The Bikes - Part 2

On Monday we headed back to the Trek Office in Beijing to complete the bike setup - we needed to fit the racks and panniers and deal with any other minor details that we wanted to fix/change before we started riding big distances.

As I said in Part 1, we have fresh out of the box Trek 4500 WSD bikes. When we picked them up the guys at Trek put a couple of bottle cages on and gave us some bottles and we were off! We weren't ready to head out touring yet :)

The bikes came with flatties on them (flat pedals that are not clipless and have no toe clips...all you non-bikers are just going to have to deal with the jargon :). We knew that we were only going to have one set of shoes with us on this part of the trip so we decided against clipless pedals before we left the UK - that would have meant special pedals and special shoes. We asked the Trek guys for some toe clips and straps and they happily fitted them for us. The pedals will help us use the full pedal stroke to power the bike, not just the pushing down part of the pedal stroke - we need all the power we can get if we are going to pedal the bikes, with our not very tiny butts and all our gear, up 5000 meter passes! :)

To haul all our gear (clothes, food, tools/spare parts, camping equipment, etc.) we have Trek racks and Trek Basic Panniers and some bungee cords. The racks are rated for 50 pounds and the panniers will carry just under 30 liters - which is a decent amount of space (my daypack is a 20 liter and A's is 25 liters, so we should be just fine...or whatever doesn't fit is going into the bin or into a box heading home :)

We also got some computers for the bikes - we totally spaced that we would need them or I would have brought the spare Cateye that I have in my toolbox (DOH! :). We want to stay as simple as possible so we asked for a cable version rather than wireless. They work great! It's been pretty frustrating riding around town and not knowing how far we have ridden - it's 12kms to the Trek Office from the hotel and it's 12 kms into downtown Beijing from the hotel. Our guess at about 20 miles a day has been spot on.

The last thing we changed was the tires. We have been riding around town on the knobby tires that came on the bike and the rolling resistance is pretty high on the street (not to mention noisy at the speeds we go! :)...especially into that heinous headwind :) We have decided on our route in China (that is for another post!) and that will be about 1000 kms of road. We also know that a large part of the Friendship Highway in Tibet is paved and the rest is gravel (there may be some off road trails, but they will not be long and it should be dry)...so we asked for some smoother tires to ease our way as well. We didn't want pure road tires - there will be some bad pavement - so we went with the Bonty XR. It's still a mountain bike tire, but it's not a full knobby tire - it's really fast! We noticed immediately on our ride home from the Trek Office :)

That sums up the changes we have made to the stock bikes. We brought some spare parts and some tools and our riding kit with us and the Trek guys have also given us a very cool, limited edition Trek China dragon jersey (which you should watch for in the upcoming photos :), an adjustable wrench (which we were going to buy when we got here...but they saved us having to find a tool shop and then try to explain what we needed - I don't think my beginner's dictionary or the travel dictionary is going to be very helpful :) and another warm jacket to ride in (it is very cold and we have been riding in all our clothes...at the same time! :) The last thing James gave us as we were heading out the door was a pair of reflective leg bands each - so that people would see us and so we wouldn't catch our trousers in the water bottle cage and cause an accident (I nearly had that accident experience on our first day on the bikes!)

Hina was extremely hlpful as well - chasing down a place for us to buy some silk to have made into a sleeping bag liner - but even more importantly she gave me some great tips on bargaining and we did quite well buying the sheet - we are no longer totally pants at bargaining!!! Woohoo!!!! :)

The people at Trek China were so nice and so helpful, it was a bit unreal at times. The guys there worked on the bikes and helped us get everything set up just the way we wanted it and we got so many good wishes....we can't help but have a great trip :) THANKS!!!!!