This is exactly what it sounds like. One night of bike camping. Leave in the afternoon, make it back home by late morning the next day. I try and do a few of these a year, leaving straight from my front door.

My first trip, with my then girlfriend (now wife) ended up twice as long. Our original intended campsite was closed, so we biked on for another 25 miles.

I brought my brother along on one trip. We carried a pack of hot dogs, and the necessary roasting skewers. They kept extending on the bike, so every few miles, I'd have to push them back in. The site we stayed at is primarily car camping, with a hiker/biker extension, so they also had nice showers and firewood for sale.

These also make good trips for just, testing out a setup or gear. I've used them to try out alcohol stoves. And new gear. And sometimes you realize in the morning that you can't get your stove alcohol bottle open in the morning to make breakfast and have to ask someone else to heat you up some water.

As much as the s24o should be where you try new methods out, sometimes, it happens on a 3 day trip instead.

I had 3 days off, and some new and old places to try and visit. I was in the mood to try packing lighter than normal, and exploring some gravel roads, so, I intentionally left the tent at home.

The first night was a new campsite to me, located in small town park. It wasn't the first time I've stayed in a city park like that, so I knew it wasn't going to be secluded, but I just didn't expect how public it actually was.

The "night" started with me crawling into my sleeping bag around sundown. Soon after though, attempts to settle to sleep were interrupted by flashing red and blue lights. I never found out what they were doing, but I think it involved someone trying to live in the camp shower.

Morning was better. Maybe. There was a barn in the campsite used by a local rowing club, and, bright and early, they started showing up and pulling boats out. And when I finally decided to change into real clothes, a homeless lady came up to me while I was trying to put my shirt on inside my sleeping bag. I know she was just trying to make sure I was ok, but I'm certainly not one for talking to strangers while getting dressed. I'm not one for getting dressed in public either though, so I guess that was my mistake.

Day two was still hot. I had drunk a bottle of water in less than an hour before I stopped in at a bike shop to try and get a shifting issue adjusted out. I headed out after, bottles full of water again. And had them nearly empty another 15 miles later. With 20 miles to go to my next camp, I had to ration it by drops. Even after arriving at camp, and trying to do exactly nothing for the rest of the day, I never stopped feeling sick from dehydration.

Nothing exciting really happened on the third day while I headed home. I still felt drained from the previous day. There was an hour and a half or so stop at a coffee shop to squeeze in a therapy appointment. And that was really about it.

Anyways, lessons learned are that I need more water, a tent shouldn't be skipped if I'm camping in semi-public areas, and a 20℉ sleeping bag is too warm for summer.

There's a scenic bikeway that runs from Sisters, OR to Smith Rock. For those who don't know, Smith Rock is a "crag" that's probably on every US climber's list of places they want to climb someday. Even if you don't climb, there's also good hiking, and a rock that looks like a monkey head from the right angle.

Anyways, even before I got into rock climbing, the scenic bikeway has been on my future ride list. But now that I do climb, it felt appropriate to combine both activities. I did have some help though. Like a brother who was willing to drive out and be a climbing partner and bring the rope. It wasn't entirely cheating. I had my shoes and harness on my bike with me.

The ride itself was pretty good. You snake into and out of a canyon a few times. Climbing out got tiring, but at least I had exhilarating descents headed into hurting my legs. And then, I had the opportunity to set up camp, and by camp, I mean, a hammock, at one of the prettiest places I've ever stayed. I also had the pleasure of cold dinner because my alcohol stove wouldn't stay lit.

Climbing the next day was fun. My brother brought me coffee, because of the whole stove problem the night before. He's a better climber than me, so I belayed him up sport routes so he could set the rope up, and then I would take a turn climbing top rope. And we determined that I can climb 5.9.

All in all, I would definitely recommend doing this. Mixing outdoor adventures is a lot of fun.

Lots of Amtrak trains let you take a bike! So I did! And spent 3 days riding home and sleeping in other people's houses.

Day one was mostly the train. And getting lost trying to escape Portland. Seriously. Now that I've lived here for awhile, Portland feels like a city that wants you to ride around in it, as long as you never ride your bike out to other places. Other than getting lost, I also got rained on. But that was ok, because then I ended up at my future wife's apartment, and we got to cuddle. And she gave me a handlebar bag.

If you look back at my 3 days of bad decisions ride, this day overlapped a lot of the path of my journey to dehydration, just in reverse. It started with a nice long descent, and a detour to the winery my wife works at, just to get another chance to say hi and I love you in the middle of the adventure. And then I pedaled and pedaled and ended up at my sister's house.

My third and final day of this trip is still my longest ride ever, at 93 miles. Just short of the coveted 100 mile ride. I thought about adding 7 miles, but sometimes, it's ok to just be tired and done by the time you arrive home. I also ate so much food. Like, I think it was 5000 calories just during the ride.

All in all, taking the bike on the train was super easy. I ended up riding 180 miles. And I learned that cycling can give you shin splints. Seriously. It wasn't something I had expected, but my shins specifically hurt for a week. 10/10 would do again.

My wife and I intentionally didn't bring a car to another city for a week.

We planned our honeymoon around staying in another city, and having fun exploring it without a car. The morning after our wedding, we dropped off our car with my brother-in-law, and headed by bike to the train station, where we had a relaxing three-ish hour ride. Seriously. Trains. They're nowhere near as fast as a trip in an airplane, but the comfort is unmatched. Everyone there gets to look at the scenery. No one has to worry about traffic. There's no big lines of security theater.

Our first goal was to ride to our airbnb. Which was harder than we thought. Not because it was in a confusing location though. It was entirely because all of Seattle seems to be made up of steep hills. My wife would quickly become not a fan.

We got to be tourists! Biking to Pike Place market, sticking gum to the gum wall, and eating lunch along the Puget Sound, watching ferries come and go. Lunch was a mistake though. My wife got food poisoning. It really hurt the rest of the trip, and the pace which we wanted to explore at.

Food poisoning also "helped" turn the trip from bike adventures in a city to transit adventures instead. It was "fun" trying to figure out how to pay for a bus in Seattle, a city covered by weird payment systems and multiple transit agencies. Coming from Portland, where you can just tap your credit card to board, it was surprising how a region filled with large tech companies could have such a convoluted bus pass system.

Even with food poisoning, we still got out and saw things. Like trying to visit a new coffee shop each morning. There was a day visiting THE Space Needle and the pop culture museum. If you don't know, by the way, Seattle is a trans woman. I'm no stranger to girl dick, and that's exactly what the Space Needle is. Girl dick. There was another day at the Chiluly glass museum. That place was cool. I didn't even know that it was possible for glass to take on some of those shapes.

One day, we even got matching penguin tattoos. Because of a pun with the initials of our combined last names. It went from noticing that two weeks before the wedding, to having a tattoo appointment set up three days later. They're really cute penguins. And when we're snuggled up together, the penguins also get to cuddle.

Anyways, Seattle is hilly. Bikes on Amtrak, once again, totally rules. Food poisoning sucks. It felt like we could easily visit a new coffee place every day for months without leaving the Capitol Hill area. Tattoos are cool. We both also bought some cool books. And then, once we got back home, while trying to get back to our car, I had to switch transit trains because some people decided smoking questionable drugs was a good life choice.