Fall in Provence is a magical time. The weather is usually crisp and clear due to the mistral winds blowing hard from the northwest. The usually silver-green hills turn a vibrant reddish orange and the air smells of smoky olives as farmers burn the cuttings pruned from their crops.

Yellowstone in the winter takes on an entirely different appearance. You wander through the main attractions and it's quiet. You watch the breath of bison erupt from their snouts as they exhale in the freezing weather. The steam rises from the potholes as you listen to the gurgling of the geysers. Red foxes scamper along the roadside, their color popping against the white background. Sights reveal themselves that seem otherworldly. Each time I found myself touring the snowy roads of Yellowstone, I became lost in the beauty of the park.

The mother of two children clinging to her long, woven skirt encourages her two-year-old son to wave to you by grabbing his wrist and saying “sabaidee,” which means “hello” in Lao. When you pass by on your bike, waving back, the woman's daughter calls out, “Bye-bye!,” a phrase she probably learned at an early age to use to address passing bike tourists. If you’ve ever wanted to feel like a celebrity, try biking in Laos. Laotians in remote villages don't see many Westerners rolling through their homeland.

Expanding Backroads internationally is a tale of necessity, entrepreneurialism, and of course, adventure! My bet is that many of you will relate, as you might be growing your own companies, trying to connect with someone from a very different culture, or fondly remembering your own international adventures.

When you go on an epic trip, such as my recent Backroads adventure, there’s often a special experience that defines the trip. It’s usually not the obvious one you gravitated to in the catalog or on the website. It may even seem inconsequential at the time, but then expands in meaning until it becomes the primary signifier of the trip. If you’re very lucky, you return with something you can hold in your hand to remember the magic of the moment.

We handpick the most scenic biking routes--from the Rocky Mountains to the Tuscan countryside. Our biking trip leaders know the least trafficked cycling routes and also the most terrific stops--the trattoria where you can lunch al fresco, the olive orchard perfect for a picnic, the best spot to pick wild blueberries. A Backroads bike tour is a dream vacation. Can you already feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face?

As I pedaled along the riverside bike path on a clear and sunny day, I couldn’t let go of the feeling that something about this riding just felt different. I was leading our Rhine River Cruise biking trip last summer and the thought kept dancing in the corner of my mind, ever-present as the smile that wouldn’t leave my face. Finally, it dawned on me.

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!

Not a single complaint. Not even a sibling spat. Not while we're biking in sweltering 100-degree weather. And not while we're biking in a downpour. "I've never seen 30 people volunteer to bike in the rain, and smile about it," said my daughter, Reggie Foldes. Anyone who has traveled with kids knows it's rare--very rare--for such amiability on a family vacation. "We're usually arguing about everything, even where to eat," said Jenna Bronfman, 18. That's one reason why her parents and the other families had signed on for this Backroads trip for families with "Older Teens and 20-Somethings" in Europe. "Backroads takes all that stress away," explained Jenna's dad, Matt Bronfman, noting this is his family's fourth Backroads trip.