 What's up my friends, Ryan Van Duzer here with a little video about all the gear I used on the Baja Divide. Now this is specific to that route, but I'm thinking 90% of this stuff would be good for essentially any bike packing trip. If you want to watch my videos, I made an entire series, I will link those below. Please like and subscribe and share them and let's get into it. Okay now, pay attention, I'm only going to do this once. Did you get all that? Did you take notes? It was too fast, just replay this video in slow motion. Thanks for watching my video, please like and subscribe, see you later. Just kidding. I've broken this gear list down into segments, we're going to start with clothing. Just a heads up, I will have a list of everything I talk about in the description down below of this video so you can go back and find everything. Let's get started with riding shirts. I always bring two Merino wool riding shirts and these ones are made by one of my favorite companies called Shower's Pass. Why do I love Merino wool? Because it doesn't stink like a lot of that plasticky, synthetic material. You can wear this for days on end and you're not going to offend anybody with your stench, which is important. One pair of riding shorts. These ones are made by another bolder brand called Eleven Pine. My buddy Jeff started this company not long ago. The material is really nice and my favorite part is you can zip up the side of the shorts so you can make them tight and then you can make them loose. One pair of padded liners and these are crucial. These things save your butt from getting destroyed because the volatilide is so bumpy. You want a little bit of padding between you and the bike seat otherwise it gets ugly real quick. One pair of lightweight long pants and these are really great because when the sun goes down in Baja it gets pretty chilly. So you put these on after your day of riding so you can hang out and camp and be comfortable. They're also very good for keeping bugs and mosquitoes from going to town on your bare legs. One long sleeve wool base layer again to keep you warm at night time. These are also great to sleep in. A buff. I usually wear these like this to keep sun off my neck while I'm riding. If you come upon a stream it's great to take these off, dip them in the stream, put them back on and it just keeps you nice and cool. And at night time I put them up to here when I'm in camp so I can look like Rambo. Warm sleeves. I love these because they keep sun off my arms, protects me. I don't need to wear sunscreen when I have these on and again you can drip water on them and it keeps your arms nice and cool. A lightweight down jacket. These things weigh almost nothing but they add a lot of warmth for night time and as an added bodice when you get ready for bed you take off your jacket, you crunch it all up like this and make a little pillow and it's really nice to sleep on. Well I know you're probably thinking right now, well Ryan what about socks? Well let's talk about socks. Again, merino wool. These ones are smart wool, they're great, they don't stink like crazy like those plasticky synthetic socks and at night time they're nice and cozy and warm. I bring two pairs of these. Riding shoes. These ones are flat, as you will see there is no SPD, I'm not clipping into my pedals. Baja is just so rough you're constantly taking your foot on and off and on and off because the terrain is just so gnarly so I like the freedom of just having flat shoes and they're pretty comfy. Comfy. Comfy. And they don't smell bad either because of the wool socks. Sandals. These are really nice for the end of the day you take off your hot shoes and you put these on. Make sure they're fairly thick though, I have learned the hard way on my first Baja trip. I had really thin sandals and there's so many thorns on the ground that goes right through and it pokes you in the foot and it hurts. Gloves. These are really nice, there's a little bit of padding so it gives your hands a break. Like I said Baja is so rough it's like a little bit of suspension right here. These are also very good if you do happen to fall off your bike let's say you go head over your handlebars, it's nice to have these on so when you Superman on the ground you don't tear your hands up as bad as you would as if you didn't have any gloves on. I have scars. I learned the hard way. Helmet. Duh. Sunglasses. The sun is so bright and powerful you really want to protect those ojos. There's your Spanish vocabulary word of the day, ojos means eyes. Underwear. I only bring one pair of underwear because I only wear these at night time after I take off my riding shorts and I'm a boxer briefs kind of guy. What kind of guy or gal are you? So here it all is and it packs down really nice and small and it doesn't weigh much and that is key because you don't have a lot of room on your bike to bring five pairs of this and six pairs of that. You can easily wash clothes in streams or if you stay in a hotel every few days you can wash stuff in the sink or however you want to do it. Yeah, that's all I got to say about that. Let's move on. Yay camping gear. Camping gear is a lot of fun and this one right here is, can you take a guess? It's a bag of beans. Just kidding. It is my tent. It's a new tent. It's the big Agnes fly creek and it is specific to bike packing. You'll see the poles fold down really nice so you can put this on your handlebars. Even if you have drop bars you can put this between the two drops. This tent is plenty big. This is the two person one. Even though I'm only one person I like to have a little extra room. It only weighs about three pounds. It's really easy to put up and take down and it seems pretty durable. I've used this about 30 nights and it's in tip top condition. It's nice. This bag right here is waterproof too. That is cool. You're going to see that brands are specifically making camping gear geared toward bike packers. Check out this sleeping pad. It is tiny and it weighs nothing. It is the Thermarest Neo Air Uber Lite. Uber and Uber and German Mitsupa Dupa Extra Lite. Actually I don't think it means that. But this thing is great. Unfortunately because it is so light it's pretty thin and I popped this on my first night out in Baja. Luckily it has a patch kit so I patched it back up. What's that? You want to see this all blown up? Okay. Here it is. I feel like if I put a string on it it would just float in the air like a balloon. This thing is really light but it's also pretty darn comfortable. Ole! A nice lightweight camp towel is great if you happen to be camped near water and you jump in it's nice to dry off. These are great and they are wet wipes and I've never traveled with wet wipes before I met John and Mira and John taught me about this. So wet wipes are great because at the end of the day if you don't have water to jump into you can wipe all the salty stuff off, do this, do that, get yourself pretty clean and then you save those in the next morning when you wake up and you have to do a little duty or a dookie or whatever you call it in your country you can use this as toilet paper. Pretty good idea huh? Thanks John and Mira. I miss Mira. You're so cute. You are so cute. This is my sleeping bag and it's actually not a sleeping bag. It's technically a quilt. It doesn't zip up and something like this is great for Baja where it's fairly warm. This one goes down to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius and it packs down really really small and I will show you what it looks like. Check it out. It's tiny. It's freaking tiny and it doesn't weigh much. I don't know exactly how much it weighs but it's not much. Look into the light. This is really cool. It's a loosey light. It's solar powered and this is great to have around camp. You can hang it up in trees or something and it's a nice lantern and when you're done you just squeeze it down and it packs quite nicely. Headlamps are also nice for just making food, spreading out beans, making that perfect burrito. You see this thing right here? This is the Garmin inReach and I'm not showing it to you in real life because I was borrowing it from a friend and I had to give it back but I can't believe I haven't traveled with one of these before. So if you have a family member or a friend who's really worried about you when you go on these adventures, this is great because these work anywhere in the world even when there's no cell phone reception and you can send them a little message every night that says, hey, I had a great day, I'm A-OK, you don't need to worry about me. And so every single night I sent one of these little texts to my mom and it was really nice because she could go to bed and not worry about her little boy. I'm not even that little anymore but she still worries. She's a mama. Also, if you really do get yourself into some trouble, there is an SOS button on this thing. You push it and it alerts the local authorities and they come and save you. It's pretty incredible. They're expensive and there's a monthly fee you have to pay but hey, safety first, right? I put all of my toiletries into a little bag like this. Things that I always have on hand, sunscreen, this is essential. I've been profaned for when those legs and those butts get sore, obviously a toothbrush because I know you're going to be doing a lot of making out when you're on a bike packing trip and some neo spore in if you happen to get a cut or something. Here it is. You were wondering when it was going to show up and here it is. My shaver. I've been using an electric shaver pretty much every day ever since I started getting little bits of facial hair when I was like 13 or 14 years old. I just like having a smooth face. It's easier to put sunscreen on and I don't know the brand. People always ask me what the brand is. It looks like it's a brawn. I buy whatever's cheapest at Target. Here's another funny item. It's a butter knife and it's kind of like my good luck butter knife. I've been traveling with one of these ever since I started bike touring over 10 years ago. The reason why I like these as opposed to a Leatherman is that it's nice and long. You can put it in the jar of peanut butter or beans and it's just a lot easier to spread. With a Leatherman you get it all gunked up and the blade's only so long you start like getting peanut butter on your knuckles and nobody wants peanut butter on their knuckles. This is my absolute favorite multi-tool. It's made by Crank Brothers. It has all the Allen keys you'll ever need. Has a Phillips head and it has a chain tool in case you break your chain. CO2 cartridges. You pretty much have to ride tubeless in Baja because there's just so many thorns. If you had tubes in there you'd get flats every single day. That sealant in there really does a great job. But if you happen to like pop your tire full on and lose all air pressure you pretty much can't pump it up hard enough fast enough to get it to seal. So you need one of these to fill it right away. If you're out of CO2 cartridges or for some reason it's not working I always bring an extra tube. This will at least get you hopefully to the next bike shop where you can get things taken care of. You can pull this tube right back out of there and go back to tubeless. Tire levers. Can you see what this is? They look like little strips of bacon and they're little plugs in case you do get a hole in your tire. You fill it up with one of these bad boys and the sealant will coagulate or something around it creating a seal. Coagulate. I haven't used that word in a long time and I'm glad I just did. One extra bottle of tire sealant. You're going to want this. If you happen to get a flat and you lose a lot of your sealant you're going to want to add some more in. This stuff I'm pretty sure it's magic. You want to know how many flats I've gotten in Baja due to thorns? Zero. And it's all because of this. I did get a flat once but that's because I slammed into a rock really hard and it broke the seal and I lost all of the air at once. Lube. Not that kind of lube. This is for your chain. This is a dry lube which is what you need in Baja. Your chain is going to get caked with dust over and over and over throughout the day so you're going to use this a lot so put it in a place on your bike that's easy to get to. Don't forget me. I know I was just ripping on Leathermans but I do bring one. I don't use these for spreading peanut butter or beans. I use it for pretty much everything else. It is nice to have a knife blade or pliers or anything else in here in a pinch. You absolutely need a good pump. This one is my favorite. It's the Lezine and it kind of acts as a floor pump. You put this down. You put your foot here and you can pump like crazy. Those teeny little pumps just take forever. I really like it even though it's bigger. I do like it. And you want one of these not only if you get a flat but because you're probably going to be playing with your air pressure quite a bit in Baja. Some days you're going to be on some rows that are just washboard and really rough and you're going to want to take some pressure out of your tires so you have a smoother ride. And you might hit a road every now and then like pavement. You pump it back up so they're nice and hard. This is key. Also, I always wrap my pumps with lots of duct tape. Duct tape comes in very handy as you all know. So where are you going to put all of that stuff that I've been talking about in the bike bags? And this one is the frame bag and this to me is the MVP. This is where I put all of my stuff that I need throughout the day and it's easy access because it's right under you right there. This one was made custom for me by my good friend Jenny. But they sell these at any bike shop pretty much. Make sure that it fits snug and you can fit a lot of good stuff in there. This little sucker right here is really awesome. It goes right behind your stem on your top bar and I usually put stuff that I get into all the time like sunscreen or some bars. I also put my little camera in here. It opens up really easily. It's magnetic and I can just slap it shut. You all know I love my town. I love my Boulder, Colorado and I love repping companies from here. This is another one. It's called Green Guru and not only is it from here the company, but they make this stuff here and it's all upcycled fabrics that they make into really cool bike gear. This bag goes on my handlebars again. Really easy to get at and this little guy right here goes in the back of the bike under the seat. This is where I put all my little bike tools, the multi-tool and the CO2 cartridges. Here is another made in Boulder product by my buddy Chris. It's called the Slap Bag. This goes on your handlebars and it opens up. You can put again, you can put bars or sunscreen and it just slaps shut nice and easy and yes this is still very dusty from Baja. So my bike packing setup with the Trek 1120 is a little bit unique. It's really the only design out there that's like this. Most bikes you're going to have some sort of a seat pack off the back of your seat post. The Trek has a rear rack where you can put in little bags so they kind of act as paniers and so I have these little dry bags that I put all of my stuff in, usually my nighttime camping stuff in these little Sea to Summit dry bags. Now let's get into the exciting world of water bottle cages and it might not seem like an important item on your bike. You just go to a shop and buy a water bottle cage, but you really want strong ones and these are the strongest ones that I have found. They are called Widefoot and they are made in the USA and they come in lots of fun colors. They hold really big water bottles. This is a 64 ounce clean canteen and they use these foil straps which are great for everything. You really want to have as many extra straps like this as you can just in case you need to strap something down. I really love these clean canteen water bottles. These are 64 ounces each. I have three of them on my bike at all times that can usually last me a day to two days depending on how hot it is and how much I'm drinking and I love that they are metal because they are just bomb proof. I don't like plastic. Plastics are just filling up our landfills so I try to buy stuff that lasts a really long time and you see this? This is about seven pesos. It's 20 pesos to the dollar and this is about how much it costs to fill up all three of those water bottles with purified water. There's no need to be buying plastic bottles in Baja. Pretty much every single tienda all over Baja has a little station where you can refill your water. Keep the plastic out of the landfills. There might be a time where you run out of water and you're not near civilization to get a refill so I always bring some way to purify water and hopefully you're near some stream or body of water to do that. I like iodine because it is small and easy to pack. You do have to wait about 30 minutes before you drink the water but it does purify it and make it safe for consumption. This little thing right here might be my favorite new addition to my bike packing setup. It is the Wahoo Roam and it is a GPS bike computer and it goes on my handlebars and what I did is I downloaded all of the Baja Divide maps to this thing and it gave me turn for turn directions the entire time. On my first trip to Baja, years ago I didn't have this and I got lost all the time. This is going to be on my handlebars all the time now no matter what I'm doing. It also tells you all the stuff that a normal bike computer would like speed and average speed and this thing also tells you the grade of the hills you're going up so you know exactly how much you're going to suffer when you see the line go like this. Which I don't know if that's a good thing. But it's interesting and it's really easy to use too. As you know I love documenting my adventures and sharing them with all of you. To do that I need to bring quite a bit of camera equipment. For the average bike packer a cell phone is enough but I'm going to give you a list of what I bring to make the videos look so purty. Check it out this is my drone and it's pretty small. This is the DJI Mavic Air. It folds down pretty small and I love this because it really gives the viewer a great idea of just the expanse of Baja or wherever I'm traveling. Unfortunately the batteries on drones don't last very long. In my case the Mavic Air can stay up for about 12 to 15 minutes depending on the wind conditions so I always bring four batteries total. The other one is in the drone. I also bring extra blades for the drone. If you break a blade the drone is not going to go in the air so you need to have extras just in case. This little guy right here is the Sony RX100 Mark 7. It is the newest in this lineup. And for how small it is the quality is really quite incredible. I can zoom into things and get you those pretty shots of flowers or cactus or whatever I want to show you. Maybe a chupacabra. What's really important here is this little external ceramonic microphone. This is key because otherwise the audio on this is pretty bad but this is my main camera in Baja. This little workhorse right here is the Sony FDRX3000 and it has been my go to POV point of view camera for the past three years. I love it because the image stabilization is really quite incredible. You'll notice I put a little beard on it right here. This is to reduce the wind noise. But this is usually on my head right here on my helmet getting those nice shots. Sony has not updated this in about three years so I imagine I'm going to be going to GoPro here pretty soon. It's unfortunate because I really loved this camera. So goodbye my friend. I get questions all the time about how I charge up batteries for my cameras. Do I have a solar power setup? And I do not. I just bring a ton of little batteries. These batteries work both in the RX100 and the action cam. So whenever I get to a hotel every three to four days I just charge like crazy. Build them all back up and then I'm good for a while. Tiny little tripod. These are really good to set up if you want to get shots of you riding past the camera back and forth. And just as a reminder I made a video last year about how I make my videos while I'm on an adventure. I will link that below. I film a ton out there so I always bring lots and lots of extra SD cards. It is very rare that I travel with my computer or external hard drive so I don't back anything up which is a little bit dangerous. These are my backups. So this I treat like the holy grail. I keep this with me at all times very close. If anything were to happen to this little container of SD cards you would not be watching any videos. I just hope that never happens. Okay that was really long thanks for hanging with me. I'm sure I forgot some things but it doesn't really matter. You got the gist of it and here's the most important thing. There is no right way. There is no perfect gear for bikepacking. The point is just to get out your door and to go on an adventure. I do realize that a lot of my gear is very expensive but you don't need the most expensive stuff. When I first started doing this I just patched together whatever I had and you know what? I was just fine and you will be too. The point is to just get out there and sleep under the stars and ride your bike and make new friends. Thank you so much for watching this video. Please like and subscribe if you want to watch this series. It's really a lot of fun. I will link that below and whew I lost all my air. Have a great day everybody and I will see you down the road.