MIDNIGHT MOUNTAIN


Trying to Trim my Daily Carry

Aug 2, 2026

I go almost everywhere under my own power.
I carry tons and tons of shit.
These two things do not mix well together.

I’m taking a lot right now at all of the stuff I carry with me most days, my “edc” to use the reddit term, and paring it down to the base essentials.

I’m doing this hand in hand with a much more extensive paring down of all the other stuff I own, I think the two go well together.

Lifestyle, Needs, Objectives

I go practically everywhere under my own power most days, either on foot or more often by bicycle1.

I commute to work 5 days a week by bike, 20km each way, with 200m of total climbing on the outbound leg and almost 500m on the return leg (most of which is one big chunk right at the end of the ride). My typical minimum distance on a work day is 40km with 700m of climbing, and I’m usually doing more. Most Mondays I’m averaging about 55km and 900m of climbing, with Thursdays being similar and the rest of the days of the week varying heavily depending on what I’m doing.2

I generally spend at least 2 hours a day with my ass on a push bike, going at a pretty brisk pace, I don’t have any power metrics etc. But I do my hilly home route, with traffic stops etc, in about 60 minutes.

If I’m not biking everywhere its probably because I’m planning to run that day, in which case I’m still doing most of my commute by bike but I cut the hills out by using transit at the end of each ride. I only leave the bike at home entirely if I’m too sick to ride or I’m planning on doing a >10km run that day.

Why am I doing so much?
Because its fun, its good for me, and its much, much quicker than transit.3 Less aggro from crackheads too.

But its really not very compatible with my packrat mentality of being prepared for every situation I can reasonably expect.
Being prepared for every situation means having kit for every situation, and kit is heavy

My bag during term time weighs 10kg most days, about 7kg during the summer break. This isn’t an impossible amount to lug about (I’ve been doing it) but it is A LOT

I’m not using panniers at the moment while I hunt for a new rack4 and I’m starting to notice some tightness in my shoulders from riding a bike with this much on my back everyday. I need to cut some of it.

So taking everything out of the bag and building it back up:

The Process

So right off the bat I think I’m pretty much fucked, but let’s see.

Step 1, Weighing everything

For a total base weight of 5,245g or just over 5kg.

That’s not too much, but this is base weight, most days its going to be more.
Between clothing for work and food my bag is probably +2kg most days, and my laptop and workbook add another 2kg easily.

Pretty dissapointed, but I don’t think I’m shaving 2kg off of this.

Let’s see how much I can get rid of.

My main problem is that I’m out all day, sunup to sundown, and I’m terrible at remembering to change my equipment loading based on the weather report.

The weather here is pretty changeable, and tends towards wet, so I kind of need to carry waterproofs, but wearing waterproof kit while doing any kind of excercise sucks ass so you only want to do it while its wet. Wearing the rain coat as my regular outerlayer isn’t happening and it’s not getting thrown out.

My other problem is that I’m not willing to buy new, lighter equipment. Weightweenery is already the height of gear faggotry and I’m bad enough about chopping and changing things just because I can as is, I don’t need new stuff, I need less stuff.

Buying new lighter gear is out the window, and really it wouldn’t save me much anyway.

If I can cut 10% I’ll be happy.

Step 2, what’s not going

Obvious stuff out of the way first, the helmet, lights, rain gear, phone, toolkit, first aid kit, water bottle & cycling gloves are staying.

This is core stuff I need and there’s no getting away from it. I’ll look at the first aid and toolkit and see if there’s anything I can dump out of there.

The glasses are also staying, riding glasses are ppe and are a big comfort improvement, they’re also fuck huge and effectively waterproof the top half of my face.

Step 3, what can definitely go

The waterproof gloves, notebook, & hat are all easy bins.
I have a notebook in my wallet, I don’t need two, the hat I rarely use in summer time and if it’s cold enough in winter to need a hat I’m taking it out to put in a woolly one anyway.

I almost never reach for the waterproof gloves, like the hat they’re definitely a very situational item as they’re too hot to wear when it isn’t absolutely pissing down.

I can live with not having them most of the time. In winter the regular cycling gloves can be swapped with these.

So we’re down 224g already, a whopping 4.27%

Step 4, maybes

“Why is a grown man carrying spare socks and underwear around with him everyday?” I hear you ask.
“Is he shidding himself with such force and regularity that he needs them?”
“Has this man had to pull over at the side of the road, or into a 7/11, and changed his DIRTY, CRAPPED BRIEFS on his way to work?”

No, I don’t, that was a one time incident.
It’s fucking wet here OK? Spare socks and underwear are really useful to have as a just in case piece of kit.
Have I ever actually needed them badly enough to actually bother to break them out?
…..
No, so maybe they can go as well, for a relatively easy 102g saving.

The gaiter stays, its not essential but it weighs practically nothing and is endlessly useful.

That’s 326g, 6.22% gone.

The 286g elephant in the room here is the ereader, which I’m absolutely loathe to get rid of. It’s a hefty chunk of weight, but its so much nicer than reading on my phone. It does add bulk though, and it’s another thing I probably don’t actually really use on the daily. I’m currently listening to an audio book and haven’t cracked the reader open all week.

This stays for now, if I can’t find enough weight savings elsewhere it goes.

The random junk I found is mostly salt packets, old masks and receipts, change, etc. A little paper money is always good to have, the actual garbage can be scrapped for a whopping 10g reduction.

Really marginal gains could be made swapping my 3m cable for a 1m, but the extra cable is nice, and its so small I don’t think its worth it. I still need to find 206g for a 10% reduction.

Cracking open the repair kit, we find:

All of which is essential kit minus the headlamp, which is IMO a pretty useful thing to have, weighing in at an entire 55g its a hefty luxury but one I’m not parting with.

At this point in the writing process my girlfriend (who’s real you guys I promise) sat down beside me and started bullying me for wanting to keep the headlamp and first aid kit. I guess I have to get rid of the headlamp. I’m keeping the first aid kit though fuck you [REDACTED].

This is a stupid excercise but I should take it seriously.

So that’s another 55g gone, up to 381g. 7.02%

This is a good use of my time. Definitely.

Conclusion: Failure

I failed! I couldn’t get anywhere near my weight savings objective and I couldn’t even meet the fallback goal of 10% I guess I should be happy that my kit is lean enough that finding even 500g of savings was difficult. Ultimately I’m not willing to drop the ereader, its too useful to get rid of and it’d end up right back in there in a few weeks anyway.

I think I’m going to take my incredibly 381 grammes of weight savings and reinvest them into a rack for my panniers. I want to do some bikepacking before the summers over and comfort improvements > weight reductions imo. Getting the weight off my back onto the bike won’t give me any performance gains but it will improve comfort and increase my carrying ability.

I did manage to repack my bag in a smarter way, so it’s a bit less bulky now.

I’m generally happy with the kit I’m using, its functional, none of it is too flimsy, and its stood the time and miles.
I’m probably going to be carrying all of this stuff for years yet.

This wasn’t worth the time I spent doing it but it was pretty enjoyable, so whatever.

  1. A Brodie Romax 2 at present, review forthcoming at the 15k kilometre mark maybe possibly if I can be bothered to write it. ↩︎

  2. Max total distance covered on a school day so far: 135km, Max weekly distance so far (including pleasure rides on the weekend): 650km ↩︎

  3. It is not quicker than driving but its much cheaper, less infuriating, & better for me ↩︎

  4. New to me anyway. My old rack went with my old bike, I kept the panniers though. ↩︎

  5. Included here because it lives here when I’m off the bike, as does the water bottle, my lock stays on my bike when I’m on it and is in use when I’m not. Carrying weight on your person vs on the bike makes no difference to climbing ability, so long as it isn’t on your legs. It does make a comfort difference though. ↩︎