Bicycle Touring: A Beginner’s Guide

Bicycle Touring: A Beginner’s Guide

[Music] is it working yeah it is not all right okay hey I’m Roland from Roland and Juliana bicycle tourists uh where we share some of our epic and not so epic Adventures you got it come all the way over here even though I’m not going to be in the video hello oh we’ll try to get her in at some point you know but we do share different bicycle trips around the world around the country trying to promote the whole idea of bike touring trying to get all of y all to get on a bike and go find out how incredible this kind of traveling really is Trails always changing it’s always something new to look at it’s just beautiful tell you people you got to get out here and do this you’re going to be missing out on a lot of beauty if you don’t so hopefully you know you’re a little bit curious about bike touring that’s probably why you’re here and maybe you’ve done a little bit of cruising around YouTube and finding some interesting ideas out there and you know you’re curious and maybe you’re already committed to doing some kind of a bike tour but you know you just want a little bit more information any kind of tips whatever to help you get it going and move it along well in this video I’m going to break down what it really takes for you to get going get started on your first tour and all the things that you really have to kind of think about and that you have to prepare for so that you can make this a really wonderful experience and something that you’re going to to be hooked on like we are so I I think the first question for me is you know why is it such a great idea in the first place you know why are we Juliana and I so high on this idea I mean if you’ve watched any of our videos you know the enthusiasm that we have for doing this kind of traveling it’s an incredibly healthy thing to do for your body you’re working out day after day hour after hour it’s great for the environment you leave no mark on the environment whatsoever which is a pry a cool thing another thing is that cycling in general just elevates your mood and bike touring specifically really elevates your mood I mean day after day again hour after hour you’re spending time in these beautiful places and you’re constantly working your body and man nothing could be better for your endorphins than bike touring it’s also very intimate and very up close way of traveling you can really kind of connect with the places The Cult the people of course it just connects you with nature you’re out there you’re watching the days change you know the seasons change so you really get a up close and personal kind of feeling for the nature around you and it awakens your sense of adventure which is a really awesome thing especially as you get to our age a lot of people seem to kind of lose their sense of adventure bicycle touring just opens it up in a fabulous way so if that all sounds like something thing that you might be interested in let’s talk about it a little bit and see what you got to do to get started where to begin first off there’s a fair amount of logistics that need to happen before you can really start on your bike tour at least the way that we do it and that can be kind of intimidating for people you know once you get things in motion everything really comes together nicely but there is kind of an art to the planning I’ll share my thoughts as someone who loves the freedom of a Bicycle Tour but also really respects and understands the planning that it takes to be able to get that kind of Freedom so here are a few questions to ask yourself is it going to be long or short how long is this tour going to be how much time do you have how much time can you get off work or how much time are you willing to spend on a bike tour another important question to ask yourself is do you want to ride on Trails or do you want to ride on roads and that comes down to mostly a safety concern are you comfortable riding on roads or do you just prefer the peace and quiet of a trail if you’re comfortable riding on roads and you want to do a combination that’s good but that’s an important distinction to make right up front and then where do you want to go the United States somewhere here in the US do you want to go to Europe you want to go somewhere more exotic so the question is what do you want to experience and what do you want to get out of it and what do your guts tell you will you want to go do the wines and the chat of France or the beautiful pastoral Landscapes of the United States check out the D canals want to travel through the rugged West I mean what lights your fire another important question what’s your Fitness level how many miles do you think you can ride every day some people like riding I don’t know 50 to 70 M A Day other people tend to like something more like 30 to 50 we like going with less distance so that we can spend more time along the way when you’re traveling through Europe or traveling through a lot of the places in the United States you just want to spend as much time as possible where you are and just really enjoying the location and enjoying the places that you’re riding through and just enjoying the journey I mean that’s really the fun of it right another important criteria is camping or hotels and if you decide that you do want to go camping do you want to do wild camping you want to do primitive camping or you want to do just Campground camping like in RV parks or established campgrounds where there might be showers I always feels so good after a shower here’s our campsite in the woods of illin nois and then there’s hotels you can do ins you can do uh airbnbs scor a nice BNB way too nice for us us filthy smelly salty Americans yes here’s our view looking down over oner uh some of these are more expensive some of them can be pretty cheap but you know how comfortable are you in some of these cheaper hotels that’s kind of a distinction you need to make as well so we’re staying in the roadway in no Motel it’s a Noel Motel it’s the shabbiest place we’ve ever been here you think it’s the shabbiest place yeah I think it is yeah yeah it’s the you know budget-minded Travelers tend to like camping a lot obviously it saves a lot of money wild camping is free primitive camping can be free too campgrounds are a little more expensive and hotels obviously you know that’s getting up there you know people who are like retirees who maybe have a little bit more money to spend a lot of times they prefer hotels or credit card touring as it’s called sometimes but maybe you just want to spend time out in the Great Outdoors waking up in the morning and having the birds singing and looking down on the lake and that kind of thing that’s a really magical feeling so it really comes down to your personal preference when we’re in Europe we like staying in the guest houses it’s part of the culture it’s part of meeting the people and you know you find yourself in these really nice little towns so this is the scene oh about 30 steps outside of our hotel right in the S of for us that feels better than staying in a campground so just decide which suits you and remember that when you are going camping you’re carrying a lot more weight you got a stove you got a sleeping pad a sleeping bag you got a tent so that really adds up food is another consideration what are we doing eating and eating again eatting and a lot of that is going to kind of work around whether you’re staying in hotels or camping going across across the United States it’s sometimes hard to find good restaurants you know you’ll be lucky to find a Chili’s it’s a lot of fast food it’s a lot of convenience stores and getting pizza at convenience stores or getting snacks and that kind of stuff this wrap came out of the uh hot case at the Arco here at the gas station and uh the only thing that has any flavor is the is the wrap is the tortilla the bacon somehow and the eggs don’t have any flavor not always the best you know you can always get stuff at grocery stores you can easily get stuff for a lunch at any grocery store or any Market if you’re staying in hotels a lot of times you get breakfasts not the best breakfast but you do get breakfast although in European hotels the breakfast can be just amazing if you’re camping you can just pick stuff up at the grocery store cook your own food we had some really great meals that way and it’s a great way to go and then finally there’s budget you know you figure out how many days you want to go or how many days you can go figure out where you want to travel your Europe United States somewhere close figure out how expensive it’s going to be for finding accommodations whether you’re going to go camping or hoteling in that area that you’re going to be touring in and just multiply the days you’re going to be gone by how much you expect your daily expenses to be and there you got your budget now let’s say this is going to be your very first bike tour and you figure I’m going to spend 14 days I got 14 days to spend you want to travel as much as possible on off-road routes on on Trails or uh you can do a little bit of Road riding but you want to kind of focus on Trails you’re going to do a mix of camping and hotels so you know you’re going to need to bring some camping stuff you feel comfortable riding an average of about 30 m a day and you want to stay here in the United States you’re going to do a mix of making your own meals and eating at restaurants everything checks out with your budget and after you do a bit of research on places you decide on the Ohio to Eerie trail from Cincinnati to Cleveland one of many Stellar American rail trails that can carry you on a multi-day bike tour across a wide region maybe 300 350 Mi something you can do easily in 10 to 14 days boom you’ve got a plan now it’s time to prepare do you have a bike well you got to get one thank you thank you so much getting my new Ste ready she’s a pretty one the kind of bike you want is something along the lines of a tour in bike a lot of people say you can use whatever bike you have and that’s fine but it has to be able to carry your load so you’re probably going to want to look at touring bikes or maybe gravel bikes you could also look at a hybrid bike anything that can carry racks and that can carry weight hopefully the bike that you have is in good shape if you bought it used make sure you take it down to your local bike shop and have them give it a complete once over you want to make sure that your brakes are in great working order you want to make sure that you’ve got really good tires on there make sure that everything is ready to roll so you don’t need to be an expert mechanic but I would recommend that you at least have the ability to change a flat then you need to get some Piers or bike bags fill those Piers with clothes and camping gear first aid kit all the stuff you’re going to need and check out uh my packing video right here when you get a chance and you can get a good sense for what you should bring okay now it’s time to prepare our bodies not to make too big of a deal out of this but you know training is kind of an important thing you want to get your body ready for the tour now Juliana and I have many times for whatever reason we have found ourselves not able to train before we took off on a bike tour probably about 30 m in and we’re both pretty tired first day this is our first Training Day really starting to feel the cramps come into my quads a little bit sure sign that I’m not used to what I’m doing and that was a little scary cuz we didn’t know if our body was going to give out but you know we went ahead and went for it and we essentially trained along the way our first week maybe two weeks we’re spent kind of taking it easy and listening to our bodies and making sure that we weren’t overdoing it we’re both tired I’ll tell you we can feel the last few days and this whole kind of acclimating getting up to speed it’s been tough it’s like boot camp you know I still really believe in getting some training in there and so I would would really push for that and say you know try to get your body up to Snuff get used to several hours at a time riding on your bike you know that saddle is going to be wearing on your butt chafing and saddle sores and all those moans and groans are all things you want to take care of before you take off and build a plan work your way up start slow and start working your way up to the amount of miles that you want to be riding every day and don’t forget to take a test ride or several test rides on your tour in bike fully loaded so that you can kind of get a feel for the weight it definitely has a different feel once you start loading it up especially if you have piers in the front and also you want to do some hill climbing so that you can get used to what it takes to haul all that weight up the mountain finally something I would add is you want to learn how to spin it’s a habit for a lot of us to mash those petals and to really grind go up those Hills and use the strength of your legs to get you over the hills but when you’re kind of grinding like that you’re really wasting a lot of energy and you’re also shortening your future for bike touring you want to go easy on your knees you want to go easy on your bones and the best way to do that is to find a higher Cadence so that you can take it real easy on your body it’s not easy it takes takes some practice but it will definitely save your knees and save your body especially as we get older stop mashing so let’s see what else what else is there left to cover oh yeah you have to overcome your fear fears this may be the toughest hurdle to overcome I mean there’s a lot of fears about bike touring out there here’s a brief overview of a few of the fears about bicycle touring that people have shared with us along the way people wonder isn’t this going to be boring you’re spending all day long on a bike they just going down a trail I have never spent a minute being bored on a bike tour it’s just constantly interesting it’s amazing how many people say don’t you bring a gun and what about all the bad people out there I don’t know if we’ve ever met anybody who was anything other than really interesting and fun to talk to um we just never had a bad experience with people anything but I mean we have found some of the most fascinating personalities and kind-hearted really helpful um generous people out there both in the cities and in the country both in Europe and in the United States we have never felt threatened now is it true that sometimes people will steal bicycles you know that’s true so yes you do keep your eye on your bike you don’t let it go you make sure if you have to leave it for a couple of minutes you make sure you put a lock on it you’re not being naive but people in this world are basically good A lot of people are like you know isn’t this like physical isn’t this just really hard on you yeah it is kind of hard on you you know it is it’s hard work you do this day after day and it’s hard work I have to officially say this is the hardest climb I have ever done too but uh with this load it just kicked our buts but you definitely don’t need to be anything close to being an elite athlete to do this all it takes is a little bit of training all it takes is a little bit of strength and off you go now everybody has their own health issues and their own personal health Journey but you can do this check with your doctor of course but you can do this it’s really no harder than riding your bicycle for one day it’s just several days of bicycling strung together that’s all bicycle touring is how hard is that not hard at all you know then people are concerned about bad weather I think that’s a big fear of people is you know what if you run into bad weather I do have a video all about cycling in bad weather and you can find it right here but it all comes down to planning we have the best apps in the world for being able to predict what’s going to happen today at what hour you know what’s going to happen with the wind what’s going to happen with the rain you know make sure that you got plenty of gear for rain and for wind and that kind of thing look like you’re running into a bunch of bad weather you can stay in a hotel and just avoid the whole thing or you can ride through it and find that riding in the rain is usually not that bad of a deal heat you know make sure that to bring plenty of water and don’t ride during the hot parts of the day get up early it is I don’t know 700 a.m. it’s already really hot so let’s go wind you know you just kind of need to deal with wind I hate wind oh my God I think a lot of people fear the traffic and uh that can be a huge fear it definitely was a a problem for Juliana and I when we were crossing the country we ran into some issues where we had to change our course it’s a really rough day really narrow shoulders and you know cars passing the opposite way so that they just barely miss us it’s incredibly frustrating and we were only too willing to doing what we had to do to get ourselves safe but for the most part if you do a good amount of planning and again I’ve got a video here about how to plan a really good route you’ll be fine you can also plan your tour around doing just rail Trails or off-road trails if you’re interested in riding in Europe just know that Western Europe is absolutely crisscrossed with off-road trails you almost never have an issue and when you do run out of options just take those back roads nice quiet back roads will get you where you need to go and we used a lot of them going across the country the last fear is that this is impossible maybe somebody who’s ridiculously fit could travel across the country or travel across a state or travel by bicycle for a week or two weeks or a month or 4 months anybody can do this you can do this uh and that’s the thing I’d want to leave you with is that you know this is super possible and all I can say is this is going to be one of the most incredible experiences of your life so give it a shot get out there start doing the things you need to do and one last thing if you haven’t already and you’re enjoying this kind of content uh make sure and subscribe and uh you know like and uh share we’d really appreciate it trying to build the channel you know happy trails [Music]

For any of you who are new to bicycle touring, or you just want to get another take on some of the ways of bike touring, this is for you. There is a whole amazing and beautiful world waiting for you to explore, it just takes a bit of planning and preparation. This video can help you get started in one of the most rewarding, healthy, environmentally-conscious, and exciting activities you will ever discover. Cheers!