erbfarm

my first-ever tour starts this Thursday morning and I'd like some advice. I'll be washing out some clothes along the way -- underwear, cycling shirt, sports bra, socks. I've washed this stuff at home and it doesn't dry by morning but takes about a day to dry. Plus it's really humid and rainy here so that's not helping. Do you clip clothes to the back of your rack or panniers and dry them that way? Thanks!

valygrl

yup, strap them on the back of the bike to dry. or, as i am doing right this moment, find somewhere with a dryer and wait.

Cyclesafe

First thing is to leave anything made of cotton at home. Coolmax or other synthetic blends dry much faster. Plus, when worn a little damp, the clothes don't seem as clammy and dry anyway once you start riding. Also, black garments heat up faster in the sun and thus dry more quickly than light colored ones. But lower temps and high humidity are not never helpful when doing laundry on the road.

If the weather is cooperative, I do my washing in a five gallon zip lock bag with biodegradable soap. All rinsings go into toilets or are poured well away from surface waters. I then hang everything with clothespins on a plastic clothes line. If I'm lucky, everything dries before dark, if not - usually not - I hang clothes from parachute cord strung up inside my tent. If still damp the next morning - usually is - I either wear the clothes anyway or spread them out inside the mesh external pockets of my panniers and flag them off the rear rack of my bike.

uciflylow

When I went on a week long tour last month I only carried 2 changes of on the bike clothing. I washed the one I rode in when I took a shower in the evening and hung them to drip over night. Nothing dries at night in this part of the country, so I strapped it on the back of the bike and it usually took untill around 10 or 11am to begin drying, but when the sun was higher they dried quite fast and I packed them away for the rest of the days trip. I did stay at state parks on my tour that had amenities, but I'm sure I could have washed them in a bathroom sink at a convenince store somewhere along the way just as easily.

Bacciagalupe

1) Bring a clothes line
2) If the clothes aren't dry by the morning, hang the clothes off the bike
3) Bring more than 1 set of clothes

By the way, you might want to get some cycling shorts. They're much more comfortable on long rides than "civilian" clothes. You can get baggy shorts if you prefer a bit of modesty.

spinnaker

Haven't tried it myself but I heard if you blow up a balloon and place the clothing over the balloon, it will dry faster.

Has anyone tried one of these? They get very, very mixed reviews. From piece of trash to a fantastic product.

Cyclesafe

Quite an annoying commercial, but it brings to mind another important trick about drying clothes that I forgot about. When you've got something that you absolutely need to get dry, you can roll it up with a towel and stand on it. Water will then distribute itself equally between the object being dried and the towel. Of course, you sacrifice a dry towel, but you might have much drier clothes the next day.

Any towel will do. But I guess some work better than others.

Machka 

1) Clip them to your panniers and let them flap in the breeze

2) Use a dryer

3) Drape them over the mesh inner of your tent (under the fly)

gregw

I bring 4 or 5 days worth of riding cloths and use Laundromats. Cloths don't weigh much and I hate doing hand washing.

Camel

That works very well for me. I use a packtowel and just roll up clothes and twist. I use a regular towel & roll up clothes when I stayed inside at hostels/guesthouse/etc. My clothes would allmost allways be dry next morning.

bragi

I'm pretty much in the "go find a dryer" group. Or else just hang out until 11:00 AM, and then get on the bike. If you have time to do laundry, you have time to start a couple of hours later; it's not a race. On my tour earlier this summer, I just wore clothes for a couple of days at a time (gross, perhaps, but if you've been in the infantry, as I have, not so bad), and brought enough to last for a week. Had I stayed out longer than a week, I would have taken half a day off and gone to a laundry. I'm not turning my bike into a rolling clothesline.

BigBlueToe

I wash my riding clothes in the shower with me. If there's no shower I wash them in a cook pot. Then I hang them up in camp. They're usually not dry by morning, so I bungee them on top of my sleeping bag and tent. They're always dry when I get to camp the next afternoon (they were probably dry by lunchtime.)

If it looks like rain I don't wash my clothes. I stretch out the wearing-washing interval. To me, dry-but-dirty clothes are preferable to clean-but-wet. If the rain lasts, it might be time to find a laundromat (which is a good, warm place to hide out from the rain.)

I woman I met on the Oregon coast had one of those warning flags - like they sell for kids' bikes, recumbents, and Bob trailers - bungeed sideways on her rear rack. The flag stuck out a ways to the left. The idea was that this would make drivers give her an extra few inches of clearance, not wanting to have her flag touch their precious automobiles. The reason I bring it up is because she would hang her socks from the "flagpole" with little clothespins - a couple on each side. It looked pretty amusing from behind, but it worked!

capejohn

I found out last month that more than one change of clothes pretty much stay in the panniers. I brought a lenght of line and hung my clothes overnight.

Many times I put on the wet clothes and they dried pretty quickly while riding. Not much different than going for a swim.

Roughstuff

There are several ways. Obviously in warm sunny weather you can alternately wear the wet stuff till it dries, and rotate thru all your wet gear till there is none left. Keeps ya cool, too!

You can put some lashed to your packs to dry in the wind, but this can look messy, sort of like a two wheeled bag lady.

If you use breathable panniers, you can put the wet stuff loosely in the pannier on top of your dry stuff (which could be in a small plastic bag by itself) and it will dry due to heat and light during the day. This will not happen with 'waterproof' bags like Ortlieb, one of the many reasons why i don't use them.

You can hang them on your bike during a rest stop, for example if ya have sandwiches or do a cafe for an hour or so.

You can hang them on your tent (or between the tent and rain fly) if you camp early enough on a sunny day to dry them.

During a sustained wet spell--I had only one bad one on my tour this summer---your best bet is a laundromat. For a couple quarters at most, all your stuff--including a down filled bag, which gets clammy in damp weather---is nice and spiffy new.

roughstuff

cyccommute 

Yep. Best way. Doing laundry everyday is a PITA. Plus hanging clothes on a line overnight is a crap shoot. What if it decides to rain?

lucille

Hello, I'm new to the forum. This is thread answers exactly what I've been wondering about. Thanks!

One more question though. Do you guys normally put your cycling clothes in the dryer? At home we never do, just let it air dry. Is the heat not going to ruin the lycra?

valygrl

at home, no drier. on tour, i'll use the drier if i need to. yeah, it reduces the life of your clothes, but so does the amount of wear they get on tour. i figure on a longer (2+ month) tour, by the end of the trip the clothes are toast anyway. i'd rather DO what i want to do, and not be owned by my stuff. it's only clothes.

lucille

That makes sense. Thanks!

cyccommute 

From the Clothing Dictionary


Laundering Lycra

Machine washing and tumble drying are the preferred manner of laundering.

If the other fibers in the garment are machine washable and dryable, this should be the recommended method for cleaning. The heat generated by machine drying will help recover any lost stretch that occurred during the wearing of a garment. Thorough washing, rinsing and drying in machines brings out the best in Lycra.

I've been drying my lycra clothes in a drier for ages without problem. Many of my shorts are multiple years old, too.

mkauffman

On both of my two month tours I ended up having to replace my shorts towards the end anyway. Wearing them every other day over 8 weeks kills shorts. So I've always figured I'll wash them however is easiest for me now, they'll be ruined in a few weeks anyway.

arctos

I use my Stephenson's Vapor Barrier shirt to dry my wool biking shirts/tops. I discovered this by accident after getting wet in a cloudburst. With the VBL against my skin I layered the wet shirt over it while setting up camp and making dinner. By the time I finished eating the wool long sleeve top was dry.

When I tell anyone about the benefits of a vbl top and bottom they dismiss it as the impossible ravings of a mad cyclist. All that I know is that it works for me. I could bore you with a long list of benefits but I will only refer you to the Stephenson site. https://www.warmlite.com/vb_shirt.htm

https://www.warmlite.com/vb.htm

BigBlueToe

I respectfully disagree - sort of. In my opinion, stopping to do laundry is often the PITA. Other times I don't mind. If it's raining, I don't mind stopping in a laundromat at all. You're right about the rain, but I usually have a fairly good idea what the weather forecast is. If there's no rain forecast, I hang my clothes out.

cyccommute 

I don't stop at laundromats to do my laundry. Most commercial campgrounds have laundry facilities as do hotels. If I can't get to either of those, I will do my laundry by hand but there are enough places that have the facilities that I seldom have to do hand laundry.

BigBlueToe

Well, I have to agree with that. I usually avoid commercial campgrounds because they're more expensive, but I have stayed in some when there was no alternative, and if my clothes needed washing, I availed myself of their laundry facilities.

Camel

OOH, that's a nice tip! I can see how the vapor barrier top would work to dry out clothes-especially just after cycling.

-I used a vapor barrier sleeping bag liner, and vapor barrier socks before as part of a sleep system. Worked like a charm in Xinjiang/Tibet (bellow freezing).