Hey it’s the direct download link for  The Pedalshift Project 197: Xtracycle Touring with Kids (mp3).

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Have some bike touring or overnight stories to share? Send your pics, audio or a quick tweet – all welcome. Email the show at pedalshift@pedalshift.net or call the lightly-used Pedalshift voicemail line at (202) 930-1109

Housekeeping

Yeah, I won’t be going to CA as planned, and The Missing Link tour is postponed (but will happen eventually). Pedalshift 199 will include the process that brought me to this decision and reveal my plans for that time. I think there’s a responsible bike touring alternative, and if it’s happening I’ll reveal it on that episode.

SprocketShift Happy Hour

Hey, let’s have a drink together! The next SprocketShift Happy Hour is FRIDAY 3/20 at 8pm.ET/5pm PT.

More information on how to join here.

The Interview: Maggie Lonergan on Bicycle Touring Norway

Hey it’s the direct download link for  The Pedalshift Project 197: Xtracycle Touring with Kids (mp3).

Subscribe/Follow The Pedalshift Project:
RSS – iTunes – Overcast – Android – Google Podcasts – Stitcher – TuneIn – IHeartRadio – Spotify

Reach out to the show via email, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to join the newsletter too.

Have some bike touring or overnight stories to share? Send your pics, audio or a quick tweet – all welcome. Email the show at pedalshift@pedalshift.net or call the lightly-used Pedalshift voicemail line at (202) 930-1109

Housekeeping

Hey, sadly the  event-cancelling-virus struck the National Bike Summit and I won’t be presenting. To be clear, this was absolutely the responsible choice. Hope to present next year!

Fellow Star Wars nerds! I have the Disney audio but need some time to distill it. Look for that later this month.

The Missing Link bike tour

Hey, tour-cancelling-virus-willing, I’ll be flying to southern California with my Brompton to ride the one piece of the California coast I missed in my 2014 tour! Possible meetup opportunity in San Diego – it would be a Friday night 3/27 probably in the Gaslamp area. If you’re interested check out the details at pedalshift.net/sandiego and give me a heads up so I can be in touch. Not a late night because this guy has a stupid early train!

The Interview: Cyrus Farivar on Xtracycle Touring with Kids

Cyrus [“suh-ROOS”] is an investigative tech reporter at NBC News in San Francisco.

In addition to being a radio producer and author, Cyrus was most recently a senior tech policy reporter at Ars Technica. He was also previously the sci-tech editor and host of “Spectrum” at Deutsche Welle English, Germany’s international broadcaster, from 2010-2012.

Cyrus is the author of multiple books, including Habeas Data (2018) and The Internet of Elsewhere (2011). Praised by The New Yorker, among others, Habeas Data takes a look at legal cases that have had an outsized impact on surveillance law in America. His first book focuses on the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world.

In 2019, Cyrus and Olivia Solon won the Technology Reporting award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter for their coverage of Silicon Valley, including reporting on privacy, facial recognition, and more.

Two years earlier, Cyrus and Joe Mullin also won the Technology Reporting award from SPJ NorCal for their August 2016 story: “Stealing bitcoins with badges: How Silk Road’s dirty cops got caught.”

Cyrus has also reported for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, Public Radio International, The Economist, Wired, The New York Times, Slate, and many others.

He received his B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

He lives in Oakland, California.

Twitter: @cfarivar

Hey it’s the direct download link for  The Pedalshift Project 196: The Kessel Run takeaways and The Missing Link bike tour (mp3).

Subscribe/Follow The Pedalshift Project:
RSS – iTunes – Overcast – Android – Google Podcasts – Stitcher – TuneIn – IHeartRadio – Spotify

Reach out to the show via email, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to join the newsletter too.

Have some bike touring or overnight stories to share? Send your pics, audio or a quick tweet – all welcome. Email the show at pedalshift@pedalshift.net or call the lightly-used Pedalshift voicemail line at (202) 930-1109

Live Video Replay

Housekeeping

Hey, I’m presenting at the National Bike Summit’s Active Transportation Leadership Retreat March 14th. National Bike Summit is the biggest collection of bike advocates and it happens in DC. This will be the first time I’m lawyering it up in the bike advocacy space, so it’s going to be fun.

Fellow Star Wars nerds! I have the Disney audio but need some time to distill it. Look for that in March.

The Kessel Run: A Central Florida Bike Tour Takeaways

Reminder to check out part 1 in PSP 194 and part 2 in PSP 195.
1 – Central Florida doesn’t expect a bike tour, but I’ve found it to be better cycling than its reputation

2- Urban riding is great training for bicycle touring amongst motorized vehicles

3 – Disneyworld and Airports: not super bike friendly unless they are

4 – Ride With GPS is a fantastic tool for riding in “new to me” places, but spending some time with Google Streetview can demystify spots that look gnarly on a map

5 – I don’t think I’ll ever stick to one style of touring and Florida proves me why

6 – Four seasons FTW

7 – Ultralight does not mean ultrastupid – I got lucky with the way the rain went considering I forgot my rain pants. Double check and use a pack list, don’t just assume everything is in your bags like I did!

8 – Off-road opportunity in Florida appears to be abundant

9 – Bromptons are great, and require less maintenance but I got very lucky on the seat post (broken clamp before, itty bitty screw after)

10 – Yes, you can absolutely ride with a lightsaber on your rear rack.

Unveiling The Missing Link bike tour

I’ll be flying to southern California with my Brompton to ride the one piece of the California coast I missed in my 2014 tour and connect two dots between Anaheim and Oceanside that I bypassed by train. It’s a short link in an otherwise uninterrupted chain. It’s the missing link.

2014 ride was dominated by camping but towards the end there is a long stretch of southern CA with limited camping. Combine a dwindling budget with a reticence to deal with a question mark of Camp Pendleton access, I decided to bike inland for a cheaper hotel stay, add some miles through Los Angeles, and take the train past Camp Pendleton to get to  the next campground.

Camp Pendleton access has been an issue since 9/11 and in 2014 the system was practically a day-to-day assessment I didn’t want to deal with.

Now, the system in place is arguably worse, but the way around the base is clearer – Interstate 5 is legally available for the 6 or so miles. Permits are available at the south gate, but I’ve decided to just go with the flow and ride 30 minutes rather than get a ride down to get the permit and go back north again. Arguably a minor challenge—the cycling should be easy, but the zooming cars are a concern— but with wide shoulders I feel comfortable with the choice.

On my train ride down in 2014 the views from the Surfliner made me regret the decision to be on a train. Now I get a chance to ride the coast along  a truly iconic stretch of beaches in Orange County and south.

Will be riding the Brompton and forgoing camping again (there aren’t great options in this stretch).

Will tackle this in two days of about 50ish miles each. First stretch includes a lot of trail time along the Santa Ana River to the coast to rejoin the Pacific Coast route. Then I’ll be sticking on that for the ride south.

I plan to wrap up in San Diego but the link completes well north of there in Oceanside, which gives me an out via a fast forward if the need arises. Whether I wrap up in SD or Oceanside, I have a train to take me back up to Burbank to fly back, because LAX is apparently a disaster these days

I never considered my 2014 ride to be incomplete—ride your ride I always say. But I do look forward to completing the missing link.

Possible meetup opportunity in San Diego – it would be a Friday night 3/27 probably in the Gaslamp area. If you’re interested check out the details at pedalshift.net/sandiego and give me a heads up so I can be in touch. Not a late night because this guy has a stupid early train!

Episode 200

• You may have noticed the numbers of the show are getting tantalizingly close to 200.
• Episode 200 will be Part 1 of The Missing Link.
• Considering the earliest episodes of the show were preparation and execution of my 2014 ride, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate 200 episodes of the pod than this tour.
• Look for it in early April.

Hey it’s the direct download link for  The Pedalshift Project 195: The Kessel Run Florida Bike Tour Part 2 (mp3).

Subscribe/Follow The Pedalshift Project:
RSS – iTunes – Overcast – Android – Google Podcasts – Stitcher – TuneIn – IHeartRadio – Spotify

Reach out to the show via email, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to join the newsletter too.

Have some bike touring or overnight stories to share? Send your pics, audio or a quick tweet – all welcome. Email the show at pedalshift@pedalshift.net or call the lightly-used Pedalshift voicemail line at (202) 930-1109

The Kessel Run: A Central Florida Bike Tour, Part 2

Hey it’s the direct download link for  The Pedalshift Project 194: The Kessel Run Florida Bike Tour Part 1 (mp3).

Subscribe/Follow The Pedalshift Project:
RSS – iTunes – Overcast – Android – Google Podcasts – Stitcher – TuneIn – IHeartRadio – Spotify

Reach out to the show via email, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to join the newsletter too.

Have some bike touring or overnight stories to share? Send your pics, audio or a quick tweet – all welcome. Email the show at pedalshift@pedalshift.net or call the lightly-used Pedalshift voicemail line at (202) 930-1109

The Kessel Run: A Central Florida Bike Tour, Part 1

Hey it’s the direct download link for  The Pedalshift Project 193: The Kessel Run Florida Bike Tour Preview (mp3).

Subscribe/Follow The Pedalshift Project:
RSS – iTunes – Overcast – Android – Google Podcasts – Stitcher – TuneIn – IHeartRadio – Spotify

Reach out to the show via email, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to join the newsletter too.

Have some bike touring or overnight stories to share? Send your pics, audio or a quick tweet – all welcome. Email the show at pedalshift@pedalshift.net or call the lightly-used Pedalshift voicemail line at (202) 930-1109

Previewing the Kessel Run: A Central Florida Bike Tour

GREAT feedback on the month of MJ! I think the game format was a fun twist, so look for more of those down the line. Very open to rule tweak suggestions or even new formats. Lots of ways to run a draft and lots of ways to argue who won

The Journal

• Last year’s FL tour with a decidedly Star Wars twist
• Fly down and enjoy a day nerding out at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge flying the Falcon and enjoying a day
• THEN a tour on the Brompton from the Orlando area to the Tampa airport over two days
• Why? I wanted to center a bike tour around something cool so that the fun was front loaded and then the tour is the cherry on top
• Wanted to check a different route out of the Orlando area
• Doing all hotel and Airbnb stays (less gear)
• Shorter than I’d like but I’m hoping to get a longer tour in this spring
• What the heck’s a Kessel Run? What you’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon? It’s the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs. Go see Solo to see what the Kessel run is.

Gear Setup

• Brompton
• Front Ortlieb backroller, 2019 mod
• Phone holster
• Water bottle holder (note these have to be removed for a full fold)
• Rear rack will hold just my folded up duffel so I can fold the rear under
• Some kind of lock setup (post-recording update… I bought a new Ottolock)
• Water bottle
• Brompton toolkit + pump (integrated)
• Spare tube (perhaps overkill)
• New – a cheap adjustable crescent wrench (I’ve learned a lesson as we’ll chat about in a bit!)
• Going very limited on clothing for a such a short trip
• Rain gear going to be a must
• May only bring down one pair of pants, a couple of wicking base layers and a puffy vest to stay simple and extra light
• Trail shoes and wool socks
• Looking to replace my helmet so considering (maybe) getting one shipped to the hotel rather than carrying down?

Challenges

• An important element of my Brampton broke less than a week away! Fixed, but lesson learned on what the Brompton toolkit can do and what it cannot.
• Weather is a wild card – last year was stellar
• This year? It looks like there’s going to be rain at the tail end of my evening at Galaxy’s Edge, through the night into the morning. That might redouble my attitude of tapping the brakes on an early start, checking out as late as I can and maybe even waiting out the end of the rain at the hotel. 
• Temps look perfect… low 70s as highs, mid 50s as lows.
• Prevailing winds will be in my face this go-around. 
• I’m challenging myself to carry anything I purchase at Galaxy’s Edge with me. That might get interesting.
• Traffic around my first night stay near Plant City is a question mark since I’m deviating from the route there
• I have plenty of time, but there is a bit of a race on Sunday… my plane leaves with or without me!

Interesting Disney-specific bike logistics

• I mentioned riding at WDW is not in the cards, but due to poor planning on my part I’m splitting two nights there between hotels
• The Brompton will get transferred by Disney bell services while I’m in the park. 
• I plan to bring an IKEA Dimpa bag and have it very securely packed up since I don’t know what to expect
• Interesting possibility – if I check the bike on my flight down it can be picked up by Disney and brought to the hotel room directly… but I don’t love checking the bike and really don’t love the idea of trusting the handoff behind the scenes of bike to bus to hotel without me being there. If the bike isn’t there before I go to bed I may lose my mind

Fun

• I’ve been so focused on the Disney/Star Wars part of the trip I’m just now getting extra excited about the ride.
• A nice escape from DC.
• I know the Kessel Run element of this trip won’t appeal to many of you, so I’ll be focusing on the bike tour for the tour journal episodes BUT I plan on recording something for the Star Wars elements that I’ll make available outside of the feed and let folks know about it.
• Pedalshift Society folks – you’ll get the real time recordings in the bonus feed. You should have received an email from me with that. First audio will likely be coming out the 30th.