Welcome to Bicycle Camping! There are so many inherently good things about bicycle camping – from fostering a healthy lifestyle, to practicing sustainable transportation, to experiencing new landscapes and cultures. I’m inspired to inspire you to consider getting out there for some bicycle camping adventures. I’ve laid out the incremental steps one might take on…
Last weekend our family successfully embarked on our first bicycle campout. This campout was very meaningful to us because of what it meant for our family and for our business with the upcoming launch of CampfireCycling.com. As I’ve been preparing for the major directional shift to a bicycle camping focused business, a major dilemma has…
A Showroom for Bicycle Camping Gear The idea was to build a great showroom for bicycle campers that strongly complimented the Campfire Cycling ecommerce brand. As we’re building the showroom we’re thinking about how to develop synergy between Ecommerce and brick-and-mortar. Our showroom will be a physical manifestation of our online presence. And conversely our…
BikeShopHub.com is becoming CampfireCycling.com! We’re gathering up kindling and wood chunks for our “campfire”. Come late April, we’ll be striking a match to set ablaze our rebranding to CampfireCycling.com! I’m inviting all of you to the campfire to gaze into the flames with us. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing with you why we’re rebranding, what…
We are utility cyclists. We are pathfinders. We see more from the seat a bike. Part of the pleasure of riding in an urban environment is that the terrain, the “bikescape,” is always shifting. For a season a road, a sidewalk, or a building will be under construction, and the traffic pattern will be altered….
Fall is here and the days are getting shorter. Gone are the long, sun-filled evenings of summer. At the same time our kids are back in school, and it’s harder to find time to ride. If you’re like our family, you’re still trying to squeeze in some after-school, after-work evening rides. We did one of…
It seems like years ago that I mentioned how much I like the products from Duluth Trading Company. Wait a minute … it was years ago: Doctor’s Orders: Ride Naked! As I said in that ancient article, Duluth makes stuff for real working people, which means they’re very familiar with clothes which will help to…
“All real cyclists ride clipless pedals.” “No real cyclists use platform (“flat”) pedals.” That’s what you’d think, anyway, from reading many biking websites and magazines. They’ll tell you, in not so many words, that you’re not “serious” about biking if you’re not walking around in clunky plastic shoes and clicking on linoleum like a castanet….
Croozer Trailers – 40% Off!!! I know it sounds to good to be true. Let me explain… This is not an ordinary sale. We’re offering this amazing line of German designed trailers at what is effectively our wholesale/dealer pricing while supplies last. I should explain how things evolved as I know the price probably sounds to good to be…
Yesterday we pulled into our driveway after a year on the road. Over twelve months, we visited more than 50 biking destinations around North America. Our route took us to the flowy trails of Copper Harbor, MI, the jungles of Ocala, FL, the paved paths of Bend, OR, and the bike park in Whistler, BC….
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before, but just in case I haven’t: I do not commute by bike during the hot summer months in Phoenix, Arizona. The reason is simple: I don’t need to complicate life for either the Phoenix Fire Department EMTs or myself. With nightly temperatures sometimes still above 100°F at 10:00…
Follow your passions, the self-help gurus said. So I followed my passion for cycling to Alaska. I may not be the fastest or the skinniest guy on a bike, and I’m certainly not the richest. But where other people pay to ride, spending their hard-earned dollars on entry fees and bib shorts and bike vacations,…
In an ideal world, every school commute could be done on a bike path and every grocery store would be on a road with a protected bike lane. In reality, most of us who bike with our children have to share roads with cars. Despite our best efforts to choose the safest routes, eventually, we…
I’m a bona fide nerd. I even have the credentials to prove it: a first edition Netware CNE (Certified Novell Engineer) certificate and a Windows NT MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) certificate. In case you don’t know, this means I am not only a Nerd, but am truly an Old Blood Geek. The further proof…
Bicycling is the opposite of quitting. Biking requires tenacity. Biking rewards tenacity. But there are times when too much tenacity can lead us astray. Bicycling necessitates putting one foot in front of the other ceaselessly. Bicycling teaches that suffering is rewarded. Every descent is earned with a climb. I’ve never quit a ride. Every century and…
School is out, the weather is warming up, and it is time to start racking up some miles. While you might be training for your next century ride or singletrack epic, make sure you’re including the kids on some of your rides too. Unlike adults, most kids aren’t interested in racking up the miles for…
In my last post, I groused about bike lanes that I thought were done poorly; that were actually, in some situations, dangerous to the folks who are supposed to use them. I thought it was only fair to bring attention to some bike lanes in Phoenix which I think are done well. My home town…
What happens when you finally arrive? For decades I’ve been trying to get more people onto bikes in my adopted hometown of Norfolk, Virginia. I’ve tried appealing to their motivation; reminding them that they say that want to ride more. I’ve tried to create more opportunities for folks to bike by working with my local…
The first time I biked across the Golden Gate Bridge, I was still in my mom’s belly. Six months pregnant, my mom made the trek from San Francisco to Tiburon by way of that iconic orange spanway. At least that’s what she told me when I balked at biking the 22-mile route with my son…
FACT: Maricopa County, Arizona, where I call home, is the fastest growing county in the United States. That is not me talking, that is the U.S. Census Bureau. The data says we add an average of 222 people every day. FACT: Arizona has the highest rate of pedestrian deaths in the nation. Again, that ain’t…
Like the wheels on a bike, the wheels of justice go round and round. Life, like biking, is about do-overs. It’s about learning from your mistakes. Last month a young man made the mistake of stealing my Sport Utility Bike in plain sight of a police officer, who promptly arrested him. When the arresting officer…
Figuring out how to bike with young kids off-road is tricky. Even if they are old enough to ride their own bike, it takes a long time before they have the endurance or skill to ride long distances or up larger hills. Most trailers and bike seats are designed for riding on paved bike paths…
I remember the first “portable computer” I had. It was called, appropriately enough, the Compaq Portable. In the vernacular of us computer geeks of the time it was referred to as a “luggable.” It was the size of a portable sewing machine. You laid the thing on its side, unsnapped the keyboard from the bottom…
My bike was just there. And now it’s gone. I’d been leaning “The Beast” up against the window at Jimmy John’s for a year. For the first few months that I worked there, I was really paranoid about locking it up every time I got back from a delivery. But I noticed that the other…
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