Bicycle camping is fun.

So, last Friday, I and a neighbor got on our bicycles and rode 20 miles to Erwin Park, in McKinney, TX.  The trip took about 2.5 hours because of a strong headwind the entire time - the hills didn't help much either. It was nearly dark when we arrived, so I hurriedly set up my tent and took this picture. Sorry for the glare, I'm not adept with a camera.

The flash certainly didn't help the picture turn out, but the camp turned out wonderful, with a few minor exceptions.  First was that neither of us brought any sort of fire-making equipment, and the other was when a couple of McKinney officers decided to pull over a number of vehicles right out front of the campsite at 1:30 in the morning. They had all their flashing lights going, and everyone was talking far too loud. 

We resolved the fire issue in about 5 minutes by cycling around the park and asking people we met. Thanks to the nice people in the pickup truck that gave us a lighter. It meant that we were able to have a warm dinner and a warm breakfast. We just had to wait patiently for the second issue to resolve itself. I snapped a pic for the time stamp.  My eyes were too bleary to see well.

I rolled out of bed around 8am and he crawled out of his tent soon after. We had a nice breakfast of warm oatmeal and Dr. Pepper, packed up our things and headed home shortly afterwards.

The trip home was much faster, helped partly by a nice tailwind. It took about an hour and a half.

I learned that I need to distribute my weight better on my bicycle so I have purchased 2 more panniers and a front rack. Having all the weight over the rear wheel made the bike handle quite a bit different than I was expecting. Also, I will be adding upright bar ends to my handlebars.  I want the extra hand positions to avoid fatigue. I"ll write about these items when they arrive.