Customer Reviews

Bike Touring: The Sierra Club Guide to Travel on Two Wheels (Sierra Club Outdoor Adventure Guide)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Raymond Bridge's book, Bike Touring: The Sierra Club Guide to Travel on Two Wheels, is the second, completely revised edition of a book Mr. Bridge originally wrote 30 years ago. In the thirty years since the first edition, some things have changed. We now have Internet forums to discuss our tours, we can track our routes using GPS and the Adventure Cycling Association has mapped out thousands of more miles of routes, but the lure of the open road is still the same.

In this age of Internet wonder, Raymond Bridge has created a book that does the thing that books still do best: he's created a compact, clear guide that condenses a wealth of practical how-to information into a portable, organized form. He explains the various types of bike touring a person might do from commercial tours to roof-to-roof and independent bike camping trips. He discusses a variety of bikes, explaining both fit and function, telling not just what options exist, but why a person might choose one bike or component over another. He explains basic roadside repairs, camping skills and things like the logistics of transporting your bike before and after your tour.

I'm really not the intended audience for a book like this, as I've been traveling by bicycle since before the first edition of this book was new, and yet I still found this book to be wonderfully organized and complete. With a critical eye, I'd find myself asking "yeah, but does he mention alcohol stoves?" Yep, he does, not only mentioning commercial stoves, but pointing his readers to a couple of instruction pages on the Internet for those who like to make their own stuff. This is typical of the book, it is marvelously complete in itself, but it also sends you off on your own journey.

In Bike Touring: The Sierra Club Guide to Travel on Two Wheels, Raymond Bridge has written a marvelous starting point for anyone interested in travel by bicycle. John Lencicki's wonderful drawings are sprinkled throughout the text, adding both clarity and charm to this book. My only complaint with this volume is the cover. This is a book that inspires and enables folks to get out on the road and experience the freedom of two wheels. The text and drawings inside the book capture that far better than the dull photograph of a pannier, water bottle, helmet, map and glove which the Sierra Club chooses for the cover of this book. In this case, don't judge a book by its cover. This one is better. I now have a guide to hand to anyone looking to get out and see the world from the seat of a bicycle.

I am relatively new to bicycle touring but I have jumped into it with both feet conducting extensive research on the subject including types of bikes, equipement, etc. This is by far the best book for both the beginner and those who want to keep abreast of the changes that have occurred since most of the other books on touring were written. Everything you need to know to select your bike, outfit it and yourself and begin your journey is there. Highly recommended.

I got this book in preparation for my first bike tour. I was trying to learn the ins and outs of traveling by bicycle so I could survive my trip from Vancouver to Mexico along the pacific coast. I found most of the info presented in this book to be common sense and rather elementary. I read a few chapters and then returned it. My advice is to save you money and get the details by talking to people who have experience touring. If you are planning on riding the coast, make sure you buy "Bicycling the pacific coast" by kirkendall and spring.

To someone on the far side of the Pacific Sierra Club rates with another great name - National Geographic.
Bicycle travel is somnething many people dream about. It's the freedom along with the discovery of fantastic places and cultures through one's own efforts. It can be a solo juorney or with agreable company.

This convient book is an all-you-need-to know bicycle-travelling guide. It has been updated after three decades to include new innovations including mountain bikes (which with minor modifications can also be ideal for touring). I was interested to see smaller wheel folders included.

Author Raymond Bridge has provided an excellent resource manual that will provide many pleasant hours of bedside reading and sweet dreams for the novice as well as those who have many kilometres of pedalling, and maybe countries, stored in their legs.
[[ASIN:B001731O36 Schwinn Midmoor Men's Hybrid Bike (700c Wheels)]

I'm preparing for a bicycle journey around Asia and needed an up to date book on touring. This book is completely recommended and has excellent references. I'm still building my bike up and the knowledge I obtained from this book is priceless. Not only on preparing your ride for the long road ahead, but also additional camping gear.

The Sierra clubs guide to bicycle touring is the most comprehensive current guide out there that I've found on the subject. Lovett's "The Essential Touring Cyclist" was the best guide out there until Mr. Bridge wrote this volume. Lovett's guide(2nd edition) is still a good book but it doesn't come close to the detail of the Sierra Clubs guide. If your going to read only one book on bicycle touring this is a good one in my opinion.

This isn't a bad book, it just isn't a very good book.

I agree w/the 2 star review -- the ideas are common sense: plan ahead and don't plan too many miles. Ok, but how? The book states that training at 150% of the mileage you want to do on tour is a good idea, but also that on a cross country trip it is possible to build up to higher daily mileage. So which is it? On a 2 week trip is there any gain? Surely the feature of having all day to ride helps w/the mileage? This seems like the essence of the insight this book should provide.

The book also fails to provide the details necessary for the information it contains to be useful. For example, pg. 438 states that all the GPS coordinates for the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) are freely available. This is a useful little nugget. For my trip, I did purchase a few ACA maps, but is this compatible w/the GPS map on the iphone? It seems like there is usually a way to make things compatible w/an iphone, but it would be nice to have an explanation in the book. Does the author recommend carrying a separate GPS unit? Wouldn't GPS on a phone save precious weight. It is possible the date of writing prevents much detail on smart phone GPS, but the problem is there isn't ANY detail.

Another problem is the verbose writing. Each sentence communicates very little. For example, pg. 27 "Styles of Training" states "The most critical aspect of training for bicycle touring is to find a routine that gives you the incentive and the consistency to ride regularly and to accumulate significant mileage. Thus, if you commute every day, even for ten or twenty miles, it will help a lot with your riding fitness, and you can add weekend and evening rides as you can fit them into your schedule."

There are a number of problems with this passage.

First, the sentences could be rewritten without loss of meaning as, "To prepare for a bike tour, try to commute on your bike and otherwise ride as much as you can in the evening or weekend." Then, the missing passage, "[From my own experience and talking to other touring riders, a minimum of 50% of weekly tour mileage for a month is recommended]" -- something, anything, to give you guidance. What does "signficant mileage" mean -- this is never defined; what types of "weekend and evening rides" are helpful -- this is also not defined. The next sections discuss club riding, seasonal riding, braking, etc. but never give concrete guidance to prepare for a cycling tour. If the author's answer is: go out and do a cycling tour, and then you'll know. Then, applying that logic to the entire book, the book itself is superfluous.

Side note: Who commutes on a bike 10 to 20 miles? Is the author suggesting there are lots of readers that commute daily via bike more than 20 miles?

More specifically, if you want to do a series of century rides during the tour, what type of training (short of doing a series of century rides) is likely to work? As an analogy, people rarely run the full 26.2 miles of a marathon during training, but there are many training guides out there that give you some guidance on the weekly and daily mileage necessary to be able to run that mileage. Bike touring is by definition a multi-day activity and thus some specifics on training would be very useful to plan your trip.

Another problem is that the book often takes both sides. This was noted above in the 150% mileage vs. tour gain. Here is another example: booking hotels in advance is a good idea during the busy season to avoid not finding a room, but exigencies force changes in plans. Which is it? If the book doesn't take a stand and give straight advice, it isn't helpful.

Most of the 452 pages are on equipment. There are a few nuggets here and there but these days finding a bike that can handle a thousand miles of U.S. country roads is not a challenge. The rider's fitness, planning, and preparation seem to vastly outweigh the potential equipment problems. The latter are important, they just are not worthy of the ~270 pages out of 452 pages, or 60% coverage, they get.

The book does have some utility -- see the lists of equipment to take at the end which are part of the free preview, thus the 3 stars, but don't expect much more than common sense ideas and things you could find on the internet in a few hours.

EDIT: After a 1,400 mile tour from Minnesota to Montana (see [...]), in essence this book raises the obvious problems of any bike tour: what equipment to take, how many miles to do, logistics. The reason this book fails is that it doesn't answer those questions. Thus the book is superfluous, as hinted at above. The author might respond that he didn't want to take a firm stand on many of these issues, because that would be just his subjective view. That is the problem with this book in a nutshell. We all have a sense that equipment, road conditions, traffic, and logistics will be problems, but a guide book must answer these questions to be of value and this one simply doesn't provide answers.

This tome is very informative and deals with many of the aspects of bicycle touring. I would highly recommend this book to other interested readers.

This book is packed with excellent, well written information for anyone interested in travel by bicycle.
The author covers every topic and includes many useful references in the resources section.
This is a must read for any beginner and even an experienced cyclist can find something useful and worthwhile.
Highly recommended!!