This is a collection of quotes about bicycle touring and travel.
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Joys Of Bike Touring
“If continuous cycling is productive of a superfluity of exhilaration, and said exhilaration bubbles over occasionally, plainly the bicycle is to blame.” –Thomas Stevens
“We developed enormous appetites, and I recall the immense relief we had oh coming up to the little Swing-Gate Inn, three miles or more out from Dover, where we ordered bread, cheese, and beer, about all the inn afforded, and which was served to us on a little balcony over the inn door, where we enjoyed the view over the fields, and were entertained by the arrival of a coach-load of passengers, many of whom got off to drink…” –Alfred D. Chandler, A Bicycle Tour in England and Wales (1879)
Why Go Bike Touring
“Every so often a bird gets up and flies some place that it’s drawn to. I don’t suppose it could tell you why, but it does it anyway.” –Ian Hibell
“Cycling makes women fresher in mind and body, and renders them far more companionable than the bloodless, limp, namby-pamby damsels who occasionally indulge in the drinking of tea and making of crochet mats.” -Brighton Gazette, 1896
Planning A Bike Tour
“We had little difficulty in approximately laying out the route; but, concerning the roads that we might expect to encounter, we were unable to obtain any information. However, as tourists, we did not hesitate to set out, and we did so with a grim determination to adhere to the route, let come what might, and take things as they came, resolving to find pleasure in every incident which might be in store for us.” –Allan Eric, Through the Adirondacks Awheel (1890s)
Equipment
“There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; In this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard,” -Jerome K. Jerome
Packing For A Bike Tour
“All of our luggage was carried in a leather case which neatly fitted the inside angles of the bicycle frames. Our personal apparel consisted merely of a change of underwear, as we depended upon the stores in towns along our route for new clothes whenever we should need them. The remainder of our luggage cases contained photograph films, medicines, repair outfits, etc. My ‘artillery’, for which there was great use as it afterward happened, consisted of two 3S-caliber and one 44-caliber revolvers.” –Mr. and Mrs. H. Darwin McIlrath (1898)
The Routines of Travel
“Boredom greases the cogs in the machinery of marvels. Oh, God, will you be bored. The three days waiting for an Indonesian bureaucrat to issue you a travel permit; the rock slide in Costa Rica that caused a twenty-three-hour traffic jam; the five-day wait for the Congo River passenger barge; the eight sweaty hours spent in the transit lounge of the Bujumbara airport, waiting for crews to clean up the wreckage of the last plane that tried to land in Kigali. Boring. Bring along a big book. This is your chance to finally finish War and Peace. And remember – while you’re plowing through Andrey’s interminable conversations with Karatayev – that boredom is often the price we pay for marvels.” –Tim Cahill, Hold the Enlightenment
On Cycling In General
“The bicycle, the bicycle, surely should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.” -Christopher Morely
“I thought of that while riding my bike.” -Albert Einstein
“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.” -Emo Philips