Nice posts Since I catch on slowly, do you heat the mug directly, or you have a separate pot for that?

Myself, I love coffee, but I don't really miss it in the bush. Sometimes I'll take a few coffee bags and a stove (Harris), but I find I rarely actually use them. I have one friend who brings a tiny espresso put, but it seems like a lot of hassle for a minuscule quantity of coffee.

> Sounds like a software problem, maybe they'll fix it between now and next summer.

Nah, hardware for sure. I don't see how you could expect to cram a tiny little piece of electronics into an already heavily loaded gizmo and expect great pics. I've seen the results on the web. Fine for "proof I was there" type photos, bad for anything more than that. I still expect it to be useful for mapping out new tracks, taking photos of the surface etc. (My oregon 550 has finally been shipped at least...it's a long wait.)

>or do you put must-stay-dry gear in liners or dry bags to make sure?

Hell yeah.

Think you need to read the first 9 words of this thread again

> I tied one end to a spoke, and the cans inside my tent. I was awakened in the middle of the night by the rattling cans.

Awesome, that's the kind of security system we've all rigged up at one point, hardly any of us get to find out if it actually works.

(Curious why your friends wouldn't lock your bike up with theirs though).

>Still, in your example they are looking at hitting every station, not hitting every inch of track in the network.

I know nothing of graphing theory, but I suspect these are just variations on a theme. The specifics of the algorithms will change, but the concept is the same.

Is there an online map of this area? I'm thinking a couple of hours with pen and paper would yield pretty good results

I recall a similar problem once studied was how to visit every station on a certain train network (London underground?) in the shortest space of time. That added the extra, interesting variable of time and scheduling. It was studied intensively by some mathematicians or computer scientists, who then went and tested out their solution by taking trains all day.

Check out their gear list:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040919044827/www.koopmann.lightup.net/crane/journey_appendix_1.html

Just in case anyone missed it:
"Control was from a cut-down Simplex gear shift to a Shimano 600 EX derailleur. In order to save weight, there was no front derailleur or lever, we used heel kick-down for lower gears and finger lift-up for higher."

Awesome Tyre choice is interesting too, 35mm at 90psi! Only one spare tube between two as well...

>I am pretty sure this problem is equivalent to the 'traveling salesman' problem, a classic one in computer science.  It is intractable to get the optimal solution for large networks... meaning computers today cannot compute the answer in any kind of reasonable time frame.

IMHO this is overstating it. Yes, computing the *absolute best* solution for *very large* networks is intractable. But computing a *very good* solution for a typical number of points (say a few hundred) is feasible. The given example of just 20 or so trails (an interesting variation on the problem!) would compute quite quickly, I suspect.

Now, as to the second part of the problem, routable maps. Get into openstreetmap.org - there are certainly hiking and mountain biking trails around the place in there, and the goal is for everything to be mapped eventually. Much better than just sticking a GPS trace on a website somewhere. As soon as my GPS arrives I'm going to be tracing a few routes for exactly this purpose...

Out of curiosity, how did you get fitting Epic Designs frame bags?

I just ordered one of those. Can't wait to see how well it works. It could shave 3 kgs off my sleeping system

>then there's the V-line from wangaratta

That one's only a coach service atm, until mid 2010 or something I think. Shepparton is ok.

Cool, that's a pretty long trip. The start is actually similar to what I have in mind for a short trip, whenever I can find a weekend: Starting somewhere like Warburton or Healesville, through Marysville, as far as Jamieson, then turning back south again. Not really sure about logistics - most bike trips that I've been on have used V-line, but that gets limiting after a while.

Incidentally, have you seen Keiran Ryan's off-road bike adventures book? The Hurstbridge-Marysville ride may be of use to you. I sketched it out in Google Maps.

I second the call for an extra foam mat. Also, wear all the woollen thermals you can stand to carry. I went through this a lot before caving in and getting a down sleeping bag *and* a down sleeping mat

>The trip i'm planning is in Victoria (Australia) during January

Where are you going, out of curiosity? I'm from Melbourne.

Thought I should report back on the event. It was fun! Perfect weather: cool and overcast, with a healthy downpour in the last half hour. I covered about 40km in the 4 hours, picking up 11 checkpoints for a combined score of 830. But lost 210 points due to being 21 minutes late to return. That final score placed me mid-field, but I'd have been something like 4th or 5th out of 25 without the penalties. Wow!

I was expecting my fitness to be the limiting factor, but it was actually my poor navigation skill. My biggest failing was to keep following a path even though it was bending significantly away from the correct bearing. Twice I ended up far away from where I should have been. The second time was so confusing that I must have spent close to 10 minutes trying to work out what I'd done. I was also mislead by misreading a speck of mud as "cleared land, unrideable"

With a bit of practice I'd improve a lot in this area. It just took a bit of effort to really pay attention to the map, and to memorise the next section of route. Will have to develop a good mnemonic system - it was starting to come together. It's very satisfying to be expecting a turn-off after 1200m and see it exactly there. Or conversely, to turn around after 1400m and go back and find it, without wasting too much time.

Every other competitor was on a hardtail (except for one brave unicyclist). My cyclocross held up great, though I'd put knobbier tyres on next time.  A couple of sections of singletrack (some I'd actually riden before) were very slippery and covered with fallen branches, so I ended up just running them.

Most competitors had commercially produced mapboards. I wasn't sure how I was going to hold the supplied map, so brought a couple of pegs in sheer optimism. Amazingly, simply pegging the map to my brake cables worked perfectly, holding it in exactly the right spot, and never coming loose. The only advantage I'd see of a mapboard is that it sits closer to your face.

After a while I reduced my tyre pressures (start optimistically at 90 and 80 psi), and shifted weight from the bike into my backpack. That made a big difference in handling, particularly trying to get over slippery logs.

I was excited when the rain came down, as I got to try out my new Mont Latitude jacket. It was brilliant. I was riding extremely hard (desperately trying to get back to the finish), and even when the rain dried up, I didn't overheat. Good venting! My gore-tex booties sucked though, they're just useless if you can't find a way to seal the shin-hole.

Scariest moment was descending a big gravel hill at 40kph at the end, coming around a bend and finding the surface changed to big chunks of rock wider than my 32mm front tyre. Really thought I was headed for a spill. Less risks next time I think

Anyway, I know that a 4 hour mountain bike orienteering event is very small beans for you all, but it gave me a real taste for the appeal of longer races. I'm most attracted to the "exploring unknown parts of the bush on a bike" side, rather than the fitness and endurance side, I think.

>I'm not advocating either position, just questioning your methodology and conclusion. Seems to me that "no sharing" clearly wins because it's 25% more popular then either the opposite extreme, or the middle ground.

Just chiming in from the peanut gallery here:
50% of respondents chose "no sharing"
50% of respondents did not choose "no sharing"

Therefore "no sharing" is not the majority or consensus view. "Half the respondents advocated some kind of sharing", "half the respondents advocated that sharing be banned", and "a clear majority supported limitations on sharing" are all reasonable interpretations.

<resists temptation to vote just to make the numbers unpleasant>

Wow...he cycled the Canning Stock Route. That's...awesome. (On a Pugsley, no less.) His sponsorship list is pretty cool too...

sure. but any screwable container would work for that, like gatorade or whatever.

http://www.cyclicnavigator.mapsport.net.au/the_adventure.html

Ok, you have to start somewhere

I don't know if we even have anything like the GDR/TD here. There's an annual MTB stage race through the Australian Alps, and there are multi-day adventure races, but I don't think I've heard of any multi-day mountain bike races. Of course, if someone started a race along the length of the Bicentennial Trail it would be longer than the GDR. However, the track was designed for horses, not bikes, so there are plenty of painful unrideable bits...