Bicycle Tour Dry Run

This morning I planned a dry run for my tour through the Great Allegheny Passage in October.  I've never gone on a bike tour, so I wanted to see how well I could pack the gear, how stable it was, how stable the bike was, how the extra weight affected the ride, etc.

So, I loaded up the bike, full sidebags and all, strapped on the tent, and set off for the Hyde Park farmers market, about 7 miles away.

I stopped at Drake park and decided to make some breakfast (oatmeal).  A couple of discoveries: sugar is the most important ingredient in oatmeal. You can get away without anything else, but without sugar, it's just oats.  The dried fruit and cashews make it awfully tasty, too, need to pack those.

The ride to Hyde Park was uneventful - mostly downhill. The center of gravity was changed a bit, but comparable to my own weight, the extra gear isnt that much additional weigh, so no big difference there.

The ride back was difficult - Red Bank is STEEP and long.
But, the extra weight from the gear again didnt make that big a difference.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weight Loss

Image
At the beginning of November, 2011, I was 'suddenly' 267 pounds, and was ready for change. I had been researching and working on a system of lifestyle changes with the goal of being merely overweight by my next birthday, in June. At 5'10", this meant a goal weight of 202 lbs. I began the first major lifestyle change - quitting cola, and switching to self-brewed ice tea. I began looking into modifying my diet, too. I love to eat, so the challenge was finding low-calorie and convenient replacements for mcdonalds, chick-fil-a, and dunkin donuts.  I learned the calorie counts for all the basic foods I usually ate, and spent a few long shopping trips at the grocery store, looking at the calories of everything. I cut most of the bread out of my diet, most sugars, which meant most processed foods.  No Mayonnaise, there are so many tasty replacements, the richest of which are half the calories. I eat a lot of asparagus, mixed vegetables (corn, peas, beans, carrots)...
Read more

Explore Your World

I traveled around for work a lot in my early thirties, and the more i traveled, the more I noticed that, while different cities had their nice points, they mostly all had their obvious drawbacks as well. That the quality of life wasn't necessarily attributable to living in a nice place. Recently, I read a quote -  "Instead Of Wondering When Your Next Vacation Is, Maybe You Ought To Set Up A Life You Don’t Need To Escape From." http://travelwithashley.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/photo.jpg Explore your city, find the tea shop, the spice shop, the bike shop. Not the one run out of delaware, but the one run by the guy down the road. Go to a grocer, the local guy who buys from the local growers, people he knows by name from farms he's been to. You'll find theyre friendly, engaged, and provide good quality food at great prices. They do so because they care, because it's THEIR business. Theyre not just earning a paycheck and helping some guy in ...
Read more