Le Tour de Dyslexia: Test Pack

This past weekend I had some free time (not true free time, but free time that was made when I decided to not start work that I should) and so I decided I would test pack my bike. I got my packing list out, made my bed, which is slightly relevant, and began to get all of my gear laid out. First, I neatly organized everything on my bed so that I could see what I was actually bringing and so that I could take a sweet picture for everyone to see (see really sweet picture below).


That picture has almost everything that I had on the list in it. The only thing that it is missing is a few things that I still need to buy. Anyway, after I laid out all of my gear I began to pack it into my panniers and handlebar bag. Everything ended up fitting real easily and I actually have significant extra room. I tried to weigh all of my bags to see how much they were but the only scale in the house was very wrong, unless I got real fat. I would like my load to be somewhere around 30-35 pounds total. After my failed attempt to weigh everything, I continued to pack everything onto my bike for the first time and see how it would ride fully loaded. I got scared when the bike began to tip very easily as I was walking it to the road but as soon as I got on it and got it into motion, it became a lot easier to control. The only problem was that my feet were hitting my panniers every time they came around, so I had to adjust the panniers to sit further back in the bike. We are now only 20-21 days away from the trip. I just got word that it will most likely have to be pushed back an extra day. We still have to be back by the 13th though so that means we will have to put the same amount of miles into less days. I am not too daunted by that because Dan and I went for a 26 mile ride on Saturday and we felt really good, even though we will be doing three times that amount on the tour. That's about all I have to say right now. The following pictures are of my bike fully loaded, looking sweet.

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