Lessons learned from my Big Tour on the thirteenth anniversary of my departure

Me at Peyto Lake near Bow Summit on Icefields Parkway, Canadian Rockies. 22 July 2011 I know that there are some folks out there that don't like to look back too much on their lives. They'd rather concentrate on the now and the future. I get that to some degree, as it's really easy to...

On elevating the everyday rider

14 May 2024. Camera: Pentax IQZoom 150SL (Espio 150SL) Film: Candido 400 Last year I bought a copy of Eugene Sloane's Complete Book of All-Terrain Bicycles. I got it because I was buying another book from Better World Books or a similar used books online retailer, and I needed to spend a few more dollars...

Nine years since the Post Pepin Peregrination, my three speed bike tour

Pondero's Rivendell Quickbeam (left) and my Raleigh Wayfarer on the La Crosse River Trail Recently on the venerable "For the Love of English Three Speeds" thread on Bike Forums (over 27,000 posts over 14 years!) someone asked, "Has anyone toured on a three-speed?" I like these questions because they are a break from the navel-gazing...

On growing older, finding the energy to do what you love, and bike camping

12 April 2024. Olympus OM-1n--OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.8--Kodak Portra 160 It's Tuesday April 23rd. If I had stuck to my plans, I'd be waking up at Ainsworth State Park in the Columbia Gorge, on my first bike camping expedition of the year. But instead, I'm at home. What exactly got me here, or more correctly,...

What hang-ups prevent people from bike touring?

My Bantam at Crown Point in the Columbia Gorge during a bike campout last April. It took almost twenty years of touring to figure out what works for me. Last week I went to a bike touring, er, "bikepacking" meetup at Lords Luggage, hosted by Bruce B. There was a good turnout featuring people I...

Radio, Revisited, Revisited.

I guess it has to do with being Gen X, but I still listen to and care about terrestrial radio. It's not with the intensity I listened to radio in the 1980s and 90s, first discovering AOR/Classic Rock and then College and Community Radio. The intensity dissipated when I moved to Portland in 2001, when...

On the endangered paper bicycle map

"Do they even make paper maps anymore?" Jacquie Phelan asks over on the Charlie Cunningham Medical and Rehab site (look for the March 9th, 2024 entry as they don't do permalinks over there.) It's a valid question. Many analog things have faded away over the past couple of decades. And with many of these "fading...

It’s spring, so time to think about bike camping…again

Women's Forum Viewpoint in the Columbia Gorge, 27 April 2023. Camera: Olympus XA Film: Kodak Ektar 100 While it is possible to bike camp here in the west-of-Cascades Pacific Northwest all year (at least in the lower elevations), winter bike camping isn't exactly ideal. Sunsets before 5 PM equal long and lonely nights, something I...