Originally Posted by
staehpj1
Are you touring in some especially high risk place? I think that most places I tour I am assumed to not have very deep pockets and thus am pretty unlikely to be a target. It would never occur to me to bother with a ersatz wallet anywhere that I have toured. I don't carry enough cash to be worth the effort and my plastic can be cancelled and is protected against loss due to theft. Heck, if anything I'd be more likely to do that at home than on tour. That said I don't do it at home either despite living in a fairly high crime city.
I actually don't carry a wallet on tour. I use a little ziploc bag with a limited selection of plastic and some cash (typically $100 or less). It is typically in my handle bar bag if using one. I have also carried it in a little backpack or more rarely in a jersey pocket.
The deep south. LA, southern AR, MS, and the like, way off the beaten path. There are little towns all over the country that are so dead and so dying that the only real industry are family run meth labs and copper stripping operations that hit foreclosed homes and buildings. While I operate under the assumption that most people are very friendly and giving, there are also those who are moraly ravaged by chemical induced need. And yeah, I have been in a situation where I was alone, and the truck full of thugs were probably related to the local sherrif. Even if you look poor, if someone sees you staying at a fleabag motel and then susses out that you will be on a bike in the middle of nowhere later, it is a risk. Grudgingly handing over a baggy with what looks like the goods might possibly satisfy and give time to book it.(and yeah, its in a little baggy as opposed to a wallet, I actualy do use the cash out of it like its real, its just the cards that are no good.)
Possibly sounds paranoid, but if you have ever lived or worked with addiction and those afflicted, you get a perspective that its a small concession to financial safety to sacrifice an ounce or two as a possible decoy.
Edit to say, that I can't stress enough that most people are really nice, and its usualy very safe to travel in these areas. And I recognize that anyone who would try to steal from you might also check to see if you swallowed anything valuable, but carrying the fake is a habit I picked up working and dealing with some terribly messed up folks.
ON the topic, I usualy use a debit card that is connected to an account that I can periodicaly recharge via online banking. So I seldom keep more than a couple hundred in there. As to cash, usualy fifty to a hundred bucks at a time.