It’s actually cold here compared to their usual weather, but it still feels pretty nice to us. Our first real loaded ride from downtown San Diego to Coronado went pretty well. The bikes were easier to manage and we rode a bit faster than on our trial run. The distance wasn’t huge, but it was good practice.

Hey everybody, we’re in Portland now. Getting out of Seattle was a bit frantic, but we made it. We’ve been doing a little relaxing, but mostly trying to finish buying all the stuff we are going to take with us. Thank you SO much to all the people who gave us REI gift cards either for Christmas or Cindy’s graduation. We had NO trouble spending all of them

So what you see here is all of our packed bags, getting ready to be taken out to the car for our first “dry” run (although technically, it was raining) at biking with fully loaded bikes. My folks live in a pretty hilly area, so we opted to drive to a flat area near the house I grew up in (Google Earth file), so that we could get some easy miles under the belt before tackling the hills. That was a very smart move—these things are pretty scary to ride with all the bags on. The handlebars shimmy all over the place, and the bike feels like it’s going to snap in two. I’m not so worried about Cindy’s frame, but mine feels suspect. Maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to it. The wiggle in the front end also gets better at higher speeds. Which brings me to another discovery—we are going to be biking really slowly…

I got myself some prescription sunglasses for the trip that I went and picked up yesterday. These are the Ekynox SX model from Rudy Project. I originally wanted to get glasses with interchangeable Rx lenses, but then seeing how much they cost, I then downgraded my wish to some photochromic lenses. They weren’t available in prescription for this model, so I just went for a lens color that would be dark enough to take out the shine on the really bright days, without being too dark for overcast days. This color seems a good compromise. I just rode with them this morning, and this is going to be MUCH preferable to dealing with contacts on the road. Cindy is working on getting herself some Rx sunglasses from Smith. She’s getting an eye exam at this moment…

I was starting to become distraught about the GPS unit, thinking it wasn’t going to be practical to make it work, and wondering if I should take it back. Then I did a google search to try to see if there was anything anybody knew about using this device on a Mac. I came across a program called LoadMyTracks that I think is going to solve our problem. This is a little utility that downloads tracks (that’s GPS-speak for a recording of continuous travel) in Google Earth format. So we can download tracks from the unit offline, not worry about losing any due to lack of memory, and then upload them to Google Earth at our leisure. Actually, we could just post them directly to the blog…that’s something we could do on any computer (assuming that our internet access may be limited to computers that aren’t ours). Now the only obstacle to overcome is electricity, which I’m assuming will be more prevalent than the internet. On that note, two other nice things about the GPS unit are that a) it takes the same USB cable as our camera, and b) it can be charged from the USB port. Now that I’m starting to wonder how in the heck we’re going to be able to carry everything, every little thing we DON’T have to bring counts.

While it would be very cool to upload these files periodically along our trip to let everybody know where we’ve been, there is one major obstacle—you need to be connected to the internet to download the GPS data into Google Earth (well, pretty much to use it period). We’re not super-optimistic about our ability to access the internet along the way though. If anybody has any ideas about internet access (is there a dial-up service we could use in Latin America?), let us know.

New forks have been installed, and the front racks have been installed on both of the bikes. This is a picture of my bike, fitted with the Ortlieb sport packers. One thing (actually, I should say ANOTHER thing) I didn’t anticipate was how much trouble I’d have fitting the panniers on the front rack. We bought two sets of front panniers, the sport packers and the front rollers. The attachment apparatus was actually different on the two sets, such that the sport packers fit the rack and the front rollers did not. It’s times like these that buying stuff over the internet really sucks. Although I hadn’t used the bags yet, I was out of the trouble-free exchange range with the dealer (only 7 days). Rather than begging and pleading, and dealing with shipping, I took the front roller bags to Recycled Cycles, and asked them if they would exchange them with me for a pair of sport packers (in blue), which to their credit, they agreed to (minus a 10% restocking fee, since I didn’t buy them there). So now we have two sets of red bags, one set of yellow, and one set of blue–a nice mix, don’t you think?

The only other news on the bike front is that I managed to bend the rim of my rear wheel trying to get my tire off while changing a flat. Wha?!?!? How the hell did I bend the rim? Why are the stupid tires so hard to get on and off? I guess it mostly happened because I was putting pressure on one of the seams of the rim (where the circle gets joined). I took it to Recycled, expecting to have to cajole them into rebuilding the wheel, but they ended up just bending the rim back into place and saying, “Don’t do it again.” I can’t imagine that this is a good indication of the strength of these wheels. I think we may just have to keep our fingers crossed.

Check out this cool toy we got at REI last weekend! It’s called a gorillapod, and is just the perfect size and weight to come along with us on our journey. We also splurged (thanks to the fall sale, and a couple of coupons) on new sleeping pads and bags. The reason we got the bags was to be able to zip them together for snuggle time—although I’m thinking that most of the time, I’m going to be too freaking hot to even get inside the dang thing.

Bike update: I ordered us some front racks, and they don’t fit on the stupid fat tube GT forks that we BOTH have now (thanks to the carport incident) because they don’t taper as they go to the dropouts. I thought about getting us some Surly Long Haul Trucker forks in fashion colors, but decided to go with the (much cheaper) black Tange fork for both of us. Boring, I know… Also upgrading Cindy’s headset to threadless. Forks should arrive on Monday, and I’ll have to get help cutting the steerer tubes to the proper length and installing the new headset (another reason to ditch the threaded one—I don’t have the tools to dismantle it). So another trip to Recycled Cycles for me. My fork is currently removed, so I’ve been riding Cindy’s bike this week. It’s somewhat heavier than my bike, but feels similar nonetheless (hmm….it does have the same wheels and shifters as my bike). If the new forks don’t work with the racks, I may ride in front of a bus…

I knew it would happen eventually…I’m kind of surprised it took this long. And I tempted fate to take a swat at me by titling my last post “The Mighty Sherpa”. Umm…you may have noticed from the picture that the fork on my bike is bent. This is what happens when you try to drive into a carport with a bike mounted on the roof rack of your car. Many bad words were spoken today My car is scratched up and dinged a bit, but nothing too major. The roof rack mounts have seen better days…I don’t think they will be salvageable. No major damage to the bike, other than the fork (thank goodness that the front wheel was safely inside the car—not sure I could have handled losing one of my beautiful new wheels as well). Just when I thought I would get a break from bike construction, I have to start shopping for a fork.

I had this great scheme to make sure something like this never happened—whenever I left the house with a bike on top of the car, I would place an orange traffic cone at the front of the carport to remind me not to drive under it. It seemed a great plan…until I thwarted it by loading the bike on the car somewhere besides my house. Even as close as 4-5 blocks away, I had reminded myself not to drive under the deck. That’s Mr. Short Term Memory for you…

P.S. Cindy’s bike is done, and working great, with all shiny new parts on it. I’m not allowed to touch it ever again.

OK, I know that everyone reading this has been dying to know more about our bikes! We’ve been holding out a little bit, because I had a crazy plan and I wasn’t sure it was going to work out. But I can let a little bit slip now…my bike has made the transformation to its touring state. The biggest change was upgrading the drivetrain from 7-speed to 9-speed. This was largely because I figured that to build a bike for Cindy, I would need to use 9-speed (7-speed parts becoming increasingly rare), and I wanted us to be able to share pertinent spare parts. I didn’t want to replace EVERYTHING on my bike though (especially the cranks, they are way expensive). I did a little research and found this page on Sheldon Brown’s website that convinced me that I could get away with just changing the shifters, the rear cassette, and chain. I’ve always wondered about this—it seems like the deraileurs shouldn’t care how many speeds you have, since they are being controlled by the shifters anyway—so it was nice to get the confirmation from a bike shop pro. My bike is now happily motoring along with 9 cogs in the rear.

I also had to replace the wheels with a hub in the rear that was compatible with a 9-speed cassette (the stays were already spaced properly for wheel with a bigger cogset, so no frame bending was involved). Cindy and I had some wheels hand built by a local bike shop, Recycled Cycles. We pulled some LX/XT hubs out of the used bin, and had them throw on some 26-inch Mavic rims. All the guys we talked to in the shop raved about their wheels, and they feel pretty darn solid—hopefully solid enough to survive carrying all our gear on dirt roads.
I finally have received all the parts to build Cindy’s bike in the mail. Hopefully, I’ll get a few hours this weekend to put it together, and then I can post pictures/details on her bike. Oh yeah, I ordered a bunch of Ortlieb panniers from Wayne at The Touring Store…they should arrive next week.

• Hepatitis A & B
• Yellow Fever
• Typhoid
• Rabies

We both got the Hep and Yellow Fever shots at the visit, and received typhoid oral tablets. Somewhat thankfully, I had received a series of rabies vaccinations during my first year of grad school when I did my rotation in Ellen Covey’s lab, which works with bats. I was a little worried I might have to re-take the series because the recordkeeping by Employee Health was a little shoddy—less because of the shots and more because the series costs > $600!—by far the most expensive of the bunch. Anyway, my records were found…but unfortunately Cindy still had to get the rabies shots.

Round 2 of shots was this morning…my arm is still sore from last week’s shots, so I asked for mine in the other arm. Two weeks until we go in for the last round.

We will also have to take anti-malarial drugs while we’re there. We can take chloroquine while in Mexico and Central America, but won’t be able to take that in South America (the critter is apparently chloroquine-resistant down there). We got a mini-script for mefloquine…the nurse recommended it as the best drug (only taken once/week), but apparently it has some pretty nasty neuronal side effects like night terrors and possible psychotic episodes. I figure we can each take it one at a time and see what happens…looking forward to some funky dreams