Old 07-22-16, 01:35 PM
  #286  
jefnvk
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For those that want a real life example of how one COULD have helped? Here you go.

I did a tour of Belgium and the Netherlands this year. I get a week off at a time, not really any more. Good for those of you with unlimited time, its not in my cards. The sole purpose of my trip was not to HTFU, to see how much wattage I could put out, to brag about getting from point a to point b solely by my power (rather hard in a country that values ferries over bridges, BTW), but to see Europe in a new way, as planes, trains, buses, and cars had gotten boring over my past dozen trips.

I crashed in Leuven the night before my tour properly started. Cut my leg wide open on a beer bottle to the point I'm surprised I didn't need an ER, and destroyed a groin muscle in the process. Couldn't hardly get over my top tube, let alone comfortably pedal, the entire time. Had I been on a rented bike, not my own, I'd have willfully went back to the shop and swapped it out for an ebike in a heartbeat. I don't feel that shortening the trip and missing out on quite a bit I had been looking forward to just to say it was solely human powered would have been worth it at all, especially just to appease anonymous internet folks who would have told me I was doing it wrong.

I'm sure there are some purists who think I wasn't really touring because cycling wasn't my sole focus of my trip and it was CC supported. I don't care, beyond crashing and rerouting and missing a couple Trappist breweries my trip was centred around, it was a great time. Everyone has different goals in touring. If someone has a question you can answer, it really takes no effort to not be a DB because something else they are doing doesn't appeal to YOU. It also takes no effort to ignore the thread. I looked at one asking about bike racks today. I prefer roof racks, the poster wanted a rear, so instead of berating them on what I find to be a silly decision, I just left. Simple.

Last edited by jefnvk; 07-22-16 at 01:39 PM.
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