Wednesday, July 1, 2009

States I've Biked In


visited 15 states (30%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or another interesting project

I rode with my kids when they were growing up but then the bike hung from the garage ceiling for many years while I did other things. Riding a bike was always one of those things I was going to do when there was more time. Well, that time finally came in 2006 when we took the plunge and bought a bike rack so we could carry the bikes with us on our annual trip east to visit family. The plan was to stop at various Rails-to-Trails and bike a few miles every few days as a way to break up sitting in the car day after day. We had a blast riding on the Cape Cod Rail Trail and several others in Massachusetts, the Towpath Trail in Ohio, a piece of the KATY trail in Missouri, several trails in Denver and Boulder City in Colorado, Moab and St. George in Utah, and lots of rides in and around Las Vegas. In all we covered 512 miles that year. In 2007 we road more miles around Las Vegas and we took our bikes to Europe and road several bike paths along the Moselle and Rhine rivers, mostly in Germany. Our miles grew to 626 that year. In 2008 we again headed to the eastern US and hit more rail trails and scenic routes as well as spending a week on Prince Edward Island (PEI) in Canada where we biked about half of the Confederation trail. Our mileage really grew in 2008, to 1409 miles. So, although biking over 2500 miles in three years is really not much to a serious and dedicated biker, that is far more experience in the saddle then I ever thought I would acquire. I'm anxious to share what we've learned about touring with bikes, and to learn even more from others who share this interest.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, you sure get around. Over a dozen states. How do you get there? I assume you don't take a bike on the plane to get across the country

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  2. Most of my family lives back east, so on trips to visit with them we put the bike rack on the back of the car and take them with us. The only time we took the bikes on a plane was when we biked through a bit of Germany and France one summer - decided it was worth the hassel to have our own bikes vs. renting bikes of unknown quality.

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