California Dreaming: Revenge on Refugio Road

You know it will be an interesting ride when the guy at the local bike shop tells you that you probably shouldn’t try riding up the road with anything less than a mountain bike. When you tell him that you’re planning to ride it with some touring bikes, he shakes his head as if to say, “it’s your funeral” and goes back to changing the brake cable on the bike in the stand.

Our first encounter with Refugio at 2008. Albatross bars, CETMA rack and no idea what we were in for.

For almost as long as we’ve been touring, Refugio has stood out in our minds as one of the toughest rides we ever did. We first “rode” it almost five years ago early in our touring careers. It was recommended to us by a friend as a scenic way to get from Solvang to the coast. There is of course a little matter of a mountain range in the way.

Refugio before the unpaved climb is actually quite pleasant with rolling hills.

You connect to Refugio a few miles out of Solvang off the 246. When you first encounter it, the road is downright pleasant. You pass a pastoral landscape of vineyards, farmland and undulating green hills. You even cross a small creek at one point at a peaceful and shaded bridge. Its not unlike riding through a Wordsworth poem. But you can never get too comfortable, because you know in the back of your mind the idyllic landscape will transform into a rocky grueling ascent. So, enjoy it while it lasts. The moment of truth is unmistakable. A foreboding concrete barricade and a bent Road Closed sign riddled with bullet holes is the demarcation between a pleasant Sunday road ride to the start of something completely different – dirt, gravel and ruts. 23mm tires need not apply, nor those that are afraid of having to push their bike for stretches.

The bullet riddled Road Closed sign in 2008.

The same Road Closed sign 5 years later. This time we brought some friends with us.

Five years ago, this road owned us. It was the middle of summer, highs were in the 90s, the dirt and rock surface hadn’t seen a drop of rain in weeks. Loose mini boulders the size of a baby’s head were all over the place. I gave it my best effort that first mile but after I kept slipping and bouncing off my line I resorted to pushing, which with the steep grade and uneven surfaces wasn’t any easier. This is the road that made me quit clipless pedals becauuse I couldn’t clip in fast enough on the rough and steep terrain. I remember hiking the bike about 70% of the time and Laura remembers distinctly the buzzards circling overhead and wondering how curious it was to spend her birthday pushing a bike up a mountain in sweltering heat. The only consolation was that the actual climbing was only 3 miles long and it had to end at some point. I can remember the feeling of being absolutely wrecked by the time we reached the top, cursing our friend who had recommended the road and vowing never to take his navigational advice ever again.

Laura pushing her bike on her birthday, wondering how she got talked into this : )

Our friend Cynthia and her fully loaded Big Dummy, wondering the same.

Flash forward a few years and a few thousand miles and we find ourselves once again at the bottom of Refugio. This time, conditions are in our favor. The weather is hovering at about 70 degrees and by the looks of the first half mile, the winter rains have helped to fill in the loose rocks with dirt.

Still a tough climb, but we did more riding this time around and actually enjoyed it.

That’s not to say its a walk in the park. Refugio averages 11%, meaning several pitches are easily 15% or higher. We shift down into our lowest gear, try to find our Zen centers and pedal upwards. And yet something remarkable happens during the ride, it doesn’t feel quite as impossibly hard as we had remembered it. Yes, we are moving slow, but we are moving without having to get off the bike and push. Our optimism is cautious because every turn reveals some other nasty steep gravel challenge, but each time we are able to pedal through. At about 2.5 miles into the climb, we know we are going to make it. The road keeps going upward, but it is just a formality. We’ve become stronger riders not just physically but mentally. We’ve climbed longer and higher roads with heavier bikes and those experiences have given us perspective. When we reach the top we celebrate with some fresh oranges.

Demonstrating the width of this so-called road.

Tough but rideable this time around.

When our friends who we were touring with reach the summit, we descend together. The sun is setting and Refugio, a road that has haunted us for years has never looked more beautiful than it does now. The air is startlingly crisp and we can see far out towards the Channel Islands which are bathed in warm light. That first memory of us dragging our bikes up the dirt hill years ago is overtaken with a new one of us soaring down a golden valley in the cool evening, laughing at the joy of it all and in the knowledge that some things are better the second time around.

All smiles at the summit.

A rare clear day on the coast.

Savoring the hard earned descent to the water.

Although the coastal side is paved it is a screamer of a downhill. We all had to stop a few times to let our disc brakes cool!

Happy we survived the first time.

Just plain happy this time.

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new Brompton Touring Book, or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing, or buying your gear through our Amazon store.)

California Dreaming: An Undiscovered Cycling Playground

As we rounded the top of the climb on See Canyon Road and inhaled the spectacular views of the hills and valleys surrounding San Luis Obispo, it became clear that we had no idea how good we had it when we lived down here.

Six years ago, we cut our teeth on cycle touring in the San Luis Obispo area. A short bus/train ride out of Long Beach and we were on open country roads, chatting with the cows, picnicking under the oak trees. We knew it was lovely, but we didn’t have anything to compare it to. Now, after all of our travels, we have been honestly surprised by the incredible cycling that’s tucked away in the Central California hills. The riding here isn’t just good, it’s a cyclist playground – and you should get here before the tourism folks realize that they’re sitting on a gold mine.

Our intention in rambling through Central California was three-fold: to see the sun again (it’s been miserably grey in Oregon), to see how the riding stacks up to our memories (it’s better), and to swap notes about what it takes for a ‘great place for cycling’ to become a cycling destination (and what that means for small communities nation-wide). The Central California area (Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Solvang, and surrounding communities) is quietly home to some of the most challenging and rewarding cycling, but the only people who really know it are the locals and the teams who train here. So, we’re going to let the cat out of the bag…

When you land in Paso Robles with a bicycle, your choices are wide and varied. Do you ramble along the rolling hills to the east, winding past the wineries on Linne Road, or do you tackle the steeper climbs to the west, conquering the steep grades on Peachy Canyon Road. For us, the answer was yes and yes. And we were rewarded with swooping curves, oak- and vineyard-lined hillsides, wine tasting, and very few cars.

Down in San Luis Obispo, we were tipped off to two very different routes to nearby Avila Beach, which we pieced together into a loop. We followed the mild-mannered Bob Jones off-road path to the beach, stopping along the waterfront for lunch and wine tasting at Peloton Cellars. We returned via See Canyon/Prefumo Canyon Roads, which included a 1-mile-long stretch of gravel, roaming cows, that pleasant sound of nothing-but-your-wheels-whirring-beneath-you, and a surprisingly steep climb that resulted in quite possibly the most rewarding summit ever.

From SLO, we wound through grassy hills and quiet canyons into Morro Bay and Pismo Beach. We navigated our way onto as many small roads as we could find, rambling around the hills behind Solvang and Buellton (where we passed dozens of training cyclists); and we returned to several of the routes we rode years ago, piecing together a sort of ‘greatest hits’ tour. (Maps of SLO-Morro Bay, Morro Bay-Ventura.)

What we discovered is an area ripe for bicycle tourism. Just a few miles east of the well-known Pacific Coast route, we found the kind of riding that made us fall in love with cycling in the first place. For folks in LA and the Bay Area who are looking for a great cycling vacation, Central California is easy to reach via Amtrak (San Luis Obispo is a baggage stop for folks traveling south with a boxed bike, and folks traveling north can take advantage of the new bicycle cars on the Surfliner). For folks who are currently buried under snow and grey clouds, winter is a perfect time to cycle around Central California, because the temps are mild and the prices are low. And the cherry on top is the fact that the burgeoning wine industry has brought good food, lots of tasting rooms, and an increase in hotels.

It’s only been a few days since we dropped out of the region and we’re already dreaming about going back…

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new Brompton Touring Book, or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing, or buying your gear through our Amazon store.)

California Bound!

Now that the holidays are winding down, we’re looking forward to our first bike trip of the new year and are headed down to California! While not extraordinarily exotic, it does promise some desperately needed sun. Our plan is to take Amtrak Coast Starlight down from Portland to Paso Robles, spend a night or two there, then work our way to San Luis Obispo and explore the town. From SLO, we’ll ride down south as far as Ventura (maybe a side trip into Ojai), then hop Amtrak into Los Angeles to visit family and friends. Then using the Amtrak Surfliner, go down to San Diego where we’ll begin the desert portion of our trip, riding through Julian to Anza Borrego, Salton Sea then turn North towards Palm Springs.

That’s the rough plan anyway. Things always change.

Aside from putting some real loaded miles on our Vayas, one goal is to travel with a lens focused on bicycle tourism to see what works and what doesn’t. So we need your help. If you’ve got any tips on communities, advocacy groups or businesses (restaurants, lodging,etc.,) that are bike friendly and actively reaching out to cyclists let us know. We’d love to interview them and put a few more arrows in the quiver for when we go to DC to speak at the National Bike Summit!

One goal for 2013 is to advocate for bicycle travel in some big ways. We feel that we’ve done a pretty good job at getting individuals excited about hopping on their bikes and exploring. The next step, is to get communities and cities excited about bicycle tourism and travel. We occupy an interesting space, a nexus between adventure and advocacy and we plan to go gangbusters on the advocacy in the coming year.

We need your help with suggestions of people to talk to and some places to stay along the way. Or, if you’d like for us to speak at your community while we travel, let us know! Or if you just want to meet up and grab a beer. You can email us or send us a message via our contact page.

This trip, like our previous trips, is paid for out of our own pockets with funds from our ebook, shirt, headbadge sales and articles and photos we sell along the way. It sounds a lot more glamorous than the reality of the situation, believe me, but we feel strongly about the future of bike travel and are trying our best to help spread the word. So if you can help in any way with a nights stay, let us know.

California, here we come!

An Accidental Documentary

I’ll be honest. After the first exhausting day of riding and filming CycleOregon, I didn’t think I would make it through the week alive. We had brought a week’s supply of 5 Hour Energy and it wasn’t looking like it would be enough.

A week before we even made it to the start line, Laura was making phone calls, setting up interviews with local proponents and juggling our schedule so we could hit all the small communities by rented mini van before the event. I was busy testing out video gear, trying to reduce things to the bare functional minimal I would need since I would be carrying everything by bike. In three days we drove the entire route, stopped at all the communities, shot some B-roll, interviewed the local proponents and then circled back to the beginning.

THEN, the actual ride started. It was our first CycleOregon so we had to get over the initial shock of the sheer enormity of the ride and get to work. It was also proving to be one of the toughest CycleOregon routes in the history of the ride with 35,000 feet of climbing over the week.

Our daily schedule consisted of getting up at 5:30am while it was dark and literally freezing outside. We would quickly take down our tent, shove things in our duffle bags and carry them to the luggage drop. Then it was a mad rush to shove hot breakfast foods down the gullet so we could shoot B-roll of people rolling out of camp. We’d ride hard everyday, trying to stay in the middle of the pack, knowing that by the end of the day we would be coming in near the back because of all our filming stops.

During lunch breaks and rest stops we’d shovel more food, barely taking a break before we were up and walking around trying to find willing cyclists and volunteers to interview. Then, more B-roll. We’d usually end up spending an hour at stops, longer than we usually would but we had to get footage.

Victory at the finish line everyday was sweet but short lived. I’d stop to film the volunteers and riders coming in, while Laura went to luggage drop to find our bags with the tent. We’d quickly set up camp, stand in line at the shower, shoot more B-roll, eat dinner, shoot more B-roll, then go to sleep exhausted only to wake up at 5:30am to repeat the whole process.

During the first few days of the ride, people thought we were nuts. Heck, I thought we were nuts. People would pedal by on their lightweight bikes and ask us about the “Film Crew” sign on our bikes. We’d explain what we were doing and ask if they wanted to join. We could always use more interns and grips to carry some camera gear. Surprisingly, there were no takers. By the end of the week, people had caught on and would cheer “Film Crew!” as they flew by us going up the hill. Though we did have one sweet day of revenge on the last day. It was flat and fast and we were feeling good and we hammered along at 25mph with camera gear and all : )

But as I’m learning, filming in someways is the easy part. It’s been about three months since we rode CycleOregon and nearly everyday I’ve been chipping away at editing the 18 hours of footage. It was a monumental task, our first video project of this length. When Jerry Norquist from CycleOregon first asked us to ride and film the event, we were hesitant. It’s challenging enough to just ride the event, much less film it at the same time. But in retrospect, we are glad we said yes because it has been one of the toughest and most fulfilling projects we’ve taken on.

So now we are done and the finished product is online. We learned a lot on the ride and after. When we first set out, I didn’t think it would be a 28 minute documentary, but that is what is has become. I’m proud of it and feel lucky to have been part of CycleOregon’s 25th anniversary ride and help tell their story. I also feel privileged to have spent time with the proponents from the small communities and to be able to share their voices. So sit back, grab a beer and some popcorn and enjoy.

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new Brompton Touring Book, or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing, or buying your gear through our Amazon store.)

Ride Report: 2012 Verboort Populaire

I’ve been interested in the odd bicycle niche of randonneuring for quite a while. It’s a ride but not a race. You’re self-supported but not exactly touring. You wear a lot of wool and use lots of French sounding words. The irony of course is that we’ve been occupied the last few years with our fully loaded touring so I didn’t have the opportunity to give it a try. The Verboort Populaire (aka Verboort Sausage Ride) is a 100k ride and is an entry level randonneur ride that allows the bike-curious to see what it is about. While short by randonneur standards (where rides typically begin at 200k all the way up to 1200k in varying degrees of masochism) it does give you a sense of what the whole thing is about.

We woke up painfully early at 5:30am, packed our bikes, ate breakfast and poured as much hot coffee down our throats before we had to run out the door to catch the MAX out to Hillsboro. While on the train, we saw other cyclists board the train for the ride. An hour later at the end of the line, we detrained and pedaled 7 miles to Visitation Church in Verboort, OR at the start of the ride. The Verboort Populaire takes place during the locally famous Verboort Suasage and Kraut Dinner which we’ve been told is the community’s largest fundraiser.

At the start we pay $5 each ($2 for insurance and $3 towards the fundraiser) and get our cue sheet and brevet card in a Ziplock baggie. During the ride there are control points where you have to get a signature, receipt or some other form of proof that you were at a certain place at a certain time. It adds a fun scavenger hunt aspect to what otherwise would be just a long ride through the countryside. After some announcements, we are off.

To finish within the allotted time, we had to keep an overall average of 10 miles per hour including stops. These sorts of rides are really about managing time and trying not to linger too long at stops. This means eating, drinking and regulating your clothing without stopping. The terrain, once we got out of the burbs was pretty nice. Mostly quiet roads with slow undulating hills. The highlight was the first and only significant climb on Timber road. We leave SR6 and slowly wind ourselves up through the trees, fog and mist. The traffic was nearly non-existent and the only sound you heard was your tires on wet road and your breathing. It felt very Rapha-esque. All that it was missing was grimacing faces and bold typography ; )

The turn around point was Vernonia. We rolled into the Black Bear Cafe and saw about a dozen other bikes already there. Everybody was chowing down and drinking coffee for the return. Laura and I split a hamburger and fries which was actually pretty spectacular. We’ll have to return again to explore the town some more. After a relatively quick lunch we are on the bikes again to keep momentum and prevent our legs from stiffening up too much.

From here back is mostly gravy. We hop on to the Banks-Vernonia trail and ride the entire length. The first half is a false flat until you summit then it is a pretty cruisy downhill to a flat stretch to the end. There were leaves everywhere on the trail and made for a slippy surface if you braked too hard. At the end of the trail we are on country roads for most of the way back to Verboort.

We rode 68 miles and came in under 5 hours and had the appetite to prove it. After handing our brevet cards over we made our way to the Bingo tent that was selling sausages on a stick or on a roll. After devouring a sausage and bun in less than two minutes we were in line for more. The second one might have been a bit overboard especially with all the grease, but when you are blinded with hunger good sense goes out the window. Before our legs get too comfortable we ride the 7 miles back to the MAX stop in Hillsboro and more or less collapse on the train for the hour long ride back into Portland (or more speficially, Velo-Cult for post-ride beers).

For our first actual official randonnuering ride we had a lot of fun. There were other newbies that we chatted with as well as some more seasoned riders that offered advice. We filtered between a few groups of people and enjoyed the social aspect of riding and eating together. It didn’t have the same hammerhead mentality as some century rides, but it also wasn’t as lackadaisical as touring. For tourists that want to ride a little faster and longer it was a good fit for us. While I don’t see myself doing 400k and 600k events anytime soon (maybe a few more 100ks and a 200k), it was a fun way to finally see what this was all about. It also broadened our riding experience a bit. We’ve been a little tired of the same in-town Portland loops we’ve been doing, so it was good to ride some new roads and get outside the bubble. For anyone considering the Verboort Populaire, we highly recommend it. The route was good, the people friendly and the sausages at the end of the ride were a good reward.

Riding Under the Harvest Moon

The plan was to meet up with our friend Howard on the Springwater Trail after he got off work. We loaded our bikes and rode down to the trail just as the sun was setting. It was just the right time of day when everything was bathed in the sort of gilded light that makes you sigh constantly at how beautiful things look. The evening was unseasonably warm and it was nice to ride on the thinning trail that was usually croweded with people. We got rolling about 7pm and after a few miles down the trail the sky had gone through its various hues and had settled into darkness.

For all our years of touring, we’ve done very little night riding. What struck us immediately was how much further distances felt in the dark. We have ridden that stretch of the Springwater several times and for some reason it never seems as long during the day. But at night, with the small patch of vision provided by our lights, it seemed to go on forever. We stopped momentarily near Powell Butte to eat some snacks when we heard a chorus of coyotes not far from the trail. The howling and the nearly full moon seemed fitting.

It was with some relief to get off the Springwater at night, which was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic and be on actual country roads. We noticed houses and a little cafe that we usually missed when riding through the area during the day. But at night, with their porch lamps shining it we a bit surprising to see how many people lived in this stretch of countryside. We passed one hopping little cafe on Dodge Park road with some people hanging out outside by their truck. Of course, as we roll by someone spots us and shouts out a cheery “Hey, Lance!” I smile and for a second contemplate responding with “Hey, Bubba!” but think the better of it and pedal on.

We take Dodge Park road and turn on Lusted which has a slight incline to camp. Nothing major, but enough to keep your legs honest. When we reach a part of the road where the groomed inhabited meadows fall away and we are faced with tall brooding trees once again, we know we are near to camp. It also means the start of our final descent to river level. Laura has the weakest lights of the three of us, so we plan to descend gingerly so she can see by the pool of our lights.

We begin our descent into the darkness and are only vaguely aware of anything else but the striped line of the road, that we try to keep centered in our patches of light. My headlight is mounted to my left fork and it is a strange and slightly unnerving sensation when the road twists to the right where I have no visibility. I make a mental note to look for a helmet mounted light if we plan to do more night touring. It’s a fairly long descent (atleast it feels long at night) with lots of twist and a few hairpin turns. There are few straight stretches but when there are, I try to look up and see around me. The full moon peeks through the tall black rushing trees. Somewhere below we begin to hear the unmistakeable sound of running water.

The end of the descent is punctuated with a spectacular exit out of the trees. Suddenly you are on a bridge and the forest opens up and on either side of you is a wide and glorious river in different shades of grey and dark blues in the night. I drag the brake to momentarily take it all in.

As luck would have it, we get into camp just in time. It is a little after 9pm. At 9:30, the camphost calls it a night and starts their final rounds of the park before shutting the gate. We have our choice of the campground and pick a spot quickly and get to work setting up camp. Laura puts up the tent and I work on getting the fire started. I’ve brought our camp knife and chop up lots of bits of kindling. I use an Esbit cube as a fire starter and soon we have fire.

Now we could finally relax. We each brought burritos for dinner from a foodcart and try to warm them by the fire. We packed light and brought no cooking gear, except for a kettle and a folding Esbit stove for coffee (we are not completely Spartan). We talk around the fire and take everything in. The tall trees around us hide the moon but its light works it way to the forest bottom and gives everything a bluish glow. Our small fire burns for a surprisingly long time before we call it a night.

The next morning, I get up at 7am and try my hand at some fishing. The water is at late summer levels before any of the winter rains so it is noticeably low. What were rapids a few months ago are just wade-able trickles. With no luck, I go back to camp and have some coffee and breakfast. Laura gathers some twigs and the rest of our wood to make a small morning fire. I decided to tackle the water one more time before heading out and switch tactics. Instead of fishing the riffles, I try out the slower deep water rigging up two weighted nymphs I cast upstream and drift the flies subsurface hopefully near the bottom. It’s tricky to fish this way since the takes are harder to feel. After about a half hour I’m ready to call it a day since we have to take off by 9am. I’m doing a slow retrieve over some rocks and see a flash of silver and the familiar tug of a fish on the line. I can tell by the weight on the line it is no monster, but the little guy has some fight. It’s a beautiful six inch rainbow. The other people fishing across the river momentarily look up and give the nod. I let it go and head back to camp to pack up.

We have to be back in Portland at a certain time, so it is not a leisurely ride going back either. The road that we gingerly descended in the dark, we attack with gusto in the morning. We make short work of the two climbs and before we know it we are back on the Springwater heading into town. We stop at a foodcart just off the trail and inhale some enormous cheeseburgers in record time. The trail in full daylight doesn’t seem as long or as mysterious; it is an altogether different place when the sun is out. The magic of riding under the full moon is gone, but not forgotten. We are a little sad that we won’t be able to camp at Dodge Park for another year, but excited at the possibilities of other places night rides could take us.

Our Cycle Oregon 2012

After 70 long miles, we rounded the final corner into the tiny town of Silver Lake, wrapping up our first day of riding on Cycle Oregon, and I nearly burst into tears. Cycle Oregon riders, volunteers, and staff outnumbered residents by twelve-to-one – but it didn’t stop the town from embracing us all. The high school cheerleaders were jumping up and down and cheering for us on the corner, the local pastor was standing in the hot sun to high-five riders and welcome us to town, and a street full of residents and volunteers clapped and cheered and handed out chocolate milk. In that moment, and countless times throughout the rest of the week, I was humbled and amazed by the kindness and generosity of community members, and reminded that people are simply incredible.

One of the Cycle Oregon board members told us that one of the event’s greatest successes is the way it connects people. City folk and rural residents, cyclists and ranchers – we all come together for an intense moment and, in the words of the native welcome song shared with us in Bly, “now that we’ve met, we both have changed.”

We joined Cycle Oregon this year, the 25th anniversary, to capture the experience on film. What does it mean to the small communities that host Cycle Oregon? Why do people give up a week’s vacation to volunteer for the event? What is the magic of this ride that is so very much more than just a bike ride?

For me, it could all be summed up in that one moment of riding into Silver Lake, and feeling the energy and optimism. Or in talking to volunteers in Fort Klamath, who told us that funds raised from Cycle Oregon will allow them to insulate their small church (built circa 1920), which they currently have to start heating on Saturday in order for it to be warm enough for Sunday services during the winter.

Ever since we learned about Cycle Oregon, we have been impressed by the rural economic development component of its mission to transform individuals and communities through cycling. But simply hearing, third-hand, about the impact on small-town Oregon does not do it justice. The experience of being a part of the impact is overwhelming and breath-taking.

Without a doubt, Cycle Oregon was one of the most physically-demanding trips. In six days, we rode 400 miles and climbed roughly 25,000 feet of elevation. We camped out each night and woke up at 5am each morning (enduring two mornings of sub-freezing temperatures). We checked the Crater Lake rim road off our bucket lists, tested out the new disc brakes on the steep and fast descents, and were told by some roadies that we were putting them to shame by riding so fast on our fat tires. And, throughout it all, we lugged camera gear and shot over 15 hours of footage, including interviews with community members, volunteers, riders, board members, and vendors.

Long-time readers know that large event rides are not usually our cup of tea; but Cycle Oregon isn’t just a ride, it’s an ambassador for cycling and a community builder and a benevolent economic force. In town after town, we heard about how mindsets were shifting, residents were coming together, civic groups were raising money to improve their communities, kids were learning about the wider world – and we heard from riders who traveled from far-away states and countries, because they knew that their rider fee would be used to build something long-lasting and worthwhile.

Over the next many weeks, we’ll be re-visiting all of the footage we shot and compiling a short film about the Cycle Oregon experience. We can’t wait to share it, because it’s a story we can’t wait for everyone to know.

A Southern Sojourn Part 1

Months ago and a hemisphere away, we got an email from someone that went by the nickname of “Zeke” to see if we’d be interested in returning to the mountains of Western North Carolina to give some presentations on bicycle travel at the Blue Ridge Breakaway. Sure, we said. It was an abstraction. Months away. Of course, time always moves faster when you’re not paying attention.

Once we were finalizing our travel dates, BikeShopGirl told us through Twitter that if we came “just” a week earlier we could also check out Southern Spokes, a fun family-oriented bike and camping weekend that she was organizing. Looking at our calendar and maps it looked like the perfect excuse for a little Southern touring. Sure, we told her. Before we knew it, we were rushing to get our bikes shipped and figuring out how to dress exactly for a humid Southern summer.

Bike Fun in the CLT

We took the red-eye to Charlotte, NC and probably got less than an hour of sleep. We met Arleigh (aka BikeShopGirl) bright and early at around 6am. In a sleep deprived but caffeine driven cloud of activity, we got to know each other and drove into Charlotte proper. After a short stop at Smelly Cat Cafe in the NoDa arts district of Charlotte, we headed over to a woman named Pamela’s house for a breakfast of oatmeal and grits. I had almost forgotten the fun but somewhat erratic trajectory of travel. You move like a pinball ricocheting from person to place ever trending in a vague but deliberate direction.

After breakfast, Arleigh got our bikes ready for riding. We had shipped them ahead of time and mine was apparently a little worse for wear. She hoisted it up on a small tree and dialed in the shifting. We then got a whirlwind bike tour of Charlotte, meeting up with some readers at Common Market. Charlotte, we were told is actually not so bad for riding. The center is busy with activity during the day, but becomes a virtual ghost town after work hours and during the weekend as people flee to the suburbs. We stopped at the headquarters of Charlotte’s new bikeshare program which was barely a week old and spoke to their operations manager. We also dropped by the Spoke Easy, a bike shop started by a local architecture firm, that specialized in building custom bicycles for people. They helped you pick out a frame, components and even worked with a local powdercoater.

When we got to our digs for the night we were exhausted from the lack of sleep, but also the buzz of being on the road again. The next morning, we rode to the small bike friendly community of Davidson, NC where we spent the afternoon checking out the small shops and enjoying the sun. We met up with four other cyclists (DC, KT, Jon, Dick Winters) who were also on their way to SouthernSpokes. After another round of coffee, we mounted up and pounded out the remaining 23 miles to the campground. It must have been a strange sight to see 6 loaded bikes pacelining on a Friday afternoon.

We set up camp at Lake Norman and made use of our firestarting skills to get the wet twigs and branches burning into suitable “cowboy TV” as DC liked to call it. As the night went on, others started to find the fire and it was good to be in the company of people that were just out for a fine weekend of bikes and camping.

The next two days were filled with relaxing bike fun. Salsa was out in force with demo bikes for the event. Laura went on women’s mountain bike ride on one of the many loops at Lake Norman. I took out the Salsa Warbird, their new gravel racing bike. We both rode the El Mariachi which got us dreaming of future off road adventures. As much fun as the bike riding was, the best part of Southern Spokes was the people. We got to hang out with Arleigh and talk about some of the challenges of bicycle advocacy in the South. We also talked a lot about the power of storytelling in blogs and social media and how bicycle shops and the greater cycling movement could take advantage of it. We got to know Eric from Salsa and learned a little more about the company and the grueling work it takes to launch new bikes.

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From Lake Norman, our next destination was Asheville, NC. We had a vague idea of how to get there and mapped out a very circuitous route trying to avoid the main highway. Although the distance wasn’t very long, according to our GPS, we did about 9,000 feet of climbing in the 100 or so miles to Asheville!

One of the highlights was stumbling upon a small private campground just outside of Marion, NC. Porsche, the owner of the campground, is a 28-year-old general contractor who got into real estate early. She purchased about a mile of riverfront property on the Catawba River for her dream house, that she is now building herself. In the interim, she is opening up some of her land to campers. It was a delightful stay where we were literally feet from the water. We were her first bike tourists, so we stayed up late drinking white wine beneath her outdoor dining area (a popup tent) and swapped stories. While the camp had very few facilities, it was relaxing and scenic (and I managed to get some blue gill on the fly rod : ). If you’re traveling through the area on bike, we highly recommend it!

From the campground, it was more or less a short-ish but hilly ride into Asheville. While only about 40 miles, there was a good bit of climbing to be done. Most of it, thankfully, was on old HWY 70 that is now a converted greenway! It is short, only about 3 miles, but it is beautiful and one of best stretches of roads we’ve been on. Imagine climbing a windy and twisty mountain road beneath a canopy of trees without a car in sight. There were even picnic benches along the way, overlooking some of the amazing views to be had.

In Asheville, we stayed at the Sweet Peas Hostel located centrally in downtown. It doesn’t look very inviting from the outside, but the interior was done in a very clean and contemporary way. Most hostels in the US that we’ve stayed in have seen better days, but Sweet Peas looked well-maintained and is a great gem in the middle of Asheville. As an added plus, the hostel was also pretty bike friendly and didn’t have a problem with us rolling the bikes indoors. They also had information about Adventure Cycling on display. While we would have liked to linger longer, we had a presentation to give at The Blue Ridge Breakaway in two days and needed to get back on the bikes!

Part 2 Coming Soon!

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new Brompton Touring Book, or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing, or buying your gear through our Amazon store.)

Video: Interview with Bill White

We interviewed Bill White, the founder of Bike Camp in Twin Bridges, MT in the summer of 2011. We learned recently that he passed away. The little time we spent together was so influential that I just had to dig up what little footage I had and share his story. Bill White is the true definition of a trail angel and I hope his legacy of Bike Camp will continue on after his passing. His story and the thinking of Bike Camp is also a great example of how we have seen bicycle travel and tourism help small communities. Thank you Bill.

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new Brompton Touring Book, or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing, or buying your gear through our Amazon store.)

Behind the Scenes: Riding The Old West Scenic Bikeway

We’ve been quiet on the site, but have been busy behind the scenes. True to our mission to promote bicycle travel to a larger audience, one of the projects we’ve been quietly working on has been with Travel Oregon to help photograph, film and promote their new Scenic Bikeway Program. Everyone knows Portland is the hot Mecca of cycling in US right now, but few people know that some of the best riding in Oregon (in our opinion) is across the mountains on the Eastern part of the state. We were sent out in early summer to write, film and photograph our experience there and we’re finally glad to say it’s all live and public! Check out our article for TravelOregon and watch the video we’ve been fine tuning for months below. The Old West Scenic Bikeway completely took us by surprise. In the five days of travel the landscape varied so much you were always wondering what the next corner would bring.

The Making of the Video
For those that are curious about some of the behind the scenes details, I carried 3 cameras in total (2 video, 1 still), a tripod, video slider, a bevy of lenses, laptop and other filming and still photography equipment in addition to our regular touring load. Somehow, it all managed to fit in two rear panniers, a Carradice saddle bag and a handlebar bag. We were originally just going out to write and photograph the bikeway but the idea to film it came at the 11th hour, so that meant some liberal use of Amazon Prime and expedited shipping. Some of the gear, didn’t arrive until the first day of riding and shooting. I had to overnight some gear to Laura’s brother in Bend (the other rider in the video) who then met up with us in John Day. While he unloaded his gear and bike, I ripped open packages and figured out how to use everything in about forty minutes before it was showtime : ). Perhaps the biggest bane but also greatest asset was the video slider. It didn’t come with a bag so I literally trucked it around for 5 days in its original packaging to protect it. This made for slow setup and deployment so I had to be really judicious about using it, since we were riding some tough miles and didn’t want to get us over tired. By the end of the trip, the box that the slider in was more or less destroyed. Duct tape was holding one end closed. About 5 miles from the end of the ride I hit a bump and heard a big kerchunk as the slider managed to fly out of one end of the box and on to the road.

Something else I was experimenting with was neutral density filters to give me narrow depth of field for portraits and details in bright light. Downside is a decent ND filter costs about $40 to $50 and my lenses are all varying diameters. The solution was to buy them in the largest lens size and get a handful of step down filters. This made for a lot of unscrewing and rescrewing step up and step down filters. Not the most elegant solution, but the most cost-effective solution.

And of course, there is all the post processing. I was already fairly adept at FCPX having used it on our previous Kiwi Chronicles series, but relatively new to motion graphics. So this meant hours of watching tutorials and hours of fiddling with After Effects for about 15 seconds of video. The biggest challenge was how to convey the concept of Oregon being bike friendly, and the scenic bikeways spatially while having it all flow together in visually coherent way. It made sense to use the bike silhouette inside the state of Oregon since it also neatly mimicked the actual scenic bikeway signage. What I’m learning is that video production is all problem solving. How to communicate a clear message in a compelling way. With still photography it is relatively easier because you are working solely in a one dimension and your major tools are composition and color. With video, it is infinitely more complex. There is composition and color but also time and audio! It is like the difference between 2D Tetris and 3D Tetris : )

All this to say that although the video was only 2 minutes, there was a lot of time, effort, false starts, re-recording that went behind it all to make it appear seamless and effortless.

Read our itinerary of the trip, watch the video and enjoy. We hope it gets you fired up to explore the Old West Scenic Bikeway (and the other 8 Bikeways Oregon has announced)!

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new Brompton Touring Book, or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing, or buying your gear through our Amazon store.)