Next Ride, new directions

On July 30, I’ll start another long ride, and this time, I’ll be going in a few new directions.

Click the image above to see more.

One new one will be cycling on gravel roads and narrow paths, for about 750 miles in the Rockies.

The roads will often be logging roads, and the paths are called ‘single track’ in the cycling crowd. The route will be a combination of the Great Divide Mountain Bike route and Great Parks North, which is a touring-bike route.

Another new direction is that I’ll be leaving my beloved touring bike behind. As many of you know, her name is Spirit. She’s made for carrying panniers, tar roads, and some gravel roads. My next ride will have 100s of miles on gravel, dozens of miles of single-track, and some fun yet unsettling yards on rocky cliffs.

For this ride, I’ll be on my new bike. Her name is Fernweh. That’s a German word which translates to “far-woe.” It’s the opposite of homesickness and shows the desire to go somewhere. Sometimes, I call my new bike Fernweh, and other times, I call her Fergie for short. Technically, Fergie is a bike from REI that’s called a Coop DRT 2.2.

Like other mountain bikes, Fergie isn’t designed for panniers like Spirit is, which leads to another “new direction” on this ride. I’ll be using frame-bags instead of panniers.

Frame bags don’t hold nearly as much as panniers, so another new direction is that I’m applying ideas from ultra-light backpacking.

A final new direction is that I will probably be using this blog less than before. This time, I want to enjoy cycling a bit more than writing. I also want to try a bike-blogging website that several of my bike-touring friends use, called TrackMyTour. Some of those friends are currently cycling from Montana to Alaska. If you’d like to see what TrackMyTour is like and see their ride, their website is at https://trackmytour.com/StWwd . In the next week or two, I’ll add my TrackMyTour website to a blog post here.

I’m excited about all these new directions, since they keep life lively. One direction that hasn’t changed is that I’m late getting ready, especially since I need to test a lot of new gear. I better stop writing and test some gear and figure out how to pack it.

But before I go, the song for this post is obvious. It includes some sights I’ll see.