The Saddlebags
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Inside the Saddlebags There's no guide for packing saddlebags for an unplanned bicycle journey, so I ended up with a lot of unused items to give away. Flying out of Seattle, I was dressed for cold temperatures even though I would be flying into the tropics of Southeast Asia. My jacket, long-sleeved shirts, and pants found their way to the bottom of the bags quickly just taking up space. What I really needed was sunscreen, and not earmuffs and winter gloves, maybe even add some mud flaps.
A small but expensive tent also occupied part of the saddlebags. Carrying a tent seemed like a reasonable thing to do, but it too quickly ended up at the bottom of the bag with the other non-essentials. Hotels in Southeast Asia were cheap, occasionally under $5, and after biking 10 hours or more, a shower and clean clothes beat hiding in the jungle swatting mosquitos most of the night. As strange as it may seem, I was too paranoid to sleep in a tent anyway. Zipped up inside, I would be a human punching bag for any intruder with a big stick. Those days I didn't make it to the next town and was forced to set up camp, I normally slept outside near the tent and only used it in case of rain or too many mosquitos. After a year in Vietnam, I usually preferred to sleep with one eye open anyway. |
Clothing should be selected not by colors or styles, but by material. Blue jeans are difficult to wash by hand and take way too long to dry. The same for sleeping bags, heavy socks, and shirts. Heavy things were the first to go; giving away clothes was easy. Most that I had brought was too warm and too baggy. Within the month, I dropped from a large to a medium.
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The saddlebags also held valuables as well, and perhaps the most valuable was a nylon Vietnam jungle blanket and mosquito net. Washing the blanket was easy and the mosquito net aided sleep. Following the sun, I didn't need much warmth. If it got too cool at night, I could always do jumping jacks.
Within that first month, all my "Seattle" clothes were given away, and eventually, the tent as well. Every direction had mountains to climb and lightening the load was a priority. If I really needed something, I could buy it along the way. Doing without was finally making sense. Living with two "city" shirts, a biking shirt, nylon pants, and two pairs of shorts, worked well with a nylon windbreaker. Other than a hat, that was it. By changing towns frequently, wearing the same shirt day after day was not a problem, and anyone who noticed, probably assumed it was part of my uniform. Traveling that light meant washing an item or two at the end of each day, but if everything was dirty, there wasn't much to wash. |
Besides clothes and sleeping gear, I carried a plate, a spoon, a pocket knife, a machete, and an assortment of plastic bags to keep things dry. As light as this personal load was, a separate camera bag weighed over twenty pounds. Being that heavy it would be difficult to run away with, so it also served as the safe for traveler's checks, cash, and a huge stash of gold and diamonds. Those things I could control. All the souvenirs that found their way to the bottom of the saddlebags were the problem.
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