There is an certain amount of risk any time you decide to venture from the safety of your own home. By participating in a bicycle tour (whether it be a short bike ride near your house or a trip that takes you to a foreign land on the other side of the world), you are going to expose yourself to several potential dangers.

Some of these dangers include:

• Vehicle traffic and the chance that you might be involved in an accident.
• People who wish to do you harm (robbers, perverts, etc).
• Wild animals.
• Pesky insects.
• Exposure to the elements (rain, snow, heat, etc).

These dangers, however, are usually easy to avoid with proper education, planning and preparation.

In fact, these external dangers are minimal in comparison to the mental challenges that you, as a long-distance cyclist, will need to overcome in order to complete your two-wheeled adventure.

While car traffic, wild animals, and axe-murders are the things we, as human beings, tend to fear the most, the true dangers of bicycle touring are the mental blocks that we carry around with us all the time.

These mental blocks include, for example:

• Not being able to mentally handle the demands of riding a bicycle for days on end.
• The fear of the unknown.
• The fear of being alone.
• The fear of other people.
• Not knowing how to manage your time.
• Not knowing how to manage your money.

The question, therefore, shouldn’t be, “Is bicycle touring dangerous?” But instead, “Is bicycle touring any more dangerous than taking a short spin by bike around your home city?”

In most cases, the answer to that question is “no.”

Bicycle touring (whether it be in your home country or in a nation on the other side of the world) is a relatively safe means of travel. And like so may other things in life, your safety when traveling by bike is going to depend upon:

• Where exactly you choose to go.
• The time of year in which you plan to travel.
• Your ability to interact with other people.
• Whether you decide to travel alone or with others.
• Your capabilities as a cyclist.
• Your navigational skills (or lack thereof).
• How well you spend your time and money.
• Your mental ability to solve problems and overcome challenges.
• And, of course, simple common sense.

Outside of the inherent pain that comes with riding a bicycle over long distances, your safety as a bicycle traveler is largely up to you. And for those few potential dangers that exist outside yourself (like traffic, scary people, wild animals, and bad weather), there are things you can do, steps you can take, and lessons you can learn, that will enable you to tackle any of these obstacles should you encounter them on your travels.

Photo by Paul Krueger

Dennis Koomen and his partner, Marijcke, spent fourteen days traveling around Southern Iceland on their bicycles. The video above offers a fantastic glimpse at what cycle touring in Iceland is all about.

This video is of special interest to me at this point in time because I am currently planning my own bicycle touring adventure in Iceland, and watching videos like this one enables me to see what the roads, weather, terrain and lodging options might be like once I arrive in Iceland later this year.

To learn more about Dennis and Marijcke’s Iceland cycling trip, head on over to their website at: www.toko-op-fietsvakantie.nl

Have you ever cycled in Iceland? If so, what was it like? What route did you take? And do you have any tips or pieces of advice for people like myself who are planing trips to the island in the near future? Leave a comment below and let me know what you have to say.

Danish bicycle traveler, Dennis Koomen, created a beautiful twenty-three minute video about his cycle touring exploits in the American Southwest. In the video, Dennis and his female companion travel from Las Vegas, Nevada and make a circle around the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley and a number of other famous Nevada, Arizona and Utah desert landmarks. Watch the full video above and enjoy!

It’s official! I’ve completed step number one of the planning process for my upcoming trip to Europe. I’ve booked my airline tickets and my plans for yet another bicycle touring adventure have suddenly become a reality.

Since I am currently planning an 8+month bicycle touring expedition through Europe later this year, I thought it would be good to share with you not only my adventures from the road, but everything that goes into planning and preparing for a long trip such as this.

My goal in sharing this information, of course, is to help you plan and prepare for your own cycle touring expeditions. While you may not have the desire to go to the same locations that I plan to visit on my upcoming tour, you can take a similar approach when planning and preparing for your own cycle touring adventures – wherever they may be.

Today I thought I would share with you the steps I’ve taken up until this point in time in order to take my idea for a third European bicycle tour and turn it into a reality.

Sound good? Great! Then here we go…

The first step I took when planning this trip to Europe was figuring out which areas I wanted to visit. I decided early on that I wanted to return to Switzerland, so I booked a tour with European tour company, Bike Switzerland, and by doing so, committed to being in the Swiss Alps by the 10th of July, 2012.

Having the dates for the Bike Switzerland tour set in stone enabled me to work backwards and figure out what I would be doing in the months prior to arriving in Geneva for the start of the tour.

Working backwards, I decided that I would not leave my home in Park City, Utah USA until the beginning of May, as I am currently a season pass holder at the Deer Valley ski resort and want to remain in the area until the end of the ski season.

This meant that I now had a potential start date for my international travels (the first of May – the end of my ski season) and a future date (the 10th of July) in which I would need to be in Geneva, Switzerland for the start of the guided bike tour with Bike Switzerland. Between these two dates I realized I had just over two months of free time in which I would need to figure out where I would like to go and what I would like to do.

I decided right away that I wanted to go to Iceland. It is a place that I’ve been wanting to visit for quite some time, so I knew right off the bat that this was going to be one of my first destinations.The fact that Iceland is on the way to Europe also made it easy for me to decide that Iceland would be the starting location for my European travels.

From Iceland, I still needed to get to Switzerland, but I didn’t want to fly straight from Iceland to Geneva. There is a lot of stuff in between the two locations that I have never seen before, and since had the time, I wanted to schedule a few weeks to travel to these areas. Therfore, I decided that after leaving Iceland, I would travel to London, England and then to Amsterdam.

At the beginning of July is the start of the Tour de France and since I would be in the area around the first of July, I figured it would be pretty awesome to follow the Tour for a few days and check out the most famous bike race in the world for myself.

To make a long story short, I created a schedule for my travels that looks a little something like this:

• May 3 – May 28, 2012:   Iceland
  

• May 29 – June 10, 2012:  London, England

• June 11 – June 21, 2012:  Amsterdam, Netherlands
  

• June 30 – July 9, 2012:  Tour de France
  

• July 10 – July 20, 2012:  Bike Switzerland Bike Tour
  

With approximately three months of travel plans laid out, I decided it was time to book my ticket and make this thing a reality.

I did a quick search of the web for cheap airline tickets, but resorted to one of my favorite international airfare websites, Vayama.com, for my inexpensive one-way ticket to Reykjavik, Iceland and the connecting one-way ticket 25 days later to London, England. It was of little surprise that the cheapest tickets to Iceland were with the nation’s IcelandAir.

Before buying my tickets with the company, however, I checked the IcelandAir website to see what their policy and prices were for flying with a bicycle, as I will most likely be bringing my own bicycle with me to Europe.

A quick search of the website revealed that bicycles could be transported with IcelandAir and that they would be treated as one of my two checked bags for a small additional fee of $40 USD per direction. Taking my own advice, I printed out the airline’s policy in regards to bicycles and then purchased my two one-way tickets.

At the moment, I have no idea where I am going to go in Iceland or what exactly I am going to do there. All I know is that I have scheduled myself approximately 25 days on the island and I’ll figure out the details a bit later.

In fact, the only things I know at this point are that I am going to be in Iceland for 25 days and after that I will fly into London. Again, I don’t know exactly what I will do in London or how long I will stay there. All I know at this point in time is that by the 10th of July I need to be in Geneva, Switzerland for the start of my guided bike tour with Bike Switzerland.

This is usually how all of my long-distance bicycle tours begin. I pick a few destinations that I really want to see and experience, and as the trip goes closer, I fill in all the gaps.

The hardest part (deciding to go on a bicycle tour at all), however, has been taken care of. This European bicycle tour is happening! I’ve booked my tickets; I know when I’m leaving; and I now have a few dates to work from as I start to slowly fill in the gaps.

Photo by Mark Winterbourne Photography

“Bicycle touring” (also referred to as “cycle touring, bike touring, bike travel, bicycle travel, and bike-packing”) is the act of riding a bicycle for days, weeks, months, or even years on end as you travel across entire cities, states, and countries under your own power (without the assistance of a motor).

While bicycle touring is typically an overnight endeavor, a bicycle tour can be a long single-day bike ride; a multi-day event where your gear, food and clothing is carried for you in a vehicle that meets you at various checkpoints along your route; or a solo or group adventure where all necessary clothing, equipment, food and tools are carried on your bicycle.

Click here to learn about the various types of bicycle tours.

If you are interested in learning how to conduct your own bicycle touring adventures, there isn’t a better website in the world than the one at www.bicycletouringpro.com. Be sure to check out the resources page for further assistance in planning, preparing for, and executing your own bicycle touring expeditions.