All packed up... my flight is WHAT time?

The bike bag - bubble wrap and all

If you ever want to know the current airline regulations and fees for oversized baggage, give me a yell. I know how they roll, and trust me they love playing hide the ball on the actual price.

So, for Virgin America (love them, by the way... how many airlines can you say that about?) the trick is... yes, they take your bike. But it costs $50. HOWEVER, be sure to keep the bike bag below 50 lbs, or they start asking for first borns. Frontier... about the same. A good airline for flying with bikes too.

Duct tape is your friend

I managed to stuff a bike bag and a large duffle with all of my gear, snacks, clothes and assorted miscellaneous stuff for 10 days of combined traveling, biking and being in northern California. A few of my big ticket items:

- Bike with an electric generating dynamo... because plugging into outlets are for suckers.
- An iPhone and an iPad because I apparently cannot be disconnected from 2011 even for a moment... unless there's no cell signal or wifi (a high probability in parts of Mendocino county at minimum)

Orange rain jacket and a lot of supporting stuff

- Newly waterproofed gear - weather reports... um, yeah... notsogood. notsogood. Rain probable the last 3 days it looks like. I'll be rockin orange in support of my alma mater on the way up to Arcata (Go Orange) and some red, white and blue for my 3-0 Buffalo Bills as I pedal the roads listening to them on Sunday morning...
- Coffee, an aeropress and an immersible water heater... except I need to plug that in (curse you dynamo for not being 110 volts!)
- Lots and lots of Nirvana on the iPhone (see above). I'll need them to get up some of the hills...
- And much, much more. 83 total lbs. in fact.

More from the SF side of things... I have a free day Friday to do my thing and get organized. Saturday is the ride up... Sunday we roll.

But I have to be up at 4am tomorrow... so, good night.

Gearing up

A few people have asked me about gear... I think the topic can be outlandishly boring, so I won't go into full detail all at once. I'm not exactly a bike-head, so I don't get excited about brands, weights, and all the mundane stuff. I'm learning I do want to make some gearing changes, so I'll talk a bit about that here too.

My chariot for Climate Ride

I ride two Marin hybrids... no not at the same time... one that leans a bit more road and one that leans a bit more mountain. I like them both, and I like Marin as a company... I think you get good bang for the buck, and the mountain hybrid has been with me for more than 10 years of sometimes uncaring rides. I've found the gearing on my road hybrid (see left... the one I'll be riding in CA) is a bit too high for what I need (and forgive my lay terminology here if you actually know what you're talking about). I need some lower gearing to accommodate what, to me, are going to be some pretty brutal hills. That's a project for tomorrow and beyond, because I expect that will require at least a new rear cassette... but who knows. That's what good bike mechanics are for, so off I'll go to the local shop.

Oddly enough the biggest issue with this ride is not the training or the equipment itself... it's getting the damn gear to California from DC. I did a ton of research and after a lot of back and forth on to ship or fly, I decided to fly the sucker. It has as much to do with my flight itinerary as anything else, but I think I like the idea of knowing my bike is traveling on the same plane as me... plus it looks like it might be cheaper. Maybe. I think.

I bought a Sette padded bike travel bag online and I dig its overall look and think it should serve me well for the future. Take a look at shirtless dude's video of the bag. Note to shirtless dude... would have been way cooler if you had packed a bike in there too. Just sayin.



Speaking of gear, I'm also thinking about getting something very alt energy producing: a dynamo that will charge a front lamp and my iPhone while I pedal. I found that my iPhone's battery is a rockstar if it gets a signal, but tries so hard to find a signal when there is none to be found (i.e. rural MD on the C&O) that it burns through a charge in about 6 hours. Since I like the data collection, mp3 playing, safety line, and other features of said phone, I need more juice. We'll see what I end up getting, but I figure this might make me the cool kid tech nerd at Climate Ride. And I'll have a charged phone, unlike the poor saps who'll be searching the campgrounds to charge their Zunes for an outlet.

Ok, that wasn't nice. Nobody has a Zune.