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JB · Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 6

John Brown here from Argentina, thought this would be easiest way to let members of the club know how i´m getting on, I remember promising Hilary at my party I would, but I couldn´t remember her address. Guess everyone knows coxy went his own way, it was his choice, its seems funny looking back, but last time I saw him he was marching off into the distance across some wild desert grassland shouting and swearing. We never had an argument he just seemed to crack up.

That was way back in December, since then i´ve been going at a steady pace, I had a couple of weeks over christmas in Chile where its never seemed to stop raining and the road was quite bad gravel. Sometimes I had to drag my bike out of the gravel and try again, it got really hard sometimes. But since new year i´ve been in Argentina, i´ve biked through amazing scenary with lakes and mountains everywhere, ran half way up a volcano, they wouldn´t let me go any further in my puma racers which now look like flip flops.

The roads have improved and I plan to stay in Argentina all the way to the Bolivian border. Its much cheaper than Chile, you can have an enormous steak and beer in restaurant for around a fiver.

I´ve seen a bit of wildlife too, a condor flew right over my head in Chile and the other day I was cycling late looking for place to camp by the road when a hairy trarantula looking spider the size of a small dinner plate just missed my front wheel. Camping that night was a bit scary.

Well done to Jones for retaining his northern title.

See everyone soon, don´t put me on any relay teams for a while when I get back my legs are looking more shirehorse than racing horse these days.

JB

roadrunner · Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:49 am Post subject:

Hey Browny, great to hear from you. Keep posting on this forum with updates. Its good to follow your progress.
Northerns was a tough race. Some loevly mud and hills to run up and down. Enjoy the rest of your trip and catch up with you when you return home.
Andi

John123 · Joined: 05 Nov 2006 Posts: 53 Location: Heald Green

John
Glad to hear you are okay and keeping the tarantulas at bay.
Keep up the good progress.
It's the Wheelers' Dinner on Saturday, so I'll let them know where you are.
We had one member cycling across USA from East to West with a small trailer behind. He wrote a good article for the Journal afterwards. Perhaps you can do the same about your South to North trip in South America, when you've rested and contemplated what you've done!!

Cheers for now.

Take Care

John123

duncanjak · Joined: 22 Oct 2006 Posts: 66 Location: Worsley, Salford

found this photo on the web

roadrunner · Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:16 am Post subject:

Bloody hell, he's the best looking one out of them other three as well!!!

Mancitymonkey · Joined: 02 Nov 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Oop North!

Funny to see that despite everyone else looking like they need a good shave/ haircut/ wash, John's head is still nice and clean!

John123 · Joined: 05 Nov 2006 Posts: 53 Location: Heald Green

I presume the photo was taken after Coxy had 'split' and before the other three became 'two' and before John left them all in his wake, as we would have expected him so to do!!!
We have a saying in the Wheelers - "You're a hard man, Curly", which would apply to John, were it not for the absense of hair!!

Further news awaited.

John123

admin · Site Admin Joined: 21 Oct 2006 Posts: 13

I checked the statistics the other day for the website.

There have been a few viewings of the website recently from Uraguay.

Is it possible that this is where John has moved on to?

JB · Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 6

Hi Again,
I´m now in a place called Humahuaca, still argentina, but this area is more like Boliva, which is now only 100miles north of here. I arrived on friday, it was a hard day climbing all the time to the height here at around 3000m. I thought I would stay the day, to try and get acclimatised to the altitude which I have to say i´m finding very hard, I hope I feel normal again soon, cause right now its quite hard to breath well. I feel at bit nervous about the next month as I don´t think I´ll go below 3500m.

This is a bit of a crazy town, I arrived on festival weekend. Yesterday everbody squirts foam from cans and throws talc everywhere, I got covered. I was fortunate to camp next to 2 young chicks, wait for it, a swedish and french girl. The frenchie used to live in manchester and drank in the castle pub near piccadilly. How much of a coincidence is that! They took me to a special ceremony where we ate steak cooked on hot ashes on the ground. Then the most bizzare ritual of throwing beer over flags. I was given a flag to wave. It felt quite a privilege as we were the only non locals there.

Thanks for your good wishes from my first post. The photo was taken back in early december. I had just carried my bike 6k on track that led to Chile. The only advise I got was from the argentine police just follow the horse shit, it will lead to Chile. I met those guys the day coxy had his breakdown. They were fun guys to be around and they really helped me lift my spirts when I knew I would be spending the next 5 months alone.

Please write back some replies is great to hear how everyone is.

John.

roadrunner · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:27 am Post subject:

It's sounding exciting John. Far more adventuroues than my recent trip to Snowbasin in Utah, USA. A month t altitude should be fun for you.
Enjoy it.