I’m jumping back into the Blogosphere. It’s been a busy and challenging last several months, but I’ve arrived back in the Bay Area (living in Oak Land to be precise) and have lots of new things to write about.  What I’m most excited about at the moment is something I’ve been working on for a little while. Lucas, the editor of Bunyan Velo, emailed me a while back and asked if I’d be interested in writing something for the second issue. I loved the first issue and immediately agreed.

Today is the day for the publication of the second issue of Bunyan Velo.

I wanted to write up a story about my trip with Aaron and Jorge to India for our Manali to Leh tour.  It’s in there at the back of the magazine.  This second issue is full of amazing adventures from a wide range of people, many of whom I’ve already been fortunate enough to ride with or cross paths with at American Cyclery or Rivendell.

Speaking of Rivendell, I’ve recently learned that they are starting a Pop-Up location in San Francisco starting June 1.  Here’s some info:

http://rivbike.tumblr.com/post/51245167679/rbw-sf

Quotes from Grant Petersen, Rivendell founder and owner:

What prompted Rivendell to open a pop-up in the Mission District?

We now have several tattoo’d staffers, and thought ‘Hey! they’d be perfect for a pop-up.’ John found it, talked to Dave; I’m just going along.

What can people expect to experience when they, visit the 24th Street location in early June?

Bikes, bags, hatchets that you can’t try out, clothing. Posters on the walls. We may get a lug mobile together by then. Background music (Swedish jazz). I’d like to have a fashion show, but….no access to models.

Think RBW might open something permanent in SF?

Probably not right away, but we’re looking into an Alamo store, and if that isn’t a money pit, if we can work out some bugs in it, we’d look at other locations. The tough part is staffing it. We don’t want regular people.

Good Luck Grant and crew!!

I’ve been in Utah now for three months, and it’s been an interesting experience.  I came out to work at the Backroads warehouse working on fleet bikes, but left at the end of February.  I’m now working at a really great pro-shop here in Salt Lake City called Contender Bicycles.  Somebody I met recently was a little blown away that I could go from working somewhere like Rivendell Bicycle Works, the home of Steel, Leather and Wool, to a place like Contender, where all-carbon Wunderbikes with five-digit price tags roll out the door every week. All I can say is that I’m an equal opportunity mechanic, even if all of my bikes are steel with internally geared hubs and none weighs less than 30 El Bees. 

I had a rough winter here, injuring myself in a bike crash that I can still feel, two months later. The weather has just recently become warm and dry enough to do some mountain biking, and I’ve been taking my Salsa Mariachi out on the local trails just outside my neighborhood.

I may have ventured out a bit early, but mud and snow are good ingredients for adventures, right?

The Mariachi is my only bike here, it’s been great for riding on the singletrack. I’m looking forward to finally going bike camping here, there have been some symptoms of adventure withdrawls going on!

The whole trail wasn’t like this, I did get to do some actual riding. This made me think of the Tour Divide racers who strap snow shoes to their bikes for the northern section of the race where it can still be very snowy.

This is more like it! Riding out here on the Shoreline Trail is a great way to clear the head on a beautiful day.

Besides riding and working on bikes, I’ve been going out and meeting some people in the scene here.

SLC has a new Bikepacking and touring meetup group. I came out to one of their social meetups and met some of the nice folks there.

Everybody brought something to show and tell or share, like these wood-burning and alcohol stoves,

a bunch of back issues of Adventure Cyclist, and some good Leave-No-Trace handouts. I put up a mini slideshow from some bicycle adventures and chatted about bikepacking gear.

The host, Becka R. has a great map of Utah on her wall, so much open space here!

I’m currently plotting some big life changes, and it may involve cameras. Time will tell, but I’m pretty excited about things to come.

I’m back in Utah, Salt Lake City to be precise. The last time was in June, 2012 for my initial training with Backroads.  Before I left the Bay Area, I was able catch up with some friends and family.  One of these was Jim Thill, the owner of Hiawatha Cyclery, and formerly the writer of a popular blog called Oil Is For Sissies.  I’d been following Jim online for more than 6 years, so I was excited to meet up in person while he was in town on a little sunny winter bike tour away from his native Minneapolis. Hiawatha Cyclery is one of the few Rivendell dealers and focuses on utilitarian style touring and mountain bikes.

We met up in Walnut Creek, grabbed a bite to eat and then headed out to one of the local open space trail networks.

Jim and I have quite similar taste in bikes, that is very heavy steel disc brake fat tire Rohloff touring bikes.

Here’s Jim’s full rig. It’s a Surly Disc Trucker, with a Rohloff Speedhub, Shimano Dynamo front hub, Tubus racks, and a combination of Revelate, Carradice, and Carousel Design Works bags.  He was headed out into the hills for a solo campout.

Beautiful segmented titanium handlebar with Rohloff twist shifter and Ergon grips. Oh, and lots of bags and cables and such.

A handsome and well used waxed canvas Carradice saddlebag.

All the practical accoutrements one could need on a bicycle.  Fenders, racks, big tires, lights, bags. Jim shipped his bike both ways on Amtrack, which apparently is convenient and less expensive than flying with it as long as you live near a train station. My parents had their tandem shipped out from Bilenky Cycle Works in Philadelphia this way when they purchased it.

My own rig lightly packed, just out for the afternoon.

Before Olivia left for her big New Zealand adventure, we went for a little dirt ride in the Oakland hills.

That sign doesn’t mean anything to her!

Blue Bike with Brown Trees.

Blue Jeans and Brown Boots.

For Christmas, I was chosen to take on the Santa Claus role, which I fulfilled with my best efforts.

With my Grandma Brown, and a carefully checked list of good and bad boys and girls.

Mike Foley with his new road bike.  We worked together in the Czech Republic and got together a few times while I was in town.

Snowshoeing in Utah.

I’ve run into a little setback recently.  While commuting to work on Friday, everything was all well and good until I reached the parking lot of the warehouse, hit some ice and went down hard.  I sprained my ankle pretty bad and am now off my feet for a couple of weeks. I’m not too happy about this, but things could always be worse!

Anybody have suggestions for a good winter studded tire? I’ve never tried any.

Olivia has finally gotten 99% of her gear together for the big New Zealand adventure.

She picked up a neat little tool and I wanted to watch her try it for the first time.

The Stein Mini Cassette Lockring Remover. This clever little tool takes the place of a conventional cassette removal tool setup, which normally consists of the lockring interfacing tool, a large adjustable wrench to grab the tool, and a chain whip to prevent the freehub body from spinning.  The large tools make the job easy and quick in a shop or home setting, but out on the trail this is cumbersome and unnecessary weight.

You may be wondering why anybody would even want to remove their cassette while on tour.  The purpose is to allow the replacement of broken spokes in the rear wheel.  The rear drive-side spokes are the most likely to break due to the higher tension and torque from the drivetrain. In addition to this tool and spare spokes, Olivia is also bringing a FiberFix kevlar spoke, a handy item I’ve never tried but could have benefitted from in the past on more than one occasion.

Unlike me, the first thing Olivia does is read the directions.

After removing the quick release and rear wheel, the spline interface part of the tool is put on.  The wheel is re-inserted into the dropout, and the outer arm is connected via an allen bolt and a few spacers.

Here’s what the tool looks like all put together.  You may notice that there is a presta valve nut stuck in there as an extra spacer.  Because of Olivia’s extra thick aluminum derailer hanger, the supplied spacers weren’t wide enough.

The cassette tool uses the frame as a lever to break the cassette lockring loose when the pedals are rotated forward.

Success! Olivia took advantage of the comfortable surroundings of her apartment to practice using this tool before she had to do it in the wild.  Spokes will invariably break only in when riding through ankle deep mud in the snow in the middle of a swarm of bird-sized mosquitos in the dark.

Lockring removed, off comes the cassette.

No, Olivia is not a tiny person, that is a very large beer.

The Stein Mini Cassette Lockring Removal Tool is a great option for bike touring. It certainly doesn’t replace the full sized shop tools, but when you need it on tour, it will be nice to have.  I’d buy one ($45 retail), but I don’t own any bikes with derailers right now.

Are there any other options out there that I haven’t mentioned? Leave a comment!

It’s been a fun week watching Olivia receive box after box of new gear in preparation for her bikepacking adventure in New Zealand. 

These boxes are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and came while I was house sitting/taking care of this little guy:

I’ve been helping Olivia sort out her pack list, and we recently did some gear prep on our new tents. 

She bought a TarpTent Rainbow, a 2 pound ultralight single wall tent highly regarded amongst lightweight backpackers for it’s roominess and thoughtful design.  Unfortunately it doesn’t come seam sealed, so Olivia bought the silicone and mineral spirits necessary for the task and set up her new tent in the garage.

The Rainbow isn’t a freestanding tent unless you use trekking poles as end-supports, so we got creative about staking it out.  Potting soil and bikes worked well enough.

While we were at it, I figured I would set up my new bug tent and lay a few strips of silicone on the floor to make it a bit grippier for my sleeping pad.  Once I test this I’ll report back on it’s performance.

Hmm, no car in the parking spot, just a couple of tents and about five bikes. I wonder what her neighbors think!

My wet, stinky bike shoes were stolen recently, so I had to replace them. I gave a bit of thought to the type of footwear most appropriate for the type of lighter-weight, more technical bikepacking that I’ve been doing, and came up with this:

All of the previous long distance touring I’ve done has been on Keen sandals.  While they are versatile and simple, I was looking for a more performance oriented set of footwear for mountain bike touring, along with a pair of light-as-possible off the bike shoes(not sandals).

Giro Gauge shoes are built on the same platform as my stolen ones, but these feature carbon soles for super efficient power transfer.  I was skeptical about how easy it would be to walk with the carbon soles, but there is a slight curve to the bottom of the shoes, making the foot roll forward without the heel pulling out of the back. These are performance shoes, and not something I’d want as my only pair for on and off bike usage the way I would with the Keens.

I was at Sports Basement and saw these little beauties half off and couldn’t pass them up. They are New Balance MT00 barefoot running shoes, and while I don’t intend to run in them, they make great camp/walking around shoes. The best part about them is how they pack down.

Soles out, right on the bottom of my seat bag. These weigh less than half of my Keens, about the same as Crocs, but pack down to nothing and are super-comfortable.

I’m looking forward to new adventures soon, and stay tuned for a couple of guest posts!

I’ve had the chance to get out bike camping a couple times since coming back home in November, with friends Olivia and Aaron G. Here are a few pics.

It felt great to sort through my gear again, figure out how to fit it into the bags the right way and hop on.

First stop, Mount Diablo open space. The weather cooperated and we got to see a beautiful sunset.

Olivia enjoying the photographers ‘golden hour’.

What it looked like from her angle.

In the morning we tried an improvised double boiler on the Trangia Clikstand with a bowl inside of a pot with some water in between to heat up home-made quiches. It worked pretty well!

While I was away, I had custom ordered an ultra-light mosquito shelter for my GoLite Shangri-La 5 pyramid tent from Bear Paw Wilderness Designs and it worked great! Plenty roomy, and the only thing I’ll do is lay down some silicone on the floor to make less slippery. If it’s not pitched on perfectly level ground, the Thermarest pad will slip as easily as marbles on glass.

We went out again and camped at one of my other favorite sites, Hawk Camp in the Marin Headlands. Olivia brought her 29er mountain bike and shredded the gnar.

Last known photo of these shoes, they were stolen out of Olivia’s secure garage. I feel sorry for whoever ended up with them. No, really.

Me and Aaron with large tree at the start of the journey.

Olivia has a beautiful Ron Cooper touring bike that needed some work, so I helped her swap the stem, rewrap the bars, and re-cable most of the bike.

I’m only going to be in California until the end of December, so I’m looking forward to taking advantage of this great west coast weather we’re having and get out there!

My season with Backroads has come to an end and I’m laying low in California for the time being.  Here are some photos from the last part of my adventures abroad.

Before leaving Dubrovnik, we sat down for a cappuccino outside the walled city,

and jumped into the Adriatic for a little swim. John and I are down there bottom right of the image.

Genuine Bicycle Related Content.

Light reading on the train back to Provence.

My Dad was born in Morocco, and I’ve been curious about the country for quite a while.  An opportunity presented itself to go for a couple of weeks, and I jumped on it. Fellow Backroads leader and good friend Claire P decided to come along and help cause trouble.

Although Marrakech is only a two hour flight from Marseilles, I felt butterflies in my stomach as we looked out the window on a new country and continent.

Claire gets an early lesson in hustling from our friendly local henna artist Fatima in the Jemaa el-Fnaa market in the Medina.  Claire said she didn’t want any henna, but Fatima grabbed her hand and started drawing away, saying ‘free’.  After she was done, she told us to pay anything we wanted, most people gave her the equivalent of $35 (HA!).  Claire reached for her wallet to give the woman a small amount of money, but thought she had been pick-pocketed.  I thought it was just an extremely clever ruse, since I knew her wallet was in her front pocket and would have been almost impossible to pick.  She kept looking at me and getting more upset that I didn’t look concerned.  I casually played along while trying to catch a wink from behind her glasses. Fatima didn’t want to come with us to the police, so we went along back the way we came.

I told her where her wallet was, and then realized that she really hadn’t been acting.

We retreated back to our hotel to regroup while Claire wiped off any trace of henna.

The Moroccan version of a stop sign.

I saw awesome bikes the whole time we were there.  Many had been ridden hard and were missing three or more cables, being held together with little more than rust and luck.

The old town Medina area of Marrakech holds a variety of small shops and reminded me a lot of Delhi, except perhaps a bit cleaner. 

The old town of Marrakech comes to life at night with scooters, horse drawn carts, bicycles and cars all crowding into the narrow streets and vendors hawking their wares to the crowds of people.

Back at the Jemaa el-Fnaa, we were ready to once again brave the merchants and hustlers.

Moroccan food is delicious.  Grilled meats and Tagines can be had almost everywhere.

A friendly game of street checkers.

Leaving Marrakech we rented a car (Whoa! If you do this, check out Concorde Car in Marrakech) and headed east to the town of Merzouga near the Algerian Border to ride camels for a couple days. We made the mistake of trying to make the whole drive in one day.  After one Gypsy attack and several attempts at misdirection from local townspeople, we eventually found the way to our Riad.

Claire getting up for the first time with our guide Ibrahim.

Hanging out on a dune with the sand whipping.

Ibrahim taking a nap at one of the Berber tents we stayed in.  His turban is about 30 feet long and serves as a sheet when necessary.

Claire wanted to try leading the camels, so Ibrahim hops right up on the camel and rides it side saddle, cool as you please.

Our next destination was Essaouira, a fishing town on the western coast of the country. Many european tourists come here for the beaches and quiet atmosphere.

Looks like we found the place they send abandoned Burning Man bikes.

No cables on this one, except for the lock!

Here’s one more, from our staff ride in Crete.  

Last week I was fortunate enough to be sent to Croatia as a roving mechanic for several days. Everybody at the office told me how wonderful Croatia is, but of course I was a bit skeptical. After arriving at 11pm during a rain storm, all I wanted to

do was get inside and go to sleep. The next day I went down to check out my work area.

Not a bad spot! The weather was great for the rest of my stay there. The leader house is in a tiny village just outside of the Dubrovnik airport.

There’s nothing better than having my own huge garage to work in. There were tunes crankin’ the whole time! My job was to go through all of the bikes in this region and do whatever they needed. There aren’t any bike shops in the area, which is why they send mechanics to work on them. What a tough life!

Everybody in the region is great, here’s Ingo (the guy who did my phone interview) and one of the owners of the leader house, Matto.

John is hilarious and was a great trouble maker during my time there.

The house is actually three stories, Backroads occupies the top two.

Here is a little of what they do downstairs. Homemade wine, half a dozen different brandies, dried meats just to name a few.

The house was destroyed during a war with Montenegro about 30 years ago, and was completely rebuilt. It’s been in the family for about 500 years.

When the weather is good everybody dries their laundry outside.

My visit also happened to coincide with the annual grape harvest at their vineyard. Together with the family and two co-leaders, we clipped about 700 kilograms of grapes.

The family grows a variety of grapes together in their vineyard, and they don’t fret too much over the individual strains, since it’s all for their own consumption (and for their guests!)

The day’s haul, ready to be processed. The grapes hanging up above were also cut down, but not for wine production. They get eaten!

Those clippers are all we used for the harvesting. It felt great to be done!

John demonstrates the best way to crush the grapes and separate the stems using this hand cranked contraption. The stems come out on the right, and the good stuff falls through to the bottom.

Nikkei made us some special ‘Croatian Coffee’ on a break. It’s like Turkish coffee, only slightly sweeter.

That stuff will get you going!

Here’s Erin B, surveying the ‘fruits’ of our labor. She is with Greg, a fellow long distance bicycle adventurer who is also out in the region leading trips.

That night, everybody ate (delicious local food), drank (homemade wine and brandy) and was very merry.

More to come, but what a place!

My time in the Czech Republic and Austria has come to an end.

I’m back in France, living in Provence and working as a mechanic in the Backroads bike shop until the staff ride in Crete. Stay tuned for a report from my Roving Mechanic time in Croatia. Leading trips this season with Backroads has been a great experience, one that wasn’t what I expected. Nobody tells you in training how much time you will spend sitting in vans! The amount of preparation and behind the scenes work that happens before a trip is incredible. Our guests see such a small part, and rarely see any of the inevitable mishaps along the way.

Leading trips is something I’d like to continue doing, although where and in what form remains to be seen.

I enjoyed Austria, and especially the Austrian sense of humor, somewhat dry and sarcastic.

There are real cows there too. Rolling farmland and quiet, manicured villages seem to be everywhere.

Hunting blinds, just like in Czech. You can tell this one is Austrian because they bothered to put a coat of paint on it!

There is a small bike museum in the town of Ybbs on the Danube.

‘My Wish’

A couple more ‘Where’s The Bathroom’ pics:

One more shot from Cesky Krumlov

A view from the other side of the river.

Ciclismo Cubano

Cycling in Cuba

Mandy’s Cycling Adventures

Most of my month in Cuba was spent in Viñales, a small farming town on the west side of the island. Viñales has one of the most unique landscapes I have ever seen:

red earth roads carving through lush green rolling hills, surrounded by stunning stone mountains with cave-like formations etched in their sides. Tethered and wild farm animals roam everywhere: pigs, roosters, goats, cows, oxen, horses, cats, dogs, chickens, turkeys. Quite the different scene from San Francisco!

Besides staying in hotels, the most common form of accommodation in Cuba is renting a private room/bath within a family home, which is called the “casa particular” system. Cubans have basically mastered the Airbnb concept, all without the internet, heavily depending on word of mouth. These casas particulares allow for a much more personal stay in Cuba. In Viñales I made home at the lovely “Villa Ariel El Músico,” with the Alfonso family. Check out this room! Like waking up in sunshine.

It was in Viñales that I did most of my bicycle venturing, renting a bike from one of their neighborhood kids for about $4USD per day. Nearly everyday I would take some kind of bicycle trip, mostly along the town’s main river so that I could take a dip and have some respite from the unforgiving Caribbean sun. Some of the riding I did by myself and some I did with the mother, Yadira, of the house where I stayed. Her nickname soon became “la guía,” or the guide, for her frequent companionship.

In this post I’d like to highlight a few of my favorite memories that riding a bicycle allowed me to have while in Cuba!

My first day with the bike, I rode out about 12 km to a peaceful watering hole that I had discovered via foot the day before. I had ditched the bike by the side of the road, hidden in the grass. I was reading while cooling off in the river and all of the sudden, this machete-wielding older man appeared from the bushes. Completely caught off guard, I looked up from my book and answered back to his friendly greeting. He had simply wanted to know to whom the bike belonged. Before long, he invited me up for an afternoon café after I finished reading. I asked, “Which house, caballero?” He responded as if I should have known, wasn’t it obvious? “The yellow one!” Well, of course.

After reading I crossed the road, carried my bike over the small footbridge and up the hill to the yellow house (of course).

And, while he went inside the check on the café, he offered me his reading literature, “Cien Horas con Fidel.”

I thought to myself, “I can’t even make this up! This is classic. He’s reading ‘One Hundred Hours with Fidel Castro’?” When he came back with the coffee, we ensued conversation about Fidel, naturally, among other things. The machete-wielding man, Juanito, ended up being the kindest soul and we made plans to go fishing later in the week. He sent me home with the biggest and longest avocado I had ever seen along with enough tropical fruit to make my backpack burst at the seams.

As soon as I carried my bike down the hill and hopped back on to head home, I realized that my rear tire was flat. Just a few minutes had gone by pushing the bike down the road when this woman called out to me, “¡Señorita! Did your tire blow? Ponchera aquí. Tire repair shop here.” And sure enough, one of the town’s only two tire shops was in my vicinity. “Qué suerte. What luck,” I thought.

At first the retired-pig-inspector-gone-bike-repairman struggled to remove my rear wheel. I thought to myself, “is this guy for real?” But, with the help of his son who happened to show up, he managed to free the wheel and take a look. Turns out that the tube was punctured adjacent to the air valve. After seeing the tube, it looked as if it had already been patched multiple times. He said he would give it a shot. The equipment he had was phenomenal!

He zapped on the electricity to heat up an old iron and properly adhere the new patch to the tube. After it had cooled down, he put the tube in a small concrete pond to assess for air bubbles. I thought I saw a few little bubbles sprouting up from the tube, but he ensured me it had sealed properly.

Then he filled up the tube and reassembled the bicycle. And, alas!, the tube deflated. He diagnosed it as being in need of a new valve, possibly a new tube. His wife came out and sent me home with two more homegrown avocados! And with that, it was back to town via foot. Twelve kilometers later, I dropped off the bike at the neighborhood kid’s house and he upgraded me to a Ferrari edition bike for my remaining adventures ahead. Quite the stylin’ set of wheels.

As planned later in the week, I bicycled down early in the morning to meet up with Juanito for our fishing trip. We trekked through some dense jungle to finally arrive at his fishing spot, “La Culebra,” The Snake. After baiting the hooks with worms and casting the two poles and four nets, we sat down and waited. He had come well prepared with plenty of tropical fruits and sweetened coffee to keep us entertained as the morning drifted by.

Little did Juanito know, but he was fishing with a Murphy, and according to Murphy’s Law, Murphys cannot fish. But sure enough, as the hours ticked by, something finally bit!

“Una guavina! Qué rico!” As the formidable clouds rolled in and we started to hear thunder, we headed back to his yellow house (of course) and fried up that fish for lunch. Mighty tasty. The only sizeable crawdad that we had netted, I left behind, hooked up and hanging by the river. Oops. Poor crawdad. But we sure enjoyed that fish!

Another day I accompanied la guía to her work. She works with the Department of Health, collecting larvae from mosquito traps to assess if any dengue or malaria positive species are found. This day she had to go to two popular outdoor attractions, El Mural Prehistórico and El Campismo. As we collected our bikes to return home, one of the guards offered to take us on a hike through some rural farmlands and up the mountains to take a dip in a small cave lake. Lake in a cave? Of course, I was game. So I convinced la guía to come with me.

A few days earlier, I had asked la guía how to say the name of a certain turkey-like bird in Spanish, “el guanajo.” She had it stuck in her mind that I had desperately wanted to eat guanajo and had made it her mission to find me one. As we crossed the rural farmlands, she asked every farmer we saw if they had a guanajo for sale.

Finally, after tracking down a willing farmer, la guía had found her lucky guanajo.

She secured the guanajo to the bike and we were off.

Yadira, la guía, always greeted everyone everywhere we pedaled. And she loved to give the passerby a tidbit of news as to what her and I had ventured into that day. This day, she indulged everyone with the news of the guanajo and our hike to Los Aquaticos. We made it home sometime between 5 and 6 in the evening. I thought there would be no way we’d actually be eating the bird that very night.

By 8pm, that guanajo was on the dinner table…what a woman! I was so impressed. She was delighted by my easy amusement of, for her, an average day feat.

Those are among my fondest memories of where pushing the pedals lead me to in Cuba. To wrap up, I will share a few more general observations of my perception on bicycle safety in Cuba, perhaps to inform you for your future explorations there.

Almost anywhere in Cuba, expect to share a two-way road with a variety of vehicles: oxen or horse-driven carts, bicycles (with cyclobatic drivers much more talented than me—see Part Uno, motorcycles, classic old Cuban cars putzing along, large cattle cars transporting workers.

To my pleasant surprise, every single vehicle always gave cyclists a very wide shoulder, often crossing well into the other lane.

For the most part the road conditions were very good, consisting of either asphalt pavement or firm earth. There was only occasional flooding due to the inevitable Caribbean downpour on most afternoons.

One big mark against bicycle safety in Cuba was the almost non-existent use of helmets. I did not personally hear of any bicycle accidents, only motorcycle and car accidents. Despite me not hearing about any bicycle related accidents that does not, however, negate the importance of helmet use!

For your own Cuban cycling adventure, I’d recommend bringing along a helmet. And if you are particular about the way a bike fits you or functions, I’d also suggest to BYOB (bring your own bike).

After Part Uno and Dos on Ciclismo Cubano, I hope you’ve had a taste of what it is like to push those pedals in Cuba. And maybe you’re inspired to take a bicycling adventure there yourself!

Happy pedaling. ¡Quizás, algún día, en Cuba! Maybe, someday, in Cuba!