As the warmer days of Spring arrive so do the extra incentives to ride. Maybe you train all year, in snow, rain, sleet, hail, frogs falling from the sky... but, perhaps your less ardent loved ones are a tad less inclined to wheel out. This Spring lure them to ride with the promise of pleasant sunny conditions and new journeys. They don't know what they are missing thus it becomes your job to show them. Don't drag them out to ride (kicking and screaming) peak their interest instead, make them come to you out of their own inquisitiveness.



On your next ride, bring a camera - take photographs of some of the curious and beautiful things that you have become accustomed to seeing everyday. Blossoming flowers, budding trees, vivid sunrises or sunsets will all entice your non-cycling mates to join you. Once you've got a decent cache of photos, put together a route book with the images in it. Then show the book to your friends and invite them to join you on a casual ride to explore a route built up from stop-offs from the book made up of those photos as destination points.



In planning the route, make sure you keep the distance easily within the limits of the least accomplished participant. Plan to have breaks to enjoy the scenic attractions from your photos. Make the route fun and safe, with little to no traffic.




Want to further entice your friends'/family's interest? Try setting up a scavenger hunt or Geo Caching event to make the trip fun. This will give kids and adults alike an objective to take their minds off of the fact that they are actually riding. For the adults in the crowd, throw in a stop off at a winery for some mature fun.



Just make sure everyone knows to swish and spit... For the kids in the crowd, make one of the stops a carousel or amusement park ride that they can all go for a spin on. The green dragon (see photo) is sure to get a few giggles in, then the peanut gallery can hop back on the bike.


Make a section of the trip on an easily ridable off-road path, this will give everyone a taste of what the trail can offer. While in the woods, you can teach them some basic trail riding techniques and then point out the colors available from throughout the spectrum courtesy of young japanese maple leaves and cherry blooms. Pretty soon, you'll have more company on your rides then you can handle.