Travel the World for FREE!!!

Traveling the world for free is the dream of most of us.  Here’s an ingenious scheme to do just that.  Here’s what you’ll need: A zip-tie long enough to go around your neck, a carabiner and a three by five card.  Inscribe the following message or something similar.  Unless you’re particular furry, change ‘teddy bear’ to uncle, brother, cousin.  You get the idea.

Dear Traveler,

My name is (insert cute name here).  I am the teddy bear (sister, brother…) of (Susie, Tommy or Timmy work well as they conjure up images of cute kids in the minds of most people).  I would like to join you on your trip!  Would you take me and make a picture of me on your holiday location?  Then e-mail this picture and the name of your holiday location to (you can use anyone’s e-mail or send them to me if you’d like. velohobo@gmail.com).   This way class (whatever) of primary school (wherever) can follow my travels around the world.  Would you then give me to another traveler?  Thank you very much and enjoy your holiday.

This scheme seems much safer than the traditional approach of mailing yourself places ‘Postage Due’ and sneaking out of the post office in the middle of the night.

Happy travels, Jack

Cycling with a Nonjudgmental Stance

Cycling, as with any other athletic endeavor, encourages judgmental thinking.  Judgments flow forth like water from a spigot and, if allowed to go unchecked, can stay with you long after you’ve gotten off the bike.  Judgments about your performance or your riding partner’s.  Judgments about riders you’ve passed or those who’ve passed you.  Judgments can leave you feeling either deflated or superior. Is this the emotional state we want to train our brains to be in when we are on our bikes?

Feedback is an important ingredient in attaining goals and bike computers are great at giving feedback.  Whether you’re trying to increase speed or distance, computers are a great tool.  But if you find that the computer is taking away from the pleasure and simple joy of riding a bike (as I have) you may try mounting it on your seat post out of view.  I’ve chosen not to ride with a computer at all, and I can honestly say I don’t miss it.  I no longer have a constant reminder of how slow I’m riding or how little ground I’ve covered staring me in the face.  I am where I am and going as fast as I please.

Judgment can creep in when riding with others too, especially when riding with someone traveling much slower.  Learning to appreciate the slower pace and the opportunity to practice patience has increased my enjoyment of cycling tremendously.  When riding multiple days a slow and steady pace is better than hammering all out the first day, then finding yourself exhausted on the third day out.  When I tour with others, I like to let the slowest person set the pace.  After all, what’s the hurry?  It’s not a race, it’s a tour.

Just my opinion, Jack

Road Hazard!

It’s that time of year again.  I’ve recently re-certified in CPR and First Aid.  This is my 9^th consecutive year of certification and thankfully I’ve not used first aid beyond applying a band-aid and helping someone who was having a seizure.  Certification is a requirement of my job, but it’s a good idea for anyone heading out for a bike ride.

We invest a lot of time learning to repair our bikes and I’d be willing to bet more people carry a bike repair kit than carry a first aid kit.  I don’t mean to be ‘preachy’; I’m just saying it might be worth your while to invest a few bucks for a small first aid kit and a few hours once a year to prepare yourself for the unexpected.

I’ll let it go at that so I don’t drive off my entire readership.  If you’re interested, here’s the link to the American Red Cross training page.  Just enter your zip code and find a class near you.  For all my loyal readers in Finland and Uganda, I have no idea where you should go for training, but I’m sure there’s something out there for you.

Thanks for reading, Jack

Skills: How to Bike Tour ~ a comprehensive beginner’s guide

There are more than a few “Bike Touring Experts” out there who can tell you what gear you should and shouldn’t take and on what bicycle you can and can’t tour.  I’m not an expert, but I won’t let that stop me from giving my expert advice to anyone considering their first bike tour.

So, here’s how it’s done:

Pack some stuff.  Pack it in anything you have that you can safely and comfortably ride with.
Hop on whatever bike you own, or borrow a bike.  Any bike will do.
Ride somewhere and spend the night.
Ride home.

Ta daa!  You’re now a bike tourist.  Welcome to the loosely associated collection of all kinds of people riding all kinds of bikes carrying all kinds of gear to all kinds of places.

Check out the Gallery of Velo Hobos for a visual aid.

Keep it simple, Jack

Eat Bark on Your Next Bike Tour!

Sampling the local cuisine is one my favorite things about touring, but there are times when eating in restaurants is not an option.  Often there’s just nothing around or you’re too tired and smelly to dine with the locals or you may want to save a few bucks.

 

Here’s a great resource I’ve stumbled across: The  Backpacking Chef  featuring recipes, links to suppliers and ‘How To” articles on dehydrating food.  I think I may try the ‘pumpkin pie bark’.  Sounds yummy.

 

Jack

 

Why Bark?

• When you cook and rehydrate Bark with other vegetables and meat, your backpacking meal turns into a thick stew with flavorful sauciness.
• Because you make Bark from starchy foods high in complex carbohydrates, your hearty meal will power you up the next mountain with calories to spare.
• Bark makes a great backpacking food because it weighs in at a couple of ounces per serving dry. Ten pounds of potatoes barks down to just eleven ounces.
• If you run out of fuel or water, you can munch on Bark dry. Bark will reconstitute right in your mouth. Pumpkin Pie Bark goes in like a chip and down like pie!

via Food Dehydrator Recipes.

Navigating w/o a Compass from Brian’s Backpacking Blog

We seldom need a compass bike touring, but from time to time it is nice to get your bearings as you consult a map or come to a cross-road.  Brian Green describes a quick and easy way to determine ‘south’ using an analog watch.  Follow the link below the quote to learn more.  Read his other post,  Part One,  to learn a little about night time navigation (not very useful for bike touring, but fun around the campsite).

Using an Analog Watch to Find South

This is the second part of a three part series describing easy to remember and reliable ways to accurately navigate without the use of a compass. In part one I described how you can use easily identifiable constellations to locate the north star, Polaris. In this second part I will show how you can use an analog watch and the sun to quickly determine North and South.

Here’s the link:    Brian’s Backpacking Blog.

Skills: Hand Tooling Leather

So here’s a post of little or no interest to most people.  Enjoy. 

Having hobbies other than cycling gives me a guilt free excuse to avoid pedaling out in this miserable weather.  The two hobbies that consume my obsessive mind when the roads are iced over are mastering the claw-hammer banjo (which I am far from achieving) and leather craft.

Leather tooling is an easy hobby to pick up and with a few basic tools, a small workspace and a lot of patience almost anyone can do it.  Some people may find making art out of the flesh of doe eyed animals a bit sick, but for those of us who enjoy gnawing the juicy bloody meat of these innocent creatures, making the most of the leftovers from the carcass is down right ethical.

Anyway, here’s the process in a nutshell.  First find a design you would like to transfer to the leather.  I use black and white tattoo templates for most of my projects.  You want a design with  bold lines that is easy to trace.  Trace the design onto tracing paper.  Lightly wet the leather.  This is called ‘casing the leather’ and will allow you to trace over the design onto the leather.  Next carve out the design using a swivel knife.  You can accent your carving using an assortment of stamps and modeling tools if you like.  Lastly finish your project off with leather dyes and a product such as Eco Flo, which resists the dye and makes your design stand out.  Tandy Leather is the biggest supplier of leather tooling products and I have had great service from them.

For those who are still reading, thanks, Jack

On Being Prepared

About ten years ago I was backpacking with a friend along the Bartram Trail here in Western North Carolina.  Three days into our hike she slipped on wet leaves and shattered her ankle.  We weren’t doing anything dangerous or reckless.  We weren’t on a particularly technical trail and we were both packing light.  It just happened.  Miles from any road or trailhead we were on our own. 

Luckily one of us was a skilled wilderness first aid responder with years of real life experience in handling just this type of emergency.  Unluckily, it wasn’t me, it was the victim.  I knew nothing.  But with a cool head she talked me through the process of creating a makeshift splint out of hiking poles, fleece jacket, sleeping pad and of course, duct tape.

So for the past eight years, without fail, I take a CPR and First Aid recertification class.  Partly because it’s a requirement of my job, but mostly because things just happen.  I don’t believe riding a bike is particularly dangerous.  Neither is bike touring.  But even out on a day ride we can find ourselves miles from help.

Basic First Aid and CPR classes are available in almost every town and cost only a nominal fee.  The investment in time is only a few hours.  A good basic First Aid kit is very inexpensive, is light weight and takes up only a small space in your pack or pannier.  I believe the most important item in any First Aid kit is a cell phone.  In an emergency, you are the link between the victim and professional medical assistance.  With just a little knowledge, a few supplies and a way to contact help, you can save a life.

Just something to consider, Jack

Meanwhile Over at Gear Talk

Jason Klass has a simple but useful do-it-yourself project to upgrade the water bottle you’ve pulled from the trash.    Here’s the link: Gear Talk. 

I should say, I have nothing against Nalgene.  I’ve owned a few of their bottles and they are very durable, but heavy when compared to a plastic water or juice bottle. 

Jack

Do It Yourself Ultralight Fire Pit

Cooking fire pits work to contain the blaze, reflect heat towards the cooking area and hold the pot or pan you are cooking with.  A good cooking fire pit can weigh hundreds of pounds and take lots of hard digging to install.  Not a very practical thing to carry on your bike. 

You can make a miniature version out of aluminum roofing flashing and a couple of paper clips and tent stakes.  If you’re having a hard time finding roofing flashing you can use a disposable aluminum baking pan.  Use a paper punch for the air vents.  Use kitchen shears to cut the flashing the right size to roll up and store in your cook pot. This setup works well with a simple twig fire, esbit tabs or homemade fuel tabs, or an alcohol burner. It is very efficient at reflecting heat. Be sure to build your fire on a piece of aluminum foil to avoid scorching the ground. 

Tailwinds, Jack

Setting Things on Fire

Before I describe my current stove, a little disclosure of my personal history with stoves might help to explain my stove addiction. Being a typical heterosexual type male I’ve always enjoyed setting things on fire.

My first stove was a Coleman multi-fuel I picked up somewhere when I was a teenager. It would burn unleaded gas and had a little pump on the side to pressurize the tank. All the elements for a proper disaster were in place. Teenager? Check. Gasoline? Check. Matches? Check. Device to spray gasoline into the air? Check.

To this day the hair on my left hand grows in thicker than the hair on my right. Much of my first attempt to light it is a blur, but I do remember kicking the little metal fireball away from my camp-site and into the woods then spending some time stomping out the fire. But I still used it for a few years with only the occasional mini-inferno.

Next I moved on to a tiny German-made butane stove that would easily fit into a pocket. The fuel was expensive and hard to find. I soon lost the German stove and replaced it with a Primus stove that worked great but was very noisy. Pressurize gas stoves are expensive to fuel, the canisters end up in landfills and they sound like little jet engines. The noise seems to take away from the back-to-nature experience.

I tried a wood burning stove with a battery powered blower underneath. It worked pretty well and was a move in the right direction, but a bit on the heavy side. Burning wood was appealing, fuel was everywhere and free, but rain is common in the mountains and a few experiences of eating dry/uncooked noodles led me to look for something more reliable.

I’ve used esbit tabs as well. These are a good choice if you are trying to go as light as possible and space is an issue. With the esbit tabs you can take exactly what is needed for each day.  But esbit tabs leave a sticky black residue on your pots (and I’m worried, in your lungs as well, if you are not careful).

On to alcohol; my current favorite. I have a couple of Trangia stoves and love their simplicity, affordability and reliability. I’ve also been making Pepsi can stoves that weigh and cost nothing. Wood and grain alcohol is environmentally safe (I think) and can be found in any hardware, auto parts or liquor store. The only drawback is the invisible flame which can easily burn the bejesus out of you. 

I used a version of the ‘Cat Stove’ popular with many Ultralight backpackers on my last trip and it worked fairly well.  I was only heating water for my morning coffee.  I carried food that didn’t need cooking.  In hindsight, I don’t think that was the best choice and by the end of the week I was really looking forward to hot food.  There are not many opportunities for dining out on the BRP, so menu planning is a major part of any self contained tour.  Next time, I think I’ll do dehydrated meals at least once a day.

And I can hardly wait till next time.  Jack

Book Review: Bicycle Maintenance & Repair by Todd Downs

If you own a bike you need this book or one similar.  There are a few others out there, Park Tools has one that is well thought of and there is even a ‘Bicycle Repair and Maintenance for Dummies’.  Whichever one you choose, I don’t think you will regret the purchase.  I know, some of you reading this are probably bike mechanics and I would love your input as to which manual is the best.

I still take my bike to my local shop for most repairs, but touring is all about becoming more self-reliant.  Even if you never intend to do any work on your bike, having a repair manual will make you a more informed bike shop customer.  You will be able to better communicate what is going on with your bike to the mechanic.  You will also be more aware of the labor and expensive specialized tools involved in the repair and perhaps a bit more understanding when you get the bill.

The repair manual I have is Todd Downs’ Bicycle Maintenance & Repair for Road & Mountain Bikes.  Well illustrated, this book takes you through repair jobs from the most basic, fixing a flat to more advanced jobs, like bottom bracket overhauls.  Other topics include boxing a bike and an overview of bike specific tools.  I bought mine from Amazon and the price was about twenty bucks.  Worth every penny.

 Thanks for reading, Jack

Skills: How to Stealth Camp

First step, select a safe spot.  If you can find a secluded area near a picnic grounds with a public restroom and water source, all the better.  You can hang out in a non-creepy fashion and as dark approaches slip off into the woods.  Nothing creepy about that, right?

Next, hide the bikes.  You can use my approach, hide the bike behind a large Jurassic looking tree, or use Larry’s approach and fling your bike in the bushes in a carefree manner making it look like part of the natural landscape.

Lastly, make camp far enough into the woods to remain undetected.  Make sure your food and smelly items are hung a safe distance from your makeshift camp.  Also note that you’re not making camp in a deer path or a place where animals bed down for the night.  It’s important to get your bearings before dark and break camp at first light. Be sure to leave no trace.

Thermo-Lite 2.0 Bivvy Sack Review or How to Survive Sleeping in a Hammock

Hammocks are a great way to reduce pack or pannier weight.  With no need to carry a sleeping pad, tent poles, ground cloth or a lot of tent stakes, a good hammock sleeping set-up can weigh less than two pounds.  I find them to be extremely comfortable and relaxing and when a gentle breeze gets the thing rocking you can have a sleeping experience common ground dwellers envy.

But that gentle breeze can be a serious problem.  All that air-flow around the body carries away body heat.  Even in mild climates you can become too chilled to be comfortable.  If the temperature drops in the middle of the night to mid-fifties or below, it can become downright dangerous.  I notice the cold most in the hip area where my sleeping bag’s loft has been the most compressed. 

So, here are two things I’ve found helpful. 

• One, reduce the airflow around the body.  Add an additional tarp or poncho over the ridgeline, wear extra clothing and/or zip-up your sleeping bag as the temperature drops. 
• Two, add some form of insulation underneath your shoulders and hip area.

Adventure Medical Kits’ Thermo-Lite 2.0 bivvy sack is a product that does both of these fairly well and weighs less than 7 ounces. The 2.0 is manufactured with a non-woven, reflective fabric that has a napped inner surface.  It’s reusable, easily repaired (with duct tape) and cost around 30 dollars. Pair this with a sleeping bag liner or very light summer bag if needed.  It’s waterproof, windproof and promises to reflect up to 80% of your body heat.  It’s long enough for most folks to pull over the head and Velcro closed, but don’t.  If you breathe inside the bivvy it will become clammy and damp. And that is the only downside; becoming too warm and clammy.  The 2.0 features a vented foot and a generous Velcro opening to help control moisture.  I bought mine from Campmor.

Thanks for reading, Jack

Ultralight Water Filtering System

Over many years of back-country travel and wilderness camping I’ve gone through three water-filtering systems.  An MSR SweetWater, a Katadyn Hiker and my current system, a clean handkerchief and chemical tablets.  Probably not as effective at preventing Giardia Infection as filtering, it is without a doubt the lightest alternative (next to boiling, which is impractical).

Finding clean drinking water is usually not a problem when bike touring, so a heavy filtering system may not be high on your packing list.  I carry Portable Aqua’s PA Plus, a two pill system which neutralizes the iodine aftertaste and color and weighs only a couple of ounces.  I was surprised to find it at Wal-Mart of all places.  Try finding replacement parts for your water filter at a small town department store.  I’ve used this system many times backpacking, but only a couple of times bike touring. 

Use the handkerchief to filter out the big chunks then add 2 tablets of iodine for every quart or liter of water.  Allow a small amount of leakage around the rim of your container to kill any creepy crawlies that may be waiting there for you to take your first sip.  Wait 30 minutes and add the neutralizer.  Wait a few more minutes for the neutralizer to do its thing and you’re done.

Thanks for reading, Jack