Tour and a Show - Whoa!

Human creativity is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I was pleasantly reminded of this when I was invited to enjoy opening night of The Taming of The Shrew. This witty comedy had me laughing with delight from the comfort of my blanket on the lawn in the park while enjoying a slice of pizza and sipping on my favorite lemon-lime soda water.

Beautiful evening for theatre in the park!

There isn't a bad seat in the house! Er, park!

The actors clearly enjoyed their work bringing the characters to life flawlessly, and each were a perfect fit for this witty work of Shakespeare! The costumes were adorable, the setting: comfortably ideal, and the ladies running the show are as friendly as they come. It's a rather intimate setting with couples and families with their blankets and lawn chairs circling the stage.

Just as important, though, there is plenty of bike parking and the food trucks provide a stunning array of dining options!

Oh - in case you're wondering? Yes, Leisurely Pedaling will provide lawn chairs and/or blankets for your viewing pleasure :-) Hope you can join us this weekend... and if not perhaps we'll see you on the 24th!

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes 

Date Night!

Painted skies and rustic beauty are guaranteed attractions on date night in Old Town Fort Collins.

Old Town Fort Collins at Sunset

More often than not, the same can be said for all of the 42 parks and countless dining and entertainment experiences throughout "mid Town" and "Down South" (keep in mind these geographic N/S references are within 6 miles of each other).

Old Town Cruiser

Date night started for us when I was in grad school. It was the unofficial deadline to complete the week's discussions and papers in exchange for an evening of remembering how to be a sociable, carefree person with my sweetie. Occasionally, we'd make it a double date. I digress.

The concept of date night inspired a new tour experience coming in June: an afternoon/evening of Leisurely Pedaling followed by lounging in the park watching live theatre, with a second-to-none culinary experience at a local food truck somewhere in the middle. How much fun would that be?! 

Goose Fountain in Old Town Fort Collins

So there you have it: a custom tour experience offered twice in June that sets you up for a sweet date night! Saturday the 11th and Friday the 24th starting at 3pm we'll have a three hour tour ending in a park. There you'll find a food truck (either Ripe Tomatoes Pizza or Mile High Lobster Shack), followed the Open Stage Theatre's production of The Taming of the Shrew. What could be better than a tour, show, and dinner all wrapped up in one neat package?!

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Bike Expo For the Win!

Remember when I talked about coopertition last month? It's a real thing: I'm living it right now. The annual bike expo in Denver is, as anticipated, a lovely experience of most things bicycles. Last year was a lot of faster/stronger/farther training focused booths, and this year the e-bikes really stick out (though they were the main view down the row from our booth). While nibbling on delicious flavors of Hope Hummus, we even had the privilege of seeing pros like Dave Weins and Georgia Gould participate in a tire changing competition... blindfolded and handcuffed! At some point there was an acoustic cover of Gangsta's Paradise serenading the beer garden. The whole set up was heavenly.

Colorado Bike Expo 2016

Back up a second - OUR booth? Yup! Leisurely Pedaling and Beer and Bike Tours teamed up to share space, laughter, and overall success of the event with each other. And - you guessed it - we're in coopertition together. We're coopertiving. Something. We were even graced with the ladies who run Experience Plus Bike Tours sharing a corner of our booth for a moment Saturday.

Someone Got Their Hands on Sidewalk Chalk!

This is how it works: Experience Plus has tours all over Europe and beyond as their specialty (they have other tour options as well). They just happen to have their home office in Fort Collins. Win! Beer and Bike Tours specializes in exactly that: breweries, bikes, and enjoying the ride. Their tours span Colorado and portions of the US that are lovely and have delicious beer culture. Leisurely Pedaling specializes in site seeing Fort Collins and the neighboring communities. We all have a little overlap (stellar experiences being offered, funloving guides, endless laughter and joy), though we all have distinctly different personalities.

Thank you so much all who dropped by the Colorado Bike Expo this last weekend. I hope to see you all again next year, and you're always welcome on our tours between times! We've drawn winners from the drawing, and are excited to announce their names in the next newsletters :-)

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

We Know How to Have a Good Time!

Team Building - or an Excuse to Enjoy a Beautiful Day!

Your Perfect Tour Awaits!

Team Building. Exercises in Trust. Corporate Retreat. Once upon a time these words brought to mind images of Dude Ranches or Spas In Fiji (am-I-right???).

Why not put a local, low-pressure spin on your next Work Bonding Event and take a Faux Tour with us?

Best case scenario: you all love it and decide to make it a regular event for your office/team/co-hort! Call it what you will: an afternoon of site-seeing by bike sounds pretty sweet, and is bound togive you the breath of fresh air outside the office that you need! I suppose in part that's why I created Leisurely Pedaling, though, and now it's an option for your corporate field trips and team bonding moments as well!

Worst case scenario: you find our stories ridiculous and you've been forced to spend a half day on a bike (on the company's dime...) enjoying the sunshine on your face and gentle breeze in your hair. Oh - and you're probably in the company of your co-workers and boss, and there's a really friendly and fun guide you can talk with as well!

What do you say - time to go talk with the manager of activities and team building and make sure the HR department is on board?

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Pedal Chats - Coopertition at Its Finest!

Coopertition: helps all the pieces come together thumbs-up!

What in heck is cooper-what-huh-how? It's a healthy combination of Cooperation and Competition - coopertition - that allows businesses and the humans running them to thrive in capitalist prosperity while working together to grow and maximize niche offerings and exposure in a friendly, supportive manner. Sure, it can sound a little "hippy" and a little "unrealistically idealistic," however, it is a really nice, incredible attribute to my reality.

Pedal Chats are an idea that has taken life from a friendship and business relationship Leisurely Pedaling has with MTBtime.com. The premise of Pedal Chats is providing a publicly approachable opportunity for everyone with similar passion in their veins to talk bikes and tourism... ride bikes a moment... and enjoy a beverage and appetizer while relaxing on one of Fort Collins' fine patio dining places. Seems like fun, right? Oh - and assuming you have your own bike it's free, or you can reasonably snag one from Peloton (our partner in bike offerings for Leisurely Pedaling this year!).

Bike Love.

So - what's the scoop between Leisurely Pedaling and MTBtime? Leisurely Pedaling and MTBtime have in common a love for bicycling outside (I know, seems like a redundant concept), an interest in expanding and coordinating tourism developments directly related to this love for bicycling outside, and making our work approachable and organically malleable: we welcome your input, and I imagine you have a million thoughts and questions, too! Where we differ is our focus: Leisurely Pedaling provides a sweet site-seeing service, and MTBtime.com provides necessary and reliable insight on local mountain bike trails, conditions, events, and other things mountain bikers would find interesting.

Join us the 4th Saturday of each month starting April 23rd. We'll meet at Peloton at 2101 South College Avenue at 3:45pm and ride to beverages and appetizers for an hour or so, and return to Peloton afterward. Can't wait to see you there!

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Platinum Bicycle City: What's That Mean?

Local Art - at Compass Cider

You recall hearing about the "Faux Collins Tour" as one of our standard tour options, and "Experience Platinum Tour" is its slightly more sophisticated, well-manicured sibling. That's right, the second new tour route for 2016 is all about the trails, bike lanes, and inter-connected nature that makes Fort Collins a Platinum Bike City as evaluated by the League of American Bicyclists.

So, what makes the trails/lanes/etc in Fort Collins unique and worthy of being a top five bicycle friendly community in the entire United States? Well, my short list includes:

Bike Parking!

• Bike paths: miles upon miles of paved paths criss-crossing the city
• Side-street bike routes: efficient yet beautiful, and they just feel safe
• Bike racks, bike racks, bike racks... You can't go half a block without tripping over them
• Clubs, teams, festivals, and bike-share: there is Something quite literally for every type of bike rider, and chances are there's a (bike) shop dedicated to your style, too
• Drivers: bike racks and pasing with wide berths are fairly common, truly the inconsiderate driver is the minority
• Mapping and way-finding: the city makes it pretty easy (intuitive?) to find where you want to be and how to get there through maps, signage, and a ranking system for why some streets are better than others in this regard

The Platinum Experience takes you through several different decades of what it means to be Fort Collins while giving you the truly local experience. Enjoy!

Cheers for now!

Adventure Jes

On Tour!

Where Has All the Lycra Gone?

"Fort Collins is surprisingly lacking in lycra..."

This quote - regardless of accuracy - makes me giggle every time I read it. You see, it's phrases like this that end up in my "business journal of inspiration and accomplishment" (yea, that's a real thing).

It's true, though: Old Town Fort Collins has bikes all over. The riders are a blend of casual carnie-looking guys, boho-chic ladies, functional commuters, and business-casual retirees! The more you look around Old Town, the more you realize how often the cyclists are overlooked because they look surprisingly human. You know what I mean: everyday clothes, helmets optional, shoes of every variety...

If Fort Collins is Platinum on the bike-friendly scale (which it is, again!) and hales as home to the likes of Georgia Gould and TJ VanGarderen, there should be a healthy collection of lycra-clad Cyclists, right? So - where are they?!

A Map of Lycra For Your Viewing Pleasure!

Fort Collins is no stranger to traffic at all daylight hours excluding, perhaps, the "hangover" hours on holidays. As such, your daily exerciser takes the shortest and least-traffic route to either the fun mountain roads and trails, or the rolling plains. So no, there are not many lycra-clad riders in the cultural center of the city, but I promise you the train of grinning quintessential, lycra-wearing riders are a-plenty!

Cheers for now!

Adventure Jes

I'll Take the Faux-sperience, Please!

I love a good story, and I love retelling a good story to the best of my ability. Therein lies my greatest challenge, though: does it matter if the retelling of a story actually matches its origin, or can the beauty of a totally embellished tale be a memorable experience in itself?

This year Leisurely Pedaling is adding a Faux Collins Tour as a pre-planned, standard tour option for either half-day or full-day enjoyment! You'll get the full tour experience with anecdotes, fun factoids, and a whole lot of hoop-la that has limited - ok, I'll be honest, has almost zero - factual basis. You could probably ride this same tour a hundred times and never get the same rhetoric.

Oh the stories Old Town Fort Collins could tell!

Many questions you didn't know you had, and will laughingly embrace our answers for include:

• What is a council tree - and where is it?
• Why "horsetooth"?
• So, where did they stash the powder?
• Which street was paved first?
• What's the story behind the CSU Aggies becoming CSU Rams?
• Where was the original Fort?
• I hear the city has tunnels under Old Town, what are/were they used for?
• Tell me about Balloon Boy...
• What was the incident that inspired local legislation banning horses from being ridden into public buildings?

I know, we're just as excited to experience this tour as you and can't wait to share our knowledge along the ride or over a beverage with you and your tour buddies!

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

The city's oldest tree is in there somewhere...

The Destination is the Journey, or the Journey is the Destination: Enjoy!

The off-season affords endless opportunities to research and experience what other bicycle enthusiasts are accomplishing in the industry within the U.S. and abroad. To me, the tourism industry is fascinating and unique in similarly subjective ways as art with endless niches, preferences, and perhaps I'll get more into that train of thought at a later date. It turns out bikes pair well with just about anything: beer, wine, friends, language barriers, fine cuisine, endless dirt trails, coordinated paved pathways, sustainability, photography, mountains, beaches, plains, summer, winter, spring, and fall just to name a few! They even pair well with motors and rain. Really - I wouldn't lie to you

Tourist "Bike Gang" in the Misty Rain!

So there we were, all ten of us choosing to snuggle up with our significant others on motorbikes to self-guide a tour of a new city. We didn't really know the laws of traffic, or how to operate our motorbike bells/whistles/lights/brakes/etc... but we were determined to get farther and see more than walking allowed. Diving into city traffic totally clueless is terrifying, so naturally we headed out of town!

What we toured:

• "Lady Budha" at an enormous (hindu?) temple (slap my wrists, I failed to research this beautiful site)
• A yellow sandy beach without a soul in site
• The teasing promise of monkeys... alas our bikes lacked the capacity for the steep climb to see the living creatures - not just a pedal-power issue afterall!
• A mountain of marble
• An incredibly scenic coastal highway connecting all the above

Monkeys?!

Unexpected Private Beach!

Reinforced ideas that stuck with me from this adventure:

• the journey is the destination... and... the destination is the journey
• A dusting of rain and a cheap poncho make for a most memorable (and pleasant!) experience
• Three or four major attractions in one tour is satisfying...
• ...and so are the little unexpected stops revealing gems of culture and delight along the way
• I would be a sad, sad lady without sharing the travel experience both near and far!

Hindu Temple

The Little Engine That... Um... Well... *smile*

Naturally, these thoughts and experiences have played a role in how this 2016 tour season shapes up for Leisurely Pedaling. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised the subtle yet monumental adjustments coming down the road, and hope you all will get to come experience them with us!

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Pedaling with Cats: A Daydream

Sidecars.
Aviator goggles and leather helmets.
That one time we saved ourselves from sure destruction!

As you might expect, I find daydreaming about bikes a common occurrence. The chilly winter days and ice-covered streets and bike-ways understandably stimulate thoughts of sunshine, warm laughter, and summer afternoons filled with exciting discoveries and visiting "oldie but goodie" favorite places.

I wish... I really wish... my cat enjoyed biking as much as I do and would tag along without any fuss. Perhaps it's just his nature: he doesn't really like meeting new people, has a healthy fear of the Great Outdoors, and finds joy in sleeping in the sun. I hear this is pretty typical for cats.

Dream with me a moment, though: imagine a cat in the front basket of a bike! Better yet: a cat in a bicycle side-car wearing aviator goggles and a leather helmet!

We could explore nearby parks (he'd nap in the sunshine or climb the trees), play in the river (he'd keep his paws dry until a fish swam by), or enjoy people-watching at a local brewery's patio - maybe even make a few new friends! It would be endless fun!

Oh well, it was worth the daydream.

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Home: When Was the Last Time you Played Tourist?

 I love daydreaming about my next vacation or weekend getaway! Who doesn't? My bestie and I have on-going emails speculating epic bike routes, races, and bike-friendly city wanderings on this continent and the next. Getting away is always the goal, but who says you can't get away at "home"?

It didn't take more than a few memorable, jovial journeys in other hemispheres to open my eyes to the biking wonders right here in my backyard. Home: the stay-cation in Fort Collins!

When I was feeling stressed and pressed for time in grad school, the easiest getaway was grabbing my bestie, my camera, and designing routes to explore my own town. There's always something to be experienced: a new museum exhibit, new restaurant, new beverage joint, new construction, new (free) live music, and new combinations of all the above to create a beautiful day on the bike!

When was the last time you glanced at your home town as a tourist?

Cheers for now!

Adventure Jes

Safety: Because, You Know, A Penny For Your... Skirt?

Let's talk about the art of riding in a skirt. Initially you may think "oh sure Jes, this post is for the ladies" ... at which point I'll smile and remind you here in Fort Collins things are a little different. All-out costume occasions happens at least twice per calendar year and include Tour de Fat and Halloween. You've never seen so many skirted men and bearded ladies! Other times would include charitable 5k runs, bike-in movie nights (togas for Animal House, anyone?!), and various other musically boozy festivals.

Back to the point: the art of riding in a skirt!
Some skirts are flow-y, and others are rather fitted. Many are floor-length, and a few are lucky to just cover the goods. Regardless, you'll want to keep these pointers in mind for "skirted situations." I'm looking at you, toga-man!

Lucky penny: keeps your skirt hem in place

1. Lucky penny pick it up, attach to the skirt hem and you'll have good luck! Really: a penny is the perfect weight to keep most upper-calf-to-lower-thigh-length skirts riding at their intended level. All you need is double-stick tape, a penny, and the hem of a skirt. Find the front and center skirt edge, and affix the penny to the underside: out of sight, out of mind.
2. Booty shorts aren't just for volley-ball players! They're like spanx without the support, running shorts without the roominess, or standard bike shorts without the chamois. Ride with confidence, friends! Oh- and no-one ever even has to know they're there - which depends on your (mini) skirt of course! 
3. Alternatively: get down with your slightly Euro-side and rock a sweet pair of tights or leggings! Fashionable yet modest. Functional yet flattering. Full range of motion yet feminine.
4. Ankle straps, pant clips, garters: call them what you want, they come in pretty handy for those long billowy floor-length maxi skirts, togas, etc... How? I'm so glad you asked! Chances are your ensemble is billowy enough that showing a little leg is perfectly acceptable: loop your garter such that it encircles your waist band and skirt hem. Voila! Note: a toga would need a little more creativity, but chances are you can keep your hem out of the bike chain effectively.
5. Consider riding a step-through frame: they're a little more forgiving when you have restricted leg movement (think: mounting, standing stopped, and dismounting).

 Cheers for now!

Adventure Jes