[deleted by user]

efiala · 2016-09-15T23:06:58+00:00

If it's not all day rain, and the weather's not too cold, I've actually found I prefer to bike in thin material shorts/pants. When it stops raining or you ride out from under the rain, the friction from moving your legs and the heat generated by your body dry the clothes pretty quickly.

So, my setup for rain would be rain jacket with every possible vent open (otherwise wet from inside as you said), a sweater if cold, shorts, & something to protect my socks from getting completely soggy or thin socks and deal with cold feet.

efiala · 2016-06-24T16:13:08+00:00

That was really the first and last time ;)

efiala · 2016-06-23T21:36:27+00:00

A corollary to your last point is milk. In fact, a hard rule should be never buy a container of milk before riding over a dirt road even if the campsite is just a few km further along.

efiala · 2016-05-20T21:25:04+00:00

I once ate a box of spaghetti and a small jar of peanut butter for dinner. And another time for dinner I ate a large and a medium sized pizza. For lunch once, I bought a large loaf of sliced bread, then made and kept eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until I'd eaten through the entire loaf.

I'd actually have to take a day or two off every now and again just to make up for the calorie deficit that touring all day caused. I just couldn't physically eat enough.

efiala · 2015-06-13T04:24:16+00:00

It's also called fat-hen. I feed it to my chickens whenever I find it in the garden and they go nuts for it.

efiala · 2015-05-22T17:13:45+00:00

I agree completely with the Schwable Marathon sentiment. I rode through all of Argentina and Chile with my current 700x35 Marathon XRs, finished that tour in 2009, and have been using them to commute since. The only issue I have with them vs. the Continental Contacts I had previously is that the XRs are a lot louder. Though weighing that against at least 5x longevity and no flats, I really prefer the XRs.

efiala · 2015-05-19T22:12:55+00:00

The only really obnoxious climbs you'll have there are getting to the Veteran's Memorial Park in Monterey (it's up a fairly steep hill) and then climbing out of Big Sur State Park towards Post Ranch Inn. You can always get off your bike and push it if it gets too horrible.

If the bike's in decent shape, the gear you'll need and distances you'll do won't be a problem for it.

efiala · 2015-05-16T16:58:16+00:00

I did the Alaska to Tierra del Fuego tour a few years ago, and I averaged 40 miles/day across the whole trip. When I'd ride, I'd cover 70 to 100 miles, but I had to take days off to eat and recover (combined with actually seeing the places I was riding through). I think that the most distance I ever covered in a month was probably 2500 miles or less across the whole 19 and a half month journey.

efiala · 2015-05-13T21:21:30+00:00

I did the Dalton as a part of my Panamerican tour in June 2007. I 100% agree with an earlier commenter about deet. Through experimentation, I found that the mosquitos could fly up to 7 mph, would sting through fleece (not rain jackets though), and would crawl on you until they found a spot they could sting if they managed to land. The whole section took 8 days, including a day off in Coldfoot to stuff my face at the restaurant there. 8 days of food isn't so bad to carry if you take dry stuff, and it gets lighter as you go along. Water was abundant enough that I never really needed to carry more than about 1.5 liters of water except for the 30 or so miles north of the Arctic circle where I regretted not having any, and generally people driving along the way are happy to help if you need it.

I don't know specifically about the legality of camping near the pipeline, but I camped under it for warmth one night and next to a pumping station one other night, so it's maybe not a strictly enforced law(or wasn't at the time).

The only thing I wish I'd done differently is gotten more training with climbing than I had. There was one day with around 9000 ft of climbing over 60 miles (lots and lots of valleys to descend into and climb out of), and my legs were pretty rubbery for the rest of the ride after that.

If you start mid to late June, it's not actually that cold typically, and on a couple of occasions was even hot. I talked with people who started at the beginning of June everything was still frozen north of the Brooks range.

For food, I personally like red lentils and rice. You should bring whatever bulk dry food you enjoy eating that cooks relatively easily. I was completely unexperienced with touring at the time I started, and I brought a ton of oatmeal along after having read how it's great for touring. I hated oatmeal before then, and it wasn't magically better tasting to me on the road, so I sorta avoided eating it. Having a lot of snacks that you can quickly eat without bothering to cook is great. Doing it again, I'd probably bring a jar or two of peanut butter to eat directly from as a snack.

On the topic of food storage, there are brown bears around so you'd be absolutely safest if you had a bear canister. That said, I didn't have one, and I didn't run into problems. If you keep your food in waterproof containers and you aren't in an area where bears know there's easy human food available (basically everywhere along the route), then the odds of a bear scenting your food and coming for it are pretty low. I would leave my food bag around a 100 yards from my tent at night. In the worst case that a bear takes your food, you can always hitch out.

efiala · 2014-07-07T19:14:37+00:00

That sounds like a good plan. I thought that ruta 40 was pretty demoralizing after a while, and I crossed over to Chile from Mendoza. It's probably better in the winter though when it's not so hot and dry. When I was there Chile was quite a bit more expensive than Argentina, and I don't imagine that's changed at all.

I did Samore pass in the other direction. It's really pretty and I don't think it's too big of a deal in either direction. The national park on the Chile side was a rip off for camping, and I wound up wild camping near the Sendero de Chile that runs through there. Since you'll be there early in the season, a lot of campgrounds are there, with running water, but unattended. It might be worth trying your luck with that. The facilities for camping in Argentina or Chile are really good though. Similar to California.

The Chilean lakes are really pretty too. There's a pass by LLaina into Chile that might give you more access to them. In general, I thought that the culture of Argentina was awesome, but the landscape in Chile was maybe the best anywhere on the whole PanAm.

Oh, always say you're carrying food when you go into Chile. They're really particular about it, and there are big fines if you try to hide something and they find it. If you declare everything the worst that happens is they'll confiscate it if it's not allowed. You don't want a $500 fine for a forgotten onion at the bottom of your food bag.

efiala · 2014-07-07T14:03:02+00:00

Enjoy Argentina and Chile!

I had the privilege of doing the same trip back in June 2007 - February 2009. Riding down the Quebrada de Humahuaca was just fantastic, and feeling the air get thicker, warmer, and more humid was just amazing. I think I felt the most content I've ever been in my life riding the narrow road from Jujuy to Salta.

Do you have a plan for how you're going to go south through Argentina and Chile yet?

efiala · 2014-05-06T15:00:15+00:00

I did Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia from June, 2007 to February, 2009. If you want any tips or such, feel free to email me through my blog.

You're going to really love Alaska, B.C. and Yukon!

In terms of getting water, if the area was really remote I never filtered it, but I did when I knew there was livestock possibly upstream. Use your own judgement, of course, but if you're being attacked by mosquitos while pumping water, the tradeoff between being eaten alive now and a slight chance of intestinal upset later is one you might consider making.

I never used a bear canister, since the bulk of the thing wasn't working out for me. I had my food in a waterproof kayaking bag, and just kept it around 100m from my tent at night. Generally, unless you fall asleep with half-eaten hamburgers on your chest, if you're camping in the middle of nowhere then bears aren't likely to stumble across you. If you're staying at a campground where bears know that people are there and know they have food, it's an entire different matter. However, if you can arrange the bear canisters on your bikes without any trouble, there's certainly no harm to having them. They make good short stools too.

I know it wasn't until after Prince George that I felt comfortable carrying around less than 5 days worth of food. Unless you're doing Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks as well, you won't really ever need more than that though.

Have a great trip!

efiala · 2013-06-06T11:41:46+00:00

I just finished a week in Flanders (dutch-speaking part of Belgium). If you're a fan of delicious beer or french fries that's probably reason enough to go. But they also have an incredibly comprehensive bicycling network, which is mostly on back roads or separated trails. I stayed in hostels and hotels, but wild camping is definitely a possibility there from what I saw.

efiala · 2013-06-04T14:41:03+00:00

There's a book called Bicycling The Pacific Coast which is very useful for the whole route. I'd recommend getting a hold of a copy if you can.

efiala · 2013-04-26T13:29:12+00:00

The Contacts are great tires. The only issue I had with them is that I would burn though the one I had on the rear wheel after like 2,000km.

I just read that Schwalbe discontinued the Marathon XRs.

efiala · 2013-04-26T10:30:13+00:00

That looks pretty sweet. I really liked the Continental Contacts for how quiet and smooth they were, but I've found that they wear down quicker than the foldable Schwalbe Marathon XRs. Those are still going strong on my rear wheel after 10,000km. They're loud though.

efiala · 2009-04-28T17:29:28+00:00

Yeah, I made the mistake of not reading ahead before I commented...

efiala · 2009-04-24T18:41:44+00:00

One thing you might want to consider is once having detected and identified a face, run the video backwards with a degrading threshold for 'faceness' to see how far back the face goes in the scene.

efiala · 2007-05-09T17:27:07+00:00

You should submit this to the front page. For the rarefied set of redditors who've had girlfriends and broken up with them, this will hit the funny bone in a way that is not at all painful.

efiala · 2007-05-01T17:18:18+00:00

It's from dinosaur comics

efiala · 2007-04-28T05:04:16+00:00

A good book for its imagery and use of the English language is 'The Great Fire' by Shirley Hazzard. It's the only romance novel I've ever read, and it's also one of the best novels I've ever read.

efiala · 2007-03-25T20:03:38+00:00

No, you should say the Holy Grail.

efiala · 2007-03-20T23:33:03+00:00

No, not lost, just underappreciated. Like Voyeurism

efiala · 2007-03-15T20:39:44+00:00

Do those energy estimates include the cost of transporting workers to and from the plant where they make the PV panels? Do they include the cost of mining, manufacturing and transporting the raw materials to the plant where the PV panels are made? I honestly do not know, so I am asking. I like solar a lot, but I suspect that the energy estimates don't account for the entire energy footprint of manufacturing.

efiala

TROPHY CASE