What's your best bike camping tip/trick?

[coachgeo]

North American riders: If you camp next to a river west of the 100th meridian, you can wake up with a rattlesnake or two sharing your bag. In some places it's almost a certainty. Don't camp nearer than 300 feet from a river in this situation.

Great tip about the snakes.  I always take precautions to prevent snakes, spiders, scorpions, etc., from gaining access to my sleeping area or boots.  A habit I developed in the military is to always shake out my boots before just sticking my foot inside them.  ...

Not sure if you two are in opposite direction of each other or not.  The snake/spider  thing... shake out boots and bags thing of Magart's... have heard that one, distance from water; have not heard that one.  Have heard of parks that require a certain distance from water but thought that might have been to help keep human garbage out of the water.   Are you saying critters might crawl in while you are sleeping?  Hard to tell by the way you wrote it which you mean.  For might crawl in with you environments, do the cots help reduce; but not prevent,  this possibility.

[tazshido]

A cot, even a short one will all but eliminate snakes being in bed with you. The ones that sit very close to the ground can entice them to bed down under your cot because the warmth of your body is radiating out below the cot. Snakes are cold blooded so rely on external sources of heat. For spiders and insects a quick spray with repellent goes a long way. Pyrethrin (sp?) is used by the military because it can be applied and will stick around for a long time, snakes don't like the stuff either so an application on the outside edges of your cot and around the entrance to your tent is effective.
   Brown recluse spiders are nomadic so they are the ones to be aware of. Black widows are not but like to set up homemaking in piles of lumber or wood. If camping in a spot where a previous camper has stacked fire wood, be very careful handling it, wear gloves. Where I camp the bears are a much bigger danger than snakes and crawlies. I plan on building a mount to attach my plastic rifle scabbard to my bike. All the local constulary that have seen me out in bear country with my rifle have given me a knowing nod.
   Research of the area you are going to be in will help against the dangers. To tell the truth I think the wildlife is far less threatening than the human pests.

[macgart]

Coach,

I'd not heard about snake problems due to proximity to water either and that's why I quoted that section.  I have often seen camping restrictions within a specific distance to water as a FS regulation.  I've always assumed the restrictions were to prevent contamination of the water from human waste, etc.  

I'm pretty OCD about keeping my tent closed to prevent creepy crawly access.  I have found plenty of spiders inside my tent nonetheless.  We were camped in a pasture in the Black Hills last summer and I had lots of "Daddy Long-legs" in my tent despite my best efforts to keep them out.  Spraying might be a good option.

[Colonel Nikolai]

It's pretty simple:

The 100th meridian in North America is the demarkation point between two major bio zones. To the east of the 100th Meridian, average annual precipitation is in excess of twenty inches. To the west it's much less than that. In some places a LOT less. All life west of the 100th therefore tends to group near riverbeds for obvious reasons. (In some mircozones west of the 100th, it's so dry that barely anything lives a football field away from a river.) Climate zones like those west of the 100th do not hold heat very well, so after the sun goes down, snakes have to figure out how to stay warm. If your tent is nearby your body heat will work just fine for that.

[macgart]

Thanks for the explanation, that makes good sense.