Repairs and Repurposing - How to save money for the important things... like coffee.

In order to afford more craft beers and fancy coffee in Portland Oregon, we do what we can to cut costs.

Exhibit A:  Todd needed a cover for his Chrome book so I found an old wetsuit from someone on the local swimming list serve and made one. Hipsters will be jealous. Savings: $40

Exhibit B: Cycling shorts built to wear all day on a bike are pricey. After a while the lycra breaks down. The first place to go is right on your butt. So... since I don't want the world viewing my naked backside, I took some old lycra and sewed some patches on two pairs of shorts. Savings: $200

Exhibit C: Between staying at Warmshowers hosts and camping we will probably spend less money than if we were at home. We will be fed a lot and won't be spending any money on gas. Savings: ??

Exhibit D: Who needs GPS? Paper maps are great and they force you to stop and ask locals for directions. This is how we find the beautiful back roads only locals know about, plus we get to hear a lot of great stories. Sometimes they even offer us food! Savings? $140 - $300

Grand Preparations

1 day to go! Todd perusing the spread of gear and bike parts

Preparing for three weeks of living on two wheels is no small task! Good thing my parents trained me to be an expert packer. Every summer our family would pack seven kids, a dog, and everything we needed for the summer in one Volkswagen van. My dad, in particular, was really good at using every square inch of space. He even filled the foot space of the rear seats and then put a baby mattress on top for us to lay across (no seat belts). On the nine hour drive to NH two of us would take turns sleeping on the mattress. Sometimes we would be fed Benadryl.

Lucky for us Roger, the man from whom Todd bought his touring bike, posted a bunch of great pages with photos on how to pack for a long bike trip. 

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1&page_id=140233&v=dK

If you click on the "Next" button on the bottom, you will get a total of seven pages detailing what and how to pack. 

We are a bit more minimalist than he is, but you get the general idea.

Packing our bikes is like working out one of those wrought iron puzzles at a bar. Patience. Patience. Lucky for us, the Portland airport has it's own Bike Assembly area near the MAX station. So we will put our bikes together right at the airport (at 1:00 AM) Even luckier that it is rated one of the best airports to sleep in!

PDX's bike assembly station

We are all set with a WarmShowers host for the first real night in Oregon. WarmShowers.org is a wonderful community of cyclists and people who want to support cyclists by hosting them while they are on their tours. If you go to their website you will see a map with all the hosts flagged all over the world. Almost every where you can cycle there will be someone who wants to help you out and feed  you a meal. If you need to feel good about humanity, strap a few heavy bags on  your bike and head out on the road. People just want to help you.

A little bit of Mark Twain to get us moving:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” 

― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

Be well!