Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

The more of these Tours I go on, the less preparation goes into a given Tour. 

Obviously–since this is going to be one of those ones where I fly to my start point–I've got some hard and fast deadlines by when I must have everything ready, but it's not really the same as the days when there was tweaking and deciding and mind changing.

I will throw a bunch of stuff in my bags. Most of it will be the stuff I need. Some of it will turn out to be stuff I don't need. The unnecessary stuff will either be mailed back to Hainan or ditched. That is simply the way things are.

For this year, I have decided once again to resume not taking a tent. I was underwhelmed by the hammock experience and, as I have no idea when that planned Amsterdam to Asia will ever be able to happen¹, the idea of training myself to sleep in uncomfortable situations once again loses out to the idea of not having to carry so damn much stuff.

Mind you, I'm still carrying enough stuff that my randonneuring acquaintances such as Marcus are horrified. From daily luxuries like two mini moka pots and a coffee grinder to necessities like my laptop, I will still need the standard four panniers².

The plan is all the bike shorts I can find, my long sleeved jersey, two or three short sleeved ones, shoes, socks, meds, camera, phone, laptop, coffee kit, spare parts.

Am I missing something?

Probably. But online shopping in China, which was already robust pre-pandemic, is already the way to do things in the city; so, if I find myself wanting something I forgot to get, there isn't much difference between buying it online and shipped to Haikou and buying it online and shipped to somewhere on the road.

---

¹ I do not approve of how the Chinese government is handling Covid. I also do not approve of how the rest of the world is failing to handle Covid.

² The bottle bags in manything cages that were a feature of the 2018 and 2019 Tours aren't happening mostly because I don't have any convenient bottles but also because, great as they were, I kind of like the "not looking homeless" aesthetic.