55 years of age for me, and 61 for Bruce, when we took our first bicycle tour, and we started off in Myanmar! Without so much as fully loaded riding around the block first. Pure insanity.
https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/chindwin1415/
Talk about trial by fire. But we can say with great confidence to those who think we were some kind of superheroes (or idiots), that if we can do it, anybody can that really wants to. And we had a really, really great trip!
Andrea and Bruce that’s an even more ‘courageous’ initiation than Winston. At least he had an experienced cycle tourer to advise and guide him.
My first bike tour came at the relatively youthful age of 47. I had quite a bit of experience with wilderness backpacking and bicycling (road & mountain), so I saw bike touring as a natural extension of those activities. Quite literally so. For four days, I rode my mountain bike while carrying food, a change of clothing, and camping gear in a backpack on my back. A Most Unusual Bike Trip (By Normal Touring Standards) - CycleBlaze
It wasn't until I was 57 years old that I conducted a more conventional tour complete with panniers and an actual touring bike.
It's definitely not as adventurous as Winston's first tour, and not as spontaneously crazy as Andrea & Bruce's first tour, but that's my story.
Greg your point about camping and backpacking experience is interesting. Prior experience with the great outdoors is probably more valuable than cycling experience when beginning cycle touring. In my case, I began cycle touring in my early 20’s.
Having grown up in a small rural community helped me enormously with the sleeping rough and living frugally aspects of youthful cycle touring. Riding and bike mechanics I learned on tour. Dealing with cities was probably the hardest thing for me in those early years.
About age 5, I put a pair of underwear in a paper bag and took off, got about 4 blocks away before my mother caught up with me. (midwesterners never leave home with dirty underwear)
I think of this as my first loaded bike tour.
Rachel
Rachel,
At some young age, I was angry with my mom and took off on my bicycle. I went round and round the block, because I wasn't allowed off the block! I don't remember packing anything, but I do remember eventually getting tired of riding in circles, and going home. She never even knew I left!
Hopefully not taking the underwear thing too far, and to give everyone a laugh - we once toured with a woman who matter of factly announced that she cut her laundry necessity down by turning her underwear inside out and wearing it a second day. We all have more clean underwear than we knew!
A friend and cycle touring colleague Ian Wallis has just completed a fairly challenging tour in Indochina. This isn’t unusual for intrepid Ian, but it was very unusual for his travel companion Winston on this recent tour.
It was Winston’s first cycle tour at 66 years of age. And it wasn’t an easy tour.
Winston has posted a very insightful reflection on the journal. This also explains how the tour came about.
https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/indochina/winston-reflections-from-home/
Winston’s words have me wondering how many others have taken up cycle touring in middle age or even later?
5 days ago