Wednesday October 29, 2014
6:45 a.m. Bird Nest Guest House
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I went to another camping store yesterday. My goal was simply to purchase a second lightweight Dueter toiletries bag. I used the first one for my bike tools and I liked the bag so much, I wanted to get a second one for either my cutlery or for my flash drives and electrical cords. At least this is one product I like. The difference, I guess, is that I was able to see this product in the store and go over it thoroughly before purchasing it.

I spent a long time at this camping store looking at other products. I’m still in the midst of my obsession to find lightweight equipment to replace all my very heavy equipment. That includes lightweight stuff sacks, lightweight sleeping bags, lightweight sleeping pads, lightweight sleeping sheets, lightweight rainjackets and many more. At this store, they had a very lightweight rainjacket. It was from Sierra Designs and I found it very tempting. It was a bit expensive, though, especially when you consider that I already have a rainjacket – but a very heavy one by comparison. This Sierra Designs jacket should have been half price or even cheaper. It was their very last one – an XX-large – in basic black from a discontinued line. However, they were still asking the full price for it. I still might buy it, but I doubt it. I went online and learned just how old this particular line was. I found old advertisements online selling this jacket for $50 as companies got rid of their last ones. I also learned that it originally came in nice colors. No one wanted this black one. So it should be on sale for that reason as well.

To shop at this store (a kind of co-op), I had to buy a lifetime membership for ten ringgits. That was a good deal, however, because it came with 25% off all the listed prices in the store and a free T-shirt. The money I saved on my purchase with the membership covered the cost of the membership and more. Plus, I got a T-shirt. Of course, that doesn’t mean I saved money on the purchase. I’m sure all the prices in the store were inflated by at least 25% to begin with. All that meant was that shopping at this store made sense only if you became a member.

Thursday October 30, 2014
7:45 a.m. Bird Nest guest House
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I’m not feeling it this morning, so I imagine this will be brief. Perhaps point form. My old age continues to be apparent. I was chatting with a guy at the guest house yesterday, and apropos of nothing, he peppered his conversation with the phrase “my generation”. “My generation” does it this way and “my generation” is like this. Apparently I am so old that he felt he was talking to his grandfather. This whipper-snapper said that he’d routinely met older travelers on the road and that they’d gone crazy for the most part. I understood what he meant. He was talking about people who dominate conversations by telling stories of all their crazy adventures and experiences. It becomes a drug for them – to sit around and tell stories, believing that the circle of young people are hanging on their every word and are in awe of their amazing life. It’s a bit of a danger of circumstances. I’ve been talking to people here at the Bird Nest, and they are always new people. People come and go very quickly, so the same topics come up in conversation all the time. Everyone wants to know how long I’ve been in Malaysia and what I’m doing here. As I explain, it’s inevitable that the bike comes up. Even when people ask me about my day, the bike ends up coming up because I spend all my days going to bike stores and camping stores. Then they ask me about my bike trip. So the same stories come up over and over again. It’s gotten to the point that I avoid people. I’m tired of that conversation. Even when we talk about other things, it gets horrible very fast. These are all young people and they are in the throes of philosophizing deeply about life and solving all the world’s problems. So the conversation can get deep quite fast. And then I hear the same stupid ideas coming out of my mouth. I’ve had the same basic thoughts and ideas for the last thirty years, and I’m sick to death of them. If these kids become bored of listening to me, it’s nothing to how much I bore myself.

It’s weird how I can feel myself slipping into boring grandpa mode. It’s almost impossible not to. I’ve hardly led an exciting life full of adventure, but I have been on the planet for over 50 years, so it’s inevitable that I’ve had some experience or thought or idea related to whatever topic comes up in conversation. I’ve had the time to be exposed to more things than these twenty-year-olds have. There is a big map of the world on the wall in this kitchen, and a young German woman was talking to me about the map. She pointed out things like how huge Greenland was. It’s bigger than South America. Well, I happen to know the map is wrong. It’s the standard Mercator’s projection and it badly distorts the landmasses to the north and makes them look larger than they are. I know about the Peter’s projection, which accurately shows the size of the continents. And I know about all that stuff about how maps tend to be biased towards Europe and North America because of the history of colonization. I know about the huge difference it makes when you turn a map “upside down” and put south at the top. Suddenly the third world looks much more important in world affairs and places like Canada practically disappear down at the bottom and seem irrelevant. And I know that north being “up” is completely random. There is no “up” or “down” in the universe. South could just as easily be “up” on maps, but because of history and cultural convention, south is down. And I know that there is a movement in the developing world to use maps where south is up and where Asia and Africa are in the middle rather than North America being in the middle.

The point is that these are ordinary ideas and facts that I came across decades ago. There is nothing special about them. But it was the first time this young woman had ever heard them. It almost blew her mind. There happens to be a globe here in the kitchen as well, and she grabbed it and turned it upside down so that south was up and she was astonished at how different the world looked. She even called in her boyfriend to show him and explain the concept to him and she went on and on about how there is no “up” or “down” in the universe. I probably reacted the same way the first time that I was exposed to the idea. But it’s an old common sense idea to me now.

The thing is that in talking with these twenty-year-olds, there is nothing that can be brought up in conversation that I don’t have some idea or story about. And it’s not that I’m smarter or more thoughtful or anything. I’ve just been around longer, so I’ve had more time to read books and watch movies and watch TV shows. And there is a real danger to become boring grandpa telling another story to the kids. As I said, I even bore myself to tears.

The young kids bore me, too. Like backpackers in general, they are obsessed with their self-image and talk about it endlessly. The young man who kept talking about “my generation” spent twenty minutes telling me all about exactly why he is traveling the way he is traveling and how it is better than other ways of traveling. If I’d had a gun, I would have put a bullet in my brain to put myself out of my misery. He was going on and on about meeting the locals and having real experiences and not spending time in the “bubble” – hanging out only with other foreigners. Unlike everyone else, he was having a real experience and meeting local people and eating local food. So he’s a better traveler than all these other travelers. It was soooooo awful to have to stand there listening to him go on about this stuff.

On a happier (and sadder) note, I found an incredible camping store yesterday. It’s a happy note because it’s a great camping store with a lot of products for sale. It’s a sad note because I wish I’d found it earlier. I bought a new mosquito net a few days ago at a different store. And at this store, I found a MUCH better mosquito net. If I’d seen this net earlier, I would have bought it. But now I’m stuck with the lesser quality net. Every time I use it for the next ten years, I’ll think about the better one that I could have had.

And I’m currently sitting here waiting for my Trangia fuel bottle to arrive in the mail. I had to order it from a company in the UK. But this new store actually carried this fuel bottle. The funny thing is that I just wrote a long email to Trangia saying, in part, that you just can’t find Trangia products anywhere in Asia. The day after I write that email, I find a camping store that had an entire section of the store devoted to nothing but Trangia products. It blew my mind. I’ve never seen so many Trangia stoves, pots, and accessories in one place. Of course, they had every single Trangia product except for one – the X2 multifuel burner that I have.

Anyway, this store was amazing. They carried North Face products, MSR products, Sea to Summit products, Cascade Designs products and much, much more. I felt like I was in a fantasy land. I have honestly never seen so many Sea to Summit products in my life. They had items from them that I hadn’t even heard of. Needless to say, I spent a long time in the shop checking things out. I won’t bore you with every little detail, but I will mention that I was smitten with the MSR Hubba Hubba NX tent. I might just say “damn the expense” and buy one of them. I love my Marmot Peapod, but it is just too damn heavy. And it is falling apart. I attempted to re-apply waterproofing when I was in Taiwan, but I wasn’t very successful. The tent fly is now really gummy and sticky. It’s a shame because the tent itself is still in very good condition. It’s just that old age caught up with it (and some poor maintenance on my part) and all the waterproofing peeled off and the fly got covered in mould. My attempt at a repair hasn’t been very successful. I weighed it with a scale here the other day, and it came in at eight pounds. Tent technology has improved a lot since 1999 and a similar tent today weighs less than four pounds. The MSR Hubba Hubba NX weighs something like three and a half pounds – and that is with two doors and two vestibules.

It probably goes without saying that I’m going to return to that store today. I left yesterday without having purchased anything. My main goal in going there was to buy a compression stuff sack. My waterproof stuff sacks are also falling apart. The seams have split on them and they are clearly about to die. I just couldn’t make up my mind yesterday about which size to buy. I needed to make some measurements on my bike to make up my mind.

Friday October 31, 2014
4:30 a.m. Bird Nest Guest House
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I have no business being awake this early, but I found myself awake in my bed and unable to go back to sleep. So I decided to take a quick shower and have a cup of coffee. I can always go back to bed later and try to sleep.

Yesterday was all about camping equipment. I spent some time in the Internet café in the morning looking at reviews of the MSR Hubba Hubba NX tent. I’m sure the tent has some flaws, but its basic form seems to be in line with the kind of tent that I like. When people talk about it, they talk about how roomy it feels inside. The pole structure is such that the tent walls are nearly vertical, and that gives it a spacious feeling. It’s the same thing that appealed to me about the Marmot Peapod. Tall people have also said that the tent is very long and they have no trouble stretching out without their feet touching the tent walls. The tent is lightweight, of course, weighing in fully packed at a mere 3.5 pounds. It is a 3-season tent with a lot of ventilation and other useful features. Best of all, perhaps, is the fact that it has two doors and two vestibules. I’ve always wanted a tent with that design. The Marmot Peapod only has one door at the very front. That’s not a problem, but having two doors (one on each side instead of at the front or back) seems like it would be far more convenient. A problem with the Marmot is that when I want to get something out of the tent, I have to go all the way inside the tent and crawl along to reach one of the pannier bags. With the Hubba Hubba NX’s doors along the side, it would be a simple matter to just unzip a door and all the pannier bags and gear would be right there lined up along the tent wall. I could just get what I needed without having to go inside the tent. (It was built this way, of course, to accommodate two people sleeping side by side. With a door on each side, each person has their own door and doesn’t have to disturb the other to go outside. But it works for a cyclist and a line of four pannier bags just as well.) This design also means that both vestibules will be useful. I generally didn’t use the vestibule on the Peapod because it was difficult to access from inside the tent, and I was worried about security. The vestibule was at my feet – very far away – and it felt like anyone could reach under the tent fly and steal whatever they wanted. The Hubba Hubba NX’s vestibules are along the sides of the tent and therefore would be right beside me as I slept. I suspect it will feel more secure to have them there. Even when I was searching for a tent for Ethiopia, I really wanted to get a tent with the two-door design. I remember that I found one or two. There was one from North Face that was particularly nice. The problem was that they were even heavier than the Peapod (I think). Having two doors means having two zippers, etc. And that adds weight. Then again, I was probably looking at 3-person tents like the Peapod instead of doing the sensible thing and getting a 2-person or even a 1-person tent.

There were some concerns online about the durability of the Hubba Hubba NX. To make it so light, they had to use relatively thin material, and one or two people complained of this material puncturing and tearing easily. This wasn’t a common complaint, though. Most people raved about the tent. It has even won awards from various outdoors magazines as the best tent on the market, etc. All in all, it seems like a no-brainer to buy the tent. I should have bought something like it while I was in Taiwan instead of trying to save my old Peapod. Saving the Peapod made sense, though, since I really hadn’t used it that much and it was structurally still in great shape. I thought it was worth it to try to reapply waterproofing. And at the time, I wasn’t as concerned about weight.

One of the reasons I’m so concerned about weight is that I’m trying to save my camera gear. I was thinking about selling or sending away a couple of my Olympus lenses and even the camera grip to save weight. But I started thinking about that. If I got rid of my awesome 75mm lens, I’d save perhaps a pound of weight. Yet, I use this lens all the time and I love it. So perhaps there is a better way to save one pound. I could, for example, get a lighter sleeping bag, a lighter tent, and a lighter sleeping pad and save ten or fifteen pounds! Then I can keep the more important camera lens.

With all of this in my mind yesterday, I returned to the camping store. It’s a great errand to run since it’s so easy to get there by subway and it’s the exact same subway stop where all the bike shops are located along with my favorite Indian restaurant. I timed it so that I got there just in time to have a good curry lunch before going to the camping store. This time, I had brought along my sleeping bag, sleeping sheet, sleeping pad, mosquito net, and left rear pannier bag. I needed to test the various stuff sacks at the shop to see which sizes made the most sense. They were having a two-for-one sale, and I could select any of the bags I wanted. I ended up buying a medium and a small. These are compression sacks. Now that I own them, I wonder why in the world I didn’t get them before. They are awesome. My old stuff sacks are heavy-duty fully waterproof stuff sacks, and I compressed them myself by sitting on the bag, etc, and then wrapping straps around them and cinching them up tight. These new compression bags are much smaller and lighter and the straps are built in so that it is very simple to stuff them and compress them down to a small size. They’re wonderful.

I had brought along my Thermarest sleeping pad because I wanted to compare it to the new lighter models available. I’ve had this Thermarest as long as I can remember and it’s a big, heavy one. I’ve had three punctures over the years, but they were easy to fix and the Thermarest is still in near perfect condition. But it is a big and heavy beast. I weighed it with a cheap scale, and it came in at three pounds. The new models come in as light as one pound.

This camping store had a full range of Thermarest products and I got to test nearly all of them. I inflated them and put them on the floor and laid down on them. My big Thermarest was the most comfortable of the bunch, but as far as I could tell, the thinner and lighter models would be just fine, too. When you’re camping, you don’t need a featherbed. It would be nice to have a big featherbed, but if it weighs four hundred pounds, then it makes no sense. I always sleep poorly in the tent. I think I’d sleep poorly even if I had a featherbed in there. So there’s no strong argument for having the thickest and heaviest Thermarest.

I ended up hemming and hawing between the Prolite Plus and the thinner and lighter Prolite. The old Doug would get the thicker and bigger Prolite Plus. The new sensible Doug is leaning toward the MUCH lighter and smaller Prolite. The Prolite might not be quite as comfortable as the Prolite Plus, but it’s so much lighter and smaller that it is a good trade-off.

I’d brought along my left rear pannier bag because it has a special long pocket designed specifically for a sleeping pad. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to use it for that purpose. My Thermarest, being an older model, was too big to fit into that pocket. No matter how tightly I rolled it, it was still too big to fit. I wanted to test these new Thermarest pads to see if they would fit, and they fit just fine.

I forgot to mention one of my adventures from yesterday. I wrote about how the guest house cat has a habit of spraying and peeing all over the shoes on the stairs to mark its territory. Well, yesterday evening, I didn’t bother to lock the door to my room because I was just going to the computer at the reception desk. When I returned to my room, I was surprised to see that the door was ajar by about seven or eight inches. I went inside and saw the cat sitting on my bed. At first, I was happy to see him. I like cats and I sort of like this cat. I was all “Oh, nice kitty, nice kitty.” But then I saw that he was hunched over in a weird posture with his legs spread. Next thing I know, I’m being sprayed with the force of a firehose. All over my bed, all over me, all over everything on my bed. It was like the entire room was on fire and the cat was putting it out. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was disgusting. I was busy putting new cords on my mosquito net, and I reacted by yelling at the cat and then whipping it with the cord in my hand and driving it out of my room. I was really angry. I could feel that I was overeacting and very irritable and opened the door to let it out. If I didn’t let it out, I might have grabbed it and really hurt it. I was furious. After it was gone, I sat down on the bed and started to clean up, and I found that a pair of socks that were rolled up and sitting on the bed were soaking wet with cat pee. They were soaked right through as if I’d run them under a tap. Apparently, the cat had sat down on those socks and emptied its bladder. It was disgusting. I took the socks and rinsed them in the shower and then threw them away. I wanted nothing to do with those socks anymore. I suppose it could have been worse. The socks had absorbed the cat pee like a sponge. If he had not gone for the socks, he might have soaked the mattress or my new mosquito net or this NEO or any number of a dozen things lying on the bed.

That’s all for now, I guess. I imagine that I’ll try to buy the tent and a new Thermarest this morning and have them shipped to Sarnia. I think I can get them from MEC in Toronto. They will ship overseas for $70, but I figure that since the Kindle is in Sarnia, it makes sense to package it all up together instead of sending two boxes. At least I think that makes sense. Of course, it makes no sense, really, to be buying a $400-tent at this point, but I’m going to do it anyway. The new somewhat more sensible Doug needs a lightweight tent. I think a lot of the reason I had trouble cycling in the Philippines was the sheer weight and volume of my gear. It was just too overwhelming and I couldn’t face it. And then when the bike started falling apart, I was just depressed about the whole thing. Now that the bike is sort of starting fresh with new spokes, a new chain, a new rear cassette, new pedals, new light touring tires, new shifters and brake levers, a new lightweight touring saddle, and an overhauled bottom bracket and headset, I want to lighten the load I put on it. With all the new lighter components and parts, the bike itself already weighs at least ten pounds less. By switching over my stove base, water filter, stuff sacks, and mosquito net I’ve shed another five pounds. A new tent and sleeping pad would then reduce the weight by another six and a half pounds. All of that pleases me immensely.

Tags: bike, Chinese Malaysia, Malaysia, pannier bags, tent, Trangia