It's neat to look back on past adventures, both for the stoke and to see how you've gotten to where you are now (on the couch icing my knees in my case, but that's beside the point
). Here's a quick look at some biking trips that have turned me, my wife, and friends onto bikepacking.
My wife and I spent several weeks in Costa Rica for our honeymoon. After a couple weeks of surfing and relaxing, we began to get a little stir crazy. A local coaxed me into entering a local bike race over a few too many beers, which led to a great time realizing that biking would be a fun thing to do out there. So, we soon rented bikes and were on our way up and down the coast to neighboring towns enjoying ourselves immensely.
On the road to Nosara
The wonderful thing about biking in Costa Rica during the monsoon: you can go where most cars can't. Miles of empty jungle and beach roads to ourselves. Woohoo!
Beach!
Beer!
After this we realized that bike touring might suit us well. We started scheming up trips, and landed on doing a trip across Scotland. It was going to be a lot wetter and colder than the tropics, but the singletrack looked promising. To get ready for the trip, we wanted to put in some longer, loaded miles under our belt. Rachel didn't like the idea of bike camping, instead preferring the idea of riding into a town, a hot shower, hot meal, and dry bed. This is exactly what we ended up doing in Scotland, but I had an ulterior motive to get her to "try it". For our training rides, I managed to convince her that if we were going to be carrying a bunch of stuff, we might as well bring camping gear and make it worth our while, rather than just riding around with heavy loads. So, a few "training for Scotland, but really just getting the lady into bikepacking" trips ensued.
We had a great time on our "training rides" and Scotland ended up being a trip of a life time (trip report here:
http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,4964.0.html). When we got back, instead of taking a break from riding, we were eagerly going after more rides, and even managed to spread the bikepacking bug to some friends.
Yeah bikepacking! Anyone have similar stories?
