All useful parts are in the process of being sent to KiwiBikes to be used for our newly built bikes. ETA for them to arrive, at a guess, is the end of February.
 We have been trying to choose the colour for our new bikes. Am wanting something stealthy that will go with our panniers.
 The beginning of thousands and thousands of miles. The first parts for our new bikes.@jeffsonbikes watch this space for more.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel
 Napoleon, North Dakota – Horace, North Dakota 164.69 Miles – 265.04 Kilometres Total distance ridden 2281.62 Miles – 3671.91 Kilometres As we passed the Marion Community Cafe, a man in a ball-cap popped out and said, 'Welcome to Marion, come in, take a load off your mind and have something to eat'. Oh what a lovely and timely invite, we immediately jumped off our bikes, lent them against a side window, un-clicked our bar-bags, entered and took a seat where we could see our bikes. The cafe was square, with long rows of brown tables on a brown floor. There was a gaggle of farmers sitting around one and other than staff, it was empty. When the friendly waiter came to take our order, I asked him what was good, what would he recommend? He thought for a moment, gave a wee smile and said, “You should try my Caramel Pig, I created it myself”. After a quick explanation, we eagerly agreed. It was so nice to just sit and relax in the air-conditioning, knowing that our day was done. Eventually our host arrived with his amazing Caramel Pig. It was a thick slice of ham under a cinnamon bun, topped with thick caramel sauce and garnished with a single large strawberry. It was quite unorthodox, not terribly healthy, but delicious. We were content to wile away the afternoon in the cafe, but eventually in fear of outstaying our warm welcome, we exited into the early afternoon sun.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel  It has begun. On a recent trip up north we were measured up to have new touring bikes built for us. They are being built by Jeffson Bikes of Rotorua. Watch this space for more, though be warned it will be a slow process.
 Beach, North Dakota – Napoleon, North Dakota 245.90 Miles – 405.73 Kilometres Total distance ridden 2116.93 Miles – 3159.63 Kilometres Upon saying this, in the late morning we started searching the rather industrial farming hamlet of Beach for a caffeine fix. Surprisingly in the land of bad coffee, we found a passable interpretation. And believe it or not, it was in a poky Western Outfitters store. It was a quaint place, very, very brown with small, round wooden tables and tiny lovely chairs. This was not a fat person's store. We sat on one of those wee seats, surrounded by chaps and hats, boots and shirts, and read our books whilst enjoying upside-down Americanos. It was quite a surreal yet pleasant experience. In the afternoon I walked down to the library. I had to find ways of replacing our melted gear. The heat of the previous week had been brutal, let me tell you a few stories.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel  Lewistown, Montana - Beach, North Dakota 280.68 Miles – 451.17 Kilometres Total distance ridden 1711.20 Miles – 2753.90 Kilometres After another good sleep, I awoke to the sound of my phone buzzing. I popped my head out of the tent, looked east into beautiful clear skies, relaxed and decided this was likely to be a hot but beautiful day. As an afterthought, I looked west over my shoulder and was greeted by deer, backdropped by what could only be described as a nuclear holocaust. The sky was glowing blue with purple orange clouds falling out of it. Fork lightning was sparking its way towards us. With some urgency, I shoved Sharon from her slumber commanding her to get up now and not do anything else but get her sleeping gear and the tent packed and on the bikes. Trying to stay calm, but panicking slightly, we decamped considerably faster than we ever had. We rushed everything into the single table shelter just as the heavens unleashed their watershed. We sat there quietly still in our pyjamas and in prayer and watched the eye of the storm split in two and proceed to travel around both sides of us. There was lightning bouncing off the ground about 600 metres both to the north and south of us, but none coming close to us. We were somewhat miraculously protected from the worst of the storm, we got a little wet, but that was about it. Whilst sitting there waiting for the rain to clear, the volunteer fire brigade alarm went off. We watched the firefighters all rush to the station. The engine pulled out of its base with sirens blaring, only for the crew to stop a hundred metres up the road and run into the cafe to buy coffee before zooming off again.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel  Leg 4.1 Missoula - Lewistown Montana 384.50 Miles – 618.79 Kilometres Total distance ridden 1430.52 Miles – 2302.19 Kilometres About two hours later we rode back to the 200, turned left at the lights and struggled up the dry hot 287 all the way to Augusta. When we arrived we were carbohydrate-starved and quite capable of eating every bit of pasta, bread and potato the town had. We rode our usual sortie, up one side of the street and back down the other. Most of the town seemed to be at a place called Western Bar. Sweaty and smelly, we pulled up and asked what was happening. It turned out to be the bar's fifth birthday and for a two dollar donation we could eat as much as we wanted. Oh my goodness did we literally pig out, they had a hog on a spit cooking away right on the street. First I went for the potatoes, fries and crisps, then I started on as much meat as I could find and finished off the meal with plates full of home-made cookies. It was like manna from heaven right there on the Lewis & Clark cycle trail. It was the first time I had felt full for quite some time.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel Caramel Pig Stage 3.1 New Meadows, Idaho – Missoula, Montana 264.53 Miles – 423.24 Kilometres Total distance ridden 1046.02 Miles – 1675.23 Kilometres Relatively tired, we rode on and bumped into the equally tired-looking town of White Bird. There was a scuzzy town park there, it was all we had so we settled on spending the night. Sharon wandered across the road to buy a beer and chips to celebrate my birthday again. The bar lady kindly suggested that we camp closer to the pub. It scared me a little that she would suggest this. Sharon went for a wee walk up the road and I recorded a video message for a friend in Lithuania. Whilst I was doing this, someone shouted out their window at me, “f- off bum”, wow what a compliment. I kind of liked being called a bum, however the whole tired town was beginning to look stunningly unsafe and dodgy.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel Caramel Pig Stage 2.2 John Day, Oregon – New Meadows, Idaho 259.23 Miles – 417.19 Kilometres Total distance ridden 782.49 Miles – 1259.29 Kilometres We cycled down town and looked in a few of the cutsie shops. I wondered into a fishing shop, that kind of sold cute things including guns. This is an excerpt from my trip dairy. It is a conversation I had with the shop assistant in the shop. Female Shop Assistant: Do you carry a gun with you on your bike? Me: No we carry beer spray Female Shop Assistant: I guess it would be difficult in states where you cannot carry a concealed weapon. Me: Yeah Female Shop Assistant: When I am in Ontario, Oregon there is nothing more embarrassing than walking into a bank and realising I have my gun in my purse. I quickly run outside and put it in my glovebox. Me: Is it legal in Oregon to carry a gun in your glovebox. Female Shop Assistant: I don't know, I just don't want to set of any alarms in the bank and have to explain myself. As soon as I could I rushed out on to the street, found Sharon and told her of the conversation, we were both once again in hysterics and dumbfounded by American gun culture.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel
"The cafe was said to be historic and basically looked like a cross between a small classroom and a shipping container. As is the custom in a tipping culture, the staff were really friendly and keen to serve. I ordered chicken biscuits and gravy. It was huge, gluggy and yummy. My plate was stacked at least five centimetres high, the gravy was horrifically thick and flanked with sliced orange. We had a side salad of black coffee. Normally this kind of food would have killed us on the spot, but having just cycled about 550 km, our arteries were in good nick".
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read these the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request. Become a Patron by following this link. Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel  Stage 1 Astoria, Oregon – Cottage Grove, Oregon 266.64 Miles – 429.11 Kilometres It turned out that we were staying at a hippy commune. We were given a room with a soft bed and an ensuite. I was struggling though, struggling with the seemingly obvious fact that so far all Americans seem to be vegan. For tea, I had the choice of eating tofu or polenta. I knew tofu, it is what the dogs leave on the lawn after their night's wandering. Polenta was an unknown, I presumed it didn't have meat in it, but I gave it a shot. It was the same colour and flavour as everything else I had eaten over the last week; brown and cardboardish. I had dried sausage in my pannier, but was too scared to munch on it, just in case the meat police jumped on me and kicked us out of our lovely room.
More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.
You can read these the full chapters by signing up to become a patron. Become a Patron! Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this. Cheers Kel 
Peddling the Dirt across North America
Consciousness found me sprawled out amidst Baltic pine and hazy, filtered sunlight. I woke to the shriek of a bloodied woman hysterically shouting, “my God, my God, what have I done to him?” Indeed this incompetent wannabe cyclist had succeeded not only in busting my collarbone, but also in careering my bicycle along a not altogether unexpected, but different, road. My Lithuanian doctor was happily corrupt and after threatening multiple times to operate, he opportunistically slapped on me an elbow-to-elbow butterfly plaster. The expectation was that I would bribe him to get something more comfortable. I didn't bribe, but I did suffer. My arms were fixed, strutting full-length slightly in front of me. I couldn't roll over at night and even in my far-sightedness, I couldn't read. I tried watching Eurosport, CNN and listening to the radio, but quickly tired. I soon discovered that if I placed my computer about 50 cm to my right and cocked my head on an angle, that with a little difficulty I could make my MacBook do what I wanted it to do. It was here where the dream was cast. In my boredom, with the help of the Ride With GPSmap-creating platform and America's Adventure Cycling Association, I mapped road by road, street by street, path by path a cycling route from the west coast of the USA 8000km clear across the continent to Canada's east coast. It was my dream to ride it and my expectation it would never happen. But happen it did. Our work in Europe came to a natural conclusion and we found ourselves with a block of free time and two tickets for two people and two bicycles to sail from Southampton to Brooklyn, USA. We had tour-cycled before, in fact we had become quite slick in the art of living off a leather saddle, but we had only toured in Europe and were not quite prepared for the brashness of polarised Donald and anti-Donald Trumpians. We didn't visit to make America great again or to make Canada polite: we came to smell her morning mist, see her sun rise, endure the coffee and experience her people. We came for small towns, quiet roads and empty landscapes. We sailed into New York City. In Europe, bicycles have a wonderful piece of high technology called the bell. It is a contraption designed for collective community-orientated cultures to effortlessly tinkle their way through seemingly unnavigable communal spaces. In America, the circular metre around you is your space and no one shall enter, regardless of a frantic dinging bell, screaming Kiwi or 50 kg of Hungarian bicycle hurtling towards him or her. Day 1 in the USA barging my way across the Brooklyn Bridge was the first and only time I have ever suffered from bell-blister. It was also the closest my wife has ever been to being run down whilst on her bike. It seems Big Apple taxi drivers only give way when you don't and if you hesitate then you are roadkill. Sharon hesitated, the cab didn't - the result could have been yellow paint down the side of her pannier. The collision was only avoided because Sharon howled with the ferocity of a living tenderised dog, scaring the horrified driver and gaining herself a police escort to the other side of the road. It could only get better from here. We chucked our bikes on Amtrak and caught the train to Oregon. On arrival in Portland, we pushed my bike to a bike shop to repair the damage Amtrak had created. One hundred and sixty US dollars worth of mechanical wizardry and a few days later, we were eating oysters and drinking craft beer with dear friends on the eve of our 5000 mile transcontinental adventure. And that is how it began, from a seaside broken clavicle to SPD clips at the Pacific mouth of the Columbia River.
 Please click here to read Sharon's awesome 'Daily Encourager' article about the challenges of our wee bike ride.
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