I got a great night of sleep last night for some reason, and I feel full of energy. Unfortunately, Tacloban was in the same mood and I was overwhelmed by the insane traffic before I even got to my favorite coffee shop. That was my fault, though, because I decided to take a different route. It’s always a good idea to just turn down a new road and see what there is to see. I did that the other day when I left from my hotel and I stumbled across the Tacloban city jail and a great little eatery. This morning, I didn’t make any great discoveries like that – just heavy traffic and honking horns. But I’m here in the coffee shop with a large and hot café latte sitting in front of me. Great service at this place and they make great coffee. As I mentioned the other day, it’s more expensive than similar places, but it’s the only reliable place.

I can’t believe I’m still here in Tacloban, but it really is a nice town. I keep discovering new interesting neighborhoods. The other day when I rode back from Robinson’s Place, I turned off onto a smaller road to see if I could get close to the waterfront. I ended up in a dense section of town full of fish markets and houses on stilts out over the water. It felt like a rough part of town. I wanted to get down to the water and explore the stilt houses but there was no reasonable way of doing that. It would have been a great place to have my camera, but I haven’t had my camera out at all in Tacloban. I just haven’t been in the mood to take pictures for some reason. I hope to take my camera out this afternoon and see what happens. Maybe just having the camera will get me back in the mood.

I’m still thinking about picking up a laptop computer to replace this NEO. It makes sense to do so. I’m just tired of spending money and want to hold off as long as I can. Make sure it really is the right thing to do. I think if I had a laptop, I’d enjoy photography more. As it is, it feels almost pointless to go out and take hundreds of great pictures only to have them sit on a memory card in one of my pouches.

I’m still playng around with my bike gear. That never ends. So far, I’m very pleased with my two giant Nalgene bottles. I like to fill them both up with water and put them side by side and just stare at them. That they fit exactly in the long tube pocket on my pannier bags is a great thing. Those two bottles added to my three bike bottles gives me about five liters of water. Now, though, I have an extra 1-liter Nalgene bottle. Bringing it along for even more water-carryng capacity would be overkill even for me, especially since I also have the 10-liter Dromedary bag. So I’m not sure what I’ll do with this Nalgene bottle. Guess I’ll just have to give it away or leave it behind.

I’m still having trouble dealing with the alcohol fuel for my Trangia stove. I’m using the Trangia a lot more than I expected. I didn’t know that alcohol for that stove would be so readily available here. I’m not used to being able to find it so easily. So I find myself stocking up on it and then my little fuel bottle (which I purchased in Legazpi) isn’t large enough. It only holds .4 of a liter.

I had a brainstorm yesterday that since I had so much water-carrying capacity, I could sacrifice one of my bike water bottles and use it to carry alcohol instead. It makes sense because it would free up space inside one of my pannier bags. And I have found that the third water bottle rack that sits on the bottom of the bike frame is really hard to access. It’s a pain to have to turn the front wheel far over to the left or right while keeping the bike from falling over and then wiggling that bottle out. It would not be a bad thing to put a fuel bottle there instead – something I would only have to access when I was staying somewhere for the night.

One normally wouldn’t use a water bottle for fuel. It just isn’t strong enough or very safe. However, alcohol fuel is different. It would be fine inside a plastic bottle. In fact, when I buy it, it sometimes comes in plastic bottles. I did an experiment first to see if the bike bottle could be used to fill up my Trangia stove. I filled the water bottle with water and then did a variety of experiments to see how it would work to squirt out liquid into the stove. It worked beautifully, and I thought I was onto something pretty good.

Next, I filled the water bottle with actual alcohol fuel. Nothing blew up and nothing melted and I was pleased. But then I felt a drip on my leg. A drop of alcohol had fallen from the bottle. I thought maybe it was just some fuel that had sloshed over the side while I was filling it. But when I turned the water bottle upside down a few times, I found that alcohol came pouring out of the threads. That was a big surprise. The water bottle did not leak water at all. No matter how much I shook the bottle and turned it upside down and then right side up, nothing happened. No water came out. But when I filled it with alcohol, it leaked out the threads on the cap. No matter how tightly I screwed down the lid, I couldn’t stop the leaking. So it appears that alcohol and water are fundamentally different when it comes to getting through cracks and threads and lids. I found that every interesting, but it meant that I would not be able to use a water bottle for a fuel bottle. I’m almost positive a Nalgene bottle would be okay. They are built to a much higher standard and I think the threads on the lid would be much tighter. Bicycle water bottles are not known for being well-made. They don’t have to be made with much precision since they are just carrying drinking water while sitting on a bike frame. It’s no big deal if it leaks a little bit or something like that.

So it looks like I’m back on the hunt for some kind of fuel bottle for alcohol – ideally a bottle that can fit into a bicycle water bottle rack. I remember long ago seeing expandable water bottle racks. I’ve kept my eyes open for them ever since, but I’ve never come across them. The idea is that they have a strap of some kind on them and the base is expandable. So you are able to put bottles of different sizes into them. It’s a good idea. It would be awesome to be able to put my giant Nalgene bottles into water bottle racks on the bike itself. The only problem I can think of is that the bottles might be too wide and would interfere with pedaling the bike. Only way to tell would be to do a test.

Last night, however, I had another idea. The thing is that I already have a fuel bottle. It’s the aluminum fuel bottle that came with my Trangia to begin with. It isn’t designed for alcohol but for white gas or gasoline. I haven’t used it for alcohol because the entire pumping mechanism is attached to the lid and is inside the bottle. I don’t want the pumping mechanism soaking in alcohol all the time. I’m pretty sure it would damage it. So to use this bottle, I’d have to find a different lid. I know that they exist. I remember I had one for an MSR fuel bottle that I had long ago. This fuel bottle, though it is labeled “Trangia”, is an Optimus bottle or Primus or something like that. I can’t remember which. So I have some new little gadget to track down – a lid for my Trangia fuel bottle. I’m going to revisit the various camping stores in Tacloban today and see what they have. One of the stores had, to my great surprise, a selection of Trangia stoves. They didn’t have anything like mine, but there’s a slim chance they’ll have a lid or cap for my fuel bottle. We’ll see.

Not much else to say. I had an awesome breakfast/lunch yesterday at a new eatery I discovered. Then I made spaghetti in my hotel room for dinner. I got some ice and had a cold bottle of beer and also made hot coffee in my room. It was very pleasant. I like urban camping. Of course, I’m not supposed to cook in my hotel room. I actually put the Trangia on the floor in the bathroom, open the window, and close the door so that the fumes don’t come into the room. If the hotel staff knew I was cooking in the room, they wouldn’t be happy. But what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

One bad thing about this hotel is the big guard dog, Rambo. It’s not that Rambo is unfriendly. He’s actually just a giant puppy. The problem is that they don’t treat him very well, and I feel bad every time I see him. He’s a huge dog, and they keep him either on a very short chain or inside a small cage. The poor guy can do nothing but lie down all day for hour after hour. It must be horribly boring. And I don’t think his diet is very good. It looks like they feed him rice and water and little else. As a result, he suffers from some malnutrition and has skin problems and that sort of thing. I lock up my bike fairly near where he lives and he whines at me all the time, he’s so lonely and bored. Breaks my heart.

 

 

Tags: bike, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Tacloban, Trangia