Good Gear, Bad Gear
I've been thinking about the gear we ❤️ especially appreciated on our trip, the gear we 🦨 thought would be great and then was meh, and the gear we 🎁 wished we had once we were on the road.
❤️ Rinko bags - It was so nice to know we have some way of packing our bike on a train or bus. I thought we maybe didn't need them, but Sarah convinced me to keep them. We had the Ostrich Speed Five.
❤️ Orange juice - Delicious, even when it is hot as a little extra next to water.
❤️ Opinel #8 knife - Sharp and small but not too small. Easy to cook with.
❤️ Sun hoodies - Keeping us cool and not burning. Also so light. The Patagonia ones are super light and nice.
🦨 Croakies - I thought they'd be nice to take my sunglasses on and off but they ended up mostly just getting tangled in my helmet and hood. I ended up just sliding my glasses into my frame bag when not in use.
❤️ AirTag holders - Cool to know where your bike is.
❤️ TPE tubes and patches - I did get a lot of flat tires, but it was from thorns being stuck in my tire. At least fixing them was pretty easy with adhesive patches on these tubes. No rubber dust, no goo, and super light. Find some clear TPU tubes.
🎁 Backpacking chairs - We didn't have them. And we wished every day we did. Almost none of our campsites had picnic tables.
🎁 Threadlocker - We rode on a lot of gravel and it ended up shaking our racks off. We had to get in the habit of re-tightening all the bolts right after a bumpy day, and I wish instead we had used threadlocker blue on all our rack bolts.
❤️ Street shades - So many towns had these decorated nets they would hang to shade a walking street. I loved every one and want one for Sarah's backyard.
🦨 Solar panel - Or maybe it was the battery we were using. The dream was that the battery allowed "pass-through charging" so you could always leave it connected to the solar panel, it would stay topped-up, but then you could plug in your phone as needed to charge. This didn't work and seemed to bork the battery for a while. Charging the phone directly also didn't work well since charging would start and stop as shadows passed over the panel. It ended up being way more reliable to just charge the battery every night at the campsite and use it during the day. Maybe if you're going farther off-grid you could make something work.
❤️ Xero sandals - I loved these. So light and comfy. Not super easy to take on and off, but better than being trapped in sneakers.
🎁 Light backpack - We brought two, but then sent them back with our parents, but then ended up buying another one to do a day hike. Panniers are not fun to carry around on your shoulders as a day bag if you're walking.
❤️ Bike computer - This is the best picture of it. So cheap, battery lasted for a few days recording rides.
🦨 Old iPhone - They say global warming will eventually make it too hot for some species to live. It is now too hot for an iPhone SE 3 to live. I couldn't put my phone on my handlebar mount because the direct sun would cause it to overheat, especially quickly while recording our rides. Then recording rides used enough battery that I'd have to recharge it twice from the battery pack during the day. But recharging from the battery, even out of the sun, heated it up so much that it also overheated; you'd have to recharge it with the case off, in the shade, but in the wind. Sometimes it would say it was "too hot" but sometimes it also just wouldn't charge. I believe new iPhones are better about this, but in the future, I'd record the ride on the bike computer, just use the phone for pictures, and rig up some sort of "sun flap" to keep it out of direct sun.
🎁 Kickstand - We didn't have them and twice a day we wish we did. Yeah, you can lean your bikes together, but that's also touchy unless the ground is totally flat.
❤️ SteerStopper - But we did have these. They lock your handlebars straight. They are amazing and we use them all the time. You just need a single point of contact to lean the bike up and the front wheel doesn't flop around.
🦨 Dongles - This trip decimated our dongles. These are all dead dongles. We needed them for our old iPhones, the solar panel, and lights (otherwise everything was USB C). But the high heat and constant shaking meant that all of them broke or stopped working by the end of our trip. It was so hot some started oozing glue? All of our cables kept working, though, so either live in a glorious USB C only future, or get hardwired conversion cables. We found some at a dollar store and they lasted way better than these dongles.
❤️ Shopska salad - Tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, farmer's cheese, olive oil. Incredible. Not gear, but I can't stop thinking about it.
🦨 Insulated water bottles - They are very good at keeping tepid water nice and tepid all day. They are more expensive and have a smaller volume. Maybe for a 2 hour trip where you can pour in cold water at the start, but it was so hot for us, on an all day trip they just didn't help.