to be going to Boston sometime this fall, I usually manage to get a couple of rides in up there too on borrowed bikes. When we go to Boston we always go pretty much car free. Sometimes we fly in and don't bother with the car rental, get a T pass and have at it. Other times we will rent a car if we fly into one of the other airports, but even then the car stays in the hotel parking lot for much of the visit. My daughter lives in NH and my son in Boston, hard to get between the two using mass transit.

I have been doing a bit of local riding too. My wife has a couple of doctor appointments coming up in a large city about 3 hours away. They have a couple of nice MUP's that run through the heart of the city right near the doctor's office...yup the bikes are going along!

Aaron

350htrr

I have ridden my bike on some of my vacations and it was great to incorporate something I enjoy doing as part of the trip... I averaged 100+ KMs a day and we camped using the truck/camper that the wife was driving as a support vehicle. We camped, fished and road our bikes on 3 trips so far (Kitimat BC 630 KMs, Hyder Alaska 820 KMs, Vancouver BC 830 KMs), me and two other riders with the wife driving the truck...

SparkyGA

Maybe going for a ride from Sydney to Brisbane. Maybe around WA. Undecided. Need to go for at least 2 more mini tours in Australia before the non cycling GF shows up in December...

bjjoondo 

We just finished a week of "Staycation" via bicycle", the wife had some, "Use it or Loose it" vacation days and we didn't have much extra cash so we just rode to different area's of the town and area each day and "did lunch"! I really think she enjoyed her staycation days much more than when we try to "tour by bicycle" and there never seems to be "enough" TIME or MONEY, LOL!

Bftsplk

Mid-vacation as we speak. Brommie to the shuttlebus, bus 4 hrs to city with Amtrak, 6 hour train, finish with enjoyable 20 mile night-time country road ride to family. Hiking and running here, and since nobody bikes take the Brommie out for occasional 20 to 30 mile rides. Reverse trip home. Foldybike w/front bag and small backpack, so relaxed, reading and lounging travel instead of 10 hours driving, fourth trip doing this, wish I had thought of it years ago.

Roody

Sounds like a great vacation, and a wonderful example of vacationing for the family rather than the car. Carfree living can improve the quality of life, or else why do it?

gerv 

I'm a bit fascinated with the idea of a "staycation".

I recall asking a colleague about here vacation. She had a 5-day stay in Bermuda and I asked exactly what she did over those 5 days. Turned out much of it was reading books, hanging out on the beach.

Considering the high cost and the enormous discomfort in flying to a vacation (especially a short one...), I'm surprised more people don't opt for staying at home and reading books on the back porch.

wahoonc

We enjoy the occasional exotic location, but we go for the local flavor not to just hangout. If I want to read or laze around I will head for the nearest state park.

Aaron

AsanaCycles

I just finished a jaunt down the west coast from Astoria.

droopayne

well i'm pushing hard to get the family to disneyland from the sf bay area on our bike (a triple tandem) in october. we've been doing some training rides and so far so good, but they are both nervous about riding the 450 miles to get there. i have a thread going in the tandem forum about our bike, trip prep and hopefully the trip. but honestly it's still a bit up in the air. i want to get at least a weekend with 70 miles of riding in before i'm confident they won't mutiny. i got the itch to do some touring this summer and wanted to do sf->pdx or the length of CA on my own bike, but after already doing a solo trip this year without the fam to Moab (their choice) i didn't want to leave them again. i've been a mtn biker forever but haven't really done any touring. just did a weekend trip to Laguna Seca this summer and loved it.

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...eyland-or-BUST!

our current plan is to ride down there and amtrak it back up.

gerv 

I visited your thread and seems like there are 3 of you on the tandem. What type of roads? What experience does your little girl have? If things work out, it could be quite an experience for her. But if things start heading south (I mean not going so well...) you can always do a section on the Grayhound I guess.

droopayne

yup, three of us. the route is basically the highway 1 (aka pacific coast highway). it's a fairly flat on that section. there's a few 1000+ foot climbs, but nothing crazy and most are over a fairly long distance. to get to highway 1 from where we are it would mean riding over a fairly steep 2600 ft climb on the first day, but i think for the sake of morale we'll start somewhere on the other side of that hill

my 8 yo doesn't really have a ton of experience per se, but i think for her she'll be ok as long as the saddle doesn't bother her or she doesn't revolt from bordom. i may bring a RAM mount for my galaxy tab for movies while riding (for her), but that's gonna be a last resort that she won't even know about unless it turns really ugly and the only other option is to abort.

i'm actually more worried about my wife who can sometimes tire fairly easily. as we learned on our training rides our daughter can get away with putting out very little in terms of power output. even though she has to move her legs still i think the ability to not really push will keep her from really getting worn out. on our training rides when my wife and i were pushing hard up a steep grade she wasn't even remotely winded and would sing silly songs while we huffed away. i have dubbed her my "turbo charger" since i let her freeload until we're climbing and when i need a break i just call on her to turn on the juice for a little boost and swear it seems like she's pushing us up the hill on her own.

we don't exactly live without a car, as we live in a big ass RV (and am a self-diagnosed motorhead), but the tandem has been great for us and we really enjoy riding it around town to go to dinner or the movies with it. a big part of the appeal of bike touring together is to be without a car (or RV). we've covered tens of thousands of miles in our nearly 4 years of living in an RV, but i think now we're all ready to slow it down and see some of the things we've been missing from the cab of our RV.

i know they can make it down there. it's just a matter of giving ourselves enough time so we're not rushed and under the gun to do 70+ mile days. i'm still planning it out, but i'm hoping to keep daily mileage around 40 miles.

gerv 

A relaxed pace would be great. I wonder about traffic on highway 1. I'm guessing there is heavy traffic, but you'll have a wide shoulder.

Around here, there are a ton of roads through the state, but none of them have shoulders.... so you typically try to negotiate count blacktop roads that have very little traffic but also very little in the way of provisioning towns.

1nterceptor

Just got back from China, stuffed my folding bike in my luggage.
Nanjing has a lot of bike lanes, too bad it seems there's a shift now
from bicycles to electric scooters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi015...hannel&list=UL

Last year I borrowed a bike and was riding around Holland. Got buzzed on
a narrow street w/ a bike lane at 7am on a Sunday That wasn't caught on video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPHI-JWj3Rw&feature=plcp

GeoKrpan

I went bike camping. The plan was a 7 day trip riding 270 miles from home, Westlake Village, to Big Sur then 100 miles from Big Sur to San Luis Obispo and catching the train home.

It didn't go as planned, the farthest north we got was Jalama Beach, 122 miles, and we were only gone 4 days. We did ride home, though, instead of taking the train.

It didn't go as planned but we had a heck of a good time anyway.

GeoKrpan

Great pics and vid, thank you.

1nterceptor

Glad you liked my silly videos. I don't know if I'll bring my folding bike in a suitcase
when I travel next time. United Airlines only allows me one check-in luggage with a
50 lbs. limit. So my 13 lbs. hard shell suitcase and 36 lbs. bike(bike + some tools for
breakdown) already used up my check-in allowance. I had to put 3 weeks worth of
clothes and personal items in my hand-carry, a big gym bag. Probably overweight but
the airlines don't usually weight your hand-carry bag.

droopayne

hey all,

just thought i'd update you guys on our bike vacation if you haven't been following us in the tandem forum. our touring trip from the SF bay area to Disneyland went off without a hitch. We had tons of fun and my wife (who's not a big cyclist) and my 8yo did great. I was really proud of them. We made it there on time and in once piece, i couldn't have asked for anything more.

i posted the pics and blog post up for our trip. it's a bit of a read, but we really wanted to remember the trip so we got pretty detailed with our post. Some post are by me, others by my wife. it all starts here....

https://planetpayne.com/blog/2012/10/...to-santa-cruz/

if you don't want to read all our blabberings you can go straight to the pics here...

https://planetpayne.com/blog/other-tr...to_Disneyland/

cheers
droo

Jared.

Tentatively planning to ride the Erie Canal Trail in the summer. Need to purchase a bunch of equipment though, since I've never done any bike touring and I haven't gone camping in about 15 years.

longhaulblue

I didn't get to bike vacation this year. Had planned to visit a friend near Luddington, MI. Ride up to Manitowoc and take the SS Badger across Lake Michigan. But it didn't pan out. Too much work. But I did take a weekend trip down to Champaign, IL. Very nice ride. Great weather and a tail wind all the way!

LadyCRides

Last winter we went to Key West, and I rented a Cannondale CAAD 10 - had a GREAT vacation. I loved the bike so much I bought it. We may go back to Key West in March, it's a great place for a bicycle, although they could be more "bicycle friendly." In the summer, we go to Chincoteague for a week, and I ride over to Assateague every day, where the wild horses live. - THIS IS A BICYCLISTS PARADISE. There is one beach that you can only access on foot or by bicycle - I recommend it for those who love the beach, hiking and cycling. In August we'll go to Rehoboth for a long weekend. I'll ride the Coastal Highway 30 miles to Ocean City Maryland, have lunch, and head back, stopping in Bethany along the way, and finishing at the beach.