America has a new post Turkey Day tradition in which #BlackFriday alludes to the color of the beverage: #BeerFriday! Skip the shopping shenanigans, get outside and commune with fellow beer lovers with Bikabout's map and directory of all the special releases, events, bike tours and more!

These days especially, people need to leave their phone at home, get outside and disconnect. Bikabout's founder, Megan, has 9 favorite daycations for the city and woods around Portland, Oregon.

May is National Bike Month! Follow Bikabout's blog and Instagram (#31GatewayDrugs), as we post 1 photo for 31 days to get your butt on a bike.

Vegas for Casual Biking

We took our friends who had never been to Minneapolis and gave them the biking experience. Follow in our footsteps with a free bike map and itinerary.

It’s no wonder the Amgen Tour of California has become the nation’s most prestigious and watched annual cycling competition. Undoubtedly, watching the cyclists ride through California will make many long to visit. So, which of the 12 bike-friendly destinations should you make your pit spot? If wine tasting is your thing you’ll have to decide who has the better wine—Santa Barbara, Lodi or Santa Rosa?

And because I used a bike to explore the city, I covered a lot of ground and saw things I would have never stumbled upon if I was on foot or driving. Here is what I love about San Diego...

Milwaukee has a strong bike culture and decent-to-amazing infrastructure. And it has those unfailingly nice mid-western people. And it has GOOD beer. Unfortunately, Milwaukee also has a governor who has cut spending on every kind of transportation except highways...

...is a glorious thing. The morning temperature is "light jacket," but during the day it scooches up into T-Shirt Territory. The trees are a riot of blossoms, and when the wind blows, they rain down on you like you're running out of a wedding chapel. Everyone's got that renewed zest for getting the hell outside.

New Belgium are purveyors of fine, fine beers, and are located in Fort Collins, Colorado, with a second facility now in Asheville, North Carolina. We at Bikabout were fortunate enough to be able to tour the Fort Collins site this past November, and it remains the best brewery tour we've ever taken. But before I explain why this modern craft brewery so richly deserves its own Bikabout blog post, I need to put "modern" and "craft" into context. It's important to understand where we came from, in order to understand why the place we are at now is so good, and why New Belgium perhaps best exemplifies that place.

With Bloomberg no longer at the helm in New York City, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has taken over the national spotlight as the most bike-progressive mayor of a major American city. And while the biking experience is not yet up to the level of the world's best biking cities, it is getting closer by the month due to Chicago's aggressive goals.

It’s Thanksgiving. You’ve probably traveled. Even if you didn’t descend upon someone else’s house, someone probably descended upon yours. The result is always the same: Come Friday after Thanksgiving, you’re ready to get out of whatever house you spent the prior day over-indulging in, and go do …something. Traditionally in America, this has meant waking up at an obscene pre-dawn hour to go wait in huge lines at big box stores to get a discount on a flat screen tv you didn’t exactly need. We at Bikabout feel there’s a better way to spend Black Friday.

Arriving in Vancouver and hopping onto a bike when you're used to places like Boston, your first thought is "this is what DONE looks like." Done arguing, done advocating, done waiting, done building... Vancouver looks and feels like a photoshopped "After" picture if you're a bike advocate. The water on all sides, the mountains tumbling over each other on every horizon, and those incredible bike paths everywhere... swoon.

Seattle has a location problem. It's sandwiched between Bicycle World darlings Portland and Vancouver, both of whom have deservedly hogged the lion's share of what precious little press space there is for bicycles in North American press. Right in between these two lies relatively ho-hum Seattle, ever the bridesmaid, never the bride. Arriving downtown (by train, naturally), one would be forgiven for failing to lift a finger to challenge that viewpoint, really. It remind me very much of the most buttoned-down parts of downtown Boston, but with massive, weapons-grade, "this is not cool" hills. Picture traffic, few trees, drunken Seahawks fans, concrete, and 1st gear hills that go on for 20 blocks.

Out of every city we have biked, Minneapolis is by far the best biking city in the U.S.  Between the "bicycle interstate highways" that get you where you need to go, water at every turn, the most bike racks per capita and normal folk riding bikes, this city provides a social, stress free and scenic city biking experience.

I am seriously biased when it comes to Madison WI because I was born in the Emerald City, also known as "X square miles surrounded by reality."   This city is jam packed with everything a Midwestern girl could want:  laid back ladies, farm-to-table food, theatrical thunderstorms, tasty beer, a decent Big 10 athletic department and most importantly, the lakes. 

Athens GA was our first stop on the Bikabout tour of 7 cities.  Although Megan Ramey, founder, and her husband attended UGA undergrad, she has never been more in love with the city's marriage of bike culture, art, food and Southern hospitality.