America ByCycle

How to Prepare for a Long-Distance Bike Tour

americabycycle — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:27:41 +0000

We teamed up with the Adventure Cycling Association to produce a series of videos on bicycle touring. This is the first of them, highlighting how to get prepared for your tour! How to Prepare for a Long-Distance Bike Tour from America ByCycle on Vimeo. 10 Things You Absolutely Need for a Long Distance Bike Tour It’s almost time for that tour! But what should you bring? House plants? An electric generator? 6 copies of your favorite [...]

How to Prepare For a Long Distance Bike Tour

americabycycle — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:42:11 +0000

The Adventure Cycling Association is awesome. Not only did they take us in, show us, around, and tell us all about their organization, they also hired us to make some videos and write some blogs for them! This is our first in a series of videos we produced for them, about how to prepare for a long distance bike tour. Enjoy! How to Prepare for a Long-Distance Bike Tour from America ByCycle on Vimeo. Stay tuned for more videos and [...]

A Historic Ride Through the Adventure Cycling Association

americabycycle — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 07:52:52 +0000

What can we say about Adventure Cycling that we haven’t said already? Before we started this trip, we didn’t even know about the small organization located in Missoula, Montana. Hell, we didn’t even know about bicycle touring! Our worries and fears about what to do were eliminated though, once we were showed the Adventure Cycling Association’s website. All we knew about the organization was that they had great maps, and their website was full of helpful information about bike touring. [...]

Race To Fat

americabycycle — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:29:37 +0000

We said our goodbyes to the amazing people of the National Speleological Society and hit the road once again, with no agenda other than having an amazing cross-country biking experience. AND THEN IT HAPPENED–we heard about Tour De Fat. Tour De Fat can best be described as “a bombastic bash of beer, bicycling, and, you know, like, bros being bros.” Ok, that last part was just for more B sounds. Gotta love alliteration, right? Repetitive B-sounding words aside, we knew [...]

1,000 and Counting

americabycycle — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 04:38:00 +0000

We can now say we’ll remember where we were when we crossed the 1,000 mile point. Although at the time we didn’t know it. “This is our first ferry ride!” Michelle exclaimed as we took the ferry across the Green River. It goes a total of 30 feet at about 3 miles an hour (it’s still fun going across, despite how short it is), but it was our first one! I was enjoying it. What I didn’t know however, [...]

Building The Jefferson Earthship

americabycycle — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 03:24:19 +0000

There was nothing really out of the ordinary when we contacted the Reents family in Jefferson, Colorado through warmshowers.org. We emailed them, they called back, and we set up the time and date that we could come through and stay at their house. They offered us whatever space they had, and we were grateful for anything they could provide on our stop between Fairplay and Denver. It wasn’t until we got a day from Jefferson that we learned they were [...]

A Mammoth Of A Good Time

americabycycle — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 03:41:12 +0000

Caves are dark. No, I’m serious. They’re dark. Imagine the darkest thing you’ve ever experienced (no, not Dick Cheney’s soul), and multiply that by 1,000. THAT’S how dark it is in an underground cave. We discovered this after we made some calls and headed into Mammoth Cave for the first time to interview Vicky Carson, head of PR for the Park. She was integral in helping us get some footage for our trip and helping us learn about the cave [...]

10 Things They Don’t Tell You About Bicycle Touring

americabycycle — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 07:04:28 +0000

1. Your feelings toward road kill will be drastically different on bicycle than they are in a car. Instead of a sympathetic “awwwww” when you see a dead cat, deer, or groundhog (lots of groundhogs in Virginia), you will nearly gag and not say anything. You won’t say anything, of course, because you are holding your breath for as long as you can while you pass the carcass on the road. It’s even worse when you can’t see the animal, [...]

Coal Country

americabycycle — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:52:54 +0000

The last thing I ever pictured myself doing on this bike trip would be operating a welding torch underneath a 23,000 pound coal truck in Belcher, Kentucky. Well it happened, and it was AWESOME. As many of you already know, I am an avid environmentalist. I love the outdoors and will do whatever it takes to protect and preserve it. When doing research before our trip, I had read a lot about the mountaintop removal mining operations taking place throughout [...]

A Piece of Hillbilly Paradise on Route 76

americabycycle — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:47:10 +0000

When Ryan and I first came up with the idea to bike across America, we had just returned from an adventurous hiking journey through the Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. National Geographic calls the Corcovado the most biologically intense place on Earth. It was nothing less than magnificent. We hiked through lush canopy jungle alongside pristine, white sand beaches. We encountered tapirs, white nose coatis, peccaries and a jaguarundi. It was the closest thing to [...]