Selecting A Tent

There are many different ways to conduct a bicycle tour. You can camp, stay in hotels and hostels, or simply stay with friends. If you’re planning to do any camping though, you’re going to need a good tent. And selecting the right tent for your long distance bicycle tour is of top importance.

Your tent is your home out on the road and you want to be comfortable inside your home. For that reason, you need to find a tent you are going to be comfortable living in for the duration of your tour. For this reason, I recommend that you select whatever tent is going to make your feel most at home. Read more

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Selecting A Sleeping Bag

When you’re selecting a sleeping bag for your long distance bicycle tour, there are three main things to keep in mind.

1. How cold is it going to be?

This is an important piece of information that you need to research before you leave home. The location and time of year in which you will be traveling will determine the approximate weather conditions. If you are planning a summer bike tour, you can likely get away with a very small and lightweight sleeping bag. However, if you’re going to be riding across Sweden in the wintertime, you’ll likely need something much warmer. Do your research ahead of time and look for a sleeping bag that can support you in those weather conditions. Read more

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Dealing With Electronics While Traveling By Bike

On my first bike tour in 2001, the only electronic device I carried with me was a camera. And not even a digital camera! It was a 35 mm camera than ran on one battery and used actual film. It’s hard to believe that was only seven years ago.

The world has definitely changed since then, and I now carry a whole host of electronics devices with my while I’m out on the road.

While I could get away from using all of these devices, I like to take them alone because they make me more comfortable while I’m out on my bike. Read more

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How To Pack Your Panniers

I get a lot of questions from prospective bicycle tourists who ask how to go about packing their panniers for a bicycle tour. This seems like a simple question, but there is actually a lot that goes into packing your bike for a tour.

That being said, I can’t cover everything in just one post. So I’ve broken down this question of how to go about packing your bike, by breaking the question into three different sections. Read more

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A Camp Stove Comparison

It was during my third long distance bicycle trip that I began to fully understand the importance of having a good stove. Unable to fly with a tank full of propane, I landed in Raleigh, North Carolina with the intention of finding the first sporting good store I could and purchasing myself the propane/butane mixed fuel I would need for the rest of my trip.

Unfortunately though, after three days of travel, I had not only failed to find the fuel I needed, but I was completely incapable of finding a sporting good store with anyone that knew anything about camp stoves.
After a week on the road, I decided to ditch the stove I had brought with me (my MSR Pocket Rocket) and purchased a totally new stove that ran on unleaded gasoline (the kind you fill your car up with). Of course, when I went to the gas station to fill up the stove’s tiny tank, the attendant immediately ran up to me, arms waving, screaming at me to get off his property… telling me in broken English that I couldn’t fill up my little camp stove at his pump. Read more

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