Weight Weenism

Most enthusiast bicyclists will be all too familiar with this term - weight weenism! The weight weenies shave off every single gram off their bicycle, in the belief that a lighter bicycle lets them scale hills faster. However, this enthusiasm often goes way too far when fanatics spend hundreds of dollars on the carbon fibre handlebars just because it's 20g lighter than a run of the mill one.

Seriously, all it takes to lose 20g (or even more) is to take a piss and clear your bowels before the ride.

However, when one goes shopping overseas and wants to pack the maximum amount of stuff into the luggage bag within the weight limit of the airline, every gram matters.

For example: Pick your clothing carefully. The difference between a pair of jeans, and a pair of boardshorts can be a whopping 345 grams. That's a whole lot of shopping.



Running shorts-180g
Boardshorts-235g
Bermudas-290g
Formal pants-500g
Jeans-580g
Cargo pants-600g



How about tops?



They don't differ all that much, actually. But go for the Drifit/Climacool polyester ones rather than cotton.



Adidas Climacool-190g
Nike Drifit-200g
Reebok cotton-230g
Formal shirt-230g



Novels are surprisingly light at less than 200g for a paperback. Bring more.



As for glossy travel books, they are really heavy. 2 small ones and it's 710 grams.



400 grams of alkaline batteries - you get 16. Plenty enough.



For the same weight, a charger and 8 rechargable NiMH batteries. I'd go for the former, because you don't even need to bring that many of them, you can just buy them off the shops overseas.

As for entertainment? A DS Lite and the adaptor is a depressingly high 450 grams. That's 2 novels and a little more, so, your pick.