This has been a great winter for bicycle riding and I was able to ride in temperatures just below freezing. However, the trails that I rode just a few days ago are covered with about 24” of snow. The New England weather has finally driven me indoors. In the past I had a gym membership, but I thought that they did a poor job of maintaining the equipment and I quit.

After some research, I bought a Kinetic Road Machine 2 stationary trainer for my home. I have it in a small room that barely qualifies as a man-cave, so I call it the man-place. Although my mountain bike and the trainer frame are nearly the same color, the color was not a part of the decision criteria. This trainer comes assembled and mounting my bike to it took about ten minutes. It comes with a special skewer for the rear axle that fits the clamp cones.

It’s important to me to know how fast and how far I’ve ridden. I’m not into watts or calories because I personally can’t convert those measures to anything useful. I usually record my rides using the Strava app on my iPhone, which clearly wasn’t going to work in my little man-place.

The type of device that I needed comes in the category of “bicycle computer”. These can be very expensive, but I was able to find one for about $25: the CatEye CC-VL520 Velo 7 bicycle computer. I mounted the sensor and the spoke magnet in the rear. Of course, it’s not meant to be mounted in the rear, so I needed to do some “engineering”. There was a perfectly shaped spring in my collection of miscellaneous hardware. The spring is fastened to the seatstay using electrical tape. The seatstay is protected with some double sided foam tape between the spring and the painted surface. The sensor is mounted to the spring using cable ties. The display is mounted to the top tube instead of the handlebar because the sensor wire isn’t long enough. This setup is alright for indoor stationary training, but I would not recommend it for use on the road since I don’t think it would hold up.

A feature of this computer that I like is the ability to input the circumference of your tire to measure the distance. This is a little more precise than the default tire sizes that can be selected as well. It is entered with accuracy to the centimeter. A mile measured using tire circumference to this accuracy can be off as much as 30 to 40 feet because of rounding, but that’s close enough for me.

This is working well for me. It can be dreadfully boring, so I’m hooking up a television that I can watch as I pedal. It’s a small screen, so I will not have the immersive experience of watching a travelogue as I pedal in front of a 60” 4K TV screen. I’ll probably stick with the news channels. I also have my iPod and a music collection that I enjoy. Until the big thaw in the spring, this is my cycling world.

Parks and Trails New York has just opened registration for their annual eight day bicycle tour of the Erie Canal from Buffalo, NY, to Albany, which is about 400 miles. I have done this ride twice with PTNY and I highly recommend it. My first ride on the canal was self-supported. The travelogue of my self-supported trip is here on the Edek’s Attic. Doing the ride with Parks and Trails New York is a less demanding way to go. This is also a great ride to test your desires to tour on a bicycle.

Riders sign up as groups or solo; there are usually about 500 people and getting to know many of them is a part of the experience. PTNY transports your stuff between campsites and provides breakfast and dinner on most days. All of the campsites have toilets (sometimes chemical toilets) and warm showers (sometimes the shower truck). Morning and afternoon rest stops are staffed with friendly and helpful people. A bicycle mechanic is available in case you have troubles and a ride is available if necessary. Bring your own tent or opt for the tent service for a little extra cost.

The route in upstate New York passes many historic and current Erie Canal features. The ride goes through Rochester, Syracuse, and Rome as well as a number of small towns. Between the towns the country side is peaceful and scenic. About 75% of the ride is off-road on dirt, packed stone dust, and paved trails that follow either the current Erie Canal or historic remnants of the older canals. The remaining 25% uses roads that generally are bicycle-friendly.

You don’t need a touring bike for this ride. Since PTNY hauls your stuff, you can successfully complete this ride with many types of bicycles. I have seen recumbent trikes and bikes, folding bikes, tandems, road bikes, mountain bikes, and touring bikes participating. You do need to be reasonably physically fit since you will ride over 50 miles most days.

See the PTNY web site for more details.

In the past two days I achieved two personal milestones: yesterday I turned 69 years old and today I achieved a new yearly high of 2,800 miles on my bicycle for 2014. Of those miles, nearly 1,000 were on tours. The remaining 1,800 miles were training miles. The total is 1,000 miles more than in 2013.

A good draw in the gene pool lottery and the mild fall and winter weather can be credited. I’ve also developed the attitude that as long as there is no snow on the ground, I can endure the cold down to some yet undetermined low temperature. Today it was around 25 degrees F and it felt great to get outdoors and ride 23 miles.

My 2014 tours were the Adirondack Loop in June; the annual Erie Canal Ride organized by Parks and Trails New York in July; and the Great Allegheny Passage / Chesapeake and Ohio Towpath in August.

The Adirondack trip taxed my patience and judgment. My patience was challenged by the rain that I endured for much of the trip. The trip was ended prematurely when I decided that my injured big toe might be infected since it was painful and ugly looking. I also found that many of the roads were not very bicycle friendly and made for some tense situations.

The Erie Canal Ride from Buffalo to Albany is an annual event and 2014 was my third time on that route. Parks and Trails New York, a advocacy group, does a great job in planning and managing the event, which draws about 500 riders from many parts of the United States and other countries. They provide most breakfasts and dinners as well as two rest stops with treats each day. The riders stay together in tent cities each night.

The Great Allegheny Passage / Chesapeake and Ohio Towpath trip took me from Pittsburgh to Georgetown. I had been on the GAP once before and this was my first trip on the C&O Towpath. It’s is probably the longest off-road cycling trail in the United States and I logged over 350 miles on it. In my view, it gets high marks for  both scenic and historical attractions along the way.

For 2015 I’m planning a series of videos on the topic of bicycle touring and the preparation needed to have a good touring experience. Those will be posted on my YouTube channel. Of course, I’ll be on the road as much as I can. I’m tentatively planning to get the year started right with a ride on New Year’s Day.

I live in New England and this year I decided to continue to ride my bicycle into the winter season. The exercise is more mentally stimulating than anything that I could accomplish in a gymnasium. The rides also feed my obsession by adding more miles to my total for the year.

To date I’m good down to about 32 degrees Fahrenheit with no snow on the trail. The biggest challenge as it becomes colder is clothing. The choices for me are much different than they are for warm weather. When its warm, I want clothes that get the moisture away from my body with the benefit of evaporative cooling. When its cold, I want to avoid having my perspiration exposed to the air because I don’t want the cooling effect.

It’s a fine balance between being warm enough and being too warm. As the season has progressed, I’ve added layers to accommodate the dropping temperatures. I started out using a nylon shell. I wore a t-shirt underneath the top shell and my regular underwear, but no pants under the pant shell. As it got colder I added cotton sweat pants and a long sleeved t-shirt over another t-shirt under the shell. To be comfortable at around 32 degrees, I wear a cotton hoodie on top. That may be good into the mid-20s.

On my feet, I gave up the clipless pedals because the shoes fit too tight for cold weather. Instead I use loose fitting cross-training shoes that are not ventilated. Two pairs of socks provide enough layers down to 32 degrees, but I need to re-think that for anything colder.

On my head I use a shell that covers my ears and forehead. It also has a flap that I can pull up over my chin and mouth. I haven’t found it necessary to cover my entire face, even with the wind chill of 15 to 20 miles per hour at times.

Hands have proven to be the most difficult to protect. On one of my early cold weather rides, I used five-finger gloves made from synthetic fleece. They worked fine until I removed them during a break. When I put them back on they were moist and caused my hands to freeze up as I rode. I didn’t anticipate that my hands would sweat as much as they do. Fortunately, I had a dry pair of mittens in my bag. The mittens have a shell and are lined with fleece. The shell prevents the evaporative effect. I use them exclusively at this point.

My training rides of about 25 miles are continuing successfully into the winter. I’m tending to use a rail trail that has a town every 4 miles or so just in case I need shelter. At the half-way point I have a favorite place where I can get coffee and a warm sandwich before I head back. I enjoy the sparsely travelled trails more when it’s warm, but that isolation is a risk during the cold weather because there is no place to get relief from the cold if necessary.

My favorite bicycle is my steel touring bike, a Surly Long Haul Trucker. I’m using that as long as I can. I like to train on the bike that I use for touring. After the trail gets covered with snow, I will try my mountain bike with some aggressive tires. At some point I will be thwarted by snow that is too deep for a bicycle.

I don’t cover the distance as fast as I would in the summer, but that’s not important in the cold. What’s important is that I am enjoying the sport that I love well into the winter. When spring comes my hope is that I will be ready for a long tour earlier in the season.

It’s hard to believe that I have exhausted all of the excellent bicycle tour routes in the United States. First let me clarify what I consider to be a tour. For me a reasonable bicycle tour will be 300 to 500 miles long, which puts it in the six to ten day range. There are many people like me who can’t go away for months on what I consider to be an exotic tour. Those are the kinds of tours that will take you across the United States or through Southeast Asia. I don’t even like to read about those kinds of tours because I find them annoying.

There are some foreign tours that I would like to do that would meet my length criteria, but the logistics are difficult to plan and they will be expensive. These include Hadrian’s Cycleway in the UK, the Canal du Midi in France, or the Lunga via Delle Dolomiti in Italy with connections into Austria and Slovenia. I do dream of adventures on those trails, but it isn’t practical for me to travel there.

I’ve done Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canal Cycleway a few times; most of the Adirondack Park Loop; and Pittsburgh to Georgetown on the Great Allegheny Passage / Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath. After much research, I conclude that the GAP / C&O Towpath may be one of the best trails and experiences in the country. That’s the kind of ride that I would like to plan as my next tour.

The Katy Trail in Missouri is a rail trail that offers some hope, but it comes in at a little less than 250 miles. For comparison, the GAP / C&O trail is about 350 miles. From Boston to St. Louis is a long way to travel for a four to five day bicycle ride.

Of course, there is the Great Divide Bicycle Route from Banff, Alberta, Canada, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, almost 2,800 miles of off road cycling. Most stretches of that route are a challenge and many stretches are very remote, so I can’t see myself tackling even a small segment of it. Adventure Cycling Association recommends traveling in a group of at least three so that one person can stay with the injured party while the third person rides off into the distance for help. The hope would be that the third person can reach cell phone coverage before being eaten by a grizzly bear.

There are many interesting places to travel by bicycle using the roads, but safety is a big thing with me. My Adirondack Park Loop tour used that kind of route. Some of that particular route uses small secondary roads that have very low traffic. The trouble is that much of the route also shares the road with heavy traffic, including lots of tractor-trailer trucks. My trip there was done before tourist season opened. It must be much worse when the tourist traffic begins. That would not be a concern if there were wide shoulders, but in many places the shoulders are extremely narrow or non-existent. It is way too stressful to ride a route like this and be able to enjoy the trip.

In my bicycle travels I have been impressed with the New York state bicycle routes. I have been on Bike Route 5 and found the shoulders wide and the road reasonably safe and well-designed for bicycle travel. Both Route 9 and Route 11 connect with la Route Verte in Quebec province. I figure that it is possible to ride from Albany, through Montreal, and into Quebec City, a trip of about 400 miles. When I tried to find a detailed map of Bicycle Route 9, I find that there isn’t one. Instead I found reviews that were critical of the road, saying that portions were very busy and dangerous. It turns out that Bike Route 9 doesn’t follow New York State Highway 9. Bike Route 9 meanders and at one point follows a route that is familiar to me from my Adirondack Park Loop tour. That was not a good experience for me during that tour. Bike Route 9 follows New York State 22 along Lake Champlain and I found the road busy and narrow at many points.

When I planned my Erie trip and when I planned my GAP / C&O trips I didn’t run into the kinds of problems that I have in trying to find other viable U.S. tours. It’s not that I have issues with hardship. I have issues with safety. I don’t even mind hills, but I don’t like hills with logging trucks barreling downhill and whipping past me like a whirlwind.

So, it looks like I will reprise my Erie and GAP /C&O trips. I will dream about the UK and Europe. Realistically, I will probably plan a bicycle tour in Canada to try a new route and give Canada a chance since it seems to be bicycle friendly. There is a lot of information about Route Verte, but it may take a while to get through some of the French language difficulties. There are plenty of resources in English as well. There is a lot of information for planning. The route maps are detailed with links for services and markers for rest areas. Positive reviews of the many trails comprising la Route Verte are easy to find. The message “Bienvenue cyclistes!” is received loud and clear. See you in Canada.

I don’t really plan to file an ad in the “personal” section of any web site or publication. Instead, this calls attention to a situation that many bicycle touring enthusiasts face. The reality is that there are very few people who would want to do self-supported bicycle touring: it is a demanding sport. As a result, it is difficult to find people who want to share the experiences and challenges of bicycle touring.

At one point I tried to recruit a friend to join me. This was an attempt that included full disclosure: this would entail some camping, carrying a load on the bike, and pedaling many miles over the course of a week or more. He laughed and said, “When I ride a long distance, my wife drops me off and picks me up at the end of the day.”

My recruiting efforts have expanded to people that I meet on my training rides. There are several people who I see regularly, but they are riding for a different reason than I am. Each one has a similar story and they certainly have a noble reason for riding. The reason is to get outside and get some exercise rather than working out in a stuffy gymnasium. Some are trying to recover from physical or medical difficulties like knee or back surgery. The rail trails give us about 25 miles of round trip exercise. When I turn the conversation to my 300 to 400 mile rides, their attention turns to the trees, the sky, and other things.

There are people who take an active approach to test their personal interest in touring. The annual Erie Canal ride that is organized by Parks and Trails New York draws a number of people who are trying this supported tour to get some feeling for the sport. I have met quite a few of the approximately 500 people on the ride who even bought touring bikes for the experiment. I have collected a few email addresses in the hope that maybe one of them would become interested. Apparently by the end of the 400 mile Erie ride they had enough.

On my tours I have met still other people who jumped into bicycle touring with both feet, but were poorly prepared. On my recent ride from Pittsburgh to Georgetown I met a guy and his teenage son. At our first camp site together, I was struck by the outsized equipment that was awkwardly strapped to their bicycles. This included foam mattresses and a 2 ½ gallon water jug. I didn’t think that they would make it to Georgetown. However, they took advantage of bicycle shops along the way and made significant changes during the course of the trip. The last time that I saw them with nearly 250 miles behind us, they were looking much more streamlined. They were quickly learning how to tour successfully and I asked them if they would do this again. The answer was “no”; this was a one-time deal.

One final obstacle is that people who are looking for a companion intend to tour southeast Asia or coast to coast across the United States. Tours that get attention in the publications are of that type: a six day ride from Pittsburgh to Georgetown isn’t very sexy. I haven’t found anybody looking for a companion for a six to ten day tour.

Self-supported bicycle touring is something that I love to do, but it is challenging and there are always surprises of the kind that need to be overcome on the trail even though you may be in Maryland instead of Vietnam. That’s part of the fun of doing it for me. It’s not like an inn to inn “beer tour” or “gourmet food tour” where everything is managed for you and the highlight of the day is the beer or the food. On a self-supported trip you need to plan for eating and sleeping each day and the highlights are the many sights that you stop to enjoy and people that you meet along the way.

So, I will continue to travel alone on my bicycle, sharing my experiences in my travelogues. I would welcome a companion, but not having one will not stop me. The people who are crazy dedicated to bicycle touring like me are few.

I recently discovered the Sheldon Brown web site. There are lots of information and links that cover everything cycling. The site was last updated about a year ago. Except for the many links, most of the information is timeless. I discovered sheldonbrown.com when I was looking for reliable information about chain wear and chain replacement. It has an excellent technical explanation of chain operation and wear. Sheldon is a well-known bicycle expert and here is an article about him in Wikipedia.

This summer I was on a supported tour and met quite a few people who were there to get a taste of touring. During the past three years, I have successfully completed several self-supported tours. This article shares my experiences with the process of preparing for a tour from choosing a bicycle to planning the route. Hopefully this will help some people who are interested in striking out on their own for the rewards and challenges of bicycle touring.

See my latest video travelogue on YouTube.

I completed my tour down the Great Allegheny Passage from Pittsburgh, PA, to Cumberland, MD, and down the C&O Canal Towpath from Cumberland to Georgetown, MD on 19 August 2014. This was one of the best bicycle touring experiences that I have had. The scenery is great and historic significance of the trail is interesting. Almost all of the 356.1 miles that I rode were off road on trails that were more than acceptable. Read all of the details here.