Video Travel Planning Tips For Your Bike Tour
Nov
Planning a trip by bike?
Watch the video above to learn about some of the basics steps you need to take when planning your travel adventures.
The following is a brief summary of some of the things I discuss in the video above:
Deciding Where You Want To Go On Your Travels
Don’t pick a destination only because the route is flat and there are cycling routes available.
Don’t pick a destination just because it’s popular with other people.
You should travel because YOU are interested in the place you plan to visit.
Other reasons you might travel to a particular place:
- To learn a language
- To study the history
- To meet with people you know
- To get an education
- To learn a skill unique to that area (martial arts, tango dancing, etc)
Don’t be afraid to change routes or go in another destination.
The Length Of Your Trip
- Decide what the main goal for your trip is. Is it to bike, sight-see, or something else?
- Getting time off of work vs. working while on your travels.
- The 4-Hour Workweek and how to negotiate days off of work.
Things To Look Into Before You Go
- Get a passport.
- Check to see if you need a visa for the countries you plan to visit.
- Vaccinations (they aren’t really mandatory – you can usually opt out of them).
- Make sure you can pay your bills online. Set up online bill pay.
- Have someone watch your house and pick up your mail. Or rent out your home and forward your mail to friends or family.
- Backup everything on your computer. Use Carbonite.com to automatically backup your files.
Finding Places To Stay
When mapping out your trip in advance, you can use these resources to find a place to stay:
- Warmshowers.org, Couchsurfers.com, Globalfreeloaders.com
- Craigslist.org
- Big Corporate websites (like hotels.com, expedia.com, etc)
- Private Rental companies that rent out hundreds of properties.
- Private home-owner websites.
When not planning your trip out in advance, you can still find places to stay by:
- Being invited into other people’s homes.
- Staying in hostels.
- Staying in hotels.
- Finding private apartments to rent.
My recommendation is that you mix your travels so that you have parts of it planned out and other parts not planned at all.
Mapping Out Your Route
- Use Vayama.com to find cheap international and one-way airline tickets.
- Road Maps ( can be purchased at AAA, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com)
- Traditional bicycle tourists ride 40-60 miles in a single day. You should do less than this if your main goal is to do more than just ride your bike.
- When planning distances, don’t forget to account for the hill, wind, and mud.
- When mapping out your route, you need to know if your main goal is to travel as far as you can in the least amount of time possible, or if you want to see as much possible in a much smaller area. You can’t do both.
Learning Foreign Languages
- Don’t let not knowing a language prevent you from going somewhere new.
- Knowing the language in a foreign country, however, makes everything easier.
- Learn the basic words and phrases – forget everything else.
- Speak to children. They know English the best.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help from people in the immediate area.
Uh, I wouldn’t make any blind recommendations like “you don’t need vaccinations”. Until you have any minimal training in this area, I suggest you stay away from making poor advice like this.
Hi Rich, I wasn’t making a “blind recommendation” about vaccinations. I know a lot about the subject actually. I was simply letting people know that vaccinations, although they are believed to be mandatory in many parts of the world, really are not!
I wasn’t trying to say that you don’t need them. In the end, it’s up to you if you want to get vaccinations or not.
I just wanted to let people know that vaccinations are NOT MANDATORY and share my experiences of living in today’s modern world without vaccinations of any kind. Most people don’t think this is possible, so I wanted to share the truth.
In the end, you have the right to opt out of vaccinations you don’t want. No one can make you put anything into your body if you don’t want it in there.
I think you might want to put some clarifications on that then. Superbugs are around, and getting sick is definitely a nasty problem. In fact, some of the medications I’ve been on for Malaria in Africa, kind of sent me up the wall.
Going around the world without vaccinations is not a very smart thing to do. A Canadian athlete died recently after getting sick. His illness lasted a week, if that. If you make the choice of not protecting yourself, then it’s just a matter of time before something invades your body that will completely own you. Someone suggesting you get inoculated is the least of your problems.
Well……… If you watched the video above you will have heard me say that I have not had vaccinations nor do I plan on ever getting them in the future.
One of the reasons myself and so many others do not get vaccinations is because there is a lot of research showing that you stand a greater chance of getting sick or even dying from the vaccines than you do from the disease the vaccine is supposed to prevent.
You even admitted that the medicine you were taking to prevent malaria was sending you “up the wall.” This is just one of the many reasons myself and so many others don’t get vaccinated or take drugs of any kind (I’ve never even had an Advil or taken a Tylenol or anything like that… and I hardly ever get sick.). Receiving the medicine is often times riskier than getting the supposed disease.
There are many other reasons to question vaccinations, but I don’t really want to get into it here. Again, my main point was just to let people know that, contrary to popular belief, they may not necessarily be REQUIRED to have vaccinations. This will vary from person to person and country to country, but much of the time there is a way to opt out of most vaccination procedures.
Hi Al,
I totally understand where you are coming from. I know that this is a controversial idea, as much of today’s modern society believes in vaccinations actually working. I totally understand that.
My point here is not to prove whether or not vaccines actually work and whether or not you should take them. This is why I don’t want to start quoting scientific studies, etc. That’s not what this is about. What I believe is what I believe… and what you believe is what you believe.
I was just hoping to share with people something that they might not already know.
Most people believe that the vaccinations that are “required” to get into certain countries are 100% mandatory. The only point I was trying to make above is that this is usually not true. If you are someone like myself who does not want to get vaccinated, and you want to travel to countries where vaccinations are supposedly required, there is usually a way to opt out of the “required vaccinations”. That is the only point I was trying to make.
If you want to inject yourself with that stuff, then that’s totally fine. But if you are like me and would rather not inject chemicals into your body, then I’m just letting people know that these immunizations are not always 100% required like they are made out to be.
I don’t want to go into all the details as to why I think vaccines are BS. That is just my personal belief. I’m not trying to push it on anyone. That is a whole other topic… a whole other website.
My only point is to let people know that even though vaccines are believed to be required, the truth is you can usually opt out of getting vaccinations if vaccinations are against your beliefs. That is all I was trying to say. I hope you can see the difference.