I want to buy a mountain bike

[San Bernardhinault]

Chair? Undies?

[caja-dglh]

I actually moved the green bag up from that image for exactly that reason. It was fine under most circumstances, but not braking hard. So I threaded the straps on the rollbag through the chair-bag to keep it up higher. The suspension is already as firm as I dare make it.

I thought you might have spent an inordinate amount of time calibrating that. It looks pretty evenly balanced and fixed in place.

And you all say I am the one that does stupid stuff...

[ad hoc]

And you all say I am the one that does stupid stuff...

We don't. We just think it

[Sporting]

Chair? Undies?

Baselayer.

[ursus arctos]

Hundreds of options available on Amazon

[San Bernardhinault]

I thought you might have spent an inordinate amount of time calibrating that. It looks pretty evenly balanced and fixed in place.

Everything has to be pretty well balanced, but it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. The thing about riding a big clunky chunky mountain bike slowly is that it's fairly forgiving. It's not like riding an Ineos time-trial bike in the rain.

And while being well balanced is important, everything has to be able to be taken off/out fairly efficiently for setting up camp, so you don't want anything that needs to be located too precisely because by day two it'll be wrong by a few mm. It's better to have a whole load of forgiveness in the set-up, even if it's marginally more work to ride.

[San Bernardhinault]

So… when I first wrote about the bike packing I said this was the easy stretch. Ha!

It’s been pretty beautiful and kind of fun. But not easy. The ride from ABQ on day one was a short starting stretch. Day 2 heading to Grants was 62 miles into a 30mph headwind. The guys were all exhausted and flagged down a ride so we got in a truck for the last 15 miles of it.

Then today we headed south. There’s a fire watch. More 30mph winds through El Malpais National Monument, along with 5% humidity. It’s desiccating us. Again, the other guys flagged a ride. After 50 miles into that wind we were messed up again….

And, the wind story continues. Tomorrow we’re meant to ride into the hills, and it’s two days of wild camping. Except on Friday there are 70mph gusts forecast in those hills. Not conditions for cycling or camping. So we’re stuck in Pietown trying to find a way to get 5 people and 5 bikes out….

Altogether not the best way to do this.