She Says - Bring it on!

I’m not quite sure how it got to be 3 months since I made a diary entry. I had convinced myself I only wrote a month ago, but that turns out to be when I launched the blog publicly to our friends and family! I’ve been trying to find time to write for the last 2 weeks but things are getting busy now. I’ve also not been feeling the best – in fact we’ve both been struggling with our health since the Xmas flu. It turns out Xander has glandular fever, while I seem to be suffering bug after bug. The doctor has today put me on iron tablets for my near anaemia, and I’m getting some blood tests done in 2 weeks to check that and thyroid function. Hopefully this will either give me an answer, or confirm that I just really need to get out of the UK!!

We went on our first holiday since last May’s Romania trip – 5 days in Cornwall, SE England, over Easter with our Aussie friend Dan who lives here. This gave us a chance to get back into the swing of daily camping and cheap living. We tested out some of the new gear we’ve bought or made, tried some tasty meals, and could see how waterproof everything is thanks to the rain!! We were lucky actually, forecast was looking unpleasant but we ended up with mostly nice weather. I’ve been wanting to visit Cornwall for several years now, but it’s a fair distance from home and crosses through 2 busy cities, so timing travel to avoid peak times and busy seasons has always been priority. After not being able to go at Xmas (bad weather then illness put an end to that), we decided it had to be Easter and actually it wasn’t as busy as expected (apparently summer is the worst time – everyone goes to the seaside). Now if we could have just done it with the bikes…We had a good time, saw some great prehistoric sites and lovely coastline, and got to play with our cameras a lot. I’m learning loads about photography through playing with settings and reading a couple of good books on travel photography and travel wildlife photography. I can really see an improvement in my shots over the last 6 months. I just hope that means I will be able to capture some great pictures from our trip!

Bike is still in pieces, but Xander has now got loads of other things ready with it after a solid effort on the weekends. He put the new wheels together this weekend (after being stuffed around by a wheel company who said they could do the job then decided they wouldn’t); they need some adjustment but will soon be ready. The tank is ready to go on after getting polished this weekend, he’s finished making a super-secure tool pannier for the front of the bike, and he’s almost finished making the aluminium tank panniers and a pannier for our lovely new tripod!

Between us we’ve made a groundsheet for under the tent and a tarp to give us extra cover when we need it (links between tent, bike and anything else). I’ve also been trying to finish all my other sewing projects so that my mate Morgan can buy my sewing machine. Another sad belonging to sell, but one I thought I might have trouble with as no-one seems to sew these days. We had a great sewing session this weekend, teaching her to make a pair of pyjama bottoms and she was such a natural at it! I kind of wish I was staying so I could make cool costumes for her photo shoots…I’ve also gone into ‘pack up’ mode. I’ve packed up lots of decorative stuff (house is looking a bit bare), have gone through my wardrobe a few more times, and am piling up everything that is going to the car boot sales, which we will have to start attending soon. We’ve got less than 3 months to go now and precious few weekends left!

There’s a little less than 6 weeks left at work now, which is scaring the hell out of me because instead of work getting less, we just seem to be getting busier! I’m trying to get as many contracts sorted out before I go so things can roll just a little more smoothly for my boss. Thankfully, they’re now able to advertise my job (for the full 18 months left on my contract too) so that’s a sigh of relief – it was looking a bit shaky with all the cutbacks at work thanks to the economic crisis. Hopefully that means a new officer will be in post shortly after I leave to help my poor boss, who is doing about 3 people’s work as it is!!

I’m too busy to be excited just yet, there’s far too much to sort out at work and home to even really think about the travel. Xander’s a bit panicky that there’s not enough time to finish everything he needs to do for the bike, but I know he’ll be fine. Anyway, we’ve got the whole of June at home to get things finalised. I’ve pretty much plotted our route through Africa, but that will change depending on what volunteer work we find. We’re talking to friends with a big organisation in London in two weeks, hopefully that will get us set for our first project. We’ve come to a compromise about how long to travel for – looks like 21 months, getting home late April 2011 (exactly 2 years from now!) – Africa 9 months, South & Central America 12 months. I was aiming for Xmas 2010 to go home, Xander wanted to go for as long as we could, as anytime we work somewhere we can maybe save money and therefore travel longer. The compromise means we are home before our storage shed in Oz is due for rent again, meaning we come home to minimal debt. Our parents have agreed to transfer money to our Oz bank account in place of birthday and Xmas presents for the next 2 years to help us with repatriation costs. After that, who knows? We have some vague ideas about what to do, but it will be all up in the air to be honest. We’ll just have to see what is available back home and what we want to do with ourselves. I have a strong suspicion we may end up going back to a project we’ve worked on, or just selling everything still at home, working for a little while and taking off again….

He Says - The Crash bars!

Well avid reader (singular as I assume only one person in the entire world is reading this...Hi Dad!), as I promised you a part two of sorts (from He Says - The Fuel Tank Dilemma.) well here it is:

Back in September, I got the larger fuel tank (which by the way is still not painted and installed ..bloody rain/snow freezing temperatures), and found out that my crash bars don’t fit. After a lot of internet surfing and several emails The “silver lining company” mentioned in the above thread, wanted an absolute ridiculous amount of money and were rude to me.. "well bugger off I don't need you" (I hoped).

Eventually, I found that once again Ricky Cross was the bars for me, unfortunately they only sold these though Africa Queens (De). Africa Queens has been great and a pleasure to deal with, but I am cheap and would have preferred to buy from the middle man and save a few pennies.

In September, when the tank/bars fit issue was discovered, the Pound Sterling was strong(ish) and I decided that I could wait until the tank was ready to be installed before I purchased the new bars. In this case good things didn't come to those who waited, the pound has lost about 1/2 its value and I have ended up paying a lot more for the bars then I wanted to. In terms of days on the road it cost us about a week all for trying to be virtuous and patient.

I digress. I ordered the bars from Africa Queens, and in true "legendary" German efficiency, they said they would be with me on Monday, and on Monday they arrived. I don’t understand how the Germans can get the Royal Mail to be efficient when every time I send something it goes horribly wrong (three months for a DVD to reach Japan, I could have walked it there in that time)!

So for a week there was nice shiny bars sitting in the living room, begging me to install them and obviously giving Tam dirty looks; judging by the scowels she was shooting me every time she tripped over them. I, however, was more worried about the lower mounting point of the bars. These attached to a place on Anubis that is a know weak point. The dreaded bash plate mounts. So I knew I had to MacGyver something to take the weight in case of a fall. And lets face it we are going to Africa and South America: “in case of a fall” is a very optimistic. I actually should say when we fall for the 1000th time. Well Angus, himself would be proud by how modification came together with out a hitch and cost a doodle (even though duct-tape was not used).

For the bike geeks ever one else skip this paragraph:

I used a system where I replaced the upper engine mounting bolt with a longer one to allow the placing of two heavy duty 90degree angle brackets. These then allowed the placing of a cross bar (2mm thick steal bar) “just” above the bash plate. The cross bar was linked to the down pipes of the bars and the bars were then cut as appropriate. Subsequently I have decided to add a second mid line cross bar to spread the impact further.

Back to the story:

I finished installing them Sunday afternoon, only to find that the front panniers that I was 3/4th the way though building were not going to work with the new tank and bars. The bike would be just too wide. DOH!. My work will never be done! Oh well back to the drawing board. That very moment I looked out the door of my shed, to see a light dusting of snow falling. Over then next 20 hours this dusting became the biggest snowfall in the UK for 18 years. A massive 4inches (10cm) of snow had fallen!! Monday morning the UK came to a grinding halt (or is that slipping halt?). There was nothing on the news but the blizzard and the impending disaster. Businesses, schools, governments, trains and airports shut down. Main highways became "death traps of uncleared snow with drifts of up to 1/2 a foot". The city of London descended into an anarchic state of panic, and the rest of Europe laughed at how badly the Brits can cope with a light dusting of snow.

Not really worrying too much about the “blizzard” I decided that I should go to work. The Trains had stopped and roads where closing. I took the bike. The ride was actually very pleasant; the majority of the roads were black and no worse then any other wet slippery day. I made it to work with out incident. The department was all but empty, the snow was falling harder, but the British cant drive at the best of times, so I decided to grab some work and head home early and work from there. Besides the panic was reaching a zenith with the Chancellor telling us to run and hide… Ahh I mean head home for safety's sake. The ride home was as nice as it was on the way in, only this time the snow was falling bit harder and it was very pretty. The fresh snow gave the English country side an ethereal clean look, and I was calm and smiling as I road. 43 miles of trouble free enjoyable riding, and only the last 10 metres on our road was "deep" (3 inches) in snow and ice.. The good news is that even without the subsequent modification to the modifications the crash bars work! The bad news is that inevitably I drop the bike! Turning into our driveway, and I scratch my less then 36 hour old crash bars. To paraphrase a beer advertisement Murphy lives here.

The moral of this story is... don’t wait, patience in not a virtue, it is an expense. If I had bought the bars several months earlier I would have saved quite a bit of money and the fall would have been on old bars not new ones... CARPE NOCTEM!