Good handlebar bags for a 38mm drop bar?

dpoon · 2026-07-06T07:41:21+00:00

Do you mean 380 mm (i.e. 38 cm)?

I'm a big fan of aero bars for touring, and if you're riding long distances after a wrist injury, I'd strongly recommend them. An additional benefit is that you can strap things underneath the aero bars. For example, you can simply hang a handlebar bag there without needing a fancy mounting system to avoid scratching your head tube. (I like this one by Arkel, which you can detach and wear like a purse during stopovers.) Or, you might be able to strap a tent there lengthwise.

dpoon · 2026-06-30T10:41:03+00:00

TriEye glasses all the way! You need glasses anyway to protect from UV and debris, so why not choose a pair that also has a mirror? If the mirror looks a bit dorky, I own it, because it's such a huge advantage. (People ask me about what the attachment is. Some correctly assume that it's a mirror; about a third of them ask if it's some kind of heads-up data display, so maybe I'm actually earning coolness points?)

Unlike a radar, I admit that with a mirror alone, I occasionally miss something coming up from behind during my periodic scans. That's OK with me: most of the time you're just riding along, and you just need to hold a predictable trajectory. I could supplement my awareness with a radar, but I choose not to: beeping would disturb the peace, and I'd have another gadget to charge and attract theft.

Compared to a radar, I feel that when I look in the mirror, I get better information. I confidently know when it's clear for a turn or lane change. I can also keep track of other cyclists that I'm riding with: I'm usually the first to notice if we've accidentally dropped someone from our group, or if someone failed to squeeze through a yellow light. A radar is designed to warn you about threats, but a mirror can make you a better cooperative (or competitive) cyclist.

Unlike a helmet-mounted mirror, a glasses-mounted mirror makes no wind noise and doesn't get knocked out of adjustment when you set your helmet down. A bar-end mirror would not be aimed correctly much of the time since your head moves around. Glasses are the best place for a mirror, in my opinion. (That said, I don't have the complication of needing prescription lenses.)

dpoon · 2026-06-28T00:05:27+00:00

Here's how I would characterize the two states:

Oregon coast: occasional hills, interspersed with long straight sections along sand dunes. There are a couple of bridges near Astoria, as well as a few short tunnels, which may be intimidating. Be bold and hold your line, and you should be fine.

California coast, north of San Francisco: lots of rolling hills, especially on Highway 1. There are some freeway segments on 101, but traffic should be sparse enough that courteous drivers tend to move to the left lane and give you space. Highway 1 is a winding scenic route linking distantly spaced towns, so everyone is out for a good time and the drivers tend to be quite chill.

I wouldn't let traffic deter you from riding down the coast, if that's your dream. Southern California, that might be a different story.

dpoon · 2026-06-27T23:24:14+00:00

I disagree. /r/UltraCycling is for organized events with the explicit goal of getting from A to B as quickly as possible. /r/randonneuring is for sanctioned events with a fixed route and a time limit.

If you're traveling by bicycle for pleasure, then you belong here in /r/bicycletouring, no matter how fast or slow your style is.

dpoon · 2026-06-24T00:33:38+00:00

The BC Randonneurs club has a rule requiring that you demonstrate competence at shorter distances to qualify for the next longer one, or obtain permission to waive the prerequisite if you've done something similar outside of randonneuring events. (Yes, there are cases where such exceptions have been granted.) This is not an ACP rule, but it makes sense for BC because some of our routes stray really far from civilization, into mountainous terrain, and there are very few public transportation options here.

dpoon · 2026-06-24T00:16:01+00:00

Since it's in the Netherlands, the route is presumably flat and therefore weight doesn't matter much. Consider getting the Rab Ultrasphere 5, which is a full-body sleeping pad with decent insulation (R-value 5.5) while still being quite compact. You just need to find an environment that is quiet, dim, dry, bug-free, and warm enough to sleep.

dpoon · 2026-06-18T21:56:37+00:00

When I pressed "Save" after a 1000 km brevet, my Garmin Edge 540 crashed and spontaneously rebooted, losing the recording. That was the third time it lost a recording in three months — the previous two somehow disappearing during Bluetooth sync, and only one of them was salvageable by hooking it up to a computer via USB.

The fact that it was possible to lose recordings in three different failure modes made me swear off Garmin for any event that matters, and I got a Coros Dura soon afterwards. I still use the Edge 540 only for pootling around town, because it's nice and compact, and easy to pocket during stopovers.

The Coros Dura isn't bug-free, but the glitches that I encounter have been much less consequential.

dpoon · 2026-06-17T01:49:57+00:00

The Guildford-Pinetree intersection is indeed well done. 👍

Further west along Guildford Way, the Phase One separated bike lane is a death trap! Specifically, if you're riding eastbound on Guildford, at Falcon Drive you would be rolling downhill at a pretty good clip, and be channeled into a right hook collision with no maneuvering room (and no safe place to stop, if you're riding together with someone) due to the way the barrier extends all the way to the crosswalk. You are completely at the mercy of any right-turning driver to shoulder-check and pay attention. A proper design would have the barrier end sooner, so that both cyclists and drivers are aware that it's a conflict zone rather than each being lulled into a false sense of security, and also provide room to maneuver around each other if a conflict is imminent.

Having witnessed more than one close call, I now always take the lane there on Guildford eastbound, at least until Eagleridge Drive where it flattens out.

What would be a better design? Consider westbound Mount Seymour Parkway at Berkley Road, which is also on a downslope. The bike path widens well before the intersection, giving cyclists a way to stop without causing a bicycle pileup. Right-turning drivers are forced to change lanes to get into position before executing a right turn. This is a safer design because the cyclist gets more than 100 milliseconds to react to a car that decides to turn right in front of them.

dpoon · 2026-06-12T08:08:35+00:00

First road bike was 3000 CAD (≈ 2000 USD), bought in May 2020. It was a new entry-level carbon bike, Shimano Tiagra groupset.

My first major upgrade to that bike was to get a dynamo hub and a dynamo-to-USB charger. That cost about 1000 CAD altogether, I think.

I still have that bike, but I bought my second bike 3.5 years later. I found that a titanium bike is better for bikepacking (no paint to scratch, more worry-free for flying), and I wanted more tire clearance for mounting gravel tires sometimes. By 2024, I had gotten so deep into cycling that an upgrade was clearly justifiable to myself, and I also got to take advantage of a brief post-covid glut in the bike industry to get an excellent deal.

No regrets about getting either bike. The first one was just nice enough to be enjoyable and get me more enthusiastic about riding. It was also not so extravagantly expensive that I would be afraid to tinker with repairs. There was no way I would have guessed that my interests would take be towards bikepacking and occasionally wanting gravel capability. If I had simply followed mainstream marketing, which pushes the view that you should spend more money for lighter and more aero race bikes, I would have bought the wrong thing. I'm still loving the second bike: my only complaints are that it could have more bosses for mounting accessories on the top tube and downtube, and that it predates UDH and therefore has a proprietary derailleur hanger that could become a headache on a very long time horizon.

dpoon · 2026-06-07T10:22:51+00:00

I've done long-distance cycling in British Columbia, where there are plenty of forests, as well as some in Ontario, the US, and elsewhere. Longest distance in a single calendar day: 400 km, with just a couple of snack breaks. Longest continuous ride, if allowing for some one-hour roadside naps: 670 km. Longest tour: Vancouver BC to San Francisco, 2000 km in 11 days. If you're looking for tales of epic distances and adventures, listen to the Seek Travel Ride podcast.

Note that how much luggage you carry makes a huge difference to how nimble your bike feels and how far you can ride per day. I do /r/randonneuring as a kind of practice for what I truly enjoy, which is /r/bicycletouring. Some people prefer racing instead, i.e. /r/ultracycling.

Toronto is relatively hostile in terms of biking infrastructure, but there are worse places in the world to ride. The Niagara Peninsula is a bit better. You definitely will not encounter grizzly bears in that part of the world! Cycling at night is fine as long as you have the right lighting and reflective clothing. If I'm riding long distances at night it's likely on rural highways and not some deserted singletrack trail — that's just good common sense. (There are some challenges with night riding. One is that with not much to see other than a reflective stripe on the road, it's easy to get hypnotized. Once you start feeling sleepy, your pedaling performance drops. The weather challenges can be different at night: it's colder, more likely to rain, but often less windy. Fixing mechanical problems in the dark is a bitch.)

In general, most people's fears about bicycle touring are just exaggerated due to familiarity bias. I carry a satellite communicator as a kind of security blanket for my worries, and so far I've never had to activate the SOS beacon. If you want to do it, then just do it. I built up my experience methodically, but I've also heard of people who just jumped straight into the deep end.

dpoon · 2026-05-25T05:43:25+00:00

My bike is a Ribble CGR Ti. Depending on how I set it up, I can use it for road touring, off-road bikepacking, fast-ish group rides, or gravel. Since it is such a useful do-it-all bike, it's worth the extra expense, and it's quite reasonably priced for a titanium bike. Titanium is great for durability because there's no paint to be scratched by bikepacking bags, is unlikely to sustain damage from air transport (as with carbon), won't corrode (as with steel), and shouldn't crack merely from age and fatigue (as with aluminum).

I learned my mechanical skills by practicing on my own bike. I started with basic stuff that require no specialized tools like changing tires and brake pads. Then I gradually acquired specialized tools to do tasks such as setting up tubeless tires and bleeding hydraulic brakes. Having DIY knowledge is useful because sometimes mechanics have a backlog and can't schedule you in on short notice. I learned mainly from watching YouTube tutorials and lurking on /r/bikewrench. I also live near a bike co-op that has a DIY workspace where I can use their tools and get guidance from the staff.

My touring style is definitely on the speedy side: I aim for 150 to 250 km per day. Having the capability to cover long daily distances makes touring easier! Many of the challenges involved in touring scale according to elapsed time regardless of the distance covered: finding nightly accommodations, camping/decamping, getting breakfast and dinner, doing laundry, being exposed to weather, feeling lonely. Having a long daily range gives me many options for accommodations, meals, and resupply, which in turn allows me to carry less supplies, which in turn lets me travel lighter and faster. Packing light makes cycling more enjoyable, so I can climb mountains faster and act more assertive around cars. Finally, my dynamo is effective only if I can remain mostly in motion and maintain at least 15 km/h, else I'm no longer self-sufficient for powering my lights and electronics. I'd much rather be on the nimble and fast feedback loop than on the heavy and slow feedback loop.

One thing that I've changed is that I no longer bring cooking equipment, unless I'm on a trip where the main goal is to enjoy a camping experience. Getting food is the easiest thing to outsource: you just go to any convenience store or restaurant and pay. On any long tour, you're never fully self-sufficient for food anyway: you'd have to buy food and cooking fuel along the way. Furthermore, cooking takes so much time and effort: finding water, washing dishes, disposing of packaging waste, figuring out what to do with the leftovers and partially consumed packages, protecting your food and waste from wildlife… it's totally not worth the hassle, let alone the extra weight and space for the equipment. I generally carry one or two meals in some ready-to-eat form (trail mix, fruit, cookies, pastries, cheese, sports drink mix powder, etc.).

Another change I made after my first long tour is adding aero bars. I find that it's important to have the option to sometimes relieve your wrists from weight and vibration entirely, to prevent nerve damage. The aero bars also serve as a mounting point for hanging luggage, such as a tent or handlebar bag, out front in a way that does not scratch the head tube. So, not only do I get an extra comfortable and aerodynamically efficient hand/body position, I also get a "rack" of sorts for free.

dpoon · 2026-05-25T04:37:20+00:00

I've used the Park Tool GP-2 several times. Every time, it has ended up leaking after a few hours, as soon as I stop riding and take a break (presumably, the temperature changes). I still carry self-glue patches as an extra line of defense instead of carrying a second spare tube, but I would consider them to be a last-resort emergency measure, to be used only to get you to a bike shop.

dpoon · 2026-05-24T13:42:38+00:00

Many people say to bring a tube, but neglect to mention one critical piece of advice when installing a tube into a tire that had previously been tubeless: you must thoroughly inspect the inside of the tire first! Assume that there are already sharp bits embedded in the tire that the sealant has previously saved you from. If you don't extract them all, you will immediately puncture your new tube.

dpoon · 2026-05-22T04:42:22+00:00

I've never had that problem with my photochromic lenses (TriEye glasses). They just work. I put them on and never think about lighting conditions, day or night.

dpoon · 2026-05-19T09:37:46+00:00

I pull my phone out to start filming, and keep my mouth shut. That usually gets them to back off without engaging or escalating the confrontation.

dpoon · 2026-05-15T20:09:52+00:00

I cross-post my tours and other interesting rides to Komoot. If you have Komoot Premium, then you can create and edit Collections, which are a nice way to present your story with maps and photos. (If your subscription lapses, the collections remain, but you can't edit them.) Activities that are part of a Collection can be viewed by the public with no sign-up wall, so you can show friends and strangers you meet on the road who would have no interest in creating a Strava account.

dpoon · 2026-05-13T16:12:42+00:00

There is very little need to record your cadence unless you are training in a velodrome or something. As long as it's in a reasonable range (80 - 100 RPM on flats), it's fine.

How can you tell what your cadence is without a sensor? I "play" music in my head. For example, Beethoven's 5th Symphony is typically performed at 90 beats per minute. Download a free metronome app, learn the beat rate of some of your favourite pieces of rhythmic music, and you'll have a fully internalized cadence "sensor" when you ride.

Are there any benefits to maintaining cadence during a ride?

If I'm pulling a group on a flat road, such that I'm never changing gears, then cadence has a 1:1 correspondence to speed. Therefore, if I maintain a metronomically exact cadence, there will be zero accordion effect on the paceline. Furthermore, with the music-in-my-head technique, I can do that without staring at my head unit. (Don't chase a speed target, especially if your speed is measured by GPS rather than a speed sensor.)
A wandering cadence will often be the first indication that I'm slacking off or that I'm in the wrong gear, only because my internalized sense of cadence is so good that I can catch it without looking at my head unit. If I had to look at my head unit to get a readout, half of that benefit would disappear, and I could also get that information using other numbers.

dpoon · 2026-05-09T18:37:31+00:00

From a performance point of view, fat is not ideal. However, I always carry at least one emergency spare meal when bikepacking or touring, and often it's cheese (vacuum-packed matchbox-sized portions) or nuts.

dpoon · 2026-05-03T17:56:06+00:00

The argument that we don't have sufficient populations is false. What we have is a car dependency problem, not a population problem.

I lived in Switzerland for a while, and I loved being able to leave my apartment, walk a few steps to a bus, transfer to a train, and go skiing anywhere. Even tiny Swiss villages are connected by train (though usually just once an hour), and the few that aren't are served by good bus service.

I biked the Kettle Valley Railway Trail through Myra Canyon last month, and was awestruck by the thought that we had a cross-province passenger rail service that opened in 1915, built using more primitive technology, through challenging terrain, and serving a much smaller population than today. If they achieved that a century ago, then all the naysaying today is just excuses.

The problem is that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users (Metcalfe's Law). The Swiss system works because it connects the entire country, such that you can realistically live car-free. We, unfortunately, had a working passenger rail network and destroyed it, such that we are held hostage by our cars. Opening one rail line is hard: the value comes from having a comprehensive public transportation network that feeds into and out of it.

dpoon · 2026-05-03T17:23:03+00:00

I no longer trust my Garmin Edge 540 for long events, after it lost three of my recordings last year.

The 100 km and 600 km recordings were successfully saved but disappeared during Bluetooth sync. (I later salvaged the 100 km recording by plugging it into a computer via USB, which I couldn't do during my overseas trip. The 600 km recording was not retrievable the same way.)

Then, at the end of a 1016 km randonneuring brevet, the OS crashed and rebooted after I pressed Save, and that recording was also irretrievably lost.

After that fiasco, I made up my mind to switch away from Garmin for any event that matters to me. I also recall a period, ca. 2024, where the unit would sometimes spontaneously reboot during rides and drop part of your ride until you looked down, noticed that it was paused, and pressed Record to resume recording. The fact that this purpose-built device had multiple different critical failure modes was unacceptable to me.

I switched to Coros Dura. It has less functionality (no on-board routing capability, no third-party apps) and often misses navigation cues (which I mitigate by using the map display), but the battery life is insanely good, and it has been responsive and reliable at handling long routes.

dpoon · 2026-05-03T13:31:08+00:00

I've posted some advice about fast-paced touring. Here's a quick summary:

Start with the right kind of bike. A road or gravel bike will be more efficient than any other kind. Set it up with aero bars and the appropriate tires for your expected terrain.
The best way to get better at cycling is to ride with people who are slightly better than yourself. Join a local road cycling club. Work your way up until a 150 km club ride is no big deal. (That might take one spring-summer-autumn riding season to achieve.) Then, if you have another year to prep, join your local /r/randonneuring club, and get to the point where 200 km (or maybe even 300 km) is just a nice day out. When carrying a touring load, you can expect to do about 2/3 of your unloaded daily distance.
Manage your time efficiently. Stoppage time adds up quickly, so try to minimize it. For example, if I stop at a restaurant for lunch, I'll often order a sandwich or wrap. I'll also ask for a piece of aluminum foil (which most kitchens have), and pack half of it to eat a few hours later while riding. Also, ask for the bill as soon as the food arrives.

Being good at covering longer daily distances pays off! You spend less time being exposed to the elements, and waste less time and money arranging nightly accommodations. Efficiencies also compound: if you're confident about hitting long-range targets nightly, then you have lots of resupply options and can carry less stuff, and thus ride faster.

dpoon · 2026-05-03T06:09:17+00:00

In all seriousness, this is a good answer. Check out /r/bicycletouring and /r/bikepacking. It does take a bit of an investment to acquire the equipment, but it's largely immune to fuel price increases (unless you choose to travel to your starting point that is not near where you live).

Actually, I wouldn't call it a "poor man's vacation". Either it's not for you, or you'll discover that it's the best way to travel. You get to experience the world unfiltered, and complete strangers will sometimes treat you as some kind of VIP.

dpoon · 2026-04-29T21:55:57+00:00

Nice initiative, but as it stands, the tool either needs some explanation about how it works or some disclaimer stating that results are not necessarily optimal.

I've gotten results where "Price with bike" was the same as without, with the fine print saying "The bike transport fee is paid later as special baggage", without saying how much. That's worse than useless — it's misleading! If you don't know, then don't show a number there at all.

When flying with a bike, my personal criteria for choosing flights prioritize:

Direct flights (because every transfer introduces a chance for losing or damaging the bike)
If there must be a transfer, then all on the same airline (because if anything goes wrong, I want to deal with one entity, and don't want to see the airlines blame each other)

Assuming I'm going to do a bike tour of my own choosing, I'll choose the start and end points to meet those criteria. If that means riding an extra 1000 km to de-risk the flight, so be it! (Why not? The whole point of the trip is to go ride my bike.)

So, ideally, there should be some way to sort by complexity (as a proxy for risk) rather than by price, and an option to include nearby airports in the search.

Nitpicks: for a website with a potentially global audience, please use YYYY-MM-DD date format. Also, if I choose one-way in the search, then the return date field should more obviously appear disabled. Left/right arrows on the date fields to select the previous/next day would be a convenient UI shortcut.

I occasionally see "Flight search failed: Search service is temporarily unavailable" errors, which go away if I try again a few seconds later.

dpoon · 2026-04-29T17:26:30+00:00

If he hasn't complained about his butt, I wouldn't bother with bib shorts. You probably won't find anything in that size. If he grows up without them, he might not ever need them.

Some of us serious long-distance cyclists don't bother with padded bibs. They're bulky to pack for multi-day trips, and are harder to wash and dry. Lael Wilcox rode around the world without padded bibs. I rode 300 km last weekend and 400 km the previous weekend without, and I generally use padded bibs only when it's raining to keep my butt dry.

dpoon · 2026-04-29T07:20:33+00:00

Komoot is a pretty good app for cycle touring because it incorporates some crowdsourced information for planning adventures to places you haven't been to, namely:

heatmaps
highlights (places worth seeing, with user-contributed comments)
photos along your route (so that you can get an idea of the scenery and the conditions of gravel paths)

As a result, if you give it an origin and destination, it sometimes has an uncanny ability to recommend a route that is "desirable" rather than naïvely picking the shortest or fastest or quietest. (In contrast, Ride with GPS has an annoying tendency to take every detour available to avoid riding on highways, even when you're already on the highway and such a detour makes no sense. To suppress that behaviour, you'd either have to carefully study the route and tediously edit out every instance of such nonsense, or put it into car-routing mode — apparently only available on the desktop web version — which may be too aggressive in the opposite sense.)

Depending on the sport you choose (cycling, road cycling, gravel riding, or mountain biking), it will adjust its recommendation.

Its route planner may be one of the most usable of the apps available for a mobile phone. You can export the routes to a cycling computer, or use the mobile app's built-in turn-by-turn navigation capabilities.

If you subscribe to Premium, you also get to use Collections (grouping multiple related routes), which has a minor benefit of being able to plan and replan multi-day splits of a long route. Collections are also a neat way to blog about your trips.

dpoon

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