Let me start out by letting you in on a secret: New England in the fall is incredible. Okay, not much of a secret.

We are lying down on the cool tile floor of the kitchen. The smell of fresh tortillas mingles with perfume. A conversation on the side of the road while cycling down the Baja Peninsula led to an invitation to Adriano’s place in La Paz.

I recently received a copy of the book, "Fifty Places To Bike Before You Die" by Chris Santella and the timing could not have been more perfect.

In some respects, recumbents are superb touring bikes. They’re supremely comfortable and allow you to stay on the road all day. The view from the seat also helps you catch sites that you may miss with your head hung over a set of drop bars. However, some of them do require some unique solutions when it comes to gear and equipment. Here are a few things to get you pointed in the right direction.

I just got back from the Adventure Travel World Summit in Lucerne, Switzerland, and as usual, was blown away by the growth in this sector of the tourism market.

This week's story comes from Heather Andrews, who spent what she calls "an amazing summer" interning for Adventure Cycling Association's publications department in 2011. Heather made a solo ride to Oregon's Champoeg State Park, and had a blast doing it.

You have spoken and we have listened. We've just announced our full 2013 tours slate and we are very excited about our offerings in 2013.

I have thousands and thousands of images from my bicycle travels throughout the world -- boxes and binders filled with color slides and folders of digital images of street scenes, flowers, sunsets, roads, and landscapes. Each photo represents a moment in time and travel that I deemed worthy of capturing. Yet, if you randomly selected an image and asked for my reaction, it just might be, “I took that?”

Bicycle travel is growing in the U.S. While it's still considered a cycling niche, bicycle touring is slowly edging its way into view of the mainstream with growing participation, growing support and infrastructure for the activity, and a growing economic impact.

The plan was to drive 4 hours north, take a right up Graves Creek, then hopefully make it to the Clarence Creek Trailhead before the storm hit. From there we'd skin up to Stahl Peak Lookout in the dark, and the next day head to Mount Wam Lookout. Then, back to the 4WD Durango which would be able to make it downhill, 15 inches or not.

On Monday, I wrote about my experience riding a segment of the Rhine River Bicycle Route (in Germany), and while I did it for the sheer enjoyment, I also did it to see first-hand the parallels between European routes and those being developed as part of the U.S. Bicycle Route System (USBRS).

With winter knocking on my bike, I decided to asked some local experts about winterizing bike tips, and I also mixed in some random thoughts:

Jim Sayer from Adventure Cycling (in the middle) with Richard Weston, a co-author of a new report on the economic impact of bike tourism in Europe, and Camille Thome, secretary-general of the Departements et Regions Cyclables, a leading French advocacy group, in Nantes, France.

Making videos of your bicycle holidays is a great way to relive your adventures and share your passion with others, as I found out about four years ago when I made my first slideshows of my bicycle holidays. Soon after, I started filming instead of taking pictures. My cycling passion extended to a passion for filming. Three years ago, I founded World Cycle Videos a bicycle-touring video group on Vimeo, a video-sharing platform. I regularly get questions from group members: How do I make a good video? What camera and editing program do I need?