S1E119 - Spencer on Bike Packing Pt. II

Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Spencer and Inmn continue to talk about bikes, how to go about planning a bike packing trip, and the usefulness of bikes in preparedness scenarios.

Guest Info

Spencer can be found on IG @spencerjharding or at www.spencerjharding.com

You can find cool bike resources at bikepacking.com, Gravelmap.com, Theradavist.com, RidewithGPS.com, and Bikepackingroots.com

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Spencer on Bike Packing Pt. II

**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inmn Neruin, and today we're gonna be talking more about bikes. Bikes, bikes, bikes, like it's a.... like it's 2005 and we're listening to Defiance, Ohio for the first time. Bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes. [Spencer laughing in background] And it's part two of a two part episode of about bike packing. So if you didn't listen to part one, you might miss some things, which is mostly about some stuff about gear, some stuff about bike travel and what the scope of it is, and some other content that you may or may not have context for. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo, doo, doo doo [singing a simple melody]

**Inmn ** 02:06 And we're back. Thanks so much for coming back on the show, definitely a week later and not twenty minutes later. Could your re-introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a little bit about what you do in the world?

**Spencer ** 02:26 My name is Spencer Harding. My pronouns are he/him/his. I work in various bicycle related things. My current day job is photographer writer, occasional editor at a website called theradivist.com. We do a lot of cycle related content. I have worked as a bicycle mechanic. I've worked as a bicycle tour guide. I have worked in bike co-ops, I've done a whole lot of shit bikes is the jist of all of that.

**Inmn ** 03:00 Yeah, cool. Cool. Well, we're just gonna...we're just gonna kind of jump right back into it from last week. So before we kind of get into the nitty gritty about how to plan a bike trip--you know, we've talked about gear for a little bit--let's just Let's start off with some good, like good feel heady stuff. Spencer, why is traveling by bike a cool idea?

**Spencer ** 03:31 A cool idea? [uestioning the question]

**Inmn ** 03:33 Or good idea. A fun idea? Is fun, or is it...Is it harrowing? Is it both?

**Spencer ** 03:40 Yes. There's always going to be a chance for all of that to happen. The big picture reason why I like biking as a means of travel is that it strikes a really good balance between walking or hiking. And traveling by vehicle, like train or bus or plane, you miss so much because you're really cut off from the world. And you're usually traveling at speeds that are hard to really digest what's around you. Whereas a bike, you're typically somewhere between three miles an hour and like 20mph. Unless you're real fast or going down a big old hill. So I feel that biking affords more of that connection and really seeing and absorbing your surroundings. Whereas I feel that walking is almost too in the weeds of that sometimes, and they just really want to get somewhere, in a way that cycling allows you to really, when you need to, you can really cover a great amount of distance in a effective amount of time and energy without having to resort to a motor vehicle or a large public form of transportation.

**Inmn ** 05:01 Yeah, yeah, I've always been really blown away by really how quickly someone can travel on a bicycle. It's like, you know, like, when me and Marie did our bike tour across the country, it took us two months to ride from Oregon to Boston, you know. And, you know, we were hauling it, we were riding like 80 to 100 miles a day.

**Spencer ** 05:26 That's fast!

**Inmn ** 05:28 Which is even more ridiculous because we absolutely had like 60 pounds of gear each, you know. And, but then meeting other people who were the really lightweight credit card tourer who rode from LA to Boston in 22 days or something. And I was like, "What?!" It was utterly incomprehensible.

**Spencer ** 06:00 And I'm going to tell you that I know people who have written from Banff, Canada to the Mexican border almost entirely off road in 16 days without any support, carrying all have their own gear.

**Inmn ** 06:13 Oh my God. Yeah. Okay.

**Spencer ** 06:17 So the scale of human capacity to move themselves and whatever they need by bike is incredible, whether that's like.... that's the upper echelons of endurance and athleticism, but in that same vein, it's bonkers, what is truly possible. But for people like you who are maybe doing less than 100 or like 20 to 30 miles a day, like that's super accessible for a lot of people.

**Inmn ** 06:47 Yeah, yeah. And actually, that's kind of where I want to start today's conversation is around like...it's kind of about preparation, but it's in the realm of...so, if I'm someone who doesn't have a whole lot of experience biking and I want to go on a trip like this, like, how do I...like I want to go ride my bike around for a month, you know, whether that's all on pavement or on gravel. How do I prepare for that? Like, if I don't have a regular workout routine or something like that? Like, what is that going to be like for me?

**Spencer ** 07:34 So are we talking about like, fitness here, then?

**Inmn ** 07:39 Um, I think like, yeah. I'm talking about kind of like bodily preparation, where it's like, I want to go ride my bike a long distance. I've never done that. What is that...what is that going to be like? And are there ways that I can kind of, I don't know, like train, I guess prepare? Do I have to? Will my body just like, do it on the trip?

**Spencer ** 08:04 Bodies are really good at adapting to things. And I've always felt the first week or so of bike tour, everything's gonna hurt a little bit. Like, obviously, there's a lot of muscles involved. Especially in your legs and your ass and your sit bones. Your sit bones are going to be a focal point of something that's going to be hurting and have a lot of pressure and possibly a lot of discomfort. So I think training...training is a poor word to describe what I think is necessary for bike touring. I think it's more of a conditioning. Like if you ride your bike to work or you ride your bike to the grocery store or like just to go run errands or like once a week with your friends like that's bike touring conditioning.