After three months of touring the Rocky Mountains from Jasper, Alberta (up there in Canada, don'tcha know), to Mexico, we're all back here in the lawless border regions of Tehachistan. The fangs of winter are nipping at the heels of fall with the first snow of the season dusting the peaks. I gaze in amazement at the weather forecast for Jasper: A low of -7 deg. F.! It's good to be in the south, so to speak. For those who didn't get the news, here's the link to the journal for the big tour:
I will be making a few more posts on that journal to wrap things up--some general considerations and gear reviews. There will still be plenty of cycling in our future, but we're both interested in regaining our rock climbing chops. For me personally, I have a specific big climbing goal I want to achieve in 2013, which will be the subject of a post coming to this blog soon.
Greetings, my readers, the few hardy souls who haunt these pages. I've been working with some new technology for the coming tour--a Samsung Galaxy 8.9" tablet. The goal is to save weight and bulk and be able to update the blog, check email, etc. from towns and other wifi areas along the way. I'll have more on the Galaxy soon, but the main issue here is that I'm finding it extremely difficult and cumbersome to draft in a word program and copy/paste to blogger. Blogger eliminates basic formatting, so multiple paragraphs become one big, hard-to-read block. Ugh. There really seems to be no simple way around this. One key consideration is that I be able to draft wherever I may be then quickly post once we get to a hotspot. Not happening on blogger, it seems.
Soooo...for the duration of the tour, and for the coming weeks, too, I'll be developing a Crazyguyonabike.com journal:
Honestly, although I've been enjoying some aspects of learning how to use the tablet, if I'd known in advance what a hassle it would be for the job I want it to do, I would have probably skipped the purchase and just lugged one of the netbooks we have. Still, I think we'll save about a pound, so that's something. I need to look at importing a few posts from this blog to give the readers over there some background.
So let's say that An American Explorer is going on holiday over to Crazyguyonabike.com. See you there!
This is the first in a series of posts that will deal with our gear selections, new and stuff we've had for a while. Although it's possible to take on an adventure like this for comparatively little money, our version involves some investment, not the least of which is arranging for a house sitter for four months and renting and driving a vehicle into back-of-beyond Canada--well, Jasper, anyway. For others considering cycle touring, these posts will serve as a resource for making selections. I have my biases, which will become clear soon enough, but my goal is always to give good information.
As the sub-title of the post suggests, this is about getting sleep, laying one's pedal-thrashed carcass down for a few hours of much needed regeneration before getting up and doing it all over again. In this area, I will cut no corners, spare no expense, and deal with extra weight as necessary. Having a comfortable platform for hanging out and sleeping is one of the most important considerations for me and Jodi. If I don't sleep well, the whole experience starts to unravel--as do I.
My equipment has gone the standard evolutionary route, I suppose. When I was quite young (early/mid-teens), I could sleep on those spongy, flesh-colored "insulite" foam pads, but by my late teens, those days were over. Next began a decades-long relationship with the Thermarest corporation. I've had 1" pads (too thin), and for years and years used the 1.5" model, usually 3/4 length so I had to put something under my heels to make the pads workable. Finally, we said, and I quote: "Screw it!" And went with the deluxe 2" "Camp Rest" model, complete with chair kit cover, for a lot of life in camp is not in the horizontal plane. We sit to cook, eat, gawk at the sunset, so a comfortable chair is important, too. With this setup, you are the King of Kings on his throne:
The Camp Rest and this chair kit were on my bike for my 2007 cross country ride. In general, I was quite happy with it, but still, like a junkie, I craved more, thicker, softer, yummy sleepier! So we tried the Big Agnes line of air mattresses, a high-tech rework of the classic design:
These are light and comfortable, if a bit noisy to sleep on. The down side? The chairs are not the most sit-friendly, although these were okay. The big problem with Big Agnes is production quality. We've had three of these fail along the seems, resulting in very annoying leaks that left us with limp pads in the morning and the occasional refill in the middle of the night. I cannot recommend this brand. Sorry, Big Aggie, we love your tent (more on that in a later post), but we'll pass on the pad.
So my quest for the perfect pad was unfulfilled, the Grail illusive, the Sorcerer's Stone hidden. Thanks to the glories of the Internet, I found--to date--the best sleeping system for my needs: Exped. Below is a photo of the Exped Synmat 7 long:
This line of pads, designed by a Swiss wizard, has some very nice features. The pads are almost 3" thick, have a soft-to-the-touch top fabric, and, get this, have their own built in pump system:
The pump is constructed of a one-way valve inside and to the left of the visible plastic valve. Just pop the inlet valve, place hands as indicated, and start pushing. My large pad 78 x 26" inflates in two minutes or less. No light-headed staggering about after a day on the open road, and no damp air injected into the pad. Here's a view showing how to inflate:
The pad also has an excellent chair sleeve that stays on the unit. Here's a pic of the Exped next to my Camp Rest:
Here are the two pads rolled, side by side:
So what are the drawbacks? One, $$$. Two, weight. The bulk doesn't bother me, and the cost isn't a big deal for me--about $150 at REI--because a good night's sleep is worth it. So, how much does it weigh? Ugh, about 4 lbs.! This is not a lot more than the Camp Rest, but many weight-conscious hiker-bikers will find this a deal breaker. We're willing to haul some extra weight for the comfort of the perfect camp. These are the best we've used, and we look forward to many nights in the wilds on these pads. Check them out. I think you'll be impressed.
With the conclusion of Vision Quest 2012, my thoughts and actions related to human powered travel have turned toThe Big One, the monster tour that lurks in our future, creeps into our thoughts, our dreams, our wallets. Our goal, which I may have mentioned before, is to load Jodi, me, the hound Django, two trikes, a trailer, and touring gear into a one-way rental van and maroon ourselves in the wilds of Canada. Then over the next four months we will struggle south, crossing, recrossing and crisscrossing the Continental Divide many times down to Silver City, New Mexico. Then we will turn west and cross the Sonoran and Mojave deserts to get home. Most of the route will be paved, but we've worked in a couple of significant dirt road passages through the Colorado Rockies, including one pass over 12,000 ft., which will be the high point of the tour for sure. In 2007 when I did my solo cross country tour, the original plan had been to do it as a couple, but Jodi's career was heating up, and she had work to do. Now we're taking this big leap together. Based on my research so far and what I already know about the route, this may turn out to be the finest of all possible north American tours. Don't get me wrong. There are many beautiful parts of the country, but week upon week of corn and soy in the Midwest gets mighty old, and the climate in the East can quite challenging--humidity, hurricanes, you name it. This tour (see map links below) will involve mountain touring for the majority of its length and then some fine desert riding for the last few weeks. Unlike my cross country adventure, the bulk of the riding for this tour will be in remote, lightly populated areas, so much of the camping will be wild and free--our favorite. We've been working on gear selection, mapping, logistics, and most of the entries in the coming weeks (with a few exceptions) will deal with preparations for this big tour.
We're veterans of this kind of trek, but we're still anxious, uncertain, keyed up, ready to go. There's so much to do. Some of the biggest concerns have already been worked out. We've got a house sitter for the duration of the tour--hallelujah! We've worked out a landscape maintenance guy. We've put in the request for passport cards--for freakin' Canada, eh! Some of the bill paying still needs to be ironed out, although most of our financial stuff we already handle online. Perhaps the biggest hassle will be arranging for proper doggie chow along the way. It's not a good idea to shift and switch dog food, and it's often hard if not impossible to find small bags for a medium sized hound. To solve this problem,I'm drinking 12 -packs of excellent lager and ale! Well, the brew has its own intrinsic value, of course, but the boxes that the bottled brew is packed in are going to serve as shipping containers for dog food and extra goodies for the human trike motors. For the tour, for us, for our fine furry friend, no sacrifice is too great. I must soldier on.... We'll pack each box with two weeks worth of kibbles, which weigh in at 6 lbs. When we find we're getting close to running out, we'll have our house sitter or someone else drop ship another box general delivery to the next appropriate town on the route.
Here are some maps of the route. Although some details may be out of whack, these cover much of the route:
The main routing question I need to answer at this point is navigating the wilds of Phoenix. Adventure Cycling takes a straight forward but very tedious approach by picking up Hwy 60. We drove this section last winter--no freakin' thank you, freakin' thank you. So I've got some homework to do. The Phoenix basin as a vast array of bike paths, which we may use. Or, as mapped here, there may be a workaround. We have options, which is the main thing.
Time is critical on this tour. We need to clear the highest passes before major snow but be in the deserts late enough so that we can ride without baking us or Django. I think hitting the low desert starting in November should do the trick, and that's our aim.
Stay tuned for more developments, gear debates and analysis, the works!
