There are perks which come from being a tour leader. Varied travel, exciting times outdoors, and sampling different cuisine are all great. Perhaps the best perk is making new friends along the way. For this post, I’d like to focus on Tom & Toni Blanken , three-time tour guests and all-around good guys.

Toni got her first bike the day mom brought a new baby home from the hospital; apparently her dad thought getting the kids out of the house would help! Tom also started riding as a child, and has never stopped. I asked, did either of you take a break from riding, for a career or for family?

Toni : Yes, I didn’t get back after my teen years until I was 32. Then I launched right back into DALMAC, Shoreline West, the whole routine. A friend got me into a really nice lightweight bike with all the gear, and he coached me into the sport.
JP : (to Tom) And you never stopped.
Tom : I never stopped. A friend of mine, in our neighborhood, we struck out on our own from Lansing to the bridge in a pair of jean shorts (laughing). We had our wives follow in a camper, in the 70s. Yes…we learned not to swim in a sandy creek with your shorts on because it really chafes you (lots of laughing)! When we got up toward the hilly country and I swore I’d never get on a bike again, but I never did quit. Once my daughter turned 10, I took her on the Pedal Across Michigan ride (PALM). Then Toni and I, we met on a bike ride in 1994, East Shoreline ride.
Toni : We both immediately bonded…

JP : This is a second marriage for each of you. How has cycling helped your marriage?
Tom : Oh, my goodness. It has been such a bonding experience because we go for the adventure, and each day is a new day. Going from point A to point B, together 24/7 and seeing what God has put out there for you. It’s a great bonding experience. We don’t like it when we can’t ride together.
Toni : Yes, we usually ride together. He slows down for me. Sometime spouses will separate, the husband rides faster, but we always stay together. We’re a team, we like the adventure together.
JP : I think I noticed the last time I rode with you, that you’re OK with your own speed, whatever it is. There may be people in the group who are faster, or who are slower, and that doesn’t bother…
Toni : Absolutely, good observation.
Tom : We prefer riding at our pace…
Toni : This isn’t easy, always, and to us it’s easier to do our socializing off the bike vs. on the road, being caught up in someone else’s pace. We tend to do our own thing, we’re not fast. We don’t worry about coming in with the bulk of the group. If you run into folks at lunch, great, but usually there’s plenty of time for that at night to get to know people. We don’t worry about trying to keep up, if we did we wouldn’t be doing this, probably.

JP : Everybody has the internet, and you surf and look at tours, friends send ideas, and you have to cut through all this information. Let’s prioritize tour factors which might include price, location, date, tour operator, tour size, camping vs motel, tour distance, tour duration in days, what’s the most important factor?
Toni : We both agree, location is #1. We want to hit all 50 states, and we have 16 left.
Tom : Alaska and Hawaii still need to be done…

Toni : We have plans for Alaska and the northwest. We have a tour in Washington, then we might fly to Anchorage, then come back and drive through Idaho…

Tom : And our minimum in a state means we’re going to do a full day ride in that state, even if it’s our own plan, 30 or 40 miles. And to help do that, we bought a trailer hitch mounted bike rack. Drive in, get on the bikes quickly, and be done. The bike rack is a very nice thing.
Toni : Back to the question, we’re done with camping, so hotel tours. We did years and years of camping on bicycle tours, but now we’re getting up there…
Tom : In 2012 we did 3,000 miles coast to coast, all camping, and that fixed this for (no more) camping.

Toni : And your own bathroom! And the internet! So we have location…and if we’re in the right spot, we like a nice long tour, seven to 14 days. We like to just get immersed in the area. We pick where we’d like to explore, we just did a bunch on the east coast, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire. One tour was 10 days, one was two weeks, and that really allowed us to immerse ourselves into the northeast. And if you spend a few weeks on a tour, it’s bonding as a couple, but there’s also bonding in the group…

Tom : We’ve got friends all over the U.S. now…

JP : So, what app are you using for navigation?
Tony & Tom in sync : Ride with GPS!
JP : Ride with GPS, they are wonderful!
Tom : And if all the ride leaders would use that, it would make it so nice!

(Note: at Bike Tour Vacations we use Ride with GPS on every tour!)

JP : What are you doing about your own safety on the roads?
Tom : Safety-that is one of the reasons the two of us like to ride together, we figure it’s a lot safer. On tours with a cue sheet, we’re good at deciphering the cue sheet and mapping. If you can figure out where you’re going easily, it tends to make it safer. You can ride safer. We usually do not ride two abreast, even on country roads with no cars, some are so small you think it’s somebody’s driveway. The other thing is bike trails nowadays are so nice. We always use helmet mounted rearview mirrors, and I carry one as a spare part. We try and follow all the rules of the road that a car would…

Toni : It’s a very intense sport, especially when you’re in traffic, but the more you are out there, the more confident you get, the more adept you get at deciding how to handle the traffic situations that you get into. We have years of experience out there now.  One more thing about safety, which we’re doing, we’ve actually started to enjoy the dirt roads and trails (gravel riding) on our hybrid bikes. There are premier trails in Michigan that are limestone or dirt or gravel, and we do this to get out into nature, and there’s no better place that out on a remote trail, many of which have facilities along the way.

Tom : On our very last ride this year, the ride leader, instead of reading the safety notes that the insurance company told him to say, he went around the room and asked everyone what they do for safety, and each person came up with one or two ideas. It was really very nice. This was a Bicycle Adventure Club tour in Kentucky.

Toni : They’re volunteer led tours, but that was a great technique. It was the first time we ever had it happen, and it was very engaging. It’s also a good for group bonding.

And also, not on safety, on the last tours, every night at happy hour we had a group question for bonding. They would ask one thing, like ‘what is your hobby’ and went around the room. We didn’t elaborate because there wasn’t time for that, and then you would use that tip for dinner conversation. We had about 4 nights with bonding questions, plus joke night…
Tom : They lifted the rules about politics and religion, you could have a joke about everything…
JP : (laughs) That’s pretty thin ice!
Tom : That was a good rule though, no conversations about politics or religion at all…
Toni : But in a general dinner conversation, 6 to 8 people, you just keep the conversation on the happy hour question. This really helped to get to know people quickly.

JP : So, to go back to religion, Tom, tell me about your prison ministry
Tom : That was one thing I brought up during the (question time) what kind of hobby do you have? So on the first tour that this question was asked, I answered that I’m in a prison ministry, and I go into prison and I have a lot of good friends in prison. I’ve followed 3 of them after they got out of prison. The comments that I got the next day, and discussion at one whole dinner after that, a lobster dinner in Maine, was talking all about that.
Toni : People were very interested in that. Tom was actually kind of embarrassed by all the attention he kept getting, like ‘dang, I like to stay under cover a little more’ but people were keenly interested. From our experience, the inmates are often quite forgotten, you know, tucked away. So when you start hearing about it, they ask ‘why would you want to do that’ and ‘what’s it like’ and…
Tom : Yes, people would come up and say ‘well, that is the best hobby mentioned out of the entire night!’

Toni : Well, you can make age irrelevant if you just keep on moving!

Tom : We divide the duties for touring. I take care of all the mechanical items, bikes, purchasing of bikes, and Toni does all of the research, registrations, planning our routes across the country…
Toni : I could have a second career as a tour guide because of all the research…

JP: Call me when you’re ready…

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