spinnaker

People have a right to their opion. I have made them based on my experience. Most of your posts here are attacks on the opinions of others. You didn't read my post. If you had you would have noticed I suggested international travel for later trips. All you wanted to do was attack as you did to others here,

Anything you have to say is absolutely irrelevant. I so rarely block anyone, it has been so long I have forgotten how to do it. But you certainly have earned . that status.

What does the "environmentalist" have to do with anything??? : foo: Also I would think an environmentalist would discourage airplane travel?? So much for your opinion I guess.

avole

Difficult to respond to a series of non-sequiturs. I'd rather reply to your other "points" through the mail system, otherwise it threatens to be tedious for anyone else. OK?

saddlesores

no experience riding a loaded bike, no extended (supported) rides, no backpacking.


you might want to get some experience locally, find out what works for you, learn about the gear and equipment, experience a loaded tour....before you jet off to some remote location that looks really cool in the travel videos.


y'all are living in mountain bike wonderland. plenny of places to ride and camp nearby or in a neighboring state. do the first couple rides where you have multiple bailout options.



and....ummm...yeah,....the relationship thing.

saddlesores

no cycling in bangkok, other than to train station to get outa dodge. have ridden across a few times - main train station to airport for example - but basically 100km of boring concrete in all directions.


anyhoo, in china with the girlfriend this year (maybe next also). possible trip to visit relatives over the summer. maybe.

antokelly

check out a lad on utube called hippyswift he does a lot of bikepacking and gives a rundown on gear he takes.

avole

Well, I don't know Bangkok that well, but Chinatown area used to be good and different, until it made all the tourist books and the govt cleaned it up, still worth a visit, however. Plus the back roads on the other side of the river can be interesting. And, there's my favourite cycle path around Suvarnabhumi airport, so some of it is still interesting. Anyway, give me a hoy if you want to stay down the coast a bit, in Hua hin, where I have a small apartment. It has some decent cycle paths leading south, roads get quieter, and, of course, there are the national parks.

Plus, the food is still great.

spinnaker

You aren't worth anothe microsecond of my time. On my ignore list. Welcome to a VERY exclusive club.

spinnaker

Agree 100%. At the very minimum do a weekend. Learn what you need and what you can do without. Learn how to ride with gear. A weekend won't cost so much and if you decide it is not for you, there is not much lost.

avole

Thought you might like to know that offer for saddlesores is also valid for you. ìt's a good apartment in a town which still has an awful lot of interest. Food is good, once you get into the street food side of things. Seafood night market also good, although it is becoming pricey. Just remember some politesse and hint of language - I find a 'sawatdee krap' goes a long way.

djb

well you guys clearly bike enough and have the fitness/endurance experience, so thats a big plus. At least you wont be figuring out bike fit or a sore keester or feet or whatever.
As folks who havent toured before, the one thing to adapt is getting used to less distance and slower speed per day, simply because of the weight of the stuff you are carrying.
I imagine the bikepacking thing appeals because its the new and cool thing, and thats fine, I would just add though that generally it entails being a lot more minimalist in what you travel with, and going to a whole other country/culture that is compeltely new to you, travelling with very little stuff could be problematic (or not)
If you havent done any self supported outdoor activities, camping, backpacking, then thats a learnign experience also.
Not to mention, how are the two of you for reading a map, planning a route that is realistic, not being frazzled by stuff that comes up, especially if in another culture.

as suggested, trying out some short local bike trips will at least show you how you feel about carrying X amount of stuff, and whether you'd want more to be comfortable.

there are tons of websites showing both touring and backpacking ideas, and Im sure you are already looking at stuff, but I come back to do some real life stuff and see how the two of you like doing the activity in general, and then go from there.

axolotl

djb

ax, thats one of the best "topic associated" photo answer Ive seen here. Very funny.
I assume you moved them there for the photo.

axolotl

This was a clever display at a folk art museum in Merida, Mexico. (Museo de Artes Populares) The museum is in an old colonial house, and they took advantage of this disused room for this particular display.

balto charlie

I love Colombia but gotta say the roads are seriously steep. This is a big reason Quintana does so well in the TDF. The Colombian people are really, really nice so help is there if you need it. I find their Spanish dialect easiest to understand of all Latin countries. I loved travelling throughout this country. Make sure to visit Tayrona Nat Park, gorgeous.

rjw1289

Thanks for the suggestion. Just watched a few videos on this route and am very interested. Could you give me more information Carretera Austral trail? Where did you start and end......highlights/camping zones. Gear list and maybe something that you wished you would have brought. What was the route from Santiago? Thanks for all the info!!!!

fantom1 

This. Get a few tours in-country under your belt first.

Second, disregard the advice of "avole". This person clearly has no idea about anything and is a troll who unfortunately found themselves here. A stereotypical "wtf" is this person?. Just completely disregard.

Touring can be like a plane crash...a bunch of small mistakes can lead to big problems. These are the things you work out at home before trying a foreign country.

You guys cycle at high altitude and that's great, but dealing with problems that sometimes seem to compound is something quite different from your daily ride. Ingenuity is many times not a question of intelligence, but of experience. Get experience. It will make your foreign touring much more enjoyable (that's the point, right?).

Once you have a few tours to iron out the kinks, I would say Columbia is an amazing choice. Difficult for the terrain, but the people are really amazing. Expect to be invited into more situations than you are probably comfortable with because the invitations never end, but seriously, I can't speak highly enough of the people of Columbia.

avole

spinnaker

I also noticed that TS wanted to do bikepacking or at the very least a remote trail. Probably fine for someone who has extensive similar back packing experience but not good for someone with little or no experience.

avole

Gosh, couldn't agree more. See some bloodcurdling tales at https://www.bikeforums.net/folding-b...sus-clone.html .

Leebo

Hmmm. Might want to get the bike/bags/equipment stuff dialed in first on an overnighter. Relying on help/tools/knowledge from random people? In the middle of no where? Hmmm. Good luck with that. Chain tool, patch kit, cable and der. adjust, spoke issues all happen on a regular basis. I like to be prepared. Guess not everyone does. My bikepacking trips take me to very remote places, best to be self sufficient.

axolotl

I'm not sure why, but this forum tends to attract lots of folks who are just plain scared to venture outside of their comfort zone. Other bike touring forums based outside of the US seem to attract more adventurous folks. For a laugh, do a search in this forum for threads pertaining to touring in Mexico. Invariably, those threads attract folks who usually have never set foot there, and those folks seem to be bound and determined to make sure nobody else does, either. I suspect their experience with Mexico is getting plastered on Cinco de Mayo somewhere north of the Rio Grande. There are also those folks who will respond to queries with the suggestion to do one of the few things they have done, but which are clearly unrelated to what the OP is asking about.

Having said that, it would be helpful if the OP were more responsive to some of the more reasonable questions and comments which have appeared in this thread. Does either of them speak any Spanish? Have they ever traveled outside of the US & Canada? How about to Latin America? Have they camped before? Are they open to the idea of going on a weekend bikepacking trip or two closer to home before they commit to a more serious trip? Is the May timeframe set in stone? (If so, forget about the Carretera Austral in southern Chile.)

spinnaker

What a joke that avole is criticizing others for criticizing on a difference of opinion when avole was the only one here attacking people for having a differing opinion. The troll is already on my ignore list (there is only one other after all these years on BF), The only reason I saw joke of a comment from avole is because of your quote of him/her.

This isn't about being scared or venturing outside your comfort zone. It is about perhaps taking on too much you can handle for a first tour and ruining a otherwise great tour when a little bit of experience that comes relatively cheap would have mad all the difference.

I find it bewildering why anyone would suggest jump in feet first when it is so easy to build some experience in your home country.

jefnvk

That is all well and good, but try to be mindful that not everyone's idea of a great time is jumping into an unfamiliar foreign environment for an unfamiliar physically strenuous activity. Telling people to just ignore planning and to jump in and deal with it is on the extreme end. There is a LOT of good information to learn by doing a trip or two around home BEFORE taking off on what, for many, will be a long trip of decent expenditure in a new environment.

This coming form a guy who decided to just go on a tour abroad on a bike before doing even an overnighter at home. Before I went on my second tour, I went on a couple short trips having realized everything I didn't know still, and ended up learning considerably more because of it.

Sounds like you have the riding down. How is your general travelling skills? There is quite a bit more to touring than simply riding a bike, and even the bike riding you are doing is going to be different than a century road ride. Navigation, local customs, unusual foods are all fun, but it is easy to overload yourself with too much "new" at once. Then again, maybe you guys are teh type that revels in such an environment, in which case go for it. I personally am, my wife certainly is not.

Have you tried some bikepacking trips around your locale? Doesn't have to be in your backyard, but even a weekend camping trip in a neighboring state will teach you a lot before you take off. Even if it is nothing but how to load your bike and what gear is unnecessary, it is stuff that is easier to learn at home before heading abroad.

Disagree with the first half, completely agree with the second. After reading through a decade old thread from here about an Aussie girl planning on bike touring Africa, who people helped until the point where she seemed flaky and not going to go through with it, and then finding out she did go through it until she was hit by a car somewhere through her trip, I realized that not every last person on the internet knows to properly plan and consider all aspects of such a trip.

avole

Unfortunately, incorrect again. I'm not attacking, but presenting an alternative, which I'm beginning to think is a rarity. You'll find most people won't necessarily agree with all or even part of what you, I and others say. I mean, I don't camp and prefer to stay in local accommodation, because it give you more of a chance to experience at least a taste of the local culture. That's why I also tend to avoid backpacker hotels, although they are a great way to meet people and make friends and are inexpensive, which often comes into it. That doesn't mean I tested camping in the way some suggest, nor backpacker hotels, the area often defines your activity, as in national parks.

Things happen, and, to be truthful, we do tend to be judgemental, I just as much as yourself. For example, herein Europe we simply cannot understand US gun laws, although guns are available, yet France in particular based a lot of its own republican ideas on this sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." but recognises sometimes the need to restrict one area to better enable the others. OK, it is an extreme example, but are the various thinkers behind the European take on weapons really attacking your own people's ideas? Of course not, but they do recognise, as many do, that there is no hard and fast formula. You cycle distance, great, you do need the muscles, you stay overnight in a tent, which you could do in your own garden, you buy dome dehydrated food and eat that for tea, what is the point? Anyway, there are lots of other things I could list, but you get the idea.

avole

Jeff, you should really have done me the courtesy of iincluding the rest of my post, as it did clarify what I meant. Your use of selective posting wasn't really accurate in this case. I do agree, though, everyone does do that to prove a point.