RAGBRAI Day-2

It never fails, every time I get a loose end wrapped up before a trip, five more things unravel. The last week has been no different. While lining up supplies for the week, I discovered busted shock cord in my tent poles, a missing tab on my sleeping bag zipper, and a handful of other minor problems with my camping gear. On top of that, I was dealing with a rather pesky SRAM drive train the shop that needed to be fixed for RAGBRAI. Fortunately, SRAM’s warranty department was on the ball with two clutch overnight replacement shipments and I was able to get everything else squared away in time to get my panniers packed with 8 hours to spare.

Pannier #1 15.1 lbs


Pannier #2 14.7 lbs

This trip being my first venture into bicycle touring, I’ve been constantly worrying whether I’m over packing or under packing and have had the sick feeling that I’m forgetting important. As it is, I’ve got all I’ll need packed into two panniers. One pannier holds my tent, netbook, repair supplies, sandals and a fleece shirt. It weighs about 15.1 lbs. The other contains my sleeping bag, thermarest, toiletries, and cloths. It weighs 14.7 lbs.

As a rule, I’ve never been much of a social media kind of guy. Sure, I’ll update on the shop’s facebook page from time to time and I’ve started a handful of blogs (all of which consisting of one or fewer posts) but I don’t use twitter and my coworkers post more status updates on my facebook page than I do. So logically, I presented the idea to Ben (my boss) that if he’d let me outfit a touring bike to demo, I’d blog about it. That conversation ended with the temporary addition of a 2010 Masi Speciale Randonneur to my stable, the creation of this blog, and me volunteering to ride RAGBRAI self supported.

RAGBRAI starts Sunday and I'll try to check in with some photos and comments as often as I can.