T-88: A Home on the Road, Bedroom Version

Getting ready to be on the bike for months on end, on a self-supporting tour, means thinking about making the lightest, most comfortable home possible.  Oh yes, and make sure it weighs less than 70 pounds total.  This has been a big effort that is not quite done.

 

In our house, we have a kitchen, a living room, a dining room,  two bedrooms, an office,  a bathroom, and a full basement where we wash clothes, store food, and watch movies.  I assure you we have filled every room with furniture, art, tchotchkes, and the detritus of daily life.  Nearly all of the functions of our life in our house still have to continue when we are on the bike.  We will still need to eat and sleep and keep ourselves clean and healthy.  There will be hours in camp that have to be filled with reading or writing or maintaining ourselves, our relationships, and our gear.

Because we will be travelling for months, through wide and varied terrain, through all kinds of weather, we also have to have carry a closet.  We know from previous tours that bike problems are an inevitable; we have to carry a tool chest as well.

How to do all this without overloading these two fat old slow souls?  How to manage the need for both comfort and lightness?  It also important to consider durability and ease of repair. Being on the road is necessarily dirty and sometimes quite rough.  More than once, we have slept in sites no one would consider a beauty spot--on gravel or in the pouring rain.  Clothing, tents, and sleeping gear will take a beating on trip like this.

So what's a soul to do?  I have thought long and hard about the problem of the bedroom.  

From this...

In tours past, we have each taken one pad, a sleeping bag, and threw them in a good tent.  Even in our younger, fitter days, we would often face a poor night's sleep.  Always, Wes is a better sleeper than me, able to sleep sitting up on a moment's notice and wake up refreshed.  Me?  Not so much.  Even in my comfortable bed, I toss and turn and smash my pillow and struggle to find a position that keeps my slight spina bifida hips and back from throbbing or going numb.   Then it is another effort to shut down the chatter in my mind. 

In the past few years, while car camping, we have discovered that sleeping together, under a down comforter is infinitely preferable to snarling up in separate sleeping bags.  We can snuggle and share body heat if it is cold.  We can throw off the comforter if we get warm.  Usually, it's both.  I sleep cold and want Wes' warmth.  Wes sleeps hot and kicks the covers off his feet.   Ok.  So we want to use a down comforter instead sleeping bags. 

 But down comforters are usually surrounded by white cotton, a terrible choice in wet or dirty conditions.  So now we need to find a way to protect the comforter.  Solution: a double silk liner bag  (from Campmor) which will keep the comforter clean and somewhat protect from damp.  On a really cold night, we will be able to get in the liner for increased warmth.  Good.  What is the weight and size cost?  Oh my.  More than 9 pounds.  Even compressed the bag and liner are 21 inches by 8 inches by 6 inches.  Big.

We choose to keep that weight and size in recognition that we have to sleep well or we will not be able  to keep up the cycling day after day. 

The bedroom is not done.  We still need a bed and a bedroom.   We choose to take two pads EACH. Wes will take two closed cells, and I will take a closed cell and a Therma-rest pad.  More weight, more bulk.  Add two more rolls the same size of the comforter roll.  Weight cost: 4 pounds for Wes and 5 pounds for me.  Weight so far: 18 pounds.


To this...

Finally, looking at our tent, we have several choices.  The big cabin tent we use for car camping is obviously wrong.  The small tent we bought last year for the bike trip, although light and small, was extremely uncomfortable.  The few nights we spent in it were miserable, sleepless, body-aching wrecks.  The tent we took on the last bike trip won't do either, with its broken zippers and holey floor. 
That sets me on a search to find a tent.  Light, strong, roomy, easy to set up, able to survive big winds and big rain.  We have even found ourselves in snow.  After look, look, look, we are thrilled with a great tent from REI.  Good size with plenty of storage space.  Wonderful weight: only 7 pounds and very small package. 

We almost have a bedroom (although we are still debating what to do about pillows).  Size: total bulk of  21 x 25 x 6.  Whew!  Weight cost:  25 pounds.  These are big numbers.  Can we make up weight and size in other parts of our home on the road?

 

T-90 The Task of Readiness

We are down to the final quarter before we leave on our cross country bicycle trip.  From nearly two years ago, when we decided it was time for a major change in our life, until today, there has a been a flurry of activity to get ready.  When we were younger, leaving on one of these trips was a much simpler task.  We would save our money, end whatever marginal job we had, get rid of or store our meager possessions, then start.

Our first major trip, around the British Isles, was a lark by comparison to massive heaven and earth realignment we have had to do for this trip.  Comparison:

1983: We were staying in a furnished apartment provided for us by the University of Reading while I was on a Fulbright Fellowship.  We had a box of books, and two backpacks of clothes, and a basic camping set-up from our hitchhike across the country before going to Europe.  We owed no money and had no obligations after my fellowship ended.  We bought our bikes from a second hand dealer and crudely fashioned panniers out of cast off bags.

2013: We have a historic house, two cats, an autistic dog, a cabin in Wyoming, full time employment as a teacher, run a busy but always financially challenged community based theatre, have debt on the cabin, debt on a car, a whole raft of bills and obligations.  We are modern Americans, up to our eyeballs in stress, work, and complicated relationships. 

But we also know that this web is killing us.  We want a different way to be in the world as we enter the third third of our lives.  Teaching, long Wes' joy and passion, has become untenable in the face of  40 student classrooms, more than 200 students a day, 3 high stakes tests a year, and the constant drumbeat of blaming teachers.  It is clear that Wes' pension is daily growing more unstable.  Already there are taxes and fees and reductions of benefits that were not there just a few years ago.  It is time to step away from 4:00 am mornings and 12 hour days, and the weekends of grading papers.  It is well past time of always being exhausted, of having no time or energy for anything else--for friendship, for recreation, for restorative time spent in nature.  Wes is carrying around a big belly that distresses him, but stress still drives him to seek solace in food.

I am worn out from the constant worry and burden of Matrix.  It has been my dream and my deepest passion, but after so many years of "spinning straw into gold", I just want time to pay attention to myself.  Instead of always facilitating the creativity of others, I would like to facilitate my own creativity.  I really want to invest in relationships in a way that I have not been able.  The first relationship that needs some nurturing is my relationship to myself.

Like Wes, my body is showing the signs of a long burden.  I am no longer overweight, but have slipped into obesity.  I have lived with a feeling of constant shame and embarrassment because of my weight.  Because I am also perverse, that shame drives me to seek solace in sugary, fatty foods...which of course, starts the whole shame cycle again.   Enough.

Over the next few days and weeks, as we move to the final days of preparation, I want to look at all the structures and systems we are remaking in this effort to set ourselves free from the self-created and self chosen shackles we have created for ourselves.   Oh my.