PaddleWise by thread

From: Craig Jungers <crjungers_at_gmail.com> subject: [Paddlewise] The difference between Paddling and Pedaling Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2010 09:08:13 -0700 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:54 PDT

As some of you know, I had a full knee replacement on my left knee on June
1st. June, as a result, is pretty much a blur in my memory. I remember more
of July but not the days I had physical therapy. Since the PT (and
oxy-codone) stopped in August I have noticed that life has brightened
considerably.

One thing my surgeon supported was a return to bicycling after a 20-year
hiatus so about a month after surgery I bought a Trek mountain bike and six
weeks after surgery pedaled the 3.5 miles each way to my surgeon's office
(with my wife shadowing me in the truck just in case I couldn't handle the
couple of steep hills along the route). He was surprised and gratified to
see my progress... so was I actually.

Because of an injury to that knee in the late 1980s I had to give up cycling
and, as a consequence, took up kayaking in an effort to find something I
could do well while still sitting flat on my ass. That worked out well,
actually. But this summer, because of the PT and the cycling, and because
getting into and out of a kayak has proven difficult (without a passing
crane) I've spent the past few months pedaling and not paddling. This has
led to a few observations.

Because my house has a lake (and a dock) on one side and a road (and a
driveway) on the other, much of the inconvenience of kayaking (transporting
it to a put-in and back home) is avoided for me. But there are differences
and similarities between the two sports.

1. The equipment is MUCH cheaper for bicycling than it is for kayaking. Even
a plastic sea kayak will cost as much new - or more - than a top-line
bicycle. Used prices for composite kayaks are often as much as for brand new
carbon-fiber road or mountain bicycles. It's only when you get into the
really top-of-the line bicycles that you approach the prices for the good
composite kayaks. And prices for bicycles tend to fall much faster than
those for kayaks.

2. Gear for kayaking is more expensive than the gear for bicycling (although
good clothing and shoes for bicycling is no slouch). There is little need
for a GPS on a bike although, surprisingly enough, quite a few cyclists have
them. A typical GPS for a kayak costs about the same as a GPS for a bike but
will more often have charts. A GPS for a bike will usually have inputs for
heart rate and/or cadence but not so often will it have maps. A decent
paddle for a kayak can cost as much (or more!) as a brand new bicycle from a
good brand (like Trek). There's no need for PFDs, drysuits, farmer john (or
jane) wet suits, flotation bags, or paddle floats on a bicycle even in the
most remote places you might pedal. I should add here that for serious
bicyclists gear can easily eat a hole in your bank account. My x/c trail
bike, which cost me $275 used, has at least $3,000 in parts bought and added
one at a time (shocks, wheels, tires, frame, shifters, derailleurs, seat,
pedals, cranks, etc.).

3. Maintenance for a bicycle, while not exactly onerous, is still more work
than maintenance for a kayak or its gear. A bike's chain and shifters need
to be lubricated and normal wear-and-tear on the chain and sprockets will
require that they be replaced from time-to-time. In general the gear for a
kayak doesn't actually wear out as much as it's just lost overboard or
broken.

4. Both sports can suffer from "home port" boredom where you tend to paddle
(or pedal) the same routes over and over because they are convenient. It's
usually easier to stuff a bike into the back of my pickup than it is to
carry and tie a kayak down on a roof rack. A bicyclist can travel just as
far to a new (or more exciting) place to pedal as a kayaker can to paddle
but whether one does that often depends more on location than attitude. I
used to drive to Puget Sound to paddle often but now I drive to Idaho;
almost as far but in the other direction.

5. Kayaks need a place to launch but bicycles - at least mountain bikes -
need trails and access to them. The access problem can be roughly equal but
once on the water a kayak needs nothing but the water. Finding decent trails
- and talking about them - occupy a fair proportion of a mountain biker's
time. Even so, this is where the comparison between mountain biking and sea
kayaking is the narrowest. The places may be different but the mindset of
finding and getting to them is the same. In this the Internet has no equal
and mountain bike forums are as filled with trail reports as kayak forums
are filled with "where I paddled" reports. If you live inland - as I do -
there are lots of trails and many of them are maintained by city park
departments. Ski areas - like Whistler in BC - have discovered new-found
profit margins in carrying cyclists and their bikes up the mountain in their
gondolas and chairlifts and letting them ride down specially prepared
trails.

6. Carrying a load in a kayak - especially camping gear - is a LOT easier
than doing the same thing on a bicycle. Weight is anathema on a bike. It
slows you down on hills (which kayakers seldom have to deal with) and simply
finding room for it on a bike is difficult. Kayaks - even relatively small
kayaks - have much more volume in which to stow camping gear. In general a
bike compares much closer to a backpacker while a kayak is more of a
mini-van.

7. But it's a LOT easier (and cheaper) to tow kids in a trailer behind a
bike than almost any other solution in kayaks. A really good bike trailer
costs about $500 while a double (or triple) kayak is much more expensive.
We've towed kids on many trails using equipment that converts easily from
bicycle to jogging to cross-country skiing. There is nothing really equal in
the kayaking world if you have children up to about age 9 or 10.

8. Aerobic activity on a mountain bicycle is comparable to a sea kayak as
long as both are used in their element. I get as good a workout on a trail
as I get paddling to a destination. But if I'm just playing the waves in
Deception Pass the workout is much less than if I play the trails above
Wenatchee. Then again, I don't get much of a workout riding to the grocery
store on my bike, either.

In general I found it quite easy to transfer paddling obsession to pedaling
obsession (and vice-versa) but I have much less money involved in my bikes
due to their rapid depreciation. My main focus for biking was at first
simply to gain greater flexibility in my new knee (and to finally beat the
8-year-old girl living across the street who could wax my wheelchair-bound
butt riding her pink Barbie bike on our daily trips to the play-park ten
blocks away). The two sports correlate and compliment easily. On a trip to
the coast one could load up a kayak and a mountain bike and explore beaches
from both sides of the land-water interface. Which explains why I see so
many vehicles on the freeways with bikes on the back and kayaks on the top.

I'm pretty happy with my new-found ability to pedal a bicycle. And I can
beat that 8-year-old. Except, as it turns out, that damn Barbie bike can
turn corners faster than I can on my big mountain bike. D'oh!

Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
www.nwkayaking.net
***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed
here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire
responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author.
Submissions:     PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net
Subscriptions:   PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net
Website:         http://www.paddlewise.net/
***************************************************************************