Writing this second-to-last post for the World2 Tour Website was something that I was definitely not looking forward to. That fact, combined with the typical confusion often encountered when restarting something resembling a normal life after a long hiatus, the pull of a much-needed break in the process of stringing digital letters together and storing them as miniscule clumps of magnetic orientation or electrical charge, and the general physical and mental malaise created by three of the most unusual years I could possibly have imagined, led to the embarrassing six-month gap between these final posts and the preceding entry. The unsurprising cause for my low level of enthusiasm for this particular task arose from the circumstance that essentially none of the most important aspects of this Tour played out as I had envisioned and expected that they would. Nevertheless, a significant event in a person’s life, as any Grand Tour will always be, deserves a full accounting and summary, no matter the participant’s outlook regarding the results. Here, I will do that for what I believe will be the three topics of most interest to readers, Cycling, Equipment, and Health.

There is no way to sugar-coat the fact that when the entire globe closes down mid-way through a long Tour, the ability to continue cycling effectively will suffer, perhaps more than any other aspect of the endeavor. It was possible, though certainly more difficult, to see a few new bird species in that situation, and, indeed, I even observed one or two species while locked in quarantine. Likewise, on a few occasions I partially saw limited views of a World Heritage Site by peering through a fence, or other similar barrier. Cycling, however, at least in the form commonly associated with a long tour, would be much more problematic. In an ideal situation, I would have found myself in some large, lightly populated, part of the globe, where I could have lazily put down giant loops, over and over, during the period of closures, in so doing, staying in good physical condition, at least. That was not the way things turned out for me, however, as a result of a particularly egregious example of bad timing. A long cycling tour requires regular and dependable waypoints where food, services, and occasionally accommodations, can be obtained, all of which became uncertain once the closures started happening. Another requirement, just as important, is one routinely taken for granted in our era, open borders. The absence of that condition was the primary origin of all of those characteristics of this summary that may appear now in a negative light.

As I have mentioned previously, the World2 Tour had no specific distance, or geographic accomplishment, in mind when I originally designed its route. I simply linked together a large number of shorter tours, consisting of some places that I had always dreamt of seeing, some places containing excellent World Heritage Sites, and some areas that were known to be incredible birding destinations, which just happened to be scattered around the globe. Upon adding up distances involved for the most interesting and efficient routes for all of those segments, the expected cumulative cycling distance expected for the Tour was a little over forty-eight thousand kilometers. The length of time I had allotted to accomplish that, around, twenty-eight months, would have required a relatively brisk, but potentially achievable pace, barring any misfortunes. Of course, misfortunes actually happened this time. On the home page of this site, the breakdown of distance by year is presented. Noticeable immediately is the steady and significant decline in distance by cycling year-on-year (though only nine months of 2019 were in the Tour, and only six weeks of 2022 counted.) When summing those values, the total for the entire Tour is revealed to be a rather underwhelming thirty-one thousand three hundred seventeen kilometers.

Anyone interested in seeing a graphical representation of that less-than-adequate result, can click the thumbnail below for the whole story. Actually, the situation was even worse than it appears on the graph, which is so crowded together that most of the single days with no cycling are not really noticeable. At the outset, my goal was to put down at least some cycling on seventy percent of the days, however, the actual rate turned out to be only forty-three percent, a mere three days per week, though I can’t take all the blame for that, of course. If I had maintained that temporal pace, my desired route would have required me to average one hundred twenty kilometers of cycling per day. During the first year, the graph makes it appear that I was doing a fairly good job of keeping that pace, but when the actual average is calculated, the result is somewhat lower. Even so, had I been able to maintain that rate for the entire Tour, I would have been largely satisfied. In reality, my pace just kept getting lower and lower.

Less than two-thirds of the intended goal indeed sounds bad, but for a long time it seemed like it was going to end up being much worse then that, since the closures initially began when I had only accumulated less than half of that distance. However, with perseverance and resilience, the situation improved a little. When I first summed up the distance on my intended route, I was rather pleased to see that it was over forty thousand kilometers, which is a significant number, as it corresponds to a full circumference of the Earth at the Equator. The Tour of a Gondwana, several years earlier, had given me two full Earth-circumferences of cycling, plus a little extra to spare. Though it was not a specific goal for the World2 Tour, I must admit that I was rather excited about the idea of putting down a third circumference during my second Grand Tour. Indeed, I was distinctly saddened, when in 2020 I realized that such a distance had become a practical impossibility.

However, somewhere along the way I concocted a loophole that would allow me to at least partially salvage that opportunity. The house where I had lived for the prior ten years before this Tour began was situated at 43° 7’ 22" north latitude. If I had, at some point in time, walked out of my front door, turned to the right, and continued walking due east, in an unbroken circle, the distance I would have covered when I eventually returned to my house, approaching from the west, would have been around twenty nine thousand three hundred kilometers. While another circumference at the equator would not be possible for me, a cycling circumference at that particular latitude seemed still within reach. In fact, the World2 Tour actually did begin at the front door of my old house, so, in that respect, it seemed reasonable. Even so, I still had a long way to go when I first devised that plan, so success was not guaranteed. Nevertheless, with my usual stubbornness, I eventually rolled past that particular milestone towards the end of my time in South Korea. As with the previous Tour, a little extra distance was then added, for good measure. Therefore, I can now proudly say that I have accomplished cycling a distance of three circumferences of the Earth in the course of my long Tours. Even though one of those is marked with an obnoxious asterisk.

I can actually live with the negative effects of those bizarre years on the cycling aspect the Tour, more or less, but what really aggravated me, in more ways than one, was the way that the closures and restrictions basically ruined any hopes I had of keeping the non-cycling parts of the Tour away from using destructive forms of travel. It had been my intention to limit my intra-Tour transfers to the less impactful modes, namely Rail and Marine transport. Where rail was concerned, I actually used that method for a distance that was reasonably similar to what I had originally intended, around thirteen thousand six hundred kilometers. Likewise, sea and river transport ended up being similar to what I expected, for the portion of the route that I actually completed, tallying up another twelve thousand nine hundred watery kilometers of travel. Therefore, those two modes of travel combined still resulted in a significantly shorter total distance than cycling did. That is the way it should always be.

But, ugh, there was another method of transport used during the Tour, one that was intended to be largely avoided, but which, ended up becoming the least enjoyable aspect of the entire event. Once it became possible, albeit with difficulty, to move from one country to another, in general, there was only one allowable way to do that, by using—airplanes. I am almost always miserably uncomfortable on planes, especially on longer flights, and for years I have tried to avoid flying, and the carbon emissions I would have been responsible for in the process, as much as possible. In 2020, air travel became the only way to cross many borders and, not always being allowed to stay put, I had no real alternative than to cave in and use that method for an unwanted and excessive amount. Furthermore, all the drawbacks inherent in that method were magnified under the circumstances of the time, as well. Available routes were only a fraction of what they normally would have been. The new rules and regulations were usually confusing and poorly explained—I was denied boarding at airports five times! Of course, the usual annoyances related to taking the bike along also seemed to be exaggerated—on two occasions, despite paying the exorbitant fees, it was not loaded onto the relevant aircraft. Most distressing, was the unsurprising way that situation blew up my budget, of course. For a long time, I avoided summing up the total distance traveled on airplanes during the Tour, for fear of what I would see. In fact, it was worse than I had imagined, extending for multiples of the Tour’s cycling distance. It’s true that over eighty percent of that distance was post-covid, but that is no real excuse, and that circumstance leaves an unpleasant stain on an otherwise satisfying achievement.

Perhaps the only silver lining arising from the unintentionally abbreviated nature of the Tour was that the equipment that I brought along, as a whole, was not punished as severely as it would have been if I had actually completed the original route. Therefore, I had no need to make unplanned replacements of major items due to wear and tear, which was one aspect of the Tour that went better than expected, at least. There were some items that were scheduled replacements, of course, but I relied on my previous experiences to plan for those sorts of eventualities. Of course, there were also many small or minor items that caused some trouble, for one way, or another. For example, I probably broke, or lost, almost twenty pairs of reading glasses during the Tour! Below are descriptions of how some of the more important items fared on this wacky endeavor.

This category was a case where the general decrease in the number of days with long hours spent outdoors greatly increased the chances of survival for these increasingly important items. In this day and age, it is becoming continuously more difficult to function effectively without at least some form of digital paraphernalia. That fact became abundantly clear during the several weeks I spent on Iceland and Greenland without my tablet, after it fell onto the floor of an airplane just as I was starting to deplane. Speaking of the tablet, the Huawei MediaPad M5-8" I used really deserves to receive the highest grades. In fact, I would say that it is one of the best electronic devices I have owned. It’s screen size struck the perfect balance between usability and still being able to slide into my handlebar bag with ease, and the battery was very dependable, with a high capacity. Apart from one or two very minor software quirks, I had no complaints whatsoever. However, I cannot say with complete accuracy that the tablet survived the Tour. It was doing quite well, right up until my sudden, and rather violent, crash on Guam. In that event, something fairly massive, either my binoculars, or a small, but heavy, bag of loose coins, impacted it from behind while it remained tucked away in my bag. Even though whatever that impactor was had no more than ten centimeters to travel, it struck with enough force to shatter the screen into hundreds of pieces. Replacing the screen revealed other problems, so I eventually had to replace the entire device. Fortunately, I was able to locate an essentially-new replacement of exactly the same model on eBay. Cloning the damaged tablet onto the new one was surprisingly easy, and I didn’t lose one bit of data throughout the whole affair, which was a big relief.

The other major item in this category also survived the Tour, which was actually quite a nice surprise, given that I had destroyed at least three of its predecessors on previous long tours. I am referring to my camera, specifically, a Nikon Coolpix P600, and I was even more surprised that it survived, because at the outset of the Tour it was already about four years old. As such, I was already very familiar with its capabilities, so I knew that it was close to an ideal choice for my typical usage during a tour. As expected, I was very pleased with the results it gave, and if it were just one hundred grams lighter, it would say that it was perfect. The great amount of use I gave it did take its toll, however. Cosmetically it has definitely seen better days, with scratches on its body and none of its rubber grips still in place. More concerning is that a few of the buttons and knobs are not functioning as well as they originally did. Therefore, I am not sure how much longer I will be able to keep it going, which is a little worrisome, because I really don’t want to have to purchase a replacement at the moment.

While the important items in this category did their jobs throughout, it was the small items that occasionally proved to be troublesome. By that I am referring to chargers, cords, extra batteries, and similar items. In addition to often being contained in a jumbled mess, their usually-affordable nature means that they can also be prone to early failure, and their typically small size means that they may be easily left behind somewhere. As you might imagine, finding suitable replacements in some of the less mainstream countries of the World can sometimes be quite a challenge. Despite those factors, I would like to give a shout-out to the electronics accessories company, Anker, which produced three items I used throughout, a supplemental battery pack, my primary USB charger, and an SD card reader. Those items were all bulletproof and exceptionally well designed, the first two surviving the entire Tour. In an somewhat tangentially-related topic, I need to point out a particularly egregious aspect of human behavior, observed primarily in the USA. My touring career began long enough ago that I can remember one incredibly obnoxious form of litter that used to be commonly seen while cycling. Specifically, either intentionally, or accidentally, but always carelessly, people would toss cassette tapes out of moving vehicles. These would promptly unravel, leaving a few hundred meters of unsightly polymer ribbon along the roadsides. Thankfully, the switch to digital data storage ended that idiotic practice, but these days there is an alternative item, just slightly less detrimental, taking over that role—USB cables. Sheesh, people!

If I were to award a Top Performer prize to an item of equipment, it would definitely go to the Polar M460 Cyclocomputer/GPS. This unit isn’t designed for navigation, but for ride logging, with the addition of the other usual functionality of a cycling computer. In that task it made my life so much easier, especially when it came to posting ride information on this site. My only concern when I purchased it was that the battery life was stated to be eleven or twelve hours. When I put in a very long day on a tour that amount of charge could be just a little inadequate. While that did create a few moments of concern during the early days of this tour, I shortly discovered that if the battery drained during a ride, I could simply connect my external battery to the unit and keep riding as if nothing was wrong. That is the kind of useful ability that never would have worked in years past. And, of course, this Tour soon became bereft of very long cycling days, so, in practice, the battery was never an issue. In all respects, the M460 performed flawlessly, and, even though it was one of the items that spent all of its working hours in the harsh sunlight, cosmetically it still looks almost brand-new. Well, except for one rather interesting repercussion. The image below shows my unit during a particularly scorching day in Thailand. The bottom display is temperature, 48 °C (not measuring just air temperature, but including effects of radiant heat,) with the highest temperature I noticed occurring earlier, in Brazil, being an incredible 58 °C! Apparently, some combination of the high temperatures and strong solar irradiance caused one layer of the LCD stack to become damaged. This can be seen in the image, where the square outside border of the display, and a small area on the left side, look essentially normal, and very bright, with the rest of the screen appearing darkened. What I found interesting was that this effect was both temperature dependent and reversible. It was only noticeable when the temperature rose above forty degrees, or so, and would disappear once the unit returned to a reasonable temperature. I suspect that the polarizer layer may be the culprit, but it doesn’t really matter, as I didn’t actually consider that condition to be a problem.. It would have been even less of a concern if I didn’t spend so much time in areas where the climate is already insane.

I won’t spend very much time discussing camping gear here, primarily because I did far less camping than I had intended to do on this Tour, and because some of my equipment and gear has been used before. Indeed, my sleeping bag is one of the few items I have that successfully completed both of my Grand Tours, in their entirety. However, there is one item that I want to discuss, and it is a rather bittersweet story. In fact, I fully intended to write an entire article on that item somewhere along the way, but, as often happens, that soon slipped far down on my list of priorities, so this short summary will have to suffice. A year, or two, before the Tour, I hand-built my own tent. That sort of project is not your usual do-it-yourself affair, though I actually found it to be a challenging, but fun, process. My reason for choosing to do that was my generally strong dissatisfaction with tents that were commercially available at the time, at least as relating to their suitability for my intended use. Of course, a big advantage to designing your own equipment is that you can get precisely the specifications you want. Therefore, my tent was exactly the perfect size for me, accounting for my above-average height, and all of my gear. It utilized an interesting material, Cuben Fiber, for the floor, which I quite liked, and had a basic trigonal, pup-tent-style shape, which eliminated all stresses on the poles, which have never broken, unlike the flimsy, curved poles that snapped numerous times on my previous long tour.

Its most unique feature was a rain fly that could be bunched up at the foot end, out of the way most of the time, allowing for maximum cool air circulation and star-gazing through the netting. However, if it started raining during the night, the fly could be slid forward by pulling on an attached cord, and, at least partially, attached into position, without fully exiting the tent. Though that was essentially a Mark I design, that procedure worked reasonably well on a number of occasions, and I was rather pleased with that feature. There were a couple of the typical drawbacks often found in standard tents that I wasn’t able to address, however. It proved to occasionally be difficult to stake out in a proper, tight, manner, in situations where the nature of the ground was rocky, sandy, or otherwise less than ideal, and it was not really the best performer in strong winds. Those deficiencies were rarely a problem for me on this Tour, except for a few occasions, notably one early morning thunderstorm when camping on a beach in the Bahamas.

But then the Ant Attack happened, as described in my post on Manaus. On one fateful night, those despicable creatures incised many holes in the tent’s netting in just a few short minutes. I made more than one attempt to patch up the holes, but, as you can see in the following image, every time I thought I had found them all, I soon discovered more, and there are still unpatched holes even now. Eventually, I realized that the only true repair would be to replace the entire netting panels, which is not exactly the kind of job that can be done in the field. Then, just a few months later, covid happened, and that resulted in having to stay indoors, for other reasons, and both of those situations unfortunately changed the Tour to an indoor-accommodation-only event from that point onward. While that provided the benefits of regular showers and energy-gulping air conditioning, the negative effects on my daily expenses are not difficult to imagine. I had no choice but to make the best of a bad situation however, and begrudgingly gave up the practice of camping for the rest of the Tour. However, I continued to lug around my camping gear for another twenty thousand kilometers, under the assumption that I will eventually finish that repair.

I will also make one brief mention of my panniers in this section, though they aren’t really camping equipment. For this Tour, I switched to Jandd Large Mountain panniers and, overall, I was quite pleased with them. They have pleasingly simple closure system which eliminates most zippers from the design, thereby removing one of my most despised equipment components. I also found the total storage space to be just about right for me, even allowing me to conveniently carry the rolled-up tyvek bag I put over the bike when taking it on (too many) airplanes. Of course, everyone’s space requirements are different, but these were close to ideal for me. Speaking of airlines, these panniers can be attached together to convert them into one single piece of baggage, though I always reinforced that combination with a couple of nylon cable ties. On a few occasions, airline check-in agents tried to balk at that method, claiming that they were still two bags, but I always stood my ground, and never had to pay any extra charges. My only mild complaint about that set was that their top-loading design, while good in many respects, can make it slightly annoying and time consuming to fish out some item from the bottom of a bag when on the road, relative to a front-loading design.

I have already discussed my scheduled drivetrain replacements in earlier posts. With one change, which I will mention in a moment, I have used the same combinations of Rings, Chain, and Cassette for many years, including on my other long tour, and so I generally knew what to expect in terms of durability. Specifically, that a typical set should last for over fifteen thousand kilometers, when treated well. I had three sets pre-purchased before the start of the World2 Tour and that meant that I probably would be covered for the entire Tour. As it turned out that was both inadequate and adequate. That first characterization arose because, as I have mentioned before, the horribly wet and gritty conditions of the first few months chewed up the first set very prematurely, causing it to last only ten thousand kilometers. The adequacy of my preparation, therefore, only came into being because the ensuing circumstances shortened my route so drastically. When I arranged for my second parts box to be sent to Bangkok, I did so because I needed the tire that it contained. However, though my second drivetrain was just starting to wear, I installed the third set anyway, and that one is still going on the bike at the moment. Regarding the one change I mentioned above, I wanted to give a big hat tip to Vuelta Chainrings, because they had so many different sizes available, but, for the moment, at least, they seems to have only a few sizes left. That’s really unfortunate, because their rings were excellent. Being made from 7075 Aluminum alloy meant that they were very durable, while the softer rings I used to use were always the first component to wear out, these rings performed so well that on this Tour the cassette was always the first to go. Fortunately, I had purchased a lifetime supply before starting the Tour.

I will also briefly revisit the two hub ratchet failures, which I also wrote about extensively before. I now have come around to the position that the second, very premature, failure in Thailand was indeed exacerbated by the extreme heat that I had been dealing with for months. Thankfully, I should never have to worry about that again.

For an example of the axiom, You are never too experienced to discover something new, I will now mention something that I wish I had realized twenty years ago. I have never been the type of cyclist who was very diligent about routine and preventative maintenance, especially where chains are concerned. As mentioned above, I typically replace the entire drivetrain as a set, a practice that I realize offends the sensibilities of many others. In practice, the extent of my chain maintenance has consisted of dowsing them with lube, whenever I felt like they might need it. Over the years I have always used a standard hydrocarbon lube, usually one of the more viscous varieties. While that always did a reasonable job of lubricating and extending the life of the chain, the hydrocarbon layer always attracted so much gunk that my entire drivetrain was constantly a filthy mess. During this Tour, at the point when I needed to replace the prematurely-worn cassette from my first set, as mentioned above, I coincidentally was out of chain lube at the same time. The decent bike shop I located in Belem, Brazil, in which to replace the cassette, didn’t have any lubes that I recognized, so I just picked up whatever they had available. That was my good fortune, because it gave me my first experience with a wax-based chain lube. I couldn’t have been more impressed. I haven’t really been able to evaluate its effect on longevity yet, but the chain certainly did ride quietly after it was applied. More importantly, that type of lube doesn’t attract dirt at all, so my drivetrain stayed virtually clean from that moment onward. Considering how many times I needed to disassemble and pack the bike after that time, I distinctly valued that property. The particular product I purchased in Brazil that day, Smoove Lube, is actually made by a company from South Africa, and I will be a loyal customer from now on.

I have said many times over the years that Wheels are the most critical part of a bicycle, and definitely the part that most deserves extra outlays when designing specialized bicycle. That is even more important when the bike will be used for long tours. And extra-important when the rider undertaking those tours is larger than average. My previous wheel failures on tours were never fun, and so it gave me a real sense of relief when I was finally able to assemble what I considered to be the ultimate touring wheels, but also a feeling of frustration that I had not been able to use such wheels on all of my previous tours.

I already wrote an entire post during the first year of the Tour praising the now-maddeningly-discontinued Marathon Dureme Tandem tires, formerly made by Schwalbe. At that time, I was incredibly ecstatic about the first rear tire of the Tour, which rolled on for an unbelievable distance of over twelve thousand six hundred kilometers! The second and third rear tires were slightly less long-lasting, giving up at around nine thousand kilometers instead. Even though those two were a little less durable the average for all three was still over ten thousand kilometers, a value that I could only dream about previously. The only slight negative was that the latter two tires failed when the tread started to delaminate from the tire body, something that should never happen. I blame the heat again.

Just a few weeks before the Tour began, I experienced a incredible wheel-related moment of panic, something that I usually try to avoid. In preparation for the Tour, and as part of the giant cache of bike parts I was acquiring for use after the Tour, I purchased a large quantity of Schwalbe tires (unfortunately, not the discontinued Marathon Dureme Tandems) and a huge number of my preferred rims. As soon as those arrived, I set about building a fresh set of wheels, on which I would begin the Tour, and, if I do say so myself, they were beautiful. However, shortly, thereafter, the moment of panic set in. Unbeknownst to me, during the interval of time between the installation of the rims that were currently on my bike, and the delivery of the big order that I had just received, those particular rims had been redesigned to make them tubeless ready. In my opinion tubeless tire systems are a dubious option for an extended tour, and perhaps in general, as well. However, rims like those are intended to still be compatible with tubed, clincher tires.

Well, you could have fooled me, at least at that moment. Having installed hundreds and hundreds of bike tires over the years, that task had become something that I could do in my sleep, if needed. However, not on that occasion. Try as I might, I absolutely could not mount the Dureme tires onto those wheels. After spending a few hours, and trying every sort of lever I had, I was getting nowhere, and with the Tour just days away, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Eventually, after watching a few videos on YouTube and speaking to the rim manufacturer on the phone, the way forward was revealed. One frustrating issue was that it was recommended that I abandon the classic Velox rim tape I used on those wheels, in favor of a more newfangled, thinner, polymer tape. Note that I have twenty rolls of Velox available, in case anyone out there needs some. However, the primary difficulty was that, with a fresh folding tire, the kinks in the bead edge can prevent the tire from fully sliding temporarily down into the center channel, which is necessary to mount the tires. Once you realize that, and with a considerable amount of finesse, a fresh tire can usually be mounted. After riding the tires for a while, the beads will straighten out, and then remounting the tire after a repair is typically rather easy. So, my mind was eventually set at ease, and I felt that I could deal with that situation without too much difficulty during the Tour. However, I do have a vivid memory of struggling to install rear tire number three, when it was new, during a huge thunderstorm in Sierra Leone.

Speaking of rims, after trying several varieties over the years, and being let down on more than one occasion, I was thrilled when, a few years before this Tour, I discovered what I believe is the best rim yet made for extended touring. Specifically, I am referring to the Velocity Cliffhanger, 700c, of course. These rims have everything one could want in a rim for touring. Specifically, they are bullet-proof and durable. In addition, their width happily accommodates the wider tires one should want to use in that situation, the mounting horror story above notwithstanding. I had no problems at all with these rims during the Tour, a first for me, actually, and I feel that they both would have easily lasted the entire Tour, if it had actually consisted of its longer original route. However, the rear rim was a knocked a little too far out of true in the crash, and even though I was able to get it mostly usable, I decided to replace it anyway. The other key factor in choosing this rim was that they continued to be available in my preferred drilling count, forty-eight hole. I will go to my grave convinced that forty-eight spokes is the proper number for a touring wheelset.

Though, where spokes were concerned, there was one annoying situation to deal with in the first months of the Tour. The initial fifteen hundred kilometers of the Tour had been uneventful for my wheels. Then, on one morning in Kansas, after a pre-dawn arrival on a train, I decided to forgo sitting around waiting for the Sun to come up and started my day’s ride in the dark, chill of a 2 °C morning. Not long after, I heard the characteristic pop sound of a spoke breaking. Spokes occasionally break on a tour, so that wasn’t too big of a concern at the time. Then two more broke, which was definitely not normal. I easily replaced them the next day, however, over the next three months, whenever the temperature dropped below about 5 °C, a disturbingly common occurrence, I frequently broke more spokes, all at the elbow. Eventually, I needed to replace over half of the originals from the rear wheel, which, of course, was more than the number of spares that I usually carry with me. I use Wheelsmith DB14 spokes, which have a good reputation, and have always served me well, so I was quite perplexed by that situation. A detailed Web search turned up one only old forum post where someone described the same exact problem, however, that poster only received unhelpful advice, like You should just rebuild the entire wheel.. Obviously, there was some sort of manufacturing issue which caused the spokes to fail in the cold, but I never really learned what the actual cause was, nor came up with a realistic solution. However, a solution simply appeared by default, as the Tour eventually left the cold behind, once and for all. From then forward, broken spokes returned to being a rare occurrence. Since I will probably never do any touring in Antarctica, and my home is in a mild climate now, I presume that I will never have to worry about that issue again.

There are some things in life that you can truly depend on, others, not so much. One prime example of the first type is the bike’s saddle, one of my most beloved possessions. It is a Brooks Swift, and it is the only saddle the bike has ever had. Over the years, I did everything I could to extend its lifespan, covering it with plastic bags to protect it from the rain whenever the bike would be left outside overnight, giving it Proofhide whenever it asked, making sure it was always tensioned properly. However, my mode of travel can often be hard on equipment, and I certainly sent a lot of abuse towards it over the years as well. The most infamous occasion being the time I rode on it, untensioned, all around Sri Lanka and across southern India, after I broke its rails in the Himalayas. Nevertheless, that particular piece of leather, with which I have a close, personal relationship, has always come back for more, accumulating over two hundred thousand kilometers of cycling distance. That is roughly equivalent to eighteen months of non-stop usage.

At the start of the World2 Tour the saddle appeared to be in reasonably good condition, considering all it had been through, so I was confident that it would do well on the Tour, even though it was getting older. Just like me. However, when I arrived in Europe, I began to see cracks in the leather emanating from the rivet holes, an ominous observation. The previous section in the neotropics was very hard on the leather, as it was constantly soaked in my own bodily fluids throughout the sweltering days I experienced there. I was unsure at the time if it would survive the entire Tour, and wondered if it would need to be replaced at some point, though I was also unaware of the imminent changes that would soon drastically reduce the amount of time I would be using it during the next two years. So, continuing to use it proved to be inconsequential after all. Still, little, by little, though it never complained, its condition continually worsened. At the end of the Tour, it appeared as in the following image, its cracks now large, and its shape slightly distorted. Even so, it is still a pleasure to ride on. This is not really a sad occasion, because it had always been my intention to retire the saddle at the end of this Tour. In fact, I already have two identical saddles in storage with my other belongings, ready to go, which should be more that adequate to last me for the rest of my life. Soon this saddle will be hung in place of honor, probably on a wall in my workshop, where I will see it often and be reminded of all the sights we have seen together.

With the impending retirement of my long-serving saddle leather, together with the total destruction of my fork in the crash, there is now very little of the bike remaining that was originally part of it, when I first assembled it back in 1999. In fact, the only original part or material that still remains is the rear triangle of the frame, and I really hope that I can keep that intact for as long as I am still breathing, and, by extension, still riding. For my beloved bike has truly evolved into a modern day Ship of Theseus!

Throughout several tours, ranging in length from short to absurdly long, over a span of just under thirty years, I have always had what I considered to be an excellent track record concerning my health during those events. In fact, in addition to the expected fitness increases that are a built-in benefit of bicycle tours, I can remember one or two times when minor health conditions were cured simply by being on tour. To be sure, there were a few problems here and there, a few head colds, occasional food-born illnesses, a lingering case of bronchitis, one sprained wrist. Overall, however, I certainly couldn’t complain. On the other hand, just before the World2 Tour began, I started to have a nagging feeling that something major was going to go wrong this time around. As it turned out there was more than one misfortune to choose from. Not, during the first year of the Tour, however, as 2019 turned out wonderfully. I felt generally fit and well, and most of the other aspects of the Tour were progressing nicely. After the calendar flipped, however, challenges never seemed far away, with health issues at the forefront.

Everyone already knows the main story of the year that was 2020, but for me, that year was even worse. Actually, the first issue began in the last week of December, 2019, but most of the effects were felt in January, so I don’t mind casting all of its poisonous karma into the crappy year that was 2020. I was in Brazil at the time, and while everyone else celebrating, I came down with a sudden, intense cough. My family has a history with bronchitis, and, as I have had cases of that myself during previous tours, I just assumed that was what it was again. However, it didn’t really seem the same, and after observing the symptoms for a long time, I came to the conclusion, albeit self diagnosed, that what I actually had was Pertussis, better known, when it affects children, as Whooping Cough. The annoyingly stupid thing about that was that, in preparation for the Tour, I took a DPT booster vaccine, only a few weeks before my departure. The P in that name stands for Pertussis, although, as I know now, that component of that vaccine mix is said to be the least effective. I was getting Breakthrough Infections before breakthrough infections became cool! Apparently, another vernacular name for Pertussis is the hundred-day cough because that how long that particular bacterial infection often lasts. My case cleared up in just thirty days so, it’s possible that I did get some benefit from the vaccine. Those thirty days were significantly unpleasant, however.

After a too-short respite of just about twenty-five days, up next was everybody’s new best friend, the SARS-CoV-2 virus. I have already described the circumstances of my presumed case in earlier posts, and my being an early-adopter by presumably catching the virus on February 16, 2020. While I only felt noticeably bad for one or two days, with some symptoms over the usual two-week period of the illness, the fact of that infection occurring so soon after the previous one was a real mental blow. Though my case was not officially diagnosed, as nobody was getting tested so early in the pandemic, my symptoms were an exact match, with the possible exception of the loss of taste and smell. That particular effect was not being reported as a symptom yet, and I didn’t have much of appetite in any case, so I am not sure if that happened, or not. I was sure that I had the illness, however, and once the two weeks of symptoms were past, I actually felt hopeful that soon people who had already recovered from the disease would be permitted to move around more easily. That would have considerably simplified the process of trying to reorganize the Tour. However, as we all know, that didn’t actually happen.

After a somewhat hopeful three-month pause, the final blow in that year of sickness was made via a recurrence of a different virus that I originally had to deal with five years earlier. It’s not a particularly interesting story so I will not bore anyone with the details, just to say that in a recurrence, one feels uncomfortable and annoyed, one hundred percent of the time, for up to two months. That situation contributed significantly to the less-than-perfectly-enjoyable time I spent in Turkiye in August of that year. The triple-whammy that those three pathogens caused, while never very serious, was like nothing I have experienced before on a tour. While the next two years have been free of any new diseases, lingering effects of one, or more, of those three rise up from time to time, providing an enduring reminder of that bizarre year.

Testing large numbers of people for active infections of Covid was always a smart thing to do, and it was rather unfortunate that it took so long to scale up that process. On the other hand, trying to contain a virus within artificial political boundaries was probably never going work very well, so a lot of effort seemed to be wasted by doing that. However, locating testing facilities at major transport facilities at least made the process less confusing—sometimes. Consequently, I never really minded the extra tasks involved when moving from place to place, since it did let me, slowly, find my way around the globe again, though often the logistics of the whole process seemed rather absurd and disorganized. Trying to learn exactly what the procedures and entry requirements were in each case was often even more bewildering. Nevertheless, between the beginning of August, 2020 and the end of April, 2022, I took forty-six tests for covid, all negative, of course. The costs for those tests ranged from free, to one hundred sixty US dollars. Towards the end of that period lower-cost antigen test became more common and commonly accepted, so that helped somewhat. Nevertheless, the total expenses I incurred, for the tests, alone, not counting extra lodging requirements, transport to the testing sites, quarantines, and other expenses, came to two thousand seven hundred seventy-five dollars. Obviously, that was not an item I had included in my pre-Tour budget. Yeah…development of a global system of logistics and management of a mass testing regime for the next time something like this happens—that would be a good idea!

No discussion of the health issues of the World2 Tour could bypass the most significant of all of those, the causes and effects of my major crash on Guam in August, 2021. I won’t rehash the specific injuries I sustained that day, because I completely described them previously, and because, sixteen months later, a complete healing has been in place for quite some time, more or less. However, a little more information on the primary cause of that event might be of use to others someday, so I will discuss some of the possibilities. To set the stage again, the crash occurred when I was just seconds from the bottom of a short, but fast decent. At that moment, I became slightly lightheaded, drifted to the right, dove into cement culvert, then impacted a short cement wall at high speed, leading to The Mother of All Headers.

Getting lightheaded while cycling is always a bad thing, no matter the circumstances, and, fortunately, such a thing had never happened to me before this Tour. Accordingly, I wanted to understand what might have caused that on that particular day, so it hopefully won’t happen again. Based on my observations of myself during the previous year, I came up with three possibilities. The first was simple dehydration. I have avoided that during many years of cycling, occasionally in hot climates, and in this case I am fairly sure it wasn’t the cause. It’s true that it was hot that morning, as it had been on the previous day. However, before starting the ride that morning, I drank quite a bit, stopped at a small store a few minutes later, and drank some more, then about an hour later, at the top of the Hill of Doom, I spent about thirty minutes stretching out in the shade of a tree, where I drank more water. The crash occurred just a couple of minutes after I stated again, so I can’t believe that I wasn’t sufficiently hydrated.

The second possible contributing factor is much more complex, and poorly understood, but may be of more interest to other people. I first became aware of this during the six-week cycling hiatus between the end of my section in East Africa and the start of the next section in Thailand. A unusual issue had come up when I was getting the check-up needed for that flight and I almost was not allowed to fly. That was eventually resolved, but while I was quarantined in Bangkok, I was extremely motivated to find out what that had been about and spent much of my abundant free time searching for answers. As it turned out, I was only able to find one scholarly paper that matched what I was looking for, and that paper described the issue as still needing more research.

Apparently, among people who do endurance activities for a long period of time, there is a subset of that group for whom that exercise causes their circulatory system to dilate, and remain that way for an extended period of time. That, of course, is generally a good thing, and should be expected to contribute to overall good health. There evidently is an even smaller subset of people, who show the opposite effects, a contraction of their vessels during exercise, and I feel immensely sorry for those folks. The catch in this situation is that this is not a permanent effect. If the person stops exercising for a rather lengthy period of time, their vessels will slowly contract back to normal size, causing measurable issues of the type that almost trapped me in Kenya. On the plus side, that change will flip back again once exercise is resumed, reopening the circulatory system. Complicating the issue is the contractions of the vessels happens slowly, on the order of weeks, whereas the return to dilation that happens when exercise resumes is closer to instantaneous, taking only a few hours. Therefore, the negative effects can sneak up on a person and not really be noticed, while the reversal can be like a slap in the face.

That is what happened to me during the Kenya to Thailand transition, and that was by far my worst experience with that particular situation. I had been inactive in Kenya for three weeks before I started to feel off, which was just a few days before I was supposed to leave the country. On the other end, after my Thailand quarantine, the reversal happened very rapidly. On the first day of the ride there, after only about two hours, I was pulling over to buy a cold drink and began to feel quite dizzy, which is to be expected when one’s blood pressure drops rapidly. At that time I needed to lie down in the shade for two hours, drinking drinks and eating popsicles, before I felt able to coast along to a place to rest for the night. The rest of my time in Thailand did not see a repeat of that situation, thankfully. Now that I know about this, and look back on my personal history, I can identify a number of times in the past when the same thing happened to me. Those events were certainly more frequent as I started getting older, but I now believe that some other occurrences were over thirty years ago, at a time when I lived where winters were too cold to get much exercise, and I almost blacked out a couple of times when I went out riding on the first warm day of spring. This indicates that there may be a genetic cause for this situation, which the paper I read seemed to support. Fortunately, over the years, my exercise regimen has been regular enough that this has never caused me any serious problems, and I hope to keep it that way.

However, I don’t believe that this condition is what lead to the crash on Guam. Between the end of my section in South Korea and the crash, only two weeks had passed, and in the second of those I did a handful of rides. Those rides weren’t very long, because riding on Guam sucks, however, they should have been more than enough to avoid causing any dizziness later on. There was one more possibility, though that one is even more confusing.

I have been riding diamond-frame bikes regularly for thirty-five years, and had never noticed the following problem until the second year of this Tour. I mentioned the bike-frame geometry because on a standard bicycle, the rider normally keeps their head bent upwards, as if they were looking up at the sky while standing upright. Typically, for most people, including me, this never poses any problems. However in during this Tour I occasionally started noticing what felt like sore muscles in the back of my neck, on the right side. I first noticed that when I was in Turkiye, then again in West Africa, and in Thailand, and probably a few more times that I can’t remember. The good news was that this only occurred on the first or second day of riding after a fairly long layoff, of a week, or more, After that, the issue disappeared entirely, until another hiatus came along. The bad news was that whatever it was that was sore either restricted blood flow to the brain, or interacted with adjacent nerves, causing a sudden, noticeable period of dizziness. The effect was even worse when riding downhill, where the rider’s head angle is more severe. Standing erect, or better yet, lying down quickly eliminated the dizziness and eventually the soreness as well.

Though I can never know for sure, I believe that last issue was what probably caused me to crash that day. However, I also don’t know exactly what caused the sore neck in the first place, but I have a strong suspicion. The first time I noticed any soreness was in Turkiye, which also happened to be right as the effects of the third of three 2020 pathogens had finally cleared away. That particular virus is a known to attack the nervous system and the most affected area of my body during that outbreak was the back of my neck. That is enough of a coincidence for me to let myself believe that those two conditions were connected. Viruses suck!

On a hopeful note, time tempers all negativities, and none of these potential problems seem to have been bothering me much since the end of the Tour, which actually a little surprising, because I have been distinctly sedentary since then, except for a couple of enjoyable periods of light cycling. It has also been the case that most of that time has been spent in an exceedingly pleasant climate, leading me to consider that all of these difficulties were exacerbated by most of the final two years of the World2 Tour taking place under a stinking hot climate. I am planning on staying here. Certainly.

In the famous movie, Indiana Jones once said, It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage. Well, I am here to tell you that Indy didn’t get that quite right, and not just from his refusal to use the Metric System. For one thing, yeah, the years do matter, though not as much as you might think. No, the real problem in that statement was that he shouldn't have said the mileage but rather, the lack of mileage. All of the difficulties encountered in the World2 Tour were compounded by a lack of mileage, an insufficient number of kilometers traveled by bicycling, or, more properly, a lack of consistency, of consistency of effort, consistency of distance bicycled over time. I am giving this message to anyone out there who might be considering their own global cycling tour in the future. In case, you are thinking of adopting a schedule of touring for a couple of months then taking several weeks off, then repeating that pattern over and over—listen to me! Don’t do that! I’m serious! Such a plan would be a big mistake! Consistency is the most important thing for ensuring a fun and successful long tour. Anything else is just asking for trouble. I mean it! Heed this sound advice, oh future tourists! Pay attention, and then, yes, you can do it! You can bicycle the World! Maybe you can even do it twice!