Video Review: The Buff

It’s simple in design and it doesn’t look like much, but the Buff is one our essential bits of touring gear. The Buff, if you’re not familiar with it, is a seamless tube of cloth. However, you can wear it to cover your neck, your ears, your face, or use it as a sweat band or bandana, etc., In a pinch, you could use it to filter sediment out of water as a pre-filter, or as a towel or maybe fashion it into a sling or tourniquet (hope it never comes to that!). In this video, I review the wool Buff and their new headband Buff and show you OUR most common uses for them.

If you want to get your own, consider getting it from our Amazon affiliate store! If you liked this review, you might like my All The Small Things review, where I talk about some small handy camping and EDC (everyday carry) items.

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new 2012 calendar or some of the fun zombie apocalypse shirts we’re designing.)

Nine Year Anniversary… and Other Adventures

Today, Russ and I celebrate our anniversary… nine years of crazy adventures together!

So, today, dear readers, we thought we would share some photos of our travels over the years, and let you into the hard-fought lessons about maintaining our relationship on the road.

One of the most common questions we’re asked is how our relationship has weathered our continual travel; specifically, how do we keep from killing each other? The answer sounds overly simple, but was actually only obvious in retrospect. We had to realize that our relationship on the road is inherently different from what our relationship was in our apartment in Long Beach… and we had to adapt.

The first thing that happened is that we ran out of things to talk about. We ride down the same road, look at the same scenery, meet the same people, eat at the same restaurants. We may interpret things differently and catch nuances differently, but our daily experiences are pretty similar. There is no coming home and saying, “Hi, Honey, How was your day?” It took some getting used to and we had to change our expectations, and eventually we came to understand that it’s okay – connection doesn’t necessarily come from chatter. Our conversations have morphed from rambling small talk about what happened at work and our interactions at the grocery store, to deeper, yet more disparate, communication about what we’re doing and where we’re going (on the road and in our lives).

We’ve also had to learn how to work well with each other and when we need personal time. In our previous lives, we did our own things during the day and then came together in the evening for dinner, etc. Now, we follow each other down the road or collaborate on projects during the day, and still come together for dinner. It’s a lot of ‘us’ time, which can actually be overwhelming after awhile. We’ve had to work through the comedy of errors that is brainstorming together. We’ve had to figure out how to be more conscientious and deliberate in our communication. And we’ve had to learn to recognize when we need time to ourselves (and then take it, and then not get upset or defensive about it).

Do we fight? Yes. If you spent every minute of every day with the same person, wouldn’t you eventually find a reason to fight with him/her? I think that every couple has its squabbles, and every couple finds a way to deal with it. Our squabbles are exacerbated by our constant movement, but I no longer think it’s a bad thing. The more we stumble over the same issue, the more we become aware of it, and the more we work at changing how we react and interact.

We’ve also learned that, sometimes, a fight has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than one of us is hungry, and we need to take a break to eat.

One of the biggest, most monumental shifts of the last few years was also one of the smallest. After traveling for long enough, our concept of ‘home’ changed – from a physical location where we stored our stuff, to wherever we are with each other. It may sound cheesy, but my home is Russ (and vice versa). Our relationship is not what keeps us in the same physical space, it is what supports us as people.

Over the past few years, these intense travel experiences have created a really strong bond between us. (One that, I might argue, is a lot stronger than simply signing a marriage license.) In general, we’ve come to feel that we’ll be okay as long as we’re together. It hasn’t come easily, but it’s certainly a blessing.

Thank you for being a part of our journey and for celebrating with us today!

Rough Cut: Jennifer Milyko – Adventure Cycling Cartographer

The downtime from moving around has given us a chance to go through our archived footage to tell more stories. While in Missoula, we had a chance to interview some of the staff at Adventure Cycling. We fielded questions on our Facebook and Twitter. A lot of the questions you submitted were about routes and maps. Fortunately, we got the opportunity to sit down with Jennifer Milyko, a cartographer with Adventure Cycling to get the inside scoop about their maps.

Jennifer talks about the transition from hand drawn maps to computer maps. We go on to talk about how new routes are planned, what sort of information route researchers look for and we also delve into the economics of bicycle touring. There was so much great information that it really was hard to cut it down! The video runs a little on the long side but answers lots of questions you might have about the ACA mapping process.

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new 2012 calendar or some of the fun zombie apocalypse shirts we’re designing.)

Video Review: Vanguard Nivelo 204BK Tripod, Perfect Touring Tripod?

I have a love/hate relationship with tripods. I love the versatility of shooting options they create (low light, self portraits, or even raised above the head for an elevated view), but I really really dislike how bulky they are and how slow they are to setup and tear down. For video, having a tripod becomes more of a necessity. I recently picked up a new tripod that is shockingly small and lightweight for what it does. The Vanguard Nivelo 204BK is a pretty cool little ‘pod. While it is definitely not for everyone, I think it will work for the gear I’m carrying and the shooting I plan to do with it.

Folded up, it is pretty small at a length of only 11 3/4 inches and weighs only a little more than a pound. At full height it unfolds to 39 inches, so a little more than waist height for me. This will no doubt not work for everyone, but for my intended use, primarily shooting sit down interviews and getting B-roll of us riding together, it should work just fine. My favorite part about the tripod is it is really fast to deploy. It uses a system that I haven’t seen before to extend the legs. You merely twist the bottom foot and expand the leg and tighten it to lock the length. This is so much faster than undoing individual segments on a tripod. One big caveat is that it works best with small cameras (point and shoot or micro 4/3s). A DSLR with big glass is not recommended.

I’m pretty excited about it. We’ll see how it holds up for the long haul!If you plan on getting one, consider buying one through our Amazon affiliate store!

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new 2012 calendar or some of the fun zombie apocalypse shirts we’re designing.)

UPDATED:Video Review: Olympus EP3 vs. EPM1

Yep, that image was shot with a camera a little bigger than your average point and shoot.

If you were to weigh all the stuff I carry while touring, you’d be surprised to note that my actual camping/clothing gear only weighs about 35 lbs. The rest of the 50lbs I carry is electronics. I’ve been slowly chipping away at the weight of the electronic gear by swapping out a lighter laptop, cutting down the number of cameras, etc., A big part of the weight has always been my DSLR. I’ve been experimenting the last few weeks with the Olympus EP3 and EPM1 and have been pleasantly surprised. They are small rangefinder sized cameras that use the micro 4/3rds system. While not having the same image quality as say a full frame DSLR, depending on your use and application, it may be all the camera you need.

In the video, I compare the EP3 and EPM1, two cameras on the opposite ends of the Olympus m43 systems. Interestingly, they use the same sensor so should produce the same image quality. The difference is in the body and handling. Watch the video and you might be surprised at the results. For full disclosure, I purchased the EP3 but was sent the EPM1 by Olympus as part of their PEN Ready project.

If you liked the video and want to get your own, consider buying from our Amazon affiliate store and we’ll get some coffee money. I’ve created a curated list of what I think would make the ideal travel camera kit.

Get the EP3 if:
-you want direct actress to features through buttons and dials
-plan to use manual focus lenses through adaptors (ie Leica, OM, Nikon, Canon FD, etc.,)
-the bigger and nicer LED screen is important to you

Get the EPM1 if:
-you’re on a budget
-if you can live with having to access the menu to change settings
-if you value weight over external controls

EDIT: A reader pointed out to me that you CAN access the focus magnification on the EPM1 by assigning it to the REC button. This didn’t dawn on me to do, because you lose the ability to shoot video with the button. That said, if you were doing JUST stills at the moment with a manual lens, then the REC button as a manual focus assist will work!

For more sample pictures of the EP3 and EPM1, check out this Flickr set where I shoot a cyclocross race with both cameras.

UPDATE: Just added a short video I shot from the same cross race in the Flickr group. Not too bad for the little PEN cameras.

UPDATE: Another video test. This time making coffee with the Hario Slim Mill : ).

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new 2012 calendar or some of the fun zombie apocalypse shirts we’re designing.)

Fall in Oregon

One of the things I never really experienced growing up in Southern California was Fall. For a kid in Los Angeles, I pretty much only remember two seasons: hot summer and warm summer. Concepts like Fall and Spring completely eluded me, except for the fact that, around October, there would be an explosion of orange and yellow in the supermarket or mall. That’s what counts for seasons sometimes. It has been a nice treat to have a real fall in one place and witness the leaves change and the air get crisper every morning.

I dusted off my trusty Surly, the bike that took me through our first 15 months of touring. It needed some air and some minor adjustments but otherwise it was in perfect working condition. Hopping on the Surly after months of riding the Brompton was strange. The bike, at first, felt slow to steer and a little sluggish out of the gate, but after a few miles I remembered why we picked the LHTs in the first place. They are great bikes. Workhorses. The sort of bike I would recommend without reservation. Sure, there are fancier bikes out there with custom doodads, but for a solid and reliable touring bike that won’t break the bank, the LHT is tough to beat.

I’ve been riding up a hill that leads to some radio towers close to Laura’s mom’s house to get my climbing legs back. It’s a decent climb, not too steep, not too long, but enough to get the blood pumping. The roads here are great for cycling. They are small country roads with little traffic and beautiful scenery. The climb up to the radio tower has some twists and turns as it undulates to the top. The trees leaning over the road are changing color and provide pleasant distraction from the climb.

When you reach the crest of the hill there is a small parking lot and dirt roads going in either direction. These are completely closed to traffic and, when you ride, all you hear is the crackle of gravel beneath your tires and your own breathing. In a couple of minutes, you’re completely enveloped by trees and all those worrying voices in your head die down. This is beautiful. As long as there are places like this and as long as you can get to them, you will be alright.

When I feel like I’ve been refreshed, I turn and ride down the hill, letting the brakes go as long as I dare. The Surly is solid beneath me and my eyes start to tear up from the air rushing by. It is still mostly country out here, but the vestiges of human activity and busyness appear.

Before too long, I too am in the thick of it again, sitting behind a computer doing the things we do to keep our trip going. As the colors change from green to orange, we know that a wet grey winter will follow and our hopes are to be in New Zealand soon.

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new 2012 calendar or some of the fun zombie apocalypse shirts we’re designing.)

No Sleep Till Aukland

After spending a few sunny weeks in Southern California visiting family and friends, we took the train back to the Pacific Northwest to wrap up some projects. It has been a whirlwind trip visiting San Diego, Long Beach, El Segundo, Santa Monica and the San Fernando Valley. On our last day in Los Angeles, some friends came to see us off at the train station.

We took a sleeper car back on the Coast Starlight, one of our favorite Amtrak lines. One little known perk is that they offer you some champagne when you board!

As usual the scenery was fantastic on the train, especially once we crossed into Oregon. We were greeted again with luscious trees, rivers and valleys – all the things that make Oregon such a wonderful state. We took the time on the train to slow down. For the last few weeks we have been moving every few days, sleeping on couches or on someone’s living room floor so it was good to have our own personal space again, even if it was only for a few hours.

We got into Portland and hit the ground running. We met up with some friends the same night and had a great evening of catching up. The next morning, we watched our friend Joey race some cyclocross. It was our first time at a cross race and it was a blast. Far more interesting than a road race where riders zip pass at 30mph, in a cross race, riders do laps in a mixed terrain course with obstacles, gravel and mud. It truly is a spectator sport and I had a fun time photographing it.

There’s a lot of acrobatics involved with riders dismounting and mounting and carrying their bikes over their shoulders.

A few days later, we were panelists for BootsNAll at their MeetPlanGo event by the Ace hotel. The event was meant to inspire other people to take a career break and go travel. People wore stickers depending on what stage of their travel plans they were in. There were those with “Dreaming” stickers who were still imagining their trip, people with “Planning” stickers who had committed to leaving and were finalizing details and those who had “Leaving” sickers that had a set departure date. It was inspiring for us to be in the same room with so many people set on fulfilling their personal adventure.

We shared the panel with Olivia, who had done some long-term travel abroad and Kim, who was about to leave on an around the world trip. We offered our perspective of traveling within the US and bicycle travel in general. One of the highlights of the evening was finally meeting Chris Guillebeau from The Art of NonConformity blog who was the keynote speaker.

There were some interesting discussions during the panel presentation about why someone would choose to travel in the first place; to the challenges of leaving everything behind. While most of the crowd probably didn’t come to hear about bicycle touring specifically, we feel that we represented bike travel well and perhaps got some folks to consider it.

One of the questions we got asked at the presentation was how long do we plan to keep on traveling? Our answer has always been (to either the amazement or befuddlement of some people), that we plan to travel “as long as its still fun.” What we mean is that we want to keep our travel plans and our future organic and open to chance and opportunity. We never had a set goal to visit every country in the world, or travel for x number of years or x amount of miles. If we have had a singular goal for our entire trip, it has been to meet people, to fill our lives with interactions we will always remember. When you travel long enough, you realize its not really about the places you go, but the people you meet (atleast it is that way for us). We feel that in many ways, we’ve merely just begun to travel. We’ve got some base miles under our legs traveling in the US, but the world is a big place. We’re in no rush to race across the planet. We know we’ll make it there (wherever “there” is) on our own time.

So that leads to the question of what’s next? The short answer is we’re aiming to get to New Zealand. The long answer is that we’ve been working on some ways to fund the trip; some have fallen through and some are in limbo. For the time being, we’re working on some projects like our 2012 Calendar, Zombie Apocalypse shirts and some books (A Small Book about Travel Photography and an Illustrated Guide to Brompton Touring) that we can sell to help us get overseas. So apologies, dear Readers, if the site and Facebook have been so salesy as of late but that is the unglamorous reality of our trip sometimes. We live simply and cheaply and try to make some money on the road to keep going. We are grateful to our readers who have supported the website and our travels over the years. We feel blessed and lucky. So for now, we’re hunkering down in Corvallis with noses to the grindstone and dreams of New Zealand in our mind. Thanks for helping us get there.

UPDATED: The Zombie Apocalypse Will Not Be Motorized

It all started as a joke, but then turned into a shirt with your help! A few weeks ago, I made a spoof of a ZipCar ad that was poking fun at cyclists. Being a big zombie fan, I made a mock ad using an image from The Walking Dead. It got us thinking that in the event of the zombie apocalypse or any other disaster that called for mass evacuations, the bicycle is way to go! So we put up some mockups on Facebook and with input from our readers we have the final shirt design and its ready for sale! We’re using SpreadShirt as our printing and distribution since they seem to have the best print quality on the shirts.

Order your Zombie Apocalypse shirt today!

UPDATE:
After enough requests we added a few more designs. One is a version of the cargo bike shirt with an Xtracycle/longtail. While we won’t be able to create every type of bicycle out there, the Xtracycle was a seminal bike in the cargo bike revolution. I used one personally when I first started my photography career so it has a special place in my heart. I also added a “Bike Local. Buy Local” shirt, which fits in with one of the themes we’ve been exploring – how bikes can benefit small economies.

Thanks for all your help. As always, all sales help keep us on the road. We’re trying to get to New Zealand, so we need to sell lots of shirts. Order one today and have one for your bikey Halloween party or every day! If you have other products you think the design would be great for, let us know!

2012 PathLessPedaled Calendar

We just finished laying out our new calendar with our favorite images from our Big Adventure Small Wheels trip! It’s crazy to think that this is our third calendar! Every year we have the tall order of searching through literally thousands of images to find twelve that will make our calendar. It’s a mix of color and B&W images that we hope capture the nature of our trip. It makes a unique gift (don’t think there is another calendar out there that shows people touring on Bromptons!) for your bike touring buddies and readers of the site. As always, calendar sales help us continue our journey. We’re running an early-bird special for the month of October and are offering them at a 10% discount.

Order yours today and help us get to New Zealand!

Preview: Olympus PEN system for Video

As you know, I’ve been on a quest to minimize our electronics even further. On our first trip, I was lugging around a DSLR, lightstand, tripod, strobes, etc., Since then, I’ve drastically cut down the load, but we’ve also started to incorporate more video on the site. For our latest Brompton trip, we’ve been using a small Canon HD solid state camcorder which we bought used on EBay. It has worked out pretty well so far, but I want to to cut down even more.

I’ve been watching the Micro 4/3 camera systems for some time but hesitated on pulling the trigger. However, I feel that the system is now getting close to maturity. There are some great lenses out for the system and the size is just right or travel. Interestingly, the Olympus PEN cameras also do video and I’ve been toying around with the idea of just carrying two PENs on our next adventure to shoot both stills and video. I’ll do a more indepth review later, but I just wanted to post a quick video experiment with the E-PM1 that Olympus sent me as part of their Pen Ready project. So far, so good! If you’re interested in what I’m carrying or want to purchase a camera and help support our site, check out our Amazon store with the list of camera gear I’m trying out.