Bikes. All frame and component decisions are optimized for durability and field-serviceability. Each bike weighs ~32 pounds.
Frames: Steel hard-tails by Sycip brothers in Santa Rosa
Forks: Magura Odur coil spring fork
Drive Train: Rohloff internally geared hubs on Paragon slider drop-outs
Brakes: Avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes
Rims: Mavic XM 719
Tires: Schwalbe Marathon XR
Pedals: platform pedals with Power Grips
Saddles: Amy - Brooks B17S, Jim - Avocet 02 Air 40
Gear. (32 pounds total, 16 each) We are fairly lightweight backpackers (base pack weight of ~10 pounds each), and we tried to apply those techniques to this bike trip. Our base load (not including food, water, the layer of shoes and clothing we will always wear while riding, or the racks and bags used to carry the load) will be about 32 pounds total (16 pounds each). This is significantly higher than our backpacking base load - partly because this is a new kind of trip and we are making some conservative decisions about what to bring. (Great info about lightweight gear can be found at www.backpackinglight.com). Here's a summary of our load:
10 pounds of tent, pads, sleeping bag
2 pounds of paperwork (maps, instruction sheets, bird book)
12 pounds of clothing (not including the layer we always wear - shorts, shirt, helmet, gloves)
5 pounds of misc ditties (first aid kit, tool kit and spares, toiletries, sunglasses, etc)
3 pounds of binoculars and iPods
Racks and Sacks and Water Bags (14 pounds total, ouch).
Tubus Cargo racks
Ortlieb BackRoller Plus panniers
Ortlieb handlebar bag for Jim
Frame Pack for Amy (beautiful bag from www.carouseldesignworks.com)
Black Diamond BBee & Magnum day packs, with 6 litre MSR DromLite hosers
TOTAL WEIGHT (divided between two people):
64 pounds of bikes
32 pounds of gear
14 pounds of racks and bags and bottles to carry that gear
6 pounds of base layer we always wear
270 pounds of flesh
2 comments:
So, no cooking equipment or dishes of any kind? All food is either already prepared, or eaten raw?
No cooking equipment. We stopped cooking on backpacking trips ~6 years ago. We'll eat at restaurants, cafes, and convenience stores when possible, otherwise, we'll cheese, crackers, carrots, smoked fish, etc. We realize the food will be a low point of the trip. We just returned from four weeks hiking in France, where we had our share of great food :)
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