BIKEPACKING FOR BEGINNERS! Pt. 1 – Packing up a bicycle for an overnight bike camping adventure tour

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if you don’t have a titanium Spork we don’t need to be friends hey bike Farmers thanks for clicking in something a little different today we are going to gear up and go bike packing I’m sitting here with my new adventure bike you probably saw the series on this I built this bike from scratch from tubes and lugs I brazed it all together and I built it up gotten it to this point I just kind of finished it today I’m heading out tomorrow on a ShakeOut ride an overnighter we’re going to do 65 Mi out camp for the night do 65 miles back I’ll be meeting up with a group of beginner bike Packers with Revolution Cycles in Madison Wisconsin it’s part of Madison bike week and we’re going to kind of show people how to do this bike packing thing I haven’t been bike packing in forever it feels like over a year um it’s been a while and I figured I’d bring you along for the ride as I think through everything and you know I just have a couple of bins I have it paired down I’ve been on a few bike tours and it’s all about living simply on the road I guess let’s just get started [Music] [Applause] [Music] um so I have my thermos here all stickered up and ready to go and then I have this big Veo orange bottle holder for it what I like this for is usually it’s empty if it’s really hot out I’ll fill it full of cold water or ice and then you always have something cool but most of the time it’s empty and at the end of the day I like to stop at a gas station and find the hot water spigot and you fill it with piping hot water and then you have hot water ready to go at Camp the other two water bottles um water bottle holders hold regular old water bottles so I can fit two of my big bike farmer bottles on this bike which will be great plenty of water for riding usually I’m not outside of 20 M or 30 mi from Services you know gas stations or whatever but you never know I mean I built an adventure bike so I could find Adventure you know I don’t bring a water filter or that kind of thing but it’s always a good thing to have if you are going to be really in the wilderness and away from a gas station for that long then it’s nice to pump a whole bunch of water you know if you got if you have to filter your water carry as much as you can cuz filtering water is a pain in the butt so that’s hydration I have the half frame bag here and right now it’s empty the number one most important thing is uh sausage stick hopefully it’s telescoping right it’s a nice sausage Fork here um you can see that then this one’s great because look at that I can twist it from the handle it’s got this little red knurled nut thing going and you can just twist your sausage just like that you know I don’t know about you but when I’m camping I like to twist my sausage as often as I can and then I have uh some Gorilla Tape just in case on the handle nice ergonomic and that fits right in there this is a camp towel fast drying um pack towel uh this is actually a pretty big one they make smaller ones but I like the big one and it works pretty good if you want to go swimming if you have a shower at your campsite anything you can use it to wipe your tent down if it rains or if it’s a lot of condensation you know just a few minutes in the Sun and this thing dries out pretty good this is the dry bag that fits in um the seat and I’ll show you that but I’m just going to kind of fill it up with as many things as I can right now just to kind of show you how that works usually the seat bag back here I fill with some bedding stuff and clothes these are my rain pants and this is my rain coat a few Sparkles are in the forecast for tomorrow but mostly while we’re riding I think honestly that doesn’t bother me a whole lot I don’t like pouring I don’t like riding in the pouring rain nobody does but if it’s just sprinkling it feels kind of good frankly it’s like air conditioning or whatever like I’m always kind of damp with sweat anyway who cares if it’s actual water I have a very light youo sub seven hammock and super light straps a lot of times I’ll even throw this in the front bag cuz you know you could be riding along and be like hey look there’s a boat landing next to the river and you go down there and throw your bike and against a tree and then you strap your hammock to it and take a nap because you know you’re on Bike Tour and that’s what you do you stop and take naps this is my sleeping pad a nice Nemo it’s really slick usually I can cram that way down in there this is a little air filled pillow I love it well here’s a nice Crank Brothers multi-tool throw that in the frame bag these are powdered aminos this is um good energy stuff it’s nice and light and I like the way it tastes it’s fun to throw it in the bottle and uh gives you some energy um some energy blocks that’s just in case like things get weird and you start to Bonk and you got to just sugar up get get yourself going again you got to at least get back to Camp right this is just a dry bag with a roll top and just like that now I’m only going for one night I don’t need to bring a whole lot of clothes you know um hardly need to bring anything not even sure I’ll bring a swimsuit because there’s not a lake we’re going to be camping on top of a giant Hill you know we’ll go upstairs and I’ll I’ll pack some clothes later so this is a relevate terapin system and I’m surprised at how Burly and durable it is because it does have some like plastic clas clasps um but it’s got some nice metal stuff too there so nice around the seat post okay and then it just hooks under your seat rails here and then that holds your dry bag in now the reason I like the system is it’s super easy to just pop this dry bag in and out so when you get to Camp you just pop the dry bag out throw it down by your tent throw it in your tent whatever you got all your clothes and everything all just right here and it just goes in like that and then this actually is there’s two ways to do it but we’ll do it this way for demonstration purpos pures and then you have you can strap things to the top like your towel or a wet shirt or something you know I also I put Crocs in here and it’s kind of nice cuz you have this extra flap here and obviously once I get some more clothes and stuff in here this gets a little bit bigger and bulkier back here but you can cinch this up super tight where it doesn’t wiggle around a whole lot and you can connect it straight into the top up here too and that makes the whole system a lot smaller but you can really cinch this up and make it small and then I still have visibility for my light here so I can have a little blinky light going for when I’m on the road which I like for safety that’s pretty much it for the rear of the bike Let’s uh move around to the front so up here in the front it’s all about the dry bags so I’ve been using these Ceda Summit bags I you know I mean they’re holding up I assume they’re still waterproof maybe it’s time to think about getting another one but this is my sleeping quilt the theory there is that they’re lighter because when you have a sleeping bag you’re just sleeping on top of the down that you compress and compressed down doesn’t have any insulation value anymore so everything underneath you is wasted and why would you carry that extra weight so it kind of wraps over the top of you and it works great because if you have a good sleeping pad that is insulating underneath you so I’ve slept at 40° and it’s been okay you know I have like a hoodie and Long John’s on it goes pretty well and then this is my tent with staks which you will see when I set it up but but uh it’s a zpx duplex I believe they call it and it is the greatest tent on the planet I love it love it love it love it super expensive it took me like two trips to finally talk myself into getting one really glad I did um because this is it and it’s light I mean super light so the tent and the sleeping bag weigh about the same so I put one on each side and they get strapped on with these straps now these are Selsa straps which is fine you know it really doesn’t matter which brand straps I always get confused on which way to go with this but you do that with your straps and then you grab your bag and strap it to your bike all right that’s all there is to it that is slicker than snot on a doorknob one of the reasons I like these bags so much is they just pop on and off so easily really good for bike packing so this is a swift Industries ozette bag I believe um these little bags you can get at while you’re riding um I have an opanel knife a lighter some BTS beeswax little pack of Fisherman’s friends those are really good they help you breathe some shammy butter just in case this one’s wide open and you can put like little snacks and stuff up there the front one I got this Nifty little light still got a little action left to it and I think you can get it to Blink so that can kind of be safety like if I get on a busy road sometimes I do that just to drive people crazy but that’s a nice thing to have then it actually a light up you know it’s just a little light but it kind of lights up a wide path just for cruising around campsites at night here’s a bag full of goodies um Pills and wet naps uh some more shammy butter some extra batteries Band-Aids that kind of thing it just kind of lives in here um what else do I have up here in the front um some extra gear straps these are toothpaste tablets and a toothbrush and some zip ties and like I said I had duct tape on my sausage stick so zip ties and duct tape you’ll get you out of a lot of little jams out there okay so there’s enough juice in there for a trip some Doc brers soap and this is how I make my coffee now I’ll bring along uh stainless steel mug this just sits on top and I just do a pour over coffee I’ve tried everything this is super lightweight super easy and actually it’s just like a pour over you know so it’s really delicious uh especially at I don’t know what it is about picnic tables next to a campfire out in the open the coffee outside it’s just better and different and then these little guys fit right in there this is my stove this is how I make water hot and I have a lighter and the gas and this little titanium mamama Jama and this sits right on top and all of that very easily fits right in there and it hardly weighs a thing and the stove here’s extra clothes line that’s a good thing to throw up front here that’ll just get tangled on everything I’m going to throw my brers up front too Tepee up front o what you going to eat with how about a titanium Spork if you don’t have a titanium Spork we don’t need to be friends most of the time um we don’t really do Fires at night it’s a lot of work you know we’re doing so much faffing about there’s so much work involved with bike packing anyway that you know we just don’t even bother with the fire we’ll just sit around and hang around the picnic table and have our lamps on and just hang out and then everybody kind of goes to bed early and wakes up early and we go for a bike ride so don’t do a lot of firing but it sure is nice to have some leather gloves to be able to reach into a fire and grab hot logs and just move them around I love having leather gloves so maybe on this overnighter I’ll bring it I always opt you know if I have a choice of bringing something or not bringing something I generally choose to not bring it rarely while I miss it or think oh man I really wish I had that ground cloth it’s like you just do without especially for one night then again for one night it’s not going to kill me to haul a camp chair or something so I don’t know maybe I should bring the leather gloves right um I don’t know nah so that’s pretty much it for my bins and the bags yeah pretty good okay okay I think I got things laid out here pretty good so as far as riding clothes I do ride with padded shorts um even on tour I’ve tried to eliminate bringing shorts just it’s one last thing but I just like riding with padded shorts and then I just throw some regular shorts over the top and then I have a nice wool t-shirt that I like to ride in just cuz it doesn’t stink it dries out pretty quickly and then things get chil I have this shirt it’s by 686 it’s I don’t I can’t remember it’s the everywhere collection but it kind of sheds water it breaks the wind it’s really light it’s got snaps um it’s just a really versatile extra layer so like today it might be a little sprinkly I might throw this on instead of my raincoat just cuz it breathes a little bit better and just kind of keeps the chill off and you can unsnap it and snap it when you’re riding it’s just great so that’s kind of the plan there because I’m meeting the crew with Revolution Cycles I’m bringing my Revolution cycle shirt bringing a swimsuit just in case oh in socks some thin wool socks and then I have some thicker wool socks for trumping around the campsite with the Crocs um I’m a sock guy I I don’t know what it is I just don’t like having bare feet wool undies wool long undies oh hi Greg you coming to be on the video I’m going pack Greg put them right in the what put them right in the bag here this is just wool tights got to have a good pair of wool tights uh mostly for sleeping and then uh wool long sleeve shirt too so this will probably be what I sleep in you know the nice thing about the wool tights is you can just put shorts over it and then you’re warm around the campfire I think between this long sleeve shirt and an extra t-shirt and this and my rain coat you know even if it gets cold which it’s not supposed to I’ll be fine so I don’t need to get at any of this stuff wilst riding and I don’t think I’m going to need to get at any kind of hammocking or anything until we get to Camp either so I’m going to because this bag kind of gets skinny at the end tape down I’m going to take all this little stuff and cram it in the taper I also don’t think I’m going to need rain pants I don’t think I’m going to need rain pants at all but just in case I’m going to keep the rain coat out just in case things get weird this I think I’m going to save Until the End use that to help roll this bag up so here goes all of my clothes then you can take this [Music] sideways get a bunch of the air out of it so there you go then that’ll go on the bike and we’ll just strap it all together I don’t like this thing rattling around so I like to do that so you can kind of cramp Ram stuff in there and then try to keep things from flopping around too much I always like to have a bandan outside I hang it on my handlebars I can go in there for now we also have a bunch of Tronics I want to film this so I have the DJI action 4 and the mic 2 so these sync up this is kind of new to me I did a video last weekend I haven’t produced it yet and it works really good this I can hang around my neck put the camera here get some good riding shots and then this also serves as a tripod if you want it and then I also have a nice long selfie stick which is kind of nice for doing a few things got my airpods I always listen to stuff when I’m riding alone the Garmin got to you know if it’s not on straa it didn’t happen and then these are just batteries for the camera yeah this little guy has an amazing battery life and we’ll just yeah it’s great I got a nice big chip in here I think I can get 5 hours with this um and then here’s my spare battery pack I should bring a charger as well just in case I have a chance to plug in it’s nice to keep this fully charged as often as possible anytime you stop it’s nice to go find an outlet plug this in and keep it charged just in case I think that’s about it um all of the camera stuff goes in my um frame bag where I can get at it and yeah I’m ready to go bike camping I mean that’s as good as it gets right there time to get everything put back on the bike okay everything looks good there there’s little velcro straps under the bag here that just kind of keep it from really flopping around in extreme situations for most Road touring you don’t need to do it but for good measure I do and there’s still a lot of room in the bag here for snacks and whatever I might make a couple of peanut butter jelly sandwiches just in case it’s kind of my go-to so that’s all good there self stick and then this guy fits in this way going to put my Crocs in here yet all right so get it in there good then you can pull up on these so you get that all cinched in good and tight let’s do one of those numbers that’s pretty good closeup of the rear bag and then down here oh yeah I added uh my little lock there frame bag room in there for snacks too and then the Rando bag up front the cockpits all locked and loaded and then tent and sleeping bag the low riders I think we are all set and ready for a camping trip [Music] [Applause] [Music]