First up is Woollypigs. Henrik and Vicky are two Europeans (Henrik from Denmark, Vicky from the UK) who decided to start touring in 2009. Over the past few years they have toured England, Wales, Scotland, Denmark, Croatia, New Zealand and Australia. Earlier this year they embarked on a tour of the Americas, starting in Tierra del Fuego. They biked around South America for a bit, then flew up to Portland in May (where they met me for coffee) and now are heading south along the coast and then...
Definitely give their blog a perusal, they are cool folks!
Next up is Robert at Rootless in Place. He's a Washington state native, seersucker and experimental music loving, Rivendell riding "touron". (His term for a bicycle tourist.) After doing a bunch of tours around the Northwest over the past few years, he decided to head east along the Northern Tier route to the East Coast. Currently he's pretty far east, just crossing the New York State line. I have no doubt he'll be in Maine soon!
And to round out the trifecta is Gypsy by Trade. He has been riding his fat bike from Alaska through Canada to get to the start of the Great Divide mountain bike route in Banff National Park. Check out his site for loads of beautiful pics of wilderness scenes. (And check out the comments of this post where we discuss National Parks policies, which inspires him to quote Edward Abbey.) I would love to do some touring like that one of these days, if I can only get over my distaste for gravel.
*****
In weird bike touring news that is creeping me out ever so slightly...
You of course know by now of the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Through a thread on Bikeforums, I learned that someone on a cross-country bike tour was a victim of the shooting. (He was shot, but is still alive.) From the linked news story I found out that the victim (Stephen Barton) is from Connecticut, my home state. So of course I have to research it further...
And it turns out that he is from a town I used to live in and graduated the same high school I did. Now I call that a bit eerie.
To be truthful, I have a friend from Connecticut who lives in the Denver metro area and is definitely one to go to the first midnight screening of a new Batman movie. So I was worried I would hear about him being a victim. But he lives on the other side of Denver so would have most likely gone to another theatre.
Hey thanks for the mention. Definitely digging the more epic tour,
ReplyDeleteIt puts my previous longest tour (Seattle to SF) to shame.
Re: tourons. It is of course a contraction of Tourist and Moron. Hopefully you note that I include myself in that group - usually "my fellow tourons". I like this term because there is a sense among some travelers (especially backpackers) of superiority that they aren't just tourists like everyone else. IMO what makes a great traveller is a humble attitude not any sort of notion of superiority of means, methods or approach. So a bit of deflationary nomenclature.