Getting started

Starting to gear up

We were planning on touring using recumbent trikes, but with the drop in the dollar it would have cost us around 6000 cdn dollars to just purchase the trikes.

 We decided to retrofit the bikes we already had. We took our bikes into the local shop and tweaked them for touring. These bikes were just hybrid mountain bikes, they were not made for long distant touring. Part of our journey is to get fit, and we do have a limited budget, so while we drooled over the "Surly long haul trucker" we just could not afford it.

We had new seats, bar ends,  new schwalbe marathon plus tires and racks put on the bikes. We realize that the bikes were not built for touring so we will be pulling  a Bob trailer (that we found on kijiji for half the price of a new one ) we also have a very old childs trailer that we may retrofit for touring as well.

We hopped in the car yesterday and drove over to the mainland (Halifax, Nova Scotia) to the Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) where we purchased some sleeping bags ( very light weight synthetic bags) sleeping pads which are self inflating store brand, very comfy, (we tried them out right there on the floor to make sure they were comfy lol) the staff were very friendly and quite knowledgeable. We only had a few raised eyebrows when we told them that we intend to bike tour around Canada lol.  The sleeping pads are heavy and bulky and we may change to a much lighter, but more expensive brand later...but for now we will use these.

The tent is the "Lightfield 2" it is a 4 season tent and a little heavier than we would like but it had great reviews and was on sale. We figure that that was one area where we would sacrifice the weight for comfort and dryness!!!!!
We also picked up some new helmets, good grief...we are such newbies lol.