staehpj1

Okay below are some weights for Forte tubes. Other brands would be similar, but these were handy and available in an appropriate size for the same model tube in different sizes. It happens to be an actual sizes and brand that I have made the choice between for 28mm tires in the past. I know that the tube I use isn't rated for the tires size I use it with, but I am fine with that. The only issues I have had are the need for more frequent topping off and more care required when patching.
19-25x700 108g
28-34x700 152g
So that works out to a little over 3 ounces (88g) difference for two tubes or a little 6 ounces for 4 tubes. With that brand and size I exaggerated a good bit, but at 44g per tube we are a very LONG way from your 2-4g per tube.

If go to a lightweight tube we could be talking about an 85-90g difference per tube rather than a 44g difference. That gets us pretty close to my exaggerated number. Throw in heavy duty or worse yet thorn proof tubes the difference would be greater than even my exaggerated number, but I can't in good faith because I wouldn't consider running those.

GhostRider62

Wide Latex tubes are 75-80 grams vs 150 grams for standard thickness, wide butyl tubes. Yes, I tour on latex tubes. 75 grams savings per tube. Two spares and a patch kit is plenty but sometimes, I carry 3 spares. Very easy to carry way more than an extra half pound in tubes.

I have toured with 10 pounds of gear and 100 pound of gear.

I would never bring a flashlight. One could use the light off the bike or a 25 gram headlamp. My philosophy is that if an item is not used everyday, the only way it stays in the bag? It is a safety or repair item. A bit of an exaggeration but not much. Wine bottles? I used to tour the vineyards with Hugh Johnson's book. No more.

djb

Re tube weights. I concur with stae's numbers. Even well over 25 years ago I bought a lightweight tube for a trip on my 28mm shod bike, lighter but also seemed to be almost half the volume of the other tubes I had, so I liked that aspect too.
Sometimes we don't have a choice of tubes we can buy, and some brands and or size range make a big volume and weight difference.
example: on a trip my wife and I did a few summers back in France, my wife forgot to put a spare tube in her pannier (I had wider tires ) and the small bike store we went into only had 1.5 to 2.1 tubes, her tires 1.5, so at the low end of range, plus the tube was a tough heavy Michelin one. The tubes we had at home , probably 1.25 to 1.5 tubes were a lot smaller and lighter.
but was better to have a spare.

Tourist in MSN

Your numbers are very close to the numbers for Schwalbe tubes, that was the brand I bought last time I bought tubes.

SV-15, 700 x 18-28C, 105 grams
SV-17, 700 x 28-47C, 150 grams

My 700c bikes are 28mm (road), 32mm (rando), 37mm (light touring). I bought the 150 gram tubes for all the sizes I am riding. I think you would have bought the SV-15 at 105 grams.
https://www.schwalbetires.com/bike_tires/tubes/finder

staehpj1

Back in the day I ran latex in my mountain bike. The weight savings were bigger in the larger size. Also I thought I got fewer flats. The fewer flats seems counter intuitive, but that was my impression. They were expensive and needed daily topping up though. It makes perfect sense to tour with them. Not sure why I don't other than that I have a lot of light butyl tubes on hand (I bought a dozen of the light conti ones for the family and they all do their own thing now). I can see folks not wanting to top up frequently, but I am already doing that frequently any way.

I like that a couple tubes easily fit in a tiny seat wedge along with a few tools. That little seat wedge and it's contents stay on the bike all the time even when not on tour. I think of it as almost part of the bike rather than as gear. The only reason it might come off is if I use a bikepacking style seat bag.

djb

Re volume, on my central America trip I had three spare tubes, again , tubes that were a bit on the large side, but i bought them when i got my tires so they took up a fair amount of space. In hindsight i should have shopped around more for smaller, lighter ones.

on other trips, I just carry one spare and make sure my glue tubes are new, and have two of them.

djb

Just don't forget to protect tubes with a plastic bag or something against abrasion over time, rubbing against either bag or tools.
Just a good thing to keep in mind generally anyway, especially if one rarely gets flats and a tube sits in a seatbag for years getting jostled around or scrunched against stuff.

staehpj1

If they come packed in sealed plastic they stay in it (lately I have been using contis which don't). Otherwise they are okay stuffed in a sock that I use to wipe my hands if they get greasy. The sock typically stays clean enough that I can keep using the same one long term unless I use it to wipe off excess lube in the absence of a paper towel or napkin..

GhostRider62

The most frustrating tubes for me are butyl tubes with pin hole leaks at the seams as delivered by the factory. I don't want to mention the brand but they were Schwalbe ultralights. I average one flat every 2-3,000 miles. In 2019, I rode like 14,000 miles and had two flats. Even if they took me 30 minutes total to swap out a tube, how much time did I save over 14,000 mile running faster tubes and tires? It is enormous.

Have you ever measured how much pressure you lose in a latex tube in 24 hours? Do you really need to fill them daily? Every two days? It depends also on tire size. Most riders put way too much pressure in their tires but anyway

Vittoria and Silca latex tubes hold air the best. On 1200km Paris Brest Paris, I added air once. On a cross country race, I inspected tires and added air every day.

rekmeyata

When I go bike camping I use a small Lezyne Micro 400 XL headlight and a Niterider Omega 300 tail light, I do not use the head light as a flash light around the campsite though, they stay on the bike. For camping area light I use a blow up Luci that uses a solar panel to charge the batteries, but that light is much better than I thought it was going to be, the light can run a very long time, and it charges up fast. Be careful buying a Luci because a couple of models claim they can recharge your phone from the solar panel...NO! The solar panel is too small to put a meaningful charge in your phone even if you left it charging for several days. I also carry a small Nebo Tino 300 lumen light, this thing is really slim and takes up next to nothing in space, it runs off of 3AAA bats which will last 2 to 3 hours, so I carry a spare set, but again the bats are small so they don't take up much space either. Then I also have a stupid pen with a light, so I can make notes and use it has a dim light if I need to. I now have several Nebo lights and those are the best lights I've ever purchased.

Depending on where I'm camping and for how long, but if I'm going to a campground for 2 to 3 nights I carry all the food necessary to eat during that time. Some campgrounds have food of course but their prices are generally a lot higher, so I just deal with the weight and carry it all in, so the only thing I'll buy at the campground is water and wood for a fire. Now if I know I'm going some place that is close to grocery stores than I only carry in one days worth of food and then buy what I need. I'm not much into alcohol so wine is off the list, the only alcohol I like is dark beer, so if I go to a grocery store while camping I will look to see what they carry, I won't buy anything but dark beer, I won't carry bottles while I'm riding to a designation from home, but if they have the beer I want I would carry it from the grocery store back to camp.

Some camping things I have I wish was lighter in weight, but at the time I had a set budget and bought everything at once and stayed inside that budget, so I can reduce the weight, but right now I'm not going to bother unless something breaks and they make something lighter of that version. I'm kind of weird that way, I set a budget for everything I buy, and I won't exceed it and try my best to go under budget, I did that with the touring bike too, I do that with houses, cars, etc. this budget thing helps me to pay cash for everything and not go to the credit card to get better stuff and blowing the budget...look, I'm so anti credit, I don't technically have a credit card, I have a debit card tied to my checking and savings, so when I set a budget I set it so I don't go into the savings unless it's a big dollar item like a car, but with cars the dealerships won't accept any type of card, they want cash or check. Before you go to nuts with what I said, the only loans I accept are mortgage loans, then my goal is to pay it off as fast as I can, I have no personal debt and own my house outright, I do own some rental property and the big multi unit building has a very small loan on it, the rest are paid for. See, when you don't have debts like cars and credit cards, you can use that freed up money to pay off a mortgage faster, and that's what I've been doing for many years. When you are debt free it's very liberating, you can do things you only dreamed about because debt kept you tied down.

Enough preaching, like you said, everyone has their preferences based on what they value in a bike touring experience, his and your values are a bit different than mine. Nothing wrong with that.

staehpj1

Credit cards are great if you don't fall for their traps. Some of them have rewards. Getting 1%, 2%, or 5% back on purchases is a wonderful perk with some of them. Fraud protection is a plus. Just don't run a balance or have a card that charges fees. Having a credit card doesn't mean you have to pay interest or fees. I have a number of cards, pay no fees and pay no interest. I pay the balance off every month on time. They set the rules, but you can use them to your advantage.

On the other hand if you think you will wind up running a balance better to avoid them.

rekmeyata

Banks are like a casino, they know what it takes to get people into the doors, they give away free gambling money, free food vouchers, a chance to win a car, all of this to drag people in knowing that the odds are heavily stacked in the houses favor and know that people will continue to gamble after they lost their free gambling money; and the banks are doing the same thing with their credit cards, the odds are that most people will use their cards and go into debt. Sure people like you and me would never do that, but I really don't want the temptation, I could care less about the rewards. I have fraud protection on my debit card. And what people don't realize about credit cards, is that if you go to buy something large like a house, and you have your eye on a $250,000 home and you know you can afford the payments because you looked it up on some calculator on the internet, so you go to get pre approved for the home but find out you only qualified for $200,000, what happened to the other $50,000 you scream? The bank says it's because you have 4 cards totalling to $50,000 in credit, but you don't have any balances you scream some more, yes but the potential to go into debt is there thus we had to reduce your borrowing ability by $50,000. In order to reverse that you have call the cards and get them to cancel the cards immediately then go back at a later date and re-qualify but by then your dream house could be gone. It's the same thing applying for a car loan, they look at how much you owe on your house and on all your credit cards including potential to owe, then reduce how much you qualify for on the car.

staehpj1

Of course you are right. The credit industry knows human nature and uses that knowledge to screw a large portion of the population. Same for casinos.

That said It is possible to use their rules against them. Your example of qualifying for a mortgage or car loans is a good one and needs to be kept in mind in how you use credit cards if you choose to. It isn't a concern for me since I don't have car loans or a mortgage or plans to have them in the near future. I am at a point in my life where my cars are paid off and I paid cash for my current home. Given the low interest rates pay cash for my home may not have been the smartest move, but I preferred to not have a mortgage. Still you can have a credit card of two and manage how much you have in credit limits.

You mention casinos. They are a lot like credit cards in a way Their goal is to rip you off, but they are a wonderful place to stop to eat when on tour, some even have cheap camping with hot showers. If you have a modicum of willpower to avoid gambling, the food is typically good and inexpensive. I find them to be a nice change of pace once in a while if they have camping and they are a nice stop for a good lunch or breakfast stop if not. I have not stopped at them often, but when I have I have enjoyed them and found them to be a good value as long as you don't gamble and I have never spent the first nickel gambling when on tour. I learned not to gamble many years ago.

There is nothing wrong with your choice of not using credit cards. There is nothing wrong with using them responsibly either. Having running balances and paying high interest on them is a suckers game though and should be avoided at all costs.

Tourist in MSN

Not sure how this got onto credit cards, but almost everything I buy I get 1 or 1.5 percent back on that purchase. On bike tours however sometimes you deal with a small company that has to pay high fees to accept credit cards, an independent small campground or bakery, etc., so on tours I always carry some cash for such purchases for when they deny my attempt to use a card. Use my debit card in ATMs, but that has no cash back so almost never use it. Credit cards also offer better consumer protection than debit cards. I think I paid a few bucks a couple decades ago for interest on a late payment but I think I can count late payments I have had on one hand. People like me that do not pay interest or other fees are refereed to as deadbeats by the credit card companies as they make their money on interest and fee payments. But they give me credit anyway because I am low risk, they know they will get paid.

To try to turn credit cards into a touring topic, I carry three credit cards on a tour, one debit card for ATMs, and always carry enough cash to last for a few days. The reason for three credit cards is one may be flagged for fraudulent use and then it is no good until I get home for the replacement. In Prague I used my credit card once, at a hotel, and that was the last time it worked on that trip. And in Reykjavik tried to use a card in the airport and the international travel alert on my card did not function right, that card never worked on that trip.

If you are careful and only spend what you can pay, credit cards are great.

Theft of a wallet is of course something to be guarded against. If I am going into a tourist area to wander about looking like a rich tourist, only one credit card is in my pocket, the other cards are in safe places. Over a decade ago I bought some Ex Officio travel pants that had a passport sized zipped pocket at ankle height, often carry the stuff I can't lose in that pocket if in a high risk area.

gauvins

Pre COVID, that was my strategy (one debit + 2 credit + some cash).

This being said, since COVID I've relied exclusively on Google Pay and I don't recall a single instance where I couldn't pay with my phone. I no longer bother with cards (and I don't remember when is the last time I've withdrawn cash...)

What is the situation in the US / Europe? Is it reasonable to expect that you can pay everything (including a coffee) with your phone?

imi

Phone pay solutions haven’t really taken off in Europe yet. I’m in Sweden which is becoming more or less cashless as everyone uses cards, but in other European countries it’s definitely good to have some cash.

Small rural campsites in France and Spain sometimes only take cash, and many smaller islands in Greece don’t have ATM’s, for example.

Oh and if you’re in Hat Yai in Southern Thailand with no cash or reserve card, don’t try getting cash from an ATM on a friday evening if the ATM is faulty and eats your card! 🤣

Tourist in MSN

In USA - I have no clue, and I plan to continue to have no clue. I am old enough that I do not carry my phone on a regular basis, but I almost always have a couple credit cards.

Continental Europe - have not been there for over half a decade, but cash appeared to be preferred at that time.

Iceland - in 2016, everybody took plastic, even tiny little campgrounds. At the end of my trip I was trying to spend down the cash that I got at an ATM on arrival in the country a month earlier instead of using my plastic.

staehpj1

In the past I have used plastic and carried some cash for the places that preferred to be paid that way and will continue to do so, but have found carrying cash to be less and less necessary. These days even folks selling stuff at yard sales will take some kind of alternate payment instead of cash, but it might often be PayPal. I have never used PayPal on tour though.

andrewclaus

Getting back to touring, I think this is an effect of the touring lifestyle. My wife and I realized much of the simplicity of our life is a direct result of being able to spend a few months at time with what we can carry on our bikes (or backs). And since most of our town errands are on the bikes, we're limited as to the junk we can carry home. So our home tends to be uncluttered, and therefore small.

We have never made a single non-mortgage interest payment in our lives. Our last mortgage payment was in the 1980s, paid off in five years. We had two good jobs, one old car, inexpensive vacations on the bikes, and a small house that we could pay off fast. Most of the "experts" told us not to do that (some told us that we couldn't), that we should leverage a home into other investments, but we craved a simpler life and it's worked out. Without a mortgage, our savings increased exponentially and we were able to retire in another ten years. And there have been a couple of housing value crises that we were able to watch smugly from a distance.

And we believe it's mostly because of bicycling. A decade or so after we achieved financial independence, we saw this blog.