Bicycle Camping is a minimalist form of outdoor survival, and enjoyment even, which includes the huge benefit of having transportation that doesn't burn up your shoe leather or your leg muscles and all of your energy.


Bicycle Camping Advantages are MARSA:

• Mobility, you get around town easily, you're not restricted to a few blocks
• Activity, you do more when you can go more places almost effortlessly. It easier to be at the right place at the right time when you're not walking.
• Relaxation, bike pedaling isn't as tiresome as walking and it's good but easy exercise. You don't have to lug bags around, you can put the stuff you'll need that day in your bike basket and roll it around.
• Security, you're off the sidewalk and you're moving, people can't hassle you. Your tiny amount of stuff in the bike basket won't get messed-with if you cover it with old newspapers or dirty rags.
• Accessibility to resources which most homeless don't use such as outlying motel pools and restaurant restrooms where the proprietors aren't set to go off hair-trigger against you if they think you're homeless. You can get away from the inner city or other homeless hangouts and experience more respect and actually pass yourself off as a middle class exercise bicyclist.

So leave that shopping cart behind and go minimalist. Here's what you need to start:

• A hideout. Spend your days searching for one. It'll be your place to hide and sleep and keep your stuff:
• Plastic bag with your stash of clothes and toiletries
• Canned food with a fork and knife and can opener
• Bug spray maybe
• Bedding and plastic sheeting for rain cover and ground moisture barrier sheet.

That's all! This kit will have to fit in a waterproof bag no bigger than a pillowcase. It has to be small so you can hide it. It's your home base, hide it well.



The good news is that with a bike you can pedal out of town every evening to where the bushes are and the night doesn't have a thousand eyes and you can relax and ponder your gift of serenity and enjoy being out of the rat race and make the rats jealous.

Best Street Bike

• Don't get a racing bike. Don't get a bike with gears unless you have a lot of hills to struggle up. Gears are the mechanical weak point of a bike and you want your bike to be sturdy and reliable.
• Get a cruiser bike with fat tires and a coaster brake, not flimsy hand brakes.
• Get a big soft cruiser saddle so your butt won't go numb after ten minute riding a thin cheap saddle.
• Get a cargo basket that mounts over the back wheel. Baskets mounted on the front wheel slow down the steering response when they are loaded and can cause you to fall over. Heavy front baskets keep the front wheel from lifting up when it goes over any obstacle and instead the front wheel jirks sideways and spills you and your stuff. Put the basket on the back, leave your front forks lightweight and free.
• Get a lock. Duh. The stealing of bikes is a cottage industry, here in Key West Florida at least. Drunks go around selling them for twenty-five dollars, the price of one drunk session. Stolen bikes are cheaper than legal bikes but unless it's been spray-painted and otherwise altered so its owner can't recognize it, you could get hurt if the owner sees you on it. Everybody hates low-life bike thieves same as they used to hate horse thieves.
• Buy a legal used bike from a normal citizen or a new coaster-brake cruiser bike from K-Mart for less than a hundred.
• New bikes light up the eyes of bike thieves so don't get one if you can help it.

You're ready to enjoy the end of rent slavery. Don't hang out at your hide out or you'll announce your presence and someone will mess with you and your stuff. Get away early and stay away til dark. Develop an interesting daily schedule and route and life will become good again, like it was before the bad stuff happened and the homelessness began. With the rent money you save you may buy an old car and sleep more comfortably, see Living in your car.

You are an average good person -- Respect! Power!