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!

There Once Was a Town Whose Air Was Riddled With the Scent of Hops

Available at: Akinz.com

On the first day of touring my true-love said to me: have a fat tire and let's cheers sustainability! (that's New Belgium Brewery, yo!)

On the second day of touring my true-love said to me: O'Dells is our favorite, so let's get mercenaries and cheers craft breweries!

On the third day of touring my true-love said to me: This basket looks so empty let's free-growler-fill-Tuesday at Black Bottle Brewery, O'Dells is still our favorite, and dangit - just plowed this cruiser into Snowbank Brewery!!!

On days four through twelve we ditched the rhyming and leisurely meandered among Coopersmith's, Ram Brewing, Equinox, Patero's Creek, Fort Collins Brewery, Funkwerks, Zwei Brewing, 1933, Rally King Brewing, Horse & Dragon Brewing Company, and (because we needed the mileage for tour gnar points) Anheuser-Busch.

We probably missed one or two: rumor has it we're up to 19 breweries these days with more breaking ground!

New Belgium Brewery: Always a Selection, Always Well-stocked!

So, what makes the brewery experience in Fort Collins unique?

Apollo: from Fan Photo Friday - Puppy Edition!

• Breweries have formed, for the most part, a "district" that is easily biked or walked allowing residents and tourists to explore the breweries safely at their leisure. Why drink at a bar when you can go straight to the source... with excellent patios, games, and occasionally music? Oh: many are dog-friendly, too!
• New Belgium and O'Dells were the micro breweries who started it all here in the Fort in 1989. You may have heard of Fat Tire Ale? Easy Street? 
• ...And just down the street situated along Interstate 25 is Anheuser-Busch: home of Budweiser, American Eagle Distribution, and... Clydesdales? Rumor has it they're bringing the ponies home to stay!

Budweiser: Yes, They're Here in Fort Collins as Well!

• Why it's worth mentioning: A-B is one of the economic drivers in Fort Collins and while it's easy to turn up a nose at their global domination through lager beer (they have a fourth step called "disillusion" roughly meaning "adding water")... They're arguably the most family-friendly brewery with access to the famous Clydesdale stables, a polished and professional tour, beer school, charming boutique, and freshly re-finished biergarten.
• Cooper-tition: a strange mix of cooperation and competition. Cooperation in the form of collaborative blends and temporarily borrowed brew-masters. Competition to see who gains favor with flavor in fermented bliss.
• Any outdoor festival featuring a beer garden is sure to be three things: 1. locally brewed, 2. award-winning, and 3. an easy, drinkable favorite.

And yea, there's probably a tour or two for that *wink*

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Tour, anyone?! (O'Dells)

Raining... Pouring... and Pedaling?

Even in cloud cover: a verdant glow everywhere!

It doesn’t always rain in Northern Colorado. In fact, we average more than 300 days of sunshine every year. Usually, we have amber waves of grain, dusty prairies, and all shades of purple Rocky Mountains.

This spring, however, has taught us all to value our “waterproofs” and provided an opportunity to dust off the thesaurus in describing the lush verdant glow of our surroundings. Starting around tax day (how fitting!) the clouds descended and the rain set in. Our May flowers received a light dusting of snow. The sun shone on Colorado State University’s spring commencement ceremonies, and finally we emerged from this low-pressure stupor for Father’s day.

May 'showers' and flowers!

Riding in the rain is an acquired art: there is no right answer, is rarely universal one day to the next. However, the relaxed explorer would do well to keep the following in mind:

The 'original' waterproof case!

*When in doubt, put your technology in a sealed plastic bag

*Carrying your waterproofs (jackets, pants, etc…) doesn’t ensure you won’t need them

*Bike lights aren’t just for dawn, dusk, and midnight adventures!

*You can keep your feet dry pedaling in up to five inches of gently flowing water

*Bike parking is exceptionally easy… When raining!

To date: no-one has melted due to rain.

We are go for launch - no joke!

Springtime is the embodiment of all that is brand new and full of hope, just like Leisurely Pedaling! March has been quite the whirlwind, and while not the standard interpretation of "in like a lion, out like a lamb" referring to weather... the month proved to be just that. In like a lion: the deafening roar of business deals, purchasing, marketing, coordinating, re-researching, and (finally!) launching. Out like a lamb: now we're in that deceptive lull where the news slowly spreads, grows, and expands into something beautiful, perhaps like the cherry blossoms in Washington DC, or the daffodils hesitantly rising to colorful life in my neighbor's yard.

The Leisurely Pedaling launch party was a smashing success! The Laboratory provided endless plates of delicious delights and a brilliant atmosphere. Akinz, The Parlour, Kilwins, and Old Town Spice Shop donated truly generous and wonderful door prizes embodying the character of Fort Collins. One lucky winner even walked away with a two day tour for two of Fort Collins! In all, about 80 people joined in the festivities, and several friends were showing their support with Leisurely Pedaling T-shirts in Idaho, Washington, and California.

Here are a few fun pictures from the event!

Business Development: What Are The Frustrations?

Most of the frustrations come at the inception of a good business idea: the closer you get to launch, the more frustrations evolve into welcome challenges. What frustrated me the most - and still makes me pause and smile - is all the "hurry up - wait, stop... now... go?" that goes into the first fragment of a business dream. Perhaps the "problem" (if it can be labeled as such) lies in the very broad concept of wanting to make a career of riding my bike. Let's go back to the end of 2012 and the start of 2013...
Naturally, everyone had an opinion and found the most obscure, far-off, and otherwise super-niche cycling activity to encourage as "profitable" before nudging me on my way. Because, you know, I really want to starve myself following the Amazon to a hidden temple of "bike enlightenment" and return destined for Olympic gold while simultaneously pied-pipering all the women of the free world into all forms of bike love. Sponsored by Patagonia, Nike, Orbea, Nabisco, and Smith...
Each incredible suggestion did help narrow my business and life focus onto two fundamental elements. The first is biking for the love of wind in my hair and sun-kissed smiles. The second is being a resource in sharing with other people something that I find interesting and important. This posed an occasional frustration in being effectively understood and re-explained among my peers. A very love-based frustration, to be sure, but equally frustrating overall.
Fort Collins is a gem of down-to-Earth residents, progressive students, outdoor adventure, and beer snobbery. It is completely endearing and the model for Main Street in Disneyland. New business ideas bloom daily involving all these charming qualities. My first inclination was combining brewery tours and bike tours since A) way too many delicious breweries to explore and experience in town, and B) no real tours of any kind going on in Fort Collins. Keep in mind this was January 2013. *ahem*

You know the absolute test of patience? Here I was voluntarily taking a business development class full of senior-level undergrads in the spirit of "four months of three credit hours per week crunching the creative young minds for the most pristine developed business plan ever." While I kept busy leading those young geniuses into a bike-conscious mindset, another hops-and-cycling focused enthusiast launched a bike brewery tour business.

Yep. Obviously, we did a great deal of research on that business... but the real research? That would be managing the three undergrads with which I had partnered, and pulling ends together for a viable business plan as the semester drew to a close. Patience and guided creativity are one thing, and the tools to master and manage are quite another.

The biggest take-away from frustrations experienced with taking this route to planning the business and watching my "initial dream" launch under someone else's expertise and leadership? Well, the best business plan for combining local lore, bicycles, and tourism research was yet to come and it would be frustratingly, gloriously mine to launch: and Leisurely Pedaling is by far the best take-away from all this!

Happy Holidays from Adventure Jes!

Bike bells ring- are you listening?

In Old Town FoCo- lights are glistening

A leisurely site!

We're bundled up tight!

Biking in a winter wonderland!

Old Town Fort Collins lights up for the winter!

All smiles at freezing temperatures!

Fortunately for the year-round bicyclists in Northern Colorado, the winters are fairly mild in the snow-dump department. When the flurries do arrive the bike routes and paths are cleared of snow long before the neighborhoods and secondary street routes!

We've been hard at work dialing in the last of the logistics to open up shop first thing in the New Year! The itineraries are set, and the daily site-seeing options are plentiful. Our neighbors, colleagues, and friends eagerly anticipate the moment they can share our unique and unhurried approach to exploring the cities along Colorado's Front Range with distant family and friends. 

With that, we're taking a moment to breath, choose the best publicly advertised name for these sock-rockin' tours, and embrace the winter for what it is before the big launch into welcoming the world into our expert site-seeing care!

May the holidays be treating you and yours festively well throughout the holidays and always!

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Designing the Adventures- Leisurely ;-)

Public Art: Andy Warhol, Soup Can

The proposed itineraries are coming together quite nicely, and we cannot wait to have AdventureJes.com ready to handle all the fun! Mapping out points of interest with the limiting criteria including "comfortably bike-able" and "I personally love this spot, and so does everyone who visits me regardless of age, origin, and inclination to travel!!" You'll find everything to be distinctly Colorado in theme and feeling.

For example, Fort Collins is known for Breweries (they're popping up EVERYWHERE!), Bikes (Platinum Bicycle City anyone?), and an Ample Supply of Restaurants (highest number per capita in the US!). What you might not know is the city also houses the broadcasting of the Nation's Atomic Clock, Colorado's only "Wild and Scenic River" as designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Old Town which became the model for Main Street in Disneyland!

Plotting Fort Collins Attractions!

While Loveland is known as one of few access points to Rocky Mountain National Park (and the town of Estes Park), you might not know that Loveland is one of the Nation's top artist communities and boasts more than 200 pieces of public art and the largest outdoor sculpture gallery in the US. As well, the town is proudly "Sweetheard City USA" and you may recall this fun factoid from having a Valentine re-routed through Loveland to be delivered to your sweetheart with an extra-romantic and charming postage cancellation. Who knew snail-mail could be so fun?! Actually we did, so we're sharing with you! ;-)

As you can imagine, even more fun, unique, and inspiring distinctions are true of the rest of Northern Colorado. We can't wait to share what fun, leisurely, and inspiring stories will come to life for you during your leisurely pedaling adventures with us.

Cheers for now,

Adventure Jes

Bike-Topia

While the "to-do" list continues to grow, this last month and a half was well stocked with many activity research opportunities here at Adventure Jes!

Our adventures exploring "what gets people to take active vacations?" took us to Montana and Wyoming where things are done in a more "pen and paper" style and phone numbers are commonly understood in their 7-digit format. As well, the route research took us up to Summit County (about an hour and a half from our base in Fort Collins) to do a little "Leaf-peeping" as the aspens prepare to lose their leaves for the year.

Montana and Wyoming have the advantage of well-dispersed populations making the roadways and bike routes a truly personal experience. We chose to get our tires in the dirt despite the "road and pavement" nature of Adventure Jes. We're looking forward to recreating a felling of "it's just you, the road, and Nature" feeling as we update and coordinate routes throughout Northern Colorado.

On the same token, Yellowstone has a fantastic mapping system that tells you where bikes can go and where they are discouraged. Nothing compares to finding a quiet spot to observe the geysers and waterfalls just a moment farther off the well-worn foot paths in Yellowstone- bringing the bikes was a major win!

Exploring Summit County in mid-September is absolutely breath-taking, and I cannot put into words my excitement for taking Colorado visitors on a tour of foliage next autumn. Great brakfast cafes, well-maintained bike paths through and between cities and towns, and several places of interest for stopping and enjoying the history, scenery, and small indulgences unique to Colorado. I hope the following pictures will suffice.

Cheers for now!

Adventure Jes