Do you get lonely on those long bike tours?
I meet lots of people on the way. A touring bike becomes
a welcome mat bringing out many questions. In small towns, especially
where bikes are not as common, people often invite me to come join their
table in restaurants. They see the bike and realize that this could
be the "tour of a life time." Someone on a bike tends to be less
threatening.
Hot springs where people sit around, often in the nude,
are great places for conversation. YMCA Saunas can be good also.
Memberships in places like the Y are often good at out of town locations.
Remember to bring along your "away card," or the equivalent, for what ever
your source of "community" is back home.
Reader comment
Pluses and minuses of bike touring
in a group or alone
Comments by Richard M. Shearer, a reader of my web site
I may be waaaaaaay late, but I just found your site and
was reading the
FAQ section. Re: whether to go alone cross-country
or sign on with an
organized tour. I rode across country (Livermore
CA to Washington DC)
with a friend as far as Yellowstone (when the friend
had to return home
for a family wedding) and by myself the rest of the way.
I have since
toured in the Sierra Nevadas alone, from Mount Shasta
to Yosemite with a
group of friends, and in southern France with a commercial
group. I
enjoyed them all, and I the variety of experiences has
left me with some
thoughts on the differences. The bottom line is
the trade off between
freedom and company. If you travel with others,
you have to take other
people's traits into account, everything from food preferences
to
snoring to riding styles. For example, on tour
I like to get up when it
gets light, eat, pack and hit the road, while others
like to laze around
longer and not start out until late morning. It
helps if you know the
people you are traveling with (my cross-country partner
and the friends
along on the Shasta-Yosemite ride were and remain friends
of many years
standing). You also have to be prepared to be flexible.
The up-side is
companionship. You have a support system in case
you get hurt or if you
just hit a rough patch (and on a cross country trip,
you will hit some
rough patches). You have someone to help with camp
chores ("I'll start
dinner if you set up the tent"). But be brutally
honest with yourself
about both yourself and what you can put up with in a
traveling
companion. Just because another person can ride
doesn't mean you want
to spend two months riding with them.
Riding solo presents just the opposite in trade-offs.
You have to be
prepared to be totally self-sufficient, physically and
emotionally. It
has been my experience that if you want human contact
on tour, it is not
hard to find. Once you tool into a campground with
a fully loaded
touring rig and start setting up camp, more often than
not someone will
approach you to ask about your trip (kids especially
are drawn to loaded
bikes), which often leads to invitations to dinner.
But you can never
just assume this will happen, and there will be stretches
where you
really are on your own. Again, you have to be brutally
honest with
yourself in determining if you are really up to doing
that. I would
never have started my cross country trip alone, and as
we got closer to
the point where my friend would have to head home, I
got somewhat
anxious. As it turned out, I am glad I had the
chance to do the rest of
the trip alone, not because I was tired of my friend
(we had one or two
very minor flare-ups, but 99% of the time got along beautifully)
but
because it left me more open to meeting people I otherwise
might have
missed.
The commercial trip in Provence was a 40th birthday present
from my
wife. I had a great time, and it was awfully nice
to have the gear
carried, the cooking done, etc. Again, it was also
nice to have the
built-in human contact, especially since my knowledge
of French is
"oui," "non," and counting to five. But as the questioner
pointed out,
the cost quickly becomes prohibitive. Don't get
me wrong, it was a
great trip and I don't for a moment think the company
overcharged. But
if you are prepared for the logistics of carrying your
own gear (and
yes, you can do it as long as you remember that you do
not have to get
there fast, you just have to get there, and prepared
to be flexible
about what "getting there" means on any given day), I
think you get far
more bang for your buck if you do it on your own, either
alone or with
others. |
