"What made you decide to do that?"

[Really Ancien]

Hummers, TT and TG, you're all bang on the money.  Touring is pretty much the modern (and temporary) version of the nomadic lifestyle we all evolved to live.  When we're on the road and experiencing new things, even if this is half an hour's pedal from our own front doors, then we're doing what it is we're best at.

Traveling, learning, adapting to our conditions and overcoming challenges.

*wanderlust*

Part of it is competence, the gradual honing of small skills, so that the packing is done semi-automatically, the machinery is kept in good repair, it builds confidence in our abilities and that is seen by those we meet.
It's a pleasure to meet people who are at the peak of their powers and have nothing to sell except their own goodwill, that pleasure reflects back and we feel happy about ourselves.
The danger is if we undertake these tasks to cope with unhappiness in our everyday lives. Might not people be asking what it is about our lives that we find so unsatisfactory, when they ask why we do these things.

Damon.

[Manotea]

Might not people be asking what it is about our lives that we find so unsatisfactory, when they ask why we do these things.

That thought has occurred to me in the past. There have definately been periods when the highlight of my working day was the ride to work, closely followed by the ride home! The joy of cycling is that it is a sport you can build into your everyday experience. But when it comes to longer trips, l've learned the hard way that to really enjoy the day you have to be riding with a clear concience with work and family squared away. You cannot cycle away from problems.

[Clare]

[snip]

You cannot cycle away from problems.

It depends what the problems are, I've left one hell of a lot of mental junk from problems in my childhood at the roadside and also used the time on rides to work through current issues etc.

[teethgrinder]

Might not people be asking what it is about our lives that we find so unsatisfactory, when they ask why we do these things.

I don't have any major problems, just a few very minor material ones, which I could easily fix if i had the inclination. I just enjoy riding my bike. If I didn't cycle, I'd run or walk for miles.
I can't wait until I retire from workand can just go touring for as long as I like.

[Rich753]

It's the flip side of "I'll be bloody glad when I've had enough of this!"

What a great line 

[Raph]

You cannot cycle away from problems.

You can't cycle away from a big council tax bill, but you definitely can cycle away from depression or a broken heart.

Sorry, didn't mean to get poetical. 

[Greenbank]

I was referring to Audax as a style of riding (fast touring) for which AUK gives me access to routes & events across the country and provide a structure and like minded company for my cycling. Living in west london, getting out into the country is a big time investment which (for me) is only really justified by a 100m+ outing, whilst riding under AUK rules for calendar, perm and DIY events encourages me to stay the course when the going gets tough. As you say, after a while it does seem a bit pointless driving or catching a train to get to cycling events so I ride out to events when I have the time. I have also become more selective on the rides I do and have laid down my own (DIY) routes I can ride from home and other parts of the country. So thats my situation. All power to the WARTY!

That exactly sums up my approach to Audaxing, which has slightly morphed over the last 2 years, hence the ride up to Henham/Ugley last weekend. It was just a 3 hour ride to get up there; for the KVR I would have had to get up at the same time (4.45am) and sit on trains for 2 hours. I was also home by 7pm having done 250km instead of just 200km. I wouldn't have done that 250km if there wasn't 2 AUK points lurking at the end of it.

Trains and travelodges for more distant events aren't the ideal scenario but Wales is just too far away to do it any other way. It's only 90 minutes on the train to Bristol for me anyway.

That thought has occurred to me in the past. There have definately been periods when the highlight of my working day was the ride to work, closely followed by the ride home!

My boss asked me recently what I enjoyed most about my job. I jokingly replied "My commute" although I was actually being serious! I do like, and enjoy, my job, it's just that my commute is my favourite bit!

[Wascally Weasel]

Might not people be asking what it is about our lives that we find so unsatisfactory, when they ask why we do these things.

I don't have any major problems, just a few very minor material ones, which I could easily fix if i had the inclination. I just enjoy riding my bike. If I didn't cycle, I'd run or walk for miles.
I can't wait until I retire from workand can just go touring for as long as I like.

+Lots of thumbs ups.

[clarion]

That thought has occurred to me in the past. There have definately been periods when the highlight of my working day was the ride to work, closely followed by the ride home!

My boss asked me recently what I enjoyed most about my job. I jokingly replied "My commute" although I was actually being serious! I do like, and enjoy, my job, it's just that my commute is my favourite bit!

Same here, even though it's in that there london village, surrounded by motons.  Work's just what fills the gap between commutes

[Really Ancien]

I'm interested in this, as I think about what LEL is. It doesn't have to have any meaning, it simply is, as is a World Tour, we get so used to narratives, that we forget that a lot of the stories get smeared over the facts to make a book or a film. Having said that I wonder if there is some truth in a couple of lines I remembered from songs,

'Sometimes I get this crazy dream
That I just drive off in my car
But you can travel on ten thousand miles and still say where you are'

and

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hand
I had flashes
You saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

There are so many stories that we can paste over our experiences, and some of those stories will inspire others to emulate us.
But there is always something in most people's lives that holds them back. I think part of it is the fear of being an 'outsider', they feel that if you are living your life right there would be nothing to drive you to undertake a journey. This is a very 'British' thing to feel, we have no 'Pilgrimage' to undertake, no trip to Rome or Lourdes or Mecca. Perhaps the protestant work ethic is so ingrained, that travel for its own sake as a sort of redemptive sacrament is sacriligious to a worldview based on honest toil and 2 weeks on the Costa del Sol.

Damon.

[Wascally Weasel]

Sometimes the question is an opportunity.  Everything I have done on a bike in the last few years has been inspired by other people – either by talking to them about what they have done or reading their ride reports.  No one has ever told me that I couldn’t do what they had done and it’s encouraged me to go a little further each time 

In 2005 I was a semi regular commuter but thought that forty miles was a long way.  I got a more road-bikey hybrid that year and started doing some group rides – in 2006 I heard about something called the Dunwich Dynamo, read some of the amazing ride reports out there and wondered if I could do it.  Up until that point the longest ride I had ever done was a 75 miler, back when I was about fourteen.  I trained a bit, rode from London to Canterbury on one of Barry Mason’s group rides and then did the Dun Run (one of the wet years).

That same year a couple of people I work with did the Etape – something I barely even know existed until then (I worked with a guy in 2001 who did it but it was so far off my radar back then that it practically didn’t exist).  I heard them talk about it before and afterwards and thought “I would like to maybe do that one day”.  One day became next year as places became available through my work for the 2007 Etape.  I was seriously overweight, didn’t even own a road bike but no-one (except the Cycling Weekly editorials) tried to deter me from entering – I bought a road bike and a Turbo late in 2006 and trained and trained – I rate completing that ride as one my best days on or off a bike.

I rode the JoGLE and La Marmotte last year without any specific training other than riding lots of miles – this year I’m back in  ‘proper’ training mode for  TRAT in June and then a serious attempt at a Silver Medal time in the Marmotte in early July.

All of this from being encouraged by other cyclists, so I try to answer the “Why do you do that?” questions as if they had asked me “How do I get to do that?”

[teethgrinder]

But there is always something in most people's lives that holds them back. I think part of it is the fear of being an 'outsider', they feel that if you are living your life right there would be nothing to drive you to undertake a journey. This is a very 'British' thing to feel, we have no 'Pilgrimage' to undertake, no trip to Rome or Lourdes or Mecca. Perhaps the protestant work ethic is so ingrained, that travel for its own sake as a sort of redemptive sacrament is sacriligious to a worldview based on honest toil and 2 weeks on the Costa del Sol.

Damon.

When I took voluntary redundancy in 2005 I went touring for 5 months.
I did think about selling my flat andpocketing all the money I'd make, which would be enough to keep me touring for about 20 years if I was carefull.
But what would happen in 20 years time. I'd most likely have to return to work and could be struggling to afford somewhere to live.
Maybe I'd have been perfectly OK.
I never took that chance, nor do I intend to because I could still do it.
All I am doing is hoping to have a secure future. Even though I have no guarentee of even having a future, let alone a comfortable one.
I still don't know if I've done what's best. I do know that I am doing as I've been conditioned to do via social pressure.
Not working for 5 months, then returning to work was a real eye opener to me.
Going to work isn't so bad. I don't think I've made a bad decision to return to what I was and I am happy. I don't know that it was the best decision though and whether I would be happier. I sometimes wonder, could I sell everything I have except for one bike and my camping gear, then just tour.
But if I continue with work, I will have paid my mortgage and can do the touring as much as I like. If it isn't as good as I thought, I don't have to start from scratch in getting a home. I'll have the best of both worlds.
As I said, I'm only hoping to secure my future, with no guarantees.

[Raph]

"Going to work isn't so bad"

That simply depends what the work is, and whether you enjoy it.

[Really Ancien]

I was watching a programme on BBC4 last night, called 'Michael Smith's Drivetime' It's about the world of the road, the world of constant motion that's inhabited by lorry drivers and reps. It explored a lot of the ideas that I've been playing about with.
I've always lived in the strange exurbia on the edge of town where the mobile meets the fixed, so I'm interested in it and I accept it. I can't really imagine a fixed and secure existence, so I'm fascinated by how someone who is not on the edge of things might see the world. Do they see a rejection of routine as a betrayal or a threat?
The nearest I get to a routine would be a long contract, we'd be progressing from plot to plot, felling trees on the Motorway for instance, so there would be mobility, but the actions would be the same, as would the start and finish of every day. It has the same feel as a journey might have, the routine elements are quite consoling. There is usually a demanding deadline which gives an element of challenge and jeopardy,  these elements are also inherent to the classic journey. The deadline is welcome because it draws a line under the event, I can also bill, which is handy. But the fitness gained from the job is a resource to be used, which can trigger wanderlust. I wonder if it is analagous to the way in which wars generally started after the harvest in the past, when the young men were at the height of physical condition.
So for me the answer to the question posed is that it lies somewhere in the middle ground between rootedness and restlessness, and that it so natural, that the surprise is that everyone doesn't do it.

Damon.

[her_welshness]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread over the last few days. Mr H-W was telling one of his friends 'you know her_welshness is doing this 120 mile ride in the dark, she's a nutcase'. I just shrug. For me its just something thats got to be done, its that next thing on the horizon, like upping and changing your commute from 8 to 10 to 12 miles each way.

It's also not just about improvement. We get to go out there and see places which most of our friends will never ever see in their lifetimes. Over the past few years I have cycled around Bedforshire, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hertfordshire and seen amazing buildings and landscapes, experienced some good cafes, pubs and cake shops and met some great people. And then you go back into work on Monday and say you did a 65 miles pootle on the Saturday, and they say 'god, thats such a long way - what made you decide to do that?'

[Wowbagger]

I posted something this morning, thought it was out of character for the thread, deleted it and was then was PMd by someone who said, in effect, "Oi! I was enjoying reading that! Put it back!" so I'll try to make amends.

Following on from TG's post, I was wondering what motivates us to do anything, not just cycling, and in my case I think there's a lot of rebelliousness there. This was the case when I was at school: I didn't want to "follow the crowd" so I never joined such organisations as the scouts. I think there's a great herdism tendency in society and what is known as "growing up" and "settling down" is actually an attempt to crush rebelliousness.

My life decisions have largely been motivated by rebelling from the perceived norm - I've never grown up or properly settled down. I went into teaching and would probably have conformed and settled down along with everyone else had it not been for a succession of very hostile Secs. of State for Education under Thatcher who made the job so bloody intolerable that I just had to get out to preserve my sanity. Had it not been for that I would probably be a moderately unhappy deputy head of a primary school by now, marking time to retirement. I was good at teaching and kids liked me (that made me unpopular with some of my colleagues! )

I went into Customs & Excise to program computers on a significant pay drop but almost immediately had a stroke of luck as a result of someone else's misfortune: the chess correspondent of the Ilford Recorder died suddenly and my name was put forward as his successor. The £20 I was paid each week to write about 500 words and supply a game and puzzle took me about 2 hours and more than made up for the shortfall in salary. I did this for 16 years.

I found the Civil Service a doddle after teaching. There was no real pressure, certainly not the every day, grinding kind of pressure which you get when you've got to educate a class of kids, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I enjoyed the work and just ignored for as long as I could the bits I didn't like, sailing pretty close to the wind discipline-wise as stupid initiatives began to appear, like ISO 9001 and a stultifying personal appraisal system. When  the govt. decided that they wanted to hive off the computer division to the private sector and demotivated everyone with "market testing" I had no intention of jeopardising my pension by working for some devourer of other people's souls like Ross Perot so I started looking for exit strategies and one presented itself in the form of a voluntary redundancy. Having changed career once made it very much easier to do so a second time.

I had became a school governor and this too fed my rebellious nature as I found myself for the first time in contact with long-standing local politicians and was able to demonstrate exactly how crap they were as people. I spent one lunch time a week in the kids' school teaching the chess team and as a result they won the National Championship. This too was very satisfying as state primary schools in council estates are not meant to beat top independent schools at intellectual pursuits when profligate parents pay through the nose for the privilege of their kids being there! I therefore decided to try to become a self-employed chess teacher and after about 5 years we were living pretty comfortably from my earnings. I found that I gained far more respect from head teachers as a weekly visitor to their school than I ever did as an employee.

Back to cycling. People who do what they are expected to do are easier to control, and putting them in cars, with all the regulation that goes with that, fits in with society's expectations whereas riding bikes, which is largely unregulated and therefore much more liberating, is frowned upon. It's no coincidence that twats like Clarkson are paid lots of money to lead the charge - but that just makes the rebel in me say "F off! I'll ride a bike, thanks!"

So it's never bothered me that people ask bloody silly questions like "Why did you decide to do that?" The answer is normally "Because to do what most people do is bloody stupid!".

[David Martin]

I was talking to a friend as we cycled through the Strathmore countryside a few weeks ago. We were riding along roads we had never ridden, selected semiarbitrarily from a map.

"You know" he said " In the last three years since I started riding the bike, I have seen more of the local countryside than in the previous 40. I have discovered places on my doorstep that I never knew existed. I can see how history has changed the place. I've lost a stone and a half in weight and the doc is no longer threatening to put me on pills. You'd have to be mad not to cycle."

..d

[Raph]

The thing that struck me the first time I did a long-distance ride was how you see every inch of the way - you still daydream some of it just as on a train journey or go on auto-pilot as on a drive, but you notice all the gradual changes of geology and character of the land. Not being interested in that aspect of the journey and wanting to be somewhere far away as immediately as possible is an attitude I associate with work - get there, do the gig, get home. But for experiencing the world, the journey is as important as the destination. That's when I discover what goes on in people's minds - or rather what doesn't - when my mate with the office job says "I just want to put my feet up" - as if putting his feet up 8 hours every single day of his working life in front of a computer weren't enough.

A distinction which is never made is between mind and body - the body, that in everyday life doesn't get anywhere near enough "hard work" to keep itself fit, suddenly gets let loose, and the mind is allowed to switch off, which it does even more so than it would by the pool on a package holiday because it has menial stuff like route-finding or cooking to do, not to mention occasionally being blown away by amazing scenery or the resulting flights of phylosophy. When you're trekking or bike touring, the anxious mind switches off - the body's going for it, which it can't in most jobs these days, but your mind, which is stressed out in most jobs, calms down.

When I take to the hills I find for the first week my mind is going ten to the dozen, a constant unstoppable burble of schemes, plans, problems, solutions, arguments... and a few anxiety dreams thrown in too - e.g. I'm locked in the toilet in an airport in Korea but out of a porthole I can see my double bass being loaded onto a flight for Morocco, oh dear the baggage handlers have dropped it out of the hold onto the runway, here comes a 747 to run over it... and I left my passport on the plane which was refuelling before going off to Alicante but whoops it's crashed into the sea, and look there's my 7-year old who's strapped on a pair of wings from a nativity play and is flapping past with a smile on his face - watch out he's crashed into a wall, and by the way where's all the printouts of the music we're supposed to be playing, oh don't worry I'll just make it up - wait here comes a posh looking woman, she says "are you the famous Raph, I can't wait for your concert I've heard all about you" - who the hell is she? What am I supposed to be playing? Where's my bass? .... and I wake up in a cold sweat, in my tent on a beautiful lonely ledge in glorious sunshine... everything's ok, PHEW!

After about a week it starts to die down, after two weeks I'm simply chilled out and happy. Who says you can't cycle away from problems??? I get to this state of mind where I can sit still for an hour or more at a time and watch the world go by like old codgers in mountain villages. That's what trekking or cycle touring does for me. Normally I can't sit for one minute without feeling I've got to get on with something. Every second without achieving anything is a tragedy all of its own, whereas touring or trekking turns it into an extra hour spent chilled out and mellow.

[David Martin]

Umm.. What Raph said. In spades.

..d

[Really Ancien]

I suppose I'm a bit of a rebel too. But I'm rebelling against myself. I'm quite persuasive, so I can convince myself that sitting around contemplating my navel, reading the papers and snacking on meusli at 2 in the afternoon does indeed count as a lifestyle choice.
But how to trick myself into the active outlook which part of my normally resistant self has absorbed from the pervading miasma of healthite propaganda.
Well, one response is to take their sensible advice and take it to ridiculous extremes, I’m so lazy and disorganised that there is a satisfying irony in turning up to a village hall for a 6 am. start to an event with a prescribed course and prescribed times. The idea of me riding as far as 1400 km is so absurd as to be almost irresistible to my rebellious streak. The only way that such an enterprise could be more alien to me is if I took it into my head to record the event in widescreen and high-definition.
So on one level I’ve decided to do it because it seems so very unikely. It has turned me into a card-carrying ironicist.


Damon.

[MSeries]

I have been pndering this question in relation to my ride across America. Difficult one to answer. Like Damon, I considered it so absurd that it had to be done. Why not ?