Category: Bike travel

Teen finishes second cross-country bike tour; raises money for diabetes research

Rebecca O'Donnell completed her second cross-country bike trip this past weekend, logging 4,400 miles from San Francisco to Southwest Harbor, Maine, with her parents and brother.

She did her first Trans-America bike tour as a 3-year-old sitting in a trailer pulled by her mom or dad.

This time she did it as a 16-year-old with Type I diabetes, a serious condition that requires constant monitoring and regular injections through a catheter attached to an insulin pump.

I'm frequently amazed by the apparent difficulties that some people can overcome to enjoy bicycle travel. In this case, Rebecca had the support of her parents, Deb and Mike, and younger brother, James. At age 12, the cross-country bike tour was no small feat for her brother, either.

The bike tour, dubbed “Rebecca's Ride,” raised nearly $9,000 for diabetes research …..

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/09/08/teen-finishes-second-cross-country-bike-tour-raises-money-for-diabetes-research/

Taking a bike vacation over the mountains to Wenatchee

BlewettPassWith a few days available for bike travel and rainy weather forecast for Western Washington, it shouldn't have taken me too long to decide on a destination east of the Cascades.

The eastern slope of the mountains is also known as the dry side.

Yet, it was an agonizing process until I realized that it was just me and my bike and some gear. I didn't have to worry about anyone else's needs or keeping someone else happy.

I really couldn't make a bad choice.

So I chose a route that started in Cle Elum, about 90 minutes by freeway, and climbed up and over Blewett Pass on Highway 97 and eventually down to Wenatchee on the Columbia River …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/09/05/taking-a-bike-vacation-over-the-mountains-to-wenatchee/

More than 25 years of bike traveler portraits posted online

A visit to the offices of Adventure Cycling Association is a highlight for bike travelers on the traditional TransAmerica route as they pass through Missoula, Montana.

Since 1982, Greg Siple, the co-founder of Bikecentennial which later became Adventure Cycling, has been taking portraits of them.

Here's the first one, at left. She's Laura Orton, a hospital dietician from Michigan who stopped by the office while on a bike vacation from Seattle.

Now, the Adventure Cycling has posted 76 of those portraits online in the National Bicycle Touring Portrait Collection. It's fun to browse through them and see what people have been riding and carrying over the years. One thing in common, they all have the self-satisfied expression of being on the ride of their lives …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/08/28/more-than-25-years-of-bike-traveler-portraits-posted-online/

Man rides his bike “Hell & Back”; says it was fun

Karl Krueger will be the first person to go into the bicycling record books for riding his bike to hell and back.

While most of us have probably felt that way after a particularly ugly bike ride, 62-year-old Krueger is the first to ever finish the bike event called the “Hell & Back.”

All he had to do was ride his recumbent bicycle clear across South Dakota, turn around, and ride back. He finished the 824-mile endurance ride in just under 93 hours — 3 hours ahead of the cut off.

The Hell & Back is part of the Gut Check 212 endurance bike race across South Dakota, a fund raiser for Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA).

The Gut Check 212 solo ride follows Highway 212 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/08/25/man-rides-his-bike-hell-says-it-was-fun/

New trail for bike vacations along Europe's Iron Curtain

Few things excite my imagination more than scanning bike trail maps.

On Sunday I stumbled across a new brochure for the Iron Curtain Trail, a bike path that one day will traverse the 4,216-mile length of the Cold War border between eastern and western Europe.

Beginning at the Norway-Russia border on the Barents Sea in the north, the bike route touches 20 nations before it ends on the Black Sea coast in Turkey in the south.

Nearly equal in length to the TransAmerica Trail that stretches from Yorktown, Virginia, to Astoria, Oregon, in the US, this bike trail passes parks, monuments and green belts that mark the so-called “death strip” between East and West during the Cold War …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/08/24/new-trail-for-bike-vacations-along-europes-iron-curtain/

Bike tour searches for people who “go the extra mile”

Much like the philospher Diogenes used a lamp to search for an honest man in ancient Greece, Shawn Anderson is using a bike to find people who go the extra mile.

Anderson, 46, is calling this the Extra Mile America Tour.

The motivational speaker and author set off by bike from San Francisco on July 21 and plans to reach Boston by Oct. 8. Along the way, he's searching for those who are going the extra mile in their lives, and he's encouraging others to give a little more effort.

He's repeating his message to gatherings in 21 cities ….

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/08/23/bike-tour-searches-for-people-who-go-the-extra-mile/

RAAM champion and teen-ager travel to Alaska by bike

What happens to former Race Across America bike riders? Sometimes they're kind of like old soldiers, “they just ride away.”

Two-time RAAM champion Danny Chew is riding away on his bicycle with a goal of tallying 1 million miles.

Riding indoors or on a trainer doesn't count. Chew logs all his miles outside, which is why it's not surprising that he recently turned up crossing the Alaska border on his bicycle with his nephew, Steven Perezluha.

Perezluha, 18, enlisted his uncle to accompany him on a bicycle tour from his home in Longwood, Florida, to Alaska and back.  Since Chew lives in Pittsburgh, his nephew bicycled the first 1,200 miles alone and then with his father …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/08/17/raam-champion-and-teen-ager-travel-to-alaska-by-bike/