[🎵 singing]
Hello, and welcome to Wheels on a Bike.
They say that failure is the first attempt in learning and in the spirit of that,
I'm going to share with you five mistakes I made in the 2021 touring season.
So if you're interested in laughing at or learning from my mistakes,
grab the beverage of your choice and let's get to it.
To provide you with a bit of context and for those of you new to the channel,
the type of touring I do is typically solo, self-supported.
So just keep that in mind when I go through the list of my five mistakes.
All right, onto the first one.
The first mistake I made was not accounting for
the reroutes, closed bridges, closed trails
and the extra time I need to record my adventures for you.
So this impacted me on my very first tour.
The first tour I took after my injury, where I planned a very specific distance
and I needed to stick to that distance to not re-injure my knee.
Well, on that tour and many others that followed in 2021,
I ran into numerous closed bridges, closed trails that I had to then bypass.
And that added not only mileage,
extra mileage, but also added time that I didn't account for.
Additionally, last year was the first time I started filming
and sharing my journeys on the channel, and that takes a little bit of time.
Setting up the camera, doing a ride by then coming back to the camera.
All of that is something that I will need to account for moving forward.
The second mistake I made on my tours in 2021 is, well,
I often placed myself on mountain bike trails.
And while I love those, I love riding on gravel, etc.,
I don't think my touring bike quite enjoys
single tracks and big, chunky gravel.
So maybe I'm a bikepacker at heart.
I just don't know it yet.
Regardless, I often plan my routes with Ride with GPS,
and I think that the surface information in that, on that platform isn't
ideal.
So I will be consulting, based on what many of you have recommended,
I will be consulting Komoot, which is another route planning
platform that perhaps has a little bit
better, or stronger information about the type of surface
that would be better suited for touring bikes.
The third mistake I made was taking advice of non
cycling locals on route planning or route choices. And here's what happened.
One of the days, I spoke to the lockmaster at a lock station I was staying at
and and told him about the route I was planning to take.
And he said that there's a better route, much more scenic one to take.
And I ended up disregarding my route altogether
and taking him up on his advice.
And while the 70% of that route were fantastic to ride on.
Scenic routes, super quiet. The remaining 30%, the last 30% were absolutely horrid,
with high moving traffic right next to me, not much of a shoulder.
And that taught me a good lesson.
I think that tapping into local advice and local knowledge is fantastic.
But I think that perhaps paying a little bit closer attention to
who is giving you advice when we're talking about route planning, is important.
The first mistake I made was leaving way too late for a pretty long day.
On my fall bicycle tour, I left at 12:00 p.m.
to ride 70 kilometers.
Now, in the fall, in Canada, days become shorter and leaving at 12:00 p.m.
was just way too late.
And again, I ran into some closed bridges, so I had to do some reroutes
and that put me close to my destination in the dark.
While on tour, I ride solo and arriving at a place I don't know in the dark.
Riding through various streets, navigating in the dark,
is just a little bit of a vulnerable situation.
So not a mistake I want to repeat any time soon.
The fifth mistake I made was not locking up my bike and having it
almost be stolen.
In my fall bicycle tour, on the first day of my adventure.
I failed to secure my bike because I didn't have a lock
that was long enough and there wasn't necessarily anything to lock my bike to.
And in the middle of the night, somebody attempted to steal my bike.
Luckily for me,
I woke up and I prevented the theft, but that was a big lesson learned for me.
Don't expose yourself to potential bike theft, especially in places
that have high traffic, high traffic in terms of people milling around.
But interestingly, that wasn't the only time I had something stolen.
A few months prior to that, I went camping with friends
and if you saw what I packed for my seven day adventure video,
I share with you that I take the Sea to Summit Kitchen Sink with me.
It is a little sack that holds water that I use for
doing laundry, for washing up and for doing the dishes.
I have the best item ever. It's a Sea to Summit Kitchen Sink.
And I used it on that particular camping trip.
I left it to dry
hanging on the tree, and when I came back from the activities of the day,
somebody had helped themselves to that Sea to Summit Kitchen Sink.
The lesson for me and all of that is that whenever I'm in the high population
area, be it in the city, be it in the campground
with a lot of people, always put away your things
so that they are not visible and certainly always lock my bike.
I told you that I would provide you with a bonus mistake I made,
and this is not as much of a mistake as something that I need to keep in mind,
and that is always to trust my gut feeling.
And here's a story for you.
On one of my adventures, I arrived at a campsite.
It was a lock station that was situated very close to the downtown area.
And as I arrived, the place looked beautiful, but there was
something that was off.
I couldn't identify what was off, but I just had that
gut feeling of - something is odd here.
Something is not quite right.
But, I went against my feeling and I and I parked it and
and I ended up spending a night and what helped me in not having that
become an uncomfortable experience is
two things - and I think this is where the universe intervened.
So the one thing was the lockmaster at that lock station
recommended that I park my bike inside a locked washroom.
So I locked the bike and then I put it in the locked washroom
so that it was away from any prying eyes.
And then at night, there were a lot of people milling around.
And what I found out in the morning is that a lot of people with
substance abuse come to that area to do whatever they do.
And what happened is that it started pouring,
so the weather intervened, again, universe intervened and everybody left.
And I spent the night without anything happening to me.
Again, that experience just gave me a lot to think about in in that
I knew there was something off,
but I didn't pay attention to that kind of gnawing feeling.
I will certainly be paying more attention to that gut feeling,
that sixth sense, in my future bike tours.
And now I'd love to hear from you.
What mistakes did you make on your 2021 tours?
Are you comfortable with sharing anything?
I would love to learn from your experience as well.
All right. As per usual, thanks so much for watching.
Comment, like, share, subscribe,
do all the YouTube things.
I appreciate your time and I will see you in the next one.
Bye.
[gentle waves splashing and nature sounds]