Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Places to Stay
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to bicycle tour: camping and credit card. In the interest of time and comfort we'll be doing the latter.
Of course, lodging is expensive. It will probably end up as a third of our budget. The best way to save money on lodging is by staying with friends (Thank you all in advance), but unfortunately our friends don't live in even one hundred mile increments across the country. I'd always thought our next best option was cheap motels. But then I stumbled on three websites.
The first is CouchSurfing. There are almost one million CouchSurfers around the world, willing to lend you a couch to crash on for a night. You're not even obligated to pay for staying there, though no one will stop you from treating your host to a meal.
The second is Airbed and Breakfast. This is what it sounds like. You spend a little bit of money and get accommodations for the night, anything from an airbed to a house, depending on the host and the fee.
The third is Warm Showers, which is like CouchSurfing for touring cyclists. Hopefully these people better understand the crazy travel schedules and funny smells of cyclists. Plus they'd all offer insight about routes.
Is there a guarantee you won't stay with a serial murderer? Well no, not really. But all of these sites have a rating and reputation system so that you can monitor other people's experiences with that host. Not a perfect system, but it gives you some idea. You also get to choose your host, and they need to agree to host you. So we'd be able to choose not to stay with the guy with the profile picture of him in the hockey mask with an axe. Again, not a perfect system, and you end up stereotyping someone based on a little profile picture, but it helps.
Of course, there's some advantages. We'd save money - anywhere from $30-$60 a night, which means a lot over the projected thirty nights we'll spend in hotels. We'd also have an opportunity to meet people that can really teach us about where they live and hopefully make a lot of good friends.
No decisions yet, just more things to keep in mind. I'm currently working on arranging for someone to be our logistics head at home - someone I can call and say "Hey, we're going to be in Podunk, Nowhere in ten miles, can you call ahead and find the cheapest room for the night?" just in case things change (and they will).
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| posted at: 19:50 |
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