This is the season for bike lights, and if you didn't score a new light over the holidays, there's a good budget friendly, and very useful light from Knog called the Boomer. The brightest LED light currently available from Knog, it throws out a solid 50 lumens. At this power output, you shouldn't expect to turn night time into day, but you can expect a descent spread of light in front of you to be able to see obstacles in the road, even with city and traffic lights dimming its power.

In my column,  Fine Tuned, in  the latest issue of Adventure Cyclist, I mentioned the difficulties of getting a rack on a fat bike that has 170mm rear dropouts. Here's a testament to how quickly fat bike technology is moving forward: Not long after I submitted my article, Salsa Cycles went ahead and released the new Alternator Rack Wide for their Mukluk fat bike. 

The following is a guest post by travel writer and Adventure Cycling member Jeanine Barone:

I glanced back, squinting into the blinding snow, to make sure Bill was still riding behind me, the snow was getting heavier and visibility was much worse than when we had started earlier that day.  But there he was, right on my tail with the biggest grin on his face. The riding was wonderfully quiet with a fresh two inches on the ground and piling fast. "This is awesome", I heard him say, as my Surly Nates made fresh tracks.  I couldn't help but laugh. 

When touring on a capable steed like the Pugsley, the bike is as willing as the rider. I've encountered many interesting dirt tracks on previous tours that seemed beyond the scope of my equipment. With the Pugsley, the bike is almost never the limitation and always agrees to new experiences. Here are some memorable moments from my revelatory fat year.

Having traveled for the last year and making the slow transition from stills to video, I’ve played with more than a few different tripods in search of THE ONE. Depending on how serious/heavy your gear you’ve got a lot of choices. Here are a few different styles of tripods I’ve used over the years to consider.

In some respects, recumbents are superb touring bikes. They’re supremely comfortable and allow you to stay on the road all day. The view from the seat also helps you catch sites that you may miss with your head hung over a set of drop bars. However, some of them do require some unique solutions when it comes to gear and equipment. Here are a few things to get you pointed in the right direction.

With winter knocking on my bike, I decided to asked some local experts about winterizing bike tips, and I also mixed in some random thoughts:

Whenever I'm putting together a pack list for a tour, before I even start thinking about what I might need, I always grab the pack list from my previous tour to use as an outline.  Since all tours are different, there are things that need to be tweaked here and there.  For instance, fenders and warm clothes can stay at home on a tour through Baja, Mexico, while they will be a necessity for touring in Alaska.

Bicycle touring is a good time, but it also takes up a good amount of time.  While we often fill in the time between tours by heading out on day rides, or weekend overnights, there are a lot of other fun things to do on a bike.  Here are some of the activities I've enjoyed over the years to fill in the spaces and stay in shape from one tour to another.

Looking at the faces of bicycle tourists, it seems like it's about a 50/50 split between those who shave and those who don't.  For myself, beard growing season happens as soon as the daytime mercury drops below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which means I'm shaving on long summer tours.  Over the years, I more or less had to make due with soap and water when it came to shaving, since I wasn't about to deal with heavy gel aerosol cans.  It was never super comfortable, and I nicked myself a lot, but it was better than itchy stubble.

The Escape Bivvy from Adventure Medical Kits is new for 2012, and it is looking to be a beefed up version of their popular Emergency Bivvy. Intended to provide additional warmth when the unexpected occurs, this bivvy reflects body heat back inwards, but also manages to breath out moisture to cut down on condensation buildup.

It never fails, no matter how iron clad your pack list is, there will always be something you realize you missed, in addition to lot of things you realize you don't really need. For the extra items, you can always ship those back home when you reach a post office, and with the items you forgot, you can usually pick them along they way. One fun thing about touring is that when I say pick thing up along the way, I really mean along the way. Over the years, I've found a lot of odd items laying on or next to the road while riding that I have found useful.

For my last few tours, I have only used rear panniers and a handlebar bag for gear storage, so I've had light duty, or randonneur style bikes on the mind. Just a quick note, when I talk about light touring, or randonneur bikes, the characteristics I'm referring to place us somewhere between road bike geometry and pure touring bike geometry. They would have shorter chainstays than a touring bike, a tall headtube, wide tire clearance, and often only rear rack mounts. Here are a few of the bikes I have really been keying in on as of late.

Bicycle touring and photography seem to go hand and hand, and it makes sense. You get to travel to incredible places at a relatively slow pace, there is plenty of time to kill, and after the tour is over you want to be able to share your experiences with others. Just thinking about our own staff here at Adventure Cycling, there have been some incredible photographers within our own walls over the years including Aaron Teasdale, Tom Robertson, John Sieber, and our co-founder, Greg Siple.

It's never a bad time to talk about fenders, and the latest option I've played around with is the Origami Fender from Portland Design Works (PDW).