Old 03-24-20, 09:40 AM
  #7  
Tourist in MSN
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Madison, WI
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Bikes: 1961 Ideor, 1966 Perfekt 3 Speed AB Hub, 1994 Bridgestone MB-6, 2006 Airnimal Joey, 2009 Thorn Sherpa, 2013 Thorn Nomad MkII, 2015 VO Pass Hunter, 2017 Lynskey Backroad, 2017 Raleigh Gran Prix, 1980s Bianchi Mixte on a trainer. Others are now gone.

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Some of the posts on this forum sound like some people have more time on their hands right now than they are used to having. And I think this thread is an example. I do not mean that in a negative way, please do not take it that way.

I agree mostly with everything above, but I do not see how the virus will cause people to plan to go lighter.

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Changes that I think the virus will dictate is:

- How do you get to your starting point? I am avoiding international travel and travel by air, train or bus at this time.

- Most of my tours in USA were in places where more than half the time I did not have cell coverage. And my foreign trips, I did not have a sim card so cell coverage did not matter as I had none. I would not want to go anywhere now where I could not get help. That means both proximity to help and ability to make contact for help. I would not want to be far from help and get badly sick.

- I do not see how the virus would cause me to make changes to go lighter. Most of my tours were intentionally where I was far from retail stores, etc., so I generally carried a lot of contingencies, including a spare tire on some trips. If you are more likely to find retail stores are closed, going lighter weight might not be a great idea.

- Most people I have met or that have commented on this forum that travel ultra light are on shorter trips of five or less days or are traveling where retail stores have been readily available almost every day, or both. For example the ultra light bikepackers that I have seen doing single track were out for no more than three days.

- Food is heavy. I have carried over two and a half weeks of food at the start of one of my bike trips, that is not ultra light. I have done some two week long kayak trips where I started out with over 30 pounds of food when you include the weight of the dry bags it was in. On a flat water kayak trip like Lake Superior, there are are no hills so if I could get the weight of the canned goods in the boat, that did not slow me down like it would on a hilly bike trip.

Last summer I went backpacking for two weeks in Northern Minnesota. Hiking on a backpacking trail is pretty much the definition of social distancing. The segment that I planned to hike this year would mostly have been out of cell coverage and I would have needed a shuttle ride to get to the starting point. Due to the virus, my plans have changed, if I go I plan to stay where I have cell coverage and will be able to walk out to a road within a day. Unsure yet if I will avoid the shuttle, but since the shuttle might not even run, my initial planning is to avoid relying on it.

And if I do that backpacking trip, I will need to buy gas on the drive there and on the drive home. Fortunately, you can pay at the pump. I could do the entire trip with social distancing and not having to stop at any other places where I could pick up something contagious.
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