Building a bike from the frame up can be exciting. It gives you the opportunity to fine tune the bike to your specific needs, and can give your bike some additional character to set it apart from others. The problem I often run into with building bikes from scratch is that the price can quickly get out of hand. To help maintain a reasonable budget for a custom build, it's important to spend money on key components, and hold back on more trivial parts. Here are some examples I have put into my own builds.

Rain is a four letter word to most cyclists. Rain means misery, road grit, filthy chains, brake pads scraping like sandpaper against rims, soggy roadside flat fixing.
 

Common knowledge among the mountain-biking crowd is that there's no off-road riding in Yellowstone National Park, where the hiking paths are indeed off-limits to bicycles. Last week I made a circuit around the park with my full-suspension Jamis to determine if the rumor is true or not.

Romance is in the air. Three times this spring, at public speaking engagements, I've had an audience member ask, "What is your most romantic travel memory?"

It's hard to come up with just the right answer to many travel questions, but I never hesitate with this one. It was in Hungary.

There is so much to tell about my recent wild ride to Minnesota and Ohio that I am breaking the story into two pieces. I'll start with my travels in Minnesota where I had the opportunity to cycle, meet, present and listen to various people that will soon be involved in the U.S. Bicycle Route System.

The story of bicycling being banned in the small town of Black Hawk, Colorado, has gained some steam. It's important to note the specific impacts in terms of cyclists using our Great Parks South Route, Section 1.

His memory jogged by last month’s media coverage focusing on the 30th anniversary of the most catastrophic volcanic event in American history, an Adventure Cycling member in Minneapolis named Bob sent me a note saying this: “With the anniversary of Mount St. Helens, will there be a magazine article or Bike Bits piece about how Bikecentennial was ‘ashed in’? I remember how our trip out of Williamsburg, Virginia [on the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail], was delayed because headquarters could not send anything to us.”

It was a hot, way too hot, summer afternoon in Macedonia. We were pedaling down a dirt track when a couple of women waved us over. Their simple stone dwelling was country modest. A smokey fire burned in the wood stove, iron skillets hung from hooks, and baskets of vegetables were stacked up in the corners. Their older brother worked the bellows to keep the coals hot.
 

On a Saturday in mid-May, my wife Nancy and I were driving from our home in southeast Idaho to Seattle, by way of western Montana and northern Idaho. We had our road bikes with us; so, because the weather was stellar, at around 10 a.m. we pulled off I-90 at the Cataldo exit, intending to sample a stretch of the 72-mile-long Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes that I’ve heard so much about.

Want to send an unforgettable birthday gift that will also be a lasting travel memory? Give an audio birthday card. It's cheap and fun.

Choose someone you love (motivation) and make sure you travel with some sort of audio recording device.

Traveling by bike is a blast! But sometimes you need a break from the long days in the saddle and want to do something away from your bicycle that is both fun and free.