My bike (Monti) and Gear

April 18, 2021

Some much stuff!!

My bike is a Avanti Montari etrail. Some people think an ebike is cheating, I think of it as make the trip possible 😃

I have some days on my itinerary where inhabited places are far apart and water sources are a bit unconfirmed. I felt that getting several water bottles onto the bike was important. With one bottle in the frame and using the zefal gizmo universal mounts to get 2 on the forkes it feels balances.

The spacing of the front rack clamps and the water bottle straps is perfect.

That leaves the gear. So much gear!

I kayak tour and hike (when needed) so I already had most of the camping gear for this trip, but kayaks are big and they take lots of gear, plus you rarely have to carry it. Rucksacks are smaller and you make lots of compromises to get hiking packs as light as possible. Also I generally only go for a couple of nights in both cases.

So .... Last time I weighted my bike tour gear it was 20kgs! I've not going to weight it again as I believe I'm down to what will make the trip comfortable for 2.5 weeks

Cycling and off-bike cloths plus the all important first aid kit and some back-up food. Some supermarkets have short opening hours in country Australia.

Camping and cooking gear. 4lt water bladder for when I know water won't be available. Water filter for when water tanks are available

Electronics, bike charger, solar panel to charge the power bank as I ride along, PLBs - Zoleo and Spot Gen3. My tool kit and emergency spares are in the white plastic container

I'm taking 2 Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) party because I can and partly because they can do slightly different things.

I got the Zoleo because it allows me to text my hubby, children and friends even if I don't have mobile reception. The Zoleo will use satellites if no phone reception exists to send text messages. So I can contact my mechanic ( hubby) and knight in shining armour ( also hubby) if needed anywhere in the world or in this case Australia. 🙂

The Spot Gen3 is kindly being lent to me by the Scouts Adventurous Activities section. It has a great tracking feature so family and friends know where I am. The updates are published ever 10mins to a URL to be viewed on a map.

Neither PLBs have both these features. But they both will call emergency services if things go really bad, but I hope to never need that.

The pannier bags. Yellow is my favorite colour, can you tell?

I got the ortlieb Rackpack 24Lt after my shakedown tour, so it's never been used before. I have been commuting to work with the ortlieb back rollers for several years and recently added the pockets. The Karrimor front panniers are special. I used those in 1993 to tour around Europe for 4 months with my husband. The matching back ones got stolen but the front ones have been kicking around at home all these years, just waiting. Yay!

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