5 steps to prep your gear for motocamping season
Motocamping season is here! CAMP - The Motocamping Club has a ton of motocamping activities scheduled for this year, and you can review them and book them all here. But…are you ready to go? Did you check both your moto and camping gear? Is it in good order? Do you need to change/upgrade/repair/treat anything?
For the purposes of this blog post we will assume that you have done all the necessary maintenance to your motorcycle: your battery is charged, you checked your tires, you changed your oil, and all that jazz. So we won’t talk about motorcycle basic maintenance. We will talk motocamping gear.
Here is what we recommend you do.
1 - Take stock of what you have
This may sound silly, but it is possibly the most important step to have a good motocamping season, especially if you did not do this at the end of last season. Go to your garage or basement, find all your gear, and lay it all out on the floor: tents, sleeping pads, cooking stoves, gas bottles, dehydrated food, coffee makers, sporks, cooking tools…literally EVERYTHING. Take stock of what you have, write it down. Once you have done that, make a list of what you need to get before your first camping trip: do you have enough gas to cook? Enough food? Enough coffee? Do your bags allow to transport it all? If you are missing some camping gear, head to our Moto Camp Nerd friends - CAMP members get 15% off and free shipping.
2 - Test your gear BEFORE you go
You know what is not great? Getting to your first motocamping outing of the season and finding out that your stove isn’t working, or that there is a leak in your sleeping pad, or that you don’t know how to properly set up your tent. All this can be easily prevented if you test ALL of your gear at home before you leave. These are the MINIMUM steps we recommend you take:
Set up your tent (your living room is fine). Make sure you know how to do it, make sure there are no holes/leaks and all the poles are in good order.
Blow up your sleeping pad/matress and make sure it doesn’t deflate overnight.
Open your sleeping bag - assess if you need to wash it. This shouldn’t be done too often, but sometimes it is inevitable. Here is an article with a video on how to
Check your knives: do you need to sharpen them?
Check your pans and pots and cooking utensils - is everything working?
Check the expiration date of some of your perishable items you are taking with you: coffee, oatmeals, anything like that.
Check and replace the batteries on all the gear that has them: headlamps, lights, mattress pumps (if you are using them). Make sure you have spares.
Now that everything is working as it should, ask yourself: does it fit in the bags/panniers you have? Perhaps you changed your motorcycle, perhaps you changed some of the gear, perhaps this is the first time you go motocamping. Make sure you pack it and it all fits in a way that doesn’t affect the handling of your motorcycle too much. In doubt on how to? Check our calendar of seminars and training, and come to our Motocamping 101 seminar near you.
3 - Treat your gear with insect repellants
This is a controversial topic, given the chemicals involved, but personally, we believe it is essential that you treat your tent and many other items of your gear with permethrin, to reduce your risk to contract Lyme disease via a tick bite. It will repel/kill ticks and other insects. You can buy permethrin on Amazon, here, or at REI, here. The video below explains what you need to do: you spray it on your tent/hammock and you let it dry for several hours before you put the tent back. We also treat in the same way pants, socks, shoes, t-shirts, sweaters that we will be using hiking / lounging at camp. The effect of permethrin will last for several weeks, even in the rain. However, you should plan on treat your gear again at least once before the season is over.
Permethrin - and every chemical, really - is a sensitive subject. Do your research and decide for yourself if the benefits outweighs your risk - pay attention if you have pets, in particular. My choice is that the benefits are greater, but you may decide otherwise. It also depends on where you camp - the Midwest is INFESTED with ticks.
4 - Get your first aid kit in order
This is often overlooked, but it is very important, especially if you require medications that are not easily accessible or that needs to be refilled with a prescription. Make sure you have anything you need, and make sure that it will last you longer than your trip is scheduled to last far - stuff happens, and you may be coming home later than you think, depending on where you are going.
5 - Get it organized
This step is particularly important if you do different types of camping throughout the season. If you car camp and motocamp you probably have different items you carry with you on different occasions - think bulkier/heavier sleeping bag/pads, bigger stoves, bigger pots for car camping, for instance. Organizing your gear depending on the type of camping you do will allow you to pack for each trip in a much more efficient way - no reason to waste time finding that titanium ultra light stove if you know that it is in the box with all the hiking/solo motocamping tub!
We also recommend having different motocamping gear lists made for different occasions - again, you will need different things depending on whether you are car camping or motocamping. You can use this list as a starting base.
May this be your best motocamping season yet! We hope you will join us on one of our motocamping trips!
