Easy Rider

By Sally S. Stich/Denver

Most biking enthusiasts sign up for a tour to meet new people, spend time outdoors and give themselves a daily workout along the way. That's what Sally Summerell, 78, was looking forward to when she anted up for a seven-day ride through Bryce Canyon and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon last September. She just had one big (albeit strange) concern: weight gain. "It's hard to believe you could gain weight on a strenuous biking trip," says Summerell, a clinical psychologist from Plattsburgh, N.Y., "but the meals are so wonderful--multicourses, lots of wine, great desserts--that I actually did come home from one bike trip to Italy and couldn't get into a dress I needed to wear to a wedding."

If bike trip makes you think of roughing it in spandex, think again. The package tours available nowadays are laden with luxuries rivaling those of even the finest hotels--and often actually include the finest hotels. There's everything from a gimmicky offer to meet a real former KGB agent during a cycling trip through Russia to helicopter rides across glaciers in New Zealand to spa treatments in Europe--oh, and there's some biking involved too.

So what's driving the movement toward chichi sideshows? Baby boomers, for the most part. They are the ones who can afford the often steep price tag that comes with these adventures (trips average about $2,500 a week, not including travel to the point of departure). As bike trips have grown in popularity, tour operators such as Butterfield & Robinson butterfieldandrobinson.com in Toronto and Backroads in California--two of the oldest active-travel companies--have learned that they can snag more customers with a tour that includes evening theater trips and fine wines than if it's just about the bike. "As boomers, who make up a significant portion of the customer base, have aged and as the appeal of biking trips has broadened," says Tom Hale, founder and owner of Backroads, "the comfort level and add-ons have taken biking trips to new heights."

Even those who crave a trip into the rustic beyond (like the very popular five-day Continental Divide tour offered by the Rocky Mountain Outdoor Center in Salida, Colo.) are treated to delicious meals cooked in a Dutch oven, tents and cots set up for them by support staff--and just about anything extra they're willing to pay for. "If someone wants a masseuse waiting at the next campsite in the middle of nowhere," says RMOC owner Ray Kitson, "or a certain kind of camp chair, we arrange it."

And the demand continues to grow. Backroads, for example, offered its first biking tour in 1980, through Death Valley. There were four cyclists. Today the company offers 51 itineraries and serves approximately 10,000 guests annually. From 1997 to 2000 there was a 30% increase in the number of participants.

Happy customers like Nancy Serafini, 55, freely admit that the amenities led them to pedaling. Serafini would never have taken the trip through the Burgundy region of France offered by DuVine Adventures of Somerville, Mass., this past June if it hadn't also included two daily yoga sessions. "I'd never been on a bike trip before, but I love yoga," the interior designer from Boston says, "and that's what attracted me." Of course, after a week of cycling through rolling vineyards and lavender fields, she was hooked on biking too. But the yoga seemed to be the real incentive. "I felt pampered physically, emotionally and spiritually," she says.

Relaxation is key. "We used to pack in so many more daily activities," says Andy Levine, owner of DuVine Adventures. "Now we do less and give overstressed customers more time to soak up a region's cultural history--or, conversely, soak up rays at the pool."

For cyclists Mike and Margo Requarth, who have taken 13 biking trips in the past 10 years, the ultra-responsive customer service keeps them signing up. "In the early days we didn't think of asking for anything outside of what was offered," says Mike, 54, of Sebastopol, Calif. Now anything goes. When the couple were in Hawaii with their two sons, Mike asked a guide to take the three guys to a golf course. No problem. And when the organizers overheard Mike telling a fellow pedaler at dinner in Bali that his wedding anniversary was in the next couple of days, the tour leader arranged for the couple to receive the honeymoon suite in a lovely beachside inn just steps from the crystal-clear water--at no extra charge. Both see themselves biking off into their golden years together or, as Margo says laughingly, at least as long as their boomer bodies hold out.

For many riders like Mike and Margo, that could be a long, long time. Of course, let's hope that the food and wine don't slow them down too much.