The Gift Guide That Will Help Your Cycling Friends Sleep at Night

I've never written a gift guide before.  It's a little intimidating to be honest. Buying gear for a cyclist is comparable to buying shoes for your girlfriend.  Your almost guaranteed to get it wrong.

But if you have a friend or loved one joining us on an expedition I can promise you that what gear to bring has kept them awake at night more than once.  Prepping for a 4 month bike tour is expensive and the list of gear is long.  So I wrote this guide to help you help them ease the anxiety a bit.  I hope it helps.

With the exception of the North Face tent, I've used and continue to use all the products I recommend here.  I'm hoping Santa brings me the tent this year, otherwise I'll have to dig deep and buy it for myself.

The TdA Gift Guide:


Essential Gear:


Schwalbe Marathon Mondial Tires - $50 to $90 each tire (did I mention preparing for tour can be expensive?)

Anyone joining us on tour will need at least two sets of tires, some times 3.  Year in and Year out Schwalbe tires out perform any other tire on tour.  You'll need to find out what size wheels your cyclists will be using. The choices are 26" or 29" / 700c).  Once you know that you can buy the appropriate width tire.  I recommend a 35mm tire for 29" / 700c wheels and a 2.0 width tire for 26" wheels. Guaranteed to put a smile on any cyclist face.

North Face Minibus Tent - $359
Living in a tent for 4 months changes the way you think about tents.  This is compounded by the fact that the tent will be used in deserts as a well as mountains and in more than a few rainstorms.  The Minibus tent covers all the bases well.  It looks like it pitches quickly and tautly, has great head room for a two man tent, two doors, lots of pockets for gear and allows for 'fly only' pitching, a feature that I personally love for those hot desert days.


Nice to have Gear:

Lite Cot - $220
Sleeping on the ground gets old.  Especially when that ground is rocky or rough.  the Lite Cot eliminates the problem by providing a lightweight sleeping cot that packs down to the size of a thermarest.  I no longer bring a sleeping pad on tour, just a lite cot.  Takes an extra 5 minutes to set up / break down but totally worth it for the comfort.

Kindle E Reader - $79
I wouldn't travel without this anymore.  The battery lasts forever and you can carry hundreds and hundreds of books in a 6 oz package.  Since the kindle also allows you to store PDFs you can also store anything from any website using services like Readability.

Schwalbe Tubes - $9 each
I've mentioned that I am a big fan a Schwalbe tires.  Well same goes for their tubes.  They cost close to 3 times as much as their chinese or korean counterparts though.  But I can vouch for the durability of the SV-17, their touring tube. Especially in scorching hot conditions where I've seen cheaper tubes spontaneously explode.  Riders are going to need 6 to 8 spare tubes on one of our trips.  Note that tubes, like tires, come in different widths and sizes.  The SV-17s fit a wide variety of widths and come in 26" and 29" / 700c sizes.  They also come with two different types of valve and the valves come in different lengths.  A 40 mm presta valve will work for most cyclists on tour.

Stocking Stuffers

Tire levers - big surprise, Schwalbe makes some great ones.
Rim Tape,  - few people bring spare rim tape on tour, they should.  Pedros and Schwalbe tape is good.
Multi Tool - a good multi tool is a life saver.  The Park Tool IB-2 or Park Rescue Tool are my favorites.
Seat bag - A place to keep essential items like tools and a spare tube.   Lots of options here.
Kickstand - Its hard to overstate how great a kickstand is to have on tour.  Racers might disagree though.

So there you go.  The first ever TdA Gift Guide (and I didn't even plug our new book - ... ahem ... available on amazon.com).  Let me know in the comments if you found this guide useful or have other suggestions.

Happy Holidays!

Paul

Paul McManus Designs and Guides Long Distance Bike Tours for Tour d’Afrique Ltd.  Currently he is preparing for the Silk Route Bike Tour from Shanghai to Istanbul which starts in May 2012.  Find out more at http://tourdafrique.com/tours/silkroute

Gear

Note: This post turned out to be me thinking out loud, kind of willy nilly. Some people might find some of it useful or interesting, but I would guess not many. I started this post mostly cause I wanted an excuse to post a picture of the police sniper bike above. Mission Accomplished. Read on at your own peril.

What to bring. Hmmm. 7000 miles, 10 days in hotel, 90 days camping, Touring S. Africa and Zambia afterwards. Maybe going on to ride from Paris to Bejing after that. A few criteria come to mind:
1) Utility - everything needs to have more than one use
2) Cost - almost anything I bring could be ruined or broken
3) Durability - I'd rather it didn't get ruined or break
4)

Here's the list:
Bike:
Poprad with 32 hole open pros and ultegra hubs. Nitto seatpost, thompson stem, alum bar and Ultegra group. Some really cool Specialized touring tires - 38 mm with a ton of tread. Negetive tread design and inflatable to 85 psi. They are folding but weigh a ton. My goal is zero flat tires on the trip and these babies are my secret weapon. I'm gonna bring an extra set of tires, jsut dome 32mm michelin mud2's, they pack pretty small and it might be nice to have a more fun set up every once in a while.

The real big bike question for me is pedals. If I bring clipless pedals I have to bring special shoes. Plus that's two things that can't be replaced if they break. But is riding 80 miles a day on flat pedals, especially with loaded panniers, a good idea? I don't know, I've never tried it.

Spare parts: I'm counting on most people to bring way to many spare parts and be able to buy them before they fly home.
2 tubes, 1 patch kits - TdA recommends 5 patch kits and 5 spare tubes - WTF?
Spare Tires - two 32 mm CX tires
1 brake and 1 gear cable.
extra spokes
brake pads - 3 pair
tool kit and pump
I'm thinking about bringing a rear thumbshifter or bar end shifter. Just in case the STI goes wonky on me.
bike lock, it's actually a snowboard lock
Extra saddle. Learned my lesson at Fools Gold.
extra bar tape
extra cycle computer - I guess these get stolen by kids a lot. makes sense.
bell - omage to cliffy,

Clothes - yep I'm bringing clothes. I'm pretty sure they sell clothes in Africa so I'm not that worried about it. Some cold weather clothes and some hot weather clothes. 2 or 3 sets. Of course clothes do present a real opportunity to show people you don't know too well how cool you are. I think I can accomplish this with my "Evolution Kills" and "I feel Pretty" tshirts. There appropirately sacastic and obscure. They really shout "I'm smarter than you but at least I have a sense of humor about it". I am definitely bringing my Joes Tshirt and of course my Atomic Jersey. Again the big issue is shoes. Also whether or not to bring lycra bike shorts or just wear regular shorts, it's that whole utility thing. Plus I look funny enough just being a white guy riding his bike thru africa, do I really need a superhero outfit to add to the spectacle? The upside is they don't take up much room and my regular shorts don't smell like ass at the end of the day. I guess I'll bring a couple pair

I am also debating whether or not to wear a helmet. Riding on dirt roads with no real extreme "hey y'all watch this" opportunities I'm not sure it's needed. I'm sure it's required as a matter of policy but... I just hate to lug it over there and not use it. I never used one in the peace corps and they threatened to thow you out if you got caught without it.

Camping,
Tent, sleeping bag, bag liner, foam pad, Head lamp, bowl, spoon, cup, tent stake hammer, 8 ft of rope, groudn cloth - all the usual stuff. Thought about tarping it to save space and wt. but then I thought - mozzies and snakes and scorpians... oh my.

misc.
ipod with Swahili, Spanish and French audio lessons that I will probably never listen to, and some music and podcasts, I wish I hadn't sold my freakin shortwave on ebay last year.
Camera and extra storage cards.
two books - Africa, Biography of a Continent and Shock Doctrine by Naomie Cline.
medical stuff: immodium, contacts, advil, chamois creme, sunscreen, salt pills, larium (maybe),
misc toiletries of course.

I bagged the idea of carrying Binos and a bird book, I'm just gonna make up a bunch of cool birds to tell Cliff I saw. Cliff if you want I can just give you the list in advance and save some time. I am gonna carry a 8x21 monocular that I've had laying around for a while.

What to carry it all in?
Airlines want to charge you for everything bigger than a fanny pack and any luggage I bring has to be carried with me on the trip. So I'm thinking about filling my panniers and then putting them in a cheap cloth bag I can give away or pack. Bike goes in a cardboard box. I'm not sure if I can fit a bike with front and rear racks in a biek box but I will soon find out. I have front and rear panniers but I'm thinking about only using teh front, maybe I should just get off my butt and load the panniers to see how much room there is.... yep.