Commuting and running errands by bicycle is fun and rewarding, but the real adventure begins when you take off for a weekend, week, or month of riding. Seeing the world at 10 to 15 miles per hour from the seat of a bike can give you a whole different perspective on travel, especially when compared to the view from the interstate at seventy.
My first multiday tour was a cross country mountain bike trip from hut to hut in Colorado and Utah. The company, San Juan Hut Systems, (www.sanjuanhuts.com ) maintained a series of fully stocked huts on Forest Service and BLM land spaced 20 to 30 miles apart. All you had to do is show up with a reliable mountain bike capable of carrying enough clothes and a tooth brush for seven days. They gave you a sleeping bag liner, a map and a key to the huts and off you went. The huts varied from rustic former “line shacks” to modern Yurts. If you broke down, got tired, or were rained or snowed on, you were pretty much on your own. 
More civilized road tours, such as the many put on by Back Roads Touring Company (www.Backroads.com) feature four and five star hotels, bed and breakfasts, lodges and the like. They provide you with a bicycle, haul your gear, feed you lunch, and follow you in a van in case you break down or just need a lift.
Which tour to take depends on how much money you have to spend, how long you can take off, and more than anything else, your sense of adventure, and your desire to see and experience new things in a different way than through the windshield of a car.  If you have the desire, the fun will follow. Find a sturdy and capable bike that you feel comfortable riding. Make sure it fits you well. That means having a professional fit it to your body, not asking the salesman at Kmart which is the right one. Ride the bike and get used to it. Start riding it distances that you think you might want to ride in a day. Begin to look for rides you might try. I’ll be riding down the Coast this weekend, camping along the way. That’s about 28-40 miles a day, with camping gear. To get in shape for a ride like that, I rode thirty miles two days, back to back, and still felt like riding the third. Try a campout in your back yard, ride to Lopez Lake or Pismo Beach from San Luis and camp overnight, or ride up the coast to San Simeon and stay in the Cavalier Inn. Read about trips others have taken. Go out and Ride!
A good resource for bicycle touring of all types is Adventure Cycling  (http://www.adventurecycling.org/). Their site features maps, how-to guides, organized tours, and links to other cycle touring sites and cyclotourists blogs.
A fun touring organization is Western Spirit Cycling Adventures (http://westernspirit.com/) Most of their tours are off road, but they are fully supported – someone else hauls your gear and cooks for you. They are known for creating gourmet meals on a campfire. I ate their Dutch Oven Carrot Cake one time and still remember it ten years later!

We are fully in the sustainability age and there are terms thrown at us daily. What do all these terms mean? Who came up with them and do they affect me? These questions you may be asking yourself and getting different answers. Here is where we can sort them out together.

The most basic terms are those that refer to the whole of a situation. Eco, for instance is becoming a widely used pronoun. “Oh, buy this eco-product. It’s biodegradable!” The Greek word oikos means house. So Eco is the relationship between people and their “house” or environment where they live. It does not necessarily relate to sustainability.

Sustainable is a word that we use often when we are talking about the management of our Natural Resources. The Forest Service Council ensures that trees are harvested sustainably. Sustainable management means that the resources we use today will not interfere with their availability for future generations. The resources which can be sustainable must also be renewable. Fossil fuels are not renewable…well they are but cannot be renewed in a living lifetime. It will take millions of years to replenish the fossil fuel reserves. Sunlight and wind are renewable because the sun will always come up and will always drive the movement of air. Water, a highly controversial resource, is in fact renewable. Sustainability is one of those buzz words that is fast becoming overplayed like a song on the radio, but when we can understand what the word really means, we can appreciate the efforts made on our collective behalf that go into using our resources sustainably.

Another word that needs to be wholly understood is organic. You can walk into your supermarket and find anything that is organic. The word itself is very interesting because paired with food, the meaning changes. Originally, organic is anything derived from a living organism. Living organisms are made of carbon. The human body, a worm in the soil, a tree, these are all living organisms made of carbon. You have heard that a stand of trees or forest is a carbon sink. Forests actually pull carbon out of the air to store in its body and produces vast amounts of oxygen which is why forests are more valuable to us in tact than cut down.

When we pair the word organic with a food product the meaning changes to that which has been grown without using chemicals or pesticides. In protein products like meat, organic means that it was allowed to range in open air and fed a natural diet free of chemicals and antibiotics. The ability to use organic in marketing a product should tell you that the grower underwent vigorous testing and verification. It is a highly regulated term. The certification process to get permission to use the term on any packaging may take up to 5 years. However, if it says organic, that does not mean you don’t have to read the label.

These terms are not new. They have been talked about for millennia. In an age where we could consume without regard, these terms were forgotten. Now they are resurfacing and are becoming part of our daily conversations. So it is important that we understand their meanings. Scientists are adding more terms to our vocabulary. Try this one on for size. Eutrophication. That’s a story for another time.

Lauren Bell is a Green Consultant and the founder of GLOBellConsulting.com. She helps businesses, schools and homeowners save money and resources by transitioning to greener lifestyles.

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