Posts tagged ‘bike build’

Birth Pangs for our Trolls

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If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend preparing for a nine month bike expedition.  Actually going on that nine month bike expedition?  No comment, yet.  The preparation is a journey all by itself!  It often seems like bracing for death.  We evaluate the truly important things in life with more perspicacity, spend more time with the people you love, and our material possessions seem increasingly trivial as we prepare to sell them or leave them behind.

While we appear to brace for death, we fully intend on surviving all 20,000 miles between Anchorage and Argentina.  Our Surly Trolls will carry us there.  Today, they arrived!  Well, two of them at least.  UPS appears to have misplaced the third Troll somewhere in Minneapolis, MN and there is no telling when it might arrive.  But no fear!  Craig at Paramount Sports in Fargo is saving the day.  He’ll have a Troll substitute ready for us by tomorrow afternoon.

This bicycle build has me smiling.  Our wheels came in today and let me tell you: there is something positively beautiful about a well-built wheelset.  We are running Phil Wood front disc hubs, Rohloff Speedhub rear hubs, all laced strongly to Velocity Cliffhanger rims.  Yum.  I can’t wait to see them fully built!  You can see the full bicycle build spec on our gear page.

Normally I am a “big ideas” kind of guy.  I don’t get caught up in the minutiae of most things.  I embody the Type B personality.  Preparing for this expedition runs against the fiber of my being.  Questions such as, “How will we carry all of our gear?” and “What if we get caught in a snowstorm in Alberta?” and “How will we purify water?” cannot be met with calm ambivalence and an attitude that things will “just kind of work out.”  Every individual bike part needs to replaceable, durable, and cross-compatible.  The little things need to be worked out to exhaustive completion.  Luckily, preparing for the unknown is thrilling and we are all motivated and excited about what lies ahead.  Choosing saddles and tents may seem mundane, but for us it is another opportunity to determine how we will live, ride, sleep, and eat for the next ten months!

Tomorrow, Friday, we will have our send-off party at Oak Grove Lutheran High School in Fargo, ND.  Come to the Eid Center at Oak Grove between 7PM and 9PM to say good-bye to Nathan, David, and I before we leave for Alaska.