Special Edition! The secret inside of the bicycle bags.

It was 2017 and I was traveling with my bike partner Kathy of the time, exactly twice my age and a wonderful testament that if you lovingly care for your person you can do anything you want your whole life. We were getting ready to leave our hotel room for the day's ride. "I just love Putting!" she said with obvious relish. "What?" I asked. "Putting! You know, putting this in that pocket, putting that in that bag. It's just so satisfying to put everything back in its place for the road." 

And indeed, every morning Ellie and I Put, quietly focused, a meditation of sorts, preparing for our day. 

Also in the morning I set the breakfast table by making the bed. I lay the bag of beans next to our bag of tortillas rolled up after last night's dinner. Unfold the pocket knife and chop up garlic (or if we're lucky, turmeric root) over a tourist brochure cutting board (any scrap of paper will do), slice the avocado smoothly in half. Beans, tortillas, some spices, this soft green fruit. We just love this breakfast so much, like each day it is new. 

The room is decorated for Christmas with bike shorts and sports bras draped over the television and curtain rods. 

One of the things things needing to be Put is a plastic cup. Otherwise trash, kept and washed out after a delicious orange juice one day, it's a speaker to put my phone into for music. Or a padded box to transport a mango or avocado inside. Or an Easy-Sip bedside water glass. Or a serving bowl for a pocket-knife-dismantled pineapple. Or it could be a BYO vessel to have guanabana juice poured into it by a vendor to save another plastic cup. 

Putting involves rolling the freshly dried clothes into sushi and jamming them into my zippered case for them, no bigger than a shoebox. You double check you have the phone charger in it's special pocket. You get your sunglasses, sunscreen, and face wipin' rag in your handlebar bag. You slide the map behind the shoebox-worth of clothes, fitting aptly and satisfyingly against the flat back of the panier. Every single item has a place. My four panier side pockets each have different zipper-pulls for easy recognition, to save the motions of zipping and unzipping and the memory game. Except for the buggered one held together by a punky line of safety pins. There's the Emergency Backup Food Pocket (the cookies that I never hope to have to eat), the VIP Pocket (sunscreen, charger), the Soft N' Warm Pocket (hat, mini scarf), and the Bike Mechanic Pocket (tube, patch kit, lube). 

In the unforseen and grumpy circumstances that you can't find a Put thing, to be zipping open pockets, pawing through items, rezipping pockets. All in futility. I want sunscreen. Not my spare tube. Not my hat. Time spent looking is not quality time. Knowing where every item is waiting is very important and satisyfing. Thus the Putting is very important. 

About a full third of my load is food and water, a third is clothes, and the rest is various life support items in itsy bitsy containers. Doll-sized handcream, toothpaste, a contact case cut in half containing my hair styling paste. I curate with enormous care each and every item I choose to bring. 

I conceptualize packing for bike travel by thinking about Physics: each item you bring has its own mass, and your very own quads and knees will need to create forces to put those masses in motion. I am incorrigibly light in my packing; each item should serve multiple purposes (e.g., pocket knife: which is bike tool and kitchenware), be imperceptibly light (my little wool smart wool hat), or be invaluable (spare tube). 

However, to be completely incongruous, I am traveling with what is basically a spice cabinet. I have accumulated it en route. I couldn't pass up a baggie of cinnamon for a few pesos; its beautiful redolence can augment weak coffee or nominal cinnamon rolls. Likewise cumin, smelling so rich and strong and contra-dancey. Ideal for little bags of popcorn bought in the park, or for all those bolsas of beans. A bulb of garlic. Some thumbs of turmeric. 

Each year in my travel journal I write notes to future self, "Remembers for Next Adventure", with advice to leave home the third shirt, but a to-go mug is a great idea. Let me know if you ever want a guide, as esoteric as it would be, to Packing for Bike Trips in the Tropics. I acknowledge that bike-camping is wholly different, a much heftier and impressive world indeed. But I am just a little traveling hummingbird. 

One of my higher-entropy days. Desperately needing a good putting. 

Still Life, with drying decorative bike shorts and food hung protectively. 

Somehow both these photos feature neon green hotel rooms (?!).