The Kit and Bike

My bike (the Blue Shift) is a Surly Disc Trucker which I built up a few years ago. It's had the hell ridden out of it since the last tour, including lots of off-road hacking around Bedfordshire so needed a bit of TLC:

I managed to bend the front rim in Germany last year by, ahem, riding into a curb while I was looking at the map. It was actually fine to ride on, but I replaced and rebuilt the wheel (using the same good hub and spokes) late last year.
I'd swapped out the front tyre for an old one I had on my old bike. It clearly was a bit thin, so I bought a new Marathon to replace it. I'm running a Marathon Plus on the rear, and the new Marathon on the front, which seems like a good compromise.
On a ride around the lanes I managed to overshift my chain behind the cassette and grind the driveside spokes. I know from experience that this can seriously weaken them and lead to spoke breakage, so thought I should take a look. It was a serious effort with the chain whip to get the cassette lock ring off (I'd overtightened it, d'oh) but I managed to avoid doing myself any serious injury and managed to get to those spokes. Two were indeed rather badly chewed up - even though I'd stopped immediately - and so I replaced them and re-trued the wheel.
Due to wet lube and lots of riding through fields, the drivetrain had got horrendously gummy and strewn with grass. Inexplicably, some tar also seemed to have got in there, and was thickly coating everything. When I tied to reverse peddle once day and realised the jockey wheels would no longer go around, I knew it was time for a clean. A lot of solvent action later, and I had a sparkling rear cassette and an almost worryingly supple chain. I removed the jockey wheels and gave them a greasing too.
New toe clips (the clips and straps themselves are indestructible, but I keep losing the screws and having to replace them with zip-ties. Once I lost both I figured it was time for a new £1.99 clip).

All this went swimmingly, until the 1 am the night before I was due to set off, when I realised that the drivetrain was grindy as all hell. Worried that the bottom bracket or hub bearing might be giving up, I spent a good hour taking it to bits and satisfying myself that it was those damn jockey wheels again. A little googling and it became clear that I'd installed them the wrong way around (who knew?). My best excuse for this is that they're so worn that telling them apart (or seeing the incredibly cryptic "G pulley" inscription for the top = guide wheel) is difficult. They're still not super-smooth, but a lot better.

While I was fiddling about I noticed too that the rear shifter cable had almost severed at the point after it was bolted to the derailler. I didn't like the look of this - so a hurried rush down to Halfords in my lunch break and I obtained a spare. Now if it breaks on the road I should be able to fix it.

What's thats coming towards you so quickly there's a Doppler effect? The Blue Shift rides again!

For the rest of the kit, I won't go through my whole kit list, as these things can get pretty dull - if anyone is interested, it is much the same as my previous tours with some additions:

New luggage. I got a new, and rather fancier, bar bag to replace the
old tiny one that had fallen apart. This has a proper map case (and an epic bar mount).
Mirror. I am slightly more concerned about the traffic in Poland and Czechia, figuring it might not be quite as careful as the scrupulous Germans or Swedes. I loved having a mirror on my old bike, but never replaced it after it eventually snapped. After much consideration of bar-mounted mirrors, I figured none would really be able to see past the luggage, and got a classic take-a-look helmet-mounted mirror off ebay. It took some extensive fiddling before I got it mounted right, but on a couple of practice rides seems to really work well. I've now got out of the habit of staring into it all the time.
Food. We're going to try out gnocchi this time. I have some English cheese as before, and a whole load of olives in case someone doesn't think I'm middle class enough. Just a load of chocolate and sweets and maltloaf. I really should stop lugging this over the continent. 200ml whisky in a plastic Tropicana bottle. No garlic, after what happened before.
Maps. I've a Michelin map (1:300K) for south-west Poland which seems fine, and a 1:200K Fraytag & Burndt map for the whole Czech Rep - the latter is detailed enough to have tracks on, though they are eyesight-ruiningly tiny. For Germany, I got a couple more ADFC maps which are if anything too detailed, and also bought along my map of the whole country.
GPS. I bought a handheld GPS when we went to Iceland so we wouldn't get lost up on the featureless mountainsides. I'm not a fan of using them to navigate day-to-day, but after a couple of navigational snafus that were more frustrating than amusing (including not being able to find France) I thought I'd bring it along. I won't be staring at it or slavishly following it onto motorways and mountainsides - it'll stay in the panniers most of the time while I use paper maps and a compass. I have detailed openstreetmap-based free maps loaded on it for all the countries I (plan to be) going through.

Sporting my new mirror. It may appear that I look like a total dork, but on closer inspection you'll see I in fact look really cool.

So that's it - I just need to finish my last day of working from home, and spin down to Sandy station. Train through London, across to Liverpool St. station and then direct to Harwich (none of this changing in Manningtree nonsense). The nice lady at Stevenage station assures me I need no bike reservation, so hopefully this all goes smoothly - and my jockey wheels don't all fall apart in the first five minutes.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	3
Comment on this entry	Comment	0