Okay as you can see from our pictures we had not brought much in the line of clothing because it seems that we wear the same thing for 40 days. Truth is that we had only one change of clothing that could be worn many different ways. Each of our pants tore off onto 3 sections allowing for differnt moods or temperatures and the shirst were made of wrinkle free cloths that could be dried within 30 minutes after washing. Emmanuelle wore mammut pants that used a quick drying cloth and i wore low density polymer fibre pants that couldnt be wrinkled with a chisle and a hammer.
We both carried 3 changes of socks and underwear and carried microfibre towels that could be easily folded and compacted into the bags. Our cycling shorts could be worn under our normal shorts which doubled as our sleeping clothing.
The rule that we imposed is that we would only take as much clothing as we could wear at one time. This way on the coldest day we could just layer until we were warm and on the coldest days we could strip off the layers accordingly eliminating over packing. We wre lucky though that it was hot just about all of the trip.
Just a note about rain gear. The trip started in Switzerland in the rain that continued until germany and i had to make a choice on how to deal with it. We had two options to choose from: a rain poncho that could cover the whole bike and all of the equipment or the alternative.
The way I see it is you can either hide from the rain or force on through it and I chose the latter. We chose to waterproof the bags and go through the rain without any rain protection. As long as I kept pedaling I was warm enough to make the trip. I guess it depends on what type of rider you are or what you expect out of the trip. I had expected to battle the elements to the death the whole way but quickly found that riding in the rain was actually agreeable and I missed it quite a bit while I was riding through 33 degree heat with the sun that ripped right through my skin.
My mother always said that "pretty flowers are not afraid of the rain"
