phughes

I get what you are saying, but I have planned week long trips on the bike as well, and as long as there are stores on your route, it isn't really difficult to "just eat." I will have to add though, that my last tour posed some difficulties in that regard, since many days I went without seeing any stores, or restaurants from the time I left came, to when I was near my next camp.

My comment though wan't addressed at you, it was addressed at the overly complex analysis of food using charts. Offering up information as you have done in this thread is very useful, and appreciated.

I think this thread is very valuable, but I still find the over-analyzing of food using charts or spreadsheets to be a bit overkill.

phughes

Since I bake all of our bread, and other things, I use a very nice scale as well. It simply makes replicating a recipe mush easier, and making bread dough easier, since I can simply add as much flour as I like, not following a recipe, then figure the proper amount of water to get the hydration level I want. The scale in an invaluable too in the kitchen. It gets used for almost everything else I cook as well.

phughes

I understand preparing, and I do, but not over-thinking, using charts and spreadsheets. As for fads, and miracle products go, that is more a product of over-thinking than simply choosing good food and eating it. I am not interested in fad diets or miracle foods. The key in your last statement was, "a little forethought," not spreadsheets and endless over-thinking.

Tourist in MSN

My last tour, I knew in advance that there would be about a week where I was in a food desert. But I think it was on day five or six when I found a grocery store that was not on any of my maps. Pleasant surprise.

When the sign says no fuel for your car for 205 km, you can pretty much bet that you will go a lot further than that before you find a well stocked grocery store.



Maybe my problem is that I love wilderness too much.

I agree that it is possible to over-think this stuff, thus I prefer to just put together my meal plan and then after that check calories and protein, then add in where I had shortages.

One trip when I got home, I had some physical issues, my Dr looked at the lab tests and bluntly said you need more protein. That was when I learned the hard way that I need to do more calculations, prior to that I never ran the numbers for protein.

And I have diabetes, have to eat a low carb diet. A lot of people can stop at a convenience store and buy a bunch of carbs and live off of that just fine for a week long trip. That would be a severe problem for me. That is why I can't do ACA trips, last ACA trip it took me two weeks after I got home to get my blood sugar under control. I average about 30 percent of my calories are from carbs, the standard USA diet is 45 to 65 percent of calories from carbs. Thus, my diet is a bit out of the norm.

Happy Feet

I think people geek out over different things. For example, I've never used a gear calculator in my life, 50 years of riding; I just get on the bike and pedal, similar to your point of just eating. Nor do I know what type of spokes any of my bikes has. Understanding the interplay of fuel, and how my body processes it does however interest me.

We eat food every day of our lives and depend on it for all our physical functions. Nothing wrong with wanting to understand that better. People here spend endless hours debating the interplay of various lubes on chains which has far less real world consequence.

Tourist in MSN

My gosh, how do you manage to stay upright???

Just joking. The only reason that I know most of my wheels have Wheelsmith DB-14 but the most recent bike has Sapim Race spokes is that I bought the spokes, along with the nipples, rims and hubs. Most people have no clue about the spokes either.

Life is to short to eat bad.

phughes

Not being able to find food during the day, and wanting protein is why I always carry a jar of peanut butter. I also throw in some cans of tuna, or the like. I'm never caught without something to eat, and the peanut butter works well for me.

I like wilderness and out of the way places as well, but that comes with it's challenges for sure. Nothing beats riding in the middle of nowhere though.

indyfabz

of the week.

P.S. NFS is the best lube for all chains. Period.

robow

Thanks for putting a wet sock on what was going to be my next topic for discussion.

Happy Feet

Not so, not so... What about a master thread that asks what the best food based lube would be, so that one could eat it if need be.

Canola comes to mind as a common go to, olive oil may be a bit more viscous, bacon grease will create some issues in bear country.

fishboat

If one needed to be trendy and hip, perhaps to match their cutting edge "kit", then the choice is clearly coconut oil. Semi-solid light machine oil-type that's tasty too.

I've always avoided coconut oil (in foods) though I'm beginning to rethink that...seems to be similar to white vinegar with widespread applications.

Tourist in MSN

The local REI store, I have heard that a mechanic there used cooking oil chain lube, but some of the other mechanics did not like the smell of the rancid oil on his bike.

djb

friends of mine decades ago tried that, and it ended up making a right gunky mess that got really stuck on.
I wouldn't advise it.

Happy Feet

I like it when a plan comes together...
...

robow

fishboat, can't believe you didn't recommend Omega 3 oil used liberally.
Btw, surprised this topic didn't derail sooner.

fishboat

Omega 3 is so..last decade. Though it(in the form of fish oil) has been a lubricant or lampoil for a few centuries..

Happy Feet

Speaking of derailling...

Here's the answer to the puzzle from post 121.

That's a lot of stockpiling and a reason why pre-planning for some trips is so important.
In Robert Falcon Scott's case, a polar explorer who's team perished from hunger, the error (among a number of them) was taking one too many men for his final push to the pole and not having enough food for that number to return. Primarily pemmican, hardtack and chocolate.

Tourist in MSN

Yeah, that can be a serious problem on a trip, insufficient coffee is another potential disaster.



In this case the red and green M&Ms were purchased at an after-christmas half price sale.

djb

you said it, certainly a headache inducing disaster!

re those expeditions with planned food caches, talk about the intrepid mature of those people, where one mistake or any little issue would mean you're toast. Not unlike all the early shipping explorers, relatively uncharted seas, limited food and water supplies, and a storm or the doldrums sealing your fate....

Tourist in MSN

And almost a century ago when they did that sort of thing, that was pre-GPS in unmapped places. How do you find the caches again? You would have to bring a cartographer with you to figure that stuff out. Some of those places had very little precipitation, so maybe their foot prints would last for a long time but you certainly could not bank on that, especially in windy places. But at least those caches were likely to remain undisturbed in the Antarctic.

Celestial navigation was a very time consuming process if you were on land. And even then your calculated location could easily be off by enough distance to make finding a cache difficult if there were no good landmarks. But if it was perpetual day time, then you could only use the sun and not stars for navigation, that is if it was not overcast.

djb

T, yup pretty scary just thinking about it.

SapInMyBlood

In my last solo fastpacking trip I did about 700km in 5 days. I stopped at grocery stores and picked up simple, easy to eat foods

Knowing I was doing a lot of fat fuelled endurance / aerobic work, I focused on fat, protein, salt (hydration) and a small amount of carbs

Dense, highly nutritionous and ideally cheap foods are what I focus on

For this trip it meant a 1kg dried sausage, 500g chunk of aged cheddar, a 1kg loaf of fruit loaf and a jar of peanut butter. 3kg of food for the majority of that trip

Easy to eat, easy to store, minimal cleanup (rinse knife or spoon) and I'm happy eating those basic foods for a long time.

Happy Feet

Just to clarify,

You say you did 700km's in 5 days eating 200gm's of sausage, 100gm's of cheese, 200gm's of fruit bread and some peanut butter each day? That's roughly 1400 calories / day (excluding the peanut butter).

SapInMyBlood

That was a non exclusive summary for the purposes of illustrating convenient and macronutrient dense food sources

I'm pretty sure I was eating about 3000-4000 calories a day during that trip.

Bearhawker

My last multi-day trip was around the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton. 3 days, 300km, ~4100m of climbing total (2000-ish meters on day 2)

My Wahoo Roam claims I burned north of 5000 calories a day. Likely so.

I rode each day' ~100km fasted. Only ate supper and couldn't get more than a can of spam down.. maybe a couple of hard boiled eggs the 1st night. Roughly 1000 calories a day and all the water I could drink.

North of 15,000 calories burned while fasting, little more than 3000 calories consumed over 3 long hard days. I gained 3 pounds body weight. lol

My preferred food for rides is pemmican - you cannot beat the energy for the weight. I ate spam on this ride purely as a convenience.