Eric Parsons of Epic Designs took his Surly Karate Monkey 29er MTB to South America for a nice bike tour and had an article published about his adventure in Dirt Rag Magazine.

Some photos from Eric’s trip in SA

More detailed info on Eric’s trip posted at MTBR.COM.

I’ve posted my tour reports from our Canadian Great Divide Mountain Bike Route [CDN GDR] ride:

• Day 1
• Days 2 & 3
• Day 4
• Day 5

Here are all my CDN GDR blog posts for anyone planning a GDR trip:

• Bow Cycle Blog GDR posts
• The Lazy Rando Blog GDR posts

I don’t own a TV, I don’t have cable and I don’t even own a sofa.  Most of the year I am an anti-TV evangalist.  I mean come on get out there and ride your bike!…=-)

That changes for 3 weeks every July.  When the Tour de France is on I do whatever I can to borrow a TV with tour coverage and geek out on someone’s sofa for 3hrs+ a day.  I’ve been known to stop in the middle of a road trip, get a hotel room and kill a sunny day inside for a crucial mountain stage.

My GF has a TV and cable and a sofa…=-)  I’ve gone weeks without turning her TV on and the couple times I’ve bothered I was appalled by the crappy programing that was on - even with a whole pile of extra cable channels.  Then a couple days into the 2009 tour as I was reading coverage on Velonews I clued into the fact my awesome GF had all the ingredients for a a TdeF binge-fest.  Sweet…=-)

So tomorrow when the peleton is tackling the mountains in France you know where I’ll be - glued to the idiot box cheering on the attacks!

Allez!  Allez!

Photo: AST Website

I just got back from a week down in Hood River, Oregon learning how to kiteboard.  Kiting was fun - lots to learn!  But, the biggest lesson we learned wasn’t on the water at all.  Since you need wind to kiteboard and not all wind is created equal there is a fair bit of sitting around waiting for the wind to develop.  Our initial plan was to bring our Surly Pugsleys with us, but somewhere along the way we got so focused on kiteboarding we decided to simplify our gear and forget the bikes…big mistake….=-(

We got to kite about 30% of the time we were in Hood River so that meant there was loads of time we could have been riding our bikes that instead we sat around waiting.  Watching guys boost 20′ airs on a kiteboard is awesome fun, but the thing is you can only kiteboard in certain places at certain times.  On the other hand you can pretty much ride a bike anytime…day or night…windy or calm…summer or winter.  The bike is reliable and besides being fun you can actually go somewhere on a bike.

Don’t get me wrong I’m still keen on learning to kiteboard, but I can assure you I won’t be leaving for a kiteboarding trip without a bike in the mix.  That way when there is no wind I won’t be bummed.  It will be a great time to ride my bike.

We had a great time on our CDN GDR ride…=-)  The Pugselys once again proved themselves to be awesome bikes for a whole lot more than just riding in snow or sand.  I’ll be posting details from the trip in the coming week, but I wanted to share our photos for those folks that are into dirt tours.

Enjoy!