We’ll visit some sites from tour and guidebooks, mostly we’ll be breath slowing across landscapes to find less insistent beauty, the beauty in the ordinary things in their ordinary state.
Cycling adventurist, bikepacker, travel writer, photographer, speaker, professor of philosophy. Route designer of the VTXL, the Green Mountain Gravel Growler beer tour, the Silk Road Mountain Race course 1st edition, and many more.
Category: Maps
Kane Creek/Pritchett Canyon Overnight
J and I only have a couple of days left before we leave, so I’ve proposed something dead easy, maybe relaxing, a little scenic: we’ll resupply, pedal out to Kane Creek Canyon, spend the night, then curl around Behind the Rocks to return to town via Pritchett Canyon.
Virginia Postcard
Rappahannock County, rollered dirt road lattice, Blue Ridge on the horizon and our fingers and toes freeze but we don’t mind, what with the sapphire sky.
NYC postcard
The plan is to follow a dirt path through the Bronx up to Westchester County on single and double track, bursts of trash and glass and chainlink glimpses. The neither illusion of it, of shrushing through the woods half a veil alongside the brick iron concrete knowledge of where we are, and that seesaw, not a countryside ride, not through hyper built spaces.
Czech Republic Postcard
Margaret coins the label agribiking for the style, where we web the Czech countryside on dirt or gravel or fragmenting asphalt roads abandoned by all but farmers imprinting tractor treads in the mud, perhaps their […]
Bikepacking Santa Fe-Los Alamos Loop V
Ride pushed carrying, only half know precisely where we are, when we do, it rarely resolves how far it is from where we’re headed timed over terrain that makes distances meaningless. Being late for my […]
Maplets App
Another iPhone App that I am finding indispensable in bike explorations is Maplets. Maplets is an archive of simple specialized maps that typically cover a very small region. Think tourist brochures, university campus maps, chamber of […]
Mountain Bike Training NYC
Suit up in the usual way — mountain helmet, gloves, shades, baggies, H2O pack — out the door, but it is a bit different to start with elevator pleasantries with the guy with the two dachshunds, each floor dinging otherwise quiet but for the muzak playing in my head. Pedaling into bright sunshine and brighter car horns, business suited pedestrians, delivery cyclists with front baskets, traffic cop white gloves whistles, drafting buses until they pull over, I surf the wake into the more frenetic middle lane fray. Heading uptown comic zippy BMX under geared single speed cadence, 25 minutes to Grand Central Station. Walk the bike into the main concourse, no one pays any special attention except mid 20’s with sideburns and headphones, raised eyebrows to gear inspection to approving nods. Cleat clack down platform 34 to board the Metro North, bike wedged into a space not meant for it but I have a $5 per year card that says that I can at this off-peak hour. I sit and don’t bother to take my helmet off, just another freaky hat, an hour meditation to Cortlandt.
Around La Paz Exploring
The Salar hogs the glamour, but the area nearer La Paz would immensely reward spirited exploration. With a clever itinerary, one could travel in a truly fast and light backpacking style on a dual suspension rig. On an imaginary future trip I imagine riding down Yunga Cruz to the jungle and then up The Death Road.
Or bring an unstoppable Fat Bike for a more deliberate, deep backcountry effort.
Here are some maps for riding and walking in the Yungas and mountains north and northeast of La Paz, including the Death Road. All of them are available in La Paz; I post them here for pre-trip planning.
South America Bound
Envisioning volcanoes, jungle tracks, salt flats and glaciers. Altitude and crater lakes and sawtooth crags, hypoxic dirt routes (if I’m not careful, tourist nonsense pan flutes). For me, South America is to Asia like ground is […]
New England historical roads
From USGS Hawley Topo map, 1894 survey It should have been more obvious, and sooner, that there are two ways through distance and motion, two answers to the wanderlusting want, to be delighted astonished by […]