raybo

I always take a look at the gear I carried on my last tour with an eye toward taking out what wasn't useful and wondering if something else would make my bike riding life better. Up to now, it has been a casual look.

After my most recent tour, I decided to take a detailed look at my gear, weigh it all, and decide if the stuff I am carrying is worth the weight penalty.

Some things I discovered:

- My camping set-up weighs about 11 pounds.

- My cooking gear weighs about 6 pounds.

- My bike, racks, and Ortlieb bags weight about 45 pounds.

- I carried about 3 pounds of food that I didn't eat.

- All in, my touring set-up weighs about 75 pounds, not counting the food and water that I consume while riding.

- By making some reasonable trade-offs, I should be able to shave a couple pounds out of my load for my next tour (July).

Here is a link to the article, if you are interested in more detail.

Machka 

3 pounds of food? What were you carrying?

andrewclaus

Good review, and thanks for the report.

I had a similar post-ride look at my last X-C touring load. I decided to tour without cooking gear, for instance, about half your camping gear, and even without a camera, so my total packed and equipped bike weight was in the low 40s. At the end of the ride, I decided that the joy of cycling with the light load was worth living with all those drastic decisions of leaving stuff behind. And I enjoy the relief in my spouse's eyes that I don't have yet another album of photos to show all my friends.

raybo

As I said in the article, I was carrying dehydrated refried beans, oatmeal, olive oil, soy sauce, spices, a pound each of raisins and peanuts, and food I had dehydrated at home. Most of the extra weight was the uneaten peanuts and raisins.

I wasn't sure what vegetarian options I would have in Texas and I spent 2 days biking through an area without any services, at all.

Again, as is mentioned in the article, this is one area where I will be a bit more careful the next time.

Do you not carry any extra food or food preparation supplies when you tour?

staehpj1

Thanks for the article. It is always good to hear what others do.

Always a good idea to review gear choices, but I go a lot farther with it. I go over my list again and again, before and after every trip, just any time in between, and to a lesser extent when on tour. I have been over my list at least hundreds and probably thousands of times tweaking it here and there every time. That includes the general list as well as specific lists for individual trips.

I most often leave home with absolutely no food or only a bit of something that I might want and not be able to find on tour. I do fairly often take some freeze dried peas, but I am sure that they have never amounted to more than a half pound at most. There are a few options with my cook kit, but it is usually under a pound plus 7 ounces of fuel. If I go with the lightest options the whole deal including fuel is about a pound.

On previous tours I have sometimes taken a few gel energy packs or a couple power bars, but these days mostly do not.

I do have two days of food at a time on hand fairly often especially if stores are scarce. I buy instant oatmeal by the box and granola bars by the box as well so that means at any given time I will have enough extra on hand to get me by for an extra day if I should not find a store.

Finishing a tour with three pounds of food from home would never happen to me.

indyfabz

Aside from coffee, olive oil, a few small containers of spices like salt, pepper and (maybe)) cayenne, a head of gralic and maybe a Cliff Bar or two, I don't take anything. Then again, I am not a vegetarian so I don't have to worry about not finding something I can eat. Of course, if there will be no service where I am staying, I will carry adequate food, but I will try to buy it as late as possible rather than start out with it. I will aslo pick up something for lunch before heading out in the morning if I will be riding a long was through an area that has no services. For example, a few years ago we started out from a town MT that had plenty of services but would be riding for some 50 miles through an area that had absolutely nothing until we got to the next campground, which had a restaurant where we planned to have dinner. We brought sandwicihes and some pasta salad before hitting the road.

Machka 

No ... I don't tend to carry much in the way of food, or food preparation supplies ... just the flat-pack dishes I currently carry, my mug, and my spoon.

Rowan brings his Trangia, but if I were travelling alone, I'd go the non-cook method.

So for food on board, I might have a packet of cookies or a few granola bars, maybe a banana, sometimes a small block of cheese. But all of that stuff gets eaten pretty quickly and replaced regularly.

I can see, however, if you're cycling for a couple days through areas with no services, that you'd want to bring more.

I was caught out one night while touring Australia and had an orange and a granola bar for dinner. Breakfast the next morning had to wait till we got to a town about 20 km down the road.

Then on a tour in France, Rowan and I rolled into a small town, set up camp in the campground, cycled into town and discovered that there were no shops at all in this town. Rowan had small bag of pasta with him, and I think I had some cheese ... and that was dinner. Fortunately we were able to order pain du chocolat for breakfast, delivered to the campground.

And on our most recent tour, we had left a lovely B&B in The Netherlands, and they insisted we pack sandwiches before we went. So we carried the sandwiches all day (ate something else at lunch) and when evening fell and we started to look for a place to stay, we ended up in a campground in the middle of nowhere with no services around. So we ate the sandwiches ... good thing we had them!!

Doug64

I usually carry one 2-portion Mountain House freeze dried dinner (for 2 of us) for emergency use. They are light, compact, tasty, and keep for a long time. We have a pretty good inventory of freeze dried foods that we use for other activities beside bike tours, so we have older ones that need using anyway. We have always found a reason to use them.

We sometimes end up carrying odds and ends in our food pannier as we travel, treats like cookies or cheese sticks. We also carry beverages such as coffee, tea, and hot chocolate.

On a short tour in Idaho last summer with our daughters we carried two 2-person freeze dried dinners. We ended up using them when the nearest town was about 10 hilly miles from the campground where we ended the day. We made a conscious decision earlier in the day not to detour into town to pick up groceries for the evening. We were reaching the end of the trip and knew we had our backup meals. At dinner one of the girls pulled a liter box of wine out of her pannier which she shared. It is nice to be young and not worry about a little extra weight.