This past Monday (March 1, 2010) I was the featured guest on “The Bicycle Nut” radio show with Jerry Goodwin. For a little over an hour I talked about long-distance bicycle touring, world travel, and my plans for the future of BicycleTouringPro.com.

To listen to the interview, click here and scroll down to the player on the subsequent page.

Photo by C.P. Storm

I painted this picture a couple years ago of a farm I saw in Kansas during my 2002 bike ride on the TranAm bicycle route. For this particular piece, I painted the entire canvas various shades of green and then I painted the black on top of it.

According to WeFollow.com, a directly of the highest ranked Twitter users in keyword specific categories, I am both the most influential and most followed “bicycle touring” Twitter user.

The most influential ranking comes from a combination of how many followers you have, how many Tweets (or Updates) you have made, and how many of your followers Re-Tweet your content or respond to your posts.

At the moment, I have blown away the competition in regards to the number of overal Updates I have made – an astonishing 2,806. The closest competition comes from the Adventure Cycling Association (which has a staff of 30 and a membership of approximately 40,000) . Currently, they’ve made just 608 Updates. That said, the ACA is close on my heels in regards to how many followers they have… and I need to keep working to ensure they do not overtake me.

Obviously, my goal both now and in the future is to continue growing my presence on Twitter and to remain the most influential and most-followed “bicycle touring” Twitter user.

If you are not yet following me, you can do so by visiting: http://twitter.com/bicycletouring

Every once and a while I will get an email from someone thanking me for the work I have done with Bicycle Touring Pro. In fact, I have an entire page on my site dedicated to the testimonials I have received from my readers. And yet, none of this compares to the single article that some anonymous individual wrote and published about me yesterday.

Click here to view the article.

While the content of the article does contain some factual errors, the overall impression is that I have influenced this person quite significantly… and it is this fact that I am most proud of.

On occasion, I get the feeling that no one totally understands the importance of what it is that I am doing. But when I read a post like this, I realize some people do see the significance of the work I am doing.

In the end, it this kind of content that makes me want to continue my work with Bicycle Touring Pro and make it even better in the future.

In the event that this article is somehow deleted from the blog to which it was origionally posted, I have copied it in its entirely (excluding the photos and embedded videos) below:

We are all influenced by others whether we come to realize it or not.  We all acquire multiple villains and heroes through our lives.  Today I want to talk about one of my heroes.  While I was waiting to publish this article later, my impatience got the better of me.  The man whose story I am about to tell is the main inspiration for my life’s path as well as countless others’ waiting to surface.

Darren Alff is an entrepreneur and traveler.  Like me, he has chosen the bicycle as his way of seeing the world.  In high school, Darren was an avid athlete, running daily as well as playing soccer for the school.  During this time, a movie was released that would lead him to the idea of traveling around the world someday, as well as myself.  The movie was Tom Hank’s best role yet in the hit motion picture, Forrest Gump.  In fact, after its release, Darren was often referred to as ‘Forrest’ or ‘Gump’ due to his infatuation with running.  Now Darren persists that he was never addicted to athleticism, just that running served a purpose for him.

It seems that after finishing grade school, both Darren and I showed reluctance to enter college.  So, at age seventeen, he decided to act out his movie fantasy.  Knowing he couldn’t really run across the United States, Darren decided that he would run from his home in Oregon down to Mexico along the Pacific Coast.  However, his plan didn’t work out as he hoped; deciding that he should make a practice trip, Darren ran a marathon worth for three consecutive days to see what the experience would be like.  After only three days, he couldn’t even walk.

With running out of the picture, Darren received help from an uncle in Ireland who had recently completed a bicycle tour.  He suggested that his nephew do the same since it was less demanding of the body.  Darren took his uncle’s advice.  Again mapping out a route down the California coast, the seventeen year old took his father’s twenty-year-old Schwinn mountain bike out of the garage, strapped the used panniers his uncle lent him, and headed south on his 1,000 mile journey with only $500 in the bank.

As he expected, his savings didn’t last long.  By the trip’s three month mark, he had already spent $300 of his budget.  If you equate that out, this means Darren lived on only $3 a day.  Yet, it was enough for him to complete the trip.  Darren would later complete his next four bike tours within the U.S. living on the same budget.

Since his first tour Darren has completed one trip the past ten years.  During that time he has gone to college and recently made the transition to internet marketing running a consulting website named Silver Mountain Marketing.  On the side he runs two recreational websites, 21bikes.com and bicycletouringpro.com.  The first is a collection of user-submitted pictures involving both bikes and their owners where visitors rank their appearance in one of the twenty-one categories.

The second is a Darren’s attempt in sharing all he knows about bicycle touring.  Launched in 2007, bicycletouringpro.com is a blog oriented website describing how to get started in bicycle touring, how he manages to finance his trips, as well as many other articles containing all the little tips to make your trip one to remember.

Darren has been reported saying that created bicycletouringpro.com to target a younger demographic.  He feels that bike touring is an activity very few people know about, even less among adolescents.  As many twenty-year-olds are going through the transition from childhood to adulthood, these journeys can be a method in which to have fun and reorganize your priorities in life.

Although we haven’t met in person yet, Darren’s life is a great model for my own.  To close this article, I would like to point out two things that Darren has said about touring.  First, for you travelers out there, remember that the “moments don’t happen on the bike”.  And second, when asked what his favorite destinations were Darren wisely said, “My favorite places are those little, random spots that I couldn’t explain how to get back to.  They’re those places when you’re in the moment and it makes you stop and think, ‘Wow…this is really cool.’”

While cleaning out my basement today, I found a wooden cutout that I created several years ago of the artist Miranda July.

Miranda July is my favorite artist of all time, largely because she can not be nailed down to one specific medium. She has produced CDs, books, movies, collaborative online art projects and successful one-man shows. On top of being one of the most intelligent artists I know, she is one incredible marketer!

I first discovered Miranda after randomly picking up a copy of her Sundance award-winning film, “Me And You And Everyone We Know.” The movie was unlike anything I had ever seen previously and it instantly became one of my favorite films of all time! In fact, it still is in my top three.

Miranda’s website at www.learningtoloveyoumore.com inspired me even more. In fact, it was this website that gave me the idea for making this wooden cutout in the first place. I hand cut the wooden outline of Miranda’s body with an X-acto knife and then hand painted the image onto the block of wood. The dark black lines that separate the colors between her shirt, arm and neck are done in ballpoint pen.

After spending 9 months in Europe and seeing thousands of people zip around in all sizes of motorcycles and mopeds, I finally decided to get a two-wheeled motorized vehicle for myself.

In October of 2009 I purchased a Kawasaki KLR 650 Dual Sport Motorcycle (shown above) and had it delivered to me from the neighboring state of Colorado. In November I took and passed the State of Utah’s Motorcycle Training Course. And just a few days ago I received my new drivers license with a class “M” motorcycle endorsement – meaning that I can now legally drive a motorcycle!

Unfortunately, the motorcycle is in storage at the moment, as it is currently below freezing outside with about three feet of snow on the ground. But as soon as spring rolls around I’ll be out there on the streets, exploring the great state of Utah and it’s neighboring areas.

On October 27th, 2007 I sat down at my computer and wrote what would become the first article in a series of hundreds (and potentially thousands) of articles, videos, and interviews on the topics of bicycle touring, world travel, and lifestyle design.

That night, I started a website called www.BicycleTouringPro.com, which has since turned into my largest and most successful Internet project to date. Now, exactly two years later, there are more than 320 unique articles, videos, and interviews on the site – each of which is read by more than 15,000 people each month from locations around the world.

This past year my travels by bike took me to Europe, where I spent nine months slowly making my way through 16 amazing countries. While in Europe, I was able to continue working and published an astounding 180 additional articles for BicycleTouringPro.com.

As of today, Bicycle Touring Pro has approximately:

- 15,500 Monthly Readers
- 2,073 Email Subscribers
- 1,109 Twitter Followers
- 299 Facebook Fans

While I’m happy with the progress being made at BicycleTouringPro.com, I still have a lot I want to do. I have some big plans for the site in 2010 and I hope that by this time next year my statistics have more than doubled.

It’s official. I’ve completed my 9th and longest bicycle tour to date.

On December 30th, 2008 I flew into Zurich, Switzerland and began what I can only describe as one of the most life-altering events of my entire life. For the next 254 days I traveled about Europe with my bicycle in tow and passed through 16 different countries. I met people along the way, took in the sights, learned a few languages (the basics at least) and had an absolute blast.

I documented much of the trip at BicycleTouringPro.com and uploaded photos from the entire journey to Flickr.com.

Now that the trip is over and I am back home in the United States I am only more confident that there will indeed be a 10th long distance bike tour in my future.

If you’ve been following along as I slowly made my way through Switzerland, Germany, France, Liechtenstein, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, I thank you.

Thank you for being a part of my adventure and supporting me along the way!

Last week I had the great pleasure of being a guest on the weekly radio show at BicycleRadio.com. On the show we discussed my recent 9-month tour of Europe, my decision to travel with a Bike Friday folding bicycle, stealth camping, travel safety, the way other people view bicycle travelers, the steps needed to escape your normal life and travel abroad for extended periods of time, and my favorite things about bicycle travel.

To listen to the interview for yourself, just head over to BicycleTouringPro.com or check out the podcast from September 21, 2009 at BicycleRadio.com.

I’ve just recently launched my latest online venture, a new website called 21Bikes.com.

The idea behind the site is extremely simple. People from around the world can upload a photo of themselves and their bicycle(s). If it’s a good picture, I’ll post it to the site within one of the 21 bike-specific categories. Then, once the picture goes live, it gets voted on and shared by users from around the world.

Those who participate in the site can submit a photo no matter what type of bike they ride, how old they are, where they live in the world, or what they look like. The only requirement is that the photo they submit include both THEM and THEIR BICYCLE. The better the picture, the better their chances of it being posted to the site.

The site is still very new and because it depends on a constant stream of user-submitted photos, I assume it will take some time to really get moving. I’ll keep you posted on the site’s progress as time goes by. But for now, I’m excited to see what happens.