Where have we been...

Bit of a slow month for us update wise but only because there was a heap of good quality bike racing on with the "Tour de France" and it's thrills and spills, the Mountain Bike World Cup and finally the BMX World Champs. Out of all that the Aussies did, I would say, well. Cadel Evans got his first Tour victory (the first Australian to win it) and our Junior Women now have a BMX world champ. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi.... After all that excitement we plain and simply were exhausted, but as the saying goes, it's time to get back in the saddle.

What's been happening ...... Hmmmmm. Well Jason's been using his graphical skills and tinkering away with the tour maps trying as always to find the best way across each country (including staying away from bears and mountain lions). At one stage I believe his mapping pen slipped because I'm sure we weren't heading to Brisbane, Australia, but then I was informed that it wasn't a mistake and yes we were going to the Sunshine state.

We've also been looking at some new phones and mobile devices which we will be taking with us. The idea was to try and use mobiles to update you all on what we are up to, including posting pics and vids. At the moment we are 75% certain the Samsung Galaxy S2 will do everything we need but we are holding off a little to check out some of the other competition. If you have any opinions on these or other phones let us know especially some of our international friends. We would love to know how they go in the US and EU.

It's "Good News Week"....

What a week we've just had. A week full of fantastic news from our existing sponsors and from two new sponsors we've been chasing for the last couple of months.

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.

The Fit Bike.

These will be fitted with:
-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. :-)

The Long Road Pre-Tour.

Over the last three to four months Garry and I have discussed our bike ride with many different people, we have had allot of fantastic feedback and interesting suggestions thrown our way, however one particular idea stood out to us as something we should seriously consider.
This was to split up our tour into a selection of shorter rides, or setting up additional lead-up rides to build up to the main event.

While both suggestions were good in their own way we did not want to split our tour up as this would defeat the purpose of what we are trying to achieve in the first place, so we decided to add an additional ride a few months prior to the main tour start date.

So what is the point of doing a lead-up ride rather than just jumping in head first to our main tour? Well there are a number of reasons behind our decision, first and foremost we believe it will be a great opportunity to further promote of our main tour and generate additional awareness for our two worthy causes.

Secondly was to get a better idea of where we are at in our preparations, providing us with valuable time in the saddle getting used to our new bikes which will both be custom made for us for the tour, as well as working out the best ways to manage our gear when we are fully loaded.


Adelaide to Melbourne.

We wanted a route that would lead-in to our main tour nicely without doubling up on destinations, riding toward our main tour start point seemed like a logical step. So Adelaide to Melbourne and in late January it was.

Of cause there was another reason for choosing Adelaide in January as our start point, The “Tour Down Under”. Being a bike racing fan I couldn’t help myself, we could go and watch the tour and then kick of our ride the day after the final stage, couldn’t think of a better way to start.

We have also been busy re-working our main tour route and in the coming weeks will be posting up a selection of new maps together with a blog about our reasons behind our destinations. For now here is an overall world map of the route.

We would like to announce Baum Cycles as the official bicycle frame supplier for The Long Road Tour.


Based in Geelong Australia, Baum Cycles are makers of some of the finest handcrafted titanium and steel bicycles in the world.


We will post up more details soon, but in the mean time head on over to the Baum Cycles web site at  http://www.baumcycles.com/ and check out their Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/baumcycles/