Yeah I definitely get nervous before a trip but when I'm off and riding then it's fine. :)

My fitness is not what it used to be last year!

http://punkrockbikeclub.com/2014/04/tcw/

So I put the headset cups in and weighed it.

3.5kg!!

Hopefully as single speed the full bike won't be stupidly heavy.

Might take the one that is in my possession currently out with me next week so will give some feedback on whether it's worth it or not.

It weighs...erm, a fair bit.

Will weigh it at some point. I picked some quite big bits of bamboo which I hope mean it will be stronger.

It should depend on the purpose/geometry of the bike but from thinking about people I know there is a definite 'fashion' element which could the give an indicator towards peoples attitudes. An example would be bar ends are 'uncool' however I ride bar ends because I don't care and want multiple hand ...

Made a bamboo bicycle frame the other weekend.

http://punkrockbikeclub.com/2014/03/deepwood/

Sometimes photos are all you need. ;-)

http://punkrockbikeclub.com/2014/03/prb ... king-trip/

I'll hold my hands up and say this is my employer/work (so delete this if you feel it's inappropriate).

However we're clearing our Thermarest stock so we've just dropped the prices.
http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php?plid=m4b0s151p0

The sawyer mini filter does seem like it would do the job and is pretty cheap.

Used mine at the weekend and was very happy with it, although I made use of trees rather than bike/pole.

In english - drink more beforehand and afterwards so you can drink less during.

Not easy to do when you're on a multi-day trip.

The wine/whisky on Saturday night may have compounded my dehydration problem though.

voodoo_simon, what's your opinion on that katadyn filter?

So despite having what I though was enough water on my overnighter this weekend I managed to run out when drinking and cooking were taken into account.

How much water to people generally carry and how do people tend to try to 'stock up' on the go? e.g. shops vs purification.

Yes I normally also make a list but an impromptu 2 hour ride the night before and then getting out of bed late meant I was a little short on time. Strange how setting off at 1pm leaves more time to faff, it's better when you have to be prepared/up and out at the crack of dawn!

Mine. I need to learn to pack things better/more cleverly as the saddlebag seemed full and I realised 20 miles from home that I'd forgotten my thermarest!

Doing an overnighter in the dales with two of my mates who haven't bikepacked before.

Petemaz, do you find that Topeak bag behind the stem moves around a lot?

Well that made everyone in the office smile. Nice work!

Well I'm in Leeds so probably would have to drive up. What time were you thinking of setting off Friday morning?

I just had to check when Easter was, but I'm definitely interested.

That's fine when you set off but can cause problems on multi day rides ... as your bivvy bag is often damp / wet, you'll want to be keeping it away from your sleeping bag until you get chance to dry it out. This! First thing I did on returning from my first trip was to order some more drybags to ke...

I knew someone would mention that!
(going to tidy it up now, the shame)

Yesterday the postman brought me some Rockshock Reba's.

@ctznsmith is me unsurprisingly.

It's still a good idea to carry a chain tool too. In my experience if you snap a chain you sometimes need to remove part of the snapped link with the chain tool before you rejoin with a 'quick link' like the connex one you mention. We would have used a quick link to fix John's chain at xmas but he w...