Bike Touring
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CO Tour Day 1: Facing My Inner Fraidy Cat: 150 Miles From Boulder to Kremmling
Nothing kicks off a bike tour like a 150-mile day that includes a front-loaded first half climb fest, including the ever-daunting Trail Ridge Road. Last year Felkerino and I climbed Trail Ridge while I howled like a kitten that climbed too high into a tree and needed rescue. I hated that feeling and vowed that… Continue reading
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Get Out The Map: Bike Tour Prep
Get out the map get out the map and lay your finger anywhere down We’ll leave the figuring to those we pass on our way out of town — Indigo Girls, Get Out The Map This Indigo Girls song reminds me of long gone days wedded to the school calendar as it simultaneously urges me to… Continue reading
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Lessons Learned From My First Tandem Bicycle Tour
This week I had the opportunity to reflect on my very first tandem bike tour with Felkerino, an eight-day, 775-mile excursion from Rockville, Maryland, to Niagara Falls. I wrote about our 2005 tour experience on The Bicycle Story (an excellent blog, and not just because I have a guest post on it). You can see… Continue reading
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Tara and Simon’s RAGBRAI Part 4 of 4: Unexpected Joys, Lessons Learned, and a Look Ahead
What better way to spend a Friday than spending a few minutes with Tara and Simon as they wrap up their RAGBRAI trip. Read on to find out the unexpected joys they encountered, lessons they learned through the week, and their pondering of the question– would we do it again? Continue reading
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Tara and Simon’s RAGBRAI Part 3 of 4: Other Riders and Unexpected Challenges
RAGBRAI is a sprawling event with more than 10,000 riders criss-crossing the state of Iowa over seven consecutive days of riding. Today’s post features Tara’s observations about some of the other RAGBRAI riders as well as unexpected issues that Simon and she confronted. Continue reading
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Tara and Simon’s RAGBRAI Part 2 of 4: The Ride
What is it like to be a rider on RAGBRAI, the largest cross-state bike ride in the country? Tara takes us there with her vivid recount. The Ride Continue reading
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From the Captain’s Perspective: Our Colorado Tandem Tour
This week it’s all happening on The Daily Randonneur. Felkerino breaks down our recent Colorado tour by day and also discusses how our tour took shape. He includes links to our GPS files that show the routes we followed each day. I know some of you had asked about the exact location and routes, and you… Continue reading
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Seeing Changes
Instead of riding brevets and doing a 1000K or a 1200K this year, Felkerino and I focused on a weeklong Colorado bike tour, which included two days of riding around Boulder and a seven-day loop rich with hills and mountains. (Felkerino is writing a post of our routes and the gear we took over at… Continue reading
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Final Day: Oh My God Road and a Rainstorm
We were loathe for our scenic week in Colorado to be at an end, so when we met a cyclist at the top of Loveland Pass who recommended we route back via Oh My God Road rather than suburban roads we were intrigued and routed our 72-mile return from Georgetown to Boulder accordingly. Continue reading
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Fremont and Loveland Passes: From 58 Miles Per Hour to Carnivorous Flies
Rain falls steadily in Georgetown, Colorado, as I write. It feels lovely to be clean and dry in a hotel room after a sweaty warm day of 71 miles out in the sun. After a tasty coffee in Leadville, Felkerino and I warmed up the legs with a steady climb up Fremont Pass, which tops… Continue reading
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100 Miles: Cottonwood Pass to Leadville
Yesterday’s ride was an excellent reminder that not all centuries are created equal. It was also the first day where I settled into “tour mode,” where I did not worry about the miles or how often we stopped. I was just in the present moment. Continue reading
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Kebler Pass: 10,000 Feet High with Neil Diamond
I loved listening to Neil Diamond when I was little. My parents owned Tap Root Manuscript, which I was pretty certain was a kid’s album. In early elementary school my musical tastes changed and that Neil Diamond album began to collect dust. This morning I had the chance to make up for decades of not… Continue reading
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This Bike Fueled by Eggs and Espresso: McClure Pass
I’m glad I wrote those sentimental notes about how wonderful tandeming with my partner can be, as I had to remind myself of them this morning. I woke up famished with only the thought of scrambled eggs and breakfast in my mind. Felkerino, on the other hand, awakened to an equally powerful urge for espresso.… Continue reading
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When the Ride is the Destination: Following the Colorado River
At its core, today’s ride was a 90-mile tour of several roads flanking the Colorado River in the hills between Kremmling and Glenwood Springs. Continue reading
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Trail Ridge Road on Tandem
There’s nothing that kicks off a bike tour better than riding the highest continuous paved road in the United States. Continue reading
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All the King’s Horses, and All the King’s Men: Co-Motion Reassembly
I’m happy to report our tandem reassembly did not end like the tale of Humpty Dumpty. It took some time, but our tandem arrived safely in Boulder, Colorado, and is now a big bike again. It helped that we are staying with cycling friends who have a spacious back porch to spread out the coupler… Continue reading
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Having a Breakdown (of the S&S Coupler Kind)
Felkerino and I made one airplane trip on a non-coupled tandem bike, and found it to be a big pain in the patootie. Because of that, we made sure our Co-Motion tandem had S&S Coupling (couplers) to facilitate the transport of our bike through airports. The couplers (visible in the photo above) allow our bike… Continue reading
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Goin’ on a Bike Tour: a Return to Simple
As I write this post, Felkerino is breaking apart and boxing up our Co-Motion Java (more on that burly beast and the S&S Coupler cases in a later post) and we’re packing for our upcoming bike tour out west. Continue reading
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Friday Coffee Club: Big Bicycling Edition
One of the reasons I love living in Washington, D.C., is because it is a destination city. Every day my path intersects with tourists who are out and about, taking in the sights, and most often blissfully oblivious to my bike bell. Today, as Felkerino and I enjoyed our pre-work morning at Friday Coffee Club… Continue reading
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The Gift of Slowness
I seldom experience slowness in the city. I rush around every weekday morning, I try to arrive at my office on time, and I work diligently throughout the day. I make post-work plans to meet up with others at a certain time, and lots of my day is scheduled. The tours and rides Felkerino and… Continue reading
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Bike Plus Jump
I never used to take photos during bike rides, but over time I realized that I like having a tangible memory of a day in the saddle. Nothing can replace the actual experience, but it is nice to have a photo to help recall rides gone by. I’ve developed an affinity for stopping at some… Continue reading
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From Middletown to Monterey: Two Days, 255 Miles
Felkerino and I have been making the most of our weekend warrior lifestyle with two straight weekends of bike overnights on our Co-Motion tandem. This past weekend we toured with our rando-friends John and Cindy, who also ride a Co-Motion tandem– a 650B Speedster. Isn’t it beautiful? Both days included plenty of climbing and stunning… Continue reading
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Escape from the City: Weekend Bike Tour to Martinsburg, West Virginia
Felkerino and I took advantage of the recently arrived summer weather and ventured out for a weekend bike tour. We departed the District on Saturday morning and took a circuitous route out to Martinsburg, making sure we plodded a few miles through the Catoctins of Maryland. That was some hilly stuff. Overall, we rode 122… Continue reading
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The Blue Ridge Parkway, Broken Bottom Brackets, and Trail Magic
Lately I’ve been remembering Felkerino’s and my short-lived honeymoon bike tour from four years ago. This adventure happened before I brought this blog to life, but on occasion I like to recall some of these blasts from the past. This story is particularly special to me and not just because it was our honeymoon. It… Continue reading
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Lost in the Landscape. One Perspective of a Female Touring Cyclist
Over the summer Swift Industries, a bicycle-loving and beautiful bag-making company out of the Pacific Northwest, sponsored a writing project called Tough & Tender, “a literary and photographic project that celebrates women’s relationships with bicycles, touring, and the bike industry.” The project received several contributions and I’ve found them all inspiring. Many thanks to Swift Industries for creating… Continue reading
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Southern Virginia Tandem Bike Tour Lessons Learned and Wrap-Up Post
Writing during the journey is always a bit different than what comes to mind after a bike tour ends. The week has given me time to reflect on the trip we had, and I wanted to throw up some summary observations, assessments, and lessons learned from our recent jaunt around southern Virginia on our Cannondale… Continue reading
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Pedaling the Blue Ridge Parkway: The Dream I Thought I Had
This past Saturday, Felkerino and I capped off our weeklong bike tour of southern Virginia with two days on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Below is a map of the segment we toured, which extended from Floyd to the northern edge of the Parkway in Waynesboro, Virginia. As you can see, we covered slightly more than… Continue reading
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What I Learned Bike Touring from Wytheville to Floyd, Virginia
Today Felkerino and I headed off to Floyd, a southern Virginia town that abuts the Blue Ridge Parkway. A scenic and challenging day in many ways, it brought home a few themes about bike touring. 1. If the route isn’t working, change it. Continue reading
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Bike Touring from Blacksburg to Wytheville, Virginia
The weather: Sunny and dry Miles ridden: 92 Mountains: Three, one being the notable Walker Mountain ten miles outside Wytheville. Continue reading
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Into the Teeth of the Virginia Highlands
The past two days of riding have brought home the fact that all rides are not created equal. Felkerino and I plotted our 70-mile days, climbing away from Clifton Forge, over Dolly Mountain to Covington, and across Hay’s Gap to overnight in Paint Bank. Continue reading
Chasing MailBoxes 