psy

Instead of addressing a point, you make lame personal attacks. No, English isn't my first language. What's your excuse? If I were to guess you have very little actual touring experience and like hear yourself talk.
You're the biggest UL troll I've yet to come across, including backpacking.

azza_333

Don't take it personally mate, some guys on this site can be wankers some times, just ignore them. Although some peoples comments can be miss understood at times aswell.

Rowan

This thread is so full of narcissism, that it is fairly overflowing!

shelbyfv

Hey Buff- you obviously put a lot of time and thought into your detailed mileage post, very impressive. I have made a sort of New Year's resolution to avoid discouraging folks from being whomever they wish to be on BF. In that spirit, I will share with you and bikenh my favorite source for tires, chains and other consumables, you probably go through lots of those. Buy Road Bikes & Parts at Ribble Cycles | Online Bike Shop Most Contis, for example, are half LBS prices. Try to order enough to get free shipping. Usually takes about one week.

mtnroads

I've seen a lot of defensiveness, and some attacking in recent threads. It's too bad. I don't know why people feel the need to call others out or to get so defensive about their way of doing things. No need to take things so personally. Just let it go if you don't like what's said, and try to have an open mind. I personally am interested in some of the UL concepts and techniques, although I will never be fast anymore, lol.

I've found some of the points made on this thread to be thought-provoking, even though a lot of it didn't have much to do with the original post. It's all good. Thanks guys.

Happy Feet

Nice sentiment Shelby but it's not 2016 yet.

I was going to say I find it strange to talk about the time wasted in other peoples lives while extolling the virtues of riding 60 miles a day, every day but then I remembered some of my journals from when I was a younger 20 something year old. Plenty of raging against the machine in them which, looking back, was mostly about trying to find my own place in a society that I felt was trying to define me in ways I did not fit. Lot's of "This is me - I'm not like you - You suck" sort of stuff.

Good news is: It all worked out! I did become me, and in some ways I'm not like you, but in other ways in turns out I am. Turns out society was just a lot of people trying to define themselves while feeling most of the same sort of feelings I did with some variation thrown in for good measure because we are not clones. In the end it wasn't them trying to make me conform so much as life itself and we were all just trying to ride the same wave together with some pushing and name calling because we were afraid we might fall down or that someone was taking a better line. There is no "society" out there; just people fumbling around trying to be happy in a life that doesn't always offer that. At least not for long.

I commute a modest 30 minutes to work each way, ride on the weekends and tour sometimes. There were times when I did not own a car, commuted 1.5 hours to college and worked as a bicycle courier. Wonderful memories but today ain't bad either. Most of my time at the slave factory now revolves around helping the elderly walk and recover from things like hip fractures; I facilitate a therapeutic walking program at an extended care facility. Spending a lot of time with people at the end of their lives has allowed me to see the results of many different paths and the human vulnerability that underlies all of our hopes and aspirations.

So, good luck with life. I hope most everybody except Hit-ler finds what they are looking for. Just try to have enough humility to not knock those who aren't chasing the same dream.

saddlesores

i don't see it..........so few of the posts are about me.

bikenh

It's funny I've gotten so use to riding the bigger miles that I don't think about it anymore. At the same time I don't like doing it that much around home. Other than extended errand running I generally save up the big mile days(100-200 mile days) for the bike trip each summer. I hardly do much of any biking outside of the local area while around home. When I take off for the bike trip I don't want to do some miles. If it's not a 125 mile day than I might have as well stayed home. When you start riding the big miles you get so used to doing it becomes routine. And like you said Bill it's not that hard for the miles to add up when you stop using a car and rely on the bike as your means of transportation. It's incredible how fast the miles add up.

bikemig 

Try taking a chill pill before responding to a post. Or go on one of those 70 mile rides you do daily first before you post, or whatever.

bikenh

I'm not telling anyone how to live their life. Everyone can make their own choices and pay their own price(it may not be not that you pay the price...it may be later). In the same way don't tell me I'm not living my life correctly. I don't tell you how to live your life. You only have one life to live and you can only regret your decisions once.

I know if Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, ISIS(ISIL whatever you want call the stupid group or idiots) decides to attack the United States with an EMP attack all electronic devices will get fried. Other than heating my house right now with electricity I can walk away from the power grid without trying. Can you? What will you do when the car won't start, the TV doesn't work anymore, the movie theaters are shut down, the internet is down, the cell phone doesn't work, etc. No more Fbook or *****ter. What will you do then to occupy yourself. How wrapped up is your life into one thing and one thing only...electricity. When all the things you "can't live without" are laying on the cupboard as dead devices you will start to realize what truly is important in life. That's when you will find a new way to occupy yourself and who your real friends are, versus who is using you for their benefit. It's your decision which way you go. I've made my decision.

Don't try to tell me I can't ride 20+K miles in a year. Kurt Searvogel has ridden over 73000 miles in the past year. He's not riding around the clock, generally 14-15 hours a day. Cut the time in half and you cut the distance in half, 36,500 miles in a year riding 7-8 hours a day, another 8 hours a day working and 8 hours a day sleeping(heck I don't get that much sleep). When you don't have anything else to do, what else is there to do. 20K miles a year working full time is not hard to do. You just have to do it. It take 6-7 weeks to form a new habit and get use to a new way of doing things...a new way of seeing the possibility of how you can do things. Like I said before I was out so long this summer I completely got use to living on the road. In the past 3 summer trips it didn't happen, they weren't long enough trips. It takes time to create change. Yes, I will fess, I'm single and live by myself. If you have the wife and kids to deal with it does complicate things a bit but it is still doable.

hokie cycler

A few comments:

1. No I cannot walk away from the power grid nor do I want to, period. I'll live with the risk of an EMP attack, whatever the heck that is. Take the doomsday prepper talk somewhere else, I'm sure there's a forum for that somewhere on the interwebs.
2. Riding 14 hours a day is insane. I love riding my bike, but not that much. Someone like that has let bike riding consume their life and their is no time for anything else. It's a case study in OCD.
3. Riding 7-8 hours a day, every day is a bit extreme, but hey, to each his own.

This thread should end as it has gone WAY off course. I like coming to the touring thread because the threads are typically very civil and I have learned a lot about touring which is something I have never done but would like to try.

bikemig 

+ 1,000. The touring forum has long been a really one. Really good discussions and disagreements. This thread is poor. We have 2 posters (the OP and @ bikenh) on this thread who have vigorously trolled the thread and it should have been closed a long time ago.

bikenh

If you would like to go on a bike tour then you need to rethink your strategy for biking. Better stay out of the midwest part of the United States or you will learn to ride 7-8 hours a day or you'll find yourself in the middle of nowhere for several days in a row with nothing but sugar to eat. This past summer, riding highway miles pretty much all the time I was riding 125-150 miles a day between decent sized towns. Around the midwest where towns/crossroad communites can be a fair distance apart you run into one small problem, decent sized towns where you can actually buy food without getting price gouged can be quite a far distance apart. You better plan on spending more money or traveling more miles per day. The bigger your miles per day the more hours per day you will be on the bike. It can be easy to 7-8 hours a day on a bike when you don't have any grocery stores for 125 miles. It happened pretty much everyday. I would see anything, Dollar General, Walmart, McDonalds, anything all day long while riding, only gas stations which sell nothing but sugary snacks. It went on like it everyday for a couple of weeks. I would only see 'normal' town services in the morning before I left town and then again in the evening when I got back into a 'normal' town. The rest of day, generally 125-150 mile day, I wouldn't see anything but gas stations. The joke I had this summer was that I thought you couldn't go more than 30 miles anywhere in this country without finding a Walmart. That's pure garbage, even around Bentonville, AR.

Oh yeah, the trip started the same way. Most of the trip until the tail end I was going most of the day without seeing a normal grocery store. All the way down the east coast and back up through the midwest I had very little in the way of services during the day. If you wanted to shorten your mileage you was going to be carrying a lot more food with you or else you was going to be eating sugary snacks.

There is plenty to learn even in pure drivel like this thread. I guess it just takes saying the right thing to get the right person to reply back.

hokie cycler

There is a difference between riding 7-8 hours a day for a week long tour, or even a month long tour, than to do so EVERY day of the year to reach some insane mileage total like 20k or 30k miles in a year, which is where this thread started to go off the rails with your manifesto.

For an off the grid guy who doesn't need electricity, you sure do spend a lot of time on the internet.

bikemig 

That's easy peasy:



Now just ad a dyno hub, connect a smart phone, and you can ride your bike and troll BF at the same time.

bikenh

First the difference comes from preparing ahead of time. The way you make a bike trip both enjoyable and easy is to go in prepared, both in carrying the right gear and being in shape. Sure you can start a bike trip without every having ridden a mile on a bike in years. It isn't going to be enjoyable though. You won't remember much but the struggle that you have trying to get your sorry butt in shape. Your found memories of the bike trip will be the sore muscles not the places you visited. Unless you want to miserable bike trip you not only get your packing done but you get sorry butt in shape as well and try to give yourself some real simulation of what you are going to have to deal with during the trip. If that means 7-8 hours a day on the bike, then you go out and do a weekend or even several weekends of getting used to riding 7-8 hours a day. A smart person does that...unless they want to have an experience they would much rather forget then remember.

When it rains, it pours. I bank miles for rainy days like today. I'm sitting in McDonalds online right now. I rode in here with drizzle falling. It's raining at a bit more steady pace right now and I have several things I'm working on online right now since I don't have much else to do. Typically, like last night, I don't get home until 9:30-10PM. No reason to. I get home, eat supper and then go to bed. Yeah, on crummy days like today I'll spend more time online than others when the weather is a lot nicer. You learn in life to get things done at the appropriate time. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right time to come before you get certain projects done. I guess after riding 172 miles in the past two days I can afford a short day. Only need 197 miles the rest of the year to hit my goal for the year so I'm not to terribly worried by it. Nice day tomorrow and then again on Wednesday and Thursday and I'm planning on probably doing a 100 miler on both NYE and NYD, just like I did last year. Why do that...I guess its the same answer as to why go on a bike tour...because you/I want to...err, because it's there dang it.

MassiveD

Seriously? You have a 39 page thread on basically the exact same subject, and now this one.

The main thing is something that everyone does, gets some advocates, who make it into a thing, and then they go all evangelical about it. The Swiss army has had bike packing, for decades. People have been ultralight touring since there were bikes, but now it is a T-shirt. I am about to go out with my for my UL ride today, look Ma, no bags.

I have a workshop, I occasionally watch videos on how to lift the heavy things. I don't need to watch videos on how to move my ham sandwich across the shop.

Why is this an issue, whether your bike needs lube, how is that a UL issue. Have you ever seen a cyclist ride with only a bike, no packs. That's UL, why do we need some nonsense thread for cycling with more than nothing, but less than a lot?

Everyone packs differently than everyone else, but you have an ideology about it.

This is what gets me. You are riding a bike and sleeping. Reinhold Messner climbed Everest Ultralite, solo, from the Chinese side over thrity years ago. He did the Eiger with Habbeler in 10.5 hours for 6000 feet of face. Anyone with a pulse got this memo in the 70s. There is nothing to say about this related to bikes that hasn't been so overwhelmed so many years ago. It's pathetic.

Evangelism maybe not, what would that look like. Proselytizing, for sure. There is a UL industry out there. And as usual it is just consumerism of a different type. You wanta go UL you can do it by leaving your smartphone behind, or you can do it by getting it a carbon fiber case, and a special bikepaking pouch. Guess which one is the UL tourist wannabe, with the blog, gear reviews and youtube videos.

That sounds like one of those everyone else needs to change, but not me statements.

MassiveD

+1

Walter S

I think the OP has an ultra-light chip on his shoulder. Only one thread begging people to dis the overly abused ultra-light peace loving people is not enough.

Buffalo Buff

You're right, I should make another.

robow

Ah, the good old days before UL touring tore us apart. Just teasing of course (or is that discourse)

veganbikes

I didn't think this thread would last since we already dealt with the subject for 40+ pages quite recently and we aren't going to come up with anything new and exciting on the subject.

How about we talk about the lack of winter? As far as I know we haven't discussed that yet and we might have something new to say on it!

Happy Feet

My front yard today... it was an ultra light snowfall.

gregjones

^^^this^^^

indyfabz

You need to notify the mods. They cannot monitor every thread sua sponte.