We built up a handsome pair of Surly Long Haul Truckers for Nic and Emma earlier in the year, and they sent us some photos from on the road in Morocco. Follow their ongoing adventures at http://nicoandemma.com/.

Mick is riding across America on his custom Bobo Bicycles Rohloff Tourer.

You can follow his adventures via http://notsoeasyrider.tumblr.com/ -

Photos of roadside oddities, epic scenery, and epic meals. Check out a selection below..

We’ve been very impressed with 2011 version of the Vivente World Randonneur, and they’ve been flying off the floor, to the point they’re almost gone in some of the more popular sizes and handlebar setups. More bikes are on the way, but it’s looking like September before they get here. If you’re considering a Vivente for a spring tour, and want to get some time on the bike over winter, we’d encourage you to check one out now.

Off-roading on the Xtracycle!

It’s almost 5 months since I got back on my bike (thanks to Xtracycle’s awesome Free Radical) and from that very first ride I’ve been dreaming up a way to hit the ‘open road’ with the kids and test my bikes ability to go beyond the daily commutes to music class, home-school meets and all the normal life stuff that we achieve on wheels. I wanted something more, something akin to the kind of bike touring that I did pre-kids. A proper cycling adventure, outside of the urban jungle.

Last week the kids and I packed up the car with our camping gear, threw the bike onto the shiny new roof-mounted bike rack (a tandem to accommodate the length) and headed south to try our luck with cycling along a Rail Trail. Well, not quite threw – it’s bloody heavy and not easy for this 5 foot nothing mama, but with the help of a milk crate and sheer determination I can do it. And have put it on and off successfully several times now with little more than a few greasy stains and perhaps a tiny little bit of chipped paint on the car! (Lucky I’m not precious about the car).

We drove for a few days, camping along the way. The weather turned rather foul at one point and we postponed hitting the Rail Trail for a couple of days while snuggled up in a gorgeous warm log cabin outside Marlo, sitting around the wood fire toasting marshmallows between little bush walks and wanderings along the beach nearby. (I’ll post about the non-cycling part of our trip soon).

When the rain finally stopped we drove to Bairnsdale, ditched the car and hit the East Gippsland Rail Trail on the bike for the next 3 days for our first ever almost whole-family (Will stayed home to work poor thing!) out of suburbia cycling trip. It was great. Challenging and hard work, but really great.

We needed to take a detour off the trail for the first night after discovering on-route that our accommodation options in the village we were headed to did not exist, and apart from the rather hairy 2 or so kilometres of cycling along the Princes Highway with enormous high speed logging trucks and way too fast cars in a ‘shoulder’ that consisted of a lot of loose gravel and uneven surface, we cycled the whole way along the peaceful old railway line through farmland and forest. Over rivers and creeks and gully’s. Past a Brown snake, many kangaroos and wallabies, about ten million butterflies and thousands of birds. And even a few other cyclists, though none of them carrying a load or child(ren)!

I just want to do it all again. Hopefully next time we’ll figure out how to carry camping gear as a cycling trip just doesn’t feel right when you’re not pitching a tent each night in my opinion. Oh well, for this trip we were loaded up enough without throwing in the extra weight of camping gear. And being our first time off a sealed road on the Xtracycle I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew. I have found myself day dreaming about acquiring some super dooper ultra lightweight and compact fancy pants camping gear that I imagine must exist… anyone have gear of that description that you want to off-load on us?!

send us some photos or a story or whatever to info@cheekytransport.com.au and we’ll whack em up

Aaron and Jacqui are hitting the road today, starting their trans-continental global touring odyssey. If you read our site regularly, you’d be familiar with their beautiful photos, beautiful bikes and previous adventures so they go with best wishes from the whole Cheeky family.

We plan to ride our bikes from the west Pacific Ocean to the east Atlantic Ocean. We’ll start on the shores of Jervis Bay, Australia and with a few assisted sea crossings, cycle to the west coast of Ireland via Asia and Europe. Our specific destination is open and the time frame is flexible.

You can follow them on their site.

image by patrick jones from bikewise