How Old Are BicycleTouringPro.com Readers?
July 25, 2009 by Darren Alff
Over the past six months I’ve been conducting a survey here at Bicycle Touring Pro where I asked readers to answer a series of questions about bicycle touring, travel, their age, interests and more. Now that hundreds of readers have weighed in, I thought it would be interesting to share some of the results of this survey with you. Today’s article, however, will concentrate strictly on one question in the survey – reader age.
Based on the 150+ people who completed the survey and were kind enough to admit to their current age, it looks like that the vast majority of BicycleTouringPro.com readers are between 45 and 60 years old.
The graph below shows the age of those surveyed. Age runs along the bottom from left to right, while the number surveyed runs along the left from bottom to top.
What’s interesting to note is that there are two main groups of people coming to the site. The first (and smaller group) consists of those between the age of 15 and 32. The second (larger) group consists of those between the age of 38 and 70. Strangely enough, people between the age of 32 and 37 fall completely off the map. Not a single person surveyed over the past six months fell into this age bracket.
What do you make of these results? Are you surprised by the age of people interested in bicycle travel? In what ways do you think these two major groups are similar? And in what ways are they different? And why is it that people in their 30’s fall almost completely off the map? I have my own theories on each of these questions, but I’d like to hear what you think. Leave a comment below if you’d like to weigh in.
If you’d like to take the BicycleTouringPro.com reader survey, you can do so here.
I didn’t take the survey but I’m 35. I haven’t actually toured yet, though I think I have some ideas why – and it does relate to the age groups.
At my age, I’m in the middle of my career. I’m firmly established at my company, though still in the middle ground. I’m not self employed, so I don’t have the power to set my own schedule. I have all the trappings of this lifestyle, too: a house (with mortgage), car (with payment) and lots of “stuff”. Being divorced I also have a child support payment. It seems to me, the bulk of the people who took the survey are in age groups that have not yet reached this stage, or have long since passed it. Of course there are a few isolated folks in the middle, but not many.
The hurdle to someone in my spot is leaving work. I have lots of bills to pay and can’t take 6 months or even 6 weeks off from work and expect to be able to pay them. Plus, if I did take that long off of work it would put me in the position of having to look for new work when the tour was done. My company might have an opening for me when I got back, but it wouldn’t be my previous position and would likely be something at the bottom of the ladder making bottom of the ladder income.
I plan on doing weekend bike camping trips for now, and starting next year when I get an extra week of vacation I plan on doing one or two of the Adventure Cycling Association tours every year. Something in the 1-2 week range.
As the previous poster just indicated, you probably still have lots of readers who didn’t respond at all to your survey.
Another completely unscientific guess that I might share is that your 32 – 37 readers are too busy having babies to think about travel!
I’m 37 (36 when I filled out your survey) and though I can’t remember the specifics, I would be surprised if I hadn’t included my age as I’m not that protective of it… not sure why I didn’t show up in your results….
Nick,
For this survey I went back and only included the people who filled out the survey in the past 6 months. So maybe if you filled it out before then you were not included. I’m sure there are other people who are interested in bicycle touring and are in that 30-something age group… but I think the graph here shows that there are, at least to a certain degree, less people in that age category.
I think that tour-cycling doesn’t appeal to those with a higher pitched competative nature. I think people in their 30’s are in the peak of that competativness. Tour-cycling may be attractive to that younger group but I believe you will find that the respondents are probably not the competative type. Just a thought.
I’m 50 yrs of age and took my 22 year old daughter on her first cycle tour from Calgary Alberta over the Rockies to Vancouver, a trip which I had done previously at age 19.
She absolutely loved it and is planning to tour Europe by bike next summer! My two sons, 20 and 17, were very jealous of our trip and want to do one with me next summer. Thats how to get young people into cycle touring these days! There’s simply no better way than to have them see the beauty of our world from a bike saddle.
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