Ditch the razor, keep the frisbee: the great art of cycle tour packing

It all began with a locked gate.
Well, actually it started two weeks earlier, back in our townhouse in New Westminster. Jocelyn was in the final throes of studying for her naturopathic medical board exams – three straight days of testing on everything she’d learned in four years of medical school – and Ed had just wrapped his hectic four-year job as a writer. With one week to go before flying across the Pacific for a six-month cycling trip, it was time to make a packing list.
“Just bring whatever. I’m studying,” said Joce on a rare five-minute snack break. “Don’t forget the snorkel stuff.”
There’s a fine balance in cycle touring between packing everything you might need for the duration of your trip, and not weighing more than a transport truck. From our tent to our pillows, our gear is the smallest, lightest possible version of a necessity while still being big / warm / comfy enough to survive weeks in a row sleeping on the ground. We even got a tiny military-issue can opener instead of lugging the behemoth we use in our kitchen.
Ed, however, is still kind of a “just in case” kind of packer. On our longer trips, Ed compiles everything he thinks we need in a heap on the floor, then Joce reviews the pile and tosses about half of it out as non-essential. This time, we flew to Auckland, New Zealand, two days after Joce’s board exams. So the pile review never happened.
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The night before our flight, it was just Ed, his heap and the bathroom scale, allocating every last bike mirror and toothbrush to the proper duffel bag so each weighed precisely the airline limit. And hey, a frisbee doesn’t weigh much at all.
We’re also traveling with fabulous Bike Friday family tandem bicycles that are easily disassembled and folded into Samsonite hard-shell suitcases, which double as a spacious trailer system while biking. Super easy for plane travel – but on the road, more like an 18-wheel rig with pedals.
So here we were, on our second day of cycling across New Zealand, on a rugged hiking trail that was not really suited for wheeled vehicles – much less fully loaded tandems and a trailer system filled with an unreviewed heap of stuff.
Standing in front of a locked gate.
Our oldest son, Heron, spotted the wooden stairs for hikers to climb over the barbed wire fence. “Let’s unpack everything and pass it over to each other!”
“No, that’ll take too long. I’ll just lift them over,” Daddy gamely volunteered.Blog3b
Forty-five minutes later, we’d unloaded both bikes, dismantled the trailer system, passed all the bags and loose crap in the trailers – the snorkel gear, Daddy’s razor kit, the frisbee and spare bungee cords – over the fence, and re-assembled the whole caravan on the other side of the gate. We’re all still having a great time because we’ve been listening to the boys’ favourite Hedley album on the bike radio, and at least we won’t have to do that again.
Shortly thereafter, the path turned to long grass, weaving up a long, meandering hill. A few mumbled garrumps from Daddy. Our younger son, Sitka, is undeterred and sings merrily along with the Justin Bieber until we’ve all pushed the bikes to the top and less annoying terrain.
Until the next locked gate. Daddy lets a swear slip and apologizes. We try lifting the bikes again, with similar results. So we unload, dismantle and re-assemble again, to the sounds of more snappy hip-hop and pop hits. The snorkel set and frisbee are thrown over the fence. Couldn’t possibly be any more of these.
There are five more of these.
Daddy no longer apologizes for the swears, and vocally wishes harm to the members of One Direction. We whittle our dis-and-re-assemble routine down to 18 minutes – sweet. Daddy retrieves the frisbee from the bushes.
Finally, we have a downhill so steep we need to apply our extra drum brakes to keep control, and then we’re through to a sandy (but at least flat) road.
Fifteen minutes along: “Something’s rubbing,” mutters Daddy, which is cyclist talk for “I’m having a hard time and it couldn’t possibly be my fitness level.”
Daddy checks both sets of brakes and fenders. All good. Must be the sand. Are we going uphill?
“Hey Daddy is your drum brake still on from that last downhill?” asks Heron.
Smart kid.
So we pick up some speed as the sun slowly descends in the late summer sky. Just one bridge to cross and we’re almost there.
The dilapidated footbridge across a 200-metre-wide river may well have predated the invention of the wheel, much less bike trailers. We don’t discover this until we’re wedged into the narrow wooden structure. Somehow, we separate the two trailer cases and wheel them separately across. Surprisingly, the snorkel set doesn’t go into the river – but our sons’ dictionary of swears is complete.
It took another couple weeks of treacherous climbs with our massive load before we resolved to ditch half our stuff. It was Joce’s idea to mail the suitcases ahead to Invercargill – our destination at the far south of the country – and she would be in charge of the purge.
The snorkel set didn’t make the cut. Neither did the spare bungees. Daddy’s razor went in the trash. But the frisbee stayed – weight-efficient entertainment.

“Do you really need these warm socks?” Joce asked.

“I only brought them because I figured you would want them at some point and steal them for your own feet.”
We kept the socks. But the rest of Daddy’s warm clothes got sent ahead with 65 lbs of other surplus, including the suitcases we packed it all in.
We never came across another locked gate, but we encountered several narrow bridges, steep hills and tight corners where we were relieved to be traveling on just two wheels per bike. Much grumpiness was prevented, and when we met our cargo again in Invercargill, almost three months later, Ed cuddled happily in his fleece vest.
A few days later, in Sydney, Australia, the fleece got mailed ahead to Brisbane with the rest of it. Same with the snorkel gear – we’re saving that for our trip finale in French Polynesia.
And Ed’s beard has gone wild.