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 this [...]
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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.
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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 new [...]
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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 [...]
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