From the age of 20 to about 50, bicycling was a large part of my life. I bicycle camped with Fred Schroeder for a month in England, France, and Germany in 1976, rode across the US with Barbara in 1980 from Yorktown VA to San Diego CA on an unsuited 10-speed racing bike while carrying 50 pounds of gear and promptly bought a 21-speed Trek touring bike on return.

Rode that touring bike with Barb for two 1-week camping tours around Virginia, 13 Bike Virginias, several century rides, and countless local rides. My career got in the way of further travels and mandatory participation in orientation at the University of Mary Washington was always during Bike Virginia.

I was never fast, too slow to ride with most groups, but I had reasonable endurance. Many people find the repetitive nature of bicycling boring but for me it felt good while improving my concentration and fitness.

Now retired, I feel the desire to bicycle one last go around; do it now while I can. The 3rd Act clock is ticking loudly in my head, so I bought a new bicycle to replace my 1981 Trek touring bicycle. I wanted something capable of dirt and gravel rail-trails and was unable to fit wider tires on the 1981 bike.

Will bike riding keep me younger? I don’t know, probably a little but I want see what I can do before I can’t.

So here is the old bike. Hey, the clothes are a little tight but I can still fit into the lycra cycling jersey and spandex shorts!

And here is the new bike.

So 20 years ago, bikepacking the Continental Divide Trail from Canada to Mexico was on my bucket list. Not going to happen as I didn’t time the curves right. Curves? Yeah, the intersection of declining physical ability with rising free time in retirement. I needed to retire at a much younger age but couldn’t. Oh well, thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail got bumped from the list too. Not confident I now can (or want) to do extra-long hours in heavy terrain.

So what do you do when your physical abilities don’t match your goals. Reset your goals of course. Overall, just like the cross country tour in 1980, I want to be outdoors for a long period of time, feel the wind, and move along on two quiet wheels, unencumbered by heavy clothing, adventure traveling from one place to another.

Motorcycling only provides some of that. Yes, you can do longer distances faster but motorcycling is noisy with too much clothing, and sometimes scary. If the point is to spend time travel outside, speed is not that important. Besides, I don’t have to remove fairings on a bicycle!

So, I can’t do the great divide but maybe I can do rail-trails, those converted railroad tracks without motorized traffic and gentile grades in beautiful scenery.

So, I bought the bike with the specific goal of trails, in particular, the Capital Trail from Richmond to Williamsburg (all paved) and the Greater Allegheny Passage (GAP) from Pittsburgh to Cumberland (firmly packed crushed limestone with average grade of 1.4%) linked with the C&O Canal from Cumberland to Washington, DC (single lane dirt road with ruts, roots, and mud, completely flat except at the locks). The combined trail is called the GAPCO, 333 miles long.

Who knows, there are thousands of miles of rail-trails to explore including the newly announced Great American Rail-Trail, including the GAPCO to link Washington DC to Washington state.

Traveling around in my minivan RV and exploring rail-trails is a relatively simple sport with adventure and fitness. Yes, I will still motorcycle, but why not enjoy both forms of two-wheel travel?