Tag Archives: touring

Tour Divide Recollections 

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I’m not entirely certain how this all started. Dave Markman and I talked about it for a while, though I couldn’t tell you when that began. Bobby Wintle was off the walls with excitement, but how (and when) did I become involved in this? 

I suppose none of that matters now. At this point it’s been slightly more than a month since I left Banff. Antelope Wells was two weeks ago. All of this is just to say that the Tour Divide was an intensely strange experience for me. Returning home was all too natural. Answering questions regarding the trip left me feeling increasingly disconnected from my involvement in the race, as if it were some book I had read long ago and hadn’t considered for quite some time. 

Rather than scroll through the back pages of my mind trying to attach emotions to locations I struggle to recall, I’m going to leave photos. I’m certain I’ll arrive at a point wherein I can organize, collect, and put to words all the thoughts I’ve been hesitant to spend much time with, but this will not be that point. 

-Bailey

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One Month

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Well we’ve been open for a whole month and I wanted to take a moment tonight to stop and smell the roses. I can’t begin to express our gratitude to all the people who helped and continue to help us with this bicycle shop. I wouldn’t want to get all mushy on the internet either.

Anyway, if you have time this spring you should take a bicycle tour. I was flipping through some of my good friends’ flickr pages and found this one of our fellow worker Rusty. Our friend Jim took the photograph. It made me feel like throwing a rack on a bike and filling a pannier with way to much gear to go too short a distance to warrant it all. (You never know when you’ll need a roll of quarters or a 24 pack of AA batteries on tour!) I jest. Bicycle touring in North America helps bring a city slicker back in touch with the slower moving, humble, and often lonely parts of the country. On the other hand it can give you a slow motion view of how giant corporations can tear the identity from small towns and counties. Both views can be quite moving and bring a new vigor to your everyday life back in the city. Whether it is questing for a better local economy, the freshest healthy food, improved transportation infrastructure, or just a perfect pub to converse in, sometimes we all need to hit refresh. And we’re cyclists so we will do so on bicycles.

Nothing like a front of warm air to churn up the long conversations about spoke count, rim width, and, of course, the ever entertaining freewheel vs freehub discussion involving the great bicycle tour.

Stop in if you want to share bicycle tour stories some day, I’d love to chat. If you are going on one soon let us know if you need help with anything.

-Comrade Jesse