Geoff's Tour
A Journal of My Bicycle Touring

About Geoff's Tour(s)

My 2018 Tour Divide Attempt

The Tour Divide for 2018 is about to begin and I am currently in Banff, acclimatizing to the altitude and making sure my bicycle is in working order.  The race gets underway at 8 am MDT and can be followed via a live tracker.  If all goes well I will reach Antelope Wells, NM around July 8.

2012 Cross Canada Bicycle Ride

On Sunday, May 20, 2012, my wife, Rochelle, and I left for a 4 month trip across Canada and the Northern USA.

Yes, all the way from Vancouver, BC to St. John's, Newfoundland - over 8,400 km (for my US family/friends = 5,200 miles! ;-) This has been something I've wanted to do my entire life (a bucket list item ;-) and Rochelle and I have decided there's no better time to do it than now!

VanGo - Our (T)rusty Touring VanRochelle drove our support/chase VW camper van, affectionately called "VanGo - Our (T)rusty Touring Van". The intentionally misspelled, "catchy" name is both aspirational (since the van is OLD, from 1984, and we were hoping it would "go" the entire trip) and a gentle nod to our business activities (more below).

During this trip, Rochelle and I focused on a "side" business we launched almost 7 years ago that has steadily grown, based completely on word-of-mouth. As a result, it has now become our primary business. It's called ArtSites.ca and is a very simple, inexpensive website-building platform that allows visual artists to create and manage their own websites. We already have a good-size community and we're going to take advantage of this trip (1) to breathe some new life and energy into the business, and (2) to meet up with several of our artists and artist communities as we drive across the country (hence the name "VanGo" ;-) 
 
Over the summer, Rochelle and I further updated and developed ArtSites and if you want, you can help us by:
  • Recommending ArtSites.ca to your artist friends
  • Recommending Art Fairs we should hit along the way
  • Letting us know about opportunities for informal ArtSites "meetups", e.g. where we can do a demo or tutorial of our service for a group of artists or an Artists Guild/Association
  • Donating to the Tour (either to the Tour directly or the Canadian Cancer Society)
  • Sharing any "must-see" attractions we should see along our route ;-)
  • Sending us lots of positive "vibes" for the trip! ;-)
Well, that's what we were up to during the summer of 2012!