Day Before Departure- what's in my bags?

We are almost ready!  Leg 2. Coast to coast, corner to corner, Bellingham Washington to key W. Florida Rd. bike trip here we come!  

Tomorrow is departure date and I'm getting the last part of my bike packed up taking as little as possible but just enough to make do.

Check out this video to see what's in (and not in) my bags...

Transcribed:

Hey, here it is! The day before we are leaving for leg 2 on our journey of coast to coast corner to corner Bellingham to Key West, Florida.

I am just doing some final packing of the bike, making sure everything fits, my husband has been out of town, so he’s already packed his bike.

Here’s what his looks like! See if we can get it in the shot, a riding machine! So we carry everything, we go camping along the way, and that means we carry a tent, sleeping bags, it gets down into the 30’s in Yellowstone.

So, we are starting this year in Jackson, Wyoming and then we go North to Yellowstone, and then across Wyoming, through Cody, Wyoming across the uh Big Horn Mountains and there’s a nice 5,000 foot climb, Oh my god, 5,000 ft! In one day, so thank goodness we bring our camping gear just in case we want to take a snooze along the way.

And then, we hit the uh, we go up the Devil’s tower in Wyoming and then go into the Black Hills of South Dakota, get to see Mt. Rushmore, I figure that’s the only time I’m gonna be passing through that part of the country.

So, um and then we go through the Badlands of South Dakota, head east in South Dakota, hot, flat, and hopefully with a tail wind. And then we head South to go to Valentine, Nebraska, hop on that cowboy trail, which is a rails to trail, which takes us almost to the Iowa border.

We’ll go back North a little bit to hopefully end in Sioux city, Iowa, we have a month, we’ve got a few rest days in there and every day I’m going to try and do a quick video for you, and shoot some pictures out on healthykneescoach.com on the blog! So, check it to see where we are, how things are going, and if it’s going as well as we’ve hoped because Doug had reconstructive surgery on his ACL tendon, he had a total rupture in February, I’m battling pushing off a second knee replacement.

And we are going to see how this goes. I figure we are going to get started!

Alright, so, check out my biking machine! Let me see if I can get this set up here, okay!

So, oh wait, that’s the wrong bike, NOT taking that one.

Let me just turn the chair here, okay there’s my bike, that looks a little more road worthy right?

While I’ve been training, I’ve been carrying weight and so, I’m really happy to say that my pannier is fully packed, I haven’t weighed it yet, but it’s lighter than what I was carrying on my training ride which was this, nice

Uh oh, wait a minute

Sorry about that, 10-pound dumbbell in each of my panniers, so I’m not taking these on the trip, my pannier weighs LESS than this 10 pound dumbbell, so that makes me a pretty happy biker.

Alright so in the back, I have, these are my civvies, so a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, oh I don’t even have a pair of shorts , a pair of pants, um a Neumo dress, a skort, two shirts, I’m really splurging here, my down coat, and then in the other side pack, I got my biking gear, I’ve got of course my bike shoes, two pairs of shorts, two pair of shirts, and couple of under things, and a light weight coat where I can zip off the sleeves cause I figure some of the mornings might be chilly.

I wanna start out, wow I’m really red, its so hot, sunny afternoon here in Bellingham!

And then in the front panniers, over here, potting bag, all the things we need for staying clean, and in the other one over here, is our air mattress, because I’m not sleeping on one of those foam pads anymore, I need a little more comfort than that, and somewhere around here  I’ve got a pound of coffee, cause I’m not going anywhere without a good cup of coffee too.

And then just the essentials for just riding up in my front pack, boom right here, we’ve got some chapstick, I burned my lips really badly one time when we were riding up on my bike, so they were super puffy, so we don’t want that to happen again, that that was really pretty awful, I’ve got some sunscreen, didn’t go with GPS this year…

Last time we had the GPS system, and it was a pain in the butt, it was hard to use and the charge took a long time, I’ve got a solar panel, oh what’s not on my bike yet is my sleeping bag right here, and solar panel. So this guy sits on the sleeping bag like this and charges while we are riding, its got a battery pack that it charges up, I’ve got it charging in the house right now.

So, we are darn close to being ready, tomorrow we leave and we are super excited to get going on Leg #2! I hope you’ll follow along and find out how we are doing! Trials and tribulations, please if you enjoy the videos and the pictures we post, I really encourage you to make a donation, a small one a big one, whatever you’d like.

There are three charities listed on the healthykneescoach website under C2C standing for Coast 2 Coast, and you can choose which one you like. They are local, Whatcom Community Foundation, love the work they do here in Whatcom County. They are national, the Arthritis Foundation, you now how much I love them because I’ve lived with Arthritis for most of my life and I’d love to help find a cure too, and then international, the World Bicycle Relief Fund, love them too! They help get bikes to people who otherwise don’t have transportation to young girls who wouldn’t be able to go to school in several countries in Africa, and also helps medical workers with visiting more villages.

It’ an amazing program, and I think it’s $134 will buy a bike? And that’s not much in the big scheme of things, so I encourage you to support this ride through those charities, and I’ll appreciate every dollar you can contribute, and I look forward to sharing our travels with you! That’s all for now, gotta finishing packing up and we’ll see you on the road, buh bye!