BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

thanks for sharing emma. did you post your route on there yet? didn't see it. I'd say my biggest bike adventure was riding thru Chile with Jason Angst. about 1000 miles in a month thru lake districts, up volcanoes, and a ferry onto an island. such a beautiful country and seemingly set up to make bike touring easy(ish). We didn't get one day of rain in the month either. And lots of gravel roads to boot!

Some of my old ones: 2010 Crush the Commonwealth: my second CtC, wherein I discover how much harder westbound is than eastbound. 2009 Endless Mountains 1240K: still the longest, hardest ride I've ever done. 2009 Crush the Commonwealth: my first CtC. 2008 Eastern PA 1000K: my first ride > than 400 miles. Aside from my stuff, there's a lot of good reading here: Pittsburgh Randonneurs links page

Here is one of my old ones, from May 2009, when I was just starting to learn about lane control. I think this is also my first usage of the term "anything but the car", which has become my motto. Originally from MySpace, copied later to Blogspot. A 50-mile trip from McCandless to Moon to downtown. The map I linked is still operational.

Excellent; thanks for taking the time to share all of this. We did a 2-day, 130 mile mountain bike trip around the White Rim Road in Canyonlands National Park last fall, which I would do again without hesitation. The scenery was stunning; I will try to find some pictures and post them. I have some thoughts on a nice multi-day gravel road and rail trail loop around Parsons, WV if you are interested in that.

I just came back from a trip to Portoroz Slovenia; on a day off I rented an (MTBish) bike. It was really the best way to see the area and get to explore. This is actually true about pretty much anywhere you go. The region has a very well developed trail and path system, much of it based on rail-to-trail (it's a holiday destination which probably explains it). The terrain is very hilly but the rail grades (and cool tunnels) make it easy to get around. Unless you make a wrong turn: at one point I found myself on hill where my front wheel started to lift off the pavement (at which point I figured out I probably missed the turnoff). I was told at the rental place to stay off the roads because the drivers were not keen on cyclists. But this turned out to be an exaggeration: even on main roads drivers were quite civil, more so than around here. Or maybe it's all relative... Anyway, I took pictures. And now I have excuse to post them! Here's an underpass on the D-8 trail: The entrance to a rail-trail just over the border in Croatia. One of the signs explains that the land was donated by the casino down the road. Lots of casinos around there. Further up that trail, looking across salt pans (formerly the main economic activity) to Slovenia proper: The promontory off in the distance is Portoroz. A rail trail up from there (and tunneling through the hills) gets you to the coast again.

@ahlir: your pictures don't appear, for me (Chrome browser on macbook). All I see is a "do not enter" icon.

bike trail underpass: Entrance to trail in Croatia: View of salt pans: tl;dr explanation: Google has phased out Picasa which had a simple way to get at raw .jpg images. Their new Photo scheme makes that difficult: the link forces you to load their entire wrapper. The bikepgh mb software can't handle that (actually I'm not sure that it should). But this works: Rclick->Open image in new tab->Rclick->Inspect->copy the clause. Paste here. If you're nerdy you can delete the 'style' but you need to keep the height/width info. I moved the pics toa "public" album after seeing @ph's comment to see if it would help. Then the images disappeared for me as well (I guess the url gets changed). [From the folks who can tell you how many basketballs fit into school bus...]

Here's a blog/fundraising page for a trip I did a couple years ago from Zimbabwe to South Africa: https://www.causes.com/campaigns/72465-support-refugee-rights-in-africa-asia-and-latin-america

I have some thoughts on a nice multi-day gravel road and rail trail loop around Parsons, WV if you are interested in that. Jacob- would love to hear about this. I've been really wanting to do a trip around Parsons/Davis area, even had a weekend planned last year, but we got rained out and ended up in Raystown instead.

I am going nuts - the board keeps eating my posts!! I love reading these!

I'm just now getting a chance to comment, having spent most of the last two weeks hiking out west. If you want to do a gravel road bike ride around Parsons, there is a nice loop of maybe 60 miles you can put together. The short of it is to get on Government Road in Parsons and ride south along the eastern edge of the Shavers Fork creek. This will give you 30 odd miles of flat, smooth gravel road next to a scenic creek. Eventually you'll get to Route 33 and from there I'd head west to Elkins. In Elkins you can get on the Allegheny Highlands rail trail and take that back to Parsons. It may be better to do the ride in reverse, riding the rail trail to Elkins in the morning, if it's hot; I am pretty sure that some parts of the rail trail are exposed to the sun. Government Road, by contrast, is very shaded. I would be cautious about the rail trail between Hambleton and Douglas, on the north side of the Blackwater Canyon. It was very rough for a 'cross bike, and was more appropriate for a mountain bike, since it really isn't maintained or improved. Also, if you look at a map and see the circle that's created by Routes 33, 48 219, 72 and 32, most of the roads in the circle are really nice to ride, although many are very hilly. And if the map says the road crosses the river, like the crossing on River Road, that doesn't necessarily mean there is a bridge there. The mountain biking in Davis is excellent, assuming your idea of fun is technically challenging rock riding. It is significantly more challenging that Quebec Run and Moraine, which are like smooth county parks by comparison. Before taking a moutain bike down there, I'd ride Moraine or Quebec, and if you can handle that stuff well then proceed. The only exception I know is the area between Davis and Thomas, which you access from Blackwater Falls State Park; some of that is smooth mountain bike riding.

Q and I camped on a knob at the top of Shenandoah this weekend. Story is here! Features motorcycles and stick bugs and mud puddles and a near-meltdown with full recovery! And if you're ever in Harrisonburg VA waiting out the rain, the combo of the Virginia Quilt Museum and a matinee movie is a fine way to spend an afternoon.

Sounds like a good time. We've hit some of the MTB trails in the George Washington National Forest, and camped at the Natural Chimneys State Park, south of Harrisonburg. The trails were good, with a lot of climbing on gravel roads and incredibly long descents. You might enjoy the 25-mile North Fork Mountain trail, along the ridge behind Seneca Rocks. It is a mix of technical and easy terrain, with tons of great overlooks to the valleys below. If I put together a two-day supported/overnight ride there next year, as I have been thinking about, I will post it here.

awesome, thanks for the tip! I am always looking for stuff that is an easy drive from here. Maximizing the micro-adventures!

Hello friends! Q and I just rode the Idaho Hot Springs mountain bike route and I wrote up some stories here, if you're interested: https://ridingthatbike.tumblr.com/post/163078661655/do-every-stupid-thing-that-makes-you-feel-alive

Trip Report: Long Beach, CA: I had high hopes of my visit to LB: The have bike-share and where I was staying was well (bike-) connected to where I would be during the day. Unfortunately that did not turn out to be the case; maybe there was some fine print on the bike-share website that I missed. Anyway, plenty of racks, some with credit-card payment. But none of the latter were working. Lots of others but they only operated with system cards. Either the system is way under-maintained or they ditched the credit card thing without putting informative stickers on the screens. On the other hand there were plenty of people riding around on shares, so at least the bikes are probably ok. It was a pain since I was staying in the (E 4th St) "Retro District" but had to be at the convention center; walkable but it took time. One other observation: The city was set up in ways very friendly to bikers: lanes, sharrows, signs. Not all that car friendly either. At the same time it was hard to tell whether there were more bikes or skateboards on the street. It probably helps that the place is very flat. I can't be completely sure but one night I think I saw a tridem(?) bike (50% more than a tandem.)    

Morgantown, WV to Cincinnati, OH - September 2017 https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1ni&doc_id=19628&v=Nl

Hey buddies, we just came home from riding the Baja Divide, and I wrote up a handful of stories, which you can find here. @fultonco, I just now saw your post! Stoked to read some more local travels! I'm in the market for some loop trips in this area -- logistically SO MUCH EASIER.

@emma Thanks for your interest and I hope you enjoy reading the journal(s).  I will be looking forward to reading about your trips, as well.  Yes, loop trips are easier but I suppose I'm hard headed!  We have another leg of our journey coming up in September of 2018.  I'll post a link to the write-up here, once it is finished. I've been digging up old photos from two trips to the gulf coast, in '06 and '07.  We passed through some areas that were hit hard by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  I may do write-ups on those trips to help pass these long winter nights.  Will keep you informed.