cycling
Whitewater rafting trips are one good option for baby boomer adventurers. Photo from Whitewater Connection
Over the past several years, I’ve had the following exciting, sometimes scary, often challenging, but ultimately exhilarating adventures:
- Summiting a peak in British Columbia, then rappelling down the side of a cliff onto a glacier.
- Whitewater rafting in Nepal on class IV and V rivers.
- Riding a camel in the Sahara and Sinai deserts.
- Hiking for a week over the hills and dales of County Kerry in southwest Ireland.
- Feeling the rush of whales diving directly under my Zodiac and surfacing less than 20 yards away in Glacier Bay, Alaska.
- Biking 45 miles from the top of Maui’s Mount Haleakala to the shores of the Pacific, the world’s longest downhill bike ride.
- Swimming with piranhas in the Amazon.
- Mushing a dogsled team in Finland.
And I’ve done them all after the… Continue reading
Since I just returned from a bike ride in Ocean City, New Jersey, I thought it would be a good time to reprint a post from two years ago about this bike-friendly city, complete with a few updates:
Bicycling is great exercise for baby boomers, who may find running to be too hard on the knees, surfing too fraught with teenagers, golf too pricey and frustrating, and hula-hooping just all-around too embarrassing.
With cycling, though, it’s easy to just hop on a bike and take off. Of course, it’s good to have someplace safe to ride.
Ocean City, New Jersey, on the lower stretches of the Jersey Shore south of Atlantic City, knows how to make cycling safe and appealing, which helps keep people out of cars and improve physical fitness and air quality as well.
Its longtime slogan “America’s Greatest Family Resort” is morphing into “America’s Greenest Family Resort.”… Continue reading
The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Photo by Catharine Norton
Fourth in a Series
On the fourth day of my recent “Magical Lake Michigan:”cruise aboard the Grande Mariner with Blount Small Ship Adventures, we reached the top of Lake Michigan in early evening.
Dinner, normally served at 6:30 p.m., was delayed a bit while we sailed under the five-mile long Mackinac Bridge, which spans the Straits of Mackinac and connects the Upper and Lower peninsulas of Michigan.
The bridge was opened to traffic in 1957 and is considered an engineering marvel, costing $100 million to build. It’s the fifth largest suspension bridge in the world and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. Four million vehicles cross the bridge annually.
We were heading for Mackinac Island, just beyond the bridge, following our earlier stop at Beaver Island. Docking there in early evening, we would have much of the next… Continue reading
You’ll cycle past castles and vineyards on the Castles and Wine tour offered by Tripsite. Photo from Portugal Bike Tours.
Many baby boomers have bucket lists — some of which include extraordinary bicycle trips through Europe (I know I do).
A company I’ve come across called Tripsite.com makes it easy to check off what they call your “Bike-It” list — which sounds preferable to “bucket list” anyway — with bike trips in more than 30 European countries as well as several in Asia and other parts of the world (including the U.S. and Canada).
And when I say easy, I mean easy.
You can search by type of tour (guided, self-guided, E-bikes — those are the bikes that give you an electric power boost when needed — and whether or not boat trips are included along with the biking portions).
You can also search by country, month… Continue reading
Bike tours are cheaper in Europe this year if purchased in dollars.
A stronger U.S. dollar and falling euro values this year mean one very good thing for U.S. travelers headed over the Atlantic: the dollar will now go a lot farther in Europe than in any time in the past several years.
The current exchange rate is just about .93 euros to $1 U.S. — meaning Americans only have to fork over $1.07 to get one euro in exchange. That’s a big drop from the $1.30 or so per euro of recent years.
One U.S.-based company, BikeToursDirect, which represents European-based bike touring companies, points out that paying for your European bike tours in dollars can save you substantial amounts of money this year.
At the current exchange rate, BikeToursDirect (which I have previously written about here) now offers more than 200 tours under $1,000 and… Continue reading
Baby boomers take a break while cycling the Dalmatian coast. Photo from Adventure Media News.
I’ve long wanted to bicycle through Europe, but a few things have held me back:
Do I really want to carry all my gear on a bike?
Is it too complicated to make all arrangements for accommodations along the way, especially if I’ve planned too ambitiously and wear myself out?
What if my bike breaks down and I can’t fix it?
If I go with a bike tour (which will essentially solve the first three problems), can I afford the expense?
And what if, in the end, I just can’t tackle the terrain if there are too many hills?
So I end up taking the train or driving — not that I don’t love European trains or roadways, but I still don’t get to experience Europe with the same intimacy as on a bike.
This… Continue reading
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