The week started with Garry making the trip down to Ballarat from Sydney on Sunday night. We had an important meeting early the next morning with a potential new sponsor and thought it best that we both be there to show our pretty faces.
Up early the next morning, hopefully prepared, after spending the last few nights going over some items we wanted to discuss and a few strategies if things did or didn't go the way we wanted (thanks Skype), we headed off. At first things didn’t quite go to plan. The person we had to meet called in sick and our morning meeting had to be re scheduled to the next day at the last minute. Not a major issue, just a minor hiccup more than anything but it just meant we could head to our next meeting a little earlier, a chat with the guys (and girl) at custom bike builder, Baum Cycles down the road at Geelong.
Having, until recently, worked full time for Baum, it’s always good to get down to Geelong and catch up with Darren, Jodie, Dave, Nick and see what interesting colour schemes Jared has come up with in the paint shop. I was also keen to show Garry around so he could get an idea of the process we would be going through to get our custom frames.We spent the afternoon working out requirements and specs for the bikes and this is what we came up with so far:
A Baum Wills (Titanium) 29er touring frame and a Baum Burke (Steel) 29er touring frame.
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| The Fit Bike. |
-Salsa Fargo touring forks,
-Salsa Woodchipper handlebars,
-Thomson Stems and posts,
-Brooks B17 Saddles,
and a full set of SRAM Components.
The process for getting a custom bike can be quite a long one but in the end will be more than worth the wait as these beasts will be more suited to the two of us and our own person styles (although Garry is still trying to work out what that style is). We will be posting a series of write ups about the process from concept and bike fit through to the finished product over the course of the year as we lead up to the tour.
To take a look at what Baum do you can visit their site at www.baumcycles.com
After a massive day with ups and downs it was time to send Garry back to Sydney but not before handing over a few presents which I'm sure you've all seen the photo of. I've been told he's got some plans for the sleeping bag which normal people wouldn't normally do so keep an eye out for that.
Everything just got better the following day with our rescheduled meeting, a teleconference with Bill from Telstra Country Wide. It took some time for word to get to Bill but he showed great interest in what we were doing and wanted to achieve. His excitement for the tour was infectious. We couldn't ask for more really. Not only did he agree to the items we were after but also offered help with PR and design for our new website. We will release some more details as we go.
Take a look at http://www.telstra.com.au/telstracountrywide/ to see some of the products Telstra have on offer.
We had also been talking to Rob from SRAM for a few months now regarding components for our bikes and later in the week we received word that we could announce them as the official component sponsor for The Long Road.Sram will be fitting out our bikes with a mix of X9 and Apex components.
We will be posting further about SRAM in the near future, in the mean time check them out at http://www.sram.com/
Also check out SRAM’s own charity, World Bicycle Relief, http://www.worldbicyclerelief.org/
So that's about it. A massive week of good news. :-)
