Another quick vignette video from cycling across Southern India (on a supported tour, with a group of friendly strangers). We’d gradually ascended the Western Ghats mountain range over the previous few days… then descended the other side on a single beautiful, curvy, 20km-long downhill. I recorded the whole descent, but clipped out about 90 seconds that capture the vibe:
Cycling India: Tea Country. After getting back from six weeks of bike touring, I’m trying something new and making a few quick highlight videos with footage I recorded. This is the first one.
And… here I am, riding my bike in the heat and humidity of Kerala, India. I’ve posted a few updates across fragmented islands of social media like Instagram / Strava, or group texts… but plenty of folks I know don’t use those sites. So I’m looking into posting updates here to link back to (though it’s not quite as easy on my phone while traveling). I’ll at least post a summary here later, after the tour, as usual. ...
A few years back I met a friend who lives in Berlin and we spent a week biking to Copenhagen. It turns out we had compatible cycle touring styles, and said “let’s do this again some time… especially if I’m ever somewhere in Europe within a reasonable take-your-bike-on-the-train distance from Germany". Other vacation plans brought me to Slovenia, so we schemed up a week of self-supported cycling in Slovenia and a bit of Croatia, on a mix of paved and gravel roads. ...
(this is a short recap post with some photos, perhaps some day I’ll come back and write more when I have the space to fully wrap my head around what just happened) Ever since I first visited Japan, one of my dreams has been to do a long-distance bicycle tour there, with a focus on rural areas (as well as the food, history, craftsmanship, and culture). “Some day, life’s too busy… maybe when I’m 65…”– but after a career change, I made it happen this year. It was one of the most memorable trips of my life. ...
(This is a placeholder writeup with a few photos, perhaps I’ll come back some day and flesh it out…) I spent a week cycling the length of Korea (~400 miles from Seoul to Busan), as a fully supported** ride with an organized tour group and about 20 strangers (though a few I’d met on a bike tour in Vietnam the previous year). By the end I felt exhilarated, challenged, stimulated, and full of great food. ...
I’d heard over the years that Taiwan’s East Coast is beautiful and a popular place to cycle, and that you can rent bikes at one Giant store and return them at another, making a one way rental bike tour reasonable. I’d never quite found the excuse + motivation to plan a trip there, so had that filed away in the “some day” mental list. Then a few months ago a friend reached out saying he wanted to bike in Taiwan and would I be interested? I said yes, and before I knew it we were riding twisty roads down gorgeous Taroko gorge after gorging on breakfast dumplings… ...
Last summer (2022) I biked from ~Berlin to Copenhagen with a friend. A week of gorgeous riding on pavement and some dirt, carrying all our gear but staying in hotels to avoid the need for camping equipment, through a mix of rural landscapes, quaint towns, and cities. It started with flying into Berlin, checking my boxed bike and a lightweight duffel bag that just held two panniers of gear. I reassembled the bike in a train station in the city, hooked my panniers onto it, wadded up the duffel bag in the bottom of one of the panniers, and rode away… ...
I’m not as young as I used to be. Stretching before and after a long ride (especially on tours where I’m riding day after day after day) makes an especially big difference now. Notes to self: Here’s the ideal set of stretches I’ve settled on, with the (*) ones being the ones I prioritize if I’m feeling tight on time: Child’s pose * Cat Cow Down Dog Pec stretch doorway * Eagle Arms Clasp hands behind back Arm circles * Hip flexor (heel held to butt, knee pointing down)
(a brief recap, perhaps to come back to with more detail some day) I’ve wanted to push myself farther out of my bike touring comfort zone, in terms of traveling in a culture very different from home, and for long enough and at a slow enough pace that I start to pick up on the rhythms on daily life. I dove in to a four-week tour through Vietnam and Cambodia… ...