Hi Bob-

Yes there is some space.

I'm on a Bike Friday, though, so I don't think the direct-to-fork mount option is going to cut it- the crown of the fork is low, and behind the front rack.

But now you've got me thinking along the lines of attaching the light to the front of the front rack. It may end up taking a bit of creative fun with a short length PVC pipe and some zip ties, but I may be able to fab something up.

Thanks for the thought!

Is there any space between the bottom of your handlebar bag and the top of your front panniers? I think I've seen some options for attaching a light on the top of the front fork, where the the hole is where you would attach a front fender. Googling 'front fork bike light mount' showed pictures of various different products that might provide a way to attach a normal handlebar mount to them.

Thanks, Keith

Thanks for the reply and for sharing your blog with me. I look forward to following your prep and journey!

Hi Dana

All in, the gear tips the scales at a between 45 and 50 pounds if I recall correctly.

Bike Friday makes only small wheel bikes, aimed specifically at the travel and commuter niches. The bike can be disassembled and folded to fit in a regular Samsonite suitcase. The wheels are 20 inch.

They also sell an optional adapter that converts the suitcase into a trailer. I have one, and have used it a few times including a couple shakedown test rides this fall, but in the end elected to stick with panniers for several reasons: weight and simplicity were the two main ones.

My panniers weigh eight pounds empty, the trailer 20. It also has different sized wheels than the bike, meaning more sizes of tubes to be carried. And tires, if it comes to that.

A lot of the kitchen stuff nests, collapses, or both, and the panniers are pretty roomy. The stove is a tiny model aimed at backpackers, and its fuel bottles will be in external mesh pockets on the rear panniers. You see them as red splotches in the photos.

Impressive! How many pounds will you be carrying? The kitchen seems well stocked and I don’t know how it all fits! Also, I’ve never seen a bike like this; the wheels look so small. (I’m reading from most recent entry backward, so maybe you wrote about it earlier ). Thanks for sharing.

I have a feeling that most of us cyclists who have reached retirement age have had (and may retain) a fleet of beloved bicycles. But I'm not sure many could easily remember and document them to the extent you have.

Sadly, in my life, this also applies to cats. I have Christmas photos of up to seven cats lined up at seven dishes of yummy food. Though I loved them all over the years, I can no longer name or even count them.

That's where blogs come in, because there are also now so many routes we have ridden, people we have met, places we have stayed.

It's good that you will blog this upcoming trip, and hey, I hope any other blogs soon float onto Cycleblaze!

Hi Jing!

Glad to have you riding along with me, at least virtually.

Keith, I am seeing you would become a writer and make a book after the trip!!! Look forward to your sharing of the information, experience, stories and beautiful pictures…

Hi Steve-

:)

Scout, my beloved and faithful Trek 620, died a deferred death after a failed theft attempt some 15 years earlier. The would-be thief dented the seat tube and over the next decade and a half of hard riding metal fatigue worked its insidious ways. The seat tube parted with a final "ping" as I was about halfway down the Natchez Trace Parkway, in 2006. (I have a journal elsewhere, that has yet to be transferred to CycleBlaze. You can probably guess where to look for it.)

Quicksilver and Mad Max keep Odysseus company to this day; Quicksilver (Litespeed Owl Hollow) being a mountain bike, he gets the call when I get the urge to go ride the C&O Canal towpath or other light offroad venues.

Mad Max is my Trek Madone 5.5, with upgrades and personalization. Man what a fun bike to ride! There are some (a few!) unlogged 2018/2019/2020 miles that don't show in the chart, but which produced big smiles. I don't know how often I'll ride him before setting off from Bend, simply because I feel like I need to be doing my training miles under conditions directly comparable to what I'll be doing (i.e. riding with full gear) on the upcoming ride.

Abner and Elsie are our recumbent tandems. Elsie, a 2001 Vision R85, is our preferred domestic ride (although Mrs. A only rides when we're preparing for an overseas trip, about which more below), while Abner is our overseas ride because, being a Bike Friday DoubleDay he goes in regular suitcases making air travel ever so much easier.

We took Elsie to England and France in 2002, 2003, and 2005 but it was just too difficult to deal with the airline luggage policies, so we bought Abner in late 2007 (looking ahead to the 2008 tour of Tuscany that we already had on the calendar) to fill that niche. Elsie briefly belonged to friend of ours after we bought Abner but returned to our stable after they divorced.

We've taken Elsie or Abner to Europe a total of (I think) eight times since our first tandem adventure in 2002. Sadly, the organizers of those tours have hung up their cue sheets, making it unlikely that we'll tour Europe anymore. Abner has yet to emerge from his packing cases after our last European adventure in 2019. Elsie currently hangs from the ceiling of my workshop, gathering dust but quietly hoping to see the road again sometime soon.

Also gathering dust at the moment, Spike (~ 1992 or 1993 Santana Arriva road tandem) hopes to be taken off the wall at some point in the not-too-distant future, if I can find a new companion. Mrs. A is not a fan of upright bikes, and Spike is a bit too large for her anyhow. But for a period from 1994 to about 2015 I was fortunate to have a couple very regular "guest stokers". Since then, through a combination of waning interest on my part and the departure of the last of my regular guest stokers, he's been sadly neglected.

There you have it: a thumbnail history of (most of) the bikes I've owned since 2000 (or earlier; I had Scout from 1985 through 2006 and bought Spike in 1994).

Wow, about 12 bikes in 21 years. I am impressed that you maintained the data. But there must be more stories hidden in the graph. do you still have Quicksilver? How did Mad Max suddenly give it the boot, only to lose out to Odysseus? Why did Abner come in with a splash and find himself in the garage unused for two years? And what about the special years 2006/7 with six bikes all on the go? Also, even the lower years are still pretty impressive, and surely 2021 can be blamed on covid!

I love it! Thank you.

Your wish has been granted. :)

It's on the to do list. I envision a couple pictures: one with everything laid out and another with it all packed. If I can contrive to make it happen, a highly accelerated video showing all the gear getting packed could be fun.

Yep. None on Odysseus but two on his predecessor and one on my tandem. I guess I am just a brute. Or used to be, at any rate. :)