We finally took the plunge and gave bike packing a go. Or rather bike touring, as for some reason people are trying to distinguish the two. Supposedly bike packing is reserved for mountain bike touring. Doesn’t really make sense. We did it anyways and had a lot of fun. That is, until the mosquitos started attacking us. Between the two of us, we definitely fed a complete new generation of Greenfield mosquitos :)
This year I went up to the Fundy Adventure Rally in NB. Heading up I decided to use a truck, which ended up being a good thing ;) More on that further down.
On June 30th we finally made it out to try the new tent with two people. We also used that weekend to try Fab’s new backpack
Once again it was time for a week of banging the bike through dense forests and fun dirt trails in NY. Following a slightly different route compared to last year, it took me about the same time, but at least I wasn’t riding in the rain:
(https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/social/route/1014456?mode=share)
As a nice surprise @Steve_kamrad brought the two wheel drive REV’IT (check out a video here) adventure bike:
After arriving in Iceland in the early morning, we picked up our gocamper and headed into Reykjavik for some breakfast.
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Stocking up on some provisions we headed out to drive along the coast to head west a little bit. We stopped a bunch of times of course:
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We ended up at the campsite next to Seljalandsfoss for our first night:
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And actually got to see a little light show in the evening!
Venturing into off road territory was a little bit of an adventure for me. Battling the elements with 200 miles of riding in heavy rain, only to be followed by a couple of days in hot sun and dusty trails. Both physically and mentally challenging days make for a good sleep, even in a small tent.
[Nerdy intro, skip if you want: 1.8in (4.67cm) That’s the distance between the knobs on my new off road tires (scorpion rally II). At least on the front wheel. In the rear it’s slightly more. Incidentally this is leads to a whistle of a bout 440hz around 45 mph (~72 km/h). Since the rear wheel is slightly different, you end up with a dissonant whistle of slightly different frequencies when riding. So while I am making my way up to DirtDaze at Lake Luzerne, my bike is trying to summon Shadowfax (Gandalf uses a whistle like that to get his attention).]