Easy Rider

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.