Rough Cut: Jerry Norquist – Economics of Bicycling

In this Rough Cut, we interview Jerry Norquist, the executive director of CycleOregon. Jerry has been in the bicycling industry for many years and has been involved in bicycle advocacy throughout. In this video, Jerry talks a little about the history of CycleOregon, attending the National Bike Summit and the shift in conversation to promoting bicycles as an economic development tool. It has been enlightening to see how event rides can affect rural communities and can sometimes create long-term positive changes.

On a personal note, we left Portland yesterday and took the Amtrak bus to Albany, OR. We are currently in Corvallis, OR staying with Laura’s mom for a few days while she heals. It looks like we will be in Oregon a while longer, doing short trips involving buses, trains and bikes (thank goodness for the Bromptons!). We’ve found that for a bike tourer in Oregon, there are many transit options to connect with a bicycle. We’re a little sad that we won’t be setting off across the country just yet, but we’re doing our best to turn the lemon into lemonade. Staying in Oregon gives us a chance to really explore deeper into what organizations are making the chances to make Oregon more bicycle friendly and explore some of the rural communities that have embraced cycling.

Part of the irony of our trip was when we first decided to do a tour combining bicycle and trains, the trains were an ancillary part of the experience, meant to augment and extend our bicycling range. Since Laura’s accident, trains and transit have taken a more central role in how we’re getting around. Likewise, having chosen the Brompton and the ease with which you can take it on trains, buses and cars has become key to our mobility. I hesitate to reduce what happened to a simple platitude like “all things happen for a reason,” but it has given us more perspective as to the importance of transit and bicycles.

Rough Cut: Tara Corbin – Rural Communities and Bicycles

Today we had the great pleasure of talking with some of the folks at CycleOregon, one of the premiere multi-day tours through Oregon. While CycleOregon is a bicycle event, guiding 2000+ riders through various parts of Oregon, it is also so much more. In this Rough Cut, Tara talks about how CycleOregon has helped communities that have hosted them and how the event is making rural towns more accepting of bicycles.

If you’ve enjoyed this video and want us to continue our project of interviewing bicycle and transit advocates and exploring the issues around bicycles and their economic impact, please consider supporting our project.

The Varsity League

“Are you ready for more adventure?” Russ asked me, as we rolled down a quiet road on our way back from Corvallis last week. “What are you looking forward to?”

This has become a common exchange between us over the past few weeks, as we consolidate our belongings again and prepare to head back out on the road. In part, we’re having this conversation to make sure that we’re still in line with the one and only parameter of our travels – to keep going as long as it’s fun. Two years ago, we decided that we didn’t want to impose any artificial time constraints; we wanted to get everything that we possibly could out of this opportunity, and be able to cry uncle at any time. So, are we still having fun, do we still want to do this? Yes.

We’ve also been having this conversation because our preparations for this second trip are decidedly lacking in the same giddiness and exuberance that we experienced two years ago. We aren’t bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, hyper about every little detail. Rather, our decisions are much more serious and conscious. This lack of bubbly excitement is easy to mistake for a lack of interest, which leads us to wondering… How can we want to do this trip, but not feel ridiculously over-the-moon?

The answer lies in the fact that this is our second trip. We’ve moved up into the varsity leagues. We know exactly what we’re getting ourselves into, and what we’re leaving behind. As curious and intrigued as we are about what we’ll find on this next trip, there isn’t the same sort of giant mystery that was waiting for us two years ago. It makes this upcoming journey feel much more ‘adult’ – all of the cards are out on the table, and we’re still choosing to do this.

It’s an interesting experience to stand at the edge of a great adventure and know that your excitement lies in the subtleties, instead of an overarching exhilaration for everything.

Lest you start thinking that I have some sort of bad attitude about this next trip, know that I’m actually quite enjoying not being the giddy teenager. I like feeling like I’m making a well-thought-out choice to walk toward something new, instead of running away. I like this place of knowing that I could truly choose anything at this moment, and I choose to travel on my bicycle. I like that I’m not as drawn to the sparkly newness, and have the perspective to appreciate the small things. I like that we’re on the other side of the learning curve and can use our energy for bigger projects than learning how to hang food or pick a route or choose a good stealth camping spot.

So just what are we looking forward on this next trip?

Creating Compelling Content. We’ve found our voices, we’ve learned what we’re realistically able to create while we travel – now we get to take it further and build on what we’ve started. Writing, video, headbadges – we’re looking forward to creating a work routine in the midst of our travels that will enable us to follow through on all those projects we hoped to do the first time out.

Food. By the end of our last trip, I was feeling ill from not eating well, or even consistently. As I get ready to give up our “real” kitchen, I’m trying to not be nervous about the roller-coaster of eating while traveling. There’s a collective belief that you just can’t eat well while traveling, and it’s probably so well-known because it’s so easy for it be true. But I’d really like to prove it wrong, and find a way to eat healthfully and consistently, even as everything else is in flux.

Fishing. Russ has cast his line in all sorts of bodies of water where you would never expect a fly fisherman. Finally, we are headed through the north, and all those Mecca-like trout streams in Montana.

People. As always, our biggest excitement lies in the simplicity of meeting new people from all walks of life – having conversations about things we’ve never really thought about and finding friends in far-flung places.

If you’re excited for our Big Adventure. Small Wheels. trip and support our goal to invigorate bike and train travel, consider making a donation to allow us to go further and create inspiring videos along the way.

More videos!

If you’re a fan on our Facebook Page or follow us on Twitter, you’ve probably seen these videos already. We’re working hard to make some great new content for our next adventure. Not all of it gets posted right away on the website, so if you want to see things hot off the presses, join the Facebook Page. Check out our latest videos!

Packing Up. Again.
In this video, we go through the strange ritual of putting things in boxes for a second time. It gets easier in some ways, but harder in others.

Visiting Corvallis with Bromptons and the Amtrak Bus
In this video, we take a trip to Corvallis, Laura’s hometown, to do a presentation. It is a small trip down memory lane for her and a small multi-modal adventure with the Bromptons and the Amtrak bus.

If you’re excited for our Big Adventure. Small Wheels. trip and support our goal to invigorate bike and train travel, consider making a donation to allow us to go further and create inspiring videos along the way.

6 More Days!

Yesterday was an emotional day for us. Laura’s family came by to see us one last time before we take off on our next trip (this Sunday!). It was also the day our boxes of stuff went away. Clothes, papers, some of my camera gear, Laura’s jewelry, our old panniers, my trusty orange laptop and, of course, our Surly Long Haul Truckers from our previous trip.

We know things are just things, but I’ll admit I was sad to see some of it go. Not because I was attached to any particular possession, but because they were touchstones of our last trip and our stay in Portland. There is no real value in a plastic Mardis Gras rubber ducky, but when I see it I think of eating crawfish from a bucket with our hosts in Shreveport, Louisiana. These things represent a past that we’re shedding off in order to move toward the unknown future. There is something symbolic, atleast for me, about putting things in boxes to be shelved away. There’s such a strange finality to it.

Stranger still is that we’ve done this before two years ago. The packing, sorting and boxing of our little lives. It was easier this time around, but it is still met with a bit of trepidation. As we look around, our apartment is beginning to feel less like a home and more just a place to just go to sleep. The shift is subtle but irreversible. Home is never a collection of kitchen appliances and furniture, it is your family and your friends that you surround yourself with. We’ve been fortunate to meet good people while in Portland who have helped us and who have welcomed us. They’ve made this wet Pacific Northwest city home for us in the few months we’ve stayed here.

The road’s siren song calls again, but this time the tune is quite different. We’re a little older, a little wiser perhaps about long term travel. We know what travel promises, and which promises it can keep. But we also know life on the road is about surprises and serendipity and we are curious about what lies around the next bend of the road.

One Last Push

We have six more days in Portland. Six more days to see our friends. Six more days to prepare and ready ourselves before pedaling forth once again. We also only have 6 more days in our IndieGoGo fundraising campaign to reach our goal! We are about a third of the way there but still have quite a bit to go.

We want to thank everyone that has so generously donated already and who has helped spread the word.

Our mission is simple – to share our vision of traveling by bike and train across the United States, through words, photos and film. We want to create a tangible vision through our writing and videos so that rail and bike advocates can see what we see. No one, to our knowledge, has really explored the possibilities of bike and train travel and what it can do for rural economies near train lines or what it could mean for new forms of adventure tourism.

Your donations will assist us with the cost of food and train tickets. We reached out to Amtrak many months ago to be a partner, but they chose not to join us. Despite that, we believe strongly in the possibilities of bike and train travel. I think our vision will be made strikingly relevant this spring and summer, as the price of gas will put the crimp on the American automobile road trip and airline travel. People will look for new ways to travel and they will look to the train. As train use gets more impacted, we feel that it may get harder and harder to bring bicycles on board. We want to inspire cyclists across the country to share our vision of travel by bike and train and get them involved now with the conversation about trains and our transportation future!

If you have enjoyed our stories, photos and videos from the road over the last two years, or if you want to assist us with our new mission of sharing our vision of bikes and trains across the country, consider donating to our fundraiser. It closes in six days, so spread the word!

Donate to our PathLessPedaled – IndieGoGo Fundraiser campaign.

Smaller than Small?

Packing for the next tour has meant a lot of scrutinizing of all of our gear. The Bromptons are great and handle a load well, but they do impose a limit on how much you can (or, rather, should) carry. After riding out to the coast on our recent shake-down trip, I had two thoughts… First, I am impressed that we were able to whittle down our gear enough so that it fit in just the front Touring bag and a Carradice saddle bag… Second, I am still packing way too much stuff.

Yes, the irony of this statement is obvious to me. My entire life has been shrunk down to just two small bags, and yet it is still too much, too big, too heavy.

On our last trip, I was happy to have all sorts of miscellaneous little luxuries… a radio, an extra pair of pants, a frisbee, paperback books, etc. On this next trip, though, luxuries just seem ridiculous. My luxury for this trip is my Brompton, and the fact that I really get to do nothing but ride it around through stunning scenery. My luxury will be the ability to take everything off the bike and carry it all onto a train, without killing my arms and without having to make multiple trips. My luxury will be the ease with which I can pedal across the country, because I won’t have an enormous amount of weight holding me back.

So it’s back to the drawing board, back to scrutinizing everything. I will continue to shave off extra weight and bulk. And I will enjoy every moment of the strict culling of stuff, because I have come to realize how little I truly need to be happy on the road. Good food, a sweater that keeps me warm, laughter, the exhilaration of soaring past waterfalls and elk… these are my luxuries now, and they are so much more enjoyable than a bag of miscellaneous things.

If you’re excited for our Big Adventure. Small Wheels. trip and support our goal to invigorate bike and train travel, consider making a donation to allow us to go further and create inspiring videos along the way.

VIDEO: Small Wheels to the Coast

Still tired from our short three day tour, but I stayed up to cut a little video montage of our trip. You can see our route on Bikely.com. It was our first fully loaded tour with the Bromptons with everything we would carry for 6 months. It was a great shakedown ride for the bike. The Bromptons handled beautifully despite a lot of climbing. We’re still refining our packing and we’ll do a more detailed post about the trip soon. For now, enjoy the video!

Follow the Pelotini :)

We’re doing a three day tour from Portland to the Oregon coast with our friends Brian and Cynthia, who are in town from Santa Monica. They brought their Dahons, and we’re riding our Bromptons, so it will be quite a sight to see. We’ve since named ourselves Team Pelotini (small peloton)! We’re packing everything that we’re bringing for our next big tour, so it will be a full dress rehearsal. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the folding bike craziness.

Getting Ready… Where Should We Go?

Two years ago, we were weeding through piles of dishes, shelves full of books, closets full of forgotten knick-knacks. We were waiting for the official announcement of my layoff and trying to figure out how to actually make the leap to full-time travel. We were preparing ourselves to say goodbye to our friends, to carry our entire lives on our bikes, to make an enormous and unknown leap. Suffice it to say, preparing for this next trip is a completely different experience.

After rambling across the country for 15 months, we feel like we’ve become hardened travelers. The idea of heading back out into nothingness isn’t something we need to steel ourselves against, and the details of life on the road aren’t overwhelming like they were two years ago. Instead of figuring out health insurance or a home for our couch, we can focus on how to structure our work flow on the road so that we can actually accomplish everything we want to do. We feel like we’re able to be much more pro-active in our plans for this next trip, and think about the bigger picture.

View Big Adventure Small Wheels in a larger map

Besides the work we’re doing to combine trains and bikes, we also want to route our journey through lots of unique places. Which is where you come in… On May 15, we leave Portland. Aside from plans to be in Missoula, Montana around the first of June, we have very little of our route planned. So we’re asking for your suggestions. Do you know of some funky little places we should explore or interesting people we should interview? Do you have a favorite burger joint or coffee shop? Send them our way!

Sometimes the Cause Finds You

When we first set off on the road almost 2 years ago, we did so for all the normal reasons. We wanted to lose and find ourselves, discover meaning, simplify, test ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. We also had a strong desire to get away from it all. We desired nothing more than to bolt outside into the big wide world like a 3rd grader to recess.

We were seeking the bicycle version of escaping to the Bahamas – sitting in a folding canvas beach chair and drinking little Coronas out of a steel bucket filled with ice. There were no folding chairs and Coronitas (much to our dismay), but we did manage to reach escape velocity and break free from the gravity of cubicle land and florescent lighting and it was all perfect. Almost.

We are social creatures. The cruel irony of travel is that, even though you meet new people all the time, at the end of the day, when you are in the stillness of your tent, you are reminded that it is a largely solitary act. It is usually then that you realize that you have deliberately uprooted yourself from your tribe. Of course, everything is just dandy at first. During those early months of a trip, you are in a state of constant amazement and distraction. Colors are more vibrant on the road than at home, and the mundane is elevated to the poetic. It is this honeymoon period of travel that most people visualize when they think of unplugging and running away.

It sounds ungrateful to admit this, but over time those colors on the road dull just a little. That eccentric chatterbox at your campsite who, at the beginning of your trip, you would have gladly entertained and filed mentally as a “colorful character,” just becomes another obstacle in your way to sleep, quiet and privacy. The small sad dusty towns that once took on emblematic meaning as the State of America are revealed as just small sad dusty towns. Even the most profoundly beautiful landscape begins to cloy after pedaling through it, uphill, for days.

In our previous lives, before PathLessPedaled.com, both Laura and I were advocates by nature. Laura worked at several non-profits that did good work around the world. I was heavily involved in bike advocacy in Long Beach. Helping others and making some sort of positive change in our communities was a large part of our identities. We gave that up to go bike touring. You would think that the promise of constant TravelVacationFunTime! would make it easy to forget about the frustrations of advocacy. But amazingly, it’s not.

What we’ve discovered is that, not only are we social creatures, but we also really like to build things. Perhaps this explains the near universal popularity of Legos and the existence of that big wall in China. Beyond just physical structures we can see from space, we also build our careful circles of friends, communities, and institutions that reflect our values. Sadly, when you are on the road all the time, one does not bring along Legos, literal or otherwise.

When we started to dream up our next trip, we knew we wanted to do it on Bromptons and we knew we wanted to do it on trains. Although excited about it, I think for both of us, to go out again for just TravelVacationFunTime! rang a little hollow this time around. We would have no doubt enjoyed it, but it would have been the enjoyment you’d get out of eating that second piece of chocolate cake. A little less enjoyable than the first and filled with empty calories.

We have enjoyed being sailors, moving nimbly where the wind would blow us, but we also missed being builders – creating something meaningful that was larger than ourselves. So this is how we now find ourselves in the strange predicament of wanting to ride for something.

Our first time around was largely for us, but even then there was an innate calling to reach out. After a few months of travel, we decided to try giving presentations. If for nothing else, it gave us another internal challenge and fulfilled that part of our natures that liked doing good. Surprisingly, we found that we really enjoyed it. There was a great joy in answering someone’s question about bike touring in person, or getting an email from someone weeks after a presentation telling us that they were so moved about our talk that they went on an S24O themselves. For us, it felt as if we weren’t just moving through the landscape, but, in our own small way, making it a little bit better as we passed.

Our advocacy goal, the cause that found us and won’t let go is to “redefine the All-American road trip.” To inspire others to not only travel their country by bike, but also to travel by train, which we feel is important in our transportation future. The combination of the bike and train, like one of our readers so eloquently put it, is the “peanut butter and chocolate of transportation.”

But aren’t there already plenty of bike advocates and train advocates? Yes, there are oodles of them. The problem isn’t the lack of bike and train advocates, it is that there doesn’t yet seem to be a shared vision between the two. Bikes and trains seem to be an either/or proposition. Our goal, as we see it, is to help create that shared vision. To show how they could work seamlessly together in modern life and make it look like something other people would want to do. The tangible product of the vision will be our writings, our photographs, our presentations and the videos we will produce. Advocacy through adventure.

So that, Dear Readers, is the raison d’etre of this next trip. Sometimes you ride just because and sometimes you ride for a cause. This time around, we find ourselves inexplicably drawn to the latter. We hope you continue to read and follow our journey. If you feel like it is worthwhile, please help us with our fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo. If you are supportive, but can’t assist financially, you can help us out by spreading the word or emailing us and telling us what you think.