Odds and Ends.......

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My wonderful wife Red is back with her little school kids this morning, both bikes are snugged up to their maintainers, and I'm dangerously close to being maudlin about the passing of summer.... hate this time......

So, to bore you all, and to pass the time, I'm gonna pass on a couple of things that we learned this summer......

- A full-length natural sheepskin can make a miserable seat passable....

- Padded bicycle shorts, worn under your riding pants, are a joy to the nether regions, but nearly impossible to launder on the road....takes a week to dry them.... so, buy a couple of pairs of nylon, long-legged briefs -- which look like bicycle shorts -- and wear them under the bike shorts. These things can be worn into the shower at night, washed up by hand, and nearly dry in your hand while walking back to the tent! From now on, I'm taking a pair of bicycle shorts and two pairs of long-legged briefs! Takes up hardly any room in the sidebag and you can get through an 11,000 mile summer that way!

- We've used the indestructible Wiggy Lightweight synthetic sleeping bags for years, zipped together. But their warmth is marginal, which is okay in the deserts of Utah but not in the mountains of Colorado. So I contemplated buying new down bags for both of us.... but that costs $$$$$$$$. So we purchased a single inexpensive, light weight, rectangular down bag which we zip open and lay on top our our Wiggy's .... like a quilt.... works great.... takes up hardly any room....and Red purrs like a kitten when the mercury heads for 32 degrees and lower.

- The newer, single-walled, silicone-coated tents like our MSR are engineered to minimize condensation, and pack incredibly lighter and more compact than our old fly tent..... we saved nearly seven pounds going this way. We don't have as much room in the tent, but we simply store our stuff inthe waterproof bags that the sleeping bags and tent came in..... The jury's still out, but it seemed to work this time........ btw, that MSR tent spills the wind like crazy and is the quietest tent I've ever slept in.....

-- Well, thanks for letting me bore ya! :cheeky1: Since I don't have a trailer and ride a smaller bike than most of you, and since I'm too poor for motels, I'm continually on the search for lighter, simpler, and less expensive gear! If you have any thoughts, pass 'em along!