How Bike Touring is Different From Camping

Initially when we were planning this trip, I thought bike camping would be a lot like bike camping. Wait, that doesn't make sense. I thought that bike touring would be a lot like bike camping. You see, we've been bike camping a couple of times over the years, usually for a weekend. And you pack light, use Ortliebs and all that good stuff, but still, bike touring is very different.

The biggest difference is for bike touring is, much of the time, and this may seem obvious- you spend riding your bike. When bike camping, we just took a bunch of stuff to one campground and stayed for as long as possible there (read: until we ran out of food). This is also kind of like car camping. Go to a place, camp out, see the scenery around there.

Thus, our plan was to stay in Monterey for 3 nights (their maximum) and check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium, 17 Mile Drive (fyi, Asilomar Beach is superior), hang out at camp/build fires, and so forth. Imagine our surprise when we got to the bike/hike campsite and everybody else was just staying for the night. Well, except one dude, but that was because he was broken and needed to rest, not because he planned on it.

Apparently, the way to bike tour is to ride from bike campground to the next bike campground. You do see a lot this way, as being on a bike is seriously the best way to see scenery, but where is the resting?? Where is the gourmet food? Why is it okay to just keep eating canned beans every night???

In fact, our campground in Monterey didn't even have fire rings for the bike campsite. We had to beg regular campers to use their fire every single night. And don't get me wrong, every single person we asked to use their fire was completely friendly and absolutely cooperative, but by the last night, I just wanted our old camping routine. Laura making a fire, me cooking over it, and then watching the embers burn burn burn. But alas, when you are in somebody else's campsite out cooking them on their own fire (why do car campers even bring camping stoves? One should do everything on the FIRE!) , you can't outstay your welcome.

Second reason why food isn't important when bike touring is because food is really heavy. When you can save a lot of weight, packing space, and time by cooking over a camp stove, why not? In fact, today, after a huge day of biking to Big Sur, we did exactly that. We didn't want to lug around firewood or worry about keeping meat cold, so we just ate boiled food (but don't despair for us too much, I still made it a 3 course meal- avocado topped with almonds, noodles with peas in a mushroom soup, and hot chocolate with marshmallows for dessert!).

Also, you don't want to have too much stuff with you because you just don't know what might get stolen! We were warned the first morning when we headed out to Monterey Bay Aquarium and were just going to leave everything in our tent like we usually do when we camp, that things disappear all the time. Sure enough, during our stay we met somebody who had their bike stolen in the middle of the night from that site, somebody had their huge gas canister stolen, and we had 5 of our 6 star bolts stolen from off our rear disc brake. Why somebody would do this is totally beyond me because I literally had them replaced for free and if you had tools you should really go for high roller items like derailleur or seats, but the guy at the bike shop said he had never seen just one bolt left unless it was stolen. Sometimes two or three come out, but never all of them but one. This was also super shitty because it slowed us down a lot to diagnose the problem (luckily we didn't die coming down from Monterey to Carmel), hitchhike to the nearest bike shop to fix the problem (Laura wisely wouldn't let us ride without brake) and then hitchhike back. Totally nuts. Luckily, I had great luck hitchhiking waiting only about 5 cars and not even having to show any skin!

Finally, bike touring is super epic because it is kind of hard to always be camping. Many times this trip I've wondered if I'm homeless. In order to save weight, I don't have a pillow, I just stuff all of our clothes into our sleeping bag stuff sack. Over the nights, I've finally perfected my "pillow" by making sure our down jackets stay on the top side of the stuff sack. But seriously, I haven't slept in a real bed with a real pillow in 5 days. Hilariously enough though, I'm taking more showers because they were free at the Monterey site and we had to wash our clothes in the shower since we packed so few (see once again, homeless or bike touring? It's hard to tell).

But whether we are bike camping, bike touring, or just plain biking, life is pretty awesome to us. It's been beautiful out and not too cold (although packing only one pair of long pants and shorts/2 tshirts was definitely not the right ratio for outdoor living). We've met plenty of fun people at the bike campsites, for instance a duo that seriously reminded me of Cheryl Strand from Wild. They booked tickets to California 3 days before, had never bike toured, and were just carrying around WAY too much stuff. Like, oversized sleeping bags, sweatshirts/sweats, and so so so many apples. However, they were in super good spirits and at the end of the day, are still ahead of us since we took our unheard of break! That's the most brilliant thing about bike touring. You can just go and start biking. Anywhere you really want, just get on your bike and there will likely be campgrounds that are first come, first serve for you when you are tired, a ton of people willing to help you along the way, and  fantastic feeling of knowing you got yourself where you are going.