At the end of this week we are heading out of town to be bicycle tourists again. We're heading to the Florida Panhandle with a weekend stop in Central Florida to play in the hills around Clermont. (What we Floridians think of as Florida's Alps.) It is going to be a lot of fun. I'm going to be slow, but I'm ready to get back to riding every day. (As a bikey friend says, "Do the miles, the speed will come.")
Our riding at home in Miami is practice for our bicycle tourist stuff. In Miami we take rest days where we don't ride our bikes anywhere. When we're traveling we ride every day; we "rest" by making some days slow and easy miles. Up to now our routes have all been loops out of our motel. We only did overnight touring carrying our luggage on our bikes from home.
This year we've pulled together some upgrades for our credit card bicycle touring:
- We worked on the luggage we had for our bikes. Our overnight luggage had been Arkel Randonneur Seatpost racks with Arkel Tailrider Trunk bags. We also had Sunlite handlebar roll bags. We decided to swap out the little Sunlite handlebar bags for Apidura handlebar packs and the Apidura snap-on accessories pockets. That pretty much doubles our carrying capacity.
- We got a new car, a car with a trunk. This lets us drive wherever we want, across the state or several states, leave our regular suitcases and big gear bag in the trunk of the car, and pedal off for a several-days-long out-and-back tour using our new bike luggage arrangement.
There's no more need to practice. Time to get out there and pedal.
