Tag: Cycle Path

With the cost of everything escalating and AI stealing our jobs out from under us, you might find that the cost of an out-of-state or international trip is out of your financial reach. Plus, with the planning involved it takes to figure out the details of a trip and working within time constraints, a trip away to anywhere just might not seem feasible.

With that in mind, what are your options if you want to break away from riding your favorite local ride for something new and different but also challenging? Turns out you may have more than a couple ways to make your local ride that you’ve done a million times seem shiny and new.

Make The Familiar An Adventure into the Unfamiliar

We all have preconceived definitions of what adventure means. But many types of things can fall under that word. The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) defines it as “chance, fortune, luck; a chance occurrence, an accident.” That’s pretty broad and doesn’t mention anything about spending wads of money on traveling to somewhere else.

Road.cc explores this idea in a recent article called “How to plan an epic one day cycling from your front door.” It points out that we often think of adventure as getting on a plane and going to a distant location or loading the bike in the car and traveling across country to ride in an event. The truth is, adventure can be much simpler than that.

An adventure can even mean, when you go out to do your local ride you have stored in your cycling computer, you just abandon that route and take on different roads and allow yourself to get lost (not in a bad way) and wander. That way, you can add in more miles, add in some climbs, whatever it might be, to make your familiar ride unfamiliar and new.

Ride to a New Coffee Shop, Take a Train Somewhere and Ride Back, Explore Your Town Like a Tourist

The place where you grew up or a place you’ve lived a long time can, at times, feel bland and boring. Once on your bike, that place can take on a new dimension as you learn the area and, eventually, carve out a route you like to do on your bike. But even then, that newness will turn to a routine pretty quickly.

Cycling gives us the ability to go places people can’t in their cars. And even if you think you know it, chances are there are places where you live you don’t know. New coffee shops, restaurants, and parks are being built all the time. As cyclists, we need these new challenges to keep our activity interesting and engaging.

So, take some time, set a distance, choose a route, then get out there and ride to these places. If you’re lucky enough to live close to a local train or bus route, hop on and take it to a place in your area you haven’t been before and start a ride from there. Ride that new Rails to Trails path you’ve always avoided.

Don’t like going out without a structured route? Take a map with you or look for new roads on Google Maps. Take the risk of getting lost. You could also look for a new local ride in apps, such as Strava or Ride With GPS.

Last Thoughts

If you don’t want to or can’t currently afford an international or out-of-state cycling trip due to financial or time constraints, and you’re craving a break from your familiar bike route, there are plentiful options. Cycling is not just about fitness and recording rides on Strava, it is also definitely about that vague notion of adventure.

So, expand on your ride by choosing new roads, riding to a new place in your town and exploring it like a tourist, call up a cycling buddy and ride his route with him instead of your own, or find a new route on Strava. Cycling should never be boring and always be fun and exciting. New rides and roads are cheap and available, you just have to take the time to find them.