Giving the Gift of New Routes


The other day I was chatting with Melissa Thompson, one of our cartographers who helps to create the bike maps and routes that you all know and love. The topic of conversation was her recent trip to the south, doing on-the-ground research for our next long-distance route: Bicycle Route 66.

While we were talking, Melissa said something that really resonated with me: ?I love the desert because you can see so much. There?s a feeling of freedom that hits you as you pedal down the road with what seems like the whole world stretched out in front of you.?

Though Melissa was speaking specifically about the desert, that feeling of the whole world stretching out in front of your bike is something that I have experienced in a wide variety of landscapes. Chattering along gravel-chipped roads through cornfields, laboring into the wind on those expansive Wyoming plains, and soaring down mountain passes in the Cascades. When experienced by bike, all of these locations provide this same feeling of infinite space. The bicycle can make you feel so small in the universe and, at the same time, so able to take on the whole world.

I want everyone to be able to experience that feeling, and for this reason the items at the top of my Bicycle Travel Wish List for 2013 are new routes in the Adventure Cycling Route Network. As our route network grows, so does the number of people with access to bicycle routes from their home towns. A bike route in your back yard is a difficult thing to pass up. Bicycle Route 66 and our new hot springs loop ride in Idaho will be two great options for bike trips in the coming years, and both will access areas previously unserved by the Adventure Cycling Route Network.

If you want to help Adventure Cycling make these and future routes a reality, please consider supporting the 2012 Holiday Campaign. With your help we can make bike travel wishes come true this holiday season.

Photo by Melissa Thompson
Illustration by Luke McDonnell

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SUPPORT ADVENTURE CYCLING is written by Alex Campbell, development coordinator for Adventure Cycling Association.

Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2012/12/giving-gift-of-new-routes.html

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