Eighteen Hours Til Tokyo…
Well this is weird… Feels like only a couple of days ago I was saying things like ‘Yeah, we got another eight weeks til we go to Japan…’
And now, it’s today…. This isn’t really going to be much of a post cause I am not sure what to say, but there are a bunch of people I’d like to thank for sure…
My boss Hugh, for letting me save up this many holidays and being almost as stoked about me finally taking them and going to Japan as I am. Big thanks to everyone at the shop for being super supportive too… I’m not really thinking about it now, but I am really looking forward to some of the changes we’ve made for the coming season and I’m excited about work in 2013…
Rosie! For just generally being awesome and deciding to come along… The planning part has been great and I’m looking forward to ten weeks of rolling around with you. And doing some cycling also…
The team at Mountain Equipment n the city, especially Pete, for helping me get set up to do this kind of thing over the last couple of years. I hope people feel about our shop the way I feel about Mountain Equipment. Sure I could buy stuff online cheaper, but every single time I go there they have a bunch of great options, I get the right advice and whatever I end up buying always works exactly how I wanted it to…
To my mum and dad for always encouraging me to ride bikes and making sure I was riding good ones (even at times when I probably didn’t deserve to be…) I’m about to go ride about around a whole country, and that’s pretty special. I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t for you guys…
Momo and Hikari for helping out SO much, especially when it came to trying to find information that was only available written in Japanese… Momo I’ll try to bring you back something awesome, and Hikari I’ll see you tomorrow at about eleven…
Everyone who’s made themselves a part of the journey so far by just being interested and keeping themselves in the loop… Promise I’ll try to keep some decent pictures coming over the next couple of months…
Facebook is probably the best way to keep in touch with me while I’m away, I ought to have a Japanese sim card in my iPhone this time tomorrow… Otherwise you’ll hear from me when I get back…
See you in late November.
Adam
All Boxed Up…
Today was just about the nicest day of the year as far as the weather was concerned… Perfect blue skies, about 26 degrees with just the slightest breeze. Would have been an amazing Sunday to be out on a bike and I hope you went and did that…
We’d had today pencilled in for bike boxing for a few weeks though, and after a bit of a wander round town in the sun and some Portugese chicken for lunch, we headed to the shop to get it done…
If you are considering flying with your bike in a cardboard box at some point or you’re one of those people that have seen my bike in the shop the last few weeks and wondered how I was gonna fit it all in, maybe bookmark this page for future reference… I’ve boxed a bunch of friends and my own bikes over the years and have gotten pretty good at it, so maybe you can take something away from this that’ll make your pack easier and maybe a bit lighter…
Otherwise I’d avoid reading this all together and just look at the pictures…
The first things to consider are a) how big a bike box is and how big it’s allowed to be and b) how much a bike box weighs.
Generally a box you grab from a bike shop will be from a pretty standard (and definitely not a loaded) bike. These boxes are usually 135x21x75 centimetres or there abouts and if you’re like us, and you are trying to fly with full sleeping and cooking gear, then that shit is just never gonna fit in there…
Those boxes are pretty close to the maximum that the airlines will let you fly with, except for the width where you are allowed 30cm rather than the 21… This makes a big difference, but we’ll get to that…
I was kinda surprised how much those boxes weigh too… The boxes we used were from GT Tachyons, pretty basic commuting bikes and were just over four kilos each..! What..?
So, how to make a box bigger, and lighter at the same time…
Grab two boxes the same size and a Stanley Knife (or whatever they’re called in your country, a Box Knife or something crazy…) and cut one of the large sides out of both of them… Along one of the cuts you just made will generally be a whole lot of huge metal staples that held the original box together – don’t need them anymore and they’re heavy so get them out of there with some pliers… Lastly, the bottom of the boxes is usually a double layer of cardboard, again held together with huge metal staples. Remove one of these layers and all the staples and don’t worry, we’ll give it some structure back later…
That little flappy bit by my hands there, just wrap a small piece of duct tape around it and under the base to hold them together and square…
Next, slide one of the open sided boxes into the other… Flip it up on it’s side, and at the base of the side, slide it out until it measures just under 30cm and run a line of tape around it. Do the same at the top of that side and BOOM you got yourself a square side… Flip it over and do the same with the opposite end and you’ll find its already got a bunch of structure to it…
Now for the base… As one box is inside the other, the outer of the base is not even… Cut a thin peice of cardboard from one of the sides you removed and fill in this space. Keep it in place with a little tape…
Speaking of tape, get your hands on the toughest duct or gaffer tape you can find… I covered the entirety of the base of these boxes in it, long lengths from one end to the other and make sure it’s all smoothed out and stuck good… This sounds excessive for sure, but it means you can drag them around all day and not care, they are even quite water resistant and its LOADS lighter than the second layer of cardboard you removed earlier… This floor will hold a shitload of weight too – important.
Both our enlarged boxes, now 135x30x75, weigh 3.4 kilograms… Add some tape to close it up and thats a solid half a kilo lighter than the original way-too-small box…
Now to chuck your bike in it…
I get loads of people (mostly road cyclists) asking about semi rigid and fully rigid cases for flying with their bikes, and I always say that the way that you pack your bike is just as important as what you pack it in… A poorly packed bike in a fully rigid case is probably more likely to get damaged than a very well packed bike ina cardboard box…
This is how I do it…
Throw your bike in a workstand (you have a workstand right?) or hang it from the clothesline or something, and grab one of the sides you removed from the original boxes. I had to removed fenders, rack and fork leg bottle cages for the next part but depending on frame size and the kind of bike you have it may be less time consuming…
Zip tie the sheet to the frame so that cranks, headset, both dropouts and seat clamp and as far from the edges as possible. This is hard with a Fargo as the fork and headtube are so long, but it can be done…
Remove your rear derailleur and zip tie it up inside the frame, then take the stem off the steerer and zip tie the bars against the fork leg… A little foam on your chainrings is not a bad idea either, just to stop the other stuff you put in the box getting damaged…
This should leave you with the bulk of your bike attached to a backing that slides snugly into the box you made, and nothing touches the sides or the base… Here’s one I prepared earlier…
One hundred and thirty five centimetres is apparently just the right length for two twenty nine inch wheels with tyres deflated and fenders zip tied to them to go end to end. So do that along the opposite side (wouldn’t be possible without that extra bit of width – and a touring bike is often too long to just leave the rear wheel in the frame). You also now have a tonne of room underneath the frame, inside and below the rear triangle and forward of the forks to pack gear.
You’ll want to reinforce the inner wall of the box where the axles of the wheels touch, again some good tape will do a great job in tandem with those floppy plastic things that new bikes get shipped with…
Rosie’s stuff went in with a mile to spare, and came in at 28 kilos…
Mine (see the first pic) was a little bit of a tighter squeeze as it has all the shared sleeping and cooking gear plus all my own crap… My bike is a lot lighter that Rosie’s to start with but it still came in at 31kg… A kilo under the absolute maximum I am allowed to carry… Paying for excess baggage tomorrow is going to be great fun…
And now all the big stuff that we had to do are done… Couple of days of work, a few beers on Wednesday and get it all to the airport on Friday…
Five Days to go…
One Week… Really???
This time next week, Rosie and I will be sitting in the small bar owned by our friend Hikari in the outer Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, rocking out to some tunes, having some good food and, I’m sure, a glass on something or two…
There are a lot of things like this coming up in the next three months. Experiences I understand because we’ve planned them or researched them but about which I actually have no way of forming an expectation that I feel will even come close to the reality of how great this trip is going to be…
Tomorrow we box our bikes, try to work out what to check in and what to carry, and no doubt pay for quite a bit of excess baggage… Tonight for me was a full bike pack. Every single thing that I will take, other than the clothes I wear to the airport and the things we will collect in Tokyo are now on my bike…
Now, some of you are going to find this really boring, but I have had a lot of people getting in touch or asking at the shop about what I am carrying… So, the following is a detailed gear list of everything that is on board and why, and includes those things that will be collected in Tokyo before we depart. Hopefully this answers all the questions…
Revelate Designs Handlebar Harness
Ortlieb 22litre dry bag with MSR Holler tent and two Exped inflatable down sleeping mats in their own thin Exped dry bag to protect them from moisture on the tent if we are forced to pack it wet. Bunch of MSR alloy tent pegs and some extra nylon rope for making a clothes line of securing the tent in high winds.
Revelate Designs Pocket
Passport, wallet, maps, sunscreen, chamois cream, Leatherman Skelletool, lip balm, little bit of snacky goodness maybe…
Revelate Designs Gas Tank and Jerry Can
Whole lot of yummy stuff to eat… Canon IXUS camera…
Revelate Designs Custom Frame Bag
Arm and leg warmers. Pearl Izumi Barrier Shell. Polarfleece Buff. Santini cycling cap. Spare tube. Spare spokes, one for each side of each wheel of both Rosie’s and my bike. Shitload of zipties. MSR Dromlite 2litre bladder for cooking and just-in-case drinking water.
Ortlieb Backroller Classic Panniers
Right – This is the one that will be going in the box with the bike. Mont Helium -12 down sleeping bag and cotton/silk blend liner (so my bag doesn’t smell toooo rough after a few weeks). MSR Dragonfly multifuel stove, one litre fuel bottle and small maintenance kit. Cannon IXUS chager and three spare batteries, whole lot of 32gig SD cards for pics and video. PowerMonkey solar charger – hopefully this guy will keep my iPhone running for a few days between proper stops. Black wolf inflatable pillow. Basic first aid kit. Mavic cycle touring shoes. Black Diamond headtorch. Small toiletries kit.
Left – This is the one I will take as carry on luggage. Basically has two sets of knicks and jerseys, with a bunch of layers to add. One light and one merino undershirt. Proper waterproof jacket and pants. Books (lonely planet and some language stuff) and maps. Down jacket. Some thermal sleeping kit, underwear and a tshirt. The only other clothes I will take I will wear on the plane – jeans, tshirt, trail shoes. A bunch of my cycling kit, especially the jacket and shell can easily double as casual kit…
Pro Storage Bottle (beneath downtube)
Lezyne SV10 multitool (because it has a T30 torx key that all new Shimano chainring bolts take). Michelin tyre levers. Roll of electrical tape. Spare hanger for me and an emergency hanger for Rosie. Stein cassette tool. Spoke key. Two sets of Avid BB7 brake pads. Park tyre boots and glueless patches. Proper old-skool patches and rubber cement. Couple of chainring bolts, two quick chain links, random M4 and M5 bolts stores in the (many) extra bolt holes on a Salsa Fargo…
Two Zefal Magnum one litre bottles and a Lezyne handpump mounted on the fork leg.
In Tokyo, we’ll buy cookware, basic crockery and cutlery. This will likeley mean I need to move my sleeping bag and some other stuff to the deck of the rack but that’s no big deal. I’d also really like to pick up a couple of very small, very light folding stools so we always have something comfy to sit on at meal times, but we’ll see how we go.
There is no room on my bike for food, that’s going on Rosie’s bike. I’ll haul all the big stuff, may even take her sleeping bag if we need and she’ll have plenty of room for our meals. Rosie is AWESOME at keeping track of what food we have (she always knows what I have in the pantry or the fridge way better than I do even if she hasn’t been over for a week) so I think it’s best she gets to keep an eye on it…
I guess we’ll see how tomorrow goes, but that really should be it for the organising and packing… I do have a little bit of a route to work out properly during the week that will take us to the west coast of Honshu, but I am getting good at that.
It’s my birthday on Wednesday. I was supposed to have root canal therapy that morning but they had a cancellation and moved it to yesterday – it’s actually a piece of cake, no pain at all and actually a little less expensive than I had anticipated – so I am looking forward to just enjoying the week and looking forward to Friday when we fly.
Two Weeks… Shakedown…
Two weeks out and we’re tying the loose ends and getting into the details of what we’re taking or not and how much little shit weighs and I kinda just want to be on the trip already…
Sunday was a final proper ride and problem shoot for the bikes… Mine is a fortress, I knew it would be. But Rosie hasn’t really spent much time on hers as it’s a loaner so a solid roll with some ups and down was needed to suss it all out…
Beautiful Sunday out along the Old Pacifi Highway to Pie In The Sky and back… I prefer this ride on a weekday when there are less motorcycles and classic cars to listen for, but it’s beautiful none the less…
Gotta tweak Rosie’s setup a little bit – cut the bars some more and maybe run a very slightly longer stem, but otherwise she’s sorted… My bike just needs something to stop the panniers rubbing the rack quite as much as they currently are (I don’t fancy snapping a rack in rural Hokkaido) and it’s good to go…
Now for the packing…
That’s just about everything on board for me… It’s sitting at 30.5kg right now, but we’ll be buying cookware, cutlery and crockery in Tokyo as well as MAYBE some tiny little folding camp stools, and a mate in Chichibu has a tarp at his place with my name on it so I’d say the rolling total will be closer to 35 maybe a little more… There’s also no food on this bike, but that’s going on Rosie’s… Now to get in into a box.
Pretty excited – WE GOT TICKETS TO THE SUMO WRESTLING at Ryogoku Kokugikan… It wasn’t something that I had originally thought of trying to get to see, but when Rosie suggested it, and it turned out that one of the few tournaments of the year was on right when we landed, it didn’t take me very long to be convinced we really should do it…
I think that’s going to be one of the great things about having Rosie rolling around with me… Aside from the great company and hilarious one-liners there’s definitely a lot of stuff that she’ll get excited about and convince me to do that I otherwise may not have done and i think my experience of Japan will be broader and better for it…
Can’t wait…
A Therapy For Pain 