Traveling Light

© littlefishyjes / Flickr

Showering with your clothes on may seem bizarre but if you’re serious about traveling light you just might find some sense in it.

Everyone has been through it. You’re packing for a trip but by the time you’ve collected everything you need plus those things you might need there’s just no room for it all. Now consider how much less you could take if you were going on this trip on a motorcycle. It’s time to think basics.

“What amazes me is the quantity of crap people carry when they travel,” says Zigy Kaluzny. “The thing I love about motorcycle travel is it pretty much reduces your needs to the basics of gas, food, and lodging. And for me part of the pleasure of it is reducing the quantity of stuff I have.”

Kaluzny is a bit fanatical about packing “lite.” So fanatical that he has been invited repeatedly to speak at motorcycle adventure touring group get-togethers to share his packing tips. These tips themselves, boiled down to the essentials, might be “no cotton” and “everything does double duty.”

© Zigy KaluznyBad packing.Says Kaluzny, “Cottons are useless when they're wet, they take forever to dry, they get dirty and they don't come clean easily.” Plus, they’re bulky. Kaluzny prefers synthetics because they compress better than cotton and they dry quickly. And he keeps even synthetics to a minimum by washing clothes every night. He carries a twisted bungee clothesline with carabiners at each end to hang the wet things on overnight. If they’re not completely dry by morning he’ll strap them under a bungee on the back of his bike and let them air dry while he rides.

This is where showering in your clothes comes in. Kaluzny wears an Aerostich riding suit and underneath he wear a T-shirt and a pair of running shorts with a mesh crotch, both synthetics, of course. If cool weather demands it he’ll also wear silky longjohns and his heated Gerbing jacket under the riding suit.

When he checks into his motel for the day he showers wearing the shirt and shorts. This cleans his body and the clothes. The clothes go on the line to dry and he puts on one of the two pair of underwear he carries and the shorts or the one pair of long pants. Walking around town in the evening, if it’s chilly, a polar fleece jacket serves as a jacket and his Thinsulate-lined glove liners do double duty as gloves.

Kaluzny does break his rule about no cottons for the shorts, because he likes them, and for a longsleeve black turtleneck. “I want to walk into a restaurant and look at least somewhat presentable,” he says.

Beyond the clothes already mentioned, Kaluzny carries only three pair of socks, a hat, sandals, light hiking boots, and a fleece longsleeve shirt.

“That's all I travel with. That's it right there.”

More Than Clothes

Of course that’s just clothing. He also travels with motorcycle gear, camping gear, and cooking gear and food. Food?

“I like to carry my own food. I'd rather have room in my Jesse cases for food rather than clothes.”

With larger than stock panniers on his BMW F1200GS Kaluzny has the ability to carry camping gear but doesn’t generally prefer to camp. But in one of those panniers he carries a compact cook stove and a couple pans. In fact, one of the panniers is generally loaded with nothing but food and the means to cook it.

“It's nice to go out and eat, but I just get tired of that stuff,” he explains. “I'm just tired of eating greasy, heavy breakfast. Even when the place has oatmeal it's usually not very good oatmeal. So I make oatmeal in my motel room. I’ll add some almonds and dates to the oatmeal.”

He carries canned tuna and will pick up a roll and some fruit to eat with the tuna for lunch, and then for dinner he favors East Indian food, like saag paneer, that comes in a pouch requiring just five minutes in boiling water.

Summing up, Kaluzny says, “Packing light is about everything you take. On a motorcycle, I want less rather than more. Unless you're crossing the Sahara or the Darien Gap or the Gobi Desert, there's probably not a lot that you can't pick up somewhere along the road. You don't need to take five pair of socks.”

Not that he’s given this a lot of thought, of course.

“I didn't really think it out as much as for me it just fell into place. It just seems obvious that less is better than more.”

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