We had a wonderful dinner with Karen Anderson and Dave Henderson tonight. Karen and Dave are experienced bicycle tourists who did a trip similar to ours in 2000. We got in touch with them through Will Knight. (Thanks Will!) They gave us a lot of great advice about our upcoming trip during dinner, including the folllowing eight zumers.

1. Bring a mesh diver’s bag. It packs up extremely small & light, but is also very strong. You can put all your panniers in it and check it as one bag on a flight.
2. Bring mirrors that mount on your helmet. These are extremely useful for keeping an eye on traffic and each other. As Dave said, “At least you’ll realize you are about to die when you see that truck bearing down on you from behind.”
3. Bring bowls and cups to eat out of & a teapot for clean water. I don’t know how we forgot about this.
4. Fly into and out of smaller airports if possible. This makes it much easier to ride your bike right out of the airport and onto the road.
5. Bring a tupperware container big enough to store a loaf of bread.
6. Put covers on your panniers during the day when riding. This way the covers get dirty and you can bring your clean panniers into the tent with you at night.
7. Bring a down jacket with you for warmth and also to be used as a pillow at night.
8. Bring a shortwave transistor radio, so you can listen to the BBC and keep in touch with the world when you are out on the road.

Thanks Karen and Dave for having dinner with us and sharing all of your experience and advice!

Next step, fully loading our bikes and going for a test ride…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 6:02 am and is filed under bicycles, gear, planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.