CONTENTS:

1. GETTING LIFTS
   

2. ACCOMMODATION OFFERS
   

3. REST DAYS
   

4. GOING SOLO
   

GETTING LIFTS

The opportunity for these does not happen often, and you have the choice whether to accept or decline.  Your response relates to your goal for the day, the weather and the terrain or barriers you expect to encounter. 

Your response also is based on a quick character assessment of the person offering the lift, and the type of vehicle they have.  This is related to security, safety and logistics.

If accepting, have a set distance for the lift, ensure you have ALL your gear in the vehicle, and then spend every moment asking your driver about the local area, current conditions or warnings, latest news of the world, and about them and their history.  Your fare is likely a good chat, so provide it!

If not accepting, then only give as much information as you feel comfortable with to the person who offered the lift.

ACCOMMODATION OFFERS

If someone looking like you on your bike rolled up, would you invite that person in or to stay a night?  I don’t think I would have before my trip, but now that I know what it’s like, I would. 

Safety is your primary judgement call.  If you do not feel safe then it is ok to politely decline the offer, as is the case for accepting lifts.

What do you have to offer in return?  Most of the time people are going to refuse your offer to do anything, but it never hurts to help out a bit while there - wash up, help with chores, entertain them, show them some (not all) photos, offer advice/recommendations on the places you have been to.

Protocol varies and while everyone is different, a few basic guidelines should be acknowledged:

1. Leave things tidy, don’t make a mess
   

2. Consider their resources limited and use them sparingly
   

3. Respect their sleep and property
   

4. Thank them in some overt way
   

REST DAYS

Rest days are essential on longer trips - time for the body to recuperate and to attend to your belongings.  It often depends on the terrain of the area you are traveling through, and your effort to date.  Or, you may have a rest day planned in 2 days, but you find an awesome campsite/area that is an ideal place to spend an extra day at.  Or, unfortunately the weather sucks, and it would be miserable to continue riding through it for another day.

So you have the day off?  What do you do - DON’T RIDE YOUR BIKE if you can help it!   Walk, run, lie down, fish, read, zone out, count grasshoppers, whatever makes you relaxed.  Get some extra sleep.  Eat heartily.  Plan or review your progress.  Clean your gear and rearrange stuff to fit better.  Repair stuff.  Call people if you have a phone. Anything that you like really, just zero to minimal time on the bike.

If on a multi-week trip, a rest day every 7-10 days is a good schedule, but if you are alternating heavy/hard with light/easy days cycling then you could stretch that to 14 days.  It is nice however to not have to pack up/set up your campsite for a day, and to stay put.

GOING SOLO

Solo is a four letter word for ‘lonely’ or ‘adventure’... depending on who you are.  If you have no history of being alone for either periods of time or attending events, then solo is likely not a good idea. 

You need to be comfortable with yourself and your skills and your personality and your level of control over inanimate objects and events.  It’s that simple.  Be self sufficient in your habits before you start.  Can you survive, deal with, entertain, make decisions, schedule and guide yourself?  You may not know yourself well before you start, but you certainly will have a much better idea about your identity by the end.

Talking to yourself and picking boogers is A-OK by me.  Dying or being injured by a basic oversight or by being reckless is not.  You need to know first aid and be confident that you can treat yourself - including stitches and worse.  You need to be able to recognize the signs or symptoms of bites, infections, GI problems, internal bleeding, hyperthermia, hypothermia, delirium, poisoning, fractures, and the other likely conditions. (You work out the rest of the list.)  Oh, and then you have to have a plan to deal with it - at least until help is summoned.  And you need to know how to best summon help.  And you need to practice your strategies (but don’t practice with your EPIRB!).

Scared?  This is one of those black and white things.  You are or you are not scared.  I am not talking about the schoolyard macho thing, but the ‘hairs on the back of your neck’ scared.  The gut feeling of fear.  If you happen to get this kind of scared, it is very black and white - do something about it right there and then.  This applies to people, places, animals, velocity, direction of motion, sounds coming from your bike etc. etc.

To get a true understanding of solo travel you have to do it yourself.  This seems an absurd statement, but there is no other way around it.  Do a little solo here and there before you undertake a long and complicated trip.  For hints and clues and an inside peek at what you have to do, how you might do it, what you deal with and how, then peruse through the rest of this site.  The journal gives you the idea and the low down on nearly anything that happened.  The other pages, like this one, focus in on some particular issues in a more concise and direct format. 

If in doubt about a trip you want to undertake, or if you have questions related to particular things I mentioned, then...