Maybe there is a bicycle coop in your aera:
https://www.bikecollectives.org/wiki/index.php?title=Community_Bicycle_Organizations#North_Carolina
Knowing how to repair your bike in the field is important. Bike coops not only have a lot of old bikes, they also show people how to fix bicycles.
The coop is often the least expensive place to get a bicycle.  If you decide to keep riding you can buy a nicer one.  In the middle of January last years model will be on sale for half off at many a bike shop.

I vote for 29 inch wheels.

Plenty to choose from.  So who invented the better mouse trap?

20 foot wide leaderboard over the finish line.

 illuminate the trail
Mounting lights on each bar end works.  But, makes the bar ends unuseable.
Bar ends are hollow.  Why are they not bar ends and lights rolled into one? 
Try mounting one light on each bar end.  Best place on the bike for lights.

things everyone wishes that had but isn't made,

Bar ends that are also lights.

Surprised to see the Baja 1000 race on the bicycle tracker page.
http://trackleaders.com/baja1k19
Maybe trackleaders is not just for bicycles anymore.

http://score-international.com/

In hot low land town of Morales Guatemala the police have two 29ers.  They waited 29 days for a replacement tire.  They had to order it from Mexico City.  Morales is a small town with a bus station where you can change for Rio Dulce, Puerto Barrios, or Honduras.  The police thought they could catch a couple of criminals if they had 29ers to chase the bandidos on the 26ers.  And they did.  Until one of them had to put a 26 inch wheel on his 29er.  Because of a lowered bottom bracket, the police man crashed 3 times.  Pedal strikes a rock in the cow path, and boom, police man hits the ground.  The bandido escaped that day.  Because his arm was broken, I had to help him mount the new tire. The wait for the other bus can be a couple of hours.   With a new tire on his bike, at last, the police man was mounting up to look for the criminal. I had to convince his friend to take him to the clinic first.

Welcome to Guatemala.

In the mountains.
Ekaterina is standing in front of her house with a green water jug in her had.   She is about to walk to the well and fill it with water.  
Those boys use a wooden plank like a sled to slide down the cobblestone hill.
No 29er in their village.  Many places in the world just do not have luxury items.

12 miles away, in the next village.  Cantilever brakes, 26 inch x 1.9 tires, and cables are for sale at the hardware store.  Anything else is a long bus ride away.
Flickr
Manuela makes tortillas as I heat water for coffee.

What are you going to do.


They would be delighted to teach you how to speak Ixil while you wait a month for a tire.
The nearest bike shop with a 29 inch tire is 607 miles away.  you have to change buses 7 times to get there.

Anyone having more trouble stealth camping and being confused with the homeless?
Such as do you have to go even further before you can camp, try to blend in, or try to look clean and straight?
Oh well, very privileged First World problem (we live like homeless or fleeing refugees for the fun of it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73OsXo19vI

stealth

1.
cautious and surreptitious action or movement.
"the silence and stealth of a hungry cat"


Stealth camp means no one knows where you are.

For your own safety avoid the homeless camps that surround all large cities.

I recall reading this guys journal.  He is a better story teller than I am.
"Free camping, its what all us adventure cyclist do. I´ve done it all over the world and never had a problem. Today my luck ran out."
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1mr&page_id=447413&v=F

Spring 2019

I talked the talk then failed to listen.
I bought a cheap single speed to ride to some trail heads, and stash in the woods while I hiked.
Figured I would take it to Guatemala, and ride to some ruins, places the bus does not go.
While inflating the tires at Aeropuerto de Guatemala-La Aurora, Boom, lost a bead on a tire I bought in 2006.
It takes about two hours to walk to zona 1.
Over the next couple of days, I visited 7 or so bike shops.  No luck!  
The only 700, was a 23 mm.  They did not have any schrader tubes either.  The old women that sold me the tube and tire for $13, from a table in the streets of Treble,  also gave me a washer to fit the presta valve.  

The roads to the ruins are not paved, sometimes the mud is so bad a jeep can not make it.

Tire on the left may have made the bike 2 pounds lighter, but Guatemala is not made of smooth roads, "no sirve para nada"
on Flickr

Ok, this is an old topic but I'll answer anyway.

Sorry for my english!

So, in 2011 I had a long trip from Texas (USA) to Ushuaia (Argentina). It took 6 months. I had a very simple bicycle which I got from REI. The bike was equipped with 700C wheels.
What I learned from that journey: NEVER EVER use 700c for international trips! It was a pain in the ass!
I was able to get to Guatemala, then I stuck there for 2 weeks waiting for 700c tires an tubes I ordered from USA because the local stores did not have 700c! Next stop was Buenos Aires (Argentina), same problem!

All America outside of USA has no clue about 700c! Probably Asia too.

My advice: use only 26" to be able to change your tubes and tires in every bike shop!

All the bike shops in Guatemala have 26 inch mt bike tires.  
At Maya pedal, a week later,
http://www.mayapedal.org/
I found an old used 700 x 28 I think it was.
With no plans to bring the single speed home a used tire was good enough.  The tire with the blue stripe was of little use outside the Capatal.

Note:
in Antigua Guatemala you can buy a 700 x 35, for 65q from a table near the old bus station.  Or from Old Town Outfitters, you can get a Schwalbe 700 touring tire, for a price.  That is it for the entire country.

I sold the bike for 150q about $20, about the price of a bus ticket back to Pa Capatal.  No rain at the ruins.  41c = about 105f every day




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYUMm8BRjY8

Flicker works better than trashyourphotosbucket.

To save weight.  A rack weighs about a pound and a half or two pounds.  A seat post bag weighs what, a half pound?  On the road a pound or three means little.  On a steep mountain trail a couple of pounds means riding or pushing.  2 racks and 4 Ortlieb bags is about 10 pounds.  You can carry enough gear with 2 pounds of bags and no racks, with a little practice.

Tabatinga, say that out loud a couple of times, Tabatinga.

somewhere up a tributary of the Amazon river, I got off the boat in a village with about 1 mile of pavement, from the dock to the market.  The rest of the roads are dirt or mud as the weather might be.
There is no bicycle shop in this village.  I looked for one.  Even a person as stingy as me would buy these children a tire if there was a way to do so.  After a few days of watching them take turns riding on the bike with no tire, I looked quite hard for a tire, there are no bike parts of any kind in this village.

This thread is about equipment that works.
This is to help people share information about gear that did its job, without fail.
The hardest part of the internet is to explain to 123,457 people what your thread is about.

In the window on the left you see dear old dad.  If he wants to buy a tire for the bicycle his 6 children share, he needs to go on a 4 day and 4 night boat ride to Tabatinga.  A day or two longer to get him back home up river.

In their village,
For 59 cents, dos soles Peruanos, Patricia sells, from a table in the street, rice and a fried egg.  For cinco soles, $1.48 You get a bigger plate with a piece of chicken.  The fat guy sitting next to me complained about the the price of the chicken.  

I think My Shimano m772 long cage rear derailleur, deserves a mention, it lasted through years of abuse, it worked without fail.
Here in Tabatinga, the dry season means 200 mm of rain per month.  The dry season is over.  As I wait for an airplain, I can see what the rainy season looks like.  Some say an internal geared hub is the way to go in the mud.  No right answer.  Just a list of gear that people found reliable after a lot of use.  You and only you can decide which gear fits your travel plans.

I like to camp in the sand.  Sometimes the wind blows off the Pacific.  Blows the tent stakes right out of the sand.   The tent that works for the man in Colorado, might not work for me on the beach.  I suppose my tent pole weighs a pound, and has no second use.  No one right answer.  A good tent in the mountains, where the ground is solid and can hold onto a tent stake, could be a different tent than the one we need on windy soft ground.

Note the tent tied down to some drift wood.

So, if you are going down the Canol Heritage Trail in the Yukon, or up the Amazon river, what gear do you need?  If you know of some gear that works and can be relied upon, post about it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RATG8uBE8mw
The final resting place of the Pearl, was a beach in northern Brazil.  
Get off your bicycle and go into an old library,
you might learn something.


Pick a point on the map

and go there.
When you get back let us know if one piece of equiptment served you well. 

Big Agness repaired my tent 3 times under warranty, 2013, replaced the Zipper, 2015, sprayed water proofing on it, 2017, another zipper,  2019, sent me a shiny new Fly Creek instead of new seam tape on the inside of the (¿2011?).  
I figure, I camped more than 100 times in the harsh environment of Baja California in all those years.  Not to mention all the times I hiked the Olympic National Park wilderness coast.  Or pedaled my bicycle for 3, 10, 30, or 60 days.

They made a mistake, and sent me a 2 person Fly Creek, instead of the 1 person I sent in.  No complaint on that one.  

Tent might be less than perfect, warranty is beyond my expectacions.

To little to late?
Well I bought an old 93(?) Hard Rock, and I kind of like it.  So I am fixing it up a little, nothing fancy.  Now the tires it comes with are 1.9 x 26 Hardrockers.  From the looks of it 2.1 is pushing my luck.  18 - 20 mm internal width(?)  Not sure if any body still make any thing like that.  The Cliffhanger  is rim brake and tubeless, but 25 mm internal, and 600 grams.  Mostly this old bike is for stashing at trail heads, or shopping.

I kind of like it, no plans to buy premium parts or anything, but breath some new life into it, mostly with old parts and hubs I already have.  Need some rims though.

edit;
I ended up with Alex Adventue 2 rims, tubeless ready and machined side walls for rim brakes.  My 93 Rock Hopper lives again.

My 2009 Fargo at age 10 needs some new parts.  I see Shimano has a new Gravel groupset, GRX.  https://www.bikeradar.com/news/shimano-grx/  I might get the brakes and the crank.  Looks like the Kindernay hubs are at last shipping to the public, http://www.kindernay.com/products/  sure looks good on paper.

But what about the handle bars  I am using the woodchipper version 1.  I would be happier with less drop.  50 mm wide sounds better than the 44 or 46 mm wide I have now.   The older Fargo does gravel roads good, not the best on paved roads, not so good on mountain trails.  Rolls well on gravel roads, forest service roads, Baja Divide, etc.  But a wider bar would seem safer to me, when my tired old bones hit a rut in the road, or bump in the trail, wider bars are eaiser to control the bike with.  On the subject of tired old bones, a shallow drop sounds better.  Ever try bullhorns in place of drop bars? Naw, maybe not.

Looking for thooughts on some modern parts for my 10 year old gravel road bike.  

What about wide right?  At best I could get a 2.6 x 29 tire in there.  What would the best internal width be for rims 2.6 max tire width and at times 2.1 as the smallest?  Any 2.8 tires running thinner than they claim?

Not sure about the budget, some people spend more than others.  
I like this guys videos though.
http://www.bikewanderer.com/video


My best advice, know how to take your bicycle apart and put it back together, every single part of it.

How long has the sealant been in the tire?
It dries out after a while.
You need to add more sealant every 3 or 6 months.

I ride in the desert a lot, some of the thorns are big enough to use for nails.  Orange seal works well.

You made a mistake somewhere, the tubeless learning curve is high, and worth the trouble to learn.
 
A marathon plus tire is what 2 pounds heavier than a tubeless tire, 4 extra pounds you dont need on your bike.

Take the time to look inside your tire and remove the old dried out sealant and then reseal the tire and add new sealant.

A small solar panel can recharge a battery for a Fenix head lamp.
or
my hl60r is enough light to move around at night, if not in a big hurry.  Advertised run times are about accurate, 3 hours per battery, a little more if you order the 3500 instead of the 2600 battery it comes with.
A couple of 3500 batteries and a
ARE-X11 18650 Battery Charging Kit could be the ticket.
https://www.fenix-store.com/fenix-are-x11-18650-battery-charging-kit/

27.5 is winning the wheel size wars.  Note, I did not type a + or type plus.  27.5 x 2.1 is slowly creeping into shops world wide.

Is not Europe a modern up to date place_

If you are going to the mountains of Peru or the jungles of Guatemala, 26 is still what you can buy, without a long bus ride to Pa Capital.

Immersion basket.
Coffee goes inside the basket which is inside the cup.  Add hot water, wait 4 minutes, lift basket out of double wall cup, works.


The double wall 200 ml cup and basket have been warmed with hot water, the paper filter has dark roast coffee grounds in it, the water is boiling,  and ready to add to the basket in the cup.

Somehow brewing the coffee in the cup you drink it out of makes it taste better.


Light weight and easy to carry, fits inside the cup.
If the basket is close in size to the cup, the coffee has the best flavor.
Temperature is important to how the coffee tastes.  with the basket inside the coffee cup the temperature stays a little higher than a press.
First I warm the cup and basket with hot water, then I put a paper filter in the basket and add coffee, then hot water, about 4 minutes and lift the basket from the double wall cup, mine is 200 ml.

This is working for me, good flavor and easy to carry.

interesting place to click
https://www.perfectdailygrind.com/2017/06/coffee-extraction-brewing-concepts/