What else do you bring along?
 

Apart from ride, eat, sleep, do you carry stuff for work, hobbies etc?

I’m an author and musician, so paper, pencils, laptop, and 3/4 size guitar.

Kindle and small art pad and pencil.

Nope.

Brought a novel a few times. Brought a small tablet or netbook a few times. Did not get farther than maybe 10 pages in the novel.

I often put some large files on my phone to read or maybe watch a copy of a youtube videos on my phone if I have a long plane flight or otherwise have a specific time where I know I will have nothing to do. But I do not plan ahead for anti-boredom activities. Sightseeing, hiking at a park, time for grocery shopping and re-packing, laundry, that usually is sufficient. Add in a few restaurant meals to check out the local cuisine. If on a trip where I did not create a specific route to follow in advance, I have spent spare time doing route planning with my phone and paper maps.

I am retired, so have no bothersome work tasks.

ADDENDUM:

I see people in later posts comment on photography. I take a lot of photos. Mostly with a point and shoot type camera that is waterproof, an old Pentax WG-3. If I anticipate much wildlife on a tour I might bring an even older Pentax Superzoom for the wildlife. But, that is something that is spur of the moment, rarely scheduled in advance.

Camera and Kindle. Pen so I can do the NYT crossword if I can find the paper.

A small tablet + folding keyboard. If I need to do heavy lifting, I'll SSH, and sometimes remote (anydesk). (academic)

Nothing except repair kit, tube, tools, levers, co2, etc.... and my phone, which I am always forgetting to stop and take a photo. I pretty much am out just getting exercise, so don't really stop.

On long tours I take a full sized chunky laptop, a wireless mouse, and a pretty heavy interchangeable lens camera. These are the only dead weight objects I take. I think it's worth it though.

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I have my share of tech toys: laptop, kindle/tablet, phone. I have brought a heavier camera in the past, though more recently used a cell phone camera.

On a longer trip, I have also occasionally either picked things up e.g. shipping to an Amazon locker is useful in the US or sent things home, e.g. UPS. As examples on most recent six month trip:
- I figured I wasn't using my camera as much, so mailed it and my warm hat/mittens home after I was done using them
- I experimented with getting a portable bluetooth speaker to play podcasts once I was in more sparsely populated regions, picked it up from an Amazon locker
- I splurged to figure out how much weight I had lost; I order a portable travel scale to pick up from an Amazon locker. A week later I mailed it home via UPS but had a few weights.
Definitely have swapped out clothing with changes in seasons/climates and picked up or dropped off things along the way, e.g. traveling through India as part of a longer trip I figured I wasn't camping for a while so left a tent/sleeping bag/pad with friends, traveled for a month and a half and then retrieved them again.

On longer tours with national parks, sometimes carry a pair of hiking boots.
If planning on a break day, try to find a thrift store to grab some cheap paperbacks.
And when in the proper geological zones, a gold pan.

Someday I will take an accordion.

Someone brought a hacky sack ball on my group tour. People actually played.

While riding your Trek 920? :innocent:

Remember this gem?:

https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/1...-my-920-a.html

Jackals can be correct.

Nothing extra for me. Minimalist touring, light and fun. For me, it's all about the cycling every day. My usual companions feel the same.

I read every day, so I bring an ereader. I bring my camera since I do photography. I generally do not bring a computer, and instead simply have enough cards for my images, though I may bring a Surface Go if I feel like it. I haven't so far.

I also read every evening/night. A woman I was dating in 2017 convinced me to get a Kindle Fire. It has been a huge relief. No more burning through headlamp batteries. The battery lasts a long time even with full backlighting. It charges really quickly. And I have even been able to download new material in places like restaurants that have Wi-Fi when surrounding areas don’t.

Yes, backlighting is a great feature. It is nice to not have to use lighting when reading in a tent at night, or anywhere else for that matter. If I am only touring one or two weeks, I generally don't have to charge the ereader. It generally lasts two weeks or so.

For sure, and I’m a slow reader. But I sometimes top it off if I have convenient power. I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly it charges.

A paperback book…often some classic I should have read in college but didn’t want to…, a camera, a legal pad, and a pen. I write a letter…yes, actual pen to paper…every night and I read while cooking dinner and eating it. When the sun goes down, I go to bed. I don’t usually take a lamp of any kind.

I’ve force myself to read The Iliad and the Odessey, War and Peace, The Plague by Camus, and others.

:lol: I know the feeling. I can think of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” while riding around southern Spain. That was a heavy book—literally. “Catch-22”, which I finished in NW Montana. Didn’t get another one until I reached Missoula, where I picked up “Jude the Obscure.” How uplifting that was. :lol:

Yeah, I will top it off especially if I have a book I have downloaded from a library that is getting ready to expire. As long as I don't turn off the reader, I can continue to read an expired book. If it runs out of power I lose it. Ereaders have been a game changer for me. I started with Sony at least 15 years ago. They were the first that were hooked up with public libraries. I was finally able to travel with library books. I never liked taking library books with me when I traveled for work because I never knew if I would get stuck out past the loan period, and I didn't want to travel with hardbacks or possibly lose one. With the ereader I could load it up and they simply expire. Love it. It has saved me so much money since I no longer have to buy books for travel. Considering I sometimes read a book a day while traveling for work, it used to add up quickly. I would seek out the book trade shelves as much as possible.

I get The New Yorker, but am often way behind reading them. Last summer on one of my short tours I brought 4 or 5, and read one every afternoon.
I usually bring a paperback novel and read that. Nothing very big, though I suppose Dickens or Tolstoi could hold you for awhile on a longer tour.

Kindle, iPad mini (prefer it to the phone for planning etc) and my MU-43 camera.

Something to read, or a pen and notebook so I can write. A pocket knife and a piece of wood is a good way to pass the time when waiting out a rain storm, or waiting for a ferry or train.

Laptop, Kindle, Camera and iPhone.