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Getting Away By Bike

02.01.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

It’s the coldest weather I’ve experienced in the 10 years I’ve lived in Texas.  My former homes in the Midwest are snowed in by the biggest snowstorm of the year.  I’m not thinking much about biking in these circumstances.  But we can use the time away from our bikes to make plans.  And when doing that, it’s a good idea to dream big.

David Houghton dreams big.  His new website, Biciklo, is a guide to biking tours around the world.  The premise is simple.  Let’s say you want to go somewhere – maybe somewhere exotic – and while you’re there, you want to get in some riding.  You could make arrangements to rent a bike and get a map and explore on your own, or you can go on an organized biking tour, with experienced guides who know cool out-of-the-way places and who can look after the mundane details of the trip.

Lots of different companies compete in this field.  How can you compare them and figure out which is the best for you?  That’s what Biciklo does.  Log onto the website, www.biciklo.com, and click on a country you’d like to see by bike.  Let’s say Spain, just for kicks.  You want to go for a period of two to 10 days, and you want to do some road biking.

Descending on the Costa Brava.

Holy cow! I counted 112 different tours in Spain, offered by at least 30 different companies.  Once you get those returns, you can start culling them to find the kind of tour that fits your interest.  Some feature overnight accommodations in luxury hotels, other say overnights are “indoors.”  The tours are described as easy, moderate or challenging.  Prices are quoted in Euros, Pound sterling, or U.S. dollars, depending upon the company offering the tour.  Of course, there’s a link on each tour to the company that offers it, so you can get further details from their sites.

Most people keep a “bucket list” – list of things they want to do in their lifetimes.  Biciklo’s Houghton suggests keeping a “bike-it” list.  He hopes his site will help promote bicycle touring as a healthy, environmentally sustainable way to travel.

If you want a break from Old Man Winter, even vicariously, take a look at www.biciklo.com.

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Categories // Travel Tags // touring, Travel

Heresy

08.17.2009 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

It’s heresy, I tell you. Away for a whole week in Hawaii (Maui, to be specific) and not one day of bicycling!

ViewThe view from our hotel room. Yep, another lousy day on Maui.

It’s not that we didn’t plan it. We were looking into bike rentals before we left for the islands. But on Maui, the big biking experience they push is the ride down Mt. Haleakala, the 10,000-foot dormant volcano that dominates the eastern half of the island. It’s a 37-mile ride, and to get the full experience, you start at sunrise at the top of the volcano in temperatures in the 30sF (+2C).

But our first two days found us dealing with the remnants of Tropical Storm Felicia (at one time a Category 4 hurricane) that rained out our activities. We drove the road up Haleakala to the national park entrance, and were advised not to go any farther because of the poor weather conditions. The drive back down the mountainside, with its constant hairpin turns, unsettled Pat, and put me off of any ideas I’d had of doing the ride, too. So we decided to look for alternatives.

The road from our resort area near the historic city of Lahaina features a wide shoulder in both directions. The downside to that is the amount of traffic on the road. Depending on time of day, it can be heavy, and the drivers don’t appear to be bike friendly.

We had plenty of other activities to cram into the remaining days once the rain stopped, like golf and horseback riding. But we never did get around to renting bikes and riding. However, on four of the seven days we spent there, we started the morning with a brisk half-hour pedal of the spin bike in the hotel’s fitness center. I programmed in some hill work, and played with different levels of effort. It was a good way to start the day, and we decided Maui ranks as one of the top vacations spots we’ve ever visited.

Some interesting biking issues popped up while I was gone, and I’ll be looking at them later this week. But for now, I have to readjust my body clock.

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Categories // Travel Tags // Travel

The island of horses and bikes

08.15.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

From time to time, I just get fed up with riding on roads with heavy motor vehicle traffic. Wouldn’t it be great to have a nice chunk of acreage all to ourselves?

On our recent vacation to northern Michigan, we got to experience what that might be like. We took a short side trip to Mackinac Island.

Mackinac (pronounced Mack-ih-naw) Island sits in the Straits of Mackinac, between Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. It was strategically important during colonial times, and was fought over during the War of 1812. But now, it’s a quiet resort, a “theme park for adults” some call it, but not in the sense that Las Vegas is a theme park for adults. Mackinac is much more sedate.

A short ferry ride gets you to to the island. There’s no bridge from the mainland.

The main reason for that placid atmosphere is that motor vehicles are banned from the island. If you want to get around, you ride a bike or use a horse-drawn vehicle. That fact of life makes for scenes that aren’t common in the rest of the country.

Getting around on Mackinac Island — bikes, horse drawn wagons, and foot power.

Pat and I stayed with our friends Brad and Linda at the Grand Hotel, built in 1887. Maroon coaches with liveried drivers carry guests from the ferry docks up to the hotel.

The Grand Hotel. Men are required to wear jackets and ties for cocktails and dinner.

Don’t want to walk? Take a taxi.

Rental bikes are available at a number of places near the ferry docks. The bikes are nothing special — lots of beach cruisers and six-or-seven speed hybrids. I think we saw two road bikes the whole time we were there.

Bike parking lot.

With no motorized traffic, bikes handle a lot of heavy work duties.

We didn’t do any biking on the island. We were there for only 24 hours, and with cocktails, dinner and dancing in the evening, and golf the next morning, we had no time for anything else (The hotel’s golf course has two nines on different parts of the island. A horse drawn shuttle takes you between the two nines).

The island’s main street. Bike traffic was surprisingly light when we walked along here.

If there’s a down side to spending time on Mackinac Island, it’s that some people on bikes are people who don’t ride much otherwise. So they ride with no attention to rules of the road, and little consideration for pedestrians. Many of them show off their lack of biking skills by weaving back and forth, and struggling to keep their balance. But they’re a minority, and the alert pedestrian can see those kinds of riders in plenty of time to move to a sidewalk.

It’s a charming place, with fudge shops every few steps, a Revolutionary War-era fort with period weapons displays during the day, and always, a pleasant breeze off Lake Huron. Members of the slow biking movement will feel right at home here.

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Categories // Travel Tags // car free, Travel

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