Day 1 - Adelaide to Wellington

Climb, Climb, Climb. For almost 50km's out of the 102km's we did, we climbed. That was not fun and took us almost half of the 6hrs on the road just to do.

But I should start from the beginning.

8am wake up to get the bikes ready so that we could be on the road by 10am. That almost happened. We only missed our start time by one and a half hours but we were at Rymill Park when we said we would. Just had to fiddle with the bikes a little.

Then off we went.

Seems the day was destined to be eventful.

To begin with Jason got attacked by ants after he stopped on the side of the road and just happened to be standing on the nest. Then half way up Mount Lofty we met some riders from the UK who were on their final day of a Sydney to Adelaide tour, and Garry had a small accident (ran into a barricade on the way up the Adelaide hills) and scratched his pannier bag but didnt come off. Great skill on his part he thinks, mind you he was only doing about 5kph.

Then we climbed and climbed some more.

The hill we had to get to the top of.

On the way up we went through a little town called Hahndorf. A German themed town in the outer hills of Adelaide. This was our first main stop for some lunch, a German sausage sandwich. A nice place but very busy.

Then one of the worst experiances of the day. The dread dirt road. It was our intention to cut a few km's off the days ride. It started off promising and a little fun. A smooth road with a few bumps here and there. Then it got angry and seemed to never end. Bumpy, rocky and sandy. It was like that for almost 10km's if not a little longer.

When we finally hit a bit of tarmac Garry couldnt believe it so he kissed the road. That may have been a bit premature as the wind came up and wanted to stop us dead in our tracks

Finally after 102km's and many trials along the way we got to our first stop, Wellington. A bed, shower and food awaited us.

On to day 2.

The tour begins - Adelaide Launch

It has begun. The official launch of 'The Long Road'. But as normal we don't do things the way everyone else would with say our supporters and close friends having a few drinks and pulling on some party poppers. Oh no. We like to make it difficult on ourselves. Normal service has resumed some would say.

In this case we decided that a short trip from Adelaide to Melbourne, as in 760km's short, would be far more beneficial. I suppose it is considering that there are a number of pieces to 'The Long Road' puzzle that requires testing. Such as our BAUM Cycles Burke and Wills touring bikes with SRAM components (sneaky plug over for now) as well as ourselves. We are so use to riding road bikes that these tourers may take a few KM's to get use to while our legs, heart and backsides will also need to get use to being on the road for 5 or more hours at a time. Theres also camp site setup to run through, communicating with the outside world (thats you) while on the road, and working out the best way to place the 30 odd kilos of equipment we need to carry on the bikes so we don't end up either:

• going over the bars with the first hill we encounter OR
• not being able to keep the front wheel on the ground because we overloaded the rear.
• 
  
• As I said… we make it hard for ourselves.

So whats the G.O?

Starting in Adelaide on the 19th of February at 10am in Rymil Park we will snake our way up the hills and out on the highway. At this stage we may deviate a little with our route depending on the state of the highway and the likelihood of us getting squashed by a truck or blown into the bushes as they fly past.

Before long, 7 days and 760km's later, we should hit Melbourne finishing up at Central Pier in the Docklands.

Along the way we will be stopping into some of the little towns that make up the South Australian and Victorian outback with the plan on seeing some of the support groups as we go. To us a highlight as its these people we want to help.

So there you go.

If you live in Adelaide or Melbourne we would be delighted to see you so come on down and say hello. It would be great to see you all.

Custom Bikes, Part 2 - Burke & Wills.

In early 09 I began playing with the idea of bicycle touring, it was something that I had always thought would be a fantastic way to travel and see the world, but never had the chance to do.

I began looking at what options were out there in terms of bikes, the choices at the time seemed to be either road or mountain bikes adapted for the task but very few that looked like it could handle multiple tasks well from fully loaded road touring to off road touring and single-track.

I had seen people setting up old 700c road bikes with wider knobby tyres or running drop bars on fully ridged 29er mountain bikes and loved the idea of combining the two styles of bike into one, the drop bars allowing more hand positions than a standard flat bar, while also having the option and choice of 700c road tyres or 29” knobbys.

Salsa had not long began making the Fargo which I liked the idea of, sort of an adventure tourer, but I wanted something a little more personal so I began looking at custom builders to create something based around a frame I had designed.

It was then that I thought I would drop in down at Baum in Geelong not really knowing what to expect to look into having something made.

Little did I know this trip would end up with me working at Baum for a while and the touring idea would be put on hold. That is until a discussion with Garry turned into what has become The Long Road Tour.

So... It's been a little while coming, but a little over 3 years since my original idea for having a custom drop-bar 29er made, my new Baum Wills is ready to go, together with Garry’s Baum Burke, complete with a custom "The Long Road" version of Baum's GTB paint scheme, and we couldn’t have asked for a better result.



Over the last few weeks I had been making regular trips down to Geelong to help with the finishing process and final assembly of the bikes. I documented the process with a selection of images bellow.



Masking the frame to work out positioning of the graphics before polishing.

 

Darren polishing the titanium frame before masking.



Weeding out the masks for the frames graphics.



Masking the frame for sandblasting.

Sandblasting finished, graphics covered over for second blast with glass bead.

Detail under the down tube after bead blasting was finished, The Long Road Tour logos.

Frame and parts ready to build.

Building up the Wills down at the Baum workshop.



Garry's frame ready for assembly.

My Custom TLR BAUM Wills Ti drop bar 29er/tourer.



Garry's Custom TLR BAUM Burke Steel drop bar 29er/tourer.



Burke and Wills ready to go, only thing left to do now is attach the Tubus racks and Ortlieb pannier bags.

Bellow is the build specifications list for the two bikes.

FRAME: Baum Burke (steel), Baum Wills (Ti).

FORK: Salsa Fargo V2.

HEADSET: Chris King Nothreadset.

DRIVTRAIN: SRAM X9 2x10, 175mm 42-28 Crankset

11-32 cassette.

BRAKES: SRAM Apex levers, Avid BB7 Road discs.

BOTTOM BRACKET : SRAM.

STEM: Thomson Elite X4 10°.

POST: Thomson Elite.

SEAT: Brooks B17.

BAR: Salsa Woodchipper.

TAPE: Fizik.

PEDALS: Shimano XTR.

RIMS: DT Swiss TK540.

HUBS: Chris King ISO disc front, ISO 150 disc rear.

TYRES: TBD

EXTRAS : King bottle cages, Stainless/Ti

RACKS: Tubus, Duo front, Logo rear.

PANNIERS: Ortlieb, Back roller classic, Front roller classic. 

Additional images can be found on our flickr site:

Jason's Wills, Garry's Burke.

Both Garry and I would like to thank everyone that has helped contribute to the making of our two touring bikes, especially Darren and the team down at Baum Cycles in Geelong and Rob at SRAM Australia for setting us up with a couple of group sets.

The Year Ahead.

2012 is finely here and what a year it’s going to be for us, a year full of adventure and excitement, visiting new countries and experiencing new cultures as we embark on our journey half way around the world, but most importantly doing what we can to help raise awareness and funds for both Parkinson’s Disease and Cancer.

There are now only 3 months to go before we head of on our first leg up the east coast of Australia and our preparations are moving along nicely.

Over the past few weeks we have added two more charities that we will be supporting for our UK/EU leg of our trip, CHILDREN with CANCER UK and PARKINSON'S UK joining Cure Cancer Australia, Parkinson’s NSW, Livestrong and Michael J Fox Foundation for the Australian and US legs respectively.

 

In the next few weeks we will be making way to Adelaide, South Australia to begin our pre-tour ride to Melbourne, Victoria at the end of January.

It is during this time that we will be officially launching The Long Road Tour together with our all new website where you will be able to follow us as we roll down the road, The new site will also include information and online donation pages for all the charities involved throughout our tour.

Our bikes are also now coming together and will be ready to go in the next week or two, stay tuned for the forthcoming post where we will show our Burke and Wills touring bikes in greater detail.