Saturday, December 27, 2008

Tea for Two



The day was beautiful today and I proposed a bicycle ride through the (imagined) French countryside with a tea stop at the halfway point. While riding through Long Beach isn't the most rustic and Old World of settings, the goal of riding somewhere to light up a stove and make some tea added a bit more fun to a simple "out and back" ride.



We packed up a Trangia stove, a pot, two tea bags, two mugs, some fuel, bread, crackers, cheese and some cured meat. Everything fit in my Carradice Camper.





We rode for about 40 minutes and stopped by the beach, set up the stove and were drinking tea in about 9 minutes. We had a light lunch and rode home.





Simple, yet fun. Transforming some boring "base miles" into something a bit more epicurean. I highly recommend it.

6 comments:

keithmo said...

Great idea! I need to dig the Dragonfly stove out of my camping gear stash and give this a try.

Unknown said...

Looks like a great day trip!

Anonymous said...

I love the idea. Not to product-push, but this seems like the perfect sort of trip for the Jetboil. I got one a while back and have only had limited use of it because of the small volume of water it heats, but it is nice and compact (fuel+burner fit in the pot). I'll have to do a trip like this in the Berkeley Hills and bring it along.

Dominic Dougherty said...

@Joel - Do you have trouble finding fuel canisters for it on tour?

Anonymous said...

@ Dominic - I haven't tried it on tour yet, only backpacking where I bring the fuel. It seems to last a decent number of burns, so I will just get a full can before a trip. I hope to test with a weekend run in early Feb (I'll be in Monterey for work Thurs/Fri and will stick around to ride Sat and Sun).

GhostRider said...

How about a Kelly Kettle:

http://www.kellykettle.com/

Collect twigs and trash wherever you ride and make tea in minutes! I forget who recommended this to me...Kent Peterson or Dave Moulton.