Wander by Bike!

Mission

Inspire 2-wheeled tourism in great biking cities with gateway drugs for the bike curious AND donate 25% of revenue to transportation advocacy.

Vision

Life by bike for 1 of 3 people in cities. When it's normal to see a mom biking her toddlers, children biking to school or an elderly couple riding next to each other, our dream will be realized.

founder & family

It was while hiking 5 nights solo on Appalachian Mountain Club's (AMC) hut-to-hut trails that Megan Ramey got the idea for Bikabout. She had just left an inspiring position as a sustainability consultant and needed time in the woods to ask the question: what next? On the final day's ascent through pine tree covered Mt. Tom, it dawned on her that if an organization could normalize sightseeing by bike like AMC had normalized hiking, they could appeal to the masses, drive bike traffic to local business, reinvest in advocacy for better biking, reward bike friendly cities with tourism dollars and ultimately change peoples' lives with the freedom of two wheels. She liked the name, Bikabout, as a play on walkabout and its imagery of getting lost, self-discovery, new experiences and casualness.

Megan now has the best job in the world continuously learning from communities, traveling, appreciating good design, tasting, drinking, exploring natural and man-made landscapes, listening to KEXP (best radio station ever), falling in love with North American cities and meeting the everyday change makers.

Kyle, her husband, is the volunteer photographer who home brews and it was his obsession with beer that made Megan plan a trip to Portland, buy the book Hop in the Saddle and together they used it to explore the Graceland of bike and beer porn. That book provided the model experience.

Their daughter and her peers are the inspiration for Bikabout. Biking for everyday life gets people outdoors, connects them to their community, frees up time and money and breeds independence. 

Seeing Cities Through A Bike Lens

We think the best way to see any city is on a bike. On a bike, you set your own schedule. You leave the second you’re ready, and when you arrive, there’s always parking. When you’re biking, and you smell something delicious, you can go find the source of that wonderful smell and give them some money. If an amazing park inspires you to admire the flowers for an extra hour,  you don’t have to worry about parking meters or bus schedules. Seeing a city by bike combines all of the freedom of walking with the range and speed of mass transit. Seeing a city by bike stacks the cosmic deck of unintended happy consequences in your favor by letting you interact with your environmentinstead of watching it go by out a window. You meet people. You discover. You reflect.  We want to make all of it very easy.

Bikes Means Business

We also want to make it easier for bike-minded local businesses and travelers to find each other. Right now it isn’t always easy to find the food, lodging, and transit providers who welcome bikes enthusiastically. We’d like to connect people who need services with people who want their business. And those customers on a bicycle are the most mobile and liberated kind there is. They don’t require a parking space, they aren’t worried about parking tickets, and they don’t pass by your business at 45 miles per hour.  As peopleforbikes.org said, “Cars don’t spend money -- people do.”

Gateway Drug For The Bike Curious

The bottom line is that biking, and everything about the culture that comes along with it, ultimately makes people happier. When cities make themselves bikeable, they make themselves infinitely more livable. One need only watch an elementary school getting out in Amsterdam, with a queue of waiting parents on bikes chatting with each other instead of a queue of idling cars wrapped around the block, to know that bikes keep us in contact with each other and get us where we’re going pretty quickly. We can’t count how many times we’ve run into friends in Boston or Cambridge as we’re biking home from work, only to ride together and chat (or stop for a beer). We want cities to compete with each other as they try to foster the kind of environment that makes more and more people feel safe enough to try to live this way. And by visiting new cities on a bike, you become a part of this culture. 

the drugs

• Beer, Baked Goods, Ice Cream, Scenery... and the list goes on and on. Whether you're into craft beverages, graffiti and public art, architecture, food or parks, we'll tell you about them and how to get there by bike
• Self-guided Bike Tours - our ambassadors are the eyes and ears of the city and curate the best rides that are scenic, casual and stop at unique cultural, culinary and outdoor oases along the way

travel planning resources

• Lodging Directory - hotels, inns and Airbnb hosts that provide bicycles and other amenities for guests
• Find a Bike - bike share, Spinlister (airbnb for bikes) and bike rental shops, we'll find you a bike preferably with lights, fenders, a rack or basket and a lock
• Flights, Trains, Buses, Ferries, Car share - these all can play a role in getting you somewhere on vacation, extending a day trip into the country or helping you plan a long weekend. Bikabout is your centralized resource for easy to understand policies and costs associated with bringing your bike onboard.