bike touring bicycle touring bikes

Bicycle touring is a type of travel or leisure activity which involves touring, exploration or sightseeing a region by bicycle. Recreational cyclists are the largest and least defined group. They don't dress alike, ride the same bicycles, or even ride in the same places. They might be riding on a city bike trail, exploring old dirt roadways through the woods, cruising in a group through the countryside, or traveling across country as a solo tour. It's easy to say what they are not interested in: speed or utility. And it's easy to say what they are interested in: enjoyment. They may also be riding for their health, but they usually see no need to monitor their heart rates to do so. Touring is a recreational activity, but not all recreational activities are touring.

A ride of a few miles on a quiet rural road in the evening or on the weekend can be considered a touring trip, if the focus is on enjoying the outdoors and the sights along the way. Bike clubs often organize longer rides that may cover from 10 to 25 miles or even more. Be sure to learn the pace of such a group before beginning such a tour. Some cyclists consider averaging 20 mph in tight packs to be touring.

Hybrid bikes and mountain bikes can sometimes be used for touring as they can also carry racks and fenders. It's a good idea to add handlebar extensions to offer additional resting places for the hands, however. The tires on the mountain bike should be fairly narrow street tread if touring on roads. Very wide tires are really only needed on soft soil and slow the bike down considerably otherwise, due to weight, air resistance, and drag.

What's a good way to get started touring. Keep your first rides short and gradually extending the distance don't try a distance of greater than five miles unless you have been cycling regularly. During the winter, I ride my bike to work to keep in shape, when the first pretty Limit yourself to a distance no more than twice my normal daily distance. I don't start riding farther until I get comfortable with that distance. To prepare for a tour with others, ride at least half of the daily distance as often as possible until you are comfortable with that distance. Also, don't worry too much about speed. Pushing for all your worth for a short distance is not nearly as helpful as traveling at an enjoyable pace for a longer distance.

What can one do on a touring trip Well, some cyclists like to use a weekend's ride as an excuse to stop in a restaurant. A simple over-night tour is to visit a nearby city, take in whatever attractions draw you, spend the night in a motel, and ride home the next day.

For many people, touring is a social activity. It's a opportunity to go on a date, spend time with the mate, share time with the kids, or get together with friends. You might make new friends by joining the local bike club -- if the club does the same kind of cycling you do. The local bike shop is often a good place to make contacts and find out the local situation. You may also meet up with other cyclists on the road and end up making a friendship out of it.

Commuter traffic is largely time-sensitive. Roads which skirt cities or which connect the cities to the boondocks, especially those that feed off of interstates will have light traffic most of the day and very heavy traffic during the morning and afternoon rush hours. The farther from a city a road is, the earlier and later the rush hour on that road. Also expect heavy evening weekend traffic, as the commuters drive back into town for recreation. Since commuter traffic is so time-bound, the best way to avoid it is to avoid commuter roads at certain hours of the day.

Local traffic is quite predictable from the populations of the towns along the road. All other things being equal, the traffic on the sole road between two cities of 50,000 will be a hundred times as heavy as the traffic on the sole road between two towns of 500. In addition to urban traffic flow, we must include rural traffic. In good farming areas, the farms will be large, and rural traffic will be too light to measure, but in areas where farming is not profitable, people spread out all over the countryside, and the rural traffic is considerable.

Beyond the heath benefits and enjoyment of cycling, which are discussed elsewhere, bicycling also provides economic, ecological, and environmental benefits over other forms of transportation. Earliest known forebears were called velocipedes included many types of human-powered vehicles. Bicycle touring, also known as cyclotourism, involves touring and exploration or sightseeing by bicycle for leisure. A brevet or randonnée is an organized long-distance ride.
 

Seeing versus Being Seen
There are two things you have to consider when riding at night:
     1. Seeing the road
     2. Being seen by motor vehicles as well as pedestrians and other cyclists.

Being Seen
The best lights for this are xenon strobes. You can put a red or amber xenon strobe on the back of your bike and a clear xenon strobe on the front. You'll still need a low wattage front headlight to remain legal. Low-intensity LED blinkers which are nice, but not as visible except in total darkness.

Seeing
On darker streets you need to be able to see the road in front of you. How far you need to see depends partly on how fast you ride. For quartz-halogen lamps, a good rule of thumb is a minimum of 10 watts, then an additional watt for every mph over 10 mph.
 

Compared to touring or hybrid bicycles, touring quadricycles are more comfortable to ride, can navigate steeper hills more easily, deal with crosswinds better and can carry a much heavier load than a bicycle. Touring quadrcycles have disadvantages compared to bicycles including that they are heavier, require more storage space, typically have slower cruise speeds, are more complex to maintain and have a larger turning circle.