How Bicycles Can Save Small Town America

(YouTube version here.)

One of our favorite things about bicycle travel is visiting small towns. After being nomadic for three years and passing through literally hundreds of tiny towns, it dawned on us that bike travel could be a viable means to revitalize rural areas. Bicycles are slower by nature, but that is not always a bad thing. Because cyclists need to stop more and eat more, their potential spending in an area far exceeds that of someone traveling by car! This idea hit me in our tent in Montana a few years ago and I drew a little sketch in my notebook. It’s been almost two years since that little doodle and I’ve finally had a chance to animate it try to spread the message.

From sketch to animation….many years in the making.

Since we’re not actively traveling at the moment, our roles have switched from being active tourists to promoting and advocating for bicycle touring. In a way, we are simply trying to give back to this activity that we love so much. We’ve inspired many people to hop on their bike and go touring. After a lot of thinking, the next step for us is to inspire communities to welcome bicycle travelers. We’ve already begun some work in that arena, speaking at the Oregon Active Transportation Summit in Salem and addressing the Rotary Club and many elected officials in Waynesville, NC. It’s an exciting time and we hope you follow us in this new leg of our journey.

If you are in a bike advocacy group or are in a community interested in the possibilities of bicycle tourism and would like to have us speak, send us an email.

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.

Finding Happiness in Simplicity

In our apartment in Portland, we are still sleeping on our camping pads. Our furniture ownership is limited to a borrowed folding table, a cheap folding chair, a donated dresser, and a bunch of cardboard boxes. It looks completely ridiculous, as if we were still broke college kids. But after all of our experiences of the past three and a half years, we are wary of accumulating stuff again. We have learned, deeply, that we are perfectly happy with just a few possessions, and what matters most is the people we meet and the experiences we enjoy.

At it’s heart, this is the message of Tammy Strobel’s new book, You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap). Simplifying our possessions, Tammy posits, creates the space to cultivate rich friendships and pursue meaningful experiences. And it’s through these actions that we are able to actually find the happiness we crave in our lives.

“Humans are notoriously bad at predicting what will make them happy. We guess, ponder, and try to plot our lives. … One major reason for simplifying my life the way I have has been to reverse this equation: to emphasize right now over what may or may not be tomorrow.”

We met Tammy and her husband Logan nearly three years ago, when we tumbled into Sacramento, California. We were tired from the previous two months of traveling by bike, we were coming down with the flu, and Russ had just burnt his hand in a cold-induced lapse of judgement. Tammy and Logan were our saviors, opening up their small apartment to us and giving us the space and support to get healthy. We have been friends ever since.

Over the years, we have watched their progress from small apartment to smaller apartment to tiny house. We have laughed and shared stories and gone bike camping together. And, now, we get to celebrate with them as Tammy’s book finally hits shelves.

What’s great about Tammy’s book is that it’s a collection of stories. From her and Logan’s experiences in simplifying possessions to the experiences of friends and family who are making decisions based on what they want their lives to be, You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap) is a demonstration of simple living rather than a cozy hypothesis. Tammy’s writing allows you to connect with each of the people she profiles, gently encouraging you to think about how your lifestyle supports your values.

“Simplifying and downsizing your life doesn’t necessarily mean living in a tiny house. It’s the philosophy of prioritizing happiness and actively shaping your life and circumstances so that you can focus on what truly matters.”

While I appreciate all of the stories within the book, what stands out most to me is the openness with which Tammy shares her and Logan’s journey over the past several years and their struggles to simplify. Knowing who they are now, I never would have believed that Logan was once a TV lover, or that Tammy used to commute over an hour by car. And it’s important to know this, because change happens slowly and deliberately; all it takes is a shift in awareness and attitude.

“My morning coffee date and daily cycling trips with Logan don’t appear in any GDP metric, but I guarantee our time together has helped me become a productive writer, a more engaged community member, and a better friend and daughter.”

I also appreciate that Tammy isn’t focused on some “right” way to simplify your life. Rather, she wants to inspire us to turn off the autopilot. The stories throughout the book, alongside a lot of impressive research and a variety of “micro-actions,” are designed to create a conversation about what we really want to build in our lives. That can be a hard question to ask and answer, but it’s also an enormous opportunity and an idea that Russ and I can really get behind – because, as you all know, in March 2009, we asked ourselves what we really wanted to do with our lives, and it has led us down an incredible path that just gets more awesome by the minute.

If you’re thinking about simplifying your lifestyle or making some shifts in the way you interact with the world around you, we highly recommend picking up your own copy of You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap).

The Welcoming Song

Last night I began the intimidating task of shifting through hours of footage to create a short video about our Cycle Oregon experience. One moment that stood out crystal clear for us was the first night in Bly, OR when a local council member welcomed us to Klamath country.

The behind the scenes of the actual filming is less than glamorous. I was just settling into a beer in the back of the stage when the evening announcements begin. I quickly bolt up and run with my tripod and camera (with a bulk of the audio gear in the tent) and start recording. Fortunately, I was able to capture a moment that I think sums up Cycle Oregon for us. Cycle Oregon is ultimately about connections. It connects friends, volunteers and most importantly it connects rural and urban Oregon in a unique shared experience.

The finished product of this video is still months down the road, but I couldn’t help but share this one moment since it is the essence of the Cycle Oregon experience. Sit back 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.)

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.

–

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.)

The Brompton Touring Book is Here! – UPDATED

Over a year ago, we began a whole new style of bike travel, when we put our sturdy Long Haul Truckers in storage and started touring on the unlikeliest of bikes – the Brompton folding bike. Almost immediately, we knew that these funny little folding bikes would be capable of great adventures, and the seed was planted to write a sort of “how to” guide for other folks interested in self-supported travel on the Brompton.

We rode our Bromptons from Central Oregon across Montana to Glacier National Park. We traveled with our Bromptons via train, plane, and car across the West Coast to various bikey events. We flew across the planet with our Bromptons to explore New Zealand. All told, we pedaled these little guys approximately 5,000 miles, fully-loaded with all of our camping gear and other necessary travel accessories (such as cameras, computer, metalsmithing kit, etc.).

And we know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Brompton is an amazing little machine that can take you places that it was probably never intended to see. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can treat a Brompton like a Long Haul Trucker, and we are always extremely vigilant of the amount of weight that we carry and how we attach it. While we fully trust that the Brompton can handle a responsible touring load, we recognize that we have pushed our Bromptons beyond their stated purpose, so we have always traveled this way at our own risk… which is why our how-to book is “Unauthorized.”

Introducing… The Unauthorized Brompton Touring Guide

The Unauthorized Brompton Touring Guide is 41 pages of in-depth information about how to set up your Brompton for touring, how to pack, how to maintain your new touring machine and troubleshoot any issues you might have on the road. You’ll also find links to videos we made while traveling on our Bromptons and external links to helpful resources.

Read More»

Our Cycle Oregon Weekend

For our first Bike Trekker episode, we’ve decided to film our experience at the Cycle Oregon Weekend ride. Cycle Oregon is an epic week long ride that showcases the great rural communities around Oregon. Aside from creating a well organized and wonderful riding experience, they do a lot of philanthropy for the small communities they go through. The Weekend Ride, just like it sounds, is a mini-version of the week long ride. This year, it took place in Corvallis, Laura’s home town and within a long day’s bike ride from Portland. We thought, “what better way to start a biking event than to bike there!”

It was a LONG ride, coming in over 80 miles. We took the MAX out to Hillsboro and began our ride there. For the most part we meandered all day through small country roads right in the heart of Willamette Valley wine country. Our favorite part of the trip was stumbling upon some quiet gravel roads with nary a car in sight.

We arrived in Corvallis tired and famished from the ride. Thankfully, we had a rest day before the madness of the Cycle Oregon Weekend began. On Friday, we rode to the OSU campus, registered and then set up our tent on campus. We got there fairly early so we were able to find a spot by some trees. In a few hours, people trickled in and the field became a tent city!

That night, we walked around the grounds and chatted with some fellow cyclists. We ran into quite a few readers which is always a treat. The folks camped next to us followed our trip to New Zealand and were planning their own NZ tour in January. We gave them a few tips of where to go and what to avoid. Later in the evening we had a few drinks at the beer garden and listened to some music on the main stage. This was our first ever “event” style ride and after years of fully supported touring this felt pretty luxurious even though we were still in a tent. We crashed out fairly early, still tired from our ride from Portland and rested for the next day.

The next morning we got up bright and early (with about 2200 other cyclists!) had a quick breakfast with bleh coffee (sorry, Portland coffee has spoiled us) and hit the road. We opted to do the medium length rides on both days since we knew were going to be stopping a lot to take photos and video.

The first day was the hillier of the two, but didn’t have any major climbs and only a few rollers. It was beautiful riding through several scenic back roads around Corvallis that we had not been on before. Some were so devoid of traffic we didn’t see any cars on them. Another first for us was pulling up to rest stops with food and drinks! We are so use to carrying all our own stuff that through force of habit we still had a pannier filled with almond butter, fruit and tortillas. Riding without carrying all your gear is a strange new world

One thing we did enjoy immensely was pedaling along and seeing we were traveling at a decent clip of around 15-18 mph! Much faster than our turtle like touring pace. It was good to know that beneath the piles of all our panniers, we can be pretty zippy bicyclists. On the evening of the first day, we had some wine in the beer garden and spotted a copy of the new maps of the Oregon Scenic Bikeways, which featured some of our photos form our recent trip out there.

The second day, some clouds rolled in and there was a forecast for strong winds. We got up fairly early and banged out the miles quickly but still stopped at all the rest stops (what a luxury!). We even got a tour of an old water-powered mill.

At the end of the second day, Cycle Oregon rolled out the red carpet for the cyclists at the finish. There was a balloon arch and a small squadron of cheerleaders, as well as a freezer truck full of ice-cream. Cycle Oregon Weekend was our first ever event ride and it was definitely different from what we were use to. Although the camping wasn’t quite as scenic, it felt pretty pampered to have rest stops with local volunteers serving sandwiches and fresh local fruit (if only that would happen on all our tours!). We had a great time and it was nice to have a few days where all you had to do was pedal your bike and everything else would be taken care of. With such a positive experience with the weekend ride, we hope to one day get a chance to do the full week ride and really get the full Cycle Oregon experience.

See you at the Blue Ride Breakaway, August 17th and 18th!

We are headed back to North Carolina! We’ve been invited by the wonderful people at the Waynesville Rotary Club to speak and ride at the Blue Ridge Breakaway! We will be giving two presentations on Friday, August 17th. One will be a Lunch and Learn for the local business community focusing on bicycle tourism and the benefits of being a bicycle friendly community. Then, later that evening we’ll be doing a kick-off presentation about some of the ups and downs of traveling on bike with lots of photos and stories from the road! And on Saturday, we’ll get to ride those beautiful roads without any gear (yay!)! So come join us for the presentation and the ride!

Nuts and Bolts
Blue Ridge Breakaway – BlueRidgeBreakaway.com

Friday, August 17th
1pm – Lunch and Learn
7pm – Friday Evening Kick-Off (Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center)

Saturday, August 18th
Let’s Ride!

We are really excited about attending the event and hope to see some readers there!