Brighton, UK

You have 4232 unread emails. Its good to be back. No, really it is. I left Kelv Tuesday in Vancouver and headed out to the airport loaded down with my months purchases. The 9 hour flight gave me plenty of time to mull over the 1500 bike miles and 500 car miles I’d spent with Kelv and James.

After landing at Gatwick I had to pop into work in Crawley to get my house keys which was a rude reality slap in the face. Luckily I’d got the day off so went straight back to Brighton, built up the Swobo and headed straight for the beach. Blue skies, waves rolling in, sun shining… it actually beat the Pacific! Lying there for a while and later cruising around the seafront felt like I was still on the other side the planet. It was time to put the Swobo through its paces. I headed for the biggest hill on the sea front, where the under cliff path links to the upper cliff path just past the marina and about 15% for 150m. That should do. It was tough no doubt but achievable, even in trainers and not SPD’s. Feeling confident I decided to give the bike a trial with panniers on and ride into work.

Yesterday I transferred the rack and pannier from the Tricross over to the Swobo for my first ever ride into work. Myself, Meat and Sammo rode out of Brighton under blue skies headed for Crawley 25 miles away. The true meaning of singlespeed was brought home to me on the climb to Devil’s Dyke, but once I’d warmed up and ate some breakfast everything was going fine. It’s a great tourer setup as long as you aren’t in any hurry. Top speed is about 22-25mph before the pedalling rpm gets too much. It flies uphill and descends pretty decently as well, about 38mph max coming down Devil’s Dyke. Coming home we rode the Downs Link, an old railway line which runs all the way to Shoreham. It performed as well off-road as onroad with the fat Vittoria tyres coping well. I'll be getting some tips from my Dad in Wales next weekend about riding Fixed. He thinks I should probably get a larger chainring as its geared a bit low. We'll see. All in all an awesome purchase for £300!

Probably need to say a little about our tour steed, the Tricross. We were both amazed with the bikes performance. 4000 miles on Kelv’s £700 Sport model and just a new cassette, chain and one tyre. You can’t get better than that. I think I must have helped sell about 5 on the trip when I saw people eyeing them up in bike shops. The custom build I had from Specialized was spot on and the well engineered gradients of the US roads didn’t pose a problem for the 34x27 setup, even with the panniers. No granny action on this trip. In fact I was kind of disappointed by the lack of tough climbs. Bizarrely 6% was the steepest gradient we had to contend with on the whole trip. The toughest climb was probably Flesher Pass in Montana, but that was more to do with the 35 deg C heat.

Kelv is still alive as far as I know, though he’s put his bike aside for a while and put on his new Brook’s running shoes. Last I heard he was headed to Toronto on Tuesday…