I’m a long time bicycle tourer, traveller and rider – together with those recreational diversions, add tinkering, repairing, maintaining, reading about bicycles and touring to the aforementioned and you can imagine where a lot of my time is spent! So yes, anything bicycle is my main interest/hobby! But at the very least, it is an enjoyable pastime which allows for a lot of dreaming and equal amounts of doing!

At one time I had seven bikes including two touring rigs, but eventually it came time to cull the herd. My main touring bike used to be a venerable Cannondale T2000 that I relentlessly modified, ad nauseum! (I’m a retired machinist/fitter, so tinkering comes very naturally). I sold the Cannondale to leave me with my break-apart touring bike that I built up beginning with a K2 suspension mountain bike frame then extensively modified to fit my needs; also to fit into an airline legal case for some previous overseas ventures.
I loved that T2000 Cannondale but it was much easier to sell than my “one-off” custom home built bike.

Now fast forward to 2019 and I felt that my K2 was getting a little tired and I had a hankering for a steel frame touring bike with disc brakes. Me being me, wanting to build it up myself, resulted in the purchase of a frame and fork for the very popular and relatively inexpensive Surly Disc Trucker.

Mostly in the past, I emailed journal entries to home then made up web pages after the fact – hence many of my scribblings were on a seperate website. I’m (very) slowly moving my journal archive to this site.
The “work in progress” journal archive and other more recent journals are available from the above menu bar item “Touring.” There are also a links to the latest blog entries, rides and reviews on the top row menu bar.
While cycle touring, I never wrote to a blog until a few years ago as I never used to travel with any device that was fully internet capable, but technology has moved in leaps and bounds so now with a tablet and/or phone device I will be able to write and post “live” during future tours and travels as I wish. And I’m sure that Basil will have some comments to add… as usual!

I hope that you enjoy ‘riding along’ even if only vicariously!