Moin

Charlotte, Button and I just returned home after 19.5 days of bicycle touring the Danish Baltic Sea Bicycle Route.

Now it is time to think about gear and what I missed on tour.

For the next post-tour-reviews and impressions please take part in the poll at the end of this post.

In general my gear is well tested and fine tuned, so I did not miss anything really badly. Beside a working sleeping  pad, because mine was leaking and the hole can not be found, so no way to fix it. Because of that I had to get myself a new one.

This one is by Outdoorer and it is a selfinflating one. So it is bigger rolled up and heavier. But that also means it has a foam core, so even if it starts to leak, you still have some insulation.

And insulation was the main trouble with my deflating sleeping pad. I woke up at night, not because I was laying on hard ground, but because it was cold…

So let’s hope this one will work for me.

The longest tour before this tour was 14 days and in the middle I did a rest day at my dad’s with a washing machine. Also this day was really warm and so my rest-day-outfit was working well and I could machine-wash all my touring clothes. This time I did not do any full rest days and also did not put my rest-day-outfit on, just because it was never warm enough or appropriate. I do have 2 T-Shirts and 2 Sports-Bras, and 3 each of underpants, shammies and socks. But I only had 1 long pants and one light fleece jacket. At the end of the tour (20 days) I wished I would have had a second pair of pants and light fleece jacket to alternate.

I would have bought another outdoor-pants by Bergson, but sadly they did not have a color I liked in my size. So I ordered one by vaude, which is also fitting well. I could not find any jacket I liked so I decided to sew my own, out of this print by me, printed on fleece and performance pique by Spoonflower.

I also got Charlotte a new second lock. The second one I was using until now was just one I had laying around, but I wanted to get another for a while now. This one is a lot longer, so I can lock her to things better, especially if she is fully loaded my HipLock often is not long enough to also go around the bike stand or a lamp post or whatever. This one is by tex-lock.

By the way: I paid for all of these (and all of my gear) the normal prize anyone would have paid. As soon as I got to test them out I will honestly let you know how they worked out for me.

I am planning some more post-tour blog posts about gear, inventory, and reviews. Please take part in the poll, and let me know what would interest you. You do not need to sign up or anything, just click on every idea you like and submit your answers.  You can also add your own ideas/requests. Nobody, not even me, can see who put the requests in, so do not hesitate to type in anything you would like to know. (No need to be embarrassed, there are no silly questions.)  Maybe others would be happy/interested when I include your idea/question/request.

The post-idea that got the most votes will be the next to get published next week and I will be writing post-tour blog posts every Saturday until all ideas/requests/questions are answered.

keep exploring and smiling

your Fairy