Hi all

I just thought I'd stick my head in and say hi. I'm new to the forum, and to lightweight backpacking. I also have a little different experience so I thought it might be interesting to share.

I grew up here in the UK walking in the Cotswolds, Scotland and other iconic places with my parents for holidays, but we didn't camp much. I remember trailer-tenting when I was a kid and a couple of family camps but not much. We usually got a cottage for the week and walked from there.

Being a motorcyclist, I recently started camping as part of longer motorcycle trips. Last year some friends and I motorcycled around Europe and camped the whole way. We camped nearly every weekend last year, and did some walking too. The gear situation is odd on a motorcycle as weight doesn't matter so much as pack size. Still, the two often go hand in hand, so it's a weird place to be when researching.

This year I want to reduce the space required when away on the bikes (taking less bags has all the mental benefits of having less, and also makes you look less silly in front of serious backpackers). I also want to do some backpacking, wild camping on longer walks in my native Cotswolds and near by Welsh mountains. This is going to mean reducing pack size, and weight.

Anyway, I though this a slightly different perspective to see things from, but ultimately one which will fit with the Backpacking Light community so here I am, saying hi.

Hi, I'm from UK and picked where I lived to be near the Lakes for hiking and 4 years ago relocated to San Francisco area which one of those places you can work but not be far from the hill. I'm a push-bike fan yes totally understand you're seeking the smallest not seeking the lightest but as you say, small tends to be lighter. Small different decisions like picking Steel instead of Titanium for example. I don't know why it happened but passing age 40 my body decided to get stronger and I found I could bike over 100 miles/day easily so that opened up biking instead of driving to the Lakes, that then made me want all my kit much smaller and my 70L dropped to about 40L and I'm reckoning I can get it to 20L. My dad had a Honda something and I think your bike's pannier capacity is... what... probably about 40L ?

There's an awful lot of Harley fans around here, I'd get say 10 mins of them wizzing past me on Skyline and here is motorbike pic from my visit to Vegas last week.

Edited by nigelhealy on 04/20/2012 15:21:04 MDT.

hi matt, i'm a motorcycle guy as well. and yeah lots of this stuff can and will translate into motorcycle camping gear. take a look at golite, they have a big sake going on now and they have the shangri-la series of tents. they are good because they are bomber and light-ish.

Hi Matt!

Neat to hear about your journey and we look forward to hearing from you. Some things about the site:
1) the search function is pretty bad, your better off googling, "site:backpackinglight.com *whatever you want to search*"

2) Check out the trips reports, those are fun reads.

3) We value scales on this site, a lot. When asking about gear, like "here's what I'm taking, help me cut it down!" we all appreciate a spreadsheet of your items, and their weights. You can find a good scale that does .0x ounce increments and will fit in your pocket for roughly $20. With a good list of your items and their weights, we can help pare them down. With your motorcycle usage and weight not mattering as much as volume, that might be different. It could be cool to somehow measure that too and add it to the spreadsheet, but I'd have no idea how.

4) Enjoy! This is an awesome community.