Frequently Asked Questions Q. Can you tell me when your next tour will be and how many people are signed up? A. In spite of the fact that we mention this repeatedly at the site, quite a few folks still think we’re a caterer offering fully-supported tours. We are not. We offer information in the form of maps, route slips, elevation profiles, and narrative copy about the stages. This service is aimed at riders who don’t want the cost and frills of a full-on catered tour. They want to do their own tours, but simply need more information about local roads and conditions. We do in fact organize and “cater” at least a couple of tours each summer. That is, the Santa Rosa Cyling Club offers tours to its members, and I am usually one of the tour leaders and planners. These wonderful tours form the basis for most of the tours offered at Adventure Velo. We have been there and done that when it comes to touring; we have been the crash test dummies who have found the good roads and the bad roads, and you—the new tour buyer—are the beneficiary of all of our experiments out there in the back country. What we’ve learned out there, we are passing along to you here. Q. With the detailed route thumbnails you’ve posted for each ride, what’s to prevent someone from just following your route on their own, without buying your tour packet? A. Go for it! That’s the same independent spirit that got me laying out my own tours in the first place. However, there is a great deal of information in the packets that is not contained in the thumbnails... about obscure little backroads...about the perfect campground...about quality of pavement and terrain and traffic and dozens of other matters of import for a prospective cycle-tourist. Not to mention all the maps, route slips, elevation profiles, phone numbers and so forth for the camps. How much is it worth to have all that good stuff figured out for you ahead of time? We think it’s worth $30. Q. My wife and I want to do one of your tours...just the two of us, without a sag. We don’t want to camp. We’ll travel light and stay in motels. Is this feasible? A. Yes and no. Yes for a few tours. No for most. These tours were designed as cooperative tours, with at least one sag acting as the beast of burden for a group of riders, and also acting as the taxi service to haul the riders to and from the start/finish. They were also laid out as camping-based vacations. There are two roadblocks in the way of a single rider or couple doing the routes alone. First, with the exception of four loop routes, all the tours end up a long way from where they began, so leaving a car at one end or the other doesn’t help much. Small groups can leave half their cars at the finish and then drive to the start in the remaining cars, repeating the same process at the end. It’s a bit cumbersome, but it can be made to work. Larger groups will charter a bus for the transportation at the start and finish. Second, many of the overnights have motels or inns not far from the designatied campsites, so you can stay indoors, but a substantial number of the campgrounds are in remote areas with no lodgings close at hand. If a tour has even one night like this, you’re out of luck for morphing the tour from camps to inns. Some people may choose to create a hybrid tour, camping on some nights and opting for the luxury of an inn every so often. This is a very realistic option. If you don’t want to camp at all, consider our Mini-Tours instead. They use motels or inns instead of campgrounds, and they stay in one place from beginning to end (doing loop routes), thereby solving all the transportation hassles. Q. Are these tours suitable for a fully-loaded tourist, carrying all camping gear? A. They will be suitable as far as the camping goes. The question is whether you will want to tackle the hills on these routes. They were designed to be ridden by bikes without much luggage on board, so they don’t shy away from hills...sometimes quite substantial ones. If you have the fitness, attitude, and gearing for hills, you should be okay. Of course, there is still the challenge of getting to and from the start/finish sites that was discussed above. Obviously, the loop routes work best for this. Q. I want to ride down the California coast, from Eureka (or Crescent City) to San Francisco. Can you give me any good pointers on how to do this trip? A. This isn’t really about one of our tours, but I get asked some variation of this question on a regular basis, so I’d like to answer it, once and for all. People seem to get this notion that riding down the length of the state is some epic journey. My feeling is, if you want to have a great cycling experience in California, there are lots of better ways to do it. From the Oregon border to the town of Leggett– nearly 200 miles–your main road is Hwy 101...always busy and often a freeway. You can escape onto less-traveled byways for a little over 80 of those miles, if you know what you’re doing, and for even more, if you’re willing to do some serious climbing. But the balance must be done on 101, and it’s quite unpleasant and none too safe. (Unlike the state of Oregon, California has done very little to make its portion of 101 cycle-friendly.) What’s more, you’re hardly ever actually on the coast. I would guess you’re actually in sight of the ocean for no more than 10-20 of those first 200 miles. Once you get onto Hwy 1, south of Leggett, things do improve, although Hwy 1 isn’t always an ideal cycling road either. I use sections of it on three of my tours, from Mendocino all the way south through Big Sur, but I try to keep it minimal. There is too much traffic and often very little shoulder. I have also been asked for advice on riding from Lake Tahoe to the Pacific...another of these supposedly epic journeys. In my opinion, the only reason to tackle one of these length- or breadth-of-the-state rides is just so you can say you did it, and never mind the suffering along the way. If your goal on your bike tour is to have fun, then get off the main highways and onto the backroads.