Editor’s Dozen: Josh Meissner’s Favorite Gear and More of 2025

My byline hasn’t appeared much on this site in the last months, as my attention has been monopolized by hard realities around me. This year, many of my friends faced intensified financial hardships, burnout at work, and political repression. How to write about bikes and bikepacking—luxury and leisure—while you and your friends are struggling materially? With daily news of climate breakdown, ongoing genocides, and imperialist warmongering around the world—now the illegal US attack on Venezuela—I was frequently overcome with collective grief and sank into guilt and despair. Cycling provided at best a fleeting escape from the daily horror reel. Escape itself started seeming suspect.

​What pulled me out of guilt and despair this year wasn’t more cycling, contemplating, or commiserating but engaging in collective action. Connecting with people from all walks of life who were organizing against injustice and for universal liberation helped me realize something important. All along, I’ve been confusing the feeling of freedom that comes from cycling with actual liberation. I want the good life, not only for a few hours after work or a couple of weeks per year on a bike trip. I want the good life for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

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​So, if you’re despairing and depressed by all the barbarism in the world, like me this year, I recommend joining a political organization for a cause you care about. Besides being literally our only way to improve the conditions for the people and things we love in life—definitely including bikepacking—collective action has also contained my despair and even stirred something like hope, despite it all. I feel my passion for bikes and bikepacking returning, especially for the sense of community and glimpses of the good life they can provide.

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And 2025 provided many such glorious glimpses. One highlight was joining the eminent Joe Cruz for a Rough-Stuff-style tour in the French Alps, an opportunity to reflect on what bikepacking can be at its peak. Various cycling projects and a weekend with Platte Gang in The Netherlands, besides being a fantastic time meeting lovely folks, furthered my understanding of bikes as tools for building community and doing art, research, and education. Adventure slideshow evenings with friends and helping other writers edit their pieces were welcome opportunities to step back and let others tell their stories. And it still surprises me every time how much a day ride with friends or a quick coffee outside within the city limits can boost my mood.

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​This year, especially, I’m glad to have a dialed grab-and-go kit for overnighters and weekend getaways. With that, find my dozen favorite things from 2025 below.

Sral Works Custom Titanium Handlebars

Made in Germany / €160 at Sral Works

​Dialing in the fit of my custom Big Forest ATB over the last year and a half, I realized the right handlebars were the missing piece of the puzzle. Handlebars come in all shapes, sizes, and sweeps these days, but I came up short looking for a zero-rise bar in the 20-degree range.

Luckily, I ran into Lars last fall at the Bespoked bike show in Dresden, who bends custom steel and titanium handlebars in Saxony under the srål name (get it?). He uses the correct 22.2mm tube stock, which is difficult to find in Europe, and offers some striking finishes. With his expert input, I settled on 750 millimeters of brushed titanium swept to 21 degrees.

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I can’t speak to the material’s supposed damping quality yet, but the fit feels just right for shorter and longer rambles through the forest, and the satin grey matches my custom Gramm framebag beautifully. The workmanship and packaging are extremely nice, just like Lars. I’m really stoked on these handlebars.

Patagonia Terrebonne Joggers

Made in Vietnam / $99 at REI: Men’s Women’s

My friends joke that I’ve basically been rotating two pairs of pants for the last five or six years, and these ultralight Patagonia jogging pants are one of them. Comfy like pajamas, they’re my camp uniform, and sometimes I wear them as wind overpants when it’s freezing. Packed down, they’re the size of a large lemon.

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The fabric is starting to wear thin in some areas by now, but they’ve proven surprisingly robust overall, suffering only a few small holes from flying embers over the years. I recently found and set aside a spare pair on sale, and I bought the Terrebonne shorts too, because I love the long version so much. They’ve been worth every penny.

Fujifilm X-T3 Camera

Made in China / ~$900 second-hand

Like a bike, I think a camera should feel intuitive and inspire me to head out and encounter the world. I love my little Ricoh GR III, but it’s proven a bit fragile for bikepacking. My Fujifilm X-T3, on the other hand, is a tank. It’s been knocked, dropped, and soaked over the last six years without missing a beat. Realistically, it’s way more camera than I need for the kind of photography I do.

For bikepacking, I’ve relied on the 27mm f/2.8 pancake lens, which allows the camera to slide into an Outer Shell Stem Caddy on my handlebars for quick access. Occasionally, I’ll carry the compact Fujinon 50mm f/2, too.

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Lately, though, the X-T3 has been gathering dust, and one reason is that the 27mm pancake’s field of view feels tighter than I’d like these days—I don’t want to step back to take a photo. I just picked up the newly released Fujinon 23mm f/2.8 pancake, which essentially gives me an X100 minus a stop of aperture, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with the X-T3 again.

The Josh Strap

I didn’t invent this handy widget, and a friend coined the name. The strap is primarily intended as a parking brake to prevent the bike from rolling away when it’s leaned against something, and for routine bike maintenance at home and on tour. It’s cheaper, lower-profile, and easier to use than a Voilé, and it comes in any color you like. I’ve got one on every bike and my keychain, and friends I’ve handed them out to have found tons of alternative uses.

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You can fashion your own using 50 centimeters of 4-millimeter paracord or similar and a dual cord stopper. Longer ones are useful for keeping frameless packs and sleeping mats rolled up in storage. I like these hexagonal stoppers for the looks, ergonomics, and secure retention, but don’t bet your life or your bike on them!

Cumulus Mosquito Bivy

Made in Poland / 159€ at Cumulus

As a big bivy believer, I was thrilled by the announcement of the new Mosquito Bivi from Cumulus. At last, a bug bivy that’s easily procured in Europe. I’ve been using it all year and have already recommended it to dozens of folks. I find the combo with the matching Larch tarp superior to a tent for overnighters and tours up to a couple of weeks. It’s lighter, more compact, and more versatile. Even if I’m packing a tent on a long tour, I’ll still bring the bivy, as it’s ideal for sleeping under the stars and in shelters with a bit of protection, especially when using a quilt.

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The Cumulus bivy’s roomy cut means large mats and winter sleeping bags fit without issue. I appreciate the nylon triangle at the head, which forms a sort of wind shield. I’ve come to love the soft nylon for the swaddling effect on warm nights, when even the open quilt is too hot. It’s possible to DIY a cheap bivy bag with some scrap Tyvek and tape, too. The Cumulus is a deluxe offering with high-quality materials and excellent workmanship, backed up by a five-year warranty.

Cycling as Embodied Research

The bike’s always served me as a tool of inquiry into the world—where and when am I, and how do I know that? Cycling, we encounter the world at a particular speed and rhythm, granting a different experience of duration and scale, potentially connecting us to the land and each other in new ways. Impressions gleaned from movement resonate differently from those founds in books. In 2025, I participated in several projects that explored cycling as an explicit method of embodied research and education.

With my friend and water science communicator Pauline and two other subject matter experts, we organized a guided tour of the defunct leach fields in the north of Berlin—an extensive, invisible, yet oh-so-crucial sanitation infrastructure. We planned the tour much as I would a bikepacking route, weaving landmarks and expert input into a story while considering flow, rhythm, and surfaces. Fun fact: Berlin households were hooked up to running water two decades before the city-wide sewage system was rolled out. And they say Berlin is a dirty city today.

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In September, I hopped on a train to Amsterdam to join the CAR (Cycling Art Research) collective for a weekend campout with the Platte Gang. CAR hosts talks, workshops, and artistic projects that explore and spread the potential of the bike for artistic research. In the rolling workshops hosted by James and Rosa, we first recovered the history and reflected on the contradictions of public land in The Netherlands. On day two, we mapped the ever-shifting boundary of the North Sea and the human-made Dutch coast by cycling along it, probing an important question: who is mapping and to what end?

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The CAR workshops—present, intentional, communal, trying to connect to the land—granted a profoundly immersive sense of cycling through the world and inspired me to get back to my own wayfinding project, which has sadly been on the back burner this year. Updating one of my bikepacking routes spun out into the desire to represent the route in a way that fosters engaging deeply with the landscape and overcomes the alienation introduced by GPS and cartographic maps. My initial approach was to develop a route description using verbal cues: “Follow the dirt road until the gap in the forest, then turn left…” and so on. Developing the route from the saddle with friends has been as fun, interesting, and meaningful as it’s been time-intensive. I hope to write up some of our wayfindings this year.

BikeYoke Revive Dropper Post

Made in Taiwan / €350 at BikeYoke

I was skeptical about the dropper post hype, but I’m totally sold now. For a touring ATB, I’d take a dropper post over a suspension fork if I had to choose. From staying in control on steep descents to micro-adjusting on climbs to packing down for train travel, getting the seat out of the way is damn useful in far more situations than I anticipated. And it’s a social component, too, allowing others to share in the experience of riding my bike. I’d be writing a full review if it hadn’t already been expertly covered on this site.

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BikeYoke dropper posts are magnificent pieces of engineering, and the Revive model is the crème de la crème. Offered in lengths from 100 to 213mm, the stepless slide action is snappy, smooth, and solid, especially when paired with their Alpha lever that rotates on a ball bearing. The post’s low stack height and possibility of adding spacers means you get the most travel possible. Fit, finish, and construction are top-notch; the lateral play in my post is still minimal after thousands of kilometers in all sorts of conditions. Similarly pricey droppers, such as the Fox Transfer, feel like cheap toys in comparison.

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Besides their remarkable mechanical qualities, I’d spring for a BikeYoke dropper for its high degree of user-maintainability and repairability. Unlike other dropper designs, which need servicing once air enters the oil circuit, BikeYoke’s droppers can be bled while on the trail, though I haven’t detected any hint of squishiness yet. BikeYoke provides all parts as spares and upgrades at reasonable costs, along with detailed maintenance instructions. Factoring in maintenance and longevity, I suspect the total lifecycle cost of a BikeYoke could be comparable to, or even lower than, that of competing droppers that cost less up front.

Switching it up with Hiking

Considering all the riding I’ve done in the last several years, it’s surprising and almost criminal that I’ve neglected the most human mode of movement until this year. After getting in a little over my head on a challenging two-day scramble in the Dolomites, I finally disposed of my prejudice against walking in the flatlands on a four-day hike along the lakes to the southeast of Berlin. Far from boring, it was engrossing and showed me how superficial my knowledge is in areas I thought I knew well.

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While cycling gives a good sense of the extent and lay of the land, I find the slower pace of walking conducive to going deeper into one place. Stopping isn’t a waste of momentum, so I’m more likely to check out something neat or just look around. Despite standing higher, I feel much smaller in the landscape. It’s easier to chat with your hiking partner or other people along the way, too. Revisiting familiar landscapes on foot is something I look forward to in 2026.

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Outer Shell Magic Musette

Made in USA / $45 at Outer Shell

​The ultralight, packable Magic Musette from Outer Shell turned out to be one of those items I didn’t know I was missing in my life, and now I use it daily. It’s quickly become my go-to for around town, packing a notebook, lunch, and iPad for university, as well as a laptop in a pinch.

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The Magic Musette’s tapered contours create a sleek silhouette that’s even earned praise from non-bike folks. I’d like to see a Fidlock-style magnetic latch on the stabilizer strap, similar to the one on Outer Shell’s Camera Strap. Now that would be perfection.

Foam Sleeping Mat

$30 at Decathlon

​One happy co-discovery of getting into hiking has been experiencing the joys of foam mats. For whatever reason, I just hate blowing up an air mat, even with a pump sack; don’t get me started on electric pumps. The waterbed sensation has never given me great sleep, and my arms tend to fall asleep while trying to keep them on the mat. Solid-state mats solve all these issues for me, and once I got used to the firmer feel, I slept way better.

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​Beyond the convenience and comfort, foam is just so versatile. The bulk is annoying for short trips, but I wouldn’t embark on a longer tour without a foam mat at this point. The collapsed package can serve as an improvised camp chair, and I’m constantly deploying it for naps and spontaneous breaks. They’re cheap and can be cut down into custom torso-length pads and seat pads—get the reflective type for a little extra warmth.

A Nice Linen Towel

A towel is about the most useful thing an international bikepacker can have. However, I found typical microfiber travel towels detestable. They feel like nails on a chalkboard, barely absorb water, and stink quickly. They just suck at being towels. Why do they exist?

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Similarly frustrated and, unlike me, equipped with the skills to do something about it, my lovely sister made a bunch of travel towels from waffle-knit linen. She sourced the material by the meter, cut it, surged the edges to prevent fraying, and added a handy loop for storage and hanging. They’re better than the synthetic options in every way. More importantly, a good linen towel has immense psychological value. I love this towel, and it comes with me on every trip.

Telling Stories at Slideshow Evenings

One of the happiest discoveries of recent years was instigating regular slideshow evenings with my cycling friends last winter. Once a month, we meet up at someone’s place with ample food and drink, and a few people tell a story about one of their adventures. It’s a heartwarming, nourishing community ritual for the quiet season that’s been met with great, consistent enthusiasm. I wholeheartedly recommend it. Just two pieces of advice I’d offer: make it a fixed, recurring date and put an effort into curation—no photo dumps.

​Coming together in person and telling stories is core to our species, yet writing, whether analog or digitally, loses the whole aspect of telling a story and hearing it in a particular time and space, by a person we know, now. As tellers, the trip rushes back into awareness, expands, and takes on new meaning. As listeners, we get to travel vicariously, far more richly than creeping on Instagram. And there’s more. In her essay, Telling is Listening, Ursula K. Le Guin writes, “The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude.”

Further Reading

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