The weather is nice today.

But the forecast for the coming days, it’s not so sunny. Which has me considering a change of plans.

A few days ago they were forecasting just some rain on Sunday and Sunday night. Now they’re expanding that to Saturday and Monday with the stakes raised to “thunderstorms” on the latter. Those are the days I’m planning to be hiking. I guess that’s better than riding in the rain, because at least hiking in the rain is safe. Just not as much fun as hiking when it’s dry.

I really need a vacation. More importantly, I need a good one.

I don’t have to make a decision on what to do until it’s time to leave tomorrow morning, so I’m not. But I’m weighing options in my head, which could include canceling one part or the other of my trip (riding Grand Traverse Bay or hiking the Manistee River) so I don’t have to do it in the rain. We’ll see.

My old iPhone4 is out of contract with AT&T, so several months ago I switched carriers.  T-Mobile has been trying to get in on the iPhone business, and to attract customers they’ve been offering monthly rates that don’t have the cost of paying off a $600 smartphone built into them.  Plus they have a pre-paid plan that doesn’t include hundreds of minutes of talk time (which I have no use for) and has unlimited data usage.  For half the cost of what I was paying on AT&T.

The reason this is relevant is because T-Mobile’s prepaid service also happens to have horrible coverage in northern Michigan.  No, seriously:

(To be fair, T-Mobile’s on-contract coverage up north is better, but the carriers all run their pre-paid services on different, crappier networks.)

So I just swapped SIM cards and signed up for a (disposible) pre-paid account with AT&T, just to use up north. It’s as ridiculously overpriced as my old AT&T plan, but I can cancel it when I get done with this summer’s riding. There are still holes in their coverage (as I’ve seen in the past), but it should be good enough. Meanwhile when I’m around home, I can swap in the T-Mobile SIM and get my regular phone number back.

In case there was any doubt that it’s been too long since I last went backpacking:

I just realized that I did not have a spoon on my packing list.

When I’m on a ride, I’ve traditionally updated the map on the main page of this site every day. I won’t be doing that for this month’s excursion, because… there’s nothing to update. I’ve already been to every county I’ll be going through this time.  (Next month will cover a bunch more new territory.)

But for the record, here’s a rundown:

1. On the first day, I’ll be riding Kent, Newaygo, Lake, Wexford (just the corner), and Manistee Counties.  (Manistee is the green one on the map below.)
2. The next day I’ll be hiking in Manistee County (along the Manistee River, go figure), but I might wander back into Wexford County at the end of the day.
3. On day three I’ll be backtracking (different trail) in Manistee, then getting back on the bike and probably cutting the corner of Benzie County, to camp in Grand Traverse County.
4. Day four will include some time in Grand Traverse, then Leelanau, Benzie, and Manistee again (along the lakeshore).
5. The last day I’ll probably stick to the shoreline, going through Mason, Oceana, Muskegon, and Ottawa Counties, but I might cut through Newaygo County instead.

So now that I have the backpack, I need to figure out how to pack it on the scooter. I tried putting it on the floor between the seat and steering column, but it was in the way and not very secure. OK for transporting a 40-pound bag of bird seed home from the store, but not for what could be a 1500-mile road trip.  What I ended up with is turning it around and facing it downward, and having my tent and sleeping gear “wear” it. With a couple bungees added for stability, I think I’ve got a winning setup.

It takes up some of the seat, which means I have to sit a little forward of where I usually sit, but not much.  Since most of the gar that I’d normally take in my big over-the-shoulder bag is now in the backpack, I’ve replaced that bag with a much smaller camera bag.  (I’m not sure if I’ll keep the water bottle on it.)  This picture does a pretty good job of showing the whole set-up: sleeping bag (olive), tent (dull green), and sleeping pad (red) on the bottom, with pillows (faded black) on top of them, secured under the bungee net; backpack on top; camera bag with water bottle on the seat; and spare gas (in the red metal bottle) and oil (not visible) in the glove bucket.  Also not visible: clothes in the “pet carrier” under the seat.

I tested it with a short ride, both with and without the rain cover,in  windy conditions, and it worked fine. It does mean I’ll have to remove the pack every time I refuel (or need to get anything from under the seat), however.  It’s a substantially larger bundle on the back than I’ve had in the past, but not carrying the big shoulder bag does a lot to make up for that.  And it’s pretty aerodynamic.

The second half of “backpack packing” is figuring out how to pack the necessary gear into my backpack, for when I’m on the trail.  As you can see, the pack is pretty small.  And I’ll be honest here: I misjudged this task.

On a long backpacking trip, food is the largest single item to pack.  This is a short backpacking trip, so I figured I’ll save a lot of space by not carrying much food.  But I still have pretty much everything else.  The cooking gear is the same size, the water gear is the same size, the tent is the same size, the sleeping bag is the same size, etc.  I’m bringing less clothing.  But it’s still a lot of gear for such a little pack.

I’d planned from the start to strap the tent to the outside, and modified the pack to allow that.  Turns out I’ll be doing the same with the sleeping bag.  Normally I bring along a pair of “camp shoes” to wear instead of my hiking boots when I get to camp; there’s no place to put them.  A pair of jeans for when it gets cold at night?  Doesn’t look like it.  To bring along  just one of the two little pillows I’m packing, I need to use the bungee net.  Which is also the only way I could include the (necessary) second water bottle.  And the bag is packed so tightly that it doesn’t fit as comfortably as it should.

There’s very little in the pack now that could be considered “optional”.  Fresh underwear?  Cooking gear (so cold oatmeal and freeze-dried dinners)?  The towel?  Ditching the rain gear would free up a lot of space, but that’s conceivable only if the forecast is confidently precipitation-free.

I think it’ll work like this.  It’s only for a couple days.  And even though it doesn’t fit as well as my bigger pack would, it’s still lighter, and the terrain I’ll be hiking (especially on the first trip) isn’t particularly challenging.  So it’s OK.  I think.

I now have a new backpack, for the hiking segments of my trips. After researching a bit online, then checking the inventory at my nearby sporting-goods shop (buy local!), I picked out The North Face’s Recon pack. I think it’s last year’s model, because the color doesn’t match what’s on North Face’s web site, and there are other minor differences. It was on sale for $20 off, so I paid $80 for it.

There were other colors available, but for some reason as I looked at them, this one grew on me.  Even though it’s fake-distressed pseudo-plaid, it feels like a nature pattern.  I’ve never really liked bright colors for wearing in the woods (yet another reason not to go during deer-hunting season), but I didn’t want to get black.  This works.

It isn’t perfect.  It’s considered a “daypack”, and isn’t really intended for really serious backpacking. Because it’s not very tall, the waist strap is really more of a belly strap; it doesn’t do anything to support the pack’s weight.  There’s also a dearth of places to attach things on the outside, so I had to stitch a strap across the bottom, which I’ll use to attach my tent underneath.  That should leave enough space inside the pack for my sleeping bag, some food, cooking gear, and a change of clothes: just enough for a couple nights on the trail.  I can clip a water bottle to the outside, hang my camera around my neck… and do some ultralight hiking for a couple days.

I think I’ve figured out how to pack this bag on the scooter.  It doesn’t fit very well in the space between the seat and the steering column, at least not leaving enough legroom for long days of riding.  So what I think I’ll do is to strap the camping gear to the rear rack, as usual, then strap the pack to that as if the tent was a set of shoulders, facing toward the rear and downward.  That won’t leave much room behind me for my over-the-shoulder bag, but I may be able to use the backpack to stow the things I would otherwise put in that.  Anyway, I’ve got a little over a week to figure that out for sure before my 5-day “trial run”; I’ll do a packing and riding test around town this weekend.