Ride Earth

If the photos and blogs haven’t satisfied your curiosity about how we’re living out Ride Earth, there’s a new way to see exactly what life on the road is like. The first episode of our video podcast is now online. Head over to the podcast page to watch it now!

You can also subscribe to the series through iTunes - just search for Ride Earth in the podcast section - or keep up to date through our blog, which will be updated for every new episode.

In the first episode, you’ll get a glimpse of why we all decided to cycle round the world, and see some of the planning and preparation that’s taken place over the last year to make it happen. (more…)

Finally, after months of planning, paperwork and 25-hour days, we’ve left on our epic journey round the globe! We’ll be posting regular updates on this blog, as well as making video podcasts available throughout the journey. Make sure you subscribe to the blog or check back often to see how we’re doing!

None of us have any experience of cycle touring before, so this is really going to test our mental and physical endurance.

Goodbye for now…

Andy, Mark and myself are all obsessed with the great outdoors. We all want to escape the life spent walled in and connect with the world outside, which is part of the reason we’ve all devoted our lives to this expedition. A few months ago, I met someone who had devoted his life to the growing environmental cause, and through this shared interest, we are very excited to have teamed up with WWF, one of the world’s largest and most respected independent conservation organizations. Observing and reporting worldwide climate-change issues and visiting conservation projects will be amongst the ways in which we will be working with the WWF to raise awareness of sustainability- and climate-related issues all over the world.

We would also like to welcome Kona on board as our bike sponsors. The Kona Explosif will be put to the ultimate test over the next few years - an unenviable task for any bike! We’re hoping that our bike-related research will pay off and that our journey will be - mechanically at least - relatively trouble-free!

We are proud to announce that top bike component manufacturer Magura are now supporting our round-the-world challenge, supplying hydraulic disc brakes from their Louise range, and Odur suspension forks.

Today we drove to the National Bike Show at the NEC after generously being giving some tickets by the organisers. I was up early and went over to pick Tom up at 8.30am to drive down. We collected our previously prepared (at midnight last night) press packs and printed a couple of cheap t-shirts with the Ride Earth logo and website on them. Eventually after the usual faffing about we headed off with some circa 2000 Pete Tong tape playing in the car.

We cruised on down the A14 and M6 then missed the turn off for the NEC by just the 5 junctions. To make things worse when we turned off in order to turn round, the southbound direction was closed and the traffic was diverted so we had to drive another junction up the M6 just to come back again. After an intense session of cursing about the lack of clear signage, we managed to find our way to the NEC by using the sun and the art of tracking.

On arrival we milled about for a bit, before being walked in by the organiser and left to do our thing. We spoke to a few different companies who had stands including Chain Reaction, Extreme.com, Pace/DT Swiss, Merlin, and dropped press packs off with Singletrack, DIRT, MBR and a few others with a view to getting some regular coverage on our trip. (more…)

On Sunday I experienced a creative explosion of some kind, which resulted in much scribbling and a large amount of grafting in Illustrator, and the eventual result was this new website design. Less blue and more brown is the general theme.

It’s now just over two months until we depart, and it’s now becoming apparent that there aren’t enough hours in a day to a) go to work, b) put in the training time, c) research the world, d) apply for sponsorship and e) publicise our project, all at the same time. The ‘paperwork’ is becoming a drag. I just want to leave now, and the impatience is starting to show a little bit. It’s difficult to focus in my free time because I spend all day doing a highly focused job, and my brain generally experiences complete meltdown by the end of the day. It can’t be healthy. Maybe I should start drinking Actimel. Mmm, Danone.

I’m also starting to catch myself thinking ‘what if’. I firmly believe that under most circumstances, asking this question is likely to be bad for you. ‘What if’ syndrome stops you being spontaneous, stops you carrying things through, and provides a common barrier between an idea and a happening. I will attempt to suppress any doubts that may be forming by crushing them under the combined weight of Philosophy: Key Themes, A.D. 500 - A Journey Through the Dark Ages of Britain and Ireland, The Beach, and Ray Mears’ Bushcraft, which are currently keeping me sane in a world where library-borrowed Lonely Planet guides block out the light in my bedroom, and I dream at night of random things like my secondary school English teachers randomly turning up in dilapidated South-East Asian villages.

We’ve just come back from One Life Live, having spread the word about our project, introduced people to the idea of cycle touring, and met up with mountain-biking legend Hans Rey. Andy and I are going to be the first Wheels4Life ambassadors, locally buying and donating bikes while we’re on the road to those who would benefit from them. (more…)

Google Earth allows you to explore Planet Earth as represented in 3D. It’s made up of topographical data for accurately displaying altitude, and satellite photograph data for texturing to make it all look real. But it’s not just flying around that Google Earth is good for. Clever users can display a variety of data. This could be GPS route data that someone has collected on a hike (or bike ride… see where this is going?), or a route that’s been plotted on a piece of software such as Memory Map, or even Google Maps. All you do is click on the link to a Google Earth file and the program will display the route data and fly directly to that place in the world - it’s incredibly easy to view.

I’ve been experimenting with the KML code language to see how it could be used within the Ride Earth project. I have massive hopes for using it to bring our remoter adventures closer to those watching our progress. The results of my first experimentations are now available to download and view in Google Earth. I have recreated the route that Andy, Mark and I took through the Scottish Highlands on our mountain-bikes, broken down day-by-day, and added a number of photo-captions at various points on the route.

Download the KMZ file for our Scotland expedition, and get Google Earth if you haven’t already.

Coming along with us to the One Life Live exhibition in Earl’s Court, London next weekend will be Project Carbon.

Project Carbon is a UK based, not-for-profit carbon reduction service that aims to help one to understand and reduce one’s carbon footprint and compensate for non-reducible carbon dioxide emissions.

We are extremely pleased to announce that we will also be joined by The Wilderness Foundation UK (blog).

The Foundation is dedicated to preserving and promoting the value of the world’s last remaining wild areas by through lobbying, education and, wherever possible offering direct experience of wilderness itself. They support projects that conserve wilderness and those seeking to re-establish it in Great Britain and overseas.

We share the belief of the Wilderness Foundation in the irreplaceable value of wilderness, which contains the wonders of pristine nature, and enables us to return to our origins and draw a deep sense of belonging and inspiration and that by visiting the unspoiled places where nature has been allowed to exist since time began, this connection is rekindled.

Time is ticking away from us in the count down to leaving. Thinking about all aspects of the equipment, navigation, etc… Which bike frame, wheels, brakes? What combination of clothes? Do I really need to take a dinner jacket?

We have been kindly donated a stand at this year’s One Life Live Exhibition. This is a huge exhibition backed by the Independent newspaper, with a massive PR and marketing campaign behind it including national newspaper, magazine, London Underground posters Radio and TV and a year round website. One Life Live 2007 (2nd – 4th March) will take place at London’s most prestigious exhibition venue - the Grand Hall, Olympia in Central London.

Tom and I will be going along with some expedition kit, hopefully with a presence from our charities and some equipment companies, reciting poetry and talking to people about the aims of our trip to encourage sustainable living, promote bike use, and hopefully inspire others.

If you have a company who would like to be represented and help us with our trip please email me.

On another note, I recently watched a couple of documentaries. An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. Al Gore combines the science of global warming in an easy to understand way, with the potential consequences in a positive and strong, rallying cry to protect the one earth we all share and how we can take action without getting too evangelical about saving the planet. I also watched Who Killed the Electric Car?. This is a lesser publicised documentary, about how the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate and emerging electric car in California was quashed by government, the car companies, Big Oil, even Eco-darling Hydrogen and consumers who turned their backs on the car in favour of the SUV. Both highly recommended and interesting.