Velo Spirits

I am not sure how bike touring got into my head, but it led to love! Travel has always been an interest of mine–and raising a family on a limited budget did not leave much of an option for travel.  Travel was one interest that my former spouse did not really share so I put it out of my mind. So when I started out on my own at age 52, I started cycling as a way to meet people and enjoy myself.  I somehow got a subscription to Adventure Cyclist, a bike touring magazine and it made me dream. When I met Vic on an organized bike ride in January 2014 in rural Maryland,  his bright smile and youthful energy made me wonder if I had met the right partner!  He also told me about his startup business building custom bikes and his enthusiasm was very attractive to me. I remember asking him right away, “Can you build me a touring bike?” He admitted he had never built a touring bike, but asked me for more details. Our emails to each other got more frequent, but also revealed our bike geekiness!  I learned a lot about different kinds of bikes and it was thrilling. Our first real date occurred in late spring and was a crazy adventure I thought. Vic asked if I could do a night ride to a cafe, with headlights, through the woods, on a work night,  “where the quiet of the woods and night light was particularly beautiful.”  It was a cold night but the adventure of it was thrilling and I came home with a buzzing feeling in my heart. You know when you’ve been bit by the love bug.  Then, there were more excuses to go on more bike rides together.  As we started to enjoy each other’s company more, we started going on biking weekend overnights to small towns in Maryland we had never been to, and we realized that traveling was one thing that invigorated us in addition to biking. One of our first conversations was about what’s really important , and we both were happy to find out we both really wanted to live life being “truly alive!”  We had raised our kids, life was moving on, we were still healthy. We needed to appreciate our life and live it fully. We vowed to take a weekend overnight every 6 weeks to fuel our love of adventure,  and many of them involved biking in new locales on our road bikes. We had not yet talked about touring bikes…..but that was coming.