April 27, 2020

"But the troublemakers were as bizarre as they were inescapable... There was the mysterious tent urinator, who found a way to pee on the side of another man’s tent..."

"... every night for six straight weeks (and whose identity is an as-yet uncracked case). The man who always took photos of me changing flat tires to send home to his wife, because 'she was never going to believe that a woman could do this.' The woman who had never ridden a bike before the trip. The daily hitchhiker who 'didn’t do climbs' and thumbed for rides up hills. The racer who wanted everyone else to ride farther and faster each day. The relapsed gambling addict who snuck into town every night and couldn’t be trusted with group funds. The sexual harasser who hounded me daily with lewd comments unfit to print. And in every group, there was always one person who tried to rile up a mutiny because he wanted out of the cooking rotation. It was hard to know who these people were in their daily lives, when they weren’t pushing their bodies to the limit and sleeping on the ground. I had to imagine that the mysterious tent urinator wasn’t similarly taking out his frustrations on a coworker’s office chair. Maybe all that misdirected rage could be chalked up to exhaustion, homesickness, and electrolyte imbalance?"

From "I Loved Bike Touring—Until I Got Paid to Do It/Seduced by the idea of turning my hobby into a paycheck, I led bike tours across the U.S. throughout my twenties. As I learned, some passion pursuits are best left pro bono," by Caitlin Giddings (at Outside). Excellent illustration, by the way.

22 comments:

Automatic_Wing said...

Uh...cool story, bro.

Paul said...

For five years I had my own karate school (5th Dan.) Sold it when I got married and a year later my wife said, "I don't get to see you much"....

Well teaching karate (4 nights a week while working 40 hr weeks programming computers) slows you down... and it's the same old.. same old.. after a while.

So yea, don't make your hobbies a money scheme. Enjoy it with others but not make it some kind of money maker.

Danno said...

Sounds like it is more fiction than fact. Outside magazine used to send me freebie copies to coax me to subscribe. I didn't know they were still a thing.

rcocean said...

IOW, she escorted hundreds across the country and a few of them were freaks. You always have troublemakers, complainers, and goof offs in every group of strangers. You even get them when you go with friends on a camping trip.

Personally, I don't like riding my bike in traffic, and I would find bicycling across the Prairie and sagebrush Country for 1,000 miles incredibly boring. There's also the wind and rain. If you've ever had to bike 30 miles in the teeth of a driving rain - you know its not a party.

Lurker21 said...

biking, careers, urine

Three things that are constantly on my mind.

Ice Nine said...

She lost me at "snuck."

Carol said...

Only thing worse would be opening a bike shop. Because you love biking!
LOL

carrie said...

I did Ragbrai a few years ago supported by a national bike tour group— our group was mainly people age 50 to 70 who could afford to pay the extra bucks for a supported ride. Ragbrai was only one week but the bike tour group we were with was a soap opera and Ragbrai was a week long part with many “crazy” riders, so I believe her stories.

rhhardin said...

I taked a young lady through a bicycle tire change, having happened on her on my bike commute. She could do it but just didn't know how.

Well now she does.

rhhardin said...

You can get out of your complimentary subscription to Outside Magazine by calling them. A more worthless magazine would be hard to find.

rhhardin said...

The chief trouble with home bike repairs is the new proprietary parts always showing up and requiring you to find and buy the tools that fit them. A bike shop can amortize the cost over its bicycles.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

peepee!
on my teepee!!
Urine trouble now

BarrySanders20 said...

Regarding do it yourself tire fixing, I was much handier changing tires on the single-speed Mongoose in the days of my youth. The multi-speed bikes with the gears and derailers (sp) make changing back tires too difficult for me, given the relative ease of walking the bike 3 blocks down to the bike shop for them to do it in 10 minutes. And they adjust the chain properly, adjust the brakes, etc. This is usually the kids' bikes since they are ones who ride and never very far from home. Would be a different story out in the stick on a long ride.

Similar deal with car tires. I had a ton of trouble changing them a few years ago, not because I dont know how, but because the lug nuts are on so tight from the compressed air used to put them on that the 12" tire iron cannot do the job. Plus I am just not as strong as I used to be, and I pay for the roadside assistance with the car insurance, so they get the call now.

madAsHell said...

Yeah.....a bunch of people in Spandex making motorcycle noises with their lips......and you think it's not going to get WEIRD?

tommyesq said...

Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in... uhmm, nevermind.

F said...

Ok, I call sexism. Just what makes the writer think the person peeing on tents was a man if she never caught the perp in the act?

Nichevo said...

Barry, just get a cheater bar. A foot or two of pipe just big enough to slip over end of lug wrench. Adds leverage. Cheap, if not free (scrap/found object).

JML said...

We did a Vacation Bike Tour in 2015. Northern Italy, Slovenia and Austria. Went with our Sister in law and her husband. Great group, reasonable price. Fun time. I highly recommend it.

JMW Turner said...

Yeah, opening a business based on nothing but passion is not a good move. Besides the usual hardcore metrics such as cash reserves, effective location, solid knowledge of the product/service, etc., it's a good idea to keep an emotional distance as to be able to know when to bail out of a product that isn't selling, or even making the gut wrenching decision to close it all down. A business failure can be a teaching event leading to future success if you don't become overly emotional. And, yeah, a certain relatively small percentage of your customer base can be dicks.

TwoAndAHalfCents said...

I love that our hostess has a 'urine' tag.

Zach said...

“Do what you love and the money will follow,” she said.

It was one of those nuggets of wisdom you only hear from people with monetizable assets—or the right ratio of talent, luck, and privilege to have landed a dream job that actually came with a paycheck. But in the swampy darkness of a Portland winter, the idea resonated. I adopted it at face value. There had to be a way I could get paid to keep hauling everything I owned across the country by bike. After all, I didn’t need a lot of money to follow from doing what I loved—just enough to support my cat while I searched for America out on the open road. That spring of 2006, I signed up for a bike-touring leadership course.


I don't think you're supposed to take that saying quite so literally.

Eric said...

We did a Vacation Bike Tour in 2015. Northern Italy, Slovenia and Austria. Went with our Sister in law and her husband. Great group, reasonable price. Fun time. I highly recommend it.

I'm interested in doing something similar. What info can you provide? Who arranged it and how and why did you choose them?