The format is also used for races, you ride as quickly as possible and can only rely on commercial services available to all for resupply and lodging, no prearranged or private support.
A couple years ago, my wife and I thru-hiked the Long Trail. We looked pretty hard at taking a bus to the start, but couldn't come up with an itinerary that took less than two days. Her parents ended up both driving us to the start and spotting our car at the finish. The finish is in the middle of goddamn nowhere; the start is near a fairly large city in western MA. It sure seemed like it should've been easier.
For our honeymoon, we did a couple hundred miles of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. The nearest place to the start to return a rented vehicle of any sort was a neighborhood U-haul (as in, not a corporate location; think a gas station with a couple trucks). And then we still needed a 1 1/2 hour shuttle ride to Old Forge. We spotted our car to the end of the trip and threw our boat in the back of the truck to get to the start.
Usually away from cars, but not typically easy. Sometimes it feels like pushing a shopping cart over a mountain.
This last summer I left my front door in the PNW and road 800 miles on a mixture of terrains to the tour divide, road 300 miles of that, then road another 1500 miles of pavement to Iowa. I'd call that bikepacking, and by my previous assertion it's also touring too. Not all touring is bikepacking, but all bikepacking is also touring. That trip is a good counter example of why it gets silly to define bikepacking by the terrain type.
/s
It can be simplified into a "saddle bag" vs "paniers", but IMO this is just a symptom. A form folows function. If You need to carry a full tent, sleeping bag and a change of clothes, touring paniers and heavy frame are probably the only way to go.
If You can cut down on comfort (or are optimizing for speed over long distance), suddenly You're left with a whole lot of options on how to carry whatever's left and You can use much lighter frame to do so.
Touring vs bikepacking being distinct I think is an anglicism, an americanization and a commercialization of the terms. The Americanization part I believe is "Bike Tour" being mistaken for in-contrast to "Car Tourist". "Bike tour" has nothing to do with "Car Tourism" or "Bike tourist". It is not short for 'tourist', which is where the americanization comes in. The etymology is French.
Take a look at my counter-example - was that a tour, or a bikepacking? It was 50% pavement. Meanwhile 300 miles was on one of the worlds most famous bikepacking route. These distinctions based on how minimalist of what you carry or where you go make no sense. Given that example, the most consistent answer is clearly "both". It was a bikepacking trip - I was carrying what I would have were I backpacking, while on a bike. Because all bikepacking is touring, it was therefore also a tour. Had I stayed in hotels/hostels and/or with & friends every night (not carrying everything I needed), then it would have been touring and not bikepacking.
We can look to the etymology of the words. 'tour' comes from French. You can do a "tour a pied" (on foot), "tour a velo" (by bike), or "tour a voiture" (by car). Because cycling is the national sport of France, "un tour" is understood to often be by bike, it's just shortened. Bike tour comes from that etymology, it is a superset. A bike tour might include a 'backpack' (bags), or it may not.
Language does evolve. The "current" anglicized understanding is silly though and contradictory. It's also way more commercial than I'd like.
Sorry.. I once spent a solid 7 hours thinking about the difference of touring vs bikepacking while on a bikepacking race. I had some time to really dig into it... I kinda dislike that 'bikepacking' is thought to be something apart from touring (and only in mountains, only on dirt, only with inline bags)- when instead bikepacking is just a subset of bike travel, bike touring.
I might have mixed up the subset/superset terms. Bikepacking is a subset of touring. All bikepacking is also touring.
In the UK we still have the Cycle Touring Club[1] which was founded in 1878, so it goes way back.
I don't even think there was originally much difference in the type of bags used. Really old school riders here used to use big saddle bags like those made by Carradice before panniers came into fashion.
I think I'm good with either term. All these amazing adventure stories make me long for summer again.
1. Recently renamed by some genius to Cycling UK (not to be confused with British Cycling which covers racing), still not sure why they bothered.
I've gone on small trips myself (weekend length) and have kept my trips under 100km. My eventual goal is to ride from the Great Lakes region (of N.America) to the Yucatán Peninsula of C. America.
I ride a recumbent. I camp in a hammock. Of course I use Linux. =)
A great resource for learning all about 'bents is: bentrideronline.com
Beard? :)>
I am definitely a graybeard too. =)
The mirrors get mounted on the handlebars. https://www.terratrike.com/product/mirror-mirrycle/ (example of them mounted on a similar frame - https://www.utahtrikes.com/RECENTTRIKE-TerraTrike_Rover_Blac... )
As an aside, my parents (late 70s) have an early model tandem pro ( https://www.terratrike.com/tandem/tandem-pro/ ) with substantial customizations (electric assist, mountain gear switch allowing them to change gears to a granny gear when stopped, solid aluminum (no spoke) back wheel).
They're hung in the house in the winter as available vertical space. https://imgur.com/YBnnwVO In the bottom center you can see the back wheel.... digging I found an earlier version of it while it was under construction (a previous winter) https://imgur.com/T9ME3lp
There's a German man on YouTube who is bikepacking with the Kwiggle and a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HQf71fMuIU
and it's small enough to fold into his canoe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exL-FCqtEOQ
The manufacturer has climbed the Stelvio Pass (1900 meters climb in 12Km) on it: https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/faltrad-stilfser-joch
and he has done 186 miles in one day around the Dutch IJsselmeer on it: https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/faltrad-300km saying "After the first test drives we noticed two things: the upright riding position is a lot of fun and even after long trips we were not tired at all".
[1] my favourite recumbent to read about/watch is the ICE Sprint with the extra large rear wheel. Worst HN recumbent story is jacquesm and his leg-sucked-underneath incident leaving a serious broken (shattered) leg injury: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Then at the other end of the spectrum there are lots of people who go quite slow, but for months. I'm not sure which is more impressive; both show tremendous grit but in different ways.
The only thing that truly sucks is when you can't continue. Like getting two irreparable flats 20 miles away from town in rural New Mexico, or getting an injury that ends your journey.
Hard to explain to people that don't experience it like that, but even if it doesn't feel good all the time, it's basically always still somehow fun.
On day 9, beginning on the Icefields parkway we pushed ourselves and rode 290 km, which was my biggest day of riding in my life. I could have gone further that day, I was still feeling pretty good when we got to our hotel after 14 hours in the saddle. Certainly it put the idea of racing on my mind.
I attempted Edmonton to Vancouver in August 2023. I made it to Nelson and scratched due to excessive wildfire smoke. That was my first attempt at any kind of a bicycle tour or any kind of activity that one might classify as an ultra. I went into that ride quite naive but I've learned enough since then that I'm ready to get myself into some real trouble.
Have you done the BC Epic?
He decided at the age of 22 to quit his job and ride his bike around the world.
...and then basically never really stopped (I think he may have been forced to retire recently but the chap's 84 now so we can cut him some slack).
There's a good documentary about him called "The Man Who Wanted to See It All".
I've just had a wake up call, my dog was diagnosed with cancer. Clock is always ticking.
It is very unfortunate that the owner and developer of the site can not make a living.
A lot of people don't want to give guys like him money, especially when most of the website's value was created by the thousands of bike tourists who put their journals there, not the creator of the website itself.
If he can't make a living from his website, he should get a job like the rest of us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Appalachian_Trai...
> As of July 2020, there are widely geographically dispersed IAT-branded walking trails in Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Wales, England, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco
> ...
> eological evidence shows that the Appalachian Mountains, certain mountains of Western Europe, and the Anti-Atlas range in North Africa are parts of the ancient Central Pangean Mountains, made when minor supercontinents collided to form the supercontinent Pangaea more than 250 million years ago. With the break-up of Pangaea, sections of the former range remained with the continents as they drifted to their present locations. Inspired by this evidence, the IAT has been extended into Western Europe and North Africa.
I started out on a two day ride on a rail trail. The following fall then went on a 6 day rail trail ride.
Then you schedule the event to coincide with holidays. In the US, we have (depending on your employer) 3 federal holidays from May through July (Memorial, Juneteenth, 4th of July). 4 for September through November but it doesn't line up well enough to get all 4 starting with 11 weeks off (Labor Day, Columbus, Veteran's, Thanksgiving). If you're willing to travel to get a better climate for an event, you have November-January which gives you Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and MLK.
So 3, 4, or 5 extra days on top of leave are feasible several times of the year (late spring/summer, fall, winter). That can be used to stretch your leave if you don't have enough to make it, or to give you a recovery week (or partial week).
Or, you get enough money and have no responsibilities and just quit working for 2-3 months.
I would bet you have more leave than 95%+ of W-2 workers in the US.
EDIT:
But if I'm understanding the table you linked, for people with between 10 and 20 years of experience, 19% have > 24 days off and 43% have > 20 days off. So my base leave is above average but not extraordinary. The rollover may be, though.
It would also be exceptional if you were approved to take all that leave at once.
I'd have a hard time riding across the country now just because my kid is still in school. But when he's out on his own, I'd like to do one more cross-country ride. I want to see how much has changed, but more importantly what has stayed the same.
EDIT: adding link to his youtube videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx86K7wVysS06YQqC6Q5jiRNw...
> The let up in the weather didn't last long, though. Even though the forecast for the area had indicated a cloudy but rainless afternoon, it just started pelting down rain in buckets. There is nothing like a really cold, persistent rain to find the weak spots in your rain gear, and before long my face, chest, and feet were soaked and freezing. The rain turned what had been a mediocre day into a miserable day. It could have been worse, I guess, but only if it had rained snakes.
