Seems like she just blew all her remaining karma points doing just that on her AZTR ITT before playing the victim card while her fanbase and media company piled on the race director with accusations of bias and gatekeeping.     

I was off grid for the past week and returned to a coupla emails and texts asking what I thought of what was happening with ^ that.

Listened to the bikes or death pod and came away with the same perspective you did.

She had a great ride and should be commended for it.  It just wasn't remotely self supported.

Chapeau to John S for sticking to his guns and taking the thankless flack that comes from being an RD.  We need more like him.

If/when properly tensioned balanced they can be good rims.

Some of this comes down to how much you weigh, how much gear you carry on your bike, what size tires you run at what pressures, and what sort of trips you plan to do with them.

nm.

My main concern was having mounting bolts rattle loose, but OMM uses standard hardware so I picked up spares at a hardware store.  The only issue or annoyance I've had is the end of the dry bag can bounce around if it hangs over the edge of the rack like in the pic; it can also slide forward/back a bit.  The easy solution was to pack a bit less, and strap down more carefully.  I'd like to try low profile panniers for the sides.

I started using racks on bikepacking missions about 16-17 years ago.  Droppers weren't yet in play, and I was committed to an FS bike, so it required having a custom rack fabricated.  But I had a connection and spent the $$$ to do it.

And ultimately didn't care much for it, largely because that amount of weight cantilevered that high and rearward (as in your pic) really changed the handling of the bike.  Enough that I wasn't enjoying the ride.

Which is the point, right?

Now, bike geo has changed dramatically -- and dropper posts have come into play -- in the ensuing decade+, such that I figured I should try it again.

And this time it's much better.

So far I've used this setup with light dry bags on each side of the rack, as well as some Revelate Nano Panniers on each side, and one quick hit where I just strapped a small stuff sack to the top.

They all work far better than my memory of that setup way back when.  Maybe it's the bike geo change.  Maybe it's that I've gotten smarter about how I load my kit.  Or maybe *I* have simply changed and the setup is exactly the same.  Dunno.

I like having full use of the dropper, so going forward I'm going to keep experimenting with the Nano Pannier setup, and with keeping my load light and tight within the constraints of that setup.

Having trouble cutting and pasting pics, words, and vid here all at once.

So, please go here and read this intro to a TR:

https://lacemine29.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-carcass-coast-preview.html

Thanks.

nm.

nm.

Creative.

Be careful!

Please follow this link to a trip report on a recent omniterrain traverse on the Colorado Plateau:

https://lacemine29.blogspot.com/2021/11/return-to-scene.html

Thanks for checkin' in.

nm.

Thanks for the thoughts -- and coming clean -- Scott.

We all make mistakes.  It's what we do after those that matters.

The larger point is that this genre of riding and racing is -- to an extent -- evolving to be less about being prepared than about cutting corners to save teeny bits of time.

I would like to turn that tide.

Most people that have spent any amount of time here have heard the phrase (and origin of) Do. It. Yourself.

I'd like for that to come back to meaning "Be prepared for the conditions you might encounter, or be prepared to do without".

It is unacceptable that it has come to mean "Take shortcuts and inconvenience others, if you want, because meh -- who cares..."

Must walk before run, grasshoppa.

I've been gone for a few weeks, and sort of expected that when I returned there would be a few new, well-reasoned replies to this, explaining why the concept is somehow sound.

Doesn't seem that's the case.

I propose that the act of sleeping in restrooms be vocally and actively discouraged by race directors going forward.

The idea should never have gained legs to begin with.

In some isolated instances it could help avoid hypothermia if caught in super cold weather with strong winds, rain or snow.

I agree. 

I also think that using them should be the exception, and not a part of strategy or because you went too light and/or failed to plan.

Nothing wrong with ducking in to collect yourself, add another layer, and fix whatever on the bike is slowing you down such that you got caught unawares by the storm. 

But using them to shelter from "super cold weather" is sort of ironic.  People bivy along the Iditarod in -40* temps with some regularity.  They can do this because they're prepared for the conditions.

If we as a community continue to look the other way at shitbox "bivying" then people will continue to cut corners by going light on gear and then "needing" to use the shitboxes as shelter.

For who?  Living where?  On what bike?  Riding which terrain?  Carrying what load?

Oh oh, somebody is getting cranky.  Back in my day we would get outside and go for a ride when this happened.

Yep, on my way out the door to ski a bit.

When I get back I hope to read some sanity herein.

I think it is unethical to sleep in the john if even one person can't use it because you are in there. 

Here we can agree, and this is what I was hoping had already been discussed.

Nevertheless, if it gets cold enough, even the biggest germaphobe will choose warmth. 

Interesting.  I remember in the early days of this genre that it was a point of pride to be prepared for everything the course and conditions would throw at you.  I don't remember cutting corners to gain an advantage being highly lauded, nor can I think of a better way to describe carrying less gear and then sleeping in a shitter to stay warm.

Most bikepack racers have immune systems which can handle others excretory germs.   

I'm sorry, but you've completely lost me here.  Perhaps if you painted with a broader brush you could be more wildly inaccurate?

Interesting topic MikeC I follow this forum pretty closely and have never seen it discussed. It certainly seems to have become standard practice for many from what I see in post during and after the AZTR, the only event I really follow. Has it become common I would say definitely yes, acceptable I have never seen anything to the contrary.

So Mike if you had foreseen this would you have added a no sleeping in bathrooms rule to your original GDMBR? That event pretty much set the standard that race directors used in formatting rules across the board.

I was (and kind of still am) incapable of predicting the explosion of this sort of racing.

Separately, it never crossed my mind that you'd have to legislate against sleeping on one of the filthiest surfaces imaginable. 

This is a situation where -- one would think -- common sense would prevail. 

Seeing the act continually popping up in trip reports suggests that many people are willing to gamble a few ounces of kit with the possibility of getting really sick. 

Or maybe they deliberately don't think about it until they're too tired to consider the consequences?

IN racing they are there in the middle of the night for 4 hours.

The trip report that got me thinking about this today directly contradicts your assertion here.

And there are many, many more TR's out there that do the same.

Sure, some racers actions align with your assertion.  But far from all, and from what I've seen not even "many".