Back in Stockholm Sarah bought her Brooks B17 saddle (there is a Brooks retailer in Stockholm old town Gamla Stan). She had problems with the WTB Pro Gel mountain bike saddle that was on her bike. Since she got her Brooks saddle I haven't heard any complaint.
I was riding on my SDG mountain bike saddle but replaced it by Sarah's WTB Pro Gel saddle. We were carring my SDG saddle for a while and finally sent it back home when we arrived in Finland.
In Jyväskylä, Finland, we swapped our stems. Sarah's riding position was not ideal and she had numb palms (despite the Ergon GC3 bar ends) and backache. My stemis a double adjustable stem whereas Sarah's headset can be adjusted in only a single point. The double adjustable stem allows a more upright riding position. In Helsinki Sarah bought a bended handle bar that again lifts the hand position by 2-3 cm. It all helped, the numb palms and backache are gone.
When we arrived at Noora's place we received the spare part parcel that my brother had sent from Germany. I was riding a 44-teeth chain ring and a 16-teeth sprocket in Sweden and Finland. The first gear was easy enough, but would not be adapted to Central Asian and Chinese mountains. I replaced the 44-teeth chain ring by a 40-teeth Spécialités TA one.
Back in Germany we had ordered the Schwalbe Marathon XR tyres. These tyres are supposed to be the best for touring. Interestingly enough, Schwalbe stopped its production last year. We hoped to receive the XR's at Noora`s place with our spare part parcel as well. Unfortunately the online shop was not able to deliver them. So we were looking for the XR's in Helsinki without any success. At the end we decided to continue with our tyres and bought two foldable Schwalbe Marathon Extreme tyres as spare tyres. Let's see how far the Schwalbe tyres will last. After 2350 km we couldn't see any wear on our Schwalbe Marathon and Marathon Plus.
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