We’ve been following the travels of

There’s not much we haven’t read on their World Biking website (a wonderful mix of diary entries and practical bike touring advice) but today we discovered something new: video interviews with bike tourists they meet.

Eric & Amaya’s latest video features a couple cycling from Vancouver to Buenos Aries.

See the full Touring Talk video series by Eric & Amaya. You can also read 10 Questions answered by Eric & Amaya about Cycling in Africa.

In 2006, Marija Kozin left her home in Slovenia and set out for China by bicycle.

When she reached Beijing, Marija turned around and cycled home again. During her 30 month trip, she covered some of the toughest routes in the world of bike touring, including going across Tibet and tackling the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan.

In this podcast, we talk to Marija about the highlights of her trip and some of the more difficult parts of her journey, including coming home.

Show Notes:

• Rick Gunn (a cyclist Marija met and we followed online)
• Theme music by Josh Woodward

The Skype connection when we recorded this podcast wasn’t the best. Some parts may be difficult to hear and I’ve had to re-record a couple of my own questions for clarity.

The rims of your bike’s wheels are one of the more likely things you’ll have to replace – possibly during a tour.

To save difficulties during your bike trip, make sure your rims are in good shape before you set out.

In this week’s Ask-A-Mechanic, Paul Gibson of British framebuilders Ellis Briggs dishes out information on how to tell if your rims might need replacing soon and how to make them last longer.

Read more about checking for rim wear and making your rims last longer – the latest in the Ask A Mechanic series.

Anyone who’s followed our bike travels will know that we stayed with some wonderful people along the way – mostly thanks to

People all over the world offer passing cyclists the chance to meet for a cup of coffee or stay the night. Often, the stay turns into a long-term friendship.

Mostly we arranged these visits by stopping in an internet cafe to look up a host we thought we’d reach in a few days time. This, of course, depending on being able to find a place to get online, which wasn’t always easy.

WarmShowers is moving with the times though and now there’s a new iPhone App that will let you see hosts in your vicinity on a map, mark them as favourites (so you can find them easily later) and get in contact with them.

The app is free. Click here to read more and download it. You can also read more about our experiences with hospitality clubs like Warmshowers and Couchsurfing.

Take 3 pairs of underwear and a pair of pliers, but leave the paperback books at home.

That’s the advice from the An Adventure Called Bicycling blog I’ve discovered recently. The entries are written by RJ, who did the TransAmerica in 2009 and now writes up helpful hints, gear reviews and general musings on cycling.

Her latest post focuses on the equipment she took on the TransAm, with notes on what stayed in the panniers and what got ditched. RJ loved her MSR Whisperlite stove (also a favourite of ours), and used her pair of miniature pliers a lot.

“That’s a kind of leverage that’s hard to come by otherwise,” RJ writes on her blog.

We neglected to pack a pair of pliers initially and regretted it. Happily, we found a discarded pair by the side of the road one day (lucky us!) but we would also recommend a small pair of pliers on tour, for getting into tight spots on your bike and also cutting wire, if you need to replace a brake or gear cable, for example.

We’re looking at lightweight tarp tents in this video – one from Six Moon Designs and one from Tarp Tent.

These single-walled tents are a popular choice for cyclists and backpackers concerned about weight. Sometimes people report problems with condensation but in general tents like the ones in this video get very good reviews.

Mandy, a member of the Dutch backpacking club, Rugzaklopers, is showing us around the tents. The Rukzaklopers Club is a social group that does backpacking trips, so the opinions are independent. They’re not selling anything – they’re just looking for the best equipment.

This is the first of a few videos that I took at the Fiets en Wandelbeurs, an outdoor bike and trekking fair, in Amsterdam last weekend.

I had heard of Thermarest chairs, but never had a chance to get a good look at them. And I didn’t know you could use the chair kits with solid foam mats as well as the inflatable mattresses! This all of a sudden seems much better than the plastic bags we mostly sat on while camping.

Mandy, a member of the Dutch backpacking club, Rugzaklopers, was happy to demonstrate the Thermarest chairs for us. In the video, you’ll see the very lightweight and small Compack Chair ($44.95 from REI) and a slightly heavier but possibly more robust model, the Trekker Chair ($29.95 from REI).

Andrew and I are as far as you can get from the ultralight bike touring crowd.

At times, our panniers have been known to contain up to 6 books, a rock collection, 2kg of not-yet-ripe avocados (they were on sale!) and a whole wardrobe of clothes that we weren’t wearing but couldn’t bear to throw out because you just never know when you might need them down the road…

And despite this tendency to bike with far more than we probably need, somewhere in the back of our brains is a fascination with ultralight touring, so I spent a happy few moments perusing this ultralight cycling setup, after spotting a link to it on the excellent Bike Touring Tips website.

I know I’ll never be hardcore enough to adopt his idea of bubble wrap as a sleeping pad or abandon my cooking gear and a hot cup of coffee in the morning in favour of saving a few grams by leaving the pots and stove behind, but I still gleaned some good tips from these ultralight touring pages.

My favourite 3 from the ultralight cycling site are:

• If you want to cut weight, cut the big things first.
  “A common mistake that we all make as newcomers to ultralight cycling is to start with cutting the handle of a tooth brush. The prospective ultralighter, on the contrary, should start with thinking big. There are 6 big ones (in terms of weight or volume) which you should consider first: bicycle, tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, cooking equipment and carriers.”
• Consider alternatives to panniers.
  “A backpack (stripped of unnecessary straps and belts), together with a bungee cord or two, is lighter than any pannier(s) of the same capacity. For example, my 40 l backpack was 1120g, and is now 820g after I cut off the waist belt and removed few other appendicies. For comparison, if you take 2 Ortlieb ‘Back Roller’ panniers, the capacity is the same, 40 l, the weight is almost twice as much, 1630g.”
• Tape Things On Your Bike Frame
  “I usually tape less frequently used items to the frame: spare tubes, spare tyre, spare spokes, canisters with oil and sun screen, duct tape, pump, light, lock. This reduces the stress on the racks a bit and more importantly reduces the volume of your stuff bags, so you may end up by using smaller stuff bags in the end.”

The page includes dozens of tips for reducing weight and volume on a bike tour so take a moment to check them out. You might not go ultra-light on your next trip but even a few grams saved might help you up that mountain a little bit faster.

Racks take a beating on a bike tour. The rack has to carry a heavy load and it is constantly exposed to the bumps and jostles of riding. This strain means that cheap racks are likely to break relatively quickly.

In our latest article on the basics of bike touring, we talk about what to look for in a rack and a few models that we recommend.

Read more in Choosing Racks For Bicycle Touring

In the summer of 2008, Carl Cartlidge decided to ride from Europe to Istanbul… the long way.

His route took him from Oslo to the North Cape – Europe’s most northerly point, inside the Arctic Circle – before he turned around and started heading south to Istanbul.

Carl found Scandinavia one of the most rewarding parts of his journey. Read 10 questions: Bike Touring in Scandinavia to find out about the terrain, highlights and challenges he faced while riding through Norway, Sweden and Finland.

We’ve all been there. You park your bike up against a wall, turn around and…. boom! It falls to the ground.

That’s how we managed to put most the scratches on our bicycles at least. But if we’d listened to the advice of Chris in this week’s Ask A Mechanic feature, we might have kept the paint job on our bikes in better shape. The secret? Helicopter tape.

Never heard of it? Read on to find out more about protecting your bicycle frame from chips and scratches. And don’t forget to get in touch to submit a question of your own to Ask A Mechanic.

I was thinking about this the other day as I was coming home from work on a particularly wet evening. Here in Holland, the rain didn’t seem to be affecting cyclists at all. The streets and bike paths were as full as ever.

Inspired by the tenacity of Dutch cyclists, I put together this series of articles about bike touring in the rain. Read about:

• Essential equipment for rainy day cycling
• Tips for bike touring in the rain
• Caring for your bike after a day of wet riding.

Master these 3 areas and you’ll never have to feel blue again when the rain starts to pour down. Just get out there and enjoy the ride!

Here’s a fun project and a good way to stand out on tour this year: build your own bicycle trailer, out of bamboo, plywood or any other material you can get your hands on.

Free plans for this nifty bike trailer come courtesy of the folks at Carry Freedom, who also make and sell the Y-Frame trailer. The home made trailer will be heavier and less efficient than its store bought cousins but it has a charm all its own.

Aside from the fun of building it, the trailer is exceptionally good value, as long as you can spare a couple days to build it.

None of the parts are particularly expensive, assuming you can salvage the wheels from old bikes. You can make the bike trailer out of any material (though good quality bamboo can be hard to come by) and you don’t need to weld anything or bend any tubes.

Best of all, the plans seem very easy to follow, even to my un-technical mind.

Simplicity was exactly what Nick, the owner of Carry Freedom, intended when he drew up the plans. The original idea, credited to bike tourist Cass Gilbert, was to make plans that anyone, anywhere in the world could copy, regardless of wealth or available materials.

“Cass was in Nepal leading a guided cycling tour, he left his Y-Frame in a Village for a few months. It was endlessly used for carting rice and many other things between villages. But while the villagers loved the trailer they could not copy it or repair it locally,” Nick writes on the Carry Freedom website.

“This got me thinking about how it would be possible to make a cheap trailer for poor villagers. Poverty is many things, but fundamental to wealth is the freedom for people, goods and ideas to move. By making it easier for villagers to move things around their world becomes a richer, bigger place.”

Nick’s thinking resulted in the bamboo trailer plans he now gives out for free. Dozens of people have since built their own trailer. The results are ingenious. One man made a portable tent out of bamboo so he always had a bed on his bike. Another used PVC tubing when neither wood or bamboo were available.

See the pictures of trailers other cyclists have built on Carry Freedom’s Flickr Stream and thanks to Nick for allowing us to the photos!

Last summer, the

Now, after nearly 7 months of determined pedalling, they’ve reached the Pacific Ocean and are turning north. There are still many miles ahead, but I loved the description on their blog of the moment when they reached the ocean:

“Words cannot express how we feel inside when we finally see the ocean. Lack of comprehension on our side results in lack of expression. We ride the final yards full of high spirits and pride.”

Their story, which I discovered on Biking Bis, is an inspiring one, for anyone who’s thinking of travelling with kids.

Of course, the trip hasn’t always been easy. They’ve had 19 flat tires so far in some 6,000km of pedalling and sometimes the terrain has been challenging as they try to propell over 600 pounds of bike, gear and riders up hills. In one journal entry, near the beginning of their trip, they write:

“Another curve, another hope that we are to the top. Crushed again, we still need to go up and up and up. We hit a wall today. Our muscles have left us, we don’t want these mountains anymore. We give up pedalling for a while and resort to pushing it around the next curve.”

The difficult moments soon fade, however, and I’m sure this family will reach their goal of arriving in Alaska this summer. Once they do, the plan is to stay for a year to experience life up north.

“We will discover the way the Alaskans live. Enriching our lives with the exposure to new customs and traditions.”

I’ll be watching to see how they go on their way up north and you can follow along too on the Pedouin Blog.

He’s cycled a massive 600,000km by bicycle over the last half century – enough to go around the world 15 times

Along the way he’s been attacked by bees, shot at by rebels and hit by cars. He ran out of water in the Sahara Desert and had his bike stolen 6 times. Every time he got it back.

Now, 70 years old and still touring on the same bike he started with, Heinz Stücke could be forgiven for slowing down a bit. Not at all. This world nomad is still going strong. In fact, he’s cycling more than ever. All of his last 10 years have made it into his ‘top 20′ in terms of distance. Sometimes he rides for up to 16 hours a day. And in 2008, Stücke covered 22,000km – his biggest year yet.

“The reason is that I like more and more those lonely stretches in the desert and in the forest so I can do more cycling. In the olden days it was like more living: going into the city, staying 3-4 weeks, participating in the culture of the country, which is also interesting. But as I’m getting older somehow it seems more a daily rhythm of progress, of camping, of independence, of nobody bothering you,” he says.

If Stücke’s style has changed over the decades, two things haven’t: he still rides the same 3-speed bike he started out with (although he sometimes uses folding bikes for convenience) and his passion for cycling is still firmly intact. There are no plans for the world’s longest bike tour to stop anytime soon.

“I have found my Shangri-la,” he says, brushing aside the suggestion that he take even a little time away from cycling to write a book. There are still too many parts of the world left to explore.

“While my legs hold out and while there are new places, and there seems to be always new places, it doesn’t matter how old and long I travel…”

Stücke never finishes the sentence. Instead, his mind jumps to the most recent places he visited in Japan and the adventures yet to come: Canada’s north this summer and, if he can raise the money, the remaining far-flung islands needed to complete his quest to visit every country in the world.

Money may not be exactly easy to come by but it’s certainly easier for Stücke now than when he started. He spent his first years scraping by on as little as 50 cents a day and has even resorted to fixing his own teeth with superglue, rather than go to the dentist.

“It was shoestring travel in the first 20 years. You don’t spend any money. You just wait until somebody invites you and then you eat like a camel. You eat 3 kilograms of meat so for the next 3 days you don’t need to eat. It was always like that and no transport was ever paid for.”

“Now I have a bit of a name and money suddenly comes from all kinds of sources and I can even play a bit of a rich guy. I even sponsor other cyclists a little bit because I feel I had such a hard time in the beginning and people gave me so much all the time that it’s about time to give something back.”

To hear the full interview with Heinz Stucke, listen to Episode 34 of the TravellingTwo Bike Touring Podcast.

On the road since 1962, he’s covered 600,000km by bicycle, through most of the countries in the world. Now 70 years old, Heinz is still going strong.

I was fortunate to speak to Heinz by phone while he was taking a winter break in Paris.

In this 45-minute interview (the best of a 2 hour phone conversation), Heinz talks about how his approach to bike touring has changed over the years, why he doesn’t wear a helmet but believes it should be illegal to cycle without a mirror, how he really feels about bicycle paths and what he hopes to achieve in future years.

Show Notes:

• Heinz’s Story on the Bike China site
• A nice article on Heinz by Ron Gluckman
• The 2 people who helped put me in touch with Heinz:  Steven Tober and Daisuke
• Theme music by Josh Woodward

*Some people have indicated they find Heinz hard to understand because of his accent. Unfortunately, we don’t have a transcript of the podcast (if anyone wants to volunteer to do one, that would be great!) but you can read a story based on the interview.

Bike touring in Norway means dealing with plenty of tunnels, some of them long, dark and narrow.

Happily there’s an excellent Map of Norwegian Tunnels to help you sort the bike-friendly tunnels from the ones to avoid.

The authors compiled the map after cycling in Norway and dealing with tunnels up to 24km long.

“In one tunnel it was so dark even with reasonable lights and a head torch I got quite disorientated especially after being blinded by the lights of the on coming traffic and this coupled with the traffic noise which seems to be magnified 10 times, can make for a quite scary experience and not for the inexperienced rider!” -Cycle Tourer website

They divide tunnels into 3 main categories:

Tunnels open to cyclists and considered to be OK to cycle through.

Tunnels open to cyclists but caution required.

Tunnel closed or unsuitable for cyclists.

You can see the tunnel locations on an interactive map, download a POI file for your GPS and even search for the tunnels by road number.

The same couple also put together some excellent general notes on cycle touring in Norway.

Still, ensuring you have the best banking arrangement possible in place and being prepared for the financial challenges you might face down the road, is one part of travelling you can’t afford to ignore. Here are our top money management tips for bike tourists.

They include tips on picking the best bank before you go, arranging emergency back-up help and being savvy when changing money.

Read more about Managing Money On A Bike Tour.

Let’s face it. Life is busy. You have to go to work, come home, do the chores, spend time with the family… and by the time all that is done, there’s not a whole lot of time left to go bike touring.

So what’s the wannabe bike tourist to do, when getting away for a real bike tour seems impossible?

That’s the question I’ve been pondering lately, as I try to get back into the swing of working life, balancing a desire to be on the road with the realities of an office job and the need to save a bit of money.

So when I was browsing the Adventure Cycling Association blog over the weekend, an article about S24O bike trips (pdf) caught my eye. For the uninitiated, S24O stands for Sub 24-hour Overnight – in other words, a bike trip that takes you from your home to a campsite and back again in a day or less. Grant Petersen, who coined the term S24O, explains what it’s all about:

“You leave on your bike in the late afternoon or evening, ride to your campsite in a few hours, camp, sleep, and ride home the next morning. It’s that simple, and that’s the beauty of it. You can fit it in. It requires almost no planning or time commitment. In the past four years I’ve done more than fifty of them, and I’m no planner.” – Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycle Works

I’m particularly taken by Grant’s idea of the S24O bike trip as the perfect way to test out equipment, techniques and even bike touring itself. It doesn’t matter if you wake up cold, if rain starts pouring down or you forgot something because the next morning you know you’ll be back home – hopefully a little wiser for your experience.

Now my mind is dreaming up all kinds of places I can reach within an hour’s ride. I’m dying to head out on a mini bike touring adventure and I can no longer use a lack of time as my excuse. There are those woods near my house, and that place near the beach that I spotted on a recent ride and thought would make a great wild camping spot. What about you? Where would you go on a S24O?

To read more about S24O bike trips, check out an account of an S24O bike trip on Kent’s Bike Blog or browse a whole site dedicated to S24O bicycle touring.

If you’re planning a bike trip, or have some knowledge to share, come join us and other adventurous souls in London next month.

Over a pint of beer, we’ll be happy to share what we know. Alastair Humphreys – who proposed the evening – will be there and plenty of other seasoned bike tourists are also going to try and make it.

The fun will take place on Tuesday, March 9th on the top floor of the Iron Duke Pub in Victoria Station, from 6:30pm until about 9pm. Hope to see you there!

And please, if you can, pass the message along via your own blog, Facebook and Twitter.

This bicycle (spotted recently on one of our walks around The Hague) might be just the decoration inspiration you need to sweep someone off their feet. The Dutch are always dressing up their bicycles, but we’ve never seen one quite as impressive as this!

Discovering a crack in your bike frame in the middle of a tour is always worrying.

Thankfully, it doesn’t happen that often but when it does, what can you do, to stop the crack widening? And will you have to abandon your trip?

Framebuilder Marten Gerritsen, who runs M-gineering in Holland, shares some tips on how to stop a cracked frame from getting worse and where to get it repaired, if there are no bicycle specialists in the area.

Read more in: What should I do if my frame breaks during a trip?

This is the latest question in our new Ask A Mechanic series. Have a question of your own? Share it with us and we’ll get the experts to answer it in a future post.

We call this mirror our lifesaver because it provided a constant view of what was happening behind us. When a car was approaching too quickly or about to pass too closely, the Take-A-Look mirror ($16 from REI) gave us the vital extra few seconds we needed to react and either get out of the way or signal our presence to the car driver.

For such a valuable tool, the Take-A-Look mirror is very simple. An acrylic, square mirror sits on the end of a wire. That’s it. There are no fancy mounting systems to deal with. You just slip it over the arms of your sunglasses or onto your helmet.

Read the rest of the review on the Take-A-Look mirror

A new bicycle touring route that takes cyclists all the way from the Canadian border to Mexico, along the stunning Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, has been revealed by the Adventure Cycling Association.

Maps for the 3,800km journey through Washington, Oregon and California, will be available in April – just in time for the summer biking season.

Not only does this route get bike tourists away from the often busy Pacific Coastline (popular with cars as well as cyclists), it also takes in a number of national parks, including Mt. Rainier in Washington, Crater Lake in Oregon and California’s famous Yosemite National Park.

The last section of the journey sounds especially intriguing, from Lake Isabella, California to the Mexican border.

“Lakes, mountains, deserts and valleys, this section has them all! Highlights include the Mohave Desert, San Gabriel Mountains, San Gorgonio Mountains and the rustic small town of Idyllwild against the background of the San Jacinto Mountains. There are also plenty of scenic byways along the way beginning with the Angeles Crest on to Rim of the World and finally to the Sunrise Scenic Byway. The route ends at the Mexican border town of Tecate. This section intersects with the Southern Tier Bicycle Route in Pine Valley, California.” -Adventure Cycling Association

Until the maps are officially published, you can download an overview from the ACA website.

“Is it safe to bike tour in New Zealand?”

That question has come our way a lot lately, following a few high-profile deaths of cycle tourists in a country that was once promoted as a bike touring paradise.

We decided it was time to investigate so we talked to cycling advocates and bike tourists with recent, first-hand experience of touring in New Zealand. The answer appears to be that yes, New Zealand still is a very worthy destination, but one where you might want to put extra focus on arriving with all the equipment you need to ride on the back roads.

Read more in: Is New Zealand Still Safe for Bike Tourists?

When we think of cycle touring, we dream of quiet roads and friendly places.

It’s like that most of the time, but not always, so this week we’re delving deeper into some of the concerns you’ve told us you have about travelling by bicycle.

Since traffic is a big worry, according to our poll on your bike touring concerns, we talk to Jean from Cycle Training UK about how to cycle safely in traffic. And we speak to Dan Martin about some of the tricky situations he encountered on his bike trip from Korea to Capetown.

We don’t promise to give you all the answers but hopefully this show will at least give you some ideas of how you can lower the risk of bike touring when there is heavy traffic, plus hints for dealing with other tricky situations that arise while you’re on tour, like how to find a place to sleep and ward off chasing dogs.

Show Notes:

• Cycle Training UK offer lessons for riding in traffic and cities.
• Dan Martin has completed many miles on his bike and is now planning a Global Triathalon.
• Theme music by Josh Woodward

He’s aiming to complete the 29,000km circuit in less than 150 days and will follow a challenging route that takes in northern Africa, India and Argentina. The journey is outlined on his website, the Great Bike Ride.

“I really want to enjoy it, so I’m not going to push it too far, but I do want to smash the record. I’d like to make it so that future record breakers will all have to hurt themselves a lot to beat me,” he said.

The most recent attempt by Julian Sayarer took 165 days. Previous rides included James Bowthorpe (176 days) and Mark Beaumont (194 days).

“I’m a little more experienced as a world traveller and as competitive cyclist than those guys, so I hope to be travelling lighter, pedaling harder, and putting in longer days,” he said.

While Vin is aiming to pedal hard and long, he hasn’t chosen the easiest route, favoring adventure over simplicity.

“I wanted a proper adventure and to be the first person to take in all the populated continents in setting the record. No-one has touched Africa or South America before. Libya is rich in ancient and modern history, and I wanted to see where my Granddad spent some of the second world war.”

“India is a risk. Last time I was there I was hospitalised buy bacterial and amoebic dysentery, but the (main) roads are great and the land is beautiful. The crossing from Chile to Argentina just looks so exciting – very high in the Andes over the shoulder of one of the world’s great peaks Aconcagua. Snow might delay me here.”

Vin is raising money for the Geoff Thomas Foundation as part of his ride.

Shimano is stirring up the market for internal hub gears with the launch of its new 11-speed Alfine model. Could this be a new challenge for the German-engineered Rohloff hub, by far the favourite of touring cyclists to date?

The Shimano option is certainly less expensive. With an expected retail price of just $419 U.S. or about €300, it costs a fraction of the Rohloff and will be infinitely more accessible to cycle tourists who love the convenience of internal hub gearing but aren’t prepared to spend thousands of dollars on a top-notch expedition touring bike.

The Shimano Alfine also has a weight advantage, at 1,600 grams versus 1,847 grams for the Rohloff.

And while the Shimano doesn’t have quite the gear range that Rohloff does, at 11 speeds to Rohloff’s 14 speeds, or a ratio of 409% compared with 526% for the Rohloff, it’s getting close. Some cyclists may be more than willing to compromise.

If you’re wondering what those numbers mean, a 409% gear ratio means the highest gear is 4.09 times greater than the lowest gear. The increments between the gears are 17% in 2 cases and 13% for the remaining 8.

The first models of the new 11 speed Shimano Alfine are due out in September 2010.

Read more on Bike Europe and on the German site Aktiv Radfahren.

We have to put our hands up and declare ourselves guilty.

Yes, guilty of dreaming of bike touring again, a mere 4 months into our re-integration. In the last week alone we’ve considered the Great Divide, India and South America as possibilities for the future.

And then we remember that we only just got back, and maybe we should work on building up the bank balance a bit longer? But it’s tough when you have road lust and we’ve got it bad. We clearly need some kind of 10-step program.

Or maybe we’ll just follow these tips from Eric, the owner of the Vakantiefietser bike touring shop in Amsterdam.

For bike tourists suffering withdrawal pains, he recommends these steps:

• Walk around in your SPD shoes at home.
• Have a cold shower outside, from a bucket.
• Stuff your moneybelt under your pillow.
• Wear your old sun-faded t-shirts.
• Sit 1 hour per day in an internet cafe.
• Ask a taxi driver or shop keeper if he wants to bargain.
• Check your shoes when you put them on. Maybe there’s a snake in them!

Maybe we can add a few:

• Don’t shower for 3 days. Smear dirt on your body for extra effect.
• After 3 days, don’t have a proper shower. Use baby wipes instead.
• Eat pasta and carrots from a pot for supper.
• Put your tent up in your living room and sleep inside it.
• Stuff some dirty clothes underneath your head for a pillow.
• Put the contents of your closet into your panniers.
• Pretend no one speaks your language. Try to get by just with sign language.

We’ll let you know if any of these steps help our rehabilitation…

I got an email tonight from our friends Gayle and John, who are planning a bicycle trip from Thailand to England.

“Any special tips about packing the old Ortliebs?” Gayle asked. “We have checked and everything easily fits into the panniers but we’re not sure how light the front ones should be…? Is it just trial and error?”

For Gayle, and all the other cycle tourists out there, here are 6 of our top tips on how to pack your bicycle panniers.

He’s racked up 50,000 miles on his recumbent trike, enough to go twice around the earth but this is not a typical tale of an adventurer, pedaling through far off lands in the prime of youth.

This is the story of someone who didn’t start cycling until he was in his 50s and diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease.  His name is Jim Wetherell or “Parky” to his friends. For us, he just might be the most inspiring cyclist we’ve come across yet.

On his appropriately named website – I Never Give Up – we learned more about Parky.

His story started in 1995, when he noticed a quiver in his hands. Doctors diagnosed Parkinsons Disease and, for a while, life looked bleak. Parky’s marriage broke down. He became depressed. He needed something to focus on.

That something, turned out to be cycling. Over the next 14 years, Parky rode his trike as much as possible. He overcame tremors, bladder problems and fatigue along the way, all brought on by Parkinsons Disease.

His achievements include a 500  mile trip through California and the 2006 RAGBRAI tour across Iowa. In May of 2009, Parky reached his goal of cycling 50,000 miles.

Describing his first long trip, Parky offered some wise words for any touring cyclist.

“To ride 450/500 miles is tough, but, bring along the right attitude (A 9 DAY RIDE – ONE DAY AT A TIME) will make the ride much more enjoyable. Setting a daily goal and just focusing on that goal, not only shortens the trip, but also tends to pump you up for tomorrow. And – a little bit of pride never hurt anyone!”

A sticker on his trike, made to look like a prescription label, also says a lot about Parky’s love of cycling.

“Take as directed to strengthen heart, lungs and muscles. Use 3X/week, 20 minutes per dose. For best results, wear spandex.”

This year, Parky will try to ride RAGBRAI again. He needs sponsors and he needs to train to stay in shape but if his previous efforts are anything to go by, we are sure he will achieve his goal.

Canadian couple Scott & Becky left their home in Ottawa in 2008 to cycle around the world on recumbent bicycles.

As part of their 16 month trip, they biked all the way across Canada, including remote stretches in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Scott & Becky tell us about the highlights of their route across Canada, including seeing bear and moose in the west, meeting friendly people in the prairies and enjoying great value B&Bs in the east, all in this week’s 10 Questions: Cycling Across Canada.

And don’t forget to check out Scott & Becky’s blog, Going East – a journal of a trip not just across Canada but around the world, without using airplanes.

If you’d like to answer 10 questions about a favourite cycling destination, read the guidelines and then get in touch.

“Where are we going? Where should we go? We don’t really know yet for sure.”

Those are the words of Alex and Meredith, currently cycling the Pacific coastline. Their adventure started in Vancouver and has already taken them into Mexico, with plans to go further south yet. It’s an amazing journey, when you consider that before last October, they’d never taken a trip longer than 20km.

Alex and Meredith document their trip with journal entries, photos and podcasts on their site Nowhere Soon and in a recent post they describe playfully how the bikes are holding up so far:

“There is no doubt that Bichael and Sylvia are great bikes with best intentions, but lately they’ve been struggling. Bichael has been making a mysterious clicking noise that he refuses to reveal the source of. He also recently let a spoke break and popped off his own chain for the first time ever. His shifting is passably, but frankly a little bit lazy and he’s been rattling loose a screw here and there. Sylvia hasn’t exactly been a doll either. Meredith reports that her gear-shifting seems to fluctuate with her mood and her front wheel has recently begun to warp.”

They also describe how they pass the time on their bikes (making up mind games, or rapping about the things they see) and how they think about distance differently after bike travel.

“Biking across the Golden Gate bridge late last week caused a small rupture in my sense of distance. I had propelled myself to the special far-away place. In one way, distance shrunk: I had pedalled to California. But at the same time, distance felt so real: I had watched every single mile and kilometre go by. I had experienced distance in full. Uphill and down.”

The trip is continuing through March.

We have a new feature here on the site: the chance to

Ready to answer are framebuilders and bike shop owners, all with some touring experience. So send us your questions and we’ll submit them to the experts.  This week, we tackle the question of chain wear.

How do you tell if your chain is worn and are some chains stronger than others? Read on to find out.

This week we’re off to cycle the TransAmerica Trail from Oregon to Virgina with Melanie.

Then there’s a preview of an interview with the famous Heinz Stücke, who tells us how his bike was stolen in Siberia. We also discuss our recent winter camping trip, including 3 things to take along for cold weather cycling.

Show Notes:

• Pictures from our winter bike camping trip
• TransAmerica summary from the Adventure Cycling Association
• Nick’s TransAmerica 2002 (Yodeling Katy recording)
• Kiki Bikes Across The U.S. (not discussed in the podcast but a great Transamerican resource)
• Heinz Stücke
• Theme music by Josh Woodward