Monthly Archives: September 2009

Perception Versus Reality In Travel

By Tom | Published: September 30, 2009
It was late April and the Ethiopian high­lands had been rolling beneath my wheels for sev­eral days. Inch­ing towards Dji­bouti, I con­sul­ted detailed road-engineers’ maps of the coun­try to plan my route, and found an enticing-looking dirt track through the Afar region of the infam­ous Dana­kil Depression. I’d developed some­thing of a romantic fas­cin­a­tion with [...]
Posted in Expedition Log, Off The Bike | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

First-Impressions Review Of The Extrawheel Voyager

By Tom | Published: September 23, 2009
Dur­ing 2007 and 2008, Andy and I road-tested some pro­to­type trail­ers for the Pol­ish com­pany Extrawheel who have been help­ing to sup­port Ride Earth. Today we took the final pro­duc­tion ver­sion of the Extrawheel Voy­ager for a spin to see how it com­pared to those early models.
Posted in Off The Bike | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Building A Bicycle Wheel In Ten Easy Steps

By Tom | Published: September 12, 2009
People fear wheel-building. None more so than tour­ing cyc­lists. Nobody, apart from a tiny elite of skilled crafts­men in scattered bike shops across the world, should dare impinge on this secret­ive world of mech­an­ical artistry. But we all have a capa­city for art, don’t we? Could it really be all that dif­fi­cult? I had a [...]
Posted in Off The Bike | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

Why Cycle-Touring Is Good For Your Legs

By Tom | Published: September 8, 2009
Since I got back from a spon­tan­eous hitch­ing trip from Armenia to Eng­land and back, my mind has been on the prob­lem of keep­ing fit. Like an awful lot of us, I’m destined to spend my time (for the next few months, at least) in a city. More than half of the world’s human pop­u­la­tion [...]
Posted in Off The Bike | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments