So you’ve got a bike, and you’ve set it up for backcountry roads. You’ve taken a few shakedown rides. Everything’s gone according to plan. Now you’re ready for more. Your first scouting trip took you several miles along an old railroad right-of-way to a real hidden treasure of a mountain lake. You spent the afternoon there and had the place all to yourself. Now you want to go back. This time, though, you want to bring a boat and enough gear to make a comfortable camp.

But there’s a problem. You can’t carry all the stuff you’ll need in your hands, and you don’t want to tote it on your back. Why not? For one thing, carrying a heavily-loaded backpack while riding a bike makes crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope look easy. For another…well, let’s just say it’s a pain in the posterior. And pain is not the object of the exercise. Then there’s your boat. How do you haul a boat with your bike?

It’s not impossible. Think of your bike as a sturdy little donkey. Load the beast, not your back. This means outfitting your bike for hauling. It’s a bit like fitting out a canoe or kayak. Straight from a dealer’s showroom, a boat is just a hole in the water. Outfitting is what makes it ready to go places and do things. It’s the same with a bike. When you first wheel it out of the shop you’ve got a neat toy. Fun? You bet. But still a toy. Once you fit it out, however, you’ve got transport — fun and utility in one tidy package. Let’s look at how it’s done.

The good news first. You’ve already started. Water bottle and cage, minipump, patch kit, tools… All of these are important when you outfit a bike, and chances are that you’ve already got them. But if you want to bring your camping gear along, you’ll need more: a rack and panniers to start with, or maybe two racks, front and rear. Think of them as a sort of frame pack for your bike. That takes care of your gear. And your boat? It’s possible to haul some ultra-light inflatables on a bike, but most of these are little better than a fisherman’s float tube. If used carefully, they’re good for exploring beaver ponds and mountain tarns. Want something more capable? Then you’ll need a bike trailer. I’ll get to these in a later article. Today, though, let’s concentrate on basic outfitting — what you’ll need to turn your bike into a beast of burden. Start by getting catalogs from a few of the many specialty mail-order firms. Some general outdoor retailers carry limited selections of bike-camping gear, too. Campmor and L.L. Bean are a couple that come to mind. Be sure to visit your LBS (local bike shop), as well. You can also get lucky at garage sales, hardware stores, and big-box retailers. It pays to look around.

With that in mind, let’s go shopping for accessories… Read on…

 
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Day was drawing to a close as we approached the international bridge. We still had many miles to go before we reached our destination in northern Québec, but we’d already been on the road a long time and we were tired. So we bailed out at a state campsite just south of the border. After a hasty meal I took my tea to the base of a tall pine and leaned back. Swallows swooped low over a slow-moving river. I dozed. Then something hit the top of my head and bounced off. I looked down. I’d been thumped by a pine cone. I rubbed my scalp. Oh, well, I thought, just a once-in-a-lifetime thing. No problem. And I closed my eyes again. But not for long. Only a minute later, a second cone hit me. I looked up into the crown of the pine. No breeze stirred the branches. I rubbed my head again, as much in puzzlement as pain. Then I moved a few feet away from the towering pine’s massive trunk and stretched out. Soon I was nodding off. My nap was a short one, however. A third cone hit me right in the solar plexus.

I eyeballed the topmost branches of the pine once more, and this time I struck pay dirt. A diminutive red squirrel stared down at me from a perch at the end of a long limb. It was obvious that I’d been trespassing on his turf. OK. I figured it was time for me to move on, anyway. So I did, walking a few yards and settling down under a neighboring pine. I was in the process of lifting my mug to my mouth when a fourth pine cone landed right in my tea. I mopped my face with my bandanna before looking up. Sure enough, a now-familiar figure was clinging to a branch in the top of the second pine. And just to make certain I’d gotten his message, he gave vent to a lusty churrrrr.

Retreat was the only option. I decamped to my tent. But that didn’t bring a halt to the harassing fire. Cones rained down on the tent fly at irregular intervals until long after the sun had dipped below the horizon.

Message received. And understood.

 
This happened almost thirty years ago, on the eve of my first Big Trip. I’d seen red squirrels before, of course, but I’d never paid much attention to them. My mind was mostly on the birds, I suppose, and if I thought about the members of the “red guard” at all, it was as smaller and more frenetic imitators of their gray cousins, those phlegmatic habitués of city park and rural garden. Now, however, I was headed Up North, deep into the heartland of the realm of the red squirrel. Read more…

 
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