My Round The World ride (inc top blagging at Spa & The Ring)

[neilski]

Yep, the freehub body has stopped going round, effectively turning my bike into a 27 speed fixie. Fine going uphill or on the flat, not so great on a 55km descent offroad.

I should add that the hub body has remained crack free so my skills as a master wheelbuilder are not in question.

ETA: It's still under warranty but CRC are quoting 15 working days to get a new one to me and my Peruvian visa has already expired. Not good.

Edited by neilski on Friday 7th November 17:22

[neilski]

I know how to remove the freehub providing it takes a 10mm allen key and not anything bigger but once it's off there are various tools for taking it apart and putting it back together that I don't have. I also don't have the lockring & cone spanners needed to remove the axle but I might be able to persuade a bike shop to let me use their workshop if they have these.

The problem is if anything inside the freehub is properly broken then I won't be able to fix it anyway. As you can imagine, Peru is a bit basic for bike spares and doesn't really stock stuff like 36 hole XT hubs. I might get lucky and find another Shimano hub with the same freehub body that I can use but I have no idea which hub models have the same freehub as an XT hub and don't want to buy several to strip down only to find out they're all different.

I don't suppose anyone's coming to Northern Peru or Ecuador in the next few days?

[neilski]

Gruffy said:

You may have already been asked this but do you have any plans following the ride? Back to the old career/new career/another ride/adventure travel circuit/book etc?

At the moment I have lots of ideas but I'm keeping a completely open mind. I'd quite like to work from January to October 2016 before setting off again on another trip but only about six months next time then maybe enter into a cycle of six months work, six months travel but I'll see how it goes.

[neilski]

Xpuffin said:

Changed companies mate , the new ones got the initials A and B.
Let me know if I can help.
( it's me...crisisjez)

Jez, I sent you a mail about this on Friday. I sent it through the PH website so did you get it? Maybe it went to your spam folder but basically, I could do with your help getting a hub to me at the closest airport your airline flies to which according to their website is Guayaquil in Ecuador otherwise I'll be stuck in Trujillo for about a month.

Can you help?

[neilski]

Yep, for those of you who don't follow me on Facebook / Twitter / Instagram etc. I'm in Spain at the moment and should finish the trip in about a month to five weeks.

[neilski]

No, up through the middle of Spain from Gibraltar to Granada to Pamplona then keeping quite far west in France to St. Malo for a ferry to Portsmouth.

[neilski]

For the non-Facebook / Twitter / social media types, I've just clocked up 50,000km.

[neilski]

Thanks to all those of you who've donated and sorry for not being around much for the past year but with internet either hard to come by or expensive or time consuming to go and sit in McDonald's I decided to concentrate on just keeping Facebook up to date as a lot of people already follow me on there and posting the same stuff on here was just giving me too much to do. Once I'm home I may upload some more photos on here to bring it up to date though.

[neilski]

After 3 years and 9 months I've finally done it, I've finally cycled around the world, having being joined by my two brothers for the final day back to the pub in my parents' village. Time for a holiday I think....

[neilski]

Minemapper said:

Holiday? As if 3 years 9 months wasn't enough?

Congrats, it's been fun following along. Welcome back.

Somewhere hot to warm me up after the final week in wet & windy France and I'll leave the bike at home this time.

[neilski]

Shaw Tarse said:

Is it good to be home, or do you feel a bit deflated?

So far so good but it's only been about 24 hours so far.

I do need to get some form of temporary Christmas work for the next 3 weeks which I think will be a massive shock to the system after not working since 2011 and not working for someone else since 2008.

Has anyone got any jobs going within cycling distance of Horsham?

[neilski]

IanA2 said:

Will you be writing a book about your adventures? Sort of Zen and the art of cycling

Having read a few books about long bike trips I'd say probably not, no. They all tend to be a bit dull, just a list of towns, the distance between each town and what the author had for lunch & dinner that day.

As much as cycling around the world seems like a huge glamorous adventure which I suppose it is in a way, if you were to watch or read about what I do each day it's quite repetitive, especially over almost 4 years. Eat sleep ride repeat....

[neilski]

soad said:

neilski said:

Has anyone got any jobs going within cycling distance of Horsham?

Try Royal Mail - Christmas Casual.

It looks like the nearest one to me is Gatwick but I'm not sure I'd want to cycle that far....

[neilski]

Silver940 said:

Just clicked on page 1, same jacket as when you set off - looks a little looser now!

I've lost about 10kg so don't believe everything health experts tell you. You can live on a diet of beer, fizzy drinks, sugary treats & junk food and still lose weight!

[neilski]

Thanks, I'll take anything at the moment. Proper job in the new year.

[neilski]

I'm going to be live on BBC Radio Sussex this morning at 10:40. For those of you who don't live in Sussex it's also available on iPlayer.

While I think about it, is this the sort of thing that PH puts in the news these days? I know it's not really car related but I've been a member on here for over 11 years and they could talk about the Spa / Ring laps for the car angle. Would more people be interested in reading about my travels who wouldn't be seen dead on a bike now that they can drive and never venture in to Pedal Powered do you think?

I vaguely remember emailing PH news just after I'd been to the Ring but didn't hear back from them. Who are the resident PH staff / bike nuts these days? Anything you can do to help?

[neilski]

Here's the podcast of me on the radio. Skip forward to 1:42:00 if you don't want to listen to the whole show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038hgzj

Available for the next 29 days.

Edited by neilski on Thursday 10th December 12:55

[neilski]

In the paper again today.


West Sussex County Times 28/12/2016 by Neil Churchard, on Flickr

[neilski]

ringweekends said:

Only just seen this thread, you turned up at one of my events - I was running the Nürburgring track day!

Hi Darren, I remember you trying to lift my bike with one hand. I normally use two and even then it's a struggle!

[neilski]

I've only just seen these last few posts from July after seeing that someone had linked to this in the Around the World in 80 Days thread then spent ages re-reading a lot of it and it brought back loads of happy memories.

Yes I do still post on here occasionally and do the odd bit of lurking from time to time when I'm not busy. Since finishing my ride I moved to Thailand to create and run a bike tour out of some friends' hostel in Bangkok, did a three month bike tour of Vietnam, Laos and northern Thailand between December last year and March this year then finished working in Bangkok in May to take a two month break back in the UK and moved to La Paz in July to start a new job as a mountain bike guide on Death Road plus will get trained up on a few other more technical rides while I'm here. Life could be a lot worse I suppose.