Stories

As Backroads leaders, my coworkers and I often get asked how we got into the sport of cycling. For me, it started with my dad. For as long as I can remember, my dad’s been a cyclist. He and his biking buddies have been going out on Saturday morning rides at 7:30 a.m. since I was a little kid, when I patiently waited for him to get home and make blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

It isn’t just cool that we’re a group of chicks on bikes, it’s phenomenal that we’re a team of women riding vintage bicycles in a historically male-dominated Tuscan race. We’re five Backroads Trip Leaders who have each led trips in Tuscany, and we’ve been planning to partake in the famed L’Eroica vintage bicycling race together for almost a year. This is my second experience racing L’Eroica in Tuscany, and this time I feel like I belong.

I'm never as fully present as I am on Backroads trips because I'm not the planner, the cook, the executor nor the "go to" person. It's pure decadence. I don't care about the weather or the terrain. I'm always delighted by the food, scenery, ambiance, and extensive research and planning that has obviously gone into making each trip seamless. And I'm never, ever in a hurry!

Backroads Trips aren't cheap. We get it. As a Backroads leader, it's not uncommon for me to hear (always from someone who hasn't traveled with us yet) "I could go there and do it myself for half the price." When I hear someone say something like that, I usually just smile and say, "Well, there are certainly a lot of ways to travel, but you'd be surprised at just how much you get from a Backroads trip." And the reason for my smile is that, having seen firsthand what our guests experience in the course of their trip, the question of "Where is the value?" is hardly a question at all. I've lost count of how many guests have expressed to me how worthwhile their experience has been. So what is it? What makes a Backroads trip so well worth the price?

My husband and I love to travel. Years ago, we were on a trip to Paris and we took a day excursion to the Loire Valley. As we traveled by bus through the countryside, I was stunned by the beauty yet dismayed to be seeing it from a bus. We are active people and I was sure there had to be a better way!

As a Trip Leader, a phrase I find myself coming back to often when speaking to guests or potential guests about traveling with Backroads is some version of, "We take care of all of the annoying aspects of travel to let you enjoy the good stuff." This philosophy applies to every trip Backroads offers, but after leading trips for two years, I can see no time that it's more valuable than when my guests are traveling with kids.

Happy 200th birthday to the bicycle! While today we rely on bikes for exercise, commuting and touring the wine country, the bicycle originated in difficult times. It all began in 1815 after a large volcano erupted in Indonesia. So much debris was ejected into the atmosphere that global temperatures cooled and crops around the world were ruined. This also meant starvation for animals, and in a pre-automobile era, left the problem of how to transport people without horses.

Ever wonder how Backroads came to be? From a garage startup in 1979 to today—here's a quick video snapshot.

In the weeks before the race, I spent a lot of time basking in the glory of telling my friends that I'd be riding a 12-speed steel-frame bicycle on gravel roads in Tuscany. I did not, however, spend a lot of time actually visualizing myself riding a 12-speed steel-frame bicycle on gravel roads in Tuscany. Ten minutes into the race, I found myself flying down a loose-gravel hill in predawn darkness with only dim candles lining the curving road, and it became apparent why this famous bicycle race is called L'Eroica, or "The Heroic" in English.

I do know a thing or two about getting kids on bikes, and doing so at the earliest possible juncture. Also into baby joggers, backpacks and the like, but that's a whole other story. It started 19 years ago with my oldest child, now a college sophomore who has recently emerged from what I would call "my parents dragging me around the world" stage into a delightful appreciation for all things travel. What a wonderful metamorphosis. Have faith ye of teen children!