Bicycling the Pacific Coast: A complete route guide, Canada to Mexico: Amazon.ca: Tom Kirkendall: Books

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Book Description

Complete road guide for trip planning and touring along the entire Pacific Coast.

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First Sentence
The 246.9 miles of cycling that make up the British Columbia portion of the Pacific Coast Bicycle Route are unique: The Pacific Ocean is never seen, a minimum of 4 hours and 20 minutes will be spent on the six different ferries that are necessary to the basic route, and for 115.1 miles you will cycle north rather than south. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
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Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good and Useful Guide, Sep 19 2003

By

Mike Eberts (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bicycling the Pacific Coast: A complete route guide, Canada to Mexico (Paperback)

I bought this book from Amazon in 2002 and used it during a ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles in August 2003.

It's a very good guide. The directions for their main route were quite detailed and usually clear. I got lost a couple of times, but never badly and it may not have been the book's fault. Milage totals were usually pretty close, although there were a couple of segments that were off somewhat. The guide is much more useful if you photocopy the pages with directions. Then you can use them as daily route slips. The book can be kept in a pannier during the trip to be brought out in the evening to get an overview of the next day's route and stuff you might see along the way.

I also enjoy the overall feeling that it was written by dyed-in-the-wool cyclists for dyed-in-the-wool cyclists. This authenticity comes out sometimes in little asides, such as the authors' comment that a northbound tunnel near Gaviota (CA) is like riding through a high-suction vacuum hose. If you've ridden a bicycle through that tunnel, you'd know how dead-on that description is.

I didn't give the book 5 stars (although I would have given it 4.5 if there was an option) because it doesn't provide much for the bicycle tourist who prefers hotels and hostels to camping. An appendix with a listing of youth hostels and a selection of cyclist-friendly hotels on the route would make the guide more complete. It would be especially helpful if the authors did this for the more remote regions on the route. The authors also might want to add a little more commentary and detail to the alternate routes they sometimes suggest. For example, the authors suggest an inland route along US101 as an alternate to Highway 1 through Big Sur when the road is closed (which happens fairly often) or during the height of the tourist season. Well, if you're going to suggest a 100-mile detour, do more than just put a shaded line on a not-very-detailed map. (By the way, I don't completely agree with the authors' assertion that Hwy 1 through Big Sur is too trafficy to comfortably ride during the tourist season. Maybe it is on weekends, but I went through on a Monday and traffic was only moderate and not particularly hard to deal with.)

Overall, though, this book is well worth the money.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars The Bible It's Not, Jun 13 2001

By

Rich Haubert (Lansing, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bicycling the Pacific Coast: A complete route guide, Canada to Mexico (Paperback)

Perhaps people are so taken with the notion of a book written just for bicycling they're willing to overlook certain things. Unquestionably this is a good resource, but it also has lots of errors. Most of these would be forgivable in a first addition, but certainly not in a third; I'm speaking of outdates, mileage errors, incorrect assumptions, incomplete data, crazy routings, etc. It's clear that Kirkendall and Spring have lots of work to do if they want the next edition to be accurate.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good cycle tourning resource, Sep 16 2009

By

Sarah Hyland (Calgary AB Can) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Bicycling the Pacific Coast: A Complete Route Guide, Canada to Mexico (Paperback)

Good cycling resource, it is very detailed in regards to distance and stateparks. It would be nice if it could be taken appart (coil ring) so that you can just take the section you need ie: Canada or California instead of having to take the whole book with you.
We will be riding in a few weeks so we shall see if things have changed since the printing of the book

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Canada to Mexico without a hitch!
This book proved to be our bible during a 6 week ride from Vancouver to San Diego (we just crossed the Mexican border and back again). Read more

Published on May 25 2001 by Andy Milsom

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have Guide
This guide is a must have for anyone wanting to ride the Pacific Coast. I just used it to for a solo ride from San Francisco to the Mexican border. Read more

Published on Nov 28 1999 by Jeffrey Gaines