Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Gear appraisal

 Gear Appraisal:

Alright, so let's get into it. I just emptied my whole backpack out onto the concrete in front of a library and snapped pictures of all the different stuff I carried with me. I'm going to split things into four categories: Essential, worth the weight, not worth the weight and useless. Bear in mind that this really only applies to the way I did this trip. For example, I'm calling my maps essential, but you can certainly travel across the country without using the ACA maps, I just couldn't do the trip the way I did this one.

Let's start with the bike.




Essential: Duh.
I rode a 2011 Specialized Allez across the country, which is most certainly a road bike. It's got 700/23 tires and a 50/34 compact in the front with an 11/28 cassette in back. I was told numerous times before I started the trip that you can't tour on a road bike. That's obviously false. The reason given was that it can't handle the weight of panniers, which I didn't use. I'll comment more on my method of travel when I get to the backpack itself, but the road bike served me very well across the whole country. I've got to give a huge thank you to everyone who pitched in from Emmanuel to get it for me after I was hit by a car on another bike back in college. I would never have fallen so far in love with cycling without this bike, so I owe you guys big time.

I rode with gatorskin tires and replaced the back tire once. I replaced most of my drivetrain components one time, in Lander, Wyoming.

Water bottles: Essential

2 water bottles were enough to get me from refill to refill, which was as often as 15 miles in Missouri where it was humid and as infrequent as 40-50 miles when it was cooler and I wasn't sweating. There were a few 60-100 mile segments without water where I filled up an old apple juice jug and put it in my backpack. That seemed to get me through.


Cell Phone: Essential
It let me write blog entries, communicate with people, order new pedals in Kentucky and look at maps and services for towns when I needed to. My most useful piece of gear. That said, I had T-Mobile service which was absolutely useless outside of towns and heavily populated areas. Even now I'm on the coast of Oregon in a city with only 1 bar of reception. Verizon is supposed to be better if you want to have service across the country. For the most part, I didn't mind being disconnected.

Charger: Essential
Cell phone is useless without a charger. I accidentally left my charger (with my rear blinker) in Mitchell a few days before finishing and replaced it with a double-usb variety. It's nice to charge both phone and lights at the same time.

Wallet: Worth the weight
I could have just carried a credit card and a little cash. It was nice to have a wallet to put people's business cards into when they inevitably gave them out. Do carry cash though, you can run into diners in small towns that won't take a card and don't have an ATM.

Headphones: Worth the weight
They weigh almost nothing. I got them in Kansas when I finally realized what hundreds of miles of flat nothingness was going to be like. Having the little microphone was cool because I could talk to people on the phone while I rode.

Bike Lights: Worth the weight
The first of the "insurance" items. You don't need to ride at night,  hence you don't need bike lights. On the other hand, if you get stuck somewhere where you don't want to camp by the highway (e.g. Yellowstone) and it's getting dark, you'd better have lights for your bike. You couldn't pay me to ride after twilight without being well lit up. They also came in handy during my night ride in Wyoming and during some early days in Missouri.



Bike repair kit

Oil: Essential
The little container of oil can make all the difference between a dry squeaky chain and a well oiled drivetrain.

Tire levers: Essential
You have to be able to replace a flat tire. No question. Tubes are also essential, but I think I put those in another picture.

Allen Wrenches: Essential
Only carry the sizes relevant on your bike. Good for tightening the headset / bolts on the chainring and also for taking the seat off your bike when someone in a little car wants to let you stay at their place.

Bike Pump: Essential
You have to be able to pump up after changing a flat. Helps to be able to top off between towns too. Every time I hit a bike shop I used their floor pump to bring my tires up to pressure.

Rubber for boot: Worth the weight
In case a tire splits, you want something to reinforce it until you can replace it. Not essential since you can make one out of almost anything, but useful since it weighs almost nothing.

Spoke wrench: Not worth the weight
Never touched it. If I wanted minor adjustments I would do them in town. If something so tragic happened that I snapped a spoke or got it way out of adjustment, I would wrap it around another spoke and ride the bike out of true into a town.




Maps: Essential
I started out with 12 maps, sending them back along the way to my friend Sarah as I went to save weight. Eventually I realized that they weighed almost nothing and held on to the last 7. These are the Adventure Cycling Association maps and they are pure gold. It includes information like campsites, has the phone numbers of places like fire stations where they let cyclists camp, information on which towns have restaurants, etc.

Compass: Worthless
The directions were so good that I never needed a compass except to figure out which direction the wind was coming from (and consequently how much pain I'd be in that day.)


Spare tubes: Essential
Try to carry two so that when you use one, you still have one more until you can restock.

Bike Lock: Worth the weight
The second of the "insurance items." Completely unnecessary in almost every small town across the country, but good to have when passing through larger towns. I got a really light cheap one that I wouldn't trust for more than an hour or so in any big city, but it did the job the few times I used it.  

Insect repellent: Worth the weight
This is totally a luxury item, but it let me spend a lot of nights outside of my sleeping bag until it got cold enough that the mosquitoes went away. If I was traveling through cold country alone, I would replace it with a head net and just use the sleeping bag for protection at night, but that would have been impractical on the really hot nights out east. Some nights it didn't get below 90 until after 10, and it was nice to sleep outside the bag without getting bitten. An alternative strategy would be to let the mosquitoes bite you until you run out of surface area.

Toiletry kit: Worth the weight
Toothbrush, toothpaste, comb and bar of soap. The comb came in surprisingly useful for getting all the little flies out of my hair once it got longer. If you go through one of those little swarms when you're all sweaty, they stick everywhere!

I also used sunscreen until Montana, at which point my arms and legs were so tan that I could ride a full day in the sun and not get the slightest indication of a burn. 


Sleeping Bag: Essential
I used a Katabatic Palisade quilt rated down to 30 degrees. It took me down to the mid 20's in Montana very comfortably wearing just a Tshirt and shorts. The quilt style means the bag doesn't have a back on it, but as long as I tucked the bag under my pad and buckled it underneath, I was plenty warm. This bag performed magnificently and it weighed only about a pound.

Sleeping Pad: Essential
Surprisingly, the pad is not intended to make the ground comfortable, which it didn't. Its job is to keep you insulated from the cold ground, which it did. For that reason, I cut everything off the pad except the torso, which has worked marvelously for me on both backpacking and now biking trips. 

Tarp: Essential
A homemade 8x10ft silicon-nylon tarp. The last of the really big insurance items. It weighed a little over a pound and was complete dead weight except for the few times when I needed to pitch it at night (or in a hail storm) to stay dry. At those moments it was absolutely priceless and I'm glad I carried it the whole way.

Groundcloth: Worth the weight
A luxury item. When sleeping on the dirt or on wet grass I would lay the cloth out before putting down my pad and sleeping bag. It doubled as an emergency bag cover to keep the down quilt dry. Only weighed a few dozen grams.


Spare Clothing

Tshirt, shorts, flip flops: Essential
I wish I would have brought a wool shirt (warmer when wet) and lighter shorts, but otherwise these two items were all I needed for camp. The reason I'm putting these as essential is that if you don't get out of your biking chamois and jersey to wash them and let them dry out, they start to chafe really badly. All the salt crystallizes in the seams and rubs you raw if you don't wash fairly regularly. To avoid this, I rinsed them out in public bathrooms, rivers, hoses, whatever I could find every night.

Towel: Worth the weight
I just brought a little hand towel which was big enough to dry myself off after taking a shower or a quick bath in a local river/stream.


Extreme weather clothing, here's where I could have saved some weight.

Rainjacket (in the stuff sack): Essential
Part of the emergency system for when it got really cold and wet. With that waterproof jacket on, I got hot fast even when I wasn't working terribly hard. Only rode with it once, after I got caught out in the hail storm in Wyoming.

Rain pants (in the stuff sack) : Worth the weight
My legs never got as cold as my torso. It could have had to do with the fact that they were constantly pumping. I'd bring them along again, but they were more for while I was stopped or for setting up camp in the rain.

Arm warmers: Worth the weight
Absolutely wonderful. I used them on a lot of cold climbs and windy descents with great success. They made riding a lot more pleasant.

Spandex: Worth the weight
My modification-free spandex allowed me to go swimming when I hit local hot springs or pools. Those were some of the best stops so I'll say they were worth bringing.

Gloves: Not worth the weight
I only wore them a few times. The dexterity afforded by having warm hands was lost by the bulkiness of wearing gloves.

Hat: Worthless
Never wore it.

Leg warmers: Worthless
Absolutely terrible. I only wore them on the climb over Hoosier Pass and would have been fine without them.

Spare socks: Worthless
Never wore them

Handkerchief: Worthless
Didn't even know I had this thing along.

(All of those items went in that stuff sack and doubled as my pillow)

Backpack: Essential

I carried a 4000 cubic inch Porter backpack made my Hyperlite Mountain Gear. It's simple and light, which fits my style well. This method of touring got lots and lots of comments as it's apparently not common. Whenever I stopped to talk to touring cyclists they always thought I was just somebody out for a day ride, not someone crossing the country. Most of them mentioned how they could never bear to ride with a backpack on and asked how my back felt. 

I really didn't mind wearing the pack at all. After a while I got used to the feel and got pretty good at adjusting the weight around as I rode, so I didn't have to stop for it. It helped that the pack was small and light, weighing in at just over 13 pounds by the end. To see how small it was, here's another angle of me at the finish: 


The next time I get to tour again, it'll probably be up or down one of the coasts, and I'm going to do it the exact same way, minus everything I labeled "not worth the weight" or "worthless." The one piece of gear that I wish I would have brought was those little waterproof boots that you can put over your cycling shoes. Wet socks after a rainstorm get annoying very quickly and I would have loved to have those shoe covers. I loved riding the road bike and quite enjoyed the mileage I was able to put on and the relative ease with which I climbed hills compared to the fully loaded folks. 

I'm posting this from Seattle, WA and probably won't be able to write my final reflection entry until the end of the week, but for those who bothered to read through, now you've got a good idea of the assets I had with me on my trip. Hopefully it'll be helpful to someone planning a trip of their own!

2 comments:

  1. Have a safe trip back to school. Thanks for sharing your adventure.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent run-down of your equipment, Carl. Thank you!
    Gary

    ReplyDelete