2024-10-22
Over a decade ago I had biked thousands of miles from Portland to Boise, and LA to Santa Barbara, and many other trips. I've done solo and buddy trips. I've taken weekend trips on my bike out of New York City as well. But it's been years.
So last weekend I went on a 24hour bikepacking trip with about 10 folks new-to-me. I'm part of an informal group of bikepackers based in my city, all folks interested in camping by bike. The group is organized and communicates via (choose at least one):
I haven't been to one of the "coffee outsides" as they are too early for me. I rarely join the brewery meetups, but sometimes I do. I actually log into the slack group semi-weekly just for this group, and receive their meetup.com emails when a new ride is organized.
The group is more like a "club," not a legal entity. Folks can propose a ride and then others "sign up" or just show up to join.
Last week there was a ride organized to a large state park in the Hudson Valley. Four of us met up in Grand Central Station, and took the train out to a village to start biking from about 20 miles from camp. We called this the "cruise crew." Another group of 5 people also took the train but not as far, and they biked as a group about 40 miles total. The last group biked directly out of the city, on a gravel route, about 50 miles.
I didn't really know the folks that well other than having met one or two people previously at one of the brewery meetups. I saw it was going to be a cold weekend, so I had packed:
My bikepacking bike setup as described
Front rack: my tent on the rack, held down with bungee straps. My pink handlebar bag hanging above the rack.
The Pink handlebar bag:
"Feed bag" on handlebar stem:
Mini bag on bike:
On bike:
Rear seat bag:
Regretfully I didn't bring:
I met my fellow riders in the train station and talked on the train. Keeping with a trend I've noticed among "bike people," especially commuters in my city, most of them worked in public service, architecture, urban planning and the like. In the train station we ate bagels, drank coffee. When we got to the town we'd bike from, we turned onto a small side street to begin, then onto a rails-to-trail. The fall leaves were raining down brilliant reds and deep greens and crimson shades like apples. The air was cool but not too crisp, and I didn't feel too cold. This wasn't glove weather for example. As we rode, we followed along rivers and the water supply. We stopped in small towns to enjoy the view, and then a general store which sold gross, overpriced sandwiches, ramen soup and slices of bad pizza. I was told to stock up here for dinner as it was the last of "civilization" we'd pass.
Biking up a mountain with lots of weight sucks at times. Thankfully, the mountain wasn't the worst climb I've had to do, and I kept up fine with the group. In fact, we did a "no drop" ride and all made sure we were relatively at the same pace.
We biked about 2 hours or so, eventually arriving at a huge buddhist monastery, up a mountain. There were hundreds of cars parked as we arrived, and we learned they served a cheap vegetarian lunch on the weekends. I ate my soggy tuna fish sandwich instead since I had already purchased it and hauled it with me. The monastery had a 40 foot high statue of Buddha, surrounded by thousands of small buddha statues. The grounds had stone sculptures of buddha and elephants and other figures. There was a lake with fish and buildings for meditation and rock gardens. People walked around in reverent silence mostly. At one point a young woman played a wooden flute by a pond. It was lovely and I was glad we had made the extra little effort to go off course to get there.
With that one down, we decided to do another side quest. We stopped at a botanical garden on the way to the top of the mountain. This time, the extra effort was short, maybe a half mile at most, but it was exceedingly steep and I had to hike-a-bike (push my bike up) the last bit of way to the entrance. At the top of the mountain was a beautiful botanical garden oasis, and my favorite was the scraggly gravel garden. This featured hidden features, almost maze-like, with bamboo shoots surrounding a path, and rocky crags. I sat by a pond for a bit and read, letting the other bikers hike around a bit before our final ride to camp.
Monastery grounds next to the pond
We reconvened a half hour later and made the final push. Thankfully, though my legs were tired from the climbs earlier in the day, now we mostly had to just glide along and even descend a little bit to camp. At this campground we had reserved a group camping site, and there was no check-in. We simply pulled in, had no cars to park, and biked directly into the woods. There was a field, a fire pit, a few picnic tables, and the forest canopy. We started unpacking, setting up tent, and introducing ourselves as bikers from one of the other riding groups pulled in. Then as a group we took a hike into the woods together, as we were actually camped next to a portion of the Appalachian Trail, and we looked for beavers building a den.
After a bit of a walk as a group, we returned to camp. We built a fire. Pretty much everyone except me had brought a camp chair, so they pulled them out and sat around the fire. I rolled up a stump. That night we told stories, talked about epic rides cross country, teaching, building, stories of the city, our partners, food, and whatever else people thought of. The effort of peddling brought us together. We were almost as one.
As expected I go to bed late so was one of the last two people to head off to sleep. Ironically, my tent wasn't too far from the last person to try to go to sleep. He told me he could never sleep, and sure enough I heard him rustling around throughout the night.
The next morning I was woken by a shout. I had told folks I didn't want to be left behind so thankfully someone woke me up. Despite the light rain, which usually helps me fall asleep, I had had a relatively poor night of sleep. At first I had been too cold, but I pulled a second pair of winter socks over my first, and I had the camp quilt on top of my sleeping bag, so had eventually overcome that issue. But for whatever reason, I just could not stay asleep. In any case, when I got up, I was up fast and changed. After some breakfast of beef jerky and a banana and date bar I packed up pretty quickly. Some folks had rolled out earlier. Others were biking off to different destinations. I chatted with some folks and we spoke about catching a particular train. I decided to roll out earlier on my own, and I biked first up and then down the mountain to a small town, where I ran into some of the other bikers from the group. We got coffee and biscuits and cheese. I thought the town was real cute and that I should stay and look for a bookstore, but my new friends wanted to head back and I was convinced it might be nice to have company and make friends so I joined them. On the way back, we had a smooth train ride into the city, except for upsetting the confuctor with our huge bikes taking up so much space, even though it was reserved for bikes (typical experience).
When we got back into the city I was too tired to ride the 9 miles home from Grand Central. I rode a few blocks to Times Square and got on the subway where there was an elevator, then took it most of the way back to my neighborhood, got off with an elevator stop, and then rode back home. I was in my apartment by 2pm, which was much earlier than I had expected. Not bad for a 24 hour bikepacking trip.
I have another bikepacking trip planned for next weekend. Except this time it's much further away, for more nights, and with a few hundred people at a big event! Now I now exactly what to pack and how to pack it.
The Power of the Overnighter article on Sub-24 hour bikepacking trips
---
If you have any comments, email lettuce at the ctrl-c.club domain with your and name and the post name you ar e responding to.
