5,000 Miles and One Left Turn: The gear that we carry

So, we thought it might be interesting to do a Blog while we have a house to live in about all of our gear. We are going to go over each major gear carrying bag and what is inside. Hopefully this gives you all an idea of what we are carrying and how we carry it. We will show the bag, and then what is contained inside.

This is a pile of all of our gear while in the containers. The two red panniers go on the back of Dani's bike. The black small bag by her hand is her handlebar bag. The two black panniers we use to mainly carry food and go on the front of Greg's bike. The big yellow BoB bag goes in the BoB trailer pulled by Greg. the orange colored semi transparent bag in the front also goes on the of Dani's rear rack. The red bag in the front is Greg's handlebar bag.

Dry bag used for holding rain gear. We found early on that it is important to keep this readily available so it stays on top of Dani's rear rack.

This dry bag contains our rain pants and our rain jackets.

This is Greg's handlebar bag with a remote control for scale.

This is everything contained Greg's handle bar bag. Here is a list of it all from the top of the photo: headlamp, can used for mixed nuts, Case containing pepper spray, pocket knife, ankle straps to keep pants out of chain, orange dry bag used to keep all electric stuff and papers dry, bandanna, GPS, Sunglasses case with sunglasses, camera battery charger, USB cable, cell phone charger, bike route maps, strap for carrying handle bar bag, pen, mini bungee cords, camera case usually with camera.

Dani's handlebar bag.

Contents of Dani's handle bar bag: Camera case and camera, Dry bag, Cell phone and wallet, Waterproof notebook, chap-stick, Handlebar bag strap, pen, rain cover for the handlebar bag.

Dani's right side pannier. These things are very nice totally waterproof made in Germany. Hasn't leaked a drop.

Dani's right side pannier contents: Dani's sleeping bag, both of our ditty bags (all of our hygiene stuff like tooth brushes, soap, floss, razor etc.), a one gallon fabric water container, the whole bike maintenance kit, all of the rest of maps for our whole trip.

Dani's left side pannier.

Dani's left side pannier contents: my sleeping bag stuff sack (inside of this is my sleeping bag, my sleeping bag liner, my compressible pillow), Dani's compressible pillow, First Aid kit, lap top computer and computer case.

Greg's front panniers. These are mostly used for carrying food.

These things are a bit empty right now, but they will have more in them tomorrow. They always have garbage bags, zip locks, mixed nuts, parachute cord, coffee cup, coffee, tea, and Dani's sunglasses and case. We try to buy groceries as we go so we carry as little as possible, but it is also risky to not have any food in them at all, so we always have something.

This is the BoB (stands for Beast of Burden) bag that goes on the trailer Greg pulls.

Same bag from a different perspective. It is a dry bag, so the material it is made out of is completely waterproof. It actually works very well.

This is everything that goes inside of the BoB bag. Two books, cell phone charger, AA battery charger, another one gallon fabric container, tent, two inflatable, sleeping pads, all of our clothes other than our rain gear, all eating utensils, spice kit, two stainless steel eating bowls, Dani's Chaco sandals, Greg's shoes, pack towel, 3 pot cooking set, whisperlite stove.

Greg's clothes. We both have a patagonia brand wool long sleeve and short sleeve shirt. These things are our main stays. They are so light breathable and still warm, but they resist becoming smelly for much, much longer than synthetic fabrics. We each have only one pair of pants that the legs zip off and turn into shorts. We wear these pants every day. We also have padded biking underwear that we wear under our pants. We use these instead of spandex biking shorts because we want to just wear normal clothes and not look like the "real cyclists" you see on the weekends. Sorry we are not like Lance.