About

My husband, Jim and I came to cycle touring late in life. We started doing short road rides like the lovely Tour de Lopez (30 miles of nice hills) and then the much more gruelling STP (Seattle to Portland - 102 miles in two days). We love riding and we were looking for ways to see the world on a budget once we retired. We discovered that there is a whole world of people out there of all ages and abilities, touring on their bikes. Intrigued by the notion, we bought some cheap equipment  (in case we hated it) and took off on our first small tour. We called it 'You Gotta Start Somewhere' because, well, you have to start somewhere! 

Finding out that we really loved combining cycling with camping, we set out to equip ourselves properly for some serious touring.  Our retirement was approaching (Jim from his work as a cameraman with a local tv station and me from teaching elementary school) and we wanted to make all of our expensive purchases while we still had dual incomes. We spend a lot of time (and money!) at MEC, the Canadian equivalent of REI, as well as spending time and money there too! Our bikes, matching Surly Disc Truckers, were built at s local bike shop. We wanted the same bike so we would be able to carry one set of replacement parts.

Bikes and equipment purchased, we decided we needed a short tour in the summer before we took off for real, just to check it all out. Hence our second tour called 'Shakedown Tour 2016'. We did a 5 day loop around the southern tip of Vancouver Island and not only did all our equipment work as we had hoped, we had such a great time, we knew that future tours would be not only doable but so much fun! 

So, the countdown began with my last teaching year. Jim (lucky guy!) ended up retiring in the fall, which worked out well as we were making major changes to our lifestyle and him being available during those last months made it all work. We decided that rather than settle in one place we would be better off getting rid of all but our most precious possessions, allowing us to live wherever we chose for however long we chose. We have family on Vancouver Island, the Vancouver area and Texas, so flexibility with our living arrangements allow us to spend time in each of these places. 

We plan to tour for 3-4 months at a time for as long as we can stand it - hopefully that will be a good long time!