Guides
Bike Touring and Travel Guides
Bike touring, bikepacking, gran fondos and taking your bike by car, train or plane.
Leaving home with your bike takes things to another level: a 90-mile (150 km) gran fondo, a week of touring with panniers or a flight to ride a legendary climb. Fitness is rarely what fails; logistics is. A badly packed bag throws the bike off balance, gearing meant for flat roads leaves you out of gears on the first steep pitch, and a poorly padded bike box can end with a bent derailleur hanger.
These guides cover the practical side, with numbers: how much weight to carry and where, what gearing you need with a load, how much to eat and drink per hour on a long ride, how to pack your bike for a flight and what each kind of transport requires.
If you're heading for a big climb, first work out how long it will take you with the climb time calculator and check its profile in the Climbs section. With panniers, review your gear ratios: the extra load hurts most on the steep pitches, and gearing that feels easy unloaded can come up short with an extra 33 lb (15 kg).
Guides on this topic
Bikepacking: How to Load Your Bike, How Much Weight to Carry and What to Pack
Bikepacking means traveling with bags strapped directly to the bike, no racks: a seat pack (11-16.5 L), a handlebar bag (9-15 L) and a frame bag (4-6 L). That's 30-40 liters and, across the three big bags, about 24 lb (11 kg) max: just enough to sleep out with a light kit.
Bike Touring With Panniers: Racks, Weight Distribution, Gearing and Daily Mileage
To tour with panniers you need a rear rack (good ones carry 55-90 lb, or 25-40 kg), two panniers of about 20 L and, if you carry more than 33 lb (15 kg), two more up front on a low-rider rack. With 44 lb (20 kg) of gear, a 43-mile day with 3,280 ft of climbing is about 4.5-5 hours of riding.
How to fly with a bike: airline fees, limits and packing
On the big US airlines a properly packed bike flies as a regular checked bag: you pay the standard bag fee, Alaska and Southwest waive the oversize fee, and overweight fees kick in above 50 lb (70 lb on Alaska). Remove the pedals, turn the bars, deflate the tires, and leave the e-bike battery at home: anything over 160 Wh can't go in passenger baggage.
Taking your bike on the train: Amtrak, Caltrain, Metra, Metro-North and the MBTA
On Amtrak, a full-size bike rolls on to a rack in Coach on select trains if you reserve a bike spot (the fee varies by route), or travels boxed as checked baggage for $10. Folding bikes ride free in place of a bag. On commuter rail, Caltrain and Metra take bikes free on every train, while Metro-North and the MBTA block bikes at rush hour.
Car bike racks: hitch, roof or trunk, and the plate and light laws
A hitch rack is the easiest to load and the only kind rated for heavy e-bikes (up to 60-80 lb per bike on Thule's e-bike models); a roof rack keeps the trunk free but costs more fuel and tops out around 40-44 lb per bike; a trunk rack is the cheapest but often hides the plate. In most states the plate must stay visible: if the bikes block it, you risk a ticket.
The best US gran fondos, gravel races and bucket-list rides: distance, climbing and how to enter
The big US mass rides are Unbound Gravel (Kansas, late May or June, 200 miles by lottery), the Leadville Trail 100 MTB (Colorado, August, about 100 miles above 9,000 ft, by lottery), the Triple Bypass (Colorado, July, 121 miles and three passes), the Mt. Washington hillclimb (New Hampshire, August, 7.6 miles at 12%) and RAGBRAI (Iowa, July, a week across the state). Most sell out months ahead.
Save your bike once, use it everywhere
In My Bike you enter your measurements, wheels and drivetrain. From there we give you your tire pressure, saddle height, gearing and chain length, plus a shop sheet you can print.