Tubus Vega Rack - Surly ECR 29er+ // Adding Bottle Cages // Custom modifications // Pedaling Nowhere // Building the Epic Touring Mountain bike //

[Photo credit of Pedaling Nowhere]

Excellent ECR build write-up with rich descriptions and photographs from Logan at Pedaling Nowhere and his experiences are also detailed for his first 1000km test tour in South Africa. Using framebags from Revelate Designs and Tubus Vega racks to support smaller pannier baggage from Carrdice.

[Photo credit: Pedaling Nowhere]

Many adventure cyclists are looking for their perfect bicycles in the stables, some choose rigid frame and fork for reliability and simplicity of setups, without the concern over mechanical failure in suspension set-ups. I am interested in the 29x3.0 Surly Knard tires, these semi-Fat bike tires have evolved with puncture resistance  a wide tread that seems durable from reports I keep reading. They have also been used on the Tour Divide race by Cjell Monee building up his rigid 29+ steel frames these days. 

[Photo credit: Pedaling Nowhere]

Here's the full article below:

Tubus Vega Rack - Surly ECR - Adding Bottle Cages - Pedaling Nowhere

Tubus Vega Rack - Surly ECR 29er+ // Adding Bottle Cages // Custom modifications // Pedaling Nowhere // Building the Epic Touring Mountain bike //

[Photo credit of Pedaling Nowhere]

Excellent ECR build write-up with rich descriptions and photographs from Logan at Pedaling Nowhere and his experiences are also detailed for his first 1000km test tour in South Africa. Using framebags from Revelate Designs and Tubus Vega racks to support smaller pannier baggage from Carrdice.

[Photo credit: Pedaling Nowhere]

Many adventure cyclists are looking for their perfect bicycles in the stables, some choose rigid frame and fork for reliability and simplicity of setups, without the concern over mechanical failure in suspension set-ups. I am interested in the 29x3.0 Surly Knard tires, these semi-Fat bike tires have evolved with puncture resistance  a wide tread that seems durable from reports I keep reading. They have also been used on the Tour Divide race by Cjell Monee building up his rigid 29+ steel frames these days. 

[Photo credit: Pedaling Nowhere]

Here's the full article below:

Tubus Vega Rack - Surly ECR - Adding Bottle Cages - Pedaling Nowhere

Tubus Vega Rack - Surly ECR 29er+ // Adding Bottle Cages // Custom modifications // Pedaling Nowhere // Building the Epic Touring Mountain bike //

[Photo credit of Pedaling Nowhere]

Excellent ECR build write-up with rich descriptions and photographs from Logan at Pedaling Nowhere and his experiences are also detailed for his first 1000km test tour in South Africa. Using framebags from Revelate Designs and Tubus Vega racks to support smaller pannier baggage from Carrdice.

[Photo credit: Pedaling Nowhere]

Many adventure cyclists are looking for their perfect bicycles in the stables, some choose rigid frame and fork for reliability and simplicity of setups, without the concern over mechanical failure in suspension set-ups. I am interested in the 29x3.0 Surly Knard tires, these semi-Fat bike tires have evolved with puncture resistance  a wide tread that seems durable from reports I keep reading. They have also been used on the Tour Divide race by Cjell Monee building up his rigid 29+ steel frames these days. 

[Photo credit: Pedaling Nowhere]

Here's the full article below:

Tubus Vega Rack - Surly ECR - Adding Bottle Cages - Pedaling Nowhere

Mongolia X Journal 20 // Driving two wheels // Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world //

This place is enormous, who built the tracks and what horses have ran across them centuries ago, the trails of Genghis Khan and the Nomadic way. I can ride for hours endlessly seeing new horizons ahead of me. On mountain ranges that climb from 1300 meters to 2600 meters, it's a challenge and freedom as one. Every day is the same routine for me, but the environment makes it new, fresh and invigorating. Rain and sun, wind and cold, it all changes around me as I ride Northwest. When the conditions are dry, I can stop and rest on my backpack on the Taiga Steppe grass, other times it raining and wet, cold and windy and I am sweaty, tired and dirty and wouldn't even think of stopping right now - I ride and stay warm. White dots, some in pairs and some in a linear line along the mountains, near streams where tributaries flow back and the surface aquifers provide source of local water. Cycling across, up and over. Grades, altitudes, GPS mapping, peering down at the map while I ride or take my camera out of my chest pocket and snap a picture (above). Occasionally, I encounter a Nomad herding his flock of several dozen obedient sheep and goat tracking in lines together, mulching the grassland with pattering tiny hoofs. I set myself a goal everyday, and try to scribble notes in my journal, pin point the map, and get some good sleep when wind whips and moans around mountains, I have only myself in some areas where it's clear and above the dirt track national highway.

I am writing old and new, thoughts of the Himalayas and present X journal in Mongolia. I turn pages and use my whiteboard marker like a paint brush. My thoughts are clear and punctuate the paper with experiences only a few years ago, I dreamed of. Now, I am living the Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world. If one door closed this summer (making it to Alaska), another door opened (booking a flight to Mongolia); so I take any opportunity to the see the world from a mountain bike. I want something challenging and extreme - dropping in, into culture and new languages, into new ways of life (or ancient reflections as I see here), and this requires a great deal of commitment and it is important despite the hardship, to connect in the Element. Land, animals, terrain, weather and climate all seem as vivid as they can get. I am certainly pushing hard, driving two wheels, and have a great deal ahead of me this summer.

Faraway from Asia where I live (and where many readers are reading this in North America), is home. I dream of going home and traveling by mountain bike across Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, British Columbia before sweeping through the Rockies to Banff, Alberta and crossing the Continental Divide. I remember motorcycle touring through Banff, Alberta in the spring of 1996 and riding up from Billings, Livingston, Bozeman and Butte, Montana on Interstate highway 90, and turning North at I-15 towards Helena, then turned out to Highway 89/200, and continued Northwest towards Freezeout Lake and Choteau, through the Rocky Mountains past Lower Saint Mary Lake and past Flathead National Forest onto Highway 89 to Kalispell, and Highway 93 to Highway 3 in British Columbia to Cranbrook...

Memories of marathon journeys stay with me long after the ride was through. Mongolia by mountain bike (where most people I met suggested "machine" which means use a motorcycle) is definitely more challenging and each passing day, gives me more challenge and more freedom that I had the day before, or the weeks before I came here. So, without regrets I ride for the challenge this summer and support two great foundations IDEAS and ETE and Lynskey Performance, USA for supporting. Hope you enjoy reading the X Journals from Mongolia - More adventures are coming soon!!!

On the trails of Genghis Khan.

Made it ahead of the dust storm, Northwest Mongolia 2012

Sandstorms of western Mongolia

Mongolia X Journal 20 // Driving two wheels // Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world //

This place is enormous, who built the tracks and what horses have ran across them centuries ago, the trails of Genghis Khan and the Nomadic way. I can ride for hours endlessly seeing new horizons ahead of me. On mountain ranges that climb from 1300 meters to 2600 meters, it's a challenge and freedom as one. Every day is the same routine for me, but the environment makes it new, fresh and invigorating. Rain and sun, wind and cold, it all changes around me as I ride Northwest. When the conditions are dry, I can stop and rest on my backpack on the Taiga Steppe grass, other times it raining and wet, cold and windy and I am sweaty, tired and dirty and wouldn't even think of stopping right now - I ride and stay warm. White dots, some in pairs and some in a linear line along the mountains, near streams where tributaries flow back and the surface aquifers provide source of local water. Cycling across, up and over. Grades, altitudes, GPS mapping, peering down at the map while I ride or take my camera out of my chest pocket and snap a picture (above). Occasionally, I encounter a Nomad herding his flock of several dozen obedient sheep and goat tracking in lines together, mulching the grassland with pattering tiny hoofs. I set myself a goal everyday, and try to scribble notes in my journal, pin point the map, and get some good sleep when wind whips and moans around mountains, I have only myself in some areas where it's clear and above the dirt track national highway.

I am writing old and new, thoughts of the Himalayas and present X journal in Mongolia. I turn pages and use my whiteboard marker like a paint brush. My thoughts are clear and punctuate the paper with experiences only a few years ago, I dreamed of. Now, I am living the Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world. If one door closed this summer (making it to Alaska), another door opened (booking a flight to Mongolia); so I take any opportunity to the see the world from a mountain bike. I want something challenging and extreme - dropping in, into culture and new languages, into new ways of life (or ancient reflections as I see here), and this requires a great deal of commitment and it is important despite the hardship, to connect in the Element. Land, animals, terrain, weather and climate all seem as vivid as they can get. I am certainly pushing hard, driving two wheels, and have a great deal ahead of me this summer.

Faraway from Asia where I live (and where many readers are reading this in North America), is home. I dream of going home and traveling by mountain bike across Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, British Columbia before sweeping through the Rockies to Banff, Alberta and crossing the Continental Divide. I remember motorcycle touring through Banff, Alberta in the spring of 1996 and riding up from Billings, Livingston, Bozeman and Butte, Montana on Interstate highway 90, and turning North at I-15 towards Helena, then turned out to Highway 89/200, and continued Northwest towards Freezeout Lake and Choteau, through the Rocky Mountains past Lower Saint Mary Lake and past Flathead National Forest onto Highway 89 to Kalispell, and Highway 93 to Highway 3 in British Columbia to Cranbrook...

Memories of marathon journeys stay with me long after the ride was through. Mongolia by mountain bike (where most people I met suggested "machine" which means use a motorcycle) is definitely more challenging and each passing day, gives me more challenge and more freedom that I had the day before, or the weeks before I came here. So, without regrets I ride for the challenge this summer and support two great foundations IDEAS and ETE and Lynskey Performance, USA for supporting. Hope you enjoy reading the X Journals from Mongolia - More adventures are coming soon!!!

On the trails of Genghis Khan.

Made it ahead of the dust storm, Northwest Mongolia 2012

Sandstorms of western Mongolia

Mongolia X Journal 20 // Driving two wheels // Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world //

This place is enormous, who built the tracks and what horses have ran across them centuries ago, the trails of Genghis Khan and the Nomadic way. I can ride for hours endlessly seeing new horizons ahead of me. On mountain ranges that climb from 1300 meters to 2600 meters, it's a challenge and freedom as one. Every day is the same routine for me, but the environment makes it new, fresh and invigorating. Rain and sun, wind and cold, it all changes around me as I ride Northwest. When the conditions are dry, I can stop and rest on my backpack on the Taiga Steppe grass, other times it raining and wet, cold and windy and I am sweaty, tired and dirty and wouldn't even think of stopping right now - I ride and stay warm. White dots, some in pairs and some in a linear line along the mountains, near streams where tributaries flow back and the surface aquifers provide source of local water. Cycling across, up and over. Grades, altitudes, GPS mapping, peering down at the map while I ride or take my camera out of my chest pocket and snap a picture (above). Occasionally, I encounter a Nomad herding his flock of several dozen obedient sheep and goat tracking in lines together, mulching the grassland with pattering tiny hoofs. I set myself a goal everyday, and try to scribble notes in my journal, pin point the map, and get some good sleep when wind whips and moans around mountains, I have only myself in some areas where it's clear and above the dirt track national highway.

I am writing old and new, thoughts of the Himalayas and present X journal in Mongolia. I turn pages and use my whiteboard marker like a paint brush. My thoughts are clear and punctuate the paper with experiences only a few years ago, I dreamed of. Now, I am living the Challenge and Freedom are one - opportunity to see the world. If one door closed this summer (making it to Alaska), another door opened (booking a flight to Mongolia); so I take any opportunity to the see the world from a mountain bike. I want something challenging and extreme - dropping in, into culture and new languages, into new ways of life (or ancient reflections as I see here), and this requires a great deal of commitment and it is important despite the hardship, to connect in the Element. Land, animals, terrain, weather and climate all seem as vivid as they can get. I am certainly pushing hard, driving two wheels, and have a great deal ahead of me this summer.

Faraway from Asia where I live (and where many readers are reading this in North America), is home. I dream of going home and traveling by mountain bike across Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, British Columbia before sweeping through the Rockies to Banff, Alberta and crossing the Continental Divide. I remember motorcycle touring through Banff, Alberta in the spring of 1996 and riding up from Billings, Livingston, Bozeman and Butte, Montana on Interstate highway 90, and turning North at I-15 towards Helena, then turned out to Highway 89/200, and continued Northwest towards Freezeout Lake and Choteau, through the Rocky Mountains past Lower Saint Mary Lake and past Flathead National Forest onto Highway 89 to Kalispell, and Highway 93 to Highway 3 in British Columbia to Cranbrook...

Memories of marathon journeys stay with me long after the ride was through. Mongolia by mountain bike (where most people I met suggested "machine" which means use a motorcycle) is definitely more challenging and each passing day, gives me more challenge and more freedom that I had the day before, or the weeks before I came here. So, without regrets I ride for the challenge this summer and support two great foundations IDEAS and ETE and Lynskey Performance, USA for supporting. Hope you enjoy reading the X Journals from Mongolia - More adventures are coming soon!!!

On the trails of Genghis Khan.

Made it ahead of the dust storm, Northwest Mongolia 2012

Sandstorms of western Mongolia

Tour Divide, it's no tour...it's a race!

Ride The Divide Movie Trailer from Ride The Divide on Vimeo.

Great Divide Mountain Bike Route

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) is a continuous long 

distance cycling route from Banff, Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, 

New Mexico, USA. As of 2010, the route is 2745 miles (4417 KM) long; its 

length is likely to change over time as the GDMBR is continually being 

refined to improve it. 

The GDMBR was developed by the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA)

and was inaugurated in 1998.  A set of highly detailed route maps is 

available from the ACA. A guidebook has also been published.

Route description

Following the Continental Divide as closely as practicable and crossing it 30 

times, about 90% of the GDMBR is on unpaved roads and trails and requires 

basic off-pavement riding skills tocomplete. The unpaved portions of the route 

range from high quality dirt or gravel roads to a fewshort sections of 

unmaintained trails which may not be possible for most people to ride at all. 

The GDMBR has over 200,000 feet (60960 meters) of elevation gain and loss 

for the rider to contend with. While most of the GDMBR is off the pavement, 

the route does not requirehighly technical mountain bike riding skills. The route 

has been designed to provide a riding experience primarily on very low trafficked 

roads through mostly undeveloped areas of the Rocky Mountain west.

The GDMBR is routed through a variety of terrain and geographic features. 

Highlights include the Flathead Valley in Alberta, Grand Teton National Park 

and the Great Divide Basin in Wyoming, South Park, and Boreas Pass in Colorado, 

and Polvadera Mesa and the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. Colorado's Indiana 

Pass, at 11,910 feet (3630 meters), is the highest point on the route. On route, 

the rider will encounter isolated river valleys, mountain forests, wide open 

grasslands, high desert, and, the end of the ride, a section of the 

Chihuahuan Desert. The GDMBR passes though some larger towns, including 

Helena and Butte, Montana, Pinedale and Rawlins, Wyoming, Steamboat Springs, 

Breckenridge, Salida, and Del Norte, Colorado, and Grants and 

Silver City, New Mexico. Otherwise, only extremely small towns will be encountered, 

limiting the variety of goods and services available to riders.

Riding the GDMBR

Logistical issues complicate completing the GDMBR as reliable food and water 

sources on some portions of the route are over 100 miles (160 KM) apart. 

Unpredictable mountain and desert weather can bring snow, rain, high winds, 

and temperature extremes at any time of year. Most people ride the route north 

to south. Southbound riders normally cannot start prior to mid June nor later the

end of September, however, due to the possibility of deep snow in the mountains 

and monsoon rains in New Mexico, careful attention to weather and climate is 

required to ensure the rider can complete the route without having to wait out 

impassible conditions. On portions of the route, rain can turn some sections of dirt 

roads into quagmires of adhesive mud; the only options for the rider to pass

these obstacles are to wait for the roads to dry or to carry their bike. 

As much of the route is not signposted, good navigation skills are also necessary. 

Riders should be self-sufficient and carry camping equipment as commercial lodging 

is not available for long stretches of the route. It is also helpful to be skilled in bike 

maintenance and repair. It is also not uncommon to encounter large mammals 

including Grizzly and Black Bear, Moose, and occasionally Mountain Lion.

For all the challenges, properly prepared and equipped riders can expect to have 

an enjoyable and adventurous experience. In 2010, National Geographic listed 

riding the GDMBR as number one of its top fifty best American adventures.[1]

A few people through-ride the GDMBR every year and trip reports written by 

some of these riders are available on the ACA website.^[2]Typical times to ride 

the entire route range from six to ten weeks.

There are also two entirely self supported races every year on the GDMBR. 

The Tour Divide ^[3] follows the entire route, while the Great Divide Race ^[4], 

which starts at the border in Roosville, Montana, follows the US portion only. 

In these events, the race clock runs 24 hours a day and the riders are allowed 

no outside support other than access to public facilities such as stores, motels, 

and bike shops. The record time to complete the Tour Divide in its 2010 routing

is 17 days, 23 hours and was set in 2009. The Tour Divide has been raced and 

completed on both single speed bicycles and on a tandem bicycle. There are 

neither entry fees nor prizes in either race.