Originally Posted by
Black wallnut
I've read and heard good things about the MSR and they look good at REI. I, when I backpack, use a Alps Mountaineering Taurus that weighs about 7 pounds. I tried super lightweight tents and found the lack of headroom when sitting up was quite bothersome. I've not tried cycle touring yet. Your thread has me thinking....
I like the Dragonfly because it has good flame control. I like to do some "gourmet" cooking on the road. It's also very powerful, which comes in handy when boiling water for pasta. If you are doing less involved cooking like heating up canned stuff, you can get by with less. Although I like my Dragon Fly, I am going to ask my GF for one of these for Christmas:
Products - Optimus
Love the compact nature of it.
Geeze. 7 lbs. is heavy. I have a older Sierra Designs Velox 3P from when my GF did some touring with me. It's a hybrid tent that weighs in at 6.25 lbs. packed. Bad design, though. The way the flay is designed, when it's wet and you open it to get out, water drips into the tent. If you have the coin and want more space without a weight penalty, the BA Copper Spur UL3 is nice.
Bike touring is fun. Before I got into it, I had never slept in a tent in my life. My first night in a tent was the first night of a cross country+ ride. Went from Seattle to Bar Harbor, ME with a group then home to Philly and on to Ocean City, NJ on my own. I ended up doing about 10,000 loaded miles between late May of '99 and August of '00 during three long tours, including one in Andalucia, Spain. Hoping to do another cross-PA tour in September. For next year, I have started to look at South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska.