Why am I here?

Hi, my name is Jim Ludwig and welcome to my first blog post for this cycle touring blog. I’ve always enjoyed the “slow ride” where I am able to see the scenery, hear the sounds and feel the breeze. None of which one experiences in a car. Luckily, a bicycle fills all these sensations and a few more. I’ve also enjoyed hearing about other people’s adventures because, well, people do amazing things. So, in the spirit of giving back, I will post my travels (and non-travel things too) here in hopes of entertaining or inspiring or widening your horizons… or maybe just for my own need to have a record.

I did my first tour back in 1982 when the World’s Fair came to Knoxville, TN. I was living in Boone, NC and had just bought a Motobecane touring bike. The family was meeting at the fair and I was living very close to the Blue Ridge Parkway. So, it made sense to ride to Knoxville. I sewed my panniers myself from a kit made by a company called Frostline. I packed them up and took off only to get a flat tire and realize I didn’t have what I needed to fix it. Oh well, time to phone a friend to come get me and start again tomorrow. The next day went much better. About half way to Mt. Mitchell I met a group of riders doing the entire parkway and we rode together. They had a sag vehicle carrying their stuff, so they looked at me struggling with a loaded bike and invited me to put my stuff in the van. So I did. This meant I had to keep up with them and they had already been riding the mountains for many days. It was my first day and I probably had not trained like I should have. Suffice to say that the first day was pretty gruesome. I was happy to split a room in Asheville and collapsed in the bed. The next day was about 65 miles to Cherokee, where I met my family, put my bike in my brother’s truck and collapsed in the front seat with the knowledge that I could actually go to faraway places on my bike.

In the ensuing years I was able to do several more tours – the length of W. Virginia, followed the Savannah River in SC, Atlanta to New Orleans and most recently from home in Burnsville to Winston Salem, NC. I retired in October 2019 as a partner in an ecommerce business I founded in 2001 and now have the time and the means to do more. The first check on the bucket list is to tour the Mediterranean countries in Europe. Come along for the ride!