Friday, October 25, 2024
8:08 a.m. Room at the House
Port Dickson, Malaysia
(685 words)
Today is my last day in Port Dickson before my trip to Sumatra. I feel okay. I seem to have gotten a reasonable amount of sleep and rest last night. And in a strange twist, the latest data package that I bought from Digi can be used as Hotspot. Therefore, I don’t have to go out to a cafe in order to access the Internet on my laptop or other devices. Digi has a lot of confusing policies. Sometimes when I buy a data package, it comes with a certain amount of Hotspot data. It’s normally a very small amount. So, even if I buy 100 GB of data, I can only use it on my main phone. Only 1 or 2 gigabytes of that will be available as Hotspot data. And there is no possibility of purchasing just Hotspot data separately. You can only get it as a little bonus that comes with main data subscription packages. However, from time to time, I’ll buy a big data package that has NO Hotspot at all, and I can use all of the data as Hotspot. Yet, there is nothing in the package to indicate that this is the case. Digi is so confusing and disorganized at times. But right now, I am able to connect my laptop to my phone, so I have Internet access and there is no need to go to a cafe.
I spent most of yesterday doing the final packing and organizing. I had arranged with KY for him to come to the house around 4 p.m. to pick up my backpack, which he was going to store at his house in Port Dickson while I was gone. And that gave me the whole day to methodically and slowly pack up my bike and separate out all the gear that I won’t be bringing with me. As is my normal habit, I did this slowly and carefully by going through every single item. It isn’t a case of just deciding what to bring with me and then grabbing those things. What I do is go through all my stuff item by item and consider each item individually. It’s just easier that way not to miss something important. The big decisions I had to make revolved around my camera gear and my various bags. For example, I had to decide whether or not to bring my Olympus camera with me. And I decided to leave it behind. If I had a good lens for the Olympus, I might bring it. But I don’t. So that camera is being left behind for now. I also had to decide whether to bring one pannier bag or two. In terms of weight capacity and volume, I don’t need the second pannier bag. I can carry all my gear in the trailer and one pannier bag. I don’t need the second one, and it adds two kilograms to the overall weight of my rig. However, I decided to take it. It will come in handy, I believe.
One reason I decided to take the second pannier bag is that my bicycle rig overall was lighter than expected. I’ve been watching videos from a Norwegian cyclist, and this guy said that his bike weighed a total of 63 kilograms. That is the weight of his bike and all his bags and gear excluding food and water. And when I weighed all of my gear, I was fully expecting my rig to be significantly heavier than that. After all, I’m using a bicycle trailer, and that trailer alone adds an extra six kilograms. However, when I added up all my gear, it came to a total of 54.4 kilograms, which is 8.6 kilograms lighter. That’s surprising. I’m accustomed to always having heavier bags than anyone else.
These are the weights I came up with:
Bicycle – 20
Trailer – 5.3 kg
Ortlieb knapsack – 0.66 kg
Arkel Pannier Bags – 4 kg
Bike Total: 30
Gear Total: 24.4 kg
Grand Total: 54.4 kg (120 lbs.)