I don't know when I got the idea to start bike touring. My dad had been into biking and touring although I don't think he ever did any long trips. I may have been motivated by reading Miles from Nowhere, a book by Barbara Savage about her around the world bike trip. It seems a "big" bike trip had always been in my mind as something I wanted to do. I even considered my Northwest Coast trip of 1500 miles in 30 days a prelude to something bigger. I figured I would get around to a big trip someday. I think "big" meant a bike trip taking several months with perhaps no definite end point...I guess this is what around the world bike books do to you.
I've gone on three bike tours. All have been solo, self-contained; cooking, camping, etc. However, I rode with a French cyclist much of the time on my Northwest tour, and rode with two friends the first part of my European tour.
Here's a picture showing the bike tourist's
favorite road sign, taken in Bixby, Missouri on my TransAmerica tour. ![[Downhill.gif, 191k]](images/ta/downhill.gif){kind=small}
I started at a friend's house in Bellingham,
Washington, took a ferry through the San Juan Islands and Vancouver
Island, then down the coast to Santa Cruz. Here's a picture ![[CA Coast 1]](images/nw/cacoast1.jpg){kind=small}
of me along the northern California coast. More
pictures and description of my trip...
I started in London, rode to Portsmouth, took
a ferry to Ouistreham, France. From there to Anger and up the Loire
Valley to Tours. Then to Paris where I met a French cyclist I had met
on my first bike trip. Then to Calais and back to England. Here's a
picture ![[Eiffell]](images/eu/eiffel1.jpg){kind=small}
of me in front of the Eiffel Tower. More
pictures and description of my trip...
I started at a friend's house in Corvallis, Oregon then followed the Bikecentenial route across the US and finished at my brother's home outside Washington, DC. I rode through 10 states and crossed the continental divide 8 times. Pictures and description of my trip...