About my wheels: I'm just a bicycle, standing in front of a boy...

Surly Long Haul Trucker, 50,000km. One careless owner. New wheels, brakes, drive train all replaced in last 2,000km. Needs new rear tire. Rear rack prone to falling off. Otherwise in good condition. Absolutely not for sale.

In the movie it will be played by the bicycle from E.T.

I have had this bike for a long time but I've resisted giving it a name. We already spend almost all of our time within a few feet of each other, I didn't want to become even more attached. Even as I type this, it is only twenty feet away, locked up outside whimpering like a little puppy that wants to go out and play. But no, it shall not have a name. I've ridden all around North America on it and it's done more than 50,000km. I've only sworn at it and called it a useless pile of junk two or three times. Mostly it behaves okay, apart from the fact that there is always something wrong with it.

When I say that I've ridden the same bike 50,000km, I am, of course, telling only a half truth. Some of the bike has done 50,000km. The frame, the fork, the handlebars and perhaps most impressively, the brooks saddle are survivors. I replaced the wheels for this trip with Rigida rims and LX hubs, handbuilt and hopefully solid enough for Central Asia. The tires are Schwalbe Marathon Plus. The crankset is Shimano Alivio, the cassette Shimano HG50 and the chain SRAM PC551. I am planning to take two spare chains and use all three on rotation, swapping them every 2-3000km to prolong the life of the chainset and cassette. The brakes are standard Shimano V-brakes. I've also replaced the derailleurs for Shimano something or other. My friend James (played by Peter Crouch) provided me with some new old pedals. He also gave me a horn, although that broke after 20km, much to the dismay of everyone involved.

The Tubus racks are my biggest concern. The front one is stuck to the frame because the screws are rusted in for good. The back one recently broke off completely with snapped stays and sheared off bottom screws. I have hopefully solved that by drilling through the shorn screws and bolting the frame on at the bottom and getting new stays. If I have the same problem again with the screws I may have no choice but to simply weld the rack to the frame. As long as I never have to take the bike apart, it might just work.

I was planning to get a page detailing all the stuff I have but it might not happen, so I'll just briefly mention here that I have Ortlieb panniers that are very much falling apart but held together by a combination of cable ties and duct tape I see no logical reason not to embark on an extended world tour with them. I have recently purchased a Vango Banshee tent. Although this appears to be a good tent I almost immediately wished I'd got a dome tent simply because they can be pitched without pegs if need be, whereas this one I've got needs to be pegged into the ground, which will limit the places I can camp. But time will tell whether that was a good purchase. Generally speaking I have one pannier full of clothes, one pannier full of my sleeping bag and food, and one pannier full of tools, spares, books and diaries. The final pannier is full of cable ties and duct tape.

The system I have for clipping one pannier on to my rack involves a carabiner- (they don't come like this when they're new)

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