Jan 1 , Rose Bowl .. Oregon Ducks to NCAA number 1 !

There's the BioLite CampStove. But, with my luck I'd get stuck in a "no open fire" area.

I am playing with a home grown solar solution:

1: 10W Solar Panel
2: Charge controller with USB
3: Small Battery

Of course, it could get cloudy. I've got a stand-by for that. A front rack mounted wind turbine!! (Not really.)

I have some solar panels and I ordered the charge controller. It works. I've been running the lights on the commuter at no cost for awhile now. But my 70W panel and truck battery are a bit on the large size.......I'm close to getting the panel and battery. I'm sure it will require fine tuning to reduce the battery as much as possible, for weight reasons.

I can see mounting a solar panel above a Bob trailer might provide some decent wattage (see last photo: Cycle touring with an electric bike and solar panel | The Spoke & Words).

Solar, great when the sun is shining and you have the panel aligned correctly and you have a long time to charge up.
Bio lite thing - how many meals do you need to cool to charge a phone?
Dyno - if you are pedaling, you are generating power. If at night, for your lights. If during the day, for your gear.

That's what I was thinking of, except flat and parallel to the ground to prevent pushing a sail sideways. While angle is important to output the reason 12V panels produce 18+V is to increase the chances of a higher production. Anything can be over-engineered. I don't care if it's perfect, functional works fine for me. Of course, this is BF.

Do the make a dyno IGH??

Don't bother. I don't want a dyno or an IGH.

why would you need a dyno IGH?

dyno front hub is like $70-100 for a Shimano, run whatever rear end you want.


i run my dyno al the time. for lights, mainly, but it pretty much stays on the bike - both my MTB and my rando rig.

I have a solar charger that powers all of my toys. It works like a charm and weighs about 1 pound. No more batteries. It even charges my tablet at about 1%/min. Since I multitask with the tablet (photos, books, etc), it's great to know I don't need to worry about outlets.

There are huge areas in the west where there is no service....Then what?

As an example,try using you phone in Death Valley....Or anywhere between Barstow and Needles.

I guess if you have all your maps loaded in the phone before hand it would work?

What happens if a road is closed or God forbid you should change your mind or your precious phone should break?

Map and compass just seems easier to me.

I was provided a company Nextel. I lost service in Echo, Utah, had it for 15 miles in Cheyenne, Wyoming and didn't pick it back up until past Lexington, Nebraska.....all along I-80.

In places out west I was told by locals, far more than any other service, that the only show in town is Verizon. It beat the Nextel by a mile and my AT&T often. All within a few miles of interstate highways.

That's all well and good. A lot depends on whether you're much of user of smart devices or not. If you are then you already have experience with lots of apps and typical ways of interacting with them. So having the map and position on your device can be very handy for easily identifying your position at a glance with a minimum of fuss.

If the road is closed etc. then obviously you need to regroup and make a new plan. I don't see how having your map and position on a smart device makes that any more difficult. What do you do if you don't have a smart phone? Do that. Then consider using the smart phone if it would help you and not if it won't.

If your phone breaks then use your backup smart device, like for me and my iPhone/iPad. I have a compass on the bicycle. Sometimes I have a printed map too and sometimes not. I've never had an incident with two devices at the same time but if I did then I have a feeling I would survive it with a story to tell. With only my compass or looking at the sun for that matter, I can temporarily make do and head in the right general direction.

Then ask for directions once I can and head for somewhere like the apple store!

Navigation doesn't require a cell signal as long as you have the maps loaded.

Why would a road being closed or a change in plans be more of a problem for an electronic map than a paper one?

Yeah the phone could break or batteries could die. On the other hand I have also had a paper map blow away when on tour. Personally I tend to take both if somewhere that getting off track would be a big deal, as in life threatening. Truth be told most of the time I am somewhere that I can memorize the roads I'll be on for the day and don't really absolutely need either paper or electronic maps to get to the next town.

Either type of map has its advantages and disadvantages. In some situations I find I like one better and in others the other.

As far as a compasses... I generally don't feel the need for one on the road. A very general sense of which way I am going is usually enough to decide which way to turn at an intersection and that can generally be maintained by the position of the sun (even on cloudy days), bodies of water, mountains and other features that are sufficiently far off to act as ways to orient one's self.

I do use a compass when backpacking and sometimes mountain biking, but I have done a fair number of long bike trips and the compass always seems to never get taken out and used.

Smart phones have certainly made it easy to consolidate a lot of information and activities. I bought a small recharger/solar panel unit at Batteries plus for about $40. It works well, recharges from an outlet or USB port, holds about 3 charges for the phone. While the solar panel isn't sufficient to recharge the phone completely it provides a constant trickle to maintain the charge and, I'm told, it can be used to run the phone directly in emergency situations.
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=423917

Marc

I carry a short extension cord with three outlets at one end so noboby unplugs my cord so they can have the last outlet in the restroom and because wall and outdoor outlets aren't always friendly to chargers with fold-out pins.

Problem with outlets is it ties you down till you're charged. Ride with a dynohub and you never have to find an outlet or hang around it waiting.

Just bring a longer cord then.

I spend more time off the bike than on. Plenty of time to charge.

I usually camp. So outlets are not convenient.

I wouldn't buy a garmin when I already have google maps on my phone- seems redundant. I guess if it were the other way around, I wouldn't want to buy a phone.

as for charging- Amazon.com: Anker® 2nd Gen Astro Mini 3200mAh Lipstick-Sized Portable Charger External Battery Power Bank with PowerIQ? Technology for iPhone, Samsung, HTC and More (Black): Cell Phones & Accessories
this is $20 and gives an actual full charge to my HTC One phone. Its pretty weak in terms of storage, but its also really small.

something like this will give you 4-6 full charges for a smartphone for $40- http://www.amazon.com/15000mAh-Exter...attery+charger


Where I bike camp/tour, I am just not away from power for long enough to need more than the above type of chargers. I don't have either of those, but I have one from the same company that is good for 2 full charges, which is plenty for playing music, gps mapping, and finding restaurants/gas stations/etc.
If I were to go on some lone ride across a vast wasteland, what I listed wouldn't be enough, but I also probably wouldn't be interested in staying as connected if I were doing such a ride.

I usually camp too, but have never even once had to hang around waiting for a charge. I use my batteries sparingly and carry a spare battery or a power wallet if necessary. I charge only when stopped anyway. I have charged while shopping, while eating, and while camped. I have often found a live outlet in small town picnic pavilions where I often camp. My heaviest battery usage is when using WiFi and where I use WiFi there is usually an outlet to use.

I just don't find I need to spend very much time charging, but part of the key to that is turning stuff off the very large majority of the time.

I haven't made the leap to smart phones or gps devices but I have added usb rechargeable head and tail lights to my daily riding, and I like not buying batteries. I've added a solar panel and external Li-Ion battery and for recharging the lights and my stupid phone when I'm camping in between motel stops.

I'm looking at a Anker battery backup. These come in alot of different capacity and seems like a nice way to carry capacity with you. The one think I think I'm going to wait for is how fast these will take a charge. I'm thinking next year they will be "upgraded" to taking 5V at 2A. Also, I'm betting the good fast adapter will be included with many of the batteries.

Right now this item is listed as such;

Ultra-high density battery cells make this the world's most compact 15000mAh external battery. Use a 5V / 1.5A adapter (not included) for fastest charging (9-10 hours).

I prefer to stay in bed and read about people walking. Less chance of sunburn or blisters.

you still run the risk of getting paper cuts. man, when those things turn
septic, only a matter of time until you turn zombie. better to just close
your eyes and dream of soft surfaces and rounded corners.

A few years ago, on my 2nd bike tour, I was riding from Vermont into Montreal along the Route Verte. I had a Garmin 60sx for mapping; it ran on AA batteries. I also had a smartphone, but given the vaguaries of cell phone reception and the astonishing cost of voice and data when "roaming" in Canada, I was planning on using it only for emergencies. In terms of paper maps, I had a Route Verte guide. It gave details along the route, but not much "wide view" information.

After a day of riding in the rain, things started going bad about 20 km from the island of Montreal. There was a fork in the road: one way (the left turn) led to a bridge crossing in 18km or so; the right turn led to a ferry crossing. The sign warned that riders would need to carry their bikes down, and up, a flight of stairs to get to the ferry. Since my bike and gear weighed about 90 lbs, I opted for the bridge.

What the sign did NOT mention was that the bridge was closed that day for a NASCAR race. I didn't find out about the closing until I was at the entry to the bridge. I knew that the ferry crossing was north of me somewhere, but couldn't quite tell where or how to get there without retracing my steps 18km back to the fork in the road. My Garmin, despite being nominally waterproof, was waterlogged; and my smartphone was low on power.

And did I mention the sun was going down?

So I just started riding north, as close to the riverbank as I could, looking for bridges I might take. The only ones I found were on the equivalent of interstate highways, unfriendly to bikes. Nothing looked good. Eventually, I pulled onto the sidewalk and tried to rig my phone to my emergency "use AA to charge phone" gadget to call someone for navigational assistance -- when I saw a sign that pointed to the ferry. (Thank you, Hermes!)

Moral?
Murphy was right: several systems failed at once. The bridge was closed, the GPS was AWOL, the paper maps were inadequate. So my recommendation is that whatever you pick (GPS, smartphone, paper maps), have a backup that has a different point of failure. "Redundant" is a virtue. Sometimes the backup is "phone a friend" or "ask a local". I practiced saying je suis perdu' (I am lost) before I needed it.