Some mountain bike meccas have their “mecca” designation handed to them with ease. All of the elements are there for them: the ideal topography, a dedicated bunch of locals with a vision, and the freedom to ride in the aforementioned hills.
Jasper mountain bikers have never had it easy. The town is situated in the middle of a national park, which presents many obstacles on the road to becoming a mountain bike destination. Parks Canada, which was formed exactly 100 years ago in 1911, has never held mountain bikes in high esteem, shutting them out completely from vast areas of national park land. Jasper, however, is a living, breathing anomaly in the Parks world, with mountain bikers slowly carving out a niche for themselves in the middle of the Canadian Rockies.

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Osprey Athletes bike, canadian rockies, jasper, joe schwartz, mountain bike, mountain biking, mtb, national parks, Osprey, Osprey Bike, Osprey Packs, Raptor, singletrack, travel

Our Osprey bike team is on the road this month! The team is driving and riding their way to several events across the West.

To make the road trip a little more fun, they’ll be posting Twitpics every few days from the road. And to make it more fun for our followers on Twitter, the first person to guess their location wins a hot new Viper or Verve hydration pack! Our bike crew will pick relatively well known landmarks or locations, but the photo may be unusual, so it’s going to be a bit tricky. To win,  you must must identify the exact area where the picture was taken. Geocodes are a plus!

So keep your eyes out for pics from our bike team on Twitter!

Contest, Events contest, gear giveaway, travel, Twitter

Sometimes your bike lane takes you through the heart of the Cambodian forest and past ancient temples, like Prasat Sambor in this photo.

Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our Facebook page, shoot us an email at blog[at]ospreypacks[dot]com or upload to our Flickr group and we might just feature it here on our weekly photo feature, Lane Love.

Image: La Xtina

Lane Love Cambodia, travel

We just got word of a great new resource for the bike-travel community the Adventure Cycling Association: BicycleTravelBloggers.org.

From ACA:

It’s a simple site that will aggregate bike-travel and touring blogs into one place. This is pretty cool. It will allow you to tap into a steady stream of inspiring posts by different traveling cyclists and adventurers from around the world.
On a bike trip and blogging? Submit your bike-travel blog and, once approved, your posts will appear in the feed. To submit your blog now,visit the site and click on “Submit Your Blog” in the top menu.

Touring bicyclists — and other passionate cyclists who want a daily dose of inspiration — can subscribe to BicycleTravelBloggers.org via RSS feed, or follow the feed on Twitter @BTBloggers.

Something to fuel your bike travel wanderlust!

Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!

Image: joiseyshowaa

Ditch Your Car Adventure Cycling Association, bike blogs, bike touring, bike travel, touring, travel

Welcome to Pedaling Change! There’s a lot of good work being done in the world of bikes, from alternative transportation advocacy to international development. To highlight some of the great action that’s going on out there, once a month we’ll be profiling a non-profit in the bike world to look at just how they’re working to make positive change.

There’s nothing quite like bicycle travel. With your panniers packed full, a map stuffed into your back pocket and plenty of spare tubes, you’ve got the whole world in front of you. But inspiring people to travel by bike takes work, and that’s where the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) comes in.

Started in 1973 as Bikecentennial, over the last several decades, ACA has been working hard to ensure that more people travel by bike, and has made a name for itself as the premier bicycle travel organization in North America. In fact the organization has over 44,700 members nationwide.

Thanks to the organization’s Adventure Cycling Route Network, over 40,699 miles are routed and mapped to help cycling enthusiasts explore the world via two wheels. If you’re looking to do some cyclo-inspired adventuring, ACA is the place to start. Publishing a magazine, organizing rides, running a yellow pages for cyclists and raising money to fund more bike routes, it’s no surprise that ACA is a resource and a leader in the industry.

We caught up with Winona Bateman, Adventure Cycling Association’s Media Director to learn more about the organization and some of their current campaigns.

What are your top three reasons for getting people out on bikes?

Adventure Cycling’s mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bike for fitness, fun, and self-discovery.

There is obviously a strong travel component integrated into ACA. Why is travel by bike so special?

Traveling by bicycle is powerful and inspiring. You get to experience a place up close and at a human pace. You can also eat a lot of ice cream, if that’s something you enjoy! Last summer more than 1,000 cyclists visited our headquarters in Missoula — we’re always so amazed at the diversity of people who drop in: students, retirees, groups, solo riders, with every age and level of experience represented. Bike travel attracts all sorts of cyclists and when you’re out on the road you will surely meet a wide range of other bike tourists. Pretty fun!

Tell us about the Build It. Bike It. Be Part of It. Campaign.

The Build It. Bike It. Be a Part of It. campaign is an annual social media fundraiser for the U.S. Bicycle Route System (USBRS) that takes place during National Bike Month. We’re hoping to raise $30,000 this year. These funds will support Adventure Cycling Association’s ongoing organizing role in helping states create U.S. Bike Routes. We’re asking cyclists across America to donate $10 to support this visionary project, they can learn more and donate here.

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Pedaling Change Adventure Cycling Association, bike touring, bike travel, touring, travel

Photo courtesy of 88Bikes

Welcome to Pedaling Change! There’s a lot of good work being done in the world of bikes, to alternative transportation advocacy to international development. To highlight some of the great action that’s going on out there, once a month we’ll be profiling a non-profit in the bike world to look at just how they’re working to make positive change.

“You can go anywhere.”

Dedicated to providing bikes to young people in developing countries, 88Bikes is certainly built on the idea of empowerment. Remember the feeling you had the first time you successfully pedaled around by yourself? That sense of freedom? Imagine bringing that sense of freedom and exhilaration to communities that have been challenged by obstacels such as war, poverty, disease and conflict. You can imagine the joy that a bike can bring.

Another key component of 88Bikes is that the organization is focused on one-to-one philanthropy, empowering not only the recipient, but the donor as well. $88 covers the approximate cost of a bike in developing countries, and donors are not only asked to provide a photo of themselves to accompany their bike, but even encouraged to take part in volunteer trips to hand deliver bikes to the donation sites, making the donation process come full circle.

Founded only 4 years ago, 88Bikes has already a long list of accomplishments. They’ve delivered bikes to Peru, Cambodia, Mongolia and Uganda and they’re currently working on their 88Bikes Villages project which will reach out to children in rural locations. Over 700 bikes have been donated, and even after a quick look at some of the organization’s photos of smiling and laughing children on their new bikes, it’s easy to see why using sustainable transportation to empower youth is such a powerful thing.

We caught up with one of 88Bikes’ founders, Dan Austin, to learn a little more about the organization and the work they’re doing.

What have some of 88bikes’ biggest accomplishments over the last year been?

Getting bikes into the hands of kids who’ve been through really difficult challenges, in really rural areas, has been very fulfilling.  Kids who’ve survived slavery in rural India, Ghana, Nepal and elsewhere are now using bikes to help reconnect with some of the lost fragments of their childhood.  To see these heroic kids who’ve been through so much smile wide and take off on their new rides, that’s a good feeling.

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Non-profits, Pedaling Change 88bikes, development, international, international development, travel