[Geeks Corner] Show me your spreadsheets...

[Ian]

A few years ago, Backinglight.com did a competition on the best spreadsheet for sorting out all the weights of your gear. I've had various sheets for doing just this over the years, but have just managed to stitch together lots of little bits onto one sheet and tailored it so I could select the various items I want to take and populate a summary and graph 8-)


Bikepacking Spreadsheet by ianbarrington, on Flickr

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one on this forum who has all their gear neatly itemised on a spreadsheet, so come on, don't be shy - show me your spreadsheets

[gairym]

holy crap - it's beautiful!

i felt like a nerd when i started a simple spreadsheet to list/organise my kit but now i just feel inferior.

thanks!

now i'm gonna have to break out the excel books and see what i can come up with.....

[Dan_K]

I'm in love.

All i've got is a little notepad file on my phone. I need to think bigger and fire up excel...

[didnothingfatal]

I stopped weighing stuff, it'll weigh what it weighs! But I used this as a basis from the guys at Salsa here

I just write out a list know of what's getting pulled out the gear pile

[numplumz]

Beauty Ian, can you offer this as a blank excel file? Got to save some weight noes the super light frame is in the bin

[Anthony]

Thats ace Ian. I do like the idea of noting the weight distribution over the bike.

I have a similar 160 piece inventory in Excel that contains every last dot. I usually then create an individual list from it depending on the trip. I can't figure out how I could post it up here though.

I'm looking forward to the summer again for those ace fast n light over-nighters.

Is your list showing everything? No balloons or the pump for said balloon bed?

[Ian]

@Dan_K and gairym - glad to have provided some inspiration :)

@DNF - I don't believe you on the first bit

@numplumz - I would except I'm not using excel, this was done in Apple's iWork spreadsheet app called Numbers

@Anthony - take a screen dump/grab off your PC and save as an image file and upload to Flickr or whatever

That list shows everything for the BB 200, but does have my revised tool kit weights shown, which are about 70g lighter than when i did the event. The ballooned weight includes 7 balloons. I use my bike pump to inflate them.

[Anthony]

I practiced for ages to get them to inflate on my Lyzyne pump like yours, but I needed 3 hands :!:

[Nick]

Easiest tool to do a screen shot with (if using Windows 7 or Vista) is the Snipping Tool, you'll find it in accessories.

Can't (yet) out nerd you Ian, you've set the bar pretty high :)

[Anthony]

Mine is just a boring defalt Excel page and at 3 A4 pages of size 8 text a full screenshot may be futile :D

Here is a snippet-

[pedalhead]

Very impressive Ian! I'm still working on my geeky spreadsheet but I shall shamelessly steal some of your ideas :D . What kind of temperature is that sleeping kit good for? I've tended to go for slightly heavier and a bit more comfort... PHD Minimus 900 for example, but the weights you're talking about are superb.

[Ian]

Anthony - nice sleeping bag collection

pedalhead - I think I would have been OK with the low overnight temps mid-October last year with that kit by combining the down vest and sleeping back with the spare merino top. I'm not sure what the temps actually were, but it was chuffing cold in the valleys when we dropped down in Rhayader from the top of Carnau (maybe 1-2 degrees?) and about 4-5 degrees at higher elevation.

[pedalhead]

cheers Ian, sounds like you've got a really efficient system there. No need to be envious of the bigger frame space on my new Peg, you clearly don't need it! :D

[Anthony]

A PHD Minim 900 must be good to about -30-35'c, I'm not sure I would be any more comfortable in that in this country, I'd be sweating just paying for it, never mind sleeping in it

Cheers Ian, I managed to pick up the Minim 600 2nd-hand for a great price I couldn't resist. It doesn't really do a lot more than the PD800, other than pack into a 5L drybag rather than an 8. A Minim 300 in their sale however would fill a nice little gap

[adjustablewench]

Balloon bed!?

How? Does it work? - and pictures please. Some things in life need to be seen to be believed!

[didnothingfatal]

@DNF - I don't believe you on the first bit

No actually given up weighing, just go and buy the lightest I can find.

Balloon bed!? Here

[adjustablewench]

Thanks dnf - always wondered how it worked

[pedalhead]

I've been getting all geeky with Excel today & I'm getting close to finishing up my template. I've shamelessly stolen some of Ian's ideas, but based mine on a separate kit list sheet.

I just create a new entry in the kit list sheet for each item. (click for big)...



and then I can choose from them all in a big drop down list on the main page. The category and weight are automatically filled in from the kit list. (click for big)...



I'm still fine tuning the categories & stuff, but I think it'll be quite useful when finished, particularly as I can quickly swap out different items & see the effect it has on overall weight & loading.

[pedalhead]

A PHD Minim 900 must be good to about -30-35'c, I'm not sure I would be any more comfortable in that in this country, I'd be sweating just paying for it, never mind sleeping in it

Oh, I meant that mine's a PHD Minimus (good to +5 or so), but with the 900 fill option. Agreed on the "Minim 900", it'd be like a sauna in winter around here!

[gairym]

I've been getting all geeky with Excel today & I'm getting close to finishing up my template. I've shamelessly stolen some of Ian's ideas, but based mine on a separate kit list sheet.

what are the chances you'd be happy to part with a copy of that excel spreadsheet???

[pedalhead]

what are the chances you'd be happy to part with a copy of that excel spreadsheet???

Always open to bribery, especially if it involves cake. :D

Happy to share it, just have a few formulas to finish off so it works properly. It'll be far from perfect & if anyone clever with excel can improve it that'd be great. Will upload it a bit later on.

[didnothingfatal]

anyone clever with excel can improve it that'd be great.

I'll sort it out 15 years plus of Excel modelling for financial institutions should see it done Put the wishlist of everyone wants and I'll code it.

[didnothingfatal]

Thanks dnf - always wondered how it worked

It's a simple method, that seems to be working!

for example stove setup fully packed 181g, including protective case or only 77g for the Pot, Cone & Stove, lightest I could find.

[pedalhead]

anyone clever with excel can improve it that'd be great.

I'll sort it out 15 years plus of Excel modelling for financial institutions should see it done Put the wishlist of everyone wants and I'll code it.

ooh well volunteered, dnf! I've uploaded the spreadsheet as it is now to here...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18468550/Pedalh ... 0v0.1.xlsm

Anyone is welcome to use it if they like. I made it in Excel 2007 & have no idea if it'll work in other versions! Excel will shout about a macro when the sheet loads...it's just the one for sorting the data on the kit_list sheet, nothing scary :)

DNF, as you're clever with excel you can probably work this out anyway, but the kit_list tab essentially just contains a dynamic named range that's used for the drop-down lists in the main_sheet. I struggled to get VLOOKUP working with the dynamic named range, so had to specify the sheet!cell:range in all the formulas instead. Not very tidy but it still works. I've also used IF(ISNA) to suppress the #N/A entries you get with all the blank lines.

The main item on my wishlist:
It would be great to have a tidy way to add & remove item lines in the main_sheet so you're not left with lots of empty ones, or indeed a section with not enough lines available. I'm not clever enough with Excel to work that one out!

[didnothingfatal]

I'll get on it later this week ) Is everyone happy with Excel 2007, or do you want compatibilty with everything post Excel 97? If so I'll change a few bits.

The issue with the VLOOKUP not working on dynamic range names is a known bug, but I have User Defined Functions already coded to get around that.

So anybody who downloads it, have a look and put up your wishlist and I'll see what I can do.