yes, i know. is this even still a blog?

Not really sure if this blog is going to keep going much longer, but I want to record at least for myself the trip I am to undertake.

Last January or so, back when it was hard to remember what the sun felt like in chicago, I decided that this summer would be the summer to do some bike touring. I had been thinking about bike touring for a long time, but never really had the money to get all the gear together. Also I don't really have a ton of vacation time so its also hard to find the time to do it. I figured I needed three basic things: a tent, a bike rack, and some panniers. Anything else would be cheap enough that I didn't have to worry about it or I could just borrow what I needed from a friend.


I want to go around Lake Michigan at some point, but do not really have the ability to take that kind of time away from work right now. I settled for just the southern part of Lake Michigan. I would start in Chicago, bike south along the lake through the Indiana Dunes, northeast into Michigan, and up along the Michigan shore until I hit Muskegon. At Muskegon I will take the ferry across the lake to Milwaukee, and from Milwaukee I will bike back south to Chicago. The whole trip is about 400 miles (including the ferry ride) and will probably take me about 5 days total. I plan to do 60-70 miles a day and camp along the way.

My good friend and coworker Ashley Johnson was kind enough to give me his old backpacking tent in the spring of 09. It is a small 1-2 person tent that is both sturdy and lightweight. It has been heavily but carefully used by Ash through his various backpacking trips in different parts of the world. Katie and I took it for a camping trip last summer and it performed admirably. A tent would be at least a couple hundred dollars so getting one for free was a great start to my collection of touring and camping gear.

The second piece fell into place last christmas in 09 thanks to Katie's mom Janet. She purchased for me an excellent Topeak Explorer Tubular Rack. It is a very well reviewed piece of kit that fits nicely on my Specialized Sirrus, which I will be using for the tour. Panniers will hang on the sides and tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping mat will all be secured on top of the rack using bungee cord.

I purchased my panniers yesterday. I thought that I was going to purchase the Ortlieb Roller Classics which are regarded by many as some of the best panniers you can get for self sustained touring. The $160 price tag kinda killed me though, and I kept putting off buying them. Yesterday at REI however, I found the Novara Transfer Panniers and decided that I could stomach $110 and put the extra $50 into some camping gear. The resident "touring expert" (as described by a helpful REI salesperson) said that they would be fine for the kind of touring I would be doing. They are light and not as tough as the Ortliebs, but I do not really plan to use them daily and my touring will probably be limited to only a week or so per year. We'll see how long they hold up. If they die young, I will consider it a lesson learned and buy the Ortliebs then. Maybe by that point I will get that long-dreamt-of raise and promotion... or maybe not.

While I was at REI, I also picked up a cheap ($13) little aluminum pot along with an Esbit camping stove ($10). I also grabbed a bag of freeze dried pad thai. Supposedly esbit stoves work ok for boiling small amounts of water but will not really provide enough heat to actually cook real food. Thats fine with me - I plan to be eating mostly freeze dried food for dinner and I will eat lunch at restaurants along the way. I cooked the pad thai that night using the esbit stove and camping pot. It tasted much the way you'd expect food of that sort to taste - a little bit like slop but also a little bit tasty and warm. I figure after riding my bike all day I'll be happy to eat almost anything. My friend Sam recommended Trangia stoves but I figured I'd try the $10 stove first to see if it would work. If it didn't work well, I could at least throw it in my car in case of emergency. The esbit seems to work as advertised but we will see what happens when I'm actually out camping.

I feel like I'm almost set in terms of gear at this point. I still need to get some more stuff, but the big pieces are all taken care of. To be honest, I'm not really much of a backpacker at all. I have only been camping a few times and am kinda unaccustomed to being out in nature. We'll see what happens. At this point I'm thinking of a late July trip.

I'll post again when I have more info.