We just finished our circuit of the Idaho Panhandle. Readers of the blog for that will know that we are claiming it was actually quite strenuous. If true, then it would amount to the first time we trained at all for the long European ride coming up.

Depending how you look at it, the wilds of Idaho gig was also a chance to test out stuff in advance of the "wilds" of Europe. Less generous observers would say the Grampies, already circling in Idaho, were circling on these other issues as well. Are we going over and over stuff uselessly? Here, you be the judge on one of them:

Sleeping Pads

In 2011 we started our touring with self inflating style mats from American outfitter Cabela's. These were the medium 3.8 cm (2.5") thickness. They seemed ok for us, except that they failed in the first season and formed balloon sized bubbles! Mid tour we switched to mats of the same thickness from Canadian Mountain Equipment Co-op. They seemed ok for us, except that they both developed a million pinhole leaks, mid tour!

So we switched to Thermarest Prolite Plus mats, also 3.8, and took them out for the Idaho spin. Maybe we are just (one year) older now, but they felt like concrete! So we shook $180 x2 out of the piggy bank and took the plunge on inflatable Thermarest Neo Air. There are now a dozens models of this thing, but we got the classic (missionary) style.

We quickly saw that I would probably faint daily from the many breaths needed to inflate these things. However , we found Thermarest now offers a 2 ounce battery powered pump. The man at REI claimed this was so new that neither REI nor anyone else would have it. He also volunteered that purchasers of such a high tech and extreme item as the Neo Air would never buy a lame pump, so REI would probably never carry it.

We rushed home (with our Neo Airs, that we bought anyway) and phoned the Thermarest head office in Seattle. Yes, the Grampies are crazy enough that they would drive into Seattle to a company HQ to buy one dumb piece of accessory gear! For some crazy reason (like, it was 5 p.m. Saturday night) the Thermarest people must have all been at the beach. However, an internet search turned up an outdoor store here in Missoula that carried the thing, and they closed at 6 p.m.

So now we had the pump! It runs on 2 AAA batteries. The manual says to use "lithium", not alkaline batteries for longest life. Lithium sounds more like a camera battery. OK, Staples is open to 9 p.m.! The man in Staples had no idea what we were blithering about, but he sold us some Duracell batteries that claimed to be better than alkaline, without saying why or how much better. Later, we did actually find AAA's that said lithium and claimed to last 6x longer than alkaline - but anyway, we still do not know how many inflations we will get per set.

So now our new mats are machine inflated. However, we also see that it takes quite a bit more time to deflate and fold these mats than with the self inflating style. So what, we are retired, right? Well, we'll see, and unfortunately you, dear readers, will hear about it!

p.s. Did we get more comfort for our $400 and day of running around town? Dunno!

So now are we ready to go? No way. For one thing, we are still sitting in Missoula, and our plane leaves from Vancouver. And we are not even leaving from Missoula because we are sitting by the door waiting for the mailman to bring us a spare battery we ordered for our new camera. Why do we have a new camera? Don't even ask!

Eventually we will leave here, battery or not, and head back to the farm. Then we will have two days to sift the Europe stuff apart from Idaho stuff, go get one last vaccination (tick borne encephalitis), see if we can wrap our bikes up in some mattress plastic bags we got, swap out old tires, rims, and chains on thhe bikes for new ones, and then get Sandra to drive us to Vancouver. This is the kind of last minute rush you read about in every blog. Of course, ready or not, we will be there on Friday, and one day later, suitably jet lagged, we will be cycling the canals of Amsterdam.

Stay with us, it should be a good 5000 km spin!