My Least Favorite Subject

The Gear Page

As you can imagine, an around-the-world bike tourist has to carry a lot of junk on his (or her) bike. He must be prepared for a wide variety of weather extremes, which means a whole lot of clothing. He must have the tools and parts necessary for emergency bike repairs. He must account for his daily hygiene needs. He must have his nylon sleeping quarters and the equipment to prepare and serve his nightly gourmet meals.

And you know what else? He deserves to carry a couple of luxury items as well--things like a hefty novel, a smart phone, a backup smart phone, smart watch, laptop computer, portable wifi device, bike computer, GPS navigational systems, camera & multiple lenses, Go Pro video camera with mounts for handlebar & helmet, aerial drone, blue tooth speaker with powerful hyper-bass, small hi-def television, camp chair with state of the art surround sound, artificially intelligent robot servant/companion, chargers up the ying-yang, etc.

I want to bring all those things, but I don't particularly relish the idea of hauling it all up and over some of Greg-World's highest mountain passes.

Then there is the matter of APPEARANCE. I sure don't want to look like this idiot:

So I was facing what seemed like an insurmountable dilemma: How to carry my many wants and needs for an epic bike tour, yet, at the same time, LOOK like the minimalist I'd like to be.

It didn't take too long for a professional dilemma solver like me to devise a system to squish, squash, squeeze, smash, smoosh, condense and compress all of my gear into a single pannier.

Sure enough, I also had to make a couple of compromises. For example, I cut my toothbrush in half to save a little weight. I also eliminated the backup cell phone, one of the high-powered zoom lenses, and the A.I. robot servant. (Sorry, R2G2)

The test run of steamrolling everything into one bag was a big success. However, there one glaring flaw in my system. The second I unzipped my pannier, everything EXPLODED out of there like the junk crashing out of Fibber McGee's and Molly's closet. Like the fluffy white goodness pops out of a hot popcorn seed. Like The Roadrunner's eyeballs blast out of their sockets when he realizes he's going to fall off a cliff.

Tent, sleeping bag, clothes, electronics--they all just exploded out of there.

I guess I'll just have to deal with my gear exploding out every evening and then having to smoosh it all back in every morning. That's bike touring.

By the way, I almost forgot to post a picture of my most essential piece of bike touring equipment. That would be my bike.

The Reckless Mr. Bing Bong in all its glory.

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Emily SharpI'm impressed you got sleeping bag, tent and cooking gear plus clothing and electronics in one pannier :-) I always figured if you were riding motel to motel and not cooking for yourself that one pannier would be quite sufficient, but being self-sufficient was a at least a whole 'nother pannier. Well done, you minimalist.

I truly hope this world tour goes places with icicles....
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1 year ago