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Equipment No this is not a list of what we have! To see that please do to the FAQ and Introduction page where you can find a listing if you are really that interested. What this page is for is our comments about the equipment we are carrying. Expect both good and bad! Tent: Mountain Hardwear Trango Big - HUGE - exactly what Richard always wanted. Actually he wanted more for the window that completely bowled him over the first time we saw the tent in Torres del Pine. It's easy to see that this tent comes from Mountain Hardwear - it has the sheer style and quality that this brand always exhibits. We've been fans of the brand for over a decade. What has always attracted us is not just it's quality and robustness but the way they are always coming up with fantastic new ideas in their designs - simple but brilliant. So far this tent has successfully dealt with the rains of Europe, the heat of North Africa, the sand and winds of the Gobi dessert in May (worst time of year for blasting snowstorms), the winter of Mongolia (gets down to -40 degrees!) and snows of the Japanese Alpes. However, we are now thinking of getting another more lightweight model for our foray into SE Asia as we feel this tent might be overkill & it's best to save it for when we return to the Himalayas next year. Stove: MSR XGK - Fantastic - we've used this model for years and it works very well - although it's incredibly noisy. What we like most about MSR is their fantastic customer service - we have yet to find another company that is as honest or supportive. Honest you may ask? The reason why we write that is that after we had used the model for 3 years (continually and an extra 4 years occasionally) we rang their UK distributors up and asked whether we should upgrade to the later Dragon Fly model. They told us that for what we were doing the XGK was the more robust & reliable model. That's impressive - most companies would do anything to get you to buy their latest model but not MSR - they were completely upfront & that impressed us hugely. Bikes: Chas Roberts Roughstuff's. To be honest we have mixed feelings about these bikes. Don't get us wrong - we love these bikes - they are our babies. Richard's bike is called Petrus and Stani's is called Wasabi. They are custom built by the Roberts family in Croydon, England. This means that our body sizes (legs, arms etc) were measured and the bikes built to fit us perfectly - same as if you have your clothes tailored. This means at the end of the day you get off your bike wanting to get back on it again - no sore back etc. But to be fair - Roberts didn't follow our requests on the specifications on how the bikes were to be built. An example being we asked the rear gear cables run along the top of the frame as opposed to under. In Alaska we experienced problems as the ice would melt enough to coat the cable and then refreeze - meaning we couldn't change gears. Other small problems include Stani's hands actually being too small to be able to use the brake levers - one would have thought this might have been taken into consideration when making a custom sized item. But our biggest grip is that Andrew told us when we were ordering our bikes that they provided support when overseas if there were any problems and parts needed replacing, quoting examples of when they had couriered replacement parts to desperate cyclists in remote areas of the world. When we ran into problems in Russia and Mongolia we sent several emails all without response. So for customer service we can only say that Roberts sucks. Panniers: Ortlieb Front & Back Roller Classics. We used to think that Ortlieb won the pannier award hands down and for 7 years recommended their panniers to everyone without hesitation. When bought our original panniers in 1996 they weren't easy to get hold of in London as very few people had even heard of the brand. When we left for our 2nd leg in 2004 we decided to treat ourselves to a new set. These fell to pieces within weeks of use (the previous set we travelled with for 3 and a half years and continued to use for commuting and the occasional cycling trip afterwards - a total of 7 years continual use). Problems included the appearance of holes making the rain proof claim invalid, the tightening clips broke, the straps plastic bits broke, the holding straps frayed and came apart from the hooks for attaching to the bike. I will expand on this further in future - just no time now! HandleBags: Ortlieb Sleeping Bags: Mountain Equipment Snowline 750g STD LZ (+10 to -20). Ok this bags are simply amazing. Always warm and fluffy - easy to zip up and unzip even with frozen hands - nice touches like the velcro fasteners have a foldback so they not snag on other clothing. Amazingly seem dry every night even if we have packed them wet in the morning (which we have done days on end!) Only one critism is that they loose a lot of down - some mornings feel like we resemble plucked chickens! After 10 months of use they still loose feathers daily.
Ortlieb Folding Bowl:
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