My bike is at the shop again and I getting repaired. The rim of the rear wheel cracked, obviously from braking. I was quite astonished to see the crack because the rim is a 26” Mavic Extreme (EX 721), one year old and had only 4000 km on it’s back. The third Mavic rim in a row, nearly one per year. The “old” Mavic ceramic rim on my front wheel is already doing its service for nearly ten years. It’s a shame it’s hard to get ceramic rim or other durable rims today.

I now decided to get a complete cheap wheel with a Rigida Explorer rim and a Shimano Deore hub for city and light cycling. And I told my bike shop to get quotes for a new ceramic rim or similar durable rims from DT Swiss.

I got a new saddle and a new Shimano XTR chainring for my bike.

The price of the latter (incl. fitting) was one third of that what they wanted to have in Norway. Go figure! I am really glad I got my gear complete again. It’s more fun cycling.

So, the new saddle is a Selle Royal (SR) Lookin Athletic. Obviously it’s a successor to my trusty old and comfortable SR Lookin saddle. Only this time I decided to get the athletic version instead of the moderate one. After testdriving it, the new one seems to be as good as the old one, if not better.

So, now I like to tell Scotty to beam me back to Norway to continue my tour…