Hey everyone,

I have been reading/learning a ton about bike touring recently and it seems like most stories/threads are about really long tours where the people have time to do as they wish. This is awesome, but I was wondering for those who have a career and the (standard for Americans) ~2 week vacation per year, do you go on one trip as long as possible or more short ones? how do you balance your touring with your career? for those who do get to do long tours, do you have no job/career? what allows you to tour?

I love the idea of going on a tour which has little to no time restrictions but don't really ever see this happening without quitting my job which isnt likely. I'm sure others wonder this as well..

thanks

The folks crossing the country or the world non stop are usually between a degree and their first job, are retired, or have a substantial trust fund or other income. A few are making it on assets they've acquired after working a while. A few others seem to do ok by siphoning off travel funds from donations to some charitable cause. A few are their own bosses. A few wrangle long sabbaticals. A few more are competent bums with no job to worry about.

The working stiff who gets the American standard 2 weeks, well he can pedal for about 14 days, and take some interim mini-tours to scratch the itch. Till one or more of the above takes affect.

As a famous person once said "I feel your pain."

I'm a two-week tour kind of tourer. Ten days to two weeks is a good amount of time for me to see some part of the country up close.

If you look at the journals posted on crazyguyonabike.com, you'll see lots of 7-14 day tours mixed in with the longer ones.

It's about your priorities. I have a 72 year-old friend who tells me all the time "this ain't no practice life, it's all you get".

Many and maybe most folks can only get away for long weekends and up to one week at a time, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun touring on your bike, you can, it just has to be a little closer to home and you don't get to cover quite as much road, but that's OK.

Not all of us live in the US. Here in Australia, I get 4 weeks of leave in my first year of employment, plus a day off each month (RDO) ... so not counting stat holidays, I get 6.4 weeks of leave. If I added stats into that it would be more like 8.4 weeks of leave. And this is just my first year. If I were to remain in my job a number of years, the leave time would go up.

I think it is a similar situation for those who live in Europe as well.


That said, I was living in Canada when I did my 3-month tour of Australia. I was up to about 4.5 weeks of leave at my job (not counting stats), and was taking that to travel to various parts of the world, but I wanted to make a life change, so I quit my job, toured Australia for 3 months, then returned to Canada to go back to Uni and get another degree.

While in Uni getting the degree, I picked up temp work which was wonderful. If your priority is to travel lots, I highly recommend going with temp (recruitment) agencies. They aren't just for 1-day labourers and occasional office work anymore, engineers and other professionals use the temp (recruitment) agencies to get longer term employment ... on their terms. When I did it, I could say when I wanted to start and finish, and I could tell them when I wanted time off in the middle ... it was all on my terms. So each year, while in Uni, I took a month or so off to travel.

If your career is really important to you, and you want to spend all but 2 weeks out of the year working ... that's your choice. But if you'd rather spend more time cycling and travelling ... that choice is available to you too. It is all about priorities.

Although I am mostly retired, I find two weeks is about enough for me. I have done a number of two week tours and find that it gives my my "fix" for a few months. To each his own so to speak.

First as far as the short tours go, I've tried to stretch things by including holiday weekends such as Memorial Day/Labor Day or 4th of July. Christmas isn't ideal time in northern hemisphere, but I've either gone south (Florida, California, Texas) at times business is slower.

Now as far as longer tours go, I've probably been fortunate in choice of industry/company and luck but while working I've been able to get absences of 3mo, 12mo and 10mo in the past 15 years. Those were while working 23 years at the same company (no longer work there). There were a few things that helped me be able to get those absences:

1. I worked with my bosses and made sure it wasn't a surprise. I had very good relations with all my bosses and around evaluation time several years before I already planted the seed that I really wanted to get the next project or two done but then be able to take a break, refresh and jump into something new. About a year before I became more concrete with rough dates and times. In months leading up, I made sure I had groomed successors and otherwise everything was in place.

2. I worked at a large company, where occasional leaves of absence occur for legally protected reasons such as maternity or military service. Hence, there were policies and procedures in place and the organization knew how to deal with them. Extended travel is not the same legally protected leave, but with the right relationship with management I've been fortunate.

3. When not on bike tours, I worked very hard and was generally considered a top performer. I also kept up my skills and set aside some extra $$. That gave me the ability if necessary to use the extended bike trip as a transition to another company, but my current company also saw this and was willing to meet my life goals (discussed early as per #1 above) and hence they also saw benefits of putting me into "LOA status" and finding the next assignment on my return.

There was an element of luck involved here and I was fortunate to work in an area of software that has paid fine. I also made some choices in my personal life in living well below my means, saving and otherwise being willing to take a risk - to prioritize those extended tours as something worth working towards in life. For example, I've been car-free for 10 years, took in room-mates to help with the mortgage, bought a lot less house than I could afford, etc.

So the combined sequence for me has been to work four or five years, take an extended sabbatical and jump into a different role usually with the same company. At some point that luck might run out, but I've been fortunate so far.

I've had some memorable two week tours in the past, and some great long-weekend tours as well. Two weeks is certainly plenty of time to cover a lot of ground and see a lot of sights if you plan it right. These days, I prefer taking at least 3-4 weeks, and have been known to take some unpaid leave from work to make sure I get the time I want, and I can usually work out in advance how much of that I'm going to need (if any). I just see that as one more expense to save for prior to the tour.

I should probably clarify at this point that this situation isn't common in Australia. At most jobs here, you'll get four weeks paid annual leave a year, and a lot of companies will mandate that you take at least some of that during the annual slumber at Christmas time.

Don't feel to bad, Im a self employed artist and as such can seldom get time to tour. Think about it, when I go, the sales dept, accounting, PR dept, materials procurement, secretary, and the poor guy who has to actually make things are all gone. So I take what I can get. Plus, all my friends with jobs and familys who would like to go generaly can't reorganize everything on the wim to ride thier bike around a bit, whatever "someone" says.

So your saying I should move to Australia/Europe!

jokes aside, thanks this was really good info!

swix.... nordic ski much?

Cyclebum's response above captured the variety of tourists I've encountered.

For years I worked jobs with limited vacation. For the last several years of my regular W2 employment (which ended in 2003), I worked things out with my employer so I could have a few extra weeks a year unpaid - this was before I started bike touring, and the weeks were never consecutive, I think I never had 2 weeks in a row off! I was rock climbing at the time, so my vacations were to travel to climb, mostly in-state. I would recommend exploring something like this if it's at all possible with your job.

When I did my first long (2.5 month, long for me) bike tour, I tried to get a sabbatical, it was denied, and I quit - there were other reasons the job wasn't going to work out long term, it's not that I threw away a good thing, it was time for a change. When I finished that first tour, I got a temp job, and then toured, and then a contract job, and then toured, etc.

During my temp/tour/contract years, I did intensive work, then was off for several months at a time, and I had gotten rid of all my big expenses, was renting a room from my sister and only had to pay rent when I was in town... so my expenses were very low. A few years ago I moved to Boulder, and last year bought a house, and for the past several years I've done shorter tours. I still do the same contract work, but I'm more careful about time away and take shorter tours now, since I am the main mortgage payer.

I'm starting to want to do another longer tour - 2-3 months in France/Italy - but now I have a husband and pets and a house payment, so I'm not as able as I was. That's ok though - I like my life, and I'm sure someday I'll make it happen.

Meanwhile, I really enjoy my shorter trips - I do more supported trips, they make more sense in the current time/money balancing act. You have to work within your own personal constraints, decide what's important to you, maybe make some radical shifts, or maybe just enjoy the 1-2 week trips you can do, and maximize their enjoyability for YOU.

Back in '99, I was fortunate enough to get downsized in the wake of an acquisition with a decent severance package. The deal had to be approved by federal regulators and then imlemented before anyone could be let go. That process took close to two years, so people knew what was coming down the pike and could save accordingly.

I had no debt so I was able to end up taking a substantial break from the working world and go on three trips, the shortest of which was nearly two months. I flopped with mom when I was not travelling. Two years after getting the axe I get my old job back. Now I have a mortgage and only 3 official weeks of vacation so I typically do a long weekend trip Easter weekend to take advantage of Good Friday, when we are closed. I also try to do a 8 to 10 day trip. This year we are going back to MT for an 8 day loop out of Missoula.

I didn't start touring until I was 55 and I had a lot of time in with the same employer by then so I was up to 4 weeks vacation per year. I always saved up some leave because I preferred to take longer vacations, so I had 8 weeks saved up. I informed my employer that I was taking 10-12 weeks to do the TA and expected that 2-4 weeks of it would be without pay. I asked them if I would have a job when I got back. It turns out that they were pretty supportive and if anything it has helped my career. I think that they must have missed me when I was gone because I found that I was treated better after the trip than before.

My first tours were while I was in college. Some were three-day weekends. A couple were during spring break. I took a 5 day tour during summer when I was working weekends and not going to school.

Now I'm a teacher. I usually go from 3-4 weeks. When I retire (in 6 years) I may try a coast-to-coast ride - get it out of my system, you know?

and hopefully your poor appendage will return to the normal pinkish colour ;-)
If not, leeches might work.

You don't have to cross the world to enjoy a bike tour. 2 weeks is the longest I've done, and it's fun enough. Admittedly I get 4 weeks vacation, so this isn't the only break I get all year, but still. Pick one destination and go explore by bike. Maybe you'll take it easy, ride 300km over 5 days, and relax for the rest. Or push hard every day and cover 2000km or more. Depends on what you like (I prefer the short end, myself).

Either way, it's a break from every day life, a chance to spend some time on your bike and see an interesting part of the world. Enjoy it.

If you're unhappy with your work-life balance, emigrating to a country that places greater value on leisure time can be an effective solution. It's a pretty big decision, though.

Two-week tours are great. I've been on a few. Nothing wrong with one-week tours, either. And in fact, some of my most memorable tours have been 2 to 3 days. With my current commitments, it is tricky for me to get away for longer. No matter, I make the best of my present situation, and perhaps at some point in the future, I will be able to take the time for extended touring.

It's not how far you go, but how much fun you have!