Day 2 - Wellington to Tintinara

No hills, but lots of wind, that just about sums up todays ride to Tintinara,

so we were up nice and early this morning, got the panniers packed, posted the previouse days blog and made a few tweeks to the bikes, mainly playing around with the postion of the rear panniers on the racks to see how it effected handeling, then off we headed in search of water and food for the start of the day.

Our first stop of the day came 500 meters in to the ride where we got to the Murray River on the edge of Wellington. after joining the queu we eventualy boarded the ferry and were away on our 200 meter ride across the river.

We were eventually off and riding once again, we had been tossing up between two possible routes for this second leg and in the end decided we would brave the highway, we knew it would be busy and that there were roadworks but it was the most direct route and didn't really feel like tackling more rough dirt roads just yet. Well the first 30km's or so went quire well after we started with the wind in our backs until Tailem Bend and the roadworks turned out to be a blessing in disguise, more often than not the speed limit was down to between 60 to 80 and in some cases even slower, we also found the dirt left of the shoulder was often smoother than the road, giving us a good 5 meters at times from the traffic.

We were more than happy to share the road with trucks and cars at this speed.

But after the first 30km's we began to face strong head winds and if it wasn't in our faces it was blowing us around from the side, add the heat (Jason's bike computer read over 40 degrees at one point.) to this and the rest of the day became pretty tough.

Oh and Garry had his second crash of the tour, this time pulling of an old favourite where he stopped and couldn't get his feet out of the pedals fast enough, sure enough there we was laying on the ground with the bike on top of him, a predicament that was made worse by the extra weight of the load on his bike, unfortunately Jason couldn't get the camera out fast enough for a shot.

One of the interesting traffic safety signs we saw along the way.

The long straight road to Tintinara.

South Australia is the driest state in Australia and we could see why, the roads are open and straight with little to no shelter from the wind and heat, all we could do was keep rolling along and keep the fluids up. 

We eventually made it to Coonalpyn where we simply had to get out of the heat for a while before continuing on, after a good 1/2 hour break we were back on the road and heading for Tintinara.

Garry having a little nap on the lawn at Coonalpyn.

Arriving into Tintinara, our stop for the night.

Garry and Jason would like to thank the local store in Coomandook for their hospitality and donation to our charities during our lunch stop today and also the local motel in Tintinara who generously donated a room to us for the night.

It's an early start tomorrow for our longest leg for the week, 125km's from Tintinara to Kaniva in Victoria.

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.