Knowing Your Bike Style

The casual cyclist cannot be encumbered by the thought of riding further than the office. Most often, the casual cyclist owns a car, and drives to the gym to ride a stationary bike.

The bike enthusiast-maximus, perhaps a fixie-owning piece of vegan-hipster-meat is one who pedals over every bridge for breakfast. 

These are not a bike tour people.

Bike touring folks are a different kind of bi-ped (punny I know). I haven't hashed out all my theories on what makes a bike tourist, but I think you have to like the challenge of . . . slow cooking. What? You know, slowly doing something. Bike touring is not instant gratification. 

This author summed up some of the mental attributes: http://christine-on-big-trip.blogspot.com/p/mentality.html

If you do not wish to read the whole thing, I feel this sums up a lot;

Mental ability to cope with unpleasant situations: A lot of hikers just hope that they will not encounter unpleasant situations. A real thruhikers does not wonder if he will encounter them, he just wonders when and how often they will occur. A thruhiker knows that bad weather, mosquitoes, overgrown trail and the like are part of a thruhike and knows right from the start that he will have to deal with them. But what looks like a horrible situation when you are in it, might end up being the best part of your trip. I have seen a lot of “thruhikers” on the AT who wussed out and started hitchhiking when the weather got bad. They are missing out on one of the best parts of a thruhike: It is the coping with these unpleasant situations that will give you the highest sense of satisfaction when you have successfully dealt with them. In hindsight you will look back and be so proud that you have successfully dealt with 2 weeks of torrential rain or 500 km of waist deep snow. In hindsight almost all of those “unpleasant” situations turn into the great experiences and achievements. Come mentally prepared for the bad and the ugly – it is part of the experience. But make sure you know what sort of unpleasant situations you will probably encounter and ask yourself whether you are ready to deal with them. One last piece of advice here: If you feel like quitting the trail, do not get off and leave immediately. Stay at least one night in a nice place and eat nice food. Most likely you just need a little pampering to forget the hardship and put things into perspective again. -Christine

Even though this author is talking about thruhiking, the important factors are applicable to bike touring.

Bike tourists are tourists! They like to take pictures and geek-out on wildlife. They enjoy a good cup of coffee and languidly looking over tour guides for the nicest parts of the country to reveal itself on a bumpy back road. That is what makes bike touring good . . . it is moving at a simmer, not a boil, allowing the culmination of things to slowly take hold. I'm hungry.

Journey on. -R