Things that I just dont leave home without, and some tips:
Earplugs: For noisy campsites, windy days or shove them in your nose if theres lots of roadkills rotting away.
Camera holder: I mount this home made camera mount onto my bike frame, and then I can make nice films hands free:)
Drysack/rugsack: This handy drysack is not only handy for keeping my cloths dry it's handy as a rugsack on days off or to get the shopping.
Self-inlating pillow: no sore neck for me anymore, works under crappy hotel pillows too.
FM/AM Radio alarmclock: For the lonely evenings, and weather forcasts. I find world service boring and local african radio stations make too much uselss noice. So I left it in Uganda and saves 200g.
MSR Dromedary 4l: Handy for cooking, cleaning, filling bedons, showering, screws onto my waterfilter and can also be used as an icepack.
Bog(wc) roll: Yeh pretty obvious.....but heres the tip.....Put it in a plastic bag, remove the core then pull from the middle, a nice handy WC roll despenser.
The bottle: (with wide opening...no I'm not bragging its just handy) Ever woke up in the middle of the night in your tent needing a pee? only to see a swarm of thirsty mosquito's outside or its pissing down with rain? The rest I'll leave to your imagination.....
Bike Touring Survival Guide
A great (and cheap) e-book written by Friedel and Andrew Grant from www.travellingtwo.com. The book contains hundreds of pages of tips and advise for starters and more experienced touring cyclists.
Ortlieb/Tubus Hack: At some point during a long trip, especially on bad roads the spacer blocks in the Ortlieb hooks with wear down and fall out, usually at a bad time. To solve this I've thrown away the last couple of spacers and created my own long lasting spacers on my racks. Simply use an old innertube, some double-sided tape and some insulation tape/ duct tape and wrap it around the rack hook positions until its about 15mm thick. Then its just a case of renewing the outer tape from time to time. I've also done the same thing but thinner in areas where the bags rub against the racks to prevent them wearing out and getting rusty.
